Archive for the 'Economy' Category
Poor Among Plenty
February 6th, 2007Via: MSNBC: Once prized as a leafy haven from the social ills of urban life, the suburbs are now grappling with a new outbreak of an old problem: poverty. Currently, 38 million Americans live below the poverty line, which the federal government defines as an annual income of $20,000 or less for a family of […]
U.S. Contractors Becoming a Fourth Branch of Government
February 5th, 2007The shop has already been looted; this is the final sweep to pull the fixtures off the walls before the criminals torch the place. Via: International Herald Tribune: In June, short of people to process cases of incompetence and fraud by federal contractors, officials at the General Services Administration responded with what has become the […]
Uncle Sam Robs You to Pay Lockheed
February 5th, 2007If we could know just how much control this one corporation exerted over the domestic and foreign policies of the United States, I’m quite sure that it would be so astonishing that hardly anyone would believe it. Via: Corpwatch: Even without all the specifics, it is clear that Lockheed is supplying the U.S. war in […]
Subprime Credit Crunch Could Trigger Collapse
February 5th, 2007Via: Autodogmatic: Some of you might have seen my new informational site, the Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter. But for those who haven’t, I started this site to coherently track a story that is otherwise only quietly developing on a smattering of disparate finance blogs and message boards, with little treatment in the mainstream media (MSM). That […]
Chicago Fed Warns of ‘Time Bomb’ Mortgages
February 4th, 2007Via: Daily Herald: Officials of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago called on state agencies to clamp down on lenders that make high-risk mortgage loans to people who can’t afford them. In a conference at the bank on Wednesday, Federal Reserve examiner John Taylor said states need to put more resources into examining the lending […]
U.S. SAVINGS RATE AT LEVEL SIMILAR TO GREAT DEPRESSION
February 2nd, 2007Via: Houston Chronicle / AP: People are saving at the lowest level since the Great Depression, and that could be a problem for the millions of baby boomers getting ready to retire. In fact, the Commerce Department reported Thursday that the nation’s personal savings rate for all of 2006 was a negative 1 percent, the […]
The Winner: Los Angeles
January 29th, 2007Of the ten least affordable areas in the U.S., California has seven of them! And then there’s good ‘ole Los Angeles, festering away at the very top. My sister, Heather, happens to be a real estate agent. If you’re looking to get off the sinking ship in Southern California, and want to work with a […]
China’s Energy Sinkhole
January 29th, 2007Via: Economist: Now there really is a giant sucking sound—not one made by the flight of jobs, but by China ferociously hoovering up commodities and raw materials. Although it accounts for roughly 4% of global GDP (measured at market exchange rates), China consumes 30% of the world’s supply of minerals and other raw materials. This […]
Raw Milk and Lifting the Veil that has Been Pulled Over Our Eyes
January 28th, 2007As all of you know, I find the “expert” opinions on medicine, energy, economics and several other areas to be riddled with bullshit. I have found that experimentation always trumps theory. No number of people with PhDs, paid trolls or “peer reviewed” journals are going to convince me that something that works for me isn’t […]
Countries by Current Account Balance
January 26th, 2007Cryptogon reader David submitted a comment that contained an interesting link to a map that depicts each country of the world in terms of current account balance. See the data in a table to get a feel for the numbers! Everyone knows who’s at the bottom of that list, right? You know, the country that’s […]
