Archive for February, 2009
Questions, Questions: Gold, Aussie and Kiwi Dollars
February 1st, 2009WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument. I’ve received some emails from Aussies and Kiwis who are thinking about buying gold. In summary: Hold off for now. I looked at the U.S. Dollar Index, but that thing is so blurry, I can’t make much sense out of it. […]
Russian Newspaper Mourns Another Murdered Reporter
February 1st, 2009Via: AP: That journalist was Anastasia Baburova, a 25-year-old cub reporter. She and a human rights lawyer were shot execution-style by a masked man with a silenced pistol as they walked together a few blocks from the Kremlin. In a country considered one of the most dangerous for journalists, no Russian newspaper has suffered like […]
FDIC Friday: Three More Down
February 1st, 2009I stopped posting FDIC Friday stories because the amounts of money involved with most of them make for noise level events in the scheme of things. I picked an arbitrary threshold of $1 billion or more in total deposits for a bank failure to warrant a mention here. But this week, we have three failures. […]
Here Comes The BARF
February 1st, 2009Via: Forbes: Why creating a Bad Asset Repository Fund for Wall Street’s toxic assets could make banking even sicker. First there was TARP. Get ready for BARF. They haven’t named it that yet, but calling a federal “bad bank” to soak up toxic assets the Bad Asset Repository Fund would be truth in advertising at […]
The End: Michael Lewis Revisits Wall Street Swindling
February 1st, 2009This piece makes a great epilogue for my 2006 Wall Street Chop Shop essay. Via: Portfolio: Now 36, Daniel grew up a lower-middle-class kid in Queens. One of his first jobs, as a junior accountant at Arthur Andersen, was to audit Salomon Brothers’ books. “It was shocking,” he says. “No one could explain to me […]
Nigerian Victims of Pfizer’s Involuntary Medical Experimentation Can Sue Under International Law Established in Responce to Atrocities Commited by the Third Reich
February 1st, 2009Via: MSNBC / AP: Nigerian families can sue Pfizer in U.S. courts with claims that the giant drug maker violated international law banning involuntary medical experimentation on humans when it tested an antibiotic to treat meningitis, an appeals court ruled Friday. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned rulings by a lower court judge […]
FDA Admits Cloned Meat, Milk May Have Already Entered Food Supply
February 1st, 2009Via: Natural News: The FDA has admitted that meat and milk from the offspring of cloned mammals such as cows, pigs, goats and sheep could very well have already entered the food supply in the United States. “It is theoretically possible,” agency spokesperson Siobhan DeLancey said. In January, the FDA declared that foods derived from […]
ICE STORM: TOTAL ACTIVATION OF KENTUCKY ARMY NATIONAL GUARD
February 1st, 2009Via: Courier Journal: Gov. Steve Beshear deployed every last one of his Army National Guardsmen on Saturday, with his state still reeling after a deadly ice storm encrusted it this week. More than half a million homes and businesses, most of them in Kentucky, remained without electricity from the Ozarks through Appalachia, though temperatures creeping […]
