Archive for April, 2009
The Vanishing Shopping Mall
April 1st, 2009Via: The Week: Enclosed shopping centers, long the cathedrals of American consumerism, are closing their doors by the hundreds as the recession continues to clobber retail sales. Is America’s love affair with the mall over? Are malls dying? The vital signs are not good. Even before the recession hit, consumers had developed mall fatigue, and […]
Max Keiser on Bankers Bonuses… And Heroin
April 1st, 2009You guys will love this. Via: Solari: Max Keiser: ….they (Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan et al) are systematically undermining the entire system. They are creating a mechanism to carve out equity and capital for themselves at the expense of society at large. So in the United States, unemployment is skyrocketing. The uninsured is skyrocketing. The […]
Financial Rescue Nears GDP as Pledges Top $12.8 Trillion
April 1st, 2009This isn’t a rescue. It’s a shakedown. Via: Bloomberg: The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s. New pledges from the Fed, the Treasury Department and the […]
Pump and Dump Swindle Used Employee Retirement Funds
April 1st, 2009Via: Boston Globe: Just months before the start of last year’s stock market collapse, the federal agency that insures the retirement funds of 44 million Americans departed from its conservative investment strategy and decided to put much of its $64 billion insurance fund into stocks. Switching from a heavy reliance on bonds, the Pension Benefit […]
Professor Paul Callaghan and Wool to Weta: Transforming New Zealand’s Culture and Economy
April 1st, 2009I hold back a lot about the problems I see in New Zealand. I love it here. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. But there are serious and uncomfortable issues that most Kiwis, including those in government, don’t want to face. And the last person they would want to hear about these things from […]
IBM: Another Public Menace
April 1st, 2009Via: Times Herald Record: As IBM was firing thousands of American workers last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published Big Blue’s application to copyright a computerized system that calculates how to offshore jobs while maximizing government tax breaks. Update: IBM withdraws its application, calling it an error.
More on What Kent Kresa Might Bring to GM
April 1st, 2009What technologies might someone like Kent Kresa be tasked with providing to GM? —Obama Fired GM’s CEO; What’s Stirring Behind the Black Curtain? Not only did the Obama administration fire GM’s CEO, the Los Angeles Times reports that they also installed Kresa as Chairman. Via: Bloomberg: Alternative Energy, Technology Kresa will probably help steer GM […]
