China Plays Major Role in Financing Latin America; Pockets Premiums
February 16th, 2012Meet the new boss…
Via: Financial Times:
Chinese state banks have lent more than $75bn to Latin America since 2005, and in 2010 gave more than the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and US Ex-Im Bank combined, according to a report which highlights China’s growing financial heft in the region.
“On the positive side, it is clear that China is a new and growing source of finance in Latin America,” notes the independent academic report, New Banks in Town: Chinese finance in Latin America.
“That said, and contrary to much commentary on the subject, by and large Latin American nations have to pay a higher premium for loans from China.”
China has overtaken the US to become Brazil and Chile’s largest trade partner. Many US policymakers fear that Beijing is using cheap rate loans to “buy” influence among left-leaning Latin American governments that are hostile to western interests, and that Beijing uses financing to secure long term commodity supplies.
But in just one example, the China Development Bank, which accounts for the bulk of China’s Latin American lending, extended a $10bn credit to Argentina in 2010 at the London Interbank Offered Rate plus 600 basis points. In the same year, the World Bank lent Argentina $30m at Libor plus 85 basis points.
Printing RFIDs on Paper at Fraction of Cost of Regular RFIDs
February 16th, 2012Via: University of Montpellier Press Release:
Now, researchers in France have developed a way to deposit a thin aluminum RFID tag on to paper that not only reduces the amount of metal needed for the tag, and so the cost, but could open up RFID tagging to many more systems, even allowing a single printed sheet or flyer to be tagged.
…
There are several techniques used to deposit an antenna on PET: etching, electroplating; and on paper: screen printing, flexography and offset lithography. Now, Camille Ramade and colleagues at the University of Montpellier have demonstrated how a simple thermal evaporation process can deposit an aluminum coil antenna on to paper for use as an RFID tag. Aluminum is a lot less expensive than copper or silver, which are used in some types of RFID tag. The researchers suggest that the approach would reduce the cost of RFID tagging to a fifth of current prices, which could represent significant savings for inventory users operating millions of RFID tags in their systems.
Research Credit: bretwalda
Detroit News Opinion Piece: Too Many Poor People, Put Contraceptives in Water Supply
February 15th, 2012Via: Detroit News:
Since the national attention is on birth control, here’s my idea: If we want to fight poverty, reduce violent crime and bring down our embarrassing drop-out rate, we should swap contraceptives for fluoride in Michigan’s drinking water.
We’ve got a baby problem in Michigan. Too many babies are born to immature parents who don’t have the skills to raise them, too many are delivered by poor women who can’t afford them, and too many are fathered by sorry layabouts who spread their seed like dandelions and then wander away from the consequences.
Michigan’s social problems and the huge costs attached to them won’t recede until we embrace reproductive responsibility.
Will Iran Sell Oil in Currencies Other Than the Dollar Starting March 20?
February 15th, 2012Via: Telegraph:
Last week, the Tehran Times noted that the Iranian oil bourse will start trading oil in currencies other than the dollar from March 20. This long-planned move is part of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s vision of economic war with the west.
“The dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme is nothing more than a convenient excuse for the US to use threats to protect the ‘reserve currency’ status of the dollar,” the newspaper, which calls itself the voice of the Islamic Revolution, said.
“Recall that Saddam [Hussein] announced Iraq would no longer accept dollars for oil purchases in November 2000 and the US-Anglo invasion occurred in March 2003,” the Times continued. “Similarly, Iran opened its oil bourse in 2008, so it is a credit to Iranian negotiating ability that the ‘crisis’ has not come to a head long before now.”
Iran has the third-largest oil reserves in the world and pricing oil in currencies other than dollars is a provocative move aimed at Washington. If Iran switches to the non-dollar terms for its oil payments, there could be a new oil price that would be denominated in euro, yen or even the yuan or rupee.
NYPD “Stop and Frisks” Hit All-Time High
February 15th, 2012Via: NBC:
The number of so-called “stop and frisks” is rising.
City police officers stopped and questioned 684,330 people on the street last year, a record since the NYPD began yearly tallies of the tactic in 2002 and a 14 percent increase over 2010.
It couldn’t be determined how many people were patted down during the encounters, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Typically, half of the potential suspects who are stopped are frisked or searched.
Of those stopped last year, about 12 percent were arrested or received summonses. The rest were not charged.
Steve Jobs Had Top Secret Security Clearance Between from 1988 to 1990
February 14th, 2012Via: Z6Mag:
A Top Secret Security Clearance was brought up in Steve Job’s FBI report detailing when it was and when it was terminated. The top secret clearance for Mr. Jobs started in 1988 and was canceled in 1990. Steve Jobs was working at Pixar in the same time as the top secret clearance and was listed as his employer. Gawker.com had sources contact them and said, “A source who worked with Jobs emailed to say “several people had security clearances at Pixar since, in the early days, they were selling an image rendering software system that could be used to enhance satellite surveillance photographs and film.”
Research Credit: anchoviesmegma
Panorama: Poor America
February 14th, 2012Here’s a link to the whole show.
Via: BBC:
With one and a half million American children now homeless, reporter Hilary Andersson meets the school pupils who go hungry in the richest country on Earth. From those living in the storm drains under Las Vegas to the tent cities now springing up around the United States, Panorama finds out how the poor are surviving in America and asks whatever happened to Barack Obama’s vision for the country.
Canada: Proposal Would Create Massive Surveillance System
February 14th, 2012Via: The Montreal Gazette:
Police will get much easier access to the web-surfing habits and personal information of all Canadians if a new law – expected to be introduced in the House of Commons next week – passes.
Privacy watchdogs caution if the so-called Lawful Access law is passed, it would give police access to webbrowsing history and sensitive personal information, and would grant greater permission to track the cellular phones of suspects – much of it without the requirement of a warrant.
The bill, which is on the order paper for this week, would require Internet service providers and cellular phone companies to install equipment that would monitor users’ activities so that the information could be turned over to police when requested.
It would also grant greater permission to law enforcement authorities to activate tracking mechanisms within cellphones so they can follow the whereabouts of suspected criminals. If there is a suspicion of terrorist activity, the law would allow such tracking to go on for a year, rather than the current 60-day limit.
This isn’t the first time this law has been introduced. The most recent incarnation of the Lawful Access bill died on the order paper when the federal election was called last year.
Another Way to Break the Internet: ‘The Right to Be Forgotten’
February 14th, 2012Not April 1st: Check.
Not The Onion: Check.
Via: Stanford Law Review:
At the end of January, the European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights, and Citizenship, Viviane Reding, announced the European Commission’s proposal to create a sweeping new privacy right—the “right to be forgotten.” The right, which has been hotly debated in Europe for the past few years, has finally been codified as part of a broad new proposed data protection regulation. Although Reding depicted the new right as a modest expansion of existing data privacy rights, in fact it represents the biggest threat to free speech on the Internet in the coming decade. The right to be forgotten could make Facebook and Google, for example, liable for up to two percent of their global income if they fail to remove photos that people post about themselves and later regret, even if the photos have been widely distributed already. Unless the right is defined more precisely when it is promulgated over the next year or so, it could precipitate a dramatic clash between European and American conceptions of the proper balance between privacy and free speech, leading to a far less open Internet.
Hungary’s Needy Given Money to Burn (in Their Furnaces)
February 14th, 2012Must see.
Via: AFP / YouTube:
Hungary’s central bank, currently at the centre of a dispute between the country’s government and the EU, has launched an unusual social programme to counter the effects of the current cold snap. It’s handing out blocks of disused bank notes to the country’s poorest citizens, so that they can be burned for fuel.
