Category Archives: business/econ

America the Boastful

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What Went Wrong? typified commentary about the U.S. economy, and economic journalism was dominated by scare headlines about downsizing, after a mere two years of good news America’s mood has become startlingly triumphalist. Read on

The Olympics are Around the Corner…

The political salience of sport has increased dramatically in the past 30 years. Governments in regimes of every type have shown a new willingness to invest and intervene in sport directly, steer and develop sport policy more purposefully, and, recently, engage in bidding for and hosting sports mega-events. With the London 2012 Olympics on the horizon, it is an apt time to reflect on the reasons behind the increasing politicisation of sport and sports mega-events, and the increasing competition between states to host an Olympic Games, FIFA World Cup or one of the smaller international competitions, such as the Commonwealth Games.

: Continue reading :

The Encyclodpedia of

Check out a thorough collection of articles about 9/11 via NYMAG‘s Encyclopedia of 9/11.

What Dinh didn’t anticipate was a profound shift in liberalism and, therefore, in the politics of the country. Even with a Democrat now in the White House, the liberalism that protects the right of the individual against the majority—the politics of civil rights and abortion and gay marriage—has diminished, in favor of one that aims to improve the lot of the median man. Obama’s liberalism is for the majority, not against it. This spirit, and the unlikely endurance of the Patriot Act, owes something to the central psychological events of the decade: the vitality and threat of new economic competitors, the social violence initiated by the authors of obscure financial instruments, but first and most of all September 11—each of which evoked a particular feeling, that we were all together, under attack. .::Patriot Act

Koch’s War on Obama

The gala marked the social ascent of Koch, who, at the age of seventy, has become one of the city’s most prominent philanthropists. In 2008, he donated a hundred million dollars to modernize Lincoln Center’s New York State Theatre building, which now bears his name. He has given twenty million to the American Museum of Natural History, whose dinosaur wing is named for him. This spring, after noticing the decrepit state of the fountains outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Koch pledged at least ten million dollars for their renovation. He is a trustee of the museum, perhaps the most coveted social prize in the city, and serves on the board of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where, after he donated more than forty million dollars, an endowed chair and a research center were named for him.

One dignitary was conspicuously absent from the gala: the event’s third honorary co-chair, Michelle Obama. Her office said that a scheduling conflict had prevented her from attending. Yet had the First Lady shared the stage with Koch it might have created an awkward tableau. In Washington, Koch is best known as part of a family that has repeatedly funded stealth attacks on the federal government, and on the Obama Administration in particular.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer#ixzz0ymB5PgBr

Dallas Police Score Big

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An undercover police agent in Dallas, Texas probably shit his pants today after he found some 50 lbs. of cocaine hidden in hydraulic compartments of a 2004 Infinity coupe they seized two months ago. The po-lice have been using the car in undercover operations since.

Ninjas hope to find the ’99 Honda seized at the same time and sold at auction before the police do.

Kids Today…

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So,

Seventy-five students at San Diego State University have been arrested on drug and weapons charges in an undercover operation[...]The operation netted more than $100,000 worth of cocaine, marijuana and ecstasy and several weapons, including a shotgun and four handguns.

Apparrrrrently the school had a pretty organized drug operation running out of the frat houses … brah.

Now, if the University sent in some ninjas, we could have rounded up a lot more than the measly hundred Gs worth of contraband. And it might have vanished without a trace.

McDashing

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You european ninjas, man, I love you. The McD’ses in Europe just rolled out their new designer food service wardrobe in an attempt to ninjafy the appeal of a McJob.

Bruce Oldfield told the BBC that one of his earlier designs for the McDonald’s uniform had to be withdrawn after trials. “We found that there was one design of shirt that chafed. We had to get rid of it because we didn’t want our boys’ or girls’ nipples chafed,” he said.

Fantastic.

Obamanomics say

“Under Republican and Democratic administrations, we failed to guard against practices that all too often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productivity and sound business practices,” Mr. Obama said. “The result has been a distorted market that creates bubbles instead of steady sustainable growth — a market that favors Wall Street over Main Street, but ends up hurting both.”

ALBA

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ALBA, an Economic Alternative for Latin America

by Medea Benjamin

The sixth conference of the Latin American alternative trade alliance known as ALBA-which stands for the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas and means “Dawn” in Spanish-was held in Caracas on January 25-26. The brainchild of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, ALBA was founded by Cuba and Venezuela in 2004 as a fair trade alternative to US-backed free trade policies and is made possible thanks to Venezuela’s oil money.

When Evo Morales was elected in Bolivia and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, they too joined ALBA, which Chavez has nicknamed the Club of “Chicos Malos”, or bad boys, because of its opposition to U.S. domination. At this weekend’s meeting, the Caribbean island of Dominica also joined, and representatives attended from Ecuador, Honduras, Uruguay, Haiti and several other Caribbean nations.

Chavez opened the session talking about the need for a trade system that addresses people’s needs, not corporate profits. His railed against the “dictatorship of global capitalism”, and encouraged Latin American countries to withdraw their international reserves from United States banks, warning of a looming US economic crisis. “Why does that money have to be in the north?”, he asked. “We should start to bring our reserves back home.”

His thoughts were echoed by Daniel Ortega, who blamed the capitalist system for the environmental crisis. “The capitalist model of development is simply unsustainable,” Ortega declared. “If your economy is controlled by speculative capital that only cares about profits, you can’t solve the huge problems affecting humanity. Once we renounce the free trade model, we can begin to address the massive problems of unemployment, poverty and global warming.”

Bolivia’s Evo Morales, who is facing fierce opposition in part because of his efforts to nationalize natural gas and oil, insisted that key public resources such as land, water and energy should not be for private profit but for the common good. He also insisted that Latin America should not look to the United States for solutions, since U.S. aid always comes with strings designed to increase its hegemony.

“In 1990s, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund imposed their disastrous policies, and then the U.S. tried to impose the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas-which should really be called the Free Profits Agreement of the Americas because it is meant to increase the profits of US corporations,” said Morales. “But people of the hemisphere rejected that agreement, so now the U.S. is trying-country-by-country-to get bilateral trade agreements. They are always trying to divide us, but we salute the great resistance to empire that we see throughout the hemisphere.”

The leaders noted that it was no coincidence that just at the time of the ALBA summit, Condoleezza Rice was visiting neighboring Colombia to promote a U.S.-Colombia Free Trade pact. Chavez, who recently called Colombia’s President Urribe a “sad peon of the empire”, laughed at U.S. accusations that he, Chavez, was facilitating the flow of Colombian cocaine through Venezuela.

The talk of drug-smuggling turned into comic relief, however, when Chavez launched into a discourse on the benefits of the coca leaf, which, he insisted, was very different from cocaine. U.S. officials have long tried to eradicate coca cultivation, which has been grown and chewed by Andean Indians for centuries.

“Speaking of drugs,” Chavez turned to Bolivian President Evo Morales, who is himself a former coca farmer and is a strong defender of the coca leaf, “where are the coca leaves you used to bring me?”

A Bolivian Indian sitting behind Morales got up and offered up his personal stash of coca leaves. Delighted, Chavez took a leaf and put it in his mouth. “The sacred leaf of the Inca, the Aymara Indians,” he declared. “Thank you, brother.” Emphasizing the great qualities of coca, Chavez said that he had become used to chewing the leaves every morning and invited the other heads of states to try some.

Read the Rest

More World Bank & Roving Bugs

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So it has come to my attention that since the discussion of roving bugs first surfaced on the internet, many people have blogged about it.

So many people have mentioned this issue in fact that it has generated a sort of hysteria about the issue.  The generation of such hysteria has obviously spurred a coalition of naysayers.  I just wanted to reaffirm to people that the technology is obviously possible.  Some articles go as far as to claim that the roving bug could be activated even when the phone was switched off.  That might be a little hyperbolic.

Anyway, this guy disagrees.  Here is a little more about that roving bug bust.

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The article from which this graph originates is very interesting. So is this.
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The other thing is that I was having a conversation with my dad the other day and he made a good anecdotal point about why free market capitalism pisses people off who live within poor market economies, I mean, besides the obvious reasons.  He pointed out what happened when a company from the UAE tried to buy American ports. It wasn’t very pretty.

I was saying in the last post that many countries blame their financial problems on the sharky nature of the world bank which can have the (purposeful or accidental) effect of destabilizing an economy, and/or supporting people financially who really don’t need to be in charge.  Argentina is one of the countries that really hates the organization.  Read and educate yourself.

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The image of the Argentinian World Bank protest originates from this article.