Scientist to study plant stress BBC Lilies Deadly to Cats, Veterinarians Warn PhysOrg. I assume cat owners know this already, but better to be safe than sorry. Poinsettias and birds of paradise are also toxic Large ice shelf expected to break from Antarctica CNN CSI Bailout Bill Moyers Journal (hat tip Laborboy). Bill Black does […]
Read more...One of the disturbing trends of the financial crisis hasn’t simply been the willy-nilly shifting of costs onto the taxpayer, even when there were investors in risk capital, aka bondholders and stockholders, who properly should take the hit first. As distressing is the repeated, flagrant disregard for the rule of law, starting with the Treasury […]
Read more...Submitted by Jesse of Le Café Américain Orwellian use of government economic statistics, par excellence. The moving average of the Non-farm Payrolls marked the downturn in the economic expansion with amazing clarity by a steep drop in late 2007. It will also mark the bottom and a sustained upturn when it arrives.
Read more...Submitted by Edward Harrison of the site Credit Writedowns I have just finished looking at the latest employment situation report and there is absolutely no good news there. This report is miles apart from the jobless claims data I reviewed yesterday and does not suggest we are anywhere close to a bottom. The headline number […]
Read more...Submitted by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse. In late November, I stated that Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) was heading for a fall: Looking at that picture above from their 2006 annual report, I can’t help thinking that Teachers may be juggling more than it can handle and they are now going to stumble […]
Read more...‘Supersize’ lions roamed Britain BBC Correlation is Not Causation, Part 1,345,649,303 Social Science Statistics Blog liberty central’s civil liberties villain of the week: The Pentagon’s privilege review team Guardian. Police state watch: Lawyers for Binyam Mohamed face the incredible prospect of a six-month jail sentence in America after writing a letter to President Obama detailing […]
Read more...Let us go back to some basic principles: 1. Despite bank and Administration smoke-blowing to the contrary, the problem with the so-called toxic assets on bank balance sheets is NOT that they cannot be priced, but that banks do not like the prices on offer from willing buyers. We have read anecdotes suggesting that the […]
Read more...Submitted by Tyler Durden, publisher of Zero Hedge When the man in charge of the second largest borrower in the U.S. is willing to lose his job due to his discomfort with the FASB’s shift in accounting rules, you can bet that the tragic fallout of all the “market buoying” recent events is only a […]
Read more...The nays on the public private partnership program, the Treasury’s gimmick program to relieve banks of toxic assets, won positive comments from the obvious beneficiaries, namely banks and possible fund managers, and quite a few negative reviews from those worried about the benefits relative to the cost to the taxpayer (such as Nobel prize winners […]
Read more...Submitted by Edward Harrison of the site Credit Writedowns Tomorrow, we all await the unemployment number with anticipation. In all likelihood, it is going to be a nasty number edging us ever closer to the 9.0% I once saw as a sort of upper range number for 2009. Meanwhile, jobless claims for the week ended […]
Read more...Submitted by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse. Reuters reports that the OECD sees a bleak global outlook and soaring job losses: The world economy will shrink at a far faster pace than originally expected this year, sending unemployment soaring and highlighting the need for extra steps to halt the crisis, the OECD said on […]
Read more...Baby chicks do basic arithmetic BBC Yeast-powered fuel cell feeds on human blood New Scientist People in Need Are Filling and Taxing Libraries New York Times AIG Debacle Not My Fault, Says Greenberg; Testifies Today Wall Street Journal. Please. Greenberg signed on to a firm within a firm arrangement with AIGFP, broke it, then reinstated […]
Read more...The George Santayana saying, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” is so oft repeated as to verge on cliche. Yet the US variant of this syndrome is to be aware of history, then rationalize how it does not apply to us. Japanese policy makers from the early days of the […]
Read more...A New York Times article tonight reports that China intends to become a world leader in electric and hybrid cars: Chinese leaders have adopted a plan aimed at turning the country into one of the leading producers of hybrid and all-electric vehicles within three years, and making it the world leader in electric cars and […]
Read more...Earth population ‘exceeds limits’ BBC The New Neocon Alliance with Obama Jacob Heilbrunn Huffington Post The Economist to Launch London Theme Park Economist (hat tip reader Justin) Alan Greenspan: “I screwed up!” Models and Agents Paid Cadillac Prices, Got a Chevrolet Daniel Gross, Slate Will The Real Geithner Plan Please Stand Up? Simon Johnson Stress […]
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