Recovery.Gov
http://www.recovery.gov/

Absolutely Brilliant. Transparency in Government will take back our country.

Hall of shame...if they have any.

The worst economic turmoil since the Great Depression is not a natural phenomenon but a man-made disaster in which we all played a part. In the second part of a week-long series looking behind the slump, Guardian City editor Julia Finch picks out the individuals who have led us into the current crisis

... and six more who saw it coming

ChairmanBruce:

2009 Will Be a Year of Panic

Intellectual property made sense and used to work rather well when conditions of production favored it. Now they don't. If it's simple to copy just one single movie, some gray area of fair use can be tolerated. If it becomes easy to copy a million movies with one single button-push, this vast economic superstructure is reduced to rags. Our belief in this kind of "property" becomes absurd.

In a battered economy, free goods and services online are more attractive than ever. So how can the suppliers make a business model out of nothing?

Free is not enough. It also has to be matched with Paid.

Before the credit crisis, the world was awash with money. Now central banks are pumping in more than ever before and still everyone is short. Dan Roberts explains the illusion of wealth.

Recession spending by sector (US)

The spending data is cool, but it's largely meaningless to use for any decision-making about the state of the economy.

"Mint.com is in a unique position to answer this question – quantitatively. Since the crisis first hit in September, our user registration rate has more than quadrupled, giving us 900,000 sample points on the economy. That’s close to 1% of US households."

The average customer: "are spending $400 less each month than they were a year ago, have burned through half of their savings, and on average have taken on an additional $5k in debt."

Aaron Patzer

abreast

Yahoo! Finance looks at some big companies who are on the razor's edge.

Loehmann's Capital Corp. (Privately owned; about 1,500 employees). This clothing chain has the right formula for lean times, offering women's clothing at discount prices. But the consumer pullback is hitting just about every retailer, and Loehmann's has a lot less cash to ride out a drought than competitors like Nordstrom Rack and TJ Maxx. If Loehmann's doesn't get additional financing in 2009 - a dicey proposition, given skyrocketing unemployment and plunging spending - the chain could run out of cash.

blistering

thought you might be interested in this

The centerpiece of President Obama's domestic agenda is an $819 billion economic stimulus plan. The Senate will consider the measure this week, with an eye toward the amount of tax cuts and spending. Republicans and Democrats spar over what to consider a tax cut. An analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office tallies the tax-cut portion to be significantly less than the one-third Democrats claim it to be.

The Washington Post's breakdown of the stimulus package.

not the clearest visualization. could benefit from some compactness, perhaps via mouse interaction/exploration. but definitely a lot of good research and data in here.

share

http://clusterstock.alleyinsider.com/2009/2/aig-implodes-the-two-cows-version

The crash of 2008 continues to reverberate loudly nationwide—destroying jobs, bankrupting businesses, and displacing homeowners. But already, it has damaged some places much more severely than others. On the other side of the crisis, America’s economic landscape will look very different than it does today. What fate will the coming years hold for New York, Charlotte, Detroit, Las Vegas? Will the suburbs be ineffably changed? Which cities and regions can come back strong? And which will never come back at all?

"The crash of 2008 continues to reverberate loudly nationwide—destroying jobs, bankrupting businesses, and displacing homeowners. But already, it has damaged some places much more severely than others. On the other side of the crisis, America's economic landscape will look very different than it does today. What fate will the coming years hold for New York, Charlotte, Detroit, Las Vegas? Will the suburbs be ineffably changed? Which cities and regions can come back strong? And which will never come back at all?"

Frightening look into the future of a social collapse in the US (and by extension other western countries) based on the experiences of the Russian collapse.

save

Hmmm. Trying not to panic.

save

Dubai threatens to become an instant ruin, an emblematic hybrid of the worst of both the West and the Middle-East and a dangerous totem for those who would mistakenly interpret this as the de facto product of a secular driven culture.

And so it goes, quite predictably too.... "As people scramble for the exits in Dubai, there is no ‘key mail’, like in America, where people can often mail back their house keys and walk away from a mortgage without the immediate threat of jail. People are literally fleeing this place, to date leaving 3000 cars stranded at the airport with keys still in the ignition. And the reason for this is that if you default on your Dubai mortgage, you can end up in a debtors prison. Perhaps Dubai will at least create a new Dickens?"

"people who have hundreds of millions or a billion in the bank are not going to change their lifestyles"

Great little animation that explains why the credit markets have frozen.

The Short and Simple Story of the Credit Crisis. Crisisofcredit.com The goal of giving form to a complex situation like the credit crisis is to quickly supply the essence of the situation to those unfamiliar and uninitiated. This project was completed as part of my thesis work in the Media Design Program, a graduate studio at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. For more on my broader thesis work exploring the use of new media to make sense of a increasingly complex world, visit jdjarvis.com.

Astute, approachable, and just plain pretty animated explanation of our current economic situation. Oh, and did I mention INCREDIBLY FRIGHTENING!? Once you realize how simple, and thus fundamental, the underlying problems are, it becomes very difficult to believe in a quick or easy fix. Now, back to stuffing my remaining cash into my mattress...

What do you do if you don't have the money to pay a debt? If you are like most of us, you borrow. The US Government is no different. In order to pay for the $700 billion bailout, it will have to borrow more money, increasing the national debt. But who will pay for this massive bailout? If you are a US taxpayer, you will. Here is a visual guide to understanding how the bailout is funded and a couple of financial experts take on how it could be funded.

What do you do if you don’t have the money to pay a debt? If you are like most of us, you borrow. The US Government is no different. In order to pay for the $700 billion bailout, it will have to borrow more money, increasing the national debt. But who will pay for this massive bailout? If you are a US taxpayer, you will.

A nice graphic showing how the Bailout is being funded

"In the mid-'80s, Wall Street turned to the quants—brainy financial engineers—to invent new ways to boost profits. Their methods for minting money worked brilliantly... until one of them devastated the global economy."

The Nobel winning formula

Great explanation of the credit crisis...

The Short and Simple Story of the Credit Crisis. By Jonathan Jarvis.

Information and Aesthetic. Nice.

long form documentary on the financial crisis. Audio editing/narrative is strong

When it comes to money, the best defense is a good offense. The best way to avoid fallout from the national economy is to take control of your personal economy. By developing smart financial habits, you can remain calm even in the midst of a financial crisis. (Well, mostly calm, anyhow.)

Compare and discuss the %age budget breakdowns.

JD, writing at Zen Habits.

"How the economy went so bad, so fast and what Bernanke and Paulson did't see, couldn't stop and weren't able to fix."

design img

waive

an interesting blog post on how banks set credit card limits

Today, we are bailing out the banks because of their greedy and deceptive lending practices in the mortgage industry. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. More is coming, I’m sorry to say. Layoffs are being announced nationwide in the tens of thousands. As people begin to lose their jobs, they will not be able to pay their credit card bills either. And the banks will be back for more handouts.

The Worst Is Yet To Come: Anonymous Banker Weighs In On The Coming Credit Card Debacle

By Felix Salmon at Wired Magazine, February 23, 2009.

Life at Wal-Mart

Wal*Mart isn't the devil? <gasp>

How about a different opinoin on those Wal-Mart jobs.

he seems surprised that the people who work at WalMart aren't ogres, and he completely ignores the fact that the writings about conditions at WM may have led to the improvements that he sees

"Of 13 million tracks available, 52,000 - just 0.4 per cent - accounted for 80 per cent of downloads."

awesome read on the sociology of shopping

The long tail

do I agree? does this matter?

nt us towards more mainstream

http://www.fastcompany.com/node/54763/print fastcompany fastcompanyfastcompany NotoWal-Mart

""As I look at the three years Snapper has been with you," he told the vice president, "every year the price has come down. Every year the content of the product has gone up. We're at a position where, first, it's still priced where it doesn't meet the needs of your clientele. For Wal-Mart, it's still too high-priced. I think you'd agree with that. Now, at the price I'm selling to you today, I'm not making any money on it. And if we do what you want next year, I'll lose money. I could do that and not go out of business. But we have this independent-dealer channel. And 80% of our business is over here with them. And I can't put them at a competitive disadvantage. If I do that, I lose everything. So this just isn't a compatible fit."" A repost of an article doing the rounds a few months ago. Not saying nothing about Kindle.

There are a lot of parallels to Web design here.

"Wier traveled to Bentonville with a firm grasp of the values of Snapper, the dynamics of the lawn-mower business, the needs of the dealers, the needs of the Snapper customer, and the needs of the Wal-Mart customer. He was not dazzled by the tens of millions of dollars' worth of lawn mowers Wal-Mart was already selling for Snapper; he was not deluded about his ability to beat Wal-Mart at its own game, to somehow resist the price pressure. He was not imagining that he could take the sales now and figure out the profits later."

Jim Wier, the CEO of Snapper Mowers, flies to Wal-mart headquarters to tell them he no longer wants to offer Snapper mowers in their stores.

Vistazo a donde las personas alrededor del mundo estan direccionando algo de su poder de compra

Who is buying what.

Shows average yearly expenditures per citizen by type of item (5 categories) around the world.

fun

to understand the financial world crisis

The indispensable Michael Lewis reports from Reykjavík on the de facto bankruptcy of Iceland. An amazing story: the country's currency is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance. This was the result of a collective madness stunning even by US standards of financial insanity. Lewis asks how a 300,000 person fishing nation with one of the highest living standards in the world managed to turn itself into a national hedge fund? Lewis reports on an inbred country where, among other things, the men are largely nuts and the women seem to have completely given up on them, The result is the first lesbian head of state, an all-female political party, and the nation's only profitable bank run entirely by women. Like most of what Lewis writes about the intersection of people and large sums of money, this is another "drop whatever else you are doing and read this" article.

on the financial meltdown ef Iceland

Iceland's collapse. "One of the distinctive traits about Iceland’s disaster, and Wall Street’s, is how little women had to do with it."

"Iceland’s de facto bankruptcy—its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance—resulted from a stunning collective madness. What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjavík, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown. "

Iceland’s de facto bankruptcy—its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance—resulted from a stunning collective madness. What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjavík, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown.

CNBC Financial Advice

first video against Santelli

The Daily Show | Comedy Central

Sprekende foto's over de financiele crisis

Another great entry from The Big Picture. #30: Unused newspaper racks clutter a storage yard.

Iceland&#8217;s de facto bankruptcy&#8212;its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance&#8212;resulted from a stunning collective madness. What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjav&#237;k, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown.

Iceland’s de facto bankruptcy—its currency (the krona) is kaput, its debt is 850 percent of G.D.P., its people are hoarding food and cash and blowing up their new Range Rovers for the insurance—resulted from a stunning collective madness. What led a tiny fishing nation, population 300,000, to decide, around 2003, to re-invent itself as a global financial power? In Reykjavík, where men are men, and the women seem to have completely given up on them, the author follows the peculiarly Icelandic logic behind the meltdown.

A beautiful piece by Michael Lewis about the Iceland economy which went bankrupt in 2008.

Two French photographers immortalize the remains of the motor city on film

Through the ruins of Detroit..

Could this be more depressing? The once-beautiful Detroit, formerly the economic engine of a nation, is a ghost.

Maybe it's all I've been reading about the collapse of the classic Maya lately, but this seriously gives me the creeps.

Must read. 210309

The President is holding a new kind of online town hall where he will answer the questions you submitted and voted on for him. The event begins here at 11:30am ET. You can read the most popular questions submitted on the economy below.

WhiteHouse.gov is the official web site for the White House and President Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States. This site is a source for information about the President, White House news and policies, White House history, and the federal government.

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform.

But these various policies—lightweight regulation, cheap money, the unwritten Chinese-American economic alliance, the promotion of homeownership—had something in common. Even though some are traditionally associated with Democrats and some with Republicans, they all benefited the financial sector. Policy changes that might have forestalled the crisis but would have limited the financial sector’s profits—such as Brooksley Born’s now-famous attempts to regulate credit-default swaps at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, in 1998—were ignored or swept aside.

A withering op-ed by Simon Johnson on the policy disaster that is our financial sector. But he's still not willing to re-evaluate the underlying premise of perpetually debt fueled exponential economic growth. How, exactly, was this all supposed to work out?

The most lucid summary I've read to date on the current global financial crisis. Written in a clear manner by Simon Johnson, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and a former the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. His conclusion: Nationalize the banks immediately, break up the financial oligarchies which have brought us to this point, and recast the entire banking sector so the blackmail of "we're too big too fail" cannot be used again.

I just link this to make me feel better.

Economic Recovery Dashboard - Helping Advisors

To help you talk to your clients, we've identified a few key economic and market indicators to help assess the current economic health and trend.

Chart of leading and lagging economic indicators giving current numbers and historical information.

Mrs. Tyler

unemployment map of the USA

"Oh, look. Here's the jerk who wrote the code that broke everything. A confession."

Further to what we were saying about iPhone apps.

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.

But I must tell you, to IMF officials, all of these crises looked depressingly similar. Each country, of course, needed a loan, but more than that, each needed to make big changes so that the loan could really work. Almost always, countries in crisis need to learn to live within their means after a period of excess—exports must be increased, and imports cut—and the goal is to do this without the most horrible of recessions. Naturally, the fund’s economists spend time figuring out the policies—budget, money supply, and the like—that make sense in this context. Yet the economic solution is seldom very hard to work out. No, the real concern of the fund’s senior staff, and the biggest obstacle to recovery, is almost invariably the politics of countries in crisis. Typically, these countries are in a desperate economic situation for one simple reason—the powerful elites within them overreached in good times and took too many risks. Emerging-market governments and their private-sector

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises.

"In its depth and suddenness, the U.S. economic and financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets (and only in emerging markets): South Korea (1997), Malaysia (1998), Russia and Argentina (time and again). In each of those cases, global investors, afraid that the country or its financial sector wouldn’t be able to pay off mountainous debt, suddenly stopped lending. And in each case, that fear became self-fulfilling, as banks that couldn’t roll over their debt did, in fact, become unable to pay."

A former head of the IMF offers an insightful and alarming look at how the United States has been hijacked by a cabal of rotten financiers.

By Christopher Hitchens

What the author of Das Kapital reveals about the current economic crisis by Christopher Hitchens

The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too. Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonmonthly.com%2Ffeatures%2F2009%2F0903.galbraith.html

"Why the economic crisis, and its solution, are bigger than you think."

hmm

Once the manic burst of building has stopped and the whirlwind has slowed, the secrets of Dubai are slowly seeping out. This is a city built from nothing in just a few wild decades on credit and ecocide, suppression and slavery. Dubai is a living metal metaphor for the neo-liberal globalised world that may be crashing – at last – into history.

The financial industry brought the economy to its knees, but how did they get away with it? With the nation wondering how to hold the bankers accountable, Bill Moyers sits down with William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. Black offers his analysis of what went wrong and his critique of the bailout

Now Black is focused on an even greater scandal, and he spares no one — not even the President he worked hard to elect, Barack Obama. But his main targets are the Wall Street barons, heirs of an earlier generation whose scandalous rip-offs of wealth back in the 1930s earned them comparison to Al Capone and the mob, and the nickname "banksters."

The former Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention now teaches Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. During the savings and loan crisis, it was Black who accused then-house speaker Jim Wright and five US Senators, including John Glenn and John McCain, of doing favors for the S&L's in exchange for contributions and other perks. The senators got off with a slap on the wrist, but so enraged was one of those bankers, Charles Keating — after whom the senate's so-called "Keating Five" were named — he sent a memo that read, in part, "get Black — kill him dead." Metaphorically, of course. Of course. Now Black is focused on an even greater scandal, and he spares no one — not even the President he worked hard to elect, Barack Obama. But his main targets are the Wall Street barons, heirs of an earlier generation whose scandalous rip-offs of wealth back in the 1930s earned them comparison to Al Capone and the mob, and the nickname "banksters."

video from jonas' recomendation

Thousands of protesters gathered in London, England on April 1st and 2nd to demonstrate against an array of issues, largely anti-capitalist or pro-environmental in nature.

YES

What is fragile should break early while it is still small.

N.N. Taleb's ideas about how to avoid financial black swans in the future, based principally on greater regulation (regulating to help people from themselves)

"No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards."

economia

visual guide

Surprise: there's never been a better moment to bootstrap your own Internet business. All you need is a laptop, a broadband connection and a great idea. Inside the new start-up boom

Info, Comments, Opinions and Facts About Goldman Sachs

just because Goldman Sachs want to ban it.

threat blog post?

Preciso ler assim que tiver tempo

Eric Hobsbawm: Whatever ideological logo we adopt, the shift from free market to public action needs to be bigger than politicians grasp

"Impotence therefore faces both those who believe in what amounts to a pure, stateless, market capitalism, a sort of international bourgeois anarchism, and those who believe in a planned socialism uncontaminated by private profit-seeking. Both are bankrupt. The future, like the present and the past, belongs to mixed economies in which public and private are braided together in one way or another. But how? That is the problem for everybody today, but especially for people on the left."

cool visual on where tax dollars are spent

10 principles to rebuild on.

1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. 2. No socialisation of losses & privatisation of gains. 3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (& crashed it) should never be given a new bus. 4. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards. 5. Complexity from globalisation and highly networked economic life needs to be countered by simplicity in financial products. The complex economy is already a form of leverage: the leverage of efficiency. 6. Complex derivatives need to be banned because nobody understands them and few are rational enough to know it. 7. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”. 8. Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. 9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert” advice for their retirement. 10. we will have to remake the system before it does so itself"

Taleb k současné krizi

2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.

Clickable interactive map of Job gain and job loss across US across time.

By Chris Wilson (Slate Magazine): if you're morbidly interested, click-through; if you're the kind of person that cringes when you watch eye-ball surgery on the Health Channel... Well, maybe I can find a link to icanhazcheezburger around here somewhere...

From David @armano's Logic+Emotion

ner at Dachis Corp. This my

This is a blog version of a book of mine first published in 1998. I am re-issuing it (two posts per week) unaltered on its 10th anniversary. Comments welcomed. ... The thesis of New Rules for the New Economy is that we are now living in an economy based on ideas and communication rather than energy and atoms. Further, this "new" economy has distinct laws or rules so it behaves differently than the previous industrial economy. To do well in the new regime, we need to grasp the new dynamics of information. I reduce the emerging principles to 10 guidelines, and suggest a few strategies for businesses based on each principle.

Kevin Kelly - Blog ver of book.

to read

How Rich Countries Die

This is a book report on The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities, by Mancur Olson. There isn’t a whole lot about how nations pulled themselves out of their medieval stagnation (see A Farewell to Alms for that), so a better title for this still-in-print book from 1982 would be “How Rich Countries Die.”

Skype does not get the respect it deserves, because eBay not only publicly admitted to overpaying for it but is making a mess of its core business. Another reason may be that Skype flies in the face of conventional Valley wisdom that says it has to be all about social media. Or maybe the fact that Skype came from Europe, and we all know that Europeans are just lunch-eating dilettantes. Whatever the reason, a company that has $500 million in revenue, is profitable and growing, and has a shot at becoming the largest player in what is now a $2 trillion (yes, "t" for trillion) market, should get more respect.

10 Resons why Skype is here to stay.

Whatever the reason, a company that has $500 million in revenue, is profitable and growing, and has a shot at becoming the largest player in what is now a $2 trillion, should get more respect.

Author of mortgage backed security software.

http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=My+Manhattan+Project&expire=&urlID=35003522&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnymag.com%2Fnews%2Fbusiness%2F55687%2F&partnerID=73272--- manhanttan ManhattanProject

My Manhattan Project How I helped build the bomb that blew up Wall Street.

I have been called the devil by strangers and “the Facilitator” by friends. It’s not uncommon for people, when I tell them what I used to do, to ask if I feel guilty. I do, somewhat, and it nags at me. When I put it out of mind, it inevitably resurfaces, like a shipwreck at low tide. It’s been eight years since I compiled a program, but the last one lived on, becoming the industry standard that seeded itself into every investment bank in the world.

financial crisis: You have a dog, and I have a cat. We agree that they are each worth a billion dollars. You sell me the dog for a billion, and I sell you the cat for a billion. Now we are no longer pet owners, but Icelandic banks, with a billion dollars in new assets. "They created fake capital by trading assets amongst themselves at inflated values,"

Are you or someone you love dating a banker? If so, we are here to support you through these difficult times. Dating A Banker Anonymous (DABA) is a safe place where women can come together – free from the scrutiny of feminists– and share their tearful tales of how the mortgage meltdown has affected their relationships. So if your monthly Bergdorf’s allowance has been halved and bottle service has all but disappeared from your life, lighten your heart with laughter and email your stories to dabagirls@gmail.com. Warning all stories sent will be infused with our own special brand of DABA Girl humor.

Ladies dating an Investment Banker? Then this site is for you! (Hat Tip @sheffi)

If you’re feeling the pinch in your paycheck, you may or may not feel comfortable going back to school right now, even if it can help your career prospects in the long run. You can, however, visit iTunes U for free access to helpful courses that will enlighten you to the state of the economy, inspire you to start your own business, and give you a little more perspective on what you should be doing with your money. Economic Principles Review the basics of economics here. 1. What’s the point of economics?: Learn why the study of economics is still relevant today. [University of Cambridge] 2. Microeconomic Analysis: Learn all about resource allocation and price determination in this course. [UC Berkeley] 3. Trade and Economics: This lecture will teach you all about the role of trade in economics. [CSIS] 4. Principles of Macroeconomics: This lecture will help you understand the principles of macroeconomics. [Rose State College] 5. Statistics: This course teaches the funda

Entrepreneur Lectures from Oxford

Q: What if markets never recover, the assets are not fundamentally undervalued, and even when held to maturity the government doesn’t make back its money? A: Then we have worse things to worry about than government losses on TARP-program money–for we are then in a world in which the only things that have value are bottled water, sewing needles, and ammunition.

bailout plan overview

הסבר ויזאולי על אינפלציה

Online resources to help manage money

外国投资人购买美国国债情况一览表

Treasury Stats on holders of US debt

Thailand ranked high

Foreign-held U.S. treasury debt

MAJOR FOREIGN HOLDERS OF TREASURY SECURITIES

China our wingman with 750 billion in Treasury Bills.

simplified the data from the CIA World Factbook

As we discussed in yesterday’s post, whether the United States and China like it or not, the economic futures of both countries are intertwined. Everyone knows that China’s got more people and that its importance as an economic superpower has escalated in recent years. What you might not understand is how the differences between our countries, in economic philosophy, in population, in geography and in how the military is built and paid for ultimately play into the entire economic relationship. For many China remains something of a mystery. In order to help compare and contrast the economic differences, we have simplified the data from the CIA World Factbook. For the exact numbers in any category, check here.

China vs United States

) is Wired's editor in chief.

Get in-depth tech news coverage from Wired and read about how it is shaping culture, education, entertainment, communications and technology.

Article de Wired sur l'économie du 21ème sicèle

Animated map: net change in job numbers of the 100 largest metro areas from Jan 2004-Mar 2009. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Demographics

RT @ritubpant: The Geography of Jobs (Interactive Map) http://tr.im/jZRA Pls RT (via @zaibatsu) [from http://twitter.com/peterto/statuses/1647222071]

The notion of micropayments — a pay-per-click/download web model — is hardly a new one. But as a business model it hasn’t exactly caught fire, or even generated more than an occasional spark. Lately, however, the journalism community has become obsessed with the idea. This is what happens when an existing business model begins to collapse: alternative models are desperately invented, debated, attempted, rejected, etc.

'This is what happens when an existing business model begins to collapse: alternative models are desperately invented, debated, attempted, rejected, etc.'

t

Always ask what can go wrong (Porterfield);

very cool summary of important things you should learn in b-school but that people don't seem to anymore...

Karina Pallagst, director of the Shrinking Cities in a Global Perspective programme at the University of California, Berkeley, said there was "both a cultural and political taboo" about admitting decline in America.

Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic "shrink to survive" proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline.

"In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside. 'The real question is not whether these cities shrink – we're all shrinking – but whether we let it happen in a destructive or sustainable way. Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity.'"

"The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature. Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area."

top

17 jun 09 / Economists Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf have just released a new Harvard Business School working paper called File Sharing and Copyright that raises some important points about file sharing, copyright, and the net benefits to society.

Via James Graham

Economists Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf have just released a new Harvard Business School working paper called File Sharing and Copyright that raises some important points about file sharing, copyright, and the net benefits to society. The paper, which includes a helpful survey of the prior economic studies on the impact of file sharing, includes the following:

not so sure

Besides the fact that this comes from the NY Post, this article raises some legitimate causes for concern about our education system. Jack also provides some solutions worth thinking about and discussing...

Suppose all goes well. He'll be sitting in front of a teacher a good 18 months after first deciding to learn. What folly. The answer is to relieve schools of the job of validating knowledge and return them to a role of spreading it. Colleges should no more vouch for their own academic competence than butchers should decide for themselves whether their meat is USDA prime. As I write this, Google is putting every book ever written online. Apple is offering video college lectures for free download through its iTunes software. Skype allows free videoconferencing anywhere in the world. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and many other schools have made course materials available for free on their Web sites. Tutors cost as little as $15 an hour. Today's student who decides to learn at 1 a.m. should be doing it by 1:30. A process that makes him wait 18 months is not an education system. It's a barrier to education.

"A student who secures a degree is increasingly unlikely to make up its cost, despite higher pay, and the employer who requires a degree puts faith in a system whose standards are slipping. Too many professors who are bound to degree teaching can't truly profess; they don't proclaim loudly the things they know but instead whisper them to a chosen few, whom they must then accommodate with inflated grades. Worst of all, bright citizens spend their lives not knowing the things they ought to know, because they've been granted liberal-arts degrees for something far short of a liberal-arts education."

Matt Taibbi on how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression

How Goldman Sachs Has Engineered Every Major Market Manipulation Since the Great Depression" The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

They use the same playbook over and over again: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. When it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again.

Print page

Statistics show hope: interesting as a visualization and as a prediction that the recovery is starting. I'll schedule a check up in six months

Fantastic illustration of business cycles

Brilliant interactive graphics on the economic cycle

"Dear Old People Who Run the World, My generation would like to break up with you. Everyday, I see a widening gap in how you and we understand the world — and what we want from it. I think we have irreconcilable differences. ... What do the "M"s in Generation M stand for? The first is for a movement. It's a little bit about age — but mostly about a growing number of people who are acting very differently. They are doing meaningful stuff that matters the most. Those are the second, third, and fourth "M"s. Gen M is about passion, responsibility, authenticity, and challenging yesterday's way of everything. Everywhere I look, I see an explosion of Gen M businesses, NGOs, open-source communities, local initiatives, government."

This may be the most accurate description of my generation I've seen, ever

to read

Small is beautiful, at least in economy...

Gen M is about passion, responsibility, authenticity, and challenging yesterday's way of everything. Everywhere I look, I see an explosion of Gen M businesses, NGOs, open-source communities, local initiatives, government.

Almost a year after A.I.G.’s collapse, despite a tidal wave of outrage, there still has been no clear explanation of what toppled the insurance giant. The author decides to ask the people involved—the silent, shell-shocked traders of the A.I.G. Financial Products unit—and finds that the story may have a villain, whose reign of terror over 400 employees brought the company, the U.S. economy, and the global financial system to their knees.

The author decides to ask the people involved—the silent, shell-shocked traders of the A.I.G. Financial Products unit—and finds that the story may have a villain, whose reign of terror over 400 employees brought the company, the U.S. economy, and the global financial system to their knees.

The poorer you are, the more things cost.

You have to be rich to be poor. That's what some people who have never lived below the poverty line don't understand. Put it another way: The poorer you are, the more things cost. More in money, time, hassle, exhaustion, menace. This is a fact of life that reality television and magazines don't o...

http://www.visualeconomics.com/

Following are excerpts from a symposium on the economic crisis presented by The New York Review of Books and PEN World Voices at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 30. The participants were former senator Bill Bradley, Niall Ferguson, Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini, George Soros, and Robin Wells, with Jeff Madrick as moderator.

By Bill Bradley, Niall Ferguson, Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini, George Soros, Robin Wells et al.

Excerpts from a symposium on the economic crisis presented by The New York Review of Books and PEN World Voices at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on April 30. The participants were former senator Bill Bradley, Niall Ferguson, Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini, George Soros, and Robin Wells, with Jeff Madrick as moderator.

You Think ‘Free’ is Only About the Price? It’s Not.

Unresolvable

Time and time again I see the discussion about free content, free services, free products, and how they're going to liberate/destroy/change the current economy,

amazing read this

Want to know why we have a zombieconomy? Because the beancounters killed the incentives to create real value. ... That's the big problem behind the zombieconomy. We don't reward people for creating, growing, nurturing, or even remixing assets. We just reward them for allocating the same old assets. That 's not an economy: it's just a game of musical chairs. Hence, no new finance, healthcare, educational, auto, or, yes, music, industry — for decades.

No wonder everyone wants to be a banker, investor, or [insert beancounter here]. There's no money left in anything else. That's the big problem behind the zombieconomy. We don't reward people for creating, growing, nurturing, or even remixing assets. We just reward them for allocating the same old assets.

If the world's biggest pop star only made $12 million a year from his recordings, why would anyone make serious music? Where did the rest of the money go? Why, straight into record labels' pockets. Did they make better music with it? Nope — they made Britney and Lady GaGa. And that's how they killed themselves: by underinvesting in quality, to rake in the take.

Want to know why we have a zombieconomy? Because the beancounters killed the incentives to create real value.

"This problem is made worse by the fact that actually paying for your health care is a loss from an insurers’ point of view — they actually refer to it as “medical costs.” This means both that insurers try to deny as many claims as possible, and that they try to avoid covering people who are actually likely to need care. Both of these strategies use a lot of resources, which is why private insurance has much higher administrative costs than single-payer systems. And since there’s a widespread sense that our fellow citizens should get the care we need — not everyone agrees, but most do — this means that private insurance basically spends a lot of money on socially destructive activities."

There are a number of successful health-care systems, at least as measured by pretty good care much cheaper than here, and they are quite different from each other. There are, however, no examples of successful health care based on the principles of the free market, for one simple reason: in health care, the free market just doesn’t work. And people who say that the market is the answer are flying in the face of both theory and overwhelming evidence.

atode

“People who love computers overwhelmingly prefer to use a Mac today. Microsoft’s core problem is that they have lost the hearts of computer enthusiasts.”

Sorry, I don't use the word media. I don't use the word news. I don't think that those words mean anything anymore. They defined publishing in the 20th century. Today, they are a barrier. They are standing in our way, like 'horseless carriage'.

'Maybe Media Will Be a Hobby Rather than a Job'

Chris Anderson sur l'avenir du journalisme. Des changements en vue et des idées provocatrices du rédacteur en chef de Wired

"In a SPIEGEL interview, Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of US technology and culture magazine Wired discusses the Internet's challenge to the traditional press, new business models on the Web and why he would rather read Twitter than a daily newspaper." via Roy Greenslade: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/jul/30/digital-media-us-press-publishing

discussion of AppStores in the Guardian

Planet of the Apps. "Some 65,000 apps are currently available for Apple's iPhones from the corporation's App Store, which marked its first anniversary earlier this summer. But in that year, the apps industry has grown exponentially – the total number of Apple's App Store downloads recently passed the 1.5bn mark. The App Store's success is reportedly a surprise to Apple, but presumably an even bigger and nastier one to competitors such as Research in Motion (who make BlackBerrys) and Nokia (the world's biggest mobile phone maker). The App Store's staggering success has led nearly every maker of a smartphone operating system to mimic Apple's business model: make it very easy for smartphone users to buy or freely download software created by from third-party developers."

The world is heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading energy economist has warned.

oil warning

The world is heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading energy economist has warned. Higher oil prices brought on by a rapid increase in demand and a stagnation, or even decline, in supply could blow any recovery off course, said Dr Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the respected International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, which is charged with the task of assessing future energy supplies by OECD countries.

this is... not reassuring.

Catastrophic shortfalls threaten economic recovery, says world's top energy economist

Reuters

I believe in the link economy. Please feel free to link to our stories — it adds value to all producers of content. I believe you should play fair and encourage your readers to read-around to what others are producing if you use it and find it interesting. I don’t believe you could or should charge others for simply linking to your content. Appropriate excerpting and referencing are not only acceptable, but encouraged. If someone wants to create a business on the back of others’ original content, the parties should have a business relationship that benefits both.

Our news ecosystem is evolving and learning how it can be open, diverse, inclusive and effective. With all the new tools and capabilities we should be entering a new golden age of journalism – call it journalism 3.0. Let’s identify how we can birth it and agree what is “fair use” or “fair compensation” and have a conversation about how we can work together to fuel a vibrant, productive and trusted digital news industry. Let’s identify business models that are inclusive and that create a win-win relationship for all parties.

Chris Ahearn, who's President, Media at Thomson Reuters, provides an interesting counterpoint to Associated Press' aggressive anti-linking views.

Blaming the new leaders or aggregators for disrupting the business of the old leaders, or saber-rattling and threatening to sue are not business strategies – they are personal therapy sessions. Go ask a music executive how well it works.

Chris Ahearn, President, Media at Thomson Reuters: "I don’t believe you could or should charge others for simply linking to your content. Appropriate excerpting and referencing are not only acceptable, but encouraged. If someone wants to create a business on the back of others’ original content, the parties should have a business relationship that benefits both."

Great slide show on drinking and economics.

This is short, funny and nice story about taxes and tax cuts. We are sure you'll find it interesting and would appreciate your vote for the presentation. FYI.... THIS PRESENTATION WAS CONCEIVED, DESIGNED AND DEVELOPED IN ABOUT 27 HOURS. That story of how we managed it is coming up shortly as a separate presentation

It's not the bonuses. It's that AIG's counterparties are getting paid back in full.

What is the deeper relationship between Goldman and AIG? Didn't they almost merge a few years ago but did not because Goldman couldn't get its arms around the black box that is AIG? If that is true, why should Goldman get bailed out? After all, they should have known as well as anybody that a big part of AIG's business model was not to pay on insurance it had issued.

The Real AIG Scandal It's not the bonuses. It's that AIG's counterparties are getting paid back in full. By Eliot Spitzer

Everybody is rushing to condemn AIG's bonuses, but this simple scandal is obscuring the real disgrace at the insurance giant: Why are AIG's counterparties getting paid back in full, to the tune of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars?

attention economy

Making something "free" is obviously an allocation strategy. "Free" attracts attention. Making things brief is an allocation strategy as well. The problem is that free isn't sustainable, and that brief is underpriced. We need a Ronald Reagan of attention, someone to inspire us away from the fight over smaller and smaller pieces of the attention pie. Someone who will inspire us to make the attention pie bigger.

As Americans search for the cure to what ails our health-care system, we've overlooked an invaluable source of ideas and solutions: the rest of the world. All the other industrialized democracies have faced problems like ours, yet they've found ways to cover everybody -- and still spend far less ...

Chris Anderson

Since Craigslist collapsed a multibillion dollar classified advertising business into a fabulously profitable $100,000,000 business, perhaps we should be talking about the potential deflationary impact of more "zero billion dollar" businesses.

. As the radical efficiencies of the web seep into more sectors of the economy, and participants in social networks exchange attention instead of dollars, will governments at all levels need to make do with less tax revenue? That's a scary thought in an era of high deficits unless traditional governments can learn from the efficent governance systems of social networks and provide more for less.

In a world where facts are readily available, from multiple sources, basic information will be commoditized. But the explosion of sources will create a real burden for the consumers of information. Raw information will become not just a commodity, it will be a nuisance. In that world, consumers will value scarce, relevant insight over abundant facts.

In a world where facts are readily available, from multiple sources, basic information will be commoditized. But the explosion of sources will create a real burden for the consumers of information. Raw information will become not just a commodity, it will be a nuisance. In that world, consumers will value scarce, relevant insight over abundant facts. Computer scientists have been working for years on algorithmic ways of mining text for insight with only modest success. It turns out that people still out perform computers at this task. Web services like Google, LastFM, and Facebook, succeed because they do a good job of harnessing the explicit or implicit input of users to sift through an overwhelming supply of information to deliver relevant insight. Google uses in-bound links to filter search results. LastFM uses other people with similar tastes to recommend music. Facebook filters information by the strength of relationships.

Freemium, Geschäftsmodelle

t

"Here, on a sleepy stretch of shoreline at the far end of Asia, is surely the biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history. Their numbers are equivalent to the entire British and American navies combined; their tonnage is far greater. Container ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers - all should be steaming fully laden between China, Britain, Europe and the US, stocking camera shops, PC Worlds and Argos depots ahead of the retail pandemonium of 2009. But their water has been stolen. They are a powerful and tangible representation of the hurricanes that have been wrought by the global economic crisis; an iron curtain drawn along the coastline of the southern edge of Malaysia's rural Johor state, 50 miles east of Singapore harbour."

Content Type: text/html

recession effects

Good article from the Daily Fail shock!

save

"The best time to do great customer service is when a customer is upset. The moment you earn your keep as a public speaker is when the room isn't just right or the plane is late or the projector doesn't work or the audience is tired or distracted. The best time to engage with an employee is when everything falls apart, not when you're hitting every milestone. And everyone now knows that the best time to start a project is when the economy is lousy."

Seth Godin: "it´s difficult to improve your performance in the downhills", lección aprendida andando en bicicleta. http://bit.ly/YL30f [from http://twitter.com/dariuus/statuses/2761368400]

»But what’s almost certain is that economists will have to learn to live with messiness.«

It’s hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves over the success of their field. Those successes — or so they believed — were both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession.

By Paul Krugman

"'Globalisation and shipping go hand in hand. Worldwide, we ship about 8.2 billion tons of cargo a year. That's more than one ton per person and probably two to three tons for richer people like us in the West. If the total goes down by five per cent or so, that's a lot of cargo that isn't moving.'" (Source: Daily Mail)

Snow crash is coming.

Sign of the recession anchored off Singapore

Incredible.

couple of years ago these ships would be steaming back and forth. Now 12 per cent are doing nothing

ghost fleet of the recession anchored just east of Singapore, Close to 500. An armada of freighters with no cargo, no crew. last year, an Aframax tanker capable of carrying 80,000 tons of cargo would cost £31,000 a day ($50,000). Now it is about £3,400 ($5,500)

Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation. If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers.

California has the highest unemployment rate in the last 70 years

"Los Angeles, 2009: California may be the eighth largest economy in the world, but its state staff are being paid in IOUs, unemployment is at its highest in 70 years, and teachers are on hunger strike."

Los Angeles, 2009: California may be the eighth largest economy in the world, but its state staff are being paid in IOUs, unemployment is at its highest in 70 years, and teachers are on hunger strike. So what has gone so catastrophically wrong?

California may be the eighth largest economy in the world, but its state staff are being paid in IOUs, unemployment is at its highest in 70 years, and teachers are on hunger strike. So what has gone so&hellip;

California may be the eighth largest economy in the world, but its state staff are being paid in IOUs, unemployment is at its highest in 70 years, and teachers are on hunger strike. So what has gone so catastrophically wrong?

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

The demise of the dollar - Business News, Business - The Independent

In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading.

Content Type: text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1, size: 300,585 bytes

要するに、重税社会というのは、貨幣システムの利用料がバカみたいに高くなる社会だ。

法人と違って、個人間での取引の場合、現金の受け渡し記録が残らないようにすれば消費税や所得税を課税するのはかなり困難だからだ。 もちろん、ヤフオクなどのように、支払い記録が残るようなシステムは使わない。そんなことをすると、税務署に把握されてしまうからだ。 基本的には、知り合

上に歪んだ政策あれば、下に歪んだ対策が必要になる。

"Wall Street has turned the economy into a giant asset-stripping scheme, one whose purpose is to suck the last bits of meat from the carcass of the middle class".

The SEC's halfhearted oversight didn't go unnoticed by the market. Six months after Bear was eaten by predators, virtually the same scenario repeated itself in the case of Lehman Brothers — another top-five investment bank that in September 2008 was vaporized in an obvious case of market manipulation. From there, the financial crisis was on, and the global economy went into full-blown crater mode.

ant. Under what became known as the "options market maker exception," the SEC permitted a market maker to sell shares whether or not he had them or could find them right away. In theory, this made sense, since delaying the market maker from selling to offset a big buy order could dry up liquidity and slow down trading. But it also created a loophole for naked short-sellers to kill stocks easily — and legally. Take Bear Stearns, for example. Say the stock is trading at $62, as it was on March 11th, and someone buys put options from the market maker to sell $1.7 million in Bear stock nine days later at $30. To offset that big trade, the market maker might try to keep his own portfolio balanced by selling off shares in the company, whether or not he can locate them. But here's the catch: The market maker often sells those phantom shares to the same person who bought the put options. That buyer, after all, would love to snap up a bunch of counterfeit Bear stock, since he can driv

Naked short-selling, and how it brought down Bear Stearns (well, that and their ludicrous debt-to-asset ratio).

Since the Great Depression, presidents have frequently experimented with Keynesian economics to combat recessions. Three economists chronicle the history of government policy during past recessions and explain what worked and what didn’t.

Keynesian economics

A possible web page for International Finance of Princ of finance

Charts showing the world today and 30 years ago.

New Scientist infographic

Chart with statistics and trends

good summary

the state of the world across a number of parameters

is the world getting better or worse?

Evidence of steady human progress but unsolved environmental issues

really interesting interactive visualization of unemployment by race, gender, age, and education

Impresionante gráfica del NYTimes sobre el desempleo por grupos de población. Vía http://twitter.com/kikollan

Great infographic, great data

Unemployment rate data visualisation from NYTimes

Informative.

"Not all groups have felt the recession equally."

Amazing chart to play around with.

Interesting dataset, but the population of all possible combinations of settings as a backdrop is a weird choice. It does make it easier to explore, but I'm not sure about it. Might be nicer to just show settings you've tried and build it up over time so it feels more like you're discovering the trends yourself? Also wish there was more granularity, but I guess you take what you can get from the labor statistics people.

Interesting graphic from the NYT. Graphs usually bore me, but this is engaging and relevant. Nice, subtle use of animation and background to add context.

interesting article to read

Timeline of unemployment rate, county by countr

Animated time-lapse map of county-by-county unemployment rates in the U.S. since January 2007. Jarring.

Creepy.

This depicts a graphic of the unemployment rate from 2007 to current date. Fascinating.

Wow.

The power of visual information

chart

Serious information used to be relayed in words, graphs and charts - pictures were just pretty window dressing. That's all changing, says David McCandless. E-mails. News. Facebook. Wikipedia. Do you ever feel there's just too much information? Do you struggle to keep up with important issues, subject and ideas? Are you drowning in data? In this age of information overload, a new solution is emerging that could help us cope with the oceans of data surrounding and swamping us. It's called information visualisation.

Serious information used to be relayed in words, graphs and charts - pictures were just pretty window dressing. That's all changing, says David McCandless.

While the middle class has been caught in an economic vise, the financial industry that was supposed to serve them has prospered at their expense. Consumer banking -- selling debt to middle class families -- has been a gold mine. Boring banking has given way to creative banking, and the industry has generated tens of billions of dollars annually in fees made possible by deceptive and dangerous terms buried in the fine print of opaque, incomprehensible, and largely unregulated contracts. And when various forms of this creative banking triggered economic crisis, the banks went to Washington for a handout. All the while, top executives kept their jobs and retained their bonuses. Even though the tax dollars that supported the bailout came largely from middle class families -- from people already working hard to make ends meet -- the beneficiaries of those tax dollars are now lobbying Congress to preserve the rules that had let those huge banks feast off the middle class.

Today, one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families can't make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month.

Can you imagine an America without a strong middle class? If you can, would it still be America as we know it?

it's time to steal from the rich

Financial Times Lexicon

Browse thousands of words and phrases selected by Financial Times editors and suggest new terms for the glossary.

- The definitive glossary of economic, financial and business terms

via kedrosky .... greenspun is right of course but that doesn't mean i've stopped thinking he's kind of an asshole

I don't agree with all of his points, but I do like some of his proposals as to how to restructure pedagogy to make classes far more practical.

"This article is about why educational performance is critical to a society's wealth, how the modern university is not appreciably improved over the template established in 1088, and proposes some simple changes that should greatly improve the effectiveness of undergraduate education."

What universities need to change to improve society

This article is about why educational performance is critical to a society's wealth, how the modern university is not appreciably improved over the template established in 1088, and proposes some simple changes that should greatly improve the effectiveness of undergraduate education.

The president has packed his economic team with Wall Street insiders intent on turning the bailout into an all-out giveaway. By Matt Taibbi

"What's taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. Elected in the midst of a crushing economic crisis brought on by a decade of orgiastic deregulation and unchecked greed, Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was ship even his most marginally progressive campaign advisers off to various bureaucratic Siberias, while packing the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside."

The controversial Matt Taibbi December 2009 Rolling Stone article.

European Parliament speech of 26/03/09.Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP for the South East of England and author of The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Brita...

The YouTube hit.

this still gives me a warm fuzzy feeling...

"you can not spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt"

hannan pillors gordon brown

Excellent visualisation of UK government spending volume

ABD'de gelir adaletsizliği tüm zamanların rekorunu kırdı

US statistics: -top .01% own 6% of wealth - top 10% own 50% of wealth

from the page: "Income inequality in the United States is at an all-time high, surpassing even levels seen during the Great Depression, according to a recently updated paper by University of California, Berkeley Professor Emmanuel Saez. .. Saez calculates that in 2007 the top .01 percent of American earners took home 6 percent of total U.S. wages, a figure that has nearly doubled since 2000. As of 2007, the top decile of American earners, Saez writes, pulled in 49.7 percent of total wages, a level that's "higher than any other year since 1917 and even surpasses 1928, the peak of stock market bubble in the 'roaring" 1920s.'""

surpassing even levels seen during the Great Depression, according to a recently updated paper by University of California, Berkeley Professor Emmanuel Saez. ....As of 2007, the top decile of American earners, Saez writes, pulled in 49.7 percent of total wages

It is difficult to sympathize with these people, their comments laced with snobbery and petulance. But you can understand their shock: Their world has been turned on its head. After years of enjoying favorable tax rates, they are facing an administration that wants to redistribute their wealth. Their industry is being reordered—no one knows what Wall Street will look like in a few years. They are anxious, and their anxiety is making them mad.

Wall Street people are not moral idiots (most of them, anyway)—it’s not as if they’ve never pondered the fairness of their enormous salaries. “One of my relatives is a doctor, we’re both well-educated, hardworking people. And he certainly didn’t make the amount of money I made,” a former Bear Stearns senior managing director tells me. “I would be the first person to tell you his value to society, to humanity, is far greater than anything that went on in the Bear Stearns building.”

In a witch hunt, the witches have feelings, too. As populist rage has erupted around the country, stoked by canny politicians, an opposite rage has built on Wall Street and other arenas where the wealthy hold sway. Its expression is more furtive and it’s often mixed with a kind of sublimated shame, but it can be every bit as vitriolic.

IBG-YBG: I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone

As the privileged class loses its privileges, a collective moan rises from the canyons of Wall Street.

It was the culture of what some called IBG-YBG: I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone,”

cost of Marshall Plan

costo del rescate de bancos en la crisis económica del 2008

How much does the bailout cost, compared to other grand government programs? More.

oh. my. god. and where the hell is this money coming from, anyway???

Bailout costs more than Marshall Plan, Louisiana Purchase, moonshot, S&L bailout, Korean War, New Deal, Iraq war, Vietnam war, and NASA's lifetime budget -- *combined*!

$4.6165 trillion? That'sa spicy meataballa!

"As we've seen in the past several years, salaries and prices fall when unemployment is high. By artificially inflating both, the New Deal policies short-circuited the market's self-correcting forces."

Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Price, wage-fixing, and collusion blamed for length of 1930's Depression.

got mugged on Christmas Eve. I was in front of my Brooklyn apartment house taking out the trash when a man pulled a gun and told me to empty my pockets. I gave him my money, wallet, and cell phone. But then—remembering something I’d seen in a movie about a hostage negotiator—I begged him to let me keep my medical- insurance card. If I could humanize myself in his perception, I figured, he’d be less likely to kill me. He accepted my argument about how hard it would be for me to get “care” without it, and handed me back the card. Now it was us two against the establishment, and we made something of a deal: in exchange for his mercy, I wasn’t to report him—even though I had plainly seen his face. I agreed, and he ran off down the street. I foolishly but steadfastly stood by my side of the bargain, however coerced it may have been, for a few hours. As if I could have actually entered into a binding contract at gunpoint.

How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take it Back

By: Douglas Rushkoff

Conservative protesters should remember that the recession, which led to so many of the policies they oppose, is almost entirely the result of Bush’s policies. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the recession began in December 2007—long before Obama was even nominated. And the previous recession ended in November 2001, so the current recession cannot be blamed on cyclical forces that Bush inherited.

HOORAY!

RT @applicants: The Obama Economy http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123604419092515347.html [from http://twitter.com/Captoe/statuses/1276487461]

WSJ edit page fires a shot across Obama's bow.

As the Dow keeps dropping, the President is running out of people to blame.

financial crisis

Great article -- recommended by Jeremy Shapiro. One part of the argument: the fallacy of the belief in diversification and complexity.

Very interesting article about the causes of the current crisis.

By Jerry Z. Muller Thursday, January 29, 2009 Major recessions are characterized by something novel. Opacity and pseudo-objectivity created the crisis today.

Read Entire Package Here

Provides a high level breakdown of how much money is allocated to each agency

Stimulus Spending Breakouts

see very bottom for foreclosure information

save pictures in your hard drive

Alternate Currency

@Niki7a @iamnowmai I thought xkcd established the new currency as funny pictures saved to your hard drive: http://xkcd.com/512/ [from http://twitter.com/danphilpott/statuses/2005464491]

Incisive

"15 year old Calvin and Hobbes strip with almost clairvoyance on how we got into our current financial crisis.‏"

Calvin needs a bailout

http://tr.im/glf8 - via gregmankiw.blogspot.com Explains it so well! [from http://twitter.com/hardmanjustin/statuses/1217823016]

Really great analysis.

America has been strong because, despite its flawed system, people built toward the future in the 1840s, and the 1930s, and the 1950s. During just the time when Frederick Law Olmsted designed Central Park, when Theodore Roosevelt set aside land for the National Parks, when Dwight Eisenhower created the Pentagon research agency that ultimately gave rise to the Internet, the American system seemed broken too. They worked within its flaws and limits, which made all the difference. That is the bravest and best choice for us now.

Is America going to hell? After a year of economic calamity that many fear has sent us into irreversible decline, the author finds reassurance in the peculiarly American cycle of crisis and renewal, and in the continuing strength of the forces that have made the country great: our university system, our receptiveness to immigration, our culture of innovation. In most significant ways, the U.S. remains the envy of the world. But here’s the alarming problem: our governing system is old and broken and dysfunctional. Fixing it—without resorting to a constitutional convention or a coup—is the key to securing the nation’s future.

Very good but doesn't *really* propose that strong of sol'ns. I think we need to try to infuse competition into the government. I also think that we need to cut military spending, my god how did he not mention this!

thoughtful - build on this to make the argument that our best way to change the system is by changing the people within it. If people in government were operating more altruistically, it wouldn't matter what system they operated within, good things would happen.

this chart rocks

Parce que la visualisation est présente absolument partout et qu'elle peut être relativement parlante, en voici une...

Track events (bankruptcy, layoffs, closings, etc.) and readership at the top 100 newspapers (by circulation)

It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" -- the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one -- has now made itself obsolete

Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce -- and most of those who have been laid off -- employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years.

Beautiful and eloquent letter from Michael Moore, on the day of GM's "hand over" to its new shareholders: the US government and its taxpayers.

"Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades -- and we don't even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven't used it, is criminal. Let's hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now."

Michael Moore's suggestions as to what to do with GM seem good to me.

A financial crisis is the worst time to change the foundations of American capitalism.

an insane article, on this day there were videos of tent camps in Sacramento, CA filled with people who had lost jobs. The editorial is by Michael Boskin

08年度駒澤大学「経済学＜現代経済理解へのガイド＞」（講師：矢野浩一）講義資料。前期「ミクロ経済学入門」、後期「マクロ経済学入門」。

ナイスな資料。

ただ、分析をしっかりしすぎた結果、簿記ちょっと難しくね？という印象を持たれかねないと思ったので、 シンプルにこれだけやれば受かりますよという間口として分かりやすさが必要と思い、別のものを書かせてもらった。

RT @taxonomylady: Unchain the Office Computers! Post from Slate on how workplace web "restrictions infantilize workers" http://bit.ly/LIbSa [from http://twitter.com/sspohnjr/statuses/3561440824]

"So why not lock down workplace computers? Here's why: The restrictions infantilize workers—they foster resentment, reduce morale, lock people into inefficient routines, and, worst of all, they kill our incentives to work productively."

Interesting article about the freedom to use and explore apps that is available on the web. However, as seen from the comments to the post, there are some serious concerns about any IT depart being about to operationally support it. I figure there is a nice to balance it but at this moment I do not know how. Maybe an environment for staff to experiment ?

"There is a jargony HR phrase that describes these forward-looking firms: They're called "results-only workplace environments," where people are judged on what they produce, not how. "

Rectangles in the chart are sized according to the amount of spending for that category. Color shows the change in spending from 2010.

President Obama's proposal for the 2011 budget.

Nice graphical representation of Obama's 2011 budget proposal, and how the budget changes from 2010.

Beautiful infographic.

A Strong Middle Class

US Government

Official blog of V.P. Joe Biden's Middle Class Task Force

This is the official web page of the White House Task Force on Middle Class Working Families.

WhiteHouse.gov is the official web site for the White House and President Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States. This site is a source for information about the President, White House news and policies, White House history, and the federal government.

The Great Recession may be over, but this era of high joblessness is probably just beginning. Before it ends, it will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar men. It could cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a despair not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years to come.

"Con artists have a word for the inability of their victims to accept that they've been scammed. They call it the 'True Believer Syndrome'. That's sort of where we are, in a state of nagging disbelief about the real problem on Wall Street. It isn't so much that we have inadequate rules or incompetent regulators, although both of these things are certainly true. [..] Instead of liquidating and prosecuting the insolvent institutions that took us all down with them in a giant Ponzi scheme, we have showered them with money and guarantees and all sorts of other enabling gestures."

dissecting wall street as a series of cons

Still, the trick for Goldman was: how to collect the insurance money. As AIG headed into a tailspin that fateful summer of 2008, it looked like the beleaguered firm wasn't going to have the money to pay off the bogus insurance. So Goldman and other banks began demanding that AIG provide them with cash collateral. In the 15 months leading up to the collapse of AIG, Goldman received $5.9 billion in collateral. Société Générale, a bank holding lots of mortgage-backed crap originally underwritten by Goldman, received $5.5 billion. These collateral demands squeezing AIG from two sides were the "Swoop and Squat" that ultimately crashed the firm. "It put the company into a liquidity crisis," says Eric Dinallo, who was intimately involved in the AIG bailout as head of the New York State Insurance Department.

Matt Taibbi gets very angry at Wall Street again; I'm not sure how fair some of it is, but it's entertaining stuff.

The unfolding debt drama in Russia, Ukraine, and the EU states of Eastern Europe has reached acute danger point.

EMU - european monetary union

"There are accidents waiting to happen across the region, but the EU institutions don't have any framework for dealing with this. The day they decide not to save one of these one countries will be the trigger for a massive crisis with contagion spreading into the EU."

Brazil lost 650K jobs in 1 mo - Jan apparently??? how

JM Keynes

The Wallstreet mindset that allowed the Madoff scandal to happen, and how to fix it.

Required reading, Part I.

OUR financial catastrophe, like Bernard Madoff’s pyramid scheme, required all sorts of important, plugged-in people to sacrifice our collective long-term interests for short-term gain. The pressure to do this in today’s financial markets is immense... The tyranny of the short term has extended itself with frightening ease into the entities that were meant to, one way or another, discipline Wall Street, and force it to consider its enlightened self-interest.

financial crisis

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important research document

Rated Colleges Top Rated Online Colleges and Universities 100 Useful Research Tools for Amateur Economists Posted By Site Administrator You don’t have to be a professional economist to do some really great research on the web. Whether you’re looking into historical trends, modern buying patterns or the latest stats on the global financial market you won’t find any shortage of information to keep you interested. Here are 100 great resources to utilize that can help you find, organize and understand your economic research. General Tools These tools offer some great general research material, help getting it all organized and some essential search capabilities. Internet Resources for Economists: This extensive list will direct you towards journals, economic research institutions, software and more that can be helpful in your search for information. American Economic Association: Here you’ll find a wealth of resources including journals, papers and links to members who may be able to he

The dirty secret of higher education is that without underpaid graduate students to help in laboratories and with teaching, universities couldn’t conduct research or even instruct their growing undergraduate populations. That’s one of the main reasons we still encourage people to enroll in doctoral programs. It is simply cheaper to provide graduate students with modest stipends and adjuncts with as little as $5,000 a course — with no benefits — than it is to hire full-time professors. In other words, young people enroll in graduate programs, work hard for subsistence pay and assume huge debt burdens, all because of the illusory promise of faculty appointments. But their economical presence, coupled with the intransigence of tenure, ensures that there will always be too many candidates for too few openings.

Our graduate system has been in crisis for decades, and the seeds of this crisis go as far back as the formation of modern universities. Kant wrote that universities should “handle the entire content of learning by mass production, so to speak, by a division of labor, so that for every branch of the sciences there would be a public teacher or professor appointed as its trustee.” Unfortunately this mass-production university model has led to separation where there ought to be collaboration and to ever-increasing specialization.

Research and publication has become more and more about less and less. Each academic becomes the trustee not of a branch of the sciences, but of limited knowledge that all too often is irrelevant for genuinely important problems. The emphasis on narrow scholarship also encourages faculty members to cultivate those students whose futures they envision as identical to their own pasts, even though their tenures will stand in the way of these students having futures as full professors.

this is the "shotgun over the mantle" of the financial debacle we are living through -- those few with a sense of history or drama KNEW it would be fired before the play ends... and here we are

Phil Gramm

news of the repeal of the steal-glass act

The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation's financial system. -- boy did it ever!

Ground zero for the financial crisis. 1999.

The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the financial system — that what we’re facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank.

The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the financial system — that what we’re facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank. As Tim Duy put it, there are no bad assets, only misunderstood assets. And if we get investors to understand that toxic waste is really, truly worth much more than anyone is willing to pay for it, all our problems will be solved.

We should just let the banks and institutions that have been poorly managed fail.

To this end the plan proposes to create funds in which private investors put in a small amount of their own money, and in return get large, non-recourse loans from the taxpayer, with which to buy bad — I mean misunderstood — assets. This is supposed to lead to fair prices because the funds will engage in competitive bidding. But it’s immediately obvious, if you think about it, that these funds will have skewed incentives. In effect, Treasury will be creating — deliberately! — the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities. For the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose. So sure, these investors will be ready to pay high prices for toxic waste. After all, the stuff might be worth something; and if it isn’t, that’s someone else’s problem.

Krugman talks about structural problems that make Geithner's plan highly unlikely to work, and msot definitely transfers all risk upon the tax payer http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/23/opinion/23krugman.html

Krugman analyzes The Geithner plan

In effect, Treasury will be creating — deliberately! — the functional equivalent of Texas S&Ls in the 1980s: financial operations with very little capital but lots of government-guaranteed liabilities. For the private investors, this is an open invitation to play heads I win, tails the taxpayers lose.

This plan will produce big gains for banks that didn’t actually need any help; it will, however, do little to reassure the public about banks that are seriously undercapitalized. And I fear that when the plan fails, as it almost surely will, the administration will have shot its bolt: it won’t be able to come back to Congress for a plan that might actually work.

For years Dr Doom toiled in relative obscurity as a NYU economics professor under his alias, Nouriel Roubini. But after making a series of uncannily accurate predictions about the global meltdown, Roubini has become the prophet of his age, jetting around the world dispensing his advice & latest prognostications to politicians & businessmen desperate to know what happens next – and for any answer to the crisis. Most other economists scoffed at Roubini & his predictions of imminent disaster. They dismissed his warnings that the sub-prime mortgage disaster would trigger a financial meltdown & that the investment banks would be crushed as the world headed for a long recession. Yet all these predictions & more came true. Few are laughing now.

Nouriel Roubini

a Cassandra

As stock markets headed off a cliff again last week, closely followed by currencies, and as meltdown threatened entire countries such as Hungary and Iceland, one voice was in demand above all others to steer us through the gloom: that of

What if Steve Jobs ran a car company?

steve jobs in the auto industry

The idea of Steve Jobs running a car company

What if Steve Jobs ran one of the three auto makers? Will the Stevian way continue to shine and would he make the Apple-like revolution in a decade from now again?

Interesting portrait of Ben Bernanke in the New Yorker

Article from The New Yorker on Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke; brief history of current economic crisis (13 pp)

Interesting article about Chairman Bernanke and the current financial crisis

Problematic gender representation. Design is confusing: what are the units? color coding could have benefited with key directly underneath.

via shinuna (thx!)

were born, that they will hurt and humiliate you as much as they can. Letting a criminal inside you house almost guaranties you that he will rape/beat/ torture and abuse

some notes/thoughts on urban survival

200 yar

This is a pretty good blog about practical survival in a tought country.

Old professions

Bugger! Really REALLY sorry about this. Can't believe how brutally George was treated.

Flickr anställd blir sparkad

Laying of George Oates

George rules.

Whoa! George Oates got hit by the Yahoo! layoffs.

:-(

George Oates on the Yahoo/Flickr layoff

(It would be unfair to give anyone affected by the lay-offs special treatment.) It's not just my treatment I worry about here. Such a sudden movement makes it especially hard to continue the program effectively, at least for a while. So silly. I sent a few tersely helpful emails before my email account was closed. Couldn't resist. Don't let The Commons die, you buggers! Can't you see how wonderful it is?!?!?

The end of the Rocky Mountain News (on Vimeo)

(via 가슴시린, http://librettist.net/2009/03/15/%EB%A7%88%EC%A7%80%EB%A7%89-%EC%8B%A0%EB%AC%B8/)

WSJ article that has one part of the housing collapse that I hadn't heard before. Apparently inflation data that gets reported and looked at by the Fed and other regulators doesn't include home prices, it includes rental prices. Since the housing bubble was driven by mortgages, rents didn't spike nearly as much home prices. Had a truer picture of inflation been reflected in the numbers regulators been looking at the rate would have been double what was reported and likely regulators would have had to act in some way.

A great piece on the differences between the housing crash and the dot com bubble.

WSJ.com | Bubbles have been frequent in economic history - Steven Gjerstad and Vernon Smith explain why the housing crash ruined the financial system but the Dot-com collapse did not

fantastic wsj essay on formation of bubbles, experimental economics

What is neoliberalism, and what's it done to our universities?

Short-term transactions-for-profit replace long-term planning designed to produce a more just and equitable society. Everyone is always running around doing and acquiring things, but the things done and acquired provide only momentary and empty pleasures (shopping, trophy houses, designer clothing and jewelry), which in the end amount to nothing. Neoliberalism, David Harvey explains, delivers a “world of pseudo-satisfactions that is superficially exciting but hollow at its core.” (”A Brief History of Neoliberalism.”)

a good description of commodity-based thinking

As Ronald Coase put it in his classic article, “The Problem of Social Cost” (Journal of Law and Economics, 1960): “The question to be decided is: is the value of the fish lost greater or less than the value of the product which the contamination of the stream makes possible?” If the answer is more value would be lost if my factory were closed, then the principle of the maximization of wealth and efficiency directs us to a negotiated solution: you allow my factory to continue to pollute your stream and I will compensate you or underwrite the costs of your moving the stream elsewhere on your property, provided of course that the price I pay for the right to pollute is not greater than the value produced by my being permitted to continue.

Well defined article analyzing the disjointed humanism taught at institutes of higher education. NeoLiberalism.

081209

When industry norms start to die, people panic. It's difficult to change when you think that you must change everything in order to succeed. Changing everything is too difficult. * Keep the machines in your factory, but change what they make. * Keep your customers, but change what you sell to them. * Keep your providers, but change the profit structure. * Keep your industry but change where the money comes from. * Keep your staff, but change what you do. * Keep your mission, but change your scale. * Keep your products, but change the way you market them. * Keep your customers, but change how much you sell each one. * Keep your technology, but use it to do something else. * Keep your reputation, but apply it to a different industry or problem.

Pivotal points for change - one thing at a time.

When industry norms start to die, people panic. It's difficult to change when you think that you must change everything in order to succeed. Changing everything is too difficult.

Pivots for change /Seth's Blog/ - When industry norms start to die, people panic. It's difficult to change ... http://tinyurl.com/bu4tdr [from http://twitter.com/jorgefsb/statuses/1315341354]

It's difficult to change when you think that you must change everything in order to succeed. Changing everything is too difficult.

Simple... use points from this Seth Godin blog to think about what to keep and what to change.

How the New Deal actually corrected the economy and the myths used to argue that it did not.

Addresses the pervasive myth that FDR failed. That is, it's a "myth" for some definitions of "myth." As always, YMMV.

At such a moment, it is imperative to expose a dangerous popular myth regarding the efficacy of President Roosevelt’s actions: that it was not the programs of the New Deal, but only the placing of the nation on a wartime footing years later, that restored the health of the nation’s economy. This belief, though widely held, cannot stand up to even the most basic economic analysis. Yet the mainstream corporate media, which abound with anti-government ideology, seek to reinforce this myth. Just this past Sunday, The Washington Post featured on Page One of its Outlook section an article by Amity Shlaes headlined “FDR Was a Great Leader, But His Economic Plan Isn’t One to Follow.” Underscoring Shlaes’s made-up claims, the Post ran the continuation of her piece under the title: “FDR’s Plan Failed to Spark Real Growth.”

My car is a 1992 Honda Civic CX which I bought new, has an EPA fuel consumption rating of 47 mpg (US) highway / 39 city (5.0/6.0 L/100 km ... 20.0/16.6 km/L ... 56.4/46.8 mpg (Imp.)), and averaged mid 40's when driven "normally".

Boy this guys has spent a lot of time modifying his car to be as slippery as possible.

cost about 400. As much as 90mpg

I'd like to do this to my 1992 Honda Civic

If this is not a hoax, then this is why I am disgusted by every auto mfg on the planet: one person, inspired by a German design from the 1930s, mods an existing car to get twice the fuel efficiency.

One year ago nostalgia :-)

PDF at http://buffalobeast.com/133/BIG3.ad.from.BEAST133.pdf . Just brilliant.

"You wouldn't buy our shitty cars, so we're taking your money anyway."

Very nice

Upside of software as service

Great article

Must read: excellent post on "the media hologram" and existence

A bit naive in his discussion of free markets, but otherwise a great article.

First you will experience boredom, then comes an internal psychic violence and anger, much like the experience of zazen, or sitting meditation, as the layers of your mind conditioning peel away. Don't quit, keep at it, endure it, to the end. And when you return you will find that deeply experiencing a non-conditioned reality changes things forever. What you have experienced will animate whatever intellectual life you have developed. Or negate much of it. But in serious, intelligent people, experiencing non-manufactured reality usually gives lifelong meaning and insight to the work. You will have experienced the eternal verities of the world and mankind at ground zero. And you will find that the healthy social structures our well intentioned Western minds seek are already inherent in the psyche of mankind, but imprisoned. And the startling realization that you and I are the unknowing captors.

And what I write about is Americans, and why we think and behave the way we so. To do that here today I am forced to talk about three things -- corporations, television and human spirituality.

Psychology and what it might be good for considering the state of the world

Under the Bush team a prominent and profitable bank, under threat of a damaging public audit, was forced to accept less than $1b of TARP money. The gov insisted on buying a new class of preferred stock which gave it a tiny, minority position. The money flowed to the bank. Arguably, back then, the Bush administration was acting for purely economic reasons. It wanted to recapitalize the banks to halt a financial panic. Fast forward to today, and that same bank is begging to give the money back. The chairman offers to write a check, now, with interest. He's been sitting on the cash for months and has felt the dead hand of government threatening to run his business and dictate pay scales. He sees the writing on the wall and he wants out. But the Obama team says no, since unlike the smaller banks that gave their TARP money back, this bank is far more prominent. The bank has also been threatened with "adverse" consequences if its chairman persists. That's politics talking, not economics.

I must be naive. I really thought the administration would welcome the return of bank bailout money. Some $340 million in TARP cash flowed back this week from four small banks in Louisiana, New York, Indiana and California. This isn't much when we routinely talk in trillions, but clearly that money has not been wasted or otherwise sunk down Wall Street's black hole. So why no cheering as the cash comes back?

Great article on Fog Creek Software's founder's views, thoughts and implementation advice of a more objective and transparent compensation structure for his employees.

Video - CNBC.com

Intense reaction by some financial analysts in Wallstreet to the current plans

Rick Santelli expresses outrage at the prospect of government rewarding bad behavior.

"CNBC's Rick Santelli and the traders on the floor of the CME Group express outrage. . ." It's good to see and hear people who are appropriately angry. Also, note the paternalistic, faux-aristocratic comments of the other anchors, though; particularly how they try to paint a dissenting, informed, concerned, and eloquent citizen as a demagogue stirring up, "mob rule."

The Economist

everyone seems to be viewing this as horrific, i don't see it. adjusting your economic approach to a given economy is inevitable, and prudent. am i missing something?

"Among the projects whose future is uncertain are Google Notebook, a site for storing and taking notes on Web pages, and Google Audio Indexing, which allows users to search for phrases within online video footage of politicians, say people familiar with the matter."

株主も社員も自分一人という「マイクロ法人」を設立すれば、それまでとは別の、金融などの仕組みを利用することができる。

content type: text/html;charset=UTF-8

The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Congresspersons, after what happened in Iraq, why did you give a green light here, then get surprised that Paulson is acting like a douche?

``We need oversight,'' Paulson told lawmakers. ``We need protection. We need transparency. I want it. We all want it.''

The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral

"The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral."

2009

Patent and copyright law are stifling innovation and threatening the global economy according to two economists at Washington University in St. Louis in a new book, Against Intellectual Monopoly. Professors Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine call for abolishing the current patent and copyright system in order to unleash innovations necessary to reverse the current recession and rescue the economy. The professors discuss their stand against intellectual property protections in a video and news release linked here.

According to two economists at Washington University in St. Louis in a new book, Against Intellectual Monopoly. But that's the opposite of what they were designed for...

Google Notebook closes, though those with existing accounts can continue to save material.

Google shutting down services, the list

Anche dalle parti di Mountain View si vede la crisi, e cosa fanno le multinazionali in tempo di crisi? Tagliano prodotti e personale

Google's announced they're closing or ceasing development of a variety of products as part of an already continuing move to keep efforts focused on other

via NPR's Planet Money @planetmoney on Twitter. Great commentary from a great kid.

Em inglês

Here's the problem for states that want to pry more money out of the wallets of rich people. It never works because people, investment capital and businesses are mobile: They can leave tax-unfriendly states and move to tax-friendly states.

Why states need to cut taxes: http://tr.im/lEOG #tcot [from http://twitter.com/Underdown/statuses/1836031711]

It's already happened in Maryland.

Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

Friedman, Thomas L.. The Inflection Is Near?." New York Times 07 March 2009.

We must have growth, but we must grow in a different way. For starters, economies need to transition to the concept of net-zero, whereby buildings, cars, factories and homes are designed not only to generate as much energy as they use but to be infinitely recyclable in as many parts as possible. Let’s grow by creating flows rather than plundering more stocks.

“We created a way of raising standards of living that we can’t possibly pass on to our children,” said Joe Romm, a physicist and climate expert who writes the indispensable blog climateprogress.org. We have been getting rich by depleting all our natural stocks — water, hydrocarbons, forests, rivers, fish and arable land — and not by generating renewable flows. “You can get this burst of wealth that we have created from this rapacious behavior,” added Romm. “But it has to collapse, unless adults stand up and say, ‘This is a Ponzi scheme. We have not generated real wealth, and we are destroying a livable climate ...’ Real wealth is something you can pass on in a way that others can enjoy.”

m the things I’ve made for them,” Chen said. “And I also hear that, when they no longer want an item, they simply

The Inflection Is Near? By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Sometimes the satirical newspaper The Onion is so right on, I can’t resist quoting from it.

Freidman,

banktron [waupwaupwaupwaup] <-transformer noise

This comic pretty much sums up the bank bail-out of 2008.

working in the economic downturn , excellent article http://bit.ly/IbXh7 [from http://twitter.com/markedgington/statuses/1257829325]

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February 17, 2009 Filling Your Dance Card in Hard Economic Times by Pepi Ronalds

Until last month, the clock had enough digits to measure US debt levels The US government's debts have ballooned so badly the National Debt Clock in New York has run out of digits to record the spiralling figure.

The US government's debts have ballooned so badly the National Debt Clock in New York has run out of digits to record the spiralling figure. The digital counter marks the national debt level, but when that passed the $10 trillion point last month, the sign could not display the full amount.

US debt clock runs out of digits

BBC News

"Capitalism (in addition to being a lot of other things) is the way people get rich simply for being rich."

The economy is as great an example as any of a program that not only got out of control, but became so prevalent - so accepted - that we came to take it for granted. We think of the economy and its rules as given circumstances, when they are actually constructions. In brief, the money we use is just one kind of money. Invented in the Renaissance, and protected with laws banning other kinds of money, it has very particular biases that lead to almost inevitable outcomes.

Economy's as great an example as any of a program that not only got out of control, but became so prevalent - so accepted - that we came to take it for granted. Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.boingboing.net%2F2008%2F09%2F23%2Fwhat-went-wrong.html

Meanwhile, local currencies had the opposite bias of centralized currency. Local currencies lost value over time. They were really just receipts on the amount of grain that farmer had brought to the grain store. Since some of that grain was lost to rats or water, and since the grain store had to be paid, money devalued each year. This meant the money was biased towards being spent. That's why reinvestment in infrastructure as a percent of total revenue was so high in the late Middle Ages. It's why they built those cathedrals. They were local efforts, by people looking to invest their abundant wealth into real assets for their communities' future. (Cathedrals were built to attract pilgrims and tourism.) Since the purpose of the Renaissance innovations was to keep the currently wealthy wealthy, the currency was biased to favor those who had it - and could mete it out at high interest rates to those who needed it for their transactions.

Money can be just as open source as any other operating system. It used to be.

explaning the american economic crisis

In a post published earlier today, John Robb claims that as “there is reason to believe that costs of higher education (direct costs and lost income) are now nearly equal (in net present value) to the additional lifetime income derived from having a degree…this situation has all the earmarks of a bubble. A bubble that will soon burst as median incomes are adjusted downwards to global norms over the next decade.

James Levy: Learning Is Not A Spectator Sport

"In a post published earlier today, John Robb claims that as “there is reason to believe that costs of higher education (direct costs and lost income) are now nearly equal (in net present value) to the additional lifetime income derived from having a degree…this situation has all the earmarks of a bubble. A bubble that will soon burst as median incomes are adjusted downwards to global norms over the next decade."

John Robb claims that as “there is reason to believe that costs of higher education (direct costs and lost income) are now nearly equal (in net present value) to the additional lifetime income derived from having a degree…this situation has all the earmarks of a bubble. A bubble that will soon burst as median incomes are adjusted downwards to global norms over the next decade.

"In the first year of the current bear market, the market has fallen more steeply than it did during the first years of Great Depression's bear markets. After adjusting for inflation, stocks are more than 40 percent lower than they were at their 2007 high (and more than 50 percent lower than their 2000 high)."

As a white-collar criminologist and former financial regulator much of my research studies what causes financial markets to become profoundly dysfunctional. The FBI has been warning of an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud since September 2004. It also reports that lenders initiated 80% of these frauds.1 When the person that controls a seemingly legitimate business or government agency uses it as a "weapon" to defraud we categorize it as a "control fraud" ("The Organization as 'Weapon' in White Collar Crime." Wheeler & Rothman 1982; The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One. Black 2005). Financial control frauds' "weapon of choice" is accounting. Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime -- combined. Control fraud epidemics can arise when financial deregulation and desupervision and perverse compensation systems create a "criminogenic environment" (Big Money Crime. Calavita, Pontell & Tillman 1997.)

always one step ahead ; http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/49b1654a-ed60-11dd-bd60-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

"By contrast, Soros sees the current crisis as a real-life illustration of reflexivity. Markets did not reflect an objective “truth”. Rather, the beliefs of market participants – that house prices would always rise, that an arcane financial instrument based on a subprime mortgage really could merit a triple-A rating – created a new reality. Ultimately, that “super-bubble” was unsustainable, hence the credit crunch of 2007 and the recession and financial crisis of 2008 and beyond."

A diagram comparing the cost of the current economic crisis with large and costly events in US history

It is exceedingly difficult to convey exactly how much we are spending on all these bailouts. Whenever I start talking trillions (versus mere billions), I get puzzled looks from people. Humans have a hard time conceptualizing any number that large. I wanted a graphic way to clearly show how astonishingly ginormous the amounts involved were. So I once again went to Jess Bachman at Wallstats. I gave him my list of expenditures (inflation adjusted of course!) and he went to work. This early Bailout Nation graphic shows the the total costs to the taxpayer of all the monies spent, lent, consumed, borrowed, printed, guaranteed, assumed or otherwise committed. It is nothing short of astonishing.

18 jun 09 / early Bailout Nation graphic shows the the total costs to the taxpayer of all the monies spent, lent, consumed, borrowed, printed, guaranteed, assumed or otherwise committed. It is nothing short of astonishing. It includes the total outlay for all the bailouts to date. In just about one short year (March 2008 - March 2009), the bailouts managed to spend far in excess of nearly every major one time expenditure of the USA, including WW1&2 (omitted from graphic), the moon shot, the New Deal, total NASA budgets (omitted from graphic), Iraq, Viet Nam and Korean wars — COMBINED.

Buy American. I Am.

"They work, what, 27 hours in a good week" , "19 holidays a month" Huuuuu, 41 hours a week and 11 holidays a year: http://www.touteleurope.fr/fr/actions/social/emploi-protection-sociale/presentation/comparatif-le-temps-de-travail-dans-l-ue.html

Viewpoint: As Washington rushes to nationalize troubled parts of the economy, the inescapable reality is that we're all French now

Viewpoint: As Washington rushes to nationalize troubled parts of the economy, the inescapable reality is that we\'re all French now

Article discusses how socialist the US has become, despite conservative's contempt for the concept.

For 400 years, higher education in the US has been on a roll. From Harvard asking Galileo to be a guest professor in the 1600s to millions tuning in to watch a team of unpaid athletes play another team of...

Seth Godin is a marketer, not an educator, but as a marketer he predicts the downfall of higher ed. "I'm afraid," he writes, "that's about to crash and burn. Here's how I'm looking at it... Just as we're watching the disintegration of old-school marketers with mass market products, I think we're about to see significant cracks in old-school schools with mass market degrees... Accreditation isn't the solution, it's the problem."

College might be overrated.

Mon Feb 09, 2009 at 08:58:22 PM PDT According to Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D) (PA-11), in mid-September of 2008, the United States of America came just three hours away from the collapse of the entire economy. In a span of 2 hours, $550 billion was drawn out of money market accounts in an electronic run on the banks.

Nevermind, this is apparently false. http://www.portfolio.com/views/blogs/market-movers/2009/02/11/kanjorski-and-the-money-market-funds-the-facts

Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D PA-11)

According to Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D) (PA-11), in mid-September of 2008, the United States of America came just three hours away from the collapse of the entire economy. In a span of 2 hours, $550 billion was drawn out of money market accounts in an electronic run on the banks. Rep. Kanjorski: "It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it."

The unprecedented expansion of the money supply could make the '70s look benign. - ARTHUR B. LAFFER

Getting a business loan in this economy can be more difficult than landing a reservation at French Laundry in Napa, California. Now try selling the loan officer on an open source hardware project where the blueprints will be given away. That's why the hardware hacking community is turning inwards to fund its ideas. Two open source hardware enthusiasts, Justin Huynh and Matt Stack, have started the Open Source Hardware Bank to fund hardware projects such as the microcontroller board pictured above.

an open source peer to peer bank, good coverage of their start

Getting a business loan in this economy can be more difficult than landing a reservation at French Laundry in Napa, California. Now try selling the loan officer on an open source hardware project where the blueprints will be given away. That's why the hardware hacking community is turning inwards to fund its ideas. Two open source hardware enthusiasts, Justin Huynh and Matt Stack, have started the Open Source Hardware Bank to fund hardware projects such as the microcontroller board pictured above.

Interactive visualization from the NY Times

enter a word - track reader responses over time

The word train on the financial crisis

わかりやすかった

Reasons to bail out GM. Basically useful as a device to pull out whenever anyone claims that the problem is easy, and that we should "just liquidate the bastards."

by Jonathan Cohn. This is not your father's Oldsmobile we're rescuing.

Key point: anonymous agents are interchangeable and virtually worthless. Agents that don't do anything but help one side find the other side in a human approximation of Google aren't so helpful any more.

Now, the best ones are paid by the traveler, not the airline. The best ones provide a differentiated service that is worth paying for. Instead of being middlemen, then, they are the front men, the attraction, a key asset to the traveler.

Where have all the agents gone? /Seth's Blog/ - Travel agents... gone. Stock brokers... gone. Real ... http://tinyurl.com/dz9uw4 [from http://twitter.com/jorgefsb/statuses/1341447525]

Travel agents... gone. Stock brokers... gone. Real estate brokers... in trouble.

To thrive in a world of self-service, agents have to hyperspecialize, have to stand for something, have to have the guts to say no far more than they say yes.

I love that the Wall Street Journal writes this but never complained about Bush using fear mongering. Also I don't think he has fear mongered, I think Obama has presented evidence that backs up what he is saying.

the Great Depression are not only historically inaccurate, they're also dangerous. Repeated warnings from the White House about a coming economic apocalypse aren't likely to raise consumer and investor expectations for the future. In fact, they have contributed to the continuing decline in consumer confidence

Mr. Obama's analogies to the Great Depression are not only historically inaccurate, they're also dangerous. Repeated warnings from the White House about a coming economic apocalypse aren't likely to raise consumer and investor expectations for the future. In fact, they have contributed to the continuing decline in consumer confidence that is restraining a spending pickup.

A Tally of Federal Rescues http://nyti.ms/cwSSVf Mind blowing ! The New York Times > Week in Review > Image >

visualization of the recent bailout

Need some time to wrap my head around these figures

Note, you don’t want to hire most of those laid off. Most permanent Googlers were “managing” projects (e.g, taking 4 day weekends and showing up to work only to eat the free food and showed up barely to 1 or 2 meetings per week). The temps that were there for more than a year learned the same laziness and worthless work ethic. If you’re looking for people with no real experience and who think it’s okay to steal a tray of bottle water provided by the company for everyone to drink… then go ahead and hire a Googler. Otherwise, be really careful and interview really in-depth about what they can and cannot do (and verify it).

Google has been quietly laying off staff and up to 10,000 jobs could be on the chopping block according to sources. Since August, hundreds of employees have been laid off and there are reports that about 500 of them were recruiters for Google. By law, Google is required to report layoffs publicly and with the SEC however, Google has managed to get around the legal requirement. In fact, one of the ways Google was able to meet Wall Street’s Q3 earnings expectations was by trimming “operational” expenses. Google reports to the SEC that it has 20,123 employees but in reality it has 30,000. Why the discrepancy? Google classifies 10,000 of the employees as temporary operational expenses or “workers”. Google co-founder Sergey Brin said, “There is no question that the number (of workers) is too high”. There is no question the economic downturn is hitting Google hard and with the slowdown in online advertising, their troubles are just beginning.

Google has been quietly laying off staff and up to 10,000 jobs could be on the chopping block according to sources.

Comment 42: William: "That, and our economy runs on paper money that the world doesn't accept as currency due to no gold standard. See the financial reasons for war in Iraq and Iran being next due to both economies no longer accepting US Dollars as main trade currency, instead switching to the Euro for its more stable fluctuation in value. When the US buys, the US prints, thus inflating their own economy, essentially taking it out on US citizens, and devaluing the money the foreign sellers recieve. They get tired of taking $9.50 worth of bills at which time of agreement was worth $10; in which time we declare them an international threat and takeover their government to re-establish the dollar as currency to maintain the image in the world. One large economic nation such as China or India stopping trade in US Dollars and our economy is finished." -- Basically

heh

Corn Fritters; Pasta w/ Smoked Oysters; Griddled Pineapple

Gourmet canned food

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

RT @kantandesu: NYタイムズにすごい記事が出た。アフガニスタンには1兆ドル規模の鉄、銅、コバルト、金、リチウムなどの鉱物資源が眠る。アフガニスタンはリチウムのサウジアラビアになれる、と書いている。理由はタリバンではなかったのだ…。恐ろし。http://ny ...

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan..Afghanistan has never had much heavy industry before, it has little or no history of environmental protection..The Pentagon task force has already started trying to help the Afghans set up a system to deal w/ mineral development. Internatl accounting firms that have expertise in mining contracts have been hired to consult w/ the Afghan Ministry of Mines, & technical data is being prepared to turn over to multinational mining companies & other potential foreign investors. The Pentagon is helping Afghan officials arrange bids on mineral rights by next fall..In 2004, American geologists, stumbled across old charts and data at the library of the Afghan Geological Survey in Kabul that hinted at major mineral deposits in the country. The data had been collected by Soviet mining experts during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, but cast aside when the Soviets withdrew in 1989.

very good!

RT @jberrebi: Current State of the Euro | http://bit.ly/aqWhgH - Maiday!

Since its inception, the Euro has tried to economically link Europe through a common form of currency. Currently, however, many analysts are worried that the state of some countries’ economies might put the Euro (and its countries) into more economic peril.

The scaling process is no longer happening in the U.S. And as long as that’s the case, plowing capital into young companies that build their factories elsewhere will continue to yield a bad return in terms of American jobs.

Andy Grove writes interesting/controversial piece arguing for protectionism and other techniques to generate American jobs.

Fantastic piece from the former CEO of Intel on the problems with focusing on profit-margins over jobs. The possible decline of Silicon Valley looks rather similar to the collapse of manufacturing that the UK went through in the late-70s and 80s. The challenge for us is to work out how to recover from that problem.

How it works nowadays: successful companies rarely make what they create.

Startups are a wonderful thing, but they cannot by themselves increase tech employment. Equally important is what comes after that mythical moment of creation in the garage, as technology goes from prototype to mass production. This is the phase where companies scale up. They work out design details, figure out how to make things affordably, build factories, and hire people by the thousands. Scaling is hard work but necessary to make innovation matter. The scaling process is no longer happening in the U.S. And as long as that’s the case, plowing capital into young companies that build their factories elsewhere will continue to yield a bad return in terms of American jobs.

Today, manufacturing employment in the U.S. computer industry is about 166,000 -- lower than it was before the first personal computer, the MITS Altair 2800, was assembled in 1975. Meanwhile, a very effective computer-manufacturing industry has emerged in Asia, employing about 1.5 million workers -- factory employees, engineers and managers. The largest of these companies is Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., also known as Foxconn. The company has grown at an astounding rate, first in Taiwan and later in China. Its revenue last year was $62 billion, larger than Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Dell Inc. or Intel. Foxconn employs more than 800,000 people, more than the combined worldwide head count of Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel and Sony Corp.

Die langweiligen Industrie-Jobs sind doch gar nicht so doof.

If you had any idea of how people really lived in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many parts of Asia...

ein im Ausland lebender Amerikaner liest s. Landsleuten die Leviten, lesenswert (English) http://bit.ly/9mcDsE ich fand es spannend #vfbb – Vera F. Birkenbihl (VeraFBirkenbihl) http://twitter.com/VeraFBirkenbihl/statuses/18785239408

If you had any idea of how people really lived in Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and many parts of Asia...

ein im Ausland lebender Amerikaner liest s. Landsleuten die Leviten, lesenswert (English) http://bit.ly/9mcDsE ich fand es spannend #vfbb – Vera F. Birkenbihl (VeraFBirkenbihl) http://twitter.com/VeraFBirkenbihl/statuses/18785239408

Brutal artículo acerca de la crisis en España. BUENÍSIMO!!!!!!!!!!

La situación en España en 2010, vista por un americano (ex del Washington Post)

Tras recorrer España en las últimas semanas, el ex director adjunto del 'The Washington Post' ofrece su retrato de la crisis.

Retrato de un país en crisis Tras recorrer España en las últimas semanas, el periodista estadounidense Phil Bennett ofrece su retrato de la crisis. El relato incluye entrevistas a Salgado, Rajoy y Rato, pero también a empresarios, trabajadores y parados. Esta es la visión de España del ex director adjunto del 'The Washington Post'

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.elpais.com%2Farticulo%2Freportajes%2FRetrato%2Fpais%2Fcrisis%2Felpepusocdmg%2F20100613elpdmgrep_1%2FTes