Clipmarks | Economy Clips

Learn from the fall of Rome, US warned

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 13:09:21 GMT

clipped by: sam.reckoner

Learn from the fall of Rome, US warned

The US government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned.

Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government”.

“They need to make fiscal responsibility and inter-generational equity one of their top priorities. If they do, I think we have a chance to turn this around but if they don’t, I think the risk of a serious crisis rises considerably”.

Tags: politics, government, finance, economy

Bono on the Bailout

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 04:51:00 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: A great quote, but somewhat sad.

Clip Source: www.prospect.org

BONO ON THE BAILOUT.

"It's extraordinary to me that the United States can find $7 $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can't find $25 billion dollars to saved 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases."

--Dana Goldstein

Tags: bono, economy, poverty

Why America Will Survive George W. Bush

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 14:53:01 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks:

Otto von Bismarck saw how American blunders led to American power and allegedly said that God has a special providence for drunks, fools, and the United States of America.

Walter Russell Mead (of the Council on Foreign Relations) puts Bush's 8-year stint in the White House into proper perspective.

America's foreign policy has been short-sighted and often self-defeating from the get-go, alternately collaborative, passive, and interventionist. And, yet, miraculously, we always come out ahead.

With the unstoppable rise of a global capitalist economy, Mead makes the case that America, for all its past and current faults, will continue to be the inevitable leader of this new international buoyancy. Not even our latest mistakes (unprecedented though they may be) can derail such a powerful incentive that is the modern American world trade system.

Which means, more than ever, we're literally all in this together.

Clip Source: www.tnr.com

Failing Upward

Nothing in the field of international affairs is as scandalous and as perplexing as the fact of American power. From Revolutionary times to the present, virtually all observers foreign and domestic have agreed that Americans don't do foreign policy well.

Moralistic, uninformed, unsubtle, alternately isolationist and hyperactive, hamstrung by a clumsy constitutional process and a public that oscillates between fatuous idealism and ignorant bellicosity, U.S. foreign policy has been shocking the world for more than 200 years.

And, worse still, we win. For two centuries, the United States has astounded critics with its bad foreign policy--and, for two centuries, the United States has steadily risen to an unprecedented level of power and influence in the international system.

The spectacle is often surreal. The United States seems to wander nearsightedly but relatively unscathed past one hazard after another

like a version of the chronically oblivious cartoon character Mr. Magoo.

Tags: america, usa, bush, foreign policy, world, history, war, empire, trade, economy

Reality Lord of the Flies

Thu, 17 May 2007 04:30:44 GMT

clipped by: adamc
clipper's remarks: Drop a bunch of kids in an abandoned town and see if they get crazy enough to make some must-see TV. Yes, it's exploitative and a frightening snapshot of our voyeuristic society, but how can you not watch this?

Clip Source: www.variety.com

CBS is ready to unleash a reality take on "Lord of the Flies," quietly wrapping filming on a new skein in which a group of 8- to 15-year-olds will create their own society.

Rather than surviving on an island, the kiddies relocated to Bonanza City, N.M., a ghost town abandoned more than a century ago.

Goal for the kids is to build a functional society. They have to pass laws, choose leaders and build an economy.

Unlike most reality shows, there will be no mandated eliminations. Kids can go home when they want to.

Tags: tv, television, lord of the flies, cbs, kids, children, kid nation

`We`re so fucked the rich are running out of things to steal` !

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 16:17:22 GMT

clipped by: beanz

Clip Source: www.rollingstone.com

Wall Street's Naked Swindle

On Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody — nobody knows who — made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half their value in nine days or less. It was madness — "like buying 1.7 million lottery tickets," according to one financial analyst.

But what's even crazier is that the bet paid.

Whoever bought those options on March 11th woke up on the morning of March 17th having made 159 times his money, or roughly $270 million.

the luckiest guy in the world, the smartest son of a bitch ever or…

What really happened to Bear and Lehman is that an economic drought temporarily left the hyenas without any more middle-class victims — and so they started eating each other

We're in a place we haven't been since the Depression: Our economy is so completely fucked, the rich are running out of things to steal.

Tags: us economy

Cartograms

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 12:36:18 GMT

clipped by: Deepti
clipper's remarks: I found this quite interesting...

Clip Source: www-personal.umich.edu

Here is an ordinary map of the world:

It's possible, however, and sometimes very useful, to redraw the map with the sizes of countries made bigger or smaller in order to represent something of interest. Such maps are called cartograms and can be an effective and natural way of portraying geographic or social data.

Here, for example, is a cartogram that shows the human population of the countries of the world:

Cartograms are most often used to show population data, but there is no reason why they need be limited to population. They can in principle be used to show almost any quantity. Here is a cartogram of the world in which the sizes of countries are proportional to Gross Domestic Product, which is a measure of how much wealth a country's economy generates, and hence, to an extent, of the wealth of the country's inhabitants:

Child mortality

People living with HIV/AIDS

Total spending on healthcare

Energy consumption (including oil)

Greenhouse gas emissions

Click on image for a larger version

Tags: maps, world, countries

12 year-old Kills Herself Over Pair of Shoes

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 08:38:01 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: More sad human truth behind the world's 'booming economy'.

Clip Source: news.independent.co.uk

All she wanted was a bicycle, a pair of new shoes and to be able to finish her schooling. But her family was dirt poor, and eventually the 12-year-old Filipina girl grew so demoralised that she hanged herself.

Mariannet Amper left a letter under her pillow describing her failed hopes and aspirations. Her family also found a diary in which she described the privations of a life with no money in Davao City, on southern Mindanao island.

The night before she killed herself with a nylon rope in their modest hut, which has no electricity or running water, Mariannet had asked her father, Isabelo, for 100 pesos (about £1) for a school project. But he had no money.

In the Philippines, nearly 14 per cent of the 87 million population lives on less than a dollar a day, despite government claims that the economy is booming.

Tags: phillipines, poverty, economic lies

Algae-in-a-vat may power the future

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 03:53:27 GMT

clipped by: pokkets

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Anna Salleh

Genetically modified green algae could one day produce stored energy in the form of hydrogen gas, say Australian researchers, fuelling a hydrogen economy.

Associate Professor Ben Hankamer of the University of Queensland and colleagues report they have increased the sunlight-capturing efficiency of algae that can pump out hydrogen.

If successfully scaled up, the researchers say this could complement or be an alternative to our present carbon-based economy.

"We urgently need to develop and install new CO2-free energy production systems. Our systems offer one solution for this," the researchers say.

They report their findings in the latest issue of the Plant Biotechnology Journal.

A prototype bioreactor

The researchers have been studying single-celled photosynthetic algae (Chlamydomonas reinhardtii).

A major problem is the algae are inefficient at capturing sunlight,

they have now used RNA interference (RNAi) to engineer a strain of algae to make the process more efficient

Tags: algae, hydrogen, photosynthesis, energy, co2, rna, sunlight

Why Socialism - Albert Einstein

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:26:17 GMT

clipped by: BartendingBear
clipper's remarks: Obviously you must click through to the source for any real value of his thoughts.

Clip Source: www.huppi.com

"We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive."

Why Socialism?

By Albert Einstein

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow-men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.

it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism.

Look alikes

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 20:44:44 GMT

clipped by: wiganfootie

Clipmarks | Economy Clips

Learn from the fall of Rome, US warned

Learn from the fall of Rome, US warned

Bono on the Bailout

Why America Will Survive George W. Bush

Reality Lord of the Flies

`We`re so fucked the rich are running out of things to steal` !

Wall Street's Naked Swindle

Cartograms

Child mortality

People living with HIV/AIDS

Total spending on healthcare

Energy consumption (including oil)

Greenhouse gas emissions

12 year-old Kills Herself Over Pair of Shoes

Algae-in-a-vat may power the future

Why Socialism - Albert Einstein

Look alikes

Why is the U.S. Military Preparing for Civil Disorder?

The Inalienable Right to Get High

The Problem Is Capitalism, Not Just the Banks

Yes...this picture is real

Yes, the picture is real, nutroots

The Trouble with Normal