[cross posted]
What gives with this morning’s NPR “Morning Edition” story about banks that are choosing to steer clear of TARP bailout money? Reporter Jim Zarroli mostly profiles the Johnson Financial Group, a bank that at first applied for $100 million, then decided not to take it after all once it learned the details of the the strings that come attached, saying that this bank is just one example of many that represent a “mini rebellion” against the TARP [...] read more >
How’s about $18 million? That’s what John J. Noffo Kahn, of Palm Beach, Florida, paid for a farm in Barnard, Vermont, to be used as a vacation home, and in the process shattering the previous record price for the sale of a residential property in the state (a mere $8 million).
Reports the Valley News (full article not online*):
The buyer [...] said in an email that privacy and security were two reasons he purchased the property through [a limited liability [...] read more >
Robert Kuttner notes an interesting tidbit from, wouldn’t you know it, the Wall Street Journal: since 2001, wages in Europe have been keeping up with inflation and the employment rate has also been rising. Yet in the US, wages have been falling behind the inflation rate and the employment rate has also been sagging. This flies in the face of the conventional economic “wisdom,” which assumes that businesses will hire more workers when the (real, i.e., adjusted-for-inflation) wage is [...] read more >
[First posted to Chelseagreen.com. Go to that version for links.]
Proponents of the “free market” have a tendency to ignore one inconvenient fact: there is no such thing as a free market in reality. Never has been one. Never will be one. The “free market” is a myth, a fairy tale told over and over by newspaper columnists and TV pundits and quite a few professional economists. I’ve come across a few declarations of this myth lately that irked me [...] read more >
The unions in South Africa seem to have successfully turned back Chinese weapons headed for the Zimbabwe powder keg, and now U.S. longshoremen are taking what may well be the strongest protest action against the Iraq war since it was started five long years ago. Thanks to the always well-informed Juan Cole for the tip. I dare say this is cause for celebration–to be followed by nose-to-the-grindstone protests until the war is over… and then to be followed [...] read more >
[Originally posted here.]
In my post a moment ago I mentioned how I’d once heard that, for the money the US spent on the war in Vietnam, we could have paid for the installation of an in-ground swimming pool for each and every Vietnamese family instead. What a great way to win the hearts and minds of our enemies, eh? So I decided to try out the math for this stupid, awful, and infuriating Iraq war. What if we [...] read more >
I was trolling through Flickr looking for photos of John McCain (for a t-shirt design I’ve got in mind) and came across this graphic by pseudoplacebo. It shows how much Clinton, Obama, McCain, and Ron Paul had spent per delegate they’d won, as of February 25, 2008. It’s something that’s been on my mind lately. Even though I’ve come to be an Obama supporter, it is seriously grossing me out how much money this election is costing–more than that, [...] read more >
I know I’m behind the times, but last night I was reading some (seriously) backlogged email and in it was a link forwarded by my mom to David Mamet’s recent essay in the Village Voice, “Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’.” It’s a strange essay that’s simultaneously difficult to follow and clearly intended as an embodiment of Churchill’s (perhaps apocryphal) dictum that “If you’re not Liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not [...] read more >
BusinessWeek has a recent article about the new law requiring improvement in automobile and small truck fuel efficiency (“The Road to a Stronger CAFE Standard“). Among other things, the article describes how the law changes the way that the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) measurement is calculated. Under the old CAFE calculation, fuel economy is measured separately for each auto manufacturer. Under the new calculation, all manufacturers will be measured together, and a trading scheme is established so that [...] read more >
