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(Global Debt Crunch) Wall Street-Backed Finance - By Doug Noland - 16 years ago
"...Keep in mind that the economy is only now succumbing to recessionary forces, and we’ve yet to experience the failure of a major financial institution in the U.S. There will be many, and it’s worth noting that Rescap’s CDS prices surged again this week. It’s amazing to watch the massive central bank liquidity injections inflate the value of government and quasi-government backed securitieby ProjectC - Project C
At 71, Physics Professor Is a Web Star - 16 years ago
By SARA RIMER December 19, 2007 Source CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Walter H. G. Lewin, 71, a physics professor, has long had a cult following at M.I.T. And he has now emerged as an international Internet guru, thanks to the global classroom the institute created to spread knowledge through cyberspace. Professor Lewin’s videotaped physics lectures, free online on the OpenCourseWare of the Massachusby ProjectC - Project C
Failure Beyond Finance - By Jim Kunstler - 16 years ago
"One difference between then and now is that in 1929 a relative small minority of Americans were involved in stock purchases. Today, a relative large number of ordinary citizens own overpriced houses bought using extraordinarily risky loans, and a large number of institutions such as pension funds, banks, hedge funds, and money markets own fraudulent securities based on these house loans, woby ProjectC - Project C
ABP seeks ESG partners - By Andrew Sheen - 16 years ago
By Andrew Sheen 18 December 2007 Source NETHERLANDS – The ABP pension fund has expressed a desire to enter into a partnership with one or more of Europe’s large pension funds to create a flagship body to pursue environmental, social and governance (ESG) investments. ABP's chief investment officer Roderick Munster announced the initiative at an indexation presentation in Amsterdam yeby ProjectC - Project C
Dateline Ukraine: Investing in Climate Change - By Geoffrey Berlin - 16 years ago
"There has been much scientific debate over climate change — whether global warming is caused by humans or natural phenomena, such as sunspots. The principal debate should be over values: Do we continue to dump waste in uncovered landfills or open-air lagoons, to vent methane gas from coal mining — and consume energy in ways that harm our environment?" Dateline Ukraine: Investing iby ProjectC - Project C
Northern Lights Race Across the Sky - By Andrea Thompson - 16 years ago
( The Plasma Universe (Here... too.) ) J. *** "The satellites have found evidence of magnetic ropes connecting Earth's upper atmosphere directly to the sun," said David Sibeck of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. "We believe that solar wind particles flow in along these ropes, providing energy for geomagnetic storms and auroras." Northernby ProjectC - Project C
Regulatory Debauchery - By Satyajit Das - 16 years ago
"Central banks and regulators bear a serious responsibility for safeguarding the functioning and integrity of financial systems. At the moment they are being exposed like the Wizard of Oz – old desperate men (they are mainly men) behind the curtain running from one lever to another in a desperate attempt to maintain illusions." Regulatory Debauchery By Satyajit Das November 27,by ProjectC - Project C
Voyager 2 finds solar system's shape is 'dented' - 16 years ago
By Mark Lawin Dec 10, 2007 Source SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft has found that our solar system is not round but is "dented" by the local interstellar magnetic field of deep space, space experts said on Monday. The data was gathered by the craft on its 30-year journey into the edge of the solar system when it crossed into a sweeping region called theby ProjectC - Project C
Magic Wand Finance - By Jim Kunstler - 16 years ago
By Jim Kunstler December 03, 2007 Source For those of you concerned about my sense of pride -- yes, I sure got that eggy feeling all over my face last week after calling for a thousand-point Dow plunge, only to watch it put on the greatest two-day melt-up in five years. I suppose I underestimate the desperate moves of desperate people against the backdrop of an economy (and a financeby ProjectC - Project C
Water Threatens Asia's Urbanization, Prosperity - By Andy Mukherjee - 16 years ago
By Andy Mukherjee December 3, 2007 Source Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- The commodity that poses the biggest threat to long-term prosperity in Asia isn't oil, it's water. It isn't so much the likelihood of Asian cities running out of fresh water that should bother the region's policy makers as the bigger danger of being overwhelmed by waste water. The capability to treat dby ProjectC - Project C
Financial Crisis and Economic Hard Landing Outlook in Two Recent Op-Ed Columns - Nouriel Roubini & Paul Krugman - 16 years ago
By Nouriel Roubini Dec 03, 2007 Source This author writes a monthly column for "La Repubblica", the leading italian newspaper. The last column was published in Italian today. An english translation of it is provided here below: Events in the last few weeks have clearly shown that the liquidity and credit crunch that started last August in financial markets in the US and Europe nby ProjectC - Project C
Banks Ask UK Clients Not to Borrow - 16 years ago
naked capitalism Monday, December 3, 2007 Source If you had any doubts that the credit contraction was having real-world consequences (beyond, say, the ease of getting a mortgage in the US), consider this DowJones Newswire story (hat tip Michael Panzner). Banks are not only not willing to lend to each other, but because liquidity is scarce, they are trying to dissuade UK clients from borrowiby ProjectC - Project C
Open source hardware gift guide - 16 years ago
blog.makezine.com Dec 3, 2007 Source It's been a year since our last open source gift guide - this year there is so much going on in the world of MAKE, open source, and beyond that we have a series of gift guides for this holiday season. The first one is our open source hardware gift guide - these are physical things you can buy that fit in to the new and exciting category of hardware wby ProjectC - Project C
Either / Or? - By Jim Kunstler - 16 years ago
By Jim Kunstler November 26, 2007 Source¨ The great debate among those of us on the Economy Deathwatch seems to be whether the debacle we observe around us will resolve as a crash or a slow-motion financial train wreck. It seems to me that at every layer of the system, we're susceptible to both -- in tradable paper, institutional legitimacy, individual solvency, productive activity, reaby ProjectC - Project C
Mandriva Linux selected as “Product of the Year 2007” at the Russian Softool event - 16 years ago
Mandriva has been selected as 'Product of the Year 2007' in the Linux category at the Softool exhibition in Moscow. Mandriva.com 2007 Source The 'Product of the Year 2007' competition was held by the department of information technologies and computing systems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Federal Agency of Information Technologies, the publishing house SK Prby ProjectC - Project C
An Embarrassment of Riches, Part II - By Dr. Marc Faber - 16 years ago
"...I wish to add that I am not a "gold bug". I would much prefer to live in a world in which central banks' top priority was to safeguard paper money's purchasing power and its function as a "store of value". I would also much rather live in a world in which the US dollar was a strong currency, and where America was as free as it was in the 1960s, and the econoby ProjectC - Project C
1%-0ff (Time.com - Monday, Nov. 25, 1929) - 16 years ago
"Exclusive of the stockmarket and the protection of business from any contagious slump, three factors entered into the making of this tax cut plan: 1) Budget estimates which tentatively fixed next year's expenditures at $3,830,000,000, a reduction of $111,000,000 below this year's amount, indicative of a surplus at least equal to the size of the reduction in revenue; 2) A secret reby ProjectC - Project C
The cost of politicians - By Martin Hutchinson - 16 years ago
"When government cannot be eliminated, structures should be established that make resource allocation and regulation as automatic as possible, so that politics and lobbying can play little role. ... One could imagine a system, technically democratic, that worked somewhat like the Catholic Church, in which only the President/Pope was elected, for a life term, and election was by a Colleby ProjectC - Project C
Peak Money - By Jim Kunstler - 16 years ago
By Jim Kunstler November 12, 2007 Source The multi-dimensional meltdown underway in the finance sector illustrates perfectly how the complex systems we depend on start to wobble and fail as soon as peak oil establishes itself as a fact in the public imagination. Mainly what it shows is that we don't have to run out of oil -- or even come close to that -- before the trouble starby ProjectC - Project C
The disappearing middle class - By Martin Hutchinson - 16 years ago
"...Blue collar workers lost bargaining power catastrophically following the peak of the 1973 cycle, and since 2000 their failure has been accompanied by a more generalized loss of bargaining power by white collar workers and all toilers below the level of top management. Employers no longer feel compelled to offer their workforce either a decent wage or the most basic of healthcare benefitsby ProjectC - Project C
Taoism of open source - By Chen Nan Yang - 16 years ago
By Chen Nan Yang September 29, 2007 Source 2,500 years ago, the Chinese philosopher Confucius asked Lao-tzu, the founder of Taoism, "What is Tao?" Lao-tzu opened his mouth but said nothing. Confucius left with a smile, but his students were puzzled. Confucius explained, "Lao-tzu has passed us the Tao. In his mouth, there are no teeth but only a tongue. The hard ones (teeth) diby ProjectC - Project C
(Mandriva) Linux wins Nigerian school desktops back from Microsoft - 16 years ago
Government thwarts supplier's plan to install Windows XP By Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service November 09, 2007 Source Microsoft may not have beaten French Linux vendor Mandriva in a large deal to supply Nigerian elementary schools with laptop computers and software after all. Mandriva had closed a deal in mid-August to provide a customised Linux operating system and support for 17,00by ProjectC - Project C
UPDATED: Lockhart to Cuomo: Unclear on the Concept - By Tanta - 16 years ago
The saga continues. J. *** UPDATED: Lockhart to Cuomo: Unclear on the Concept By Tanta Friday, November 09, 2007 Source See end of post for update. The plot thickens on the WaMu/eAppraiseIT front. Yves at naked capitalism runs it down: James Lockhart, head of OFHEO, fires off irritated letter to Cuomo about the latter's public involvement of Fannie and Freddie in the mess wby ProjectC - Project C
(666 Fifth Avenue) - Financial Ground Has Shifted Under a Record Deal - 16 years ago
(First read: Source) Questions - Lore 1, Lore 2. J. (Book of Mozilla - Wikipedia) "Don't exploit the poor, because he is poor; And don't crush the needy in court." -- Proverbs 22:22 "For Yahweh will plead their case, And plunder the life of those who plunder them." -- Proverbs 22:23 *** "But a footnote pointed out that the cash flow frby ProjectC - Project C
Ignoring the Obvious - By Jim Kunstler - 16 years ago
By Jim Kunstler November 5, 2007 Source One of the biggest laughs of the season came out of a New York Times business section story last Tuesday by reporter Michael Grynbaum, who wrote, "Oil is on a steady march toward toppling the inflation-adjusted high of $101.70 it set in April 1980, analysts said, though many are at a loss as to what keeps driving the price." (Italics minby ProjectC - Project C
Prostitution Ban Huge Success in Sweden - 16 years ago
'In fact, Cewers has actually become somewhat of a supporter of the ban, although she continues to believe that prostitution should be abolished altogether. "It's true: There are no happy whores. Most of the ones I've met here over the years were sexually abused by relatives when they were young and have serious emotional problems," she says. "Not much of this is aboby ProjectC - Project C
Cancer-busters tap into grid computing - 16 years ago
By Robert Jaques 8 November 2007 Source Canadian researchers have promised to squeeze "decades" of cancer research into just two years by harnessing the power of a global PC grid.. The research team is led by Dr Igor Jurisica at the Ontario Cancer Institute, and scientists at Princess Margaret Hospital and University Health Network. The scientists are the first from Canada toby ProjectC - Project C
One Soldier's War in Chechnya by Arkady Babchenko - 16 years ago
How to heal? J. *** 'About 1m Russians have served in Chechnya over the past decade. Babchenko says that they returned from the ordeal consumed with hatred for authority, indeed for the world. He describes the cripples, their bodies wrecked in the war, who haunt the Moscow subway, singing as they beg: “They sing terribly, but that doesn’t bother them. They hate the people they aby ProjectC - Project C
Why Financial Engineering Doesn’t Work - By Martin Hutchinson - 16 years ago
"Thus the valuation of a complex financial engineered product (i) may not be generally agreed among market participants, (ii) may quite simply be wrong (iii) may be proved hopelessly flawed by new discoveries about the underlying asset class or (iv) may be affected by distorted incentives so that the owners of the product, the banks concerned, receive different rewards from the agents controby ProjectC - Project C
The Python Paradox - By Paul Graham - 16 years ago
"A friend of mine who knows nearly all the widely used languages uses Python for most of his projects. He says the main reason is that he likes the way source code looks. That may seem a frivolous reason to choose one language over another. But it is not so frivolous as it sounds: when you program, you spend more time reading code than writing it. You push blobs of source code around the wayby ProjectC - Project C