Wednesday, March 16, 2011

OMG!!! Alert

The teevee is telling me all about taking iodine pills to prevent radiation sickness.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Me Too

Atrios is right. It's time.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Tell of the Day

Jim Cramer's mouth rushes ahead of his brain:
Cramer admitted there are still lots of problems here in America, and the government's anti-business stance in favor of the little guy isn't helping the economy at large.
That's right. The last thing government should be doing is helping the little guy.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

More Than Ever

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son ?
And where have you been my darling young one ?
I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

A Look into the Future

Peter Cohan on recent economic developments:
China is overtaking the U.S. because of China's superior application of capital. With Greece having taken a $140 billion bailout from Europe, China is viewing Greece's weakened condition as an opportunity to build a distribution network in Europe. So China is investing capital to extend its 10% economic growth based on building real businesses.
Why is China investing when the rest of the world sees Greece as an economic basket case? China wants to make it easier for the output of its factories to reach consumers across Europe and North Africa, according to the Post. Moreover, China's investment in Greece isn't a one-shot deal. It has also "plunked down billions from Angola to Peru" to help guarantee China's supply of raw materials and product distribution through "a network of roads, pipelines, railroads and port facilities --sort of a modern Silk Road -- to boost East-West trade," according to the Post.
By contrast, the U.S. financial markets are dominated by high-frequency traders who account for 70% of trading volume and exalt the use of technology to outsmart other traders -- rather than using it to create jobs by building businesses.

Read the whole thing.

Monday, May 31, 2010

So True

From the great Jeff Miller:
"One of the worst features of CNBC is the penchant for taking a stupid question and posing it to people who could not possibly know the answer."

Saturday, March 6, 2010

You Know What?

They may be right.

From The People's Daily:

The quenching of the developed countries'growth by the bout of the Great Recession has driven more Western thinkers and political analysts to look eastwards at China. Some have coined the phrase "Beijing consensus" or "China model", and more are studying the phenomenon of the country's political skeleton versus its monumental rise.

The way the decision-makers in Beijing chewed the possibly decimating impact of the global financial crisis and swiftly meted out a massive stimulus plan in late 2008, raised the eyebrows of many. The funds were rushed to high-speed railways, inter-province expressways and tens of thousands of infrastructure projects right away, without hitting the walls of parliamentary obstruction.

It has worked out wonders: the country's economy expanded by 8.8 percent last year. It outgrew Germany as the top exporter and the United States as the largest auto consumer in 2009.And, even before some Western economic gurus warned it of bubbling asset prices, China's central bank had started to fine-tune it by twice raising the reserve requirement ratio of banks, aimed at reining in credit and preventing inflationary bubbles.

Are Chinese getting smarter these days? Not exactly! It has nurtured a system that is tested and proved to be fairly functioning and efficient. The result is not as rowdy and contesting -- even predatory -- as we have seen in some Western democracies. The way one political party tries to sit at the throat of another by obstructing and killing every legislative move proposed by the politicians in power regardless of its merits, is just outrageous, if not preposterous.

Take the United States for an instance. More than 16 months has passed since the eruption of the crisis, the country hasn't come out with a repair plan to fix the holes of its financial regulation, because legislative lines submitted by the Obama administration to scrutinize credit default swaps and other dubious financial instruments, and protect individual consumers, are being held back by partisan lawmakers and bank lobbyists.

http://english.people.com.cn/90002/96743/6908714.html