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Casino. S 2008 Cost of Living survey highlights. Relative stability in the Americas, but multiple factors influence ranking shifts In the Americas, cities in South America are the most expensive for expatriates. Living in some cities, particularly those in Brazil, became cheaper because of the US dollar's strengthening against local currencies. Other cities became more expensive. The cost of living in some, like Buenos Aires and Caracas, rose due to high inflation. Others, like Mexico City, are facing a strong rental market. Overall, the cost of living in other cities in Latin America and in the Caribbean remained fairly stable, according to Mercer's rankings. New York, the base city for Mercer's Cost of Living rankings, is the most expensive city in the United States. To learn more, read the press release. Sign of the End Time 01/06/2009. One clear sign of the End Time is when the media starts publishing my opinions on the economy.

Worse yet, now I have to worry that, for the benefit of the world, Warren Buffett will send his goons to kill me. As long as I'm a dead man walking, I might as well make things worse before I go. Here now, more of my opinions about the economy. I wonder what people mean when they say the economy will recover in 2010. The only way that can happen is if another irrational bubble forms thus creating an illusion of wealth similar to our previous illusions. I said before that I think we're on the cusp of a change as fundamental as the industrial revolution. The coming consumption revolution won't be strictly for the benefit of the environment. The Internet will make this revolution possible.

In California we're facing a severe budget deficit, and this will demand cuts in education among other things. Obviously you can see lots of problems with this approach. Peter Schiff Was Right 2006 - 2007 (2nd Edition) The productivity paradox: Why hasn't the Internet helped the American economy grow more? - By Annie Lowrey. If you have attended any economists' cocktail parties in the past month or so—lucky you! —then you have probably heard chatter about Tyler Cowen's e-book, The Great Stagnation. The book seeks to explain why in the United States median wages have grown only slowly since the 1970s and have actually declined in the past decade. Cowen points to an innovation problem: Through the 1970s, the country had plenty of "low-hanging fruit" to juice GDP growth.

In the past 40 years, coming up with whiz-bang, life-changing innovations—penicillin, free universal kindergarten, toilets, planes, cars—has proved harder, pulling down growth rates across the industrialized world. Annie Lowrey, formerly Slate’s Moneybox columnist, is economic policy reporter for the New York Times. But wait! A quarter century ago, with new technologies starting to saturate American homes and businesses, economists looked around and expected to find computer-fueled growth everywhere. BusinessDay - SA’s world competitiveness ranking slips. SA CONTINUED to lose ground to its nearest rivals in economic competitiveness, slipping nine places to 54 out of 139 countries in the latest World Economic Forum (WEF) global competitiveness index published yesterday. Despite the country's favourable ranking for policy and financial institutions, poor healthcare and education and high crime and corruption levels weighed down on the overall ranking.

However, SA claimed the number one spot for auditing and reporting standards. Last year it was number two and in 2008 number four in this category. Bernard Agulhas, CEO of the Independent Regulatory Board for Auditors, said the ranking should be a comfort for businesses, financial institutions and overseas investors. He said that after the global financial crisis there had been more attention paid to auditing and accounting standards. But SA scored lower in the competitiveness ranking. "SA attracts its fair share of portfolio or hot investment but we are not attracting enough fixed investment. How Michael Osinski Helped Build the Bomb That Blew Up Wall Street -- New York Magazine. 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. I wrote the software that turned mortgages into bonds. Because of the news, you probably know more about this than you ever wanted to. The first collateralized mortgage obligation, or CMO, was created in 1983 by First Boston and Salomon Brothers, but it would be years before computer technology advanced sufficiently to allow the practice to become widespread.

I started on Wall Street on October 5, 1985. My first assignment was to write a “machine-to-machine interrupt handler.” The Big Takeover : Rolling Stone. Consumers Don't Cause Recessions - Robert P. Murphy - Mises Institute. There's one saving grace about Paul Krugman's column at the New York Times: when an Austrian economist wants to explain how mainstream economics leads to ruin, he can always trust Krugman to set up the target in a clear, concise manner. This saves us a lot of work, because we don't have to first build up the position before knocking it down. Even the casual reader of the financial press knows that it is dominated by Keynesian "demand-side" thinking. For example, during the debate over the stimulus checks earlier in the year, the main objection was that taxpayers might use some of their rebate to pay down credit card bills, rather than blowing the whole thing at the mall.

But the reader will never see a careful, step-by-step exposition of the worldview that generates such crazy notions. Enter Paul Krugman. "The Paradox of Thrift" Now let's stop for a moment. And now to the actual theory behind all these musings. The Misleading "Circular Flow" Model Ah, now we're getting somewhere. Notes. Growing stocks of unsold cars around the world | Recession-Proof Industries. Newstopia explains the Reserve Bank. Sponsor an Executive. Google Gears Down for Tougher Times. Tech Companies, Long Insulated, Now Feel Slump. The Shallowest Generation. The Baby Boom Generation will never be mistaken for the Greatest Generation that survived the Great Depression and defeated evil in a World War that killed 72 million people. I hate to tell you Boomers, but putting a yellow ribbon on the back of your $50,000 SUV is not sacrifice. Our claim to fame is living way beyond our means for the last three decades, to the point where we have virtually bankrupted our capitalist system.

Baby Boomers have been occupying the White House for the last sixteen years. The majority of Congress is Baby Boomers. The CEOs and top executives of Wall Street firms are Baby Boomers. The media is dominated by Baby Boom executives and on-air stars. We have no one to blame but ourselves for the current predicament. Of course, not all Baby Boomers are shallow, greedy, and corrupt. Click to enlarge images Receive future articles by this author via email: Follow and be the first to know when they publish.

Follow James Quinn (2,000 followers) Brick & mortar retail New! America has sneezed, how bad will our cold be? - South Africa - The Good News. Very dark storm clouds have gathered over the world's economies recently with comparisons being drawn to the Great Depression, a worldwide economic downturn that started in 1929. Like the Great Depression, the current economic crisis has originated in the United States and in this age of globalisation, no economy is safe. How will South Africa fare? Of course the adage of 'when the US sneezes, the world catches cold' will hold true, but the severity of the influenza will vary from one country to the next.

From reading up on what the experts have had to say, it appears a confluence of factors in our favour will mean that we will be spared the worst. South Africa is insulated, but not immune to the germs. These are the factors in our favour: Exchange controls These relics from our apartheid past are still around, but have been slowly and systematically relaxed over the past 14 years. "Thank goodness for exchange controls," Remgro chairman Johann Rupert said recently.

What about the Rand? Hayibo - Home. A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift. Putting NASA’s budget in perspective. By Jeff BrooksMonday, July 2, 2007 “I think we should solve our problems here on Earth before we go into space.” This line, or some facsimile of it, has probably been heard countless times by just about every advocate of space exploration. For many people, it seems to sum up the totality of their thinking on the subject.

Not a few politicians invoke it on those rare occasions when space exploration comes up in political discourse. In October of 2006, on the 49th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, CBS News anchor Katie Couric summarized this attitude when she concluded her nightly broadcast by saying, “NASA’s requested budget for 2007 is nearly $17 billion. When space advocates hear this argument, it is difficult not to become irritated or even a little angry. It’s important for space advocates to understand that this opinion is held by people not because they are hostile to space exploration, but because they lack sufficient information about it. Let’s make it happen.