History of the British Empire. ING to pay $619 million over Cuba, Iran sanctions. Timeline: Libya - from bloody uprising to elections. Factbox: Who is running in Libya's election? Syria sends armored column to Aleppo, strikes from air. Fed strives to replenish depleted toolkit. EU Solar Firms Seek Tariffs on China. Euro-Zone Business Output Falls. Mukesh Ambani Plans Huge 4G Wireless Network in India. Libor Probe Expands to Bank Traders. Obama Keeps WSJ/NBC Poll Lead as Voter Anxiety Rises. Fed Sees Action if Growth Doesn't Pick Up Soon. Farmers seen weathering 2012 drought better than in 1988. Romney accuses Obama of weakness abroad, leaks. Richard Cohen: The secret in Mitt Romney’s tax returns. This is what the average person would learn if all of Romney’s tax filings hit the light of day.
He has so far divulged just his 2010 return and the estimate for 2011, and the Obama camp, smelling blood, has demanded more. The din has reached such a level that even some conservatives are entreating Romney to reveal additional filings. They are not, however, imploring their candidate to identify his bundlers — for this might actually reveal who has their hooks into him. The filings, I promise you, will show loopholes and financial black holes that make taxable income disappear. What is Libor? Syria, The Movie: Monsters and Defectors. By Russ Baker on Jul 16, 2012 There’s an underlying problem with reporting about Syria: The media continue to treat as human rights violations what is actually authority clamping down on people it considers, rightfully or not, revolutionaries or terrorists.
You might disagree with that government. You might find that government repressive, even odious, and want those involved in the uprising to succeed. But to call yourself reasonably objective you would have to admit that all governments respond with force when their survival is threatened. And, because they have the army and its might, they use it. Any regime considers itself authorized to do whatever it takes to put down insurrection. That’s the basic issue in Syria. Instead, to justify intervention, it must make its case by presenting a growing litany of increasingly egregious human rights violations, being visited upon the people for no reason beyond an inherent monstrousness.
Should Journalists Be Entertainers? - Derek Thompson. As newspapers continue to lose money and cut their news staffs down to meager sizes, we're going to see a lot of ideas to make money that will fall somewhere on the spectrum between utterly stupid and excellently clever.
This idea from the Washington Post is a little bit of both: Pay More, Drive Less, Save the Planet - Derek Thompson. New GM to Be 'Fully Launched' This Month - Derek Thompson. The Federal Reserve's Magical Balance Sheet - Derek Thompson. What Changed Between 1981 and 2007? - Derek Thompson. A lot has changed in the quarter century-plus since Ronald Reagan became president.
As Billy Joel reminisced on the early 1980s: "Begin, Reagan, Palestine; Terror on the airlines; Ayatollahs in Iran, Russia's in Afghanistan," all the way up to the 2000s with, say: "Tax cuts, oil gluts, terror by religious nuts; Enron, Hadron and Katrina, Iraq, Iran, Brangelina... " But how do we explain this? A truly brilliant interactive feature at the Council on Foreign Relations breaks down the financial crisis in various chapters of graphs, facts and expert analysis.
One motion chart allows you to look at how world economies compare to each other between 1981 and 2007. Does anybody else find this surprising? That's a graph of each countries' percentage share of world GDP from 1981. To be sure, some things change very much. Why So Many Jobless Recoveries, Recently? - Derek Thompson. Employment is a lagging indicator in economic downturns, which means you don't often see a recovery in the jobs market until months after other factors -- like consumer confidence and the stock market -- have long recovered from their recession lows.
But in the last two recessions, employment has lagged for a much longer time, by historical standards. What accounts for this, and can we expect a similar "jobless recovery" in 2010? First, here's a colorful look at past recessions. You can see pretty clearly that the job losses beginning in 74, 80 and 81 all recovered relatively quickly from their bottoms. 10 Crazy Ideas for Fixing Our Education System - Derek Thompson. Can Google Change Election Outcomes? - Derek Thompson. Outside of Virginia, there was little reason to notice that Creigh Deeds won the state's Democratic primary for governor.
But here's something that political campaigns and marketers across the country should pay attention to: He did it partly with a technology called Google Blasting, an eleventh-hour strategy to blanket Google-affiliated webpages in an area with a single ad campaign to impact voters' final decision. This is now the second time in three months that a Democratic underdog has used Google blasts to seal a surprising victory. Goodbye robocalls, hello Google surges? First, let's understand what happened with Creigh Deeds, who just a month ago was running a distant third in the VA primary.
First the Washington Post endorsed him, creating a huge boost in northern Virginian support. Starting at 3 p.m EST Monday, hours before polls opened across Virginia, Deeds's campaign bought what's called a 'Google blast.' So how can this change elections going forward? It's Time for Obama to Defend the Banks - Derek Thompson. Last week Brad DeLong said the government had three distinct narratives to explain the bank plan to carping foreign governments and a persnickety media.
In short: "1) The banks have us by the plums; 2) The government has a chance to make a fortune; and 3) We have to play out the hand before we ask for a new deal. " I don't know about the last two (Geithner shouldn't be promising any kind of fortune and ix-nay on the ationalization-nay) but I'm most interested in the first lets-praise-the-banks narrative because, frankly, I find it the most convincing.
No, I'm not saying Obama should call a press conference where the media can watch Vikram Pandit, Ken Lewis, Lloyd Blankfein and the president sip espresso and compliment each others' decision-making skills and matching pocket squares. Should Obama Defend The Banks - Derek Thompson. Last week Brad DeLong said the government had three distinct narratives to explain the bank plan to carping foreign governments and a persnickety media.
In short: "1) The banks have us by the plums; 2) The government has a chance to make a fortune; and 3) We have to play out the hand before we ask for a new deal. " I don't know about the last two (Geithner shouldn't be promising any kind of fortune and ix-nay on the ationalization-nay) but I'm most interested in the first lets-praise-the-banks narrative because, frankly, I find it the most convincing. No, I'm not saying Obama should call a press conference where the media can watch Vikram Pandit, Ken Lewis, Lloyd Blankfein and the president sip espresso and compliment each others' decision-making skills and matching pocket squares.
WSJ Blames Obama for Stock Market Fall. Shut Up, Bankers - Derek Thompson. Geithner Says Repayments Depend on Overall Credit Needs - Derek Thompson. I.M.F. Puts Losses From Crisis at $4.1 Trillion - Derek Thompson. Can the Oil Shock Alone Explain the Financial Crisis? - Derek Thompson. Yes.
That's the astonishing conclusion of a paper presented at the Brookings Institution that I'm still having trouble wrapping my mind around. The author, economist James Hamilton, can hardly believe the conclusions of his economic model, himself (I've got company), but the findings are remarkable, nonetheless. Hamilton went back to 2003, when crude oil was around $30 a gallon and forecast what an oil shock like the one we experienced in 2007-08 (when oil peaked around $140) would do to GDP. He graphed the result through the end of 2008 and, lo and behold, it was damn close to actual GDP. As though there were no such thing as a collaterized debt obgligation in the first place! Perhaps you'll join me in thinking: Huh? What about real estate, subprime mortgages and defaults? The Real Time Economics Blog at WSJ moves the theory forward with a pretty interesting bit of revisionist history.
Hamilton concludes. Is the Geithner Plan Illegal? - Derek Thompson. How Geithner's Plan Leads to Nationalization - Derek Thompson. The reaction to Timothy Geithner's new bank plan from liberals has been largely despairing, but there's an interesting contingent arguing that even if the bank plan isn't great economics, it's still good politics.
The argument would be that not only does the plan bypass Congress and free up capital (political and otherwise) to devote to health care and energy, as Matthew Yglesias suggests, its failure might also make nationalization inevitable. How the Richest 400 People in America Got So Rich - Derek Thompson. In 1992, the 400th richest person in America made $24 million.
The Scariest Chart in Europe Just Got Even Scarier - Derek Thompson. In March this year, for the first time on record, more than half of the young people in Spain and Greece were counted as unemployed by the OECD, which provided the chart above. Three months later, the situation is still getting worse. Official youth unemployment in Greece and Spain has crossed 51 percent. That's worse than twice the rate of the entire euro zone (22%) and more than three times worse than the already-quite-bad youth unemployment in the United States and Canada (16% and 14%, respectively). The 11 Ways That Consumers Are Hopeless at Math - Derek Thompson. This is your brain on shopping, and it's not very smart Reuters You walk into a Starbucks and see two deals for a cup of coffee.
The first deal offers 33% extra coffee. Derek Thompson - Authors.