Barclays commercial. In Italy, Parmesan as Collateral for Bank Loans. Russian Banks Count Pigs, Lingerie as Collateral (Update1) - Blo. Global Financial Crisis Hits Mongolia's Grasslands. Sukuk. Dubai World Gets $10 Billion from Abu Dhabi. By Haris Anwar (Bloomberg) — Abu Dhabi provided $10 billion to help Dubai World, the state-owned holding company, avoid defaulting on a $4.1 billion bond payment that roiled global financial markets during the past month. Dubai World will use the money to cover debt of real-estate unit Nakheel PJSC that comes due today.
The rest of the money will cover Dubai World's interest and operating costs until the company reaches a standstill agreement with its creditors, Dubai's government said in an e-mailed statement. After the emirate and its state-controlled companies borrowed $80 billion to diversify away from dwindling oil supplies, Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, has been forced to seek Abu Dhabi's help three times this year as the global financial crisis dried up credit and triggered a property crash in the city state.
Leeway to Dubai World The cost of protecting investors against Dubai defaulting on its debt tumbled the most since February. Internal Transfer. Out-of-Work Architects Turn to Other Skills. In fact, Mr. Morefield, 29, is no politician, but an architectural designer looking for work. He was seated at a homemade wooden stand under a sign reading “Architecture 5¢,” with a tin can nearby awaiting spare change. For a nickel, he would answer any architectural question. In 2008, Mr. “I didn’t know what I was going to do,” Mr. A troubled economy and the implosion of the real estate market have thrown thousands of architects and designers out of work in the last year or so, forcing them to find or create jobs.
“It’s hard to find a place to hide when the economy goes down,” said Kermit Baker, the chief economist at the American Institute of Architects. And it’s not clear when the industry will recover. In the meantime, many of those who have been laid off are discovering new talents often unrelated to architecture. “I feel this is a good time to try new things,” said Ms. Since she and Ms. Ms. Mr. This month, he began commercial truck driving school. As for Mr. In Defense of Holiday Gift-Giving - Economix Blog. Alchemists Screwed As Lead Outperforms Gold In 2009. Bad news for alchemists who are in the business of transmuting lead into gold. They made the wrong trade in 2009. It turns out, according to Bloomberg, that lead outperformed the shiny metal, having gained 145% compared to gold's kind of pathetic 24% rise. That's quite a big disparity when you consider, too, that the elements are just three protons apart.
And maybe alchemists should think twice before converting a useful element into something pretty. (via John Lothian) A Novel Idea to Keep Students in College: Failure Insurance - St. By David Glenn Imagine a first-generation college student whose high-school preparation was less than ideal. She has just finished her first semester, and she realizes now that college is going to be tougher than she had hoped. She failed one course and struggled to earn C's in her other subjects.
She worries that she'll eventually flunk out, and she wonders whether she should walk away now before she accumulates any more student debt. But what if she could hedge her risks by buying a "failure insurance" policy that would reimburse her for a portion of her student-loan debts if she did flunk out? Would that make her more willing to stay for another semester? Failure insurance might sound outlandish—but a well-designed insurance system could actually improve students' effort and their attainment rates, according to a working paper that was presented in Atlanta last week at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association.
But regardless of whether it is ever put into practice, Mr. Golden Triangle Warlords Swap Guns, Drugs for Tourism: Review - Prediction market. People who buy low and sell high are rewarded for improving the market prediction, while those who buy high and sell low are punished for degrading the market prediction. Evidence so far suggests that prediction markets are at least as accurate as other institutions predicting the same events with a similar pool of participants.[1] History[edit] Prediction markets have a long and colorful lineage. Betting on elections was common in the U.S. until at least the 1940s, with formal markets existing on Wall Street in the months leading up to the race. Newspapers reported market conditions to give a sense of the closeness of the contest in this period prior to widespread polling. Around 1990 at Project Xanadu, Robin Hanson used the first known corporate prediction market.
In July 2003, the U.S. The research literature is collected together in the peer reviewed The Journal of Prediction Markets, edited by Leighton Vaughan Williams and published by the University of Buckingham Press. Cantor Exchange. SimExchange. Smarkets. Intrade Prediction Markets. Engraving & Printing. Worksheets at SmartMoney.com. Renting Makes More Financial Sense Than Homeownership - Yahoo! R.
ETFs get religion: New FaithShares funds target Christian denomi. Increasingly, people are choosing to put their money where their values are, and that sentiment isn't lost on money managers. Just this week, the first of three exchange-traded funds targeted at Christian investors hit the market. Two more will launch next week. The securities held in each of the funds, FaithShares Catholic Values Fund , FaithShares Methodist Value Fund and FaithShares Christian Values Fund, are tailored to each denomination's teachings and recommendations for investing. FaithShares Advisors worked with the FTSE Group and KLD Research & Analytics, a provider of environmental, social and governance research and indexes, to create the series of custom indexes on which the funds are based. Each fund has about 100 stocks, mostly household names like Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG) and Starbucks (SBUX).
What you won't find in them are companies that earn their profits from alcohol, tobacco, gambling, pornography or weapons -- the so-called "sin stocks. "