Archive for June, 2009
Next Segment of the Housing Market to Crash: $1+ Million McMansions
June 30th, 2009Via: Business Insider: The new hallucination for most strapped McMansion owners is that they’ll “rent the house for a year and then sell when the market comes back.” The happy theory here is that, yes, prices are temporarily depressed, but when the green shoots really take hold, we’ll go roaring right back to 2006 levels […]
China Loans Zimbabwe US$950 Million
June 30th, 2009There will be something in the dirt that China wants to dig up. Or, maybe just the dirt would do. More: China arable land fears end reforestation drive Arable land shrinking fast Via: BBC: China has agreed to give Zimbabwe a loan of $950m (£573m) to help it revive its battered economy, Prime Minister Morgan […]
Clarifying News Stories Using the Iraqis-Regaining-Their-Sovereignty Meme
June 30th, 2009Ah yes, June 30th is National Sovereignty Day in Iraq… There are dozens of boilerplate propaganda stories floating around today about Iraqis regaining their sovereignty because U.S. troops are being pulled out of Iraqi cities. This, of course, is ludicrous. Within the first hour of my first International Relations class in college, I came away […]
Key Leaders of Honduras Military Coup Trained in U.S.
June 30th, 2009Via: Institute for Southern Studies: At least two leaders of the coup launched in Honduras on June 28 were apparently trained at a controversial Department of Defense school based at Fort Benning, Georgia infamous for producing graduates linked to torture, death squads and other human rights abuses. Leftist President Manuel Zelaya was kidnapped and transported […]
One in Four Mortgage Defaults Are “Strategic”: People Who Could Make Their Payments Are Choosing to Default Instead
June 30th, 2009Via: Economist: HOUSE prices in America have fallen so far that as many as one in five households have mortgage debt greater than the value of their homes. In a few states, borrowers are not liable for the shortfall between an unpaid loan and the resale value of the home it is secured upon. Even […]
Confidential Memo Reveals U.S. Plan to Provoke an Invasion of Iraq
June 30th, 2009Via: Guardian: A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK’s role in toppling Saddam Hussein. The memo, written on 31 January […]
Brookings Institution Report: A “Sufficiently Horrific Provocation” Would Make the U.S. Decision to Invade Iran, “Almost Easy”
June 29th, 2009Which Path to Persia? Options for a New American Strategy Toward Iran (PDF 1.2MB) Analysis Paper Number 20 June 2009 Authors: Kenneth M. Pollack Daniel L. Byman Martin Indyk Suzanne Maloney Michael E. O’Hanlon Bruce Riedel — The Question of a Provocation As noted above, in the section on the time frame for an invasion, […]
UK Gilts Advance as Central Bank Buys Securities
June 29th, 2009Via: Bloomberg: U.K. 10-year government bonds rose as the Bank of England bought 3.5 billion pounds ($5.8 billion) of securities as part of its asset-purchase plan to revive the economy. The gains drove the yield on the gilt to its lowest level in six weeks after Britain’s biggest business lobby group said financial-services companies may […]
Failed Entrepreneurs Flee Dubai, Fear Debtor Prison
June 29th, 2009Via: Telegraph: A British entrepreneur has fled the financial crash in Dubai leaving behind hundreds of thousands pounds in debts. Simon Ford, who founded a “gift experience” company that prospered in the United Arab Emirates’ boom years, said he had been forced to escape as he feared being sent to debtors’ prison under strict bankruptcy […]
Bernard Madoff Sentenced to 150 Years in Prison
June 29th, 2009We still don’t know who his accomplices were, or where the money went. Via: Bloomberg: Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years for masterminding the largest Ponzi scheme in history, six times longer than the penalties meted out to the chief executives of WorldCom Inc. and Enron Corp. Madoff appeared in court today before U.S. […]
