Money “an illusion”

February 18, 2010

WASHINGTON—The U.S. economy ceased to function this week after unexpected existential remarks by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke shocked Americans into realizing that money is, in fact, just a meaningless and intangible social construct.
Calling it “basically no more than five rectangular strips of paper,” Fed chairman Ben Bernanke illustrates how much “$200″ is actually worth.
What [...]

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Water: shortages and usage

February 16, 2010

Water—or the scarcity of it—is not something people give a lot of thought to. But consider these facts:

Demand for clean water will rise by 100% between 2007 and 2040.
Irrigation for farming uses 60% of all water taken from rivers and aquifers globally.
While the world produces twice as much food as it did 25 years [...]

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Self-regulation helps reduce moral hazard

February 13, 2010

Self-regulation has been much maligned, thinks John Kay of the FT in a thoughtful article in early December 2009 on government intervention in the financial crisis.

He thinks it bad because it distorts competition, increases moral hazard and disrupts private sector initiatives which might be better and less costly.

Oh, yes, and it’s very expensive.

Talking of the [...]

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Toyota: another view

February 12, 2010

Toyoto is not having a good time. A couple of days back I wrote about the Toyota slow-motion PR wreck. Yet here is another perspective on the whole matter from Ed Wallace on Business Week.

He cautions, soundly, against knee-jerk reactions and suppositions, citing very very biased reporting and investigation in the cases of [...]

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Bank crisis 2: commercial property loans

February 11, 2010

Just when you thought it was all over, safe to go in the water etc, it looks like the banks are going to get hit all over again. Mrs. ReRisk has been predicting this for some time and it looks as if she is going to be vindicated.
From data compiled by DeMontfort[1] University, Savills [...]

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The unpredictability of predictions

February 11, 2010

Building Blog has a good piece on the recent mudslides in LA, which in turn followed the denuding of the hills by raging bush-fires.

As one commenter notes, how anybody could think that a few concrete barricades would hold back a 50mph mudslide, embedded with boulders and other large debris, is hard to fathom.

(pics by [...]

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Toyota D&O claims

February 9, 2010

Oh dear. The train-wreck-in-slow-motion that is Toyota’s current crisis has got a lot worse today with the announcement that they are having to recall all their Prius models worldwide to sort out brake problems. Toyoda-san, the grandson of the founder, can’t be having a good day.

What sort of claims will emerge from this? [...]

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England under snow

January 8, 2010

Courtesy of Mr. Reid, though “the imagery comes from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite’s Rapid Response System which provides near real-time imagery of the Earth’s surface.”

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Arbitration awards: challenge on grounds of ‘irregularity’

December 17, 2009

English arbitrations are generally certain, final and enforceable. They can be appealed in only limited circumstances, principally if the panel has erred as to its jurisdiction or on some point of English law or, and more rarely, if there has been some “serious irregularity affecting the tribunal, the proceedings or the award” (Arbitration Act 1996 [...]

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UK prosecutors unlikely to charge former Madoff employees

December 15, 2009

The Serious Fraud Office has been investigating whether former Madoff Securities International Ltd. CEO, Stephen Raven, or any London employee of Madoff had knowledge of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.
Those familiar with the investigation have commented that the U.K. is unlikely to prosecute anyone at Madoff’s London operation because the SFO does not currently have enough [...]

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