Jim Rittenhouse's semidaily journal of news, commentary and reports
I’ve been asked to speak at a Wright State University forum; their Honors Institute is having a symposium on Chinese-American relations called “Connecting With China”, and I’m to talk on “Exploring Issues in Cross-Cultural Adoptions” from 2-4 pm, February 17th. The event is free to the public, but you have to register in advance to [...]
http://www.newsweek.com/id/225492/page/1 The Power of Two: http://www.newsweek.com/id/225098 Photo gallery of the kids, etc. The Intro picture is particularly stunning. This has been in the works since spring. Newsweek came in with a Pulitzer-award winning photographer who was fresh from covering the White House and Obama and Bush to do the shots. The interviews mostly were around [...]
Child stealing and smuggling rings in China, including a bust in the twins’ home town. Shanghai Daily _ 上海日报 — En.. (PDF. 28 k – pdf’d version of story)
…being played against Chinese state-controlled firms vis-a-vis foreign mining and iron mill outfits. The Chinese have a response; their own Gulag, where the rule of law is variable and limited at best. Which is the essential problem in dealing with China, business-wise. The whole 关系 guanxi / baksheesh ‘special connections’ situation is all-important, and the [...]
Speaking of the seriously rich are still pretty much the seriously rich unless they put their money in the seriously stupid, the Chinese Prime Minister is getting nervous about the safety of US Treasury securities with all of the talk about spending lots of newly printed dollars. Dude. There’s no real place to go with [...]
In Britain, new home purchase mortgages are getting to be a nightmare to obtain; banks are demanding a 40-50% down payment for starters. Nearly a third of housing sales in the US are now either short sales (the bank agrees to take a hit because the value of the house is less than the mortgage [...]
The US has a significant honey and honeybee problem – we only produce about half the honey we consume. Part of that is because of massive bee ailment problems, part because pollination pays better than the honey, and the stuff that is coming into the USA is often adulterated or watered down – and in [...]
Craft stores and online stores that sell handmade stuff are doing well as cheap gift-things with the recession. Me, I’m worthless at handmade gifts, unless you make ‘em on a computer. People (and primates) will believe lies and deceive each other far more than dolphins will. I say we elect dolphins. Yes, the non-US based [...]
With huge numbers of people unemployed, and more rolling into the offices, the states are running out of money to pay benefits. Like 30 out of 50 states. Drill-baby-drill just went *choke*, as oil companies are suddenly unwilling to finance new exploration. Existing wells are being shut down as uneconomical to operate, and forecasts are [...]
No more Polaroid film. Digital’s killed it. Whole Paycheck Foods is having problems, and people are going for store generics everywhere in grocery stores. Mark Penn can’t imagine how he hurt the Clinton campaign for President. China is having serious upsets and problems due to the recession elsewhere; if nobody buys the stuff you make, [...]
Robert Reich, the former Labor Secretary and one of my favorites on economics, writes: After the market closed today, Bank of America announced a significant deterioration in people’s ability to repay credit-card and other consumer debt. The central fact is this: consumers in the real economy are coming to the end of their capacities to [...]
From Nico Pitney in HuffPo: 3) John McCain has skipped more votes during this session than any member of the Senate except for Tim Johnson, who had major brain surgery. He hasn’t cast a single vote in five months, since April 9. All of a sudden, McCain is demanding that the presidential race shut down [...]
You want examples of what happens when government looks the other way and deregulates business? Remember that whole business last year about pet food being loaded with plastics byproducts that could fake protein in feed tests by the Chinese government? It’s happened again, in China, over fake baby formula, loaded with the same stuff, which [...]
The central bank of China has $1 trillion of US debt securities (including mortagage stuff from Freddie Mac and the like) , and the dollar’s fall and the tumble of mortgage securities in the US has led to a serious depreciation in those assets. Problem is that they don’t have an easy way to fix [...]
….that, oh, maybe, those schools in Sichuan province were made out of crap materials that enriched the local governments with kickbacks from the contractors. it’s possible….