Jim Rittenhouse's semidaily journal of news, commentary and reports
He’s expressing his rather strong opinions on how the Vancouver Olympics are a money pit in a downturn period, cutting off funding for other public things in favour of high-end expense for the Games. (NSFW re strong language)
I’m really tired of the rumbledy-toss of big banks buying small fry – and then going under due to hilarity at the home office. We use two banks and a credit union; the latter is WAY out of state, and I’d transfer over to that except that we’d never have a local bank. Bank #1 [...]
AP has a map here (interactive flash) on local economic conditions; my home county (DuPage) has (in the last two years) seen unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies double, and we’re nowhere near the bottom. Check it out.
Discussion about a bailout bill for newspapers if they reorganize as 501c3 not-for-profits; the President had this to say about it: Obama said that good journalism is “critical to the health of our democracy,” but expressed concern toward growing tends in reporting — especially on political blogs, from which a groundswell of support for his [...]
Interesting article on how India’s endemic corruption problems are holding the country back, with this comment from the Prime Minister: “The pervasive corruption in our country tarnishes our image [and it] discourages investors who expect fair treatment and transparent dealings with public authorities.” Read it all.
The inspector general of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reports that five SEC exams and investigations of Bernie Madoff were incompetently done. I can believe one screwup happened, but five? Five is agency policy to not look too hard. Both Markopolos and an SEC staff accountant testified that it was clear the Boston office’s [...]
Dirty little secret #1: Not everyone who gets through law school with a diploma gets a law job. Not guaranteed, though it’s a common misconception – by non-lawyers – that law school graduates are not automatically given cushy jobs, that all law jobs pay astronomically well, and job security is everything. Oh, yeah, and that [...]
The shoe company is going under; a combination of saturating its market and people cutting back.
…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 [...]
Website for the remains of the old GM that they’re liquidating. Wanna buy a golf course or a Superfund site? At the first day of hearings on GM’s proposed asset sale restructuring chief Albert Koch estimated on June 30 that the company’s environmental liabilities for all sites are $530 million. Chief Executive Officer Fritz Henderson [...]
Post from Nate Silver pointing out how people are economizing: no dry-cleaning, no Starbucks, brownbagging lunch, buying generics, cutting out bottled water and bringing water bottles, cancelling subscriptions (magazines and newspapers), and so on.
Courtesy of Paul Riddell and the New York Times, an examination of the inanities and OMG-its-not-selling of the present-day jewelry industry. Thanks, Paul!
Ritz Camera chain in the US likely to liquidate, as people are using them less and less in favor of digital photography which is then uploaded via the Internet to be printed up cheaply elsewhere.
Michael Lewis, one of my all-time favorite writers on Wall Street and high-end finance, has a Vanity Fair article on the fall of AIG that I thoroughly recommend. And yet the A.I.G. F.P. traders left behind, much as they despise him personally, refuse to believe Cassano was engaged in any kind of fraud. The problem [...]
I have my own suspicions, but the Californians who have opinions who regularly read my journal can read this posting in the Mahablog (which I regularly read) and see if they agree about the breakdown of the political process in the Golden State. Here also is a quick breakdown of who is paid in IOUs [...]