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Posts Tagged ‘Economy’
Economics is too damned hard …
… so we don’t deal with it. (Cartoon poached from Daily Kos)[...]
January 21st, 2015 - 12:10 pm § in America
Study debunks GOP myths about subprime mortgage crisis
America’s political right wasted no time turning the subprime mortgage crisis into a political football. Their argument, in essence, is that “the financial crisis was the result of government pressure to make subprime home loans to those at the lower end of the income scale.” Here[...]
January 20th, 2015 - 3:20 pm § in Misc.
Would you work for $2.13 an hour?
I certainly wouldn’t. But that’s still the federal minimum wage for food servers. The restaurant industry’s argument for such a low wage is that waitstaff make their money from tips. The problem is, tipping is voluntary; whereas getting paid for your work shouldn’t be. When t[...]
January 6th, 2015 - 3:06 pm § in Uncategorized
England may be in the same shape as Russia. Is North Dakota next?
UK oil industry ‘close to collapse’ as price plunges below $60 per barrel Britain’s oil industry is in a “crisis” and may be “close to collapse,” a senior oil industry expert has said, as the UK’s biggest oil and gas companies continue to…[...]
December 31st, 2014 - 6:56 pm § in Misc.
How low can oil go?
Oil is an extremely complicated industry. There are different grades and qualities of oil, with different refining requirements, and widely varying production costs. Oil is used not just for fuel, but also chemical feedstock, and for manufacturing everything from plastics to fertilizer. Things like [...]
December 28th, 2014 - 12:20 am § in America
Obama’s results vs. GOP’s promises
During the 2012 presidential campaign: Romney promised to get unemployment down to 6% by 2016. Obama won and unemployment is 5.8% in 2014. Gingrich promised $2.50 gas. Obama won, and the national average gas price today is $2.38. Pawlenty promised giving tax breaks to the wealthy would boost GDP gro[...]
Bruce Willis, Hero of American Right, Bankrupts Russian Bank
The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) said that a plan to loan Trust bank an amount of up to 30bn roubles (£343m) had been approved, while analysts warned that Russia’s banking sector had become particularly vulnerable. Trust bank has run a series of advertisements featuring actor Bruce Willis in Russ[...]
December 20th, 2014 - 9:08 pm § in Politics
Go figure …
“The jobless rate, at 10 percent at its peak after Mr. Obama took office, is down to 5.8 percent with nearly 11 million new jobs. The annual deficit, which reached 10.1 percent of the gross domestic product, the measure of the economy, has fallen below 3 percent of G.D.P., the level most econo[...]
December 10th, 2014 - 12:25 pm § in Misc.
What’s going on with oil? A Q & A primer
Here are some basic facts about oil. The economic law of supply and demand affects pricing, supply, and demand with respect to oil. Unlike natural gas, whose markets are fragmented, and whose pricing varies widely by geographic local, oil can be transported across oceans easily and cheaply, so oil&#[...]