This chart from Marco Man says it all.
For those that don’t know, the Labor party (under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown) campaigned on a promise to end the boom and bust cycle that the irresponsible Marget Thatcher and John Major allowed on their watch. The chart above is not entirely fair (it only tracks the stock market) but it makes a valid point very clearly.
Read this first…..
But while the video received five stars from viewers, some YouTube users were concerned that the dog might be about to lash out at Lucy.
Alexandra Semyonova wrote: “The dog exercises huge self control for a full minute and a half, then gets up and walks away in the end.
“But if it hadn’t, if it had lashed out even symbolically, this child could have spent the rest of its life without a face — and everyone would have blamed the dog.”
Now watch this….
Some people know nothing about dogs. That dog was having almost as much fun as the baby. I have seen dogs put up with a lot worse.
Alternatively, some people hate kids and think that anything that they do must irritate a dog. Either way, the people getting up in arms over this video are disgusting.
The commentary, intro, and intermission on these video’s is annoying as all get out. But the actual competition is fun to watch. I think the shooting sports would be more popular if more people tried this sort of thing.
This is the shotgun challenge….
And this is sub machine gun challenge…..
You can see links to more challenges here.
Public sector workers – from schools, hospitals, the Post Office and publicly-funded media – will join forces with car factory workers, helicopter pilots and even ski-lift operators from the private sector, to leave much of the country paralysed.
The show of force is backed by all of France’s main unions, the opposition Socialists and 75 per cent of the public see it as justified, according to one poll.
According to François Chérèque, leader of the moderate CFDT union, the strike is a “cry of anger” from workers who feel the government has given billions to banks and industry but not protected their jobs or “purchasing power”.
Not much is going to come of this. The French government is going to back down so fast that there will be no need to prolong the strikes.
Britain was just three hours away from going bust last year after a secret run on the banks, one of Gordon Brown’s Ministers has revealed.
City Minister Paul Myners disclosed that on Friday, October 10, the country was ‘very close’ to a complete banking collapse after ‘major depositors’ attempted to withdraw their money en masse.
The Mail on Sunday has been told that the Treasury was preparing for the banks to shut their doors to all customers, terminate electronic transfers and even block hole-in-the-wall cash withdrawals.
Only frantic behind-the-scenes efforts averted financial meltdown.
I don’t know if I believe anything that I read in the Daily Mail. But no body seems to be denying the quote. And it seems to me that anyone with large amounts of foreign exchange has to realize that if a crunch ever comes, they will get their dollars/euros when the British government is good and ready to let them. Given the example of Iceland, a lot of people have reason to be nervous.
Listing your name on Canada’s new do-not-call registry could actually increase the likelihood that you will be targeted by unscrupulous telemarketers.
The Consumers’ Association of Canada says it has been inundated with complaints from people who have been called by scam artists after placing their telephone numbers on the registry, which went into effect last September.
The do-not-call list was created to prevent telemarketers from contacting people who do not want to be pestered with uninvited sales pitches. For companies to find out who they are not permitted to call, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission sells the list online for a fee.
From later on in the article….
Penalties for misuse of the registry run as high as $15,000 for a corporation, or $1,500 for an individual. But it’s difficult to fine fraudsters who are based overseas – or those in Canada running a fly-by-night business.
Fannie Mae (formally, the Federal National Mortgage Association) is in the process of preparing its financial statements for the fourth quarter of 2008 and the year ended December 31, 2008. Based on preliminary unaudited information concerning its results for these periods, management currently expects that the Federal Housing Finance Agency, acting in its capacity as conservator of Fannie Mae (the “Conservator”), will submit a request to the U.S. Department of the Treasury (“Treasury”) to draw funds on behalf of Fannie Mae under the $100 billion Senior Preferred Stock Purchase Agreement entered into between Treasury and the Conservator, acting on behalf of Fannie Mae, on September 7, 2008, and subsequently amended and restated on September 26, 2008 (the “Purchase Agreement”). Although management currently estimates that the amount of this initial draw will be approximately $11 billion to $16 billion, the actual amount of the draw may differ materially from this estimate because Fannie Mae is still working through the process of preparing and finalizing its financial statements for the fourth quarter of 2008 and the year ended December 31, 2008.
If you are conservative and figure 10 Billion for Fannie and 30 Billion for Freddie, you have a 40 Billion dollar draw on the government in one quarter.
Even if there were a rationale for Citi buying a corporate jet now (which I cannot fathom, given their horrid financial condiiton), why buy new? There are no doubt plenty of used jets for sale right now.
Another post on Naked Capitalism called Merrill Pay Down Only Slightly in 2008 From 2007 Levels has more along the same lines.
On Friday Qimonda, of Germany, became the first big chipmaker to file for insolvency. The world’s fourth-biggest manufacturer of DRAM memory chips, used mainly in PCs, said that a €325 million (£306 million) rescue attempt by the German state of Saxony, Infineon, its parent company, and a group of banks had not been agreed in time to save it. Qimonda follows Nortel Networks, North America’s biggest telecoms equipment maker, in filing for insolvency.
The semiconductor sector was in poor shape before the present downturn, with large players having spent lavishly in early 2007 on increased production to expand their market share, resulting in oversupply and price collapses. Cash-strapped manufacturers have cut output, but the weakness in demand has prevented any meaningful price gains.
Gettelfinger argued Toyota’s workers actually make $2-per-hour more than UAW workers, if you count bonuses. But … but. … Toyota did not go bankrupt. … Toyota hasn’t had to be rescued with $17.4 billion of taxpayer money. … If Toyota can afford to pay its workers $2/hour more than UAW workers–perhaps because it doesn’t have to build cars under the union’s legalistic work rule system–that’s great. It doesn’t mean Gettelfinger’s workers have a right to $28/hour if at that wage their employers can’t stay in business without an ongoing multi-billion dollar subsidy. I’m sorry if this seems obvious. It’s apparently not obvious enough. … P.S.: So will promoters of greater unionization now boast that with unions, workers can earn $2/hour less?
The last line is the kicker.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi boldly defended a move to add birth control funding to the new economic “stimulus” package, claiming “contraception will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.”
Two words: Social Security.
In a country where 12-hour workdays are common, the electronics giant has taken to letting its employees leave early twice a week for a rather unusual reason: to encourage them to have more babies.
“Canon has a very strong birth planning program,” says the company’s spokesman Hiroshi Yoshinaga. “Sending workers home early to be with their families is a part of it.”
Japan in the midst of an unprecedented recession, so corporations are being asked to work toward fixing another major problem: the country’s low birthrate.
At 1.34, the birthrate is well below the 2.0 needed to maintain Japan’s population, according to the country’s Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
Now I am all for babies as much as it is possible for a guy to be. But I dunno about working for a company that feels compelled to urge you to multiply. Business is Business and family is family. Still, the ugliest thing about the above story is that 1.34 figure. Japan no longer has the time to turn their birth rates around. They are doomed without massive immigration and I don’t see anyone in Japan willing to accept that.
