Tag: Economics

A recession-proof product?

According to Gawker, there is one. What’s one of the only consumer products with steadily rising sales in the midst of this financiapocalypse? “Clinical” strength deodorant! Because Americans are growing nervouser and nervouser. Also we’re all suckers! All these “clinical” strength deodorants started coming out a couple years ago, as America grew more self-conscious. Last… Continue reading A recession-proof product?

So the pork stimulus bill passed

I’m very angry, extremely frustrated, but not in the least surprised that the economic stimulus bill has been passed by both the House and the Senate. I can only describe this fiasco as a complete dereliction of duty on the part of every Congressperson and Senator who voted for it. It’s full of pork, untargeted,… Continue reading So the pork stimulus bill passed

More about the stimulus package

A couple of days ago I wrote about the proposed economic stimulus package currently being debated in the Senate, calling it ‘a complete and unmitigated disaster for the Republic‘. That’s just been confirmed in an absolutely grotesque, appalling fashion by this article. The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment… Continue reading More about the stimulus package

Pork Stimulus Politics versus Reality

As I write these words, it looks as if the Senate will pass a somewhat diminished version of President Obama’s stimulus package. That will then have to be reconciled with the version passed by the House, probably involving much horse-trading and the reinsertion of many wasteful projects approved by the House but deleted by the… Continue reading Pork Stimulus Politics versus Reality

Lifestyles of the rich

For a third economics-related post this morning, how about this analysis of Monte Carlo from the Daily Mail? Monaco is officially the world’s most densely populated sovereign country, and almost every one of the 33,000 people resident there is seriously rich. It is estimated that Monaco houses 2,000 millionaires and 50 billionaires, many of them… Continue reading Lifestyles of the rich

Some good investment advice

Sir Alan Sugar, one of Britain’s most successful businessmen, has some cogent advice for today’s investors, based on his own hard-won experience. Why is it that successful business people, who accumulated their fortune from expertise in their field, tend to look outside of their comfort zone at the other man’s grass and rely upon so-called… Continue reading Some good investment advice

I’ve heard of ‘filthy lucre’, but this is ridiculous!

The expression ‘filthy lucre‘ goes back to the sixteenth century – but it could seldom be used more appropriately than to describe the rewards currently being reaped by the Nagano prefecture in Japan. Resource-poor Japan just discovered a new source of mineral wealth — sewage. A sewage treatment facility in central Japan has recorded a… Continue reading I’ve heard of ‘filthy lucre’, but this is ridiculous!

Was the film WALL-E prophetic?

Recent news reports from a number of countries about the dire straits in which the recycling industry finds itself have got me thinking. Perhaps the movie ‘Wall-E‘ wasn’t so much fantasy as prophecy . . . In Britain, for example: Taxpayers are facing a multi-million-pound bill to store 100,000 tons of waste paper and cardboard… Continue reading Was the film WALL-E prophetic?

So much for the recession . . .

I’m staggered to read of the sums paid for movie memorabilia in a recent Hollywood auction. The light saber used by Mark Hamill, playing Luke Skywalker, in the first ‘Star Wars’ movie sold for $240,000. The droid helmet worn by actor Antony Daniels, playing C-3PO, in the same movie fetched $120,000, while the same character’s… Continue reading So much for the recession . . .