18 Airlines, Cable TV, Banks, Etc That Flourish Despite Consumer HATRED
Category: News Desk
Global Wheat Turmoil Creates Doubt for Farmers
Russia’s ban on grain exports, in response to a devastating drought, has sent prices shooting up all over the world.
But farmers here in America’s wheat country, far from seeing the spike as an unexpected blessing, are wary.
As planting time approaches next month, they are balancing the possibility of greater income against the failed promises of the past,
when bonanzas turned bust, sometimes at terrible cost.
South Korea Seeks Oil Security
South Korea, which imports almost all of its oil, has increasingly felt threatened,
as countries with high energy demands, like China, snatch up oil reserves from around the world.
As a result, the government gave its state-run oil company – Korea National Oil Corp., or K.N.O.C. –
a $6.5 billion war chest this year to fund acquisitions and project developments.
Nurse Jackie Chan ??? Chinese Hospitals Seem Like US
Forget the calls by many Chinese patients for more honest, better-qualified doctors.
What Shenyang, China’s 27 public hospitals really needed, officials decided this summer , was police officers.
And not just at the entrance, but as deputy administrators.
The goal: to keep disgruntled patients and their relatives from attacking the doctors.
The decision was quickly reversed after Chinese health experts assailed it,
Deflation FINALLY Becoming Focus of Fed Discourse
A string of developments has altered the sentiment within the central bank,
leading Fed policy makers to stop worrying for the moment about the increasingly remote prospect of inflation.
Instead, they are increasingly focused on the potential for the economy to slip into a deflationary spiral of declining demand, prices and wages.
Not since 2003 has the prospect of deflation been taken so seriously at the Fed,
Cell Phone Plans: Alternatives to Two Year Contract
The two-year contract.
To the cellphone carriers, it is the centerpiece of their business model,
promising a steady stream of revenue by handcuffing customers to their phones.
On the other side of the contract is the consumer,
locked to a phone or a carrier as competitors offer less expensive or better alternatives.
If the customers do not like the phone or the carrier, they can always walk away from a contract
US Productivity FELL in Q2 – Significant Bad Sign
Business productivity fell for the first time in 18 months in the second quarter and labor costs were flat,
according to government data released earlier this summer.
Productivity declined by an annual rate of 0.9 percent after rising at a revised 3.9 percent rate in the first quarter, a Labor Department report showed.
Falling output per worker implies the economy is operating less efficiently because overall production is below its potential.
Interest Rate Drop: Markets Fear Deflation & Recession, Not Deficit Spending
As 2010 began, there was nearly unanimous agreement in financial circles on at least one thing:
Interest rates were sure to rise during the year.
For good or ill, quite the contrary has occurred.
As Labor Day approaches, interest rates have collapsed, plunging along with economic optimism.
That turn of events, which has shocked savers and stunned investors, appears to indicate that
US Needs Mortgage Structure Aligned w New Job Patterns
The roots of the mortgage crisis are well known — overly aggressive lenders, overly optimistic borrowers and lax regulation of financial firms.
But as policymakers search for a resolution,
they need to recognize another critical aspect of the problem:
today’s mortgages are designed for yesterday’s borrowers.
Until recently, most Americans paid for their homes through 30-year self-amortizing mortgages,
Huge Israel Natural Gas Find: Many-Sided Implications
For decades, Israelis have taken perverse pride in what they lacked — oil and gas deposits.
Few countries had looked so hard with so little result.
Obliged to live off their wits, Israelis turned their country into a high-tech haven.
But enormous deposits of natural gas have been detected off the country’s northern coast.
Last year, the United States Geological Survey estimated that
