China’s version of ‘Too big to fail’: Andy Xie

Some aspects of financial system are still a cause for concern

By Andy Xie

BEIJING ( Caixin Online ) — Europe recently had something to cheer about with the apparent discovery of the Higgs boson particle at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. It is the biggest scientific discovery in decades.

In the strange world of quantum physics, the Higgs boson particle that Peter Higgs theorized in [...]

What really gets me mad is “Cost Externalization”.

It’s a term describing how “someone else” pays for the damage that comes from consuming energy, be it the tons of radioactive water released in Japan, to the groundwater poisoned by leaking gasoline tanks at petrol stations, to the vast damage caused in the gulf, to the cancer and other health ailments that come from being downwind of a refinery, to the cost of the America’s military operations in the [...]

How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,676634,00.html

How Goldman Sachs Helped Greece to Mask its True Debt

By Beat Balzli

2.8.2010

Goldman Sachs helped the Greek government to mask the true extent of its deficit with the help of a derivatives deal that legally circumvented the EU Maastricht deficit rules. At some point the so-called cross currency swaps will mature, and swell the country’s already bloated deficit.

Greeks aren’t very welcome in the Rue Alphones Weicker in Luxembourg. It’s [...]

MEASURING ECONOMIC SUCCESS IN AN ECONOMY

Farid Khavari, Ph.D., Economist

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is considered the yardstick by which to measure all goods and services that a nation produces over a 1-year period. If the GDP in the previous year shows growth – let’s say 3% over the previous year – politicians tend to go on a spending binge without realizing these figures are distorted. As a result, a huge scam begins to take [...]

55% of all military spending on the planet is by the USA, most of it pointless...

Via huffingtonpost:

By far the single most important of these is our current initiative to include substantial reductions in the projected level of American military spending as part of future deficit reduction efforts. For decades, the subject of military expenditures has been glaringly absent from public debate. Yet the Pentagon budget for 2010 is $693 billion — more than all other discretionary spending programs combined. Even subtracting the cost of the [...]