By Jonathan Watts

Under the plan, money would be used to expand China’s solar, wind, carbon capture and smart-grid markets. Photograph: Graham Turner

A joint US-China plan to “take over the world”…

Franklin Sanders has a speaking engagement in Columbia, South Carolina, September 21, 2009.

Franklin is a long-time member of the League of the South Board of Directors, a delegate to the Southern …

By Helaine Olen
John Halko was halfway through renovating an expanded space for Comfort, his mostly organic eatery in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y., when the credit crisis hit. His source of funding — a …

View Chart of the Day: S&P500 P/E Ratio
The Big Picture (21 Aug 09)

By Mark Morford

So far ahead in weapons sales to the world are we, it’s not even a contest. We own the game. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, while overall weapons sales…

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Continue reading Chart of The Day: Consumer Credit Collapse

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Continue reading The Amazing US Manufacturing Worker

By Cameron French

Barrick Gold (ABX.TO) will issue $3 billion in stock to eliminate all of its fixed-price gold hedges and a portion of its floating hedges, taking a $5.6 billion hit to third-quart…

By Robert Cookson in Hong Kong

China will issue sovereign bonds denominated in its own currency to offshore investors for the first time this month – a crucial step towards making the renminbi a …

By Sven Egenter

Switzerland knocked the United States off the position as the world’s most competitive economy as the crash of the U.S. banking system left it more exposed to some long-standing wea…

By James T. Areddy

China’s government on Monday offered public encouragement to state-owned companies challenging foreign banks over huge losses from derivative contracts, a move that bankers say h…

By Don Nicoloff

It would appear IBM in 2006 was planning for a global epidemic sometime before 2011.

Continue reading IBM: Planning on an Epidemic

The US Court of Appeals in the Second Circuit has ruled against Google. Google was offering competitors trademarked names to advertisers as a search term so the advertisers’ ads appeared when searc…

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

China has issued what amounts to the “Beijing Put” on gold. You can make a lot of money, but you really can’t lose.

I happened to see quite a bit of Cheng Siwei at …

[How did we miss this one from last month?]

Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein has warned his employees to avoid high-profile spending, as The Post reported — but his wife evidently didn’t get the…

by Roberta Rampton and Chuck Abbott

More than 35 million Americans received food stamps in June, up 22 percent from June 2008 and a new record as the country continued to grapple with the worst rec…

The head of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) Yukio Hatoyama, who will be named Prime Minister on Sep. 14 in the wake of his party having swept the Parliamentary elections on Aug. 30, is a followe…

Dr. Hulda Clark passed away peacefully in her sleep September 3, 2009.
A website is being setup in memory of Dr. Clark where people may leave their thoughts and experiences to share with all.
Further…

“For there to be a world at all, every indigenous, original, natural thing must start singing its song, dancing its dance, moving and breathing, each according to its own nature. When any of these …

What would you see if you could fly over Mars in a plane and look out the window?

It must be something like the thousands of curious, intriguing and spectacular images taken by the High Resolution …

China began the long journey to a new international reserve currency with a single step – agreeing to buy $50 billion in notes from the International Monetary Fund.

Another proverb, less distinguis…

Our forefathers’ worst nightmare has now come upon us. They created a free government, limited in its powers and a servant to the people. But today the United States has become an empire, fast decay…

By Chris Oliver

Hong Kong is pulling all its physical gold holdings from depositories in London, transferring them to a high-security depository newly built at the city’s airport, in a move that wo…

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Continue reading Chart of The Day: Investors Rush Into Gold ETFs

By Matt Falloon

Finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 developed and developing economies meet in London this week to assess how far the world economy and banking system is recove…

By John Williams

Revived Crisis Brewing? A confluence of signals has aroused my gut instincts of an intensifying systemic liquidity crisis, and possible pending reaction by the Federal Reserve and/or…

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By Chelsea Schilling

Pandemic bill allows health authorities to enter homes, detain without warrant.

…the following states have implemented legal actions in response to the H1N1 virus:

Florida …

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Japans’s tax revenues have collapsed by 27pc over the last year, leaving it unclear how the incoming Democrats can pay for their blitz on welfare spending without floodin…

By Eadie Chen and Chen Aizhu

A report that Chinese state-owned companies will be allowed to walk away from loss-making commodity derivative trades provoked anger and dismay among investment bankers …

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Beijing is drawing up plans to prohibit or restrict exports of rare earth metals that are produced only in China and play a vital role in cutting edge technology, from hybr…

The real US unemployment rate is 16 percent if persons who have dropped out of the labor pool and those working less than they would like are counted, a Federal Reserve official said Wednesday.

“If…

Undercover armed Americans are swarming the Pakistani capital in the latest sign that the elected government has allowed Washington to dispatch what is believed to be a large number of American specia…

Are you planning to get vaccinated against the H1N1 virus (also known as swine flu) this fall?

Response    Percent        Votes

Yes               23%          495…

By Linda Sieg

Japan’s next leader Yukio Hatoyama, fresh from a historic election win, faced the task on Monday of forming a government to tackle challenges such as reviving the economy and steering…

Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) may unilaterally terminate derivative contracts with six foreign banks that provide over-the-counter commodity hedging services, a leading financial magazine s…

The electromagnetic waves emitted by mobile phone towers and cellphones can pose a threat to honey bees, a study  published in India has concluded.

An experiment conducted in the southern state of…

Here is a map of the three month change in the Philly Fed state coincident indicators. Forty six states are showing declining three month activity.

This is what a widespread recession looks like base…

In thinking about economic reform, if you want to contemplate construction techniques outside of “the matrix,” read about the Coral Castle and Nan Madol.

by Lauren Schenkman

A recent analysis of the 2007 financial markets of 48 countries has revealed that the world’s finances are in the hands of just a few mutual funds, banks, and corporations. This…

by Declan McCullagh
Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers f…

With much of the world still mired in recession, the IMF took action to bolster its members’ reserves through an allocation of SDRs, or Special Drawing Rights. The allocation, equivalent to 250 bi…

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By Andrew Ward and David Oakley

For a world first, the announcement came with remarkably little fanfare.

But last month, the Swedish Riksbank entered uncharted territory when it became the world�…

By Shannon P. Duffy

Ordinarily, the decision to settle a case while an appeal is pending means giving up the opportunity to set a legal precedent as well as forgoing the chance to win a reversal of a…

Here is my #1 proposal for health care reform – stop suppressing the knowledge and technology that supports health and prevents and cures disease.

If you are curious about what health care might lo…

This is a special flower called a Cereus. It blooms only once a year at night and by dawn the flower is gone, My friend David brought it to my house because he knew it would be opening and we wat…

Scientists who developed the Small Pox vaccine are refusing immunization inoculation against the Swine Flu due to major medical side effects. 1 in 3 UK nurses refuse the jab. . . . . .

Read One in …

by Michel Chossudovsky

“Over the course of the next few months, with the assistance of our partners in the private and public sector and at every level of government, we will move aggressively to pre…

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Swiss private bank Wegelin announced on Tuesday that it is to stop doing business in the United States.

The St Gallen-based bank, Switzerland’s oldest, said the decision had been taken in response to…

By Steve Silberman

Merck was in trouble. In 2002, the pharmaceutical giant was falling behind its rivals in sales. Even worse, patents on five blockbuster drugs were about to expire, which would al…

(Reuters Pictures)

Senator Ted Kennedy died shortly before midnight Tuesday at his home in Hyannis Port, Mass., at age 77.

Continue reading Ted Kennedy Dies at Age 77

by Dr. Anders Bruun Laursen

The average quantity of squalene injected into the US soldiers abroad and at home in the anthrax vaccine during and after the Gulf War was 34.2 micrograms per billion mi…

U.S. securities regulators are examining weekly meetings at Goldman Sachs Group Inc, where research analysts offer tips to traders and then to big clients, the Wall Street Journal reported on its we…

Argentina’s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday it is unconstitutional to punish an adult for private use of marijuana as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. The unanimous ruling makes Argentina the se…

If someone else says to me that Americans are in a stupor and not doing anything, I will just spit.

Lots of Americans are doing things and have been doing things at great expense and risk. America is…

By Karen Gullo

The Federal Reserve must make public reports about recipients of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers under programs created to address the financial crisis, a federal judge ruled.

C…

“Non-event”

— Congressman Ron Paul’s (R-TX) description of Swine Flu outbreak

By Carrie Johnson

In appointing a prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA interrogation abuses, including episodes that resulted in prisoner deaths, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Monday shoo…

By Matthew Cole,Richard Esposito and Brian Ross

A “profanity-laced screaming match” at the White House involving CIA Director Leon Panetta, and the expected release today of another damning int…

YouTube

“A little help from my friends.”

Ann, private investigator, on Paul Krugman’s new $1.7 million pad.

Read Paul Krugman Gets a New Place to Hang His Hat and Nobel

Extreme Sheep Herding – With Lights!
YouTube

By Tami Luhby

In Pennsylvania, day care centers are closing. Food banks and libraries are cutting back. A school district is taking out a multi-million dollar loan.

Local governments and social se…

Dear Catherine,

I enjoyed your appearance on Coast last night. It was a very insightful discussion as always. You will be shocked and saddened by the following, but I implore you to read on.

You t…

By Chris Powell

Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank, today confirmed that much of its gold is held outside the country at “trading centers” where the bank conducts “its gold activities.”

The Bu…

It’s been three years since Sarah and Susan Banks had the revelation over coffee at their Aunt Mary’s restaurant, where Sarah had worked summers putting herself through college. They had returned to O…

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By Tyler Durden

The fact that more than the entire float of AIG has traded daily on several occasions, should be a bright red light for the regulators to analyze whether this abno…

By Stephen Ohlemacher

By law, Social Security benefits cannot go down. Nevertheless, monthly payments would drop for millions of people in the Medicare prescription drug program because the premium…

By BBC News

China holds more US government debt than any other country and cut its holdings of US securities by more that 3% in June, said the BBC’s Chris Hogg.

Japan and the UK – second and third…

While New York is the capital of banking, one could argue that Boston is the capital of equity investment, being home to numerous mutual fund companies such as Fidelity and Putnam, and home as well of…

By Dr. Mae Wen Ho

Within the past several years, however, scientists have found that oxygen (O2) in the atmosphere has been dropping, and at higher rates than just the amount that goes into the inc…

by Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Prof. Joe Cummins

It is a messy combination of sequences from bird, human and swine flu virus lineages from North America and Eurasia. A senior virologist based in Canberra, A…

King Assasination – The Trial in 1999 (Part 2-10)

Trial Transcript

Ramadan starts today,  Friday, the 21st of August, and will continue for 30 days until Saturday, the 19th of September.

Muslims are called upon to use this month to re-evaluate their lives in ligh…

By Jason Kelly and Jonathan Keehner

U.S. pension funds contributed to the record $1.2 trillion that private-equity firms raised this decade. Three of the biggest investors, state pensions in Californ…

Warren Bamford, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Boston, said Tuesday that he is baffled by opposition to a proposal to give some neighborhood police officers the semiautomatic weapons.

Cont…

By Diana Furchtgott-Roth

Buried in the 1,017 pages of the House Democrats’ health-care bill is a little-noticed provision that for the first time could give the government access to the checking or…

Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley

Mayor Michael Nutter said the clock is counting down to the implementation of a devastating ‘doomsday budget’ in Philadelphia.

During a morning press conference…

How do the current deficits compare with past administrations? And how did the national debt get so big anyway? This video tries to answer those questions by looking at the debt as a road trip …

Y…

Jackson Hole

Every year, the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank sponsors a meeting of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The 2009 event starts tonight. For prior year topics, click here.

By …

View Full Size Chart of The Day: Credit May Crunch Again Before Getting Back To Normal

Having received another repayment, I just made my next loan at Kiva.org to an entrepreneur in Palestine starting a grocery store. Learn more about the syndicate I have joined, and how you or your So…

By Ed Mendel

The CalPERS chief actuary says pension costs are “unsustainable,” and the giant public employee pension system plans to meet with stakeholders to discuss the issue.

So, are the critics …

By William Selway

JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to lend California $1.5 billion, a cash infusion that will allow the most-populous U.S. state to stop issuing IOUs to businesses, taxpayers and mun…

The “Impossible” Healthcare Solution: Go Back to Cash

Here are the costs of childbirth as of 1952 at one of the finest hospitals on the West Coast, The Santa Monica Hospital:

Having a baby cost $3…

YouTube

by Meg White

I don’t like it when scientists feel the need to explain that they’re scared out of their wits, or use exclamation marks.

I also get a little nervous when they say stuff like, “We’re …

YouTube

YouTube

Water Color by Lesta Frank

By Anne Stuhldreher

…Unless, that is, you’re friends with someone like Maria del Carmen Torres. In between serving up pupusas and plantain chips at local farmers’ mark…

Target, Burlington, MA

By Eric Janszen

The first half of 2009 goes like this:

1. After Christmas sales: 20% to 50% off
2. Liquidation sales: 50% to 80% off
3. Then 30% to 40% of retailers go out o…