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bparksj28

India hit by national strike over economic reforms - Yahoo! News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/reforms-074613172--sector.html

india hit national strike economist

shared by bparksj28 on 21 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • called the strike to protest against a 14 percent increase in heavily subsidized diesel prices, and a government decision that opens the door to foreign supermarket chains investing in India.
  • economic reforms aimed at boosting a sharply slowing economy
  • long demanded by Indian business leaders, were crucial for economic growth.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • "Good economics seldom makes for good politics,"
  • mom-and-pop "kirana" stores, who fear the retail reform will drive them out of business
  • "If we don't protest now, the central government will eliminate the poor and middle-class families,"
  • bparksj28 on 21 Sep 12
     
    India strike over market-oriented new policies
bparksj28

Legalising marijuana: The view from Mexico | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...legalising-marijuana

marijuana view mexico economist

shared by bparksj28 on 06 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • AMERICAN elections are watched closely in Mexico, which sends most of its exports and about a tenth of its citizens north of the border.
  • On the same day, voters in Colorado, Oregon and Washington will vote on whether to legalise marijuana—not just for medical use, but for fun and profit.
  • he impact on Mexico could be profound. Between 40% and 70% of American pot is reckoned to be grown in Mexic
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • the American marijuana business brings in about $2 billion a year to Mexico’s drug traffickers.
  • That makes it almost as important to their business as the cocaine trade, which is worth about $2.4 billion.
  • Many Mexicans therefore wonder if America might consider a new approach. Felipe Calderon, the president, has said that if Americans cannot bring themselves to stop buying drugs, they ought to consider “market alternatives”, by which he means legalisation. Vicente Fox and Ernesto Zedillo, the two previous presidents of Mexico, have reached the same conclusion.
  • About 60,000 have been killed by organised crime during the past six years. Thousands more have disappeared.
  • In Mexico relatively few people take drugs. But many are murdered as a result of the export business.
  • Would Mexico’s bandits find themselves undercut by “El Cártel de Seattle”?
  • Mexico’s traffickers would lose about $1.4 billion of their $2 billion revenues from marijuana.
  • The cost of illegally transporting the drug adds about $500 per kilo for every thousand kilometres that the drug is hauled, it calculates, based on the fact that pot gets pricier the further you get from the Mexican border
  • So smuggling legal Washington dope to New York, for instance, would add about $1,900 to the cost of a kilo, giving a total wholesale price not much below $4,000.
  • That would make it more expensive than imported Mexican pot. But home-grown marijuana is much better quality than the Mexican sort. The content of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the part that gives you the giggles, is between 10% and 18%, whereas in Mexican pot it is only about 4% to 6%.
  • Once you adjust for quality, Washington pot would be about half the price of the Mexican stuff, even after it had made its expensive illegal journey to New York.
  • It calculates that the cost of growing marijuana legally is about $880 per kilo. Adding on a decent mark-up, plus the taxes that would be applied, it puts the wholesale price of Washington marijuana at just over $2,000 per kilo.
  • the Sinaloa “cartel” would lose up to half its total income,
  • . Exports of other drugs, from cocaine to methamphetamine, would become less competitive, as the traffickers’ fixed costs (from torturing rivals to bribing American and Mexican border officials) would remain unchanged, even as marijuana revenues fell.
  • Legalisation could, in short, deal a blow to Mexico’s traffickers of a magnitude that no current policy has got close to achieving. The stoned and sober alike should bear that in mind when they cast their votes on Tuesday.
bparksj28

Is There Hope for High-Debt Economies? - Real Time Economics - WSJ - 0 views

blogs.wsj.com/...e-hope-for-high-debt-economies

shared by bparksj28 on 12 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • . Out of 22 advanced economies in the mix, 14 of them breached the 100% debt-to-GDP threshold at least once between 1875 and 1997. (The high debt came from nat
  • The good news: the nations that built up high debt still exist.
  • The bad news: working off heavy debt loads takes an incredibly long time. Fifteen years after breaching the 100% mark, the median debt-to-GDP ratio was only 10 percentage points lower, the IMF said in a new report released Thursday
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Among the countries in the 100% club: Japan, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and the U.S. (U.S policymakers and credit-rating firms tend to put the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio at 73%, based on marketable securities held by the public. Gross debt — the $16 trillion figure we see most often — includes money the government owes itself, like for Social Security. But the IMF uses the gross debt figure here.)
bparksj28

Federal Reserve details new round of stress tests - Nov. 16, 2012 - 0 views

money.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by bparksj28 on 16 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • The Federal Reserve, preparing to embark on its latest round of so-called stress tests, released the details Friday of three economic scenarios it will use to judge the health of the U.S.'s largest lenders.
  • 5% decline in gross domestic product, an unemployment rate of 12% and a volatile stock market which loses half its value.
  • The stress tests are mandated by Dodd-Frank, the financial reform law written in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis that brought down Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Last year, the Fed's tests showed a majority of the nation's largest banks would be able to weather another deep recession.
  • Ally Financial, Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and SunTrust (STI, Fortune 500) -- would likely need new capital from either investors or the government in the Fed's adverse economic scenario
  • bparksj28 on 16 Nov 12
     
    Dodd-Frank Act - stress test 2012
bparksj28

Federal Reserve official wants low interest rates until unemployment falls to 6.5% - No... - 0 views

money.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by bparksj28 on 28 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Charles Evans, president of the Chicago Fed, wants the central bank to keep the federal funds rate near zero until unemployment falls to 6.5% -- a jobless rate not seen since 2008.
  • in January he will rotate into a voting role on the Fed's policymaking committee. For about a year, he has been urging his colleagues to publish clear economic targets that would guide the central bank's policies.
  • . He wants to see the unemployment rate fall to at least 6.5% and inflation not exceed 2.5% a year
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • hope behind the policy is that numerical targets will lift some of the mystery surrounding the Fed's decisions.
  • As economic data is released, the public can base their expectations for Fed policy on a clearer picture of the central bank's goals.
  • "I support this approach because it would enable the public to immediately adjust its expectations concerning the timing of liftoff in response to new information affecting the economic outloo
  • The Fed has kept interest rates near zero since late 2008 in an effort to stimulate the economy. While the unemployment rate has since fallen slightly to 7.9%, the Fed is still unsatisfied with that level and has been pursuing additional alternative policies to boost the economy further.
  • The Fed's policymaking committee is next scheduled to meet Dec. 11-12.
bparksj28

8 Truths About Retirement - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/ruths-about-retirement-2012-10

social secutiy statistics

shared by bparksj28 on 31 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • irement planning.
  • Retirement Week,” an educational campaign to raise public awareness about the importance of long-term re
  • National Save fo
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • encourages Americans to utilize retirement savings and investment plan strategie
  • The week also encourages individuals to reflect on their current financial situations and their potential for a secure retirement in the future.
  • 2. Half of Americans aren’t saving for retirement
  • 49 percent of Americans say they aren’t contributing to any retirement plan. Those least likely to save for retirement: individuals between ages 18 and 34.
  • planning a home remodel and planning a vacation ranked higher on the list of priorities within the past year than planning for retirement (which ranked third).
  • respondents
  • Apparently 80 is the new 65 for many middle-class Americans when it comes to retirement. One-third of survey
  • The majority of middle-class Americans aren’t confident in the stock marke
  • When survey respondents were asked what they’d do if given $5,000 to invest for retirement, only 24 percent said they’d invest in stocks – compared to 40 percent who would choose a CD or savings account and another 22 percent who would invest in gold or precious metals.
  • Women are less engaged in retirement planni
  • More than 20 percent of Americans have borrowed against their 401(k), the highest percentage since 1996, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. The average loan size is 14 percent of the remaining account balance.
  • About 95 percent of companies are back to matching 401(k) contributions, but only 30 percent of employees are taking advantage of this, according to a survey by the nonprofit Plan Sponsor Council of America.
  • Forty percent of Americans fear lack of retirement funds
bparksj28

Chinese herb Ginkgo "does not prevent Alzheimer's" - Yahoo! News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/vent-alzheimers-105227820.html

chinese herb alzheimer news yahoo

shared by bparksj28 on 07 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • bparksj28 on 07 Sep 12
     
    What will this do to the demand for gingko biloba?
bparksj28

Social Security benefits will get small cost of living bump - Oct. 9, 2012 - 0 views

money.cnn.com/...index.html

social security benefits will cost living bump

shared by bparksj28 on 09 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • The Labor Department will release its September inflation reading on Oct. 16, which is the final of 12 readings used to calculate the cost of living adjustment made annually to benefits. The Social Security Administration will announce the 2013 benefit increase at that time. Benefits increased by 3.6% in 2012, when inflation was higher.
bparksj28

firstamendmentcenter.org: news - 0 views

archive.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx

Got Milk

shared by bparksj28 on 10 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • The Supreme Court today turned away a challenge by some dairy farmers who objected to funding ads showing famous people with milk mustaches asking "Got Milk?"
  • A federal appeals court last March relied heavily on the 1997 ruling when it threw out the dairy farmers' challenge to the program that, since 1984, has required them to subsidize generic ads. Dairy farmer
  • and other milk producers are assessed about $250 million a year for the popular ads.
  • bparksj28 on 10 Jan 13
     
    Got Milk Campaign Forced to Finance itself
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