Checkered Lounge Pants

Transparent governing would not require damage controlling censorship. Sometimes accountability comes in unusual shapes... CBC News - World - U.K. government wants WikiLeaks media briefing: report

by Paul Waldie From Wednesday's Globe and Mail Global investment funds have sunk as much as $20-billion (U.S.) into farmland, last year alone they bought 111 million acres of farmland, a tenfold increase from previous years. *just as a pre-cursor to the following blog here is the scope of the established agri-corporations and their vested interest as per 2004 financials: Critics argue that the ultimate goal of corporate farming is to vertically integrate the entire process of food production, up to the point of the distribution and sale of food to consumers. Some corporations are considered to be well on the way to achieving this objective, and have become very large in the process, such as Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto Company, and the privately held Cargill, with 2004 revenues of $62.9 billion. I think you will agree, the present day investors pale to the long-standing established corporations. Why the cries NOW????? Here are some of the biggest buyers in agriculture real est

What does procrastination tell us about ourselves? Some years ago, the economist George Akerlof found himself faced with a simple task: mailing a box of clothes from India, where he was living, to the United States. The clothes belonged to his friend and colleague Joseph Stiglitz, who had left them behind when visiting, so Akerlof was eager to send the box off. But there was a problem. The combination of Indian bureaucracy and what Akerlof called “my own ineptitude in such matters” meant that doing so was going to be a hassle—indeed, he estimated that it would take an entire workday. So he put off dealing with it, week after week. This went on for more than eight months, and it was only shortly before Akerlof himself returned home that he managed to solve his problem: another friend happened to be sending some things back to the U.S., and Akerlof was able to add Stiglitz’s clothes to the shipment. Given the vagaries of intercontinental mail, it’s possible that Akerlof made it back to t

Weekly Audit: Banks get big bucks, consumers get bupkis By Lindsay Beyerstein | November 9, 2010 Last week, the Federal Reserve announced a plan to buy an additional $600 billion worth of Treasury bonds in an attempt to stimulate the economy. On Democracy Now!, economist Michael Hudson argues that the $600 billion T-bill buy will help Wall Street at the expense of ordinary Americans. The Fed justifies the purchase as an infusion of cash into the U.S. economy. The buy-up will certainly be an infusion of cash into U.S. banks. In effect, the Fed will help the government pay back the banks that lent money to finance deficit spending. The hope is that these banks, suddenly flush with cash, will help the U.S. economy by lending money to finance projects that will create wealth and jobs (i.e. opening factories and hiring more workers). However, as Hudson points out, there’s no guarantee that the banks are going to use the windfall to build wealth in the U.S. On the contrary, he argues, there’

China becomes scapegoat of American illness in mid-term election By Han Dongping (chinadaily.com.cn) The US mid-term election on Tuesday was a very important event in American political life. As most polls indicated, Democrats lost its control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans amid high unemployment and unprecedented government deficit. Just two years ago, voters elected Barack Obama with their anger toward former President George W. Bush's unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In just two years, voters' anger has turned against Obama and the Democrats because of his administration's inability to improve the unemployment situation in the US and his huge government spending in rescuing banks and big business. All politics is local, as Dick O'Neil, former US House speaker from Massachusetts once said. Most Americans cast their votes according to their own economic situation and what is happening in their local communities. However, foreign policies alwa