“I thought America had studied Japan’s failures,” said Hirofumi Gomi, a top official at Japan’s Financial Services Agency during the crisis. “Why is it making the same mistakes?”
Japan’s problems did not happen at the time of a world-wide downturn. I think that Geithner is afraid that the World Financial System couldn’t handle the Japanese cure right now – The cure could kill the patient.
Just last week, the new United States director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, told Congress that instability caused by the global economic crisis had become the biggest security threat facing the United States, outpacing terrorism.
High unemployment rates, especially among young workers, have led to protests in countries as varied as Latvia, Chile, Greece, Bulgaria and Iceland and contributed to strikes in Britain and France.
Worldwide job losses from the recession that started in the United States in December 2007 could hit a staggering 50 million by the end of 2009, according to the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency. The slowdown has already claimed 3.6 million American jobs.
via Rise in Jobless Poses Threat to Stability Worldwide – NYTimes.com.
Seven years after the AKP came to power, Turkey’s Islamists have returned to their roots. The AKP experience demonstrates that when Islamist parties moderate, it reflects not a strategic change but a tactical response to strong domestic and foreign opposition. Once these firewalls weaken, Islamist parties regress, driven by popular sentiment. A recent survey shows that the AKP’s popularity jumped 10 percent after the Davos incident, suggesting the party could pass the game-changing 50 percent threshold in the upcoming March 29 local elections. The AKP’s renewed Islamism may play well at the polls. But Turkey, and its allies, will be left worse off for it.
Turkey’s Leaders Show Their Islamist Roots | Newsweek International Edition | Newsweek.com.
We posted a warning sign back in April of 07 when “Balconies were banned” so “So the traditional women kept inside cannot be seen by the world.””
It is 150 years since the publication of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, which suggested that all living things are related and that everything is ultimately descended from a single common ancestor. This has troubled many, including Darwin himself, as it subverted ideas of divine intervention. It is not surprising that the countries least accepting of evolution today tend to be the most devout. In the most recent international survey available, only Turkey is less accepting of the theory than America. Iceland and Denmark are Darwin’s most ardent adherents. Indeed America has become only slightly more accepting of Darwin’s theory in recent years. In 2008 14% of people polled by Gallup agreed that “man evolved over millions of years”, up from 9% in 1982.
How did the hackers steal $9 million in one 30-minute time period using only 100 ATM cards you ask? That shouldn’t be possible given the daily limits (usually about $500/day) placed on all ATM cards. Well it turns out that the hackers applied military like precision to old ATM Scam techniques and added a touch of devious ingenuity to pull this one off. Here is a look at how the theft was perpetrated.
via Largest Coordinated ATM Rip-off Ever Nets $9+ Million in 30 Minutes | NetworkWorld.com Community. Continue reading “How To Steal $9+ Million in 30 Minutes From ATMs”
Would you prefer to live in a place with more McDonald’s or more Starbucks? A new report from the Pew Research Center tells of the results it got when posing that oddball question last October in one of its Social & Demographics Trend surveys. Overall, respondents preferred a place with more McDonald’s (the choice of 43 percent) to one with more Starbucks (35 percent, with the rest declining to choose). As you’d guess, though, the pattern of response differed significantly among different demographic cohorts.
via Starbucks America vs. McDonald’s America. Continue reading “Starbucks vs. McDonald’s Poll”
[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.781611&w=425&h=350&fv=config%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.liveleak.com%252Fflash_config.php%253Ffile_embed_tag%253D58247f31341c%2526%3D]
More than 25 separate studies have established that marital quality drops, often quite steeply, after the transition to parenthood. And forget the “empty nest” syndrome: when the children leave home, couples report an increase in marital happiness.
Parents today spend much more time with their children than they did 40 years ago. The sociologists Suzanne Bianchi, John Robinson and Melissa Milkie report that married mothers in 2000 spent 20 percent more time with their children than in 1965. Married fathers spent more than twice as much time.
Couples found some of these extra hours by cutting back on time spent in activities where children were not present — when they were alone as a couple, visiting with friends and kin, or involved in clubs. But in the long run, shortchanging such adult-oriented activities for the sake of the children is not good for a marriage.
Couples who don’t, investing too much in their children and not enough in their marriage, may find that when the demands of child-rearing cease to organize their lives, they cannot recover the relationship that made them want to have children together in the first place. As the psychologist Joshua Coleman suggests, the airline warning to put on your own oxygen mask before you place one on your child also holds true for marriage.
via Op-Ed Contributor – Till Children Do Us Part – NYTimes.com.