July 2012
244 posts
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Keeping China’s economy afloat: Andy Xie - Caixin... →
rationalcapitalistspeculator:
Floating yuan, protecting forex reserves will help avoid crisis
— Andy Xie
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"Paying the price for work experience" →
cristinagarafola:
Thought unpaid internships were only a problem in the U.S.? Unsurprisingly, they also have them in China (although some are paid as well). Read more at the link; here’s a short excerpt below:
Wang Zhong, a lawyer specializing in labor law at the Shanghai branch of the Zhong Yin Law Firm, said there is nothing illegal in companies not paying interns and the recently...
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Web browser usage in China →
visualoop:
Via
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“The word monozukuri has only been in use for 15 years or so. In 1998, the...”
– Monozukuri — another look at a key Japanese principle (via monnikfeed)
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Japan's Finance Ministry Hacked for 2 Years →
infoneer-pulse:
A security audit has found that 123 computers in Japan’s Finance Ministry were infiltrated by malware that went undetected for nearly two years. According to media reports, the ministry said that no confidential taxpayer information was exposed. It is not known who was behind the hack, which started in 2010 and continued until the end of 2011.
The Japan Times speculates that...
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“Kafka, incidentally, was a dedicated user of Ohropax (or ‘ear peace’) earplugs,...”
– David Toop - Sinister Resonance, p. 108
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The basic principles [of American exceptionalism] were spelled out to Mexicans by Condoleezza Rice when she visited in March 2005 to ensure that they would live up to their obligations under a 1944 treaty to deliver water to the United States. That compliance was the only formal outcome of the seven-hour visit, the Mexican press reported, though Rice did comment on another matter of interest to...
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“Today orthodox economics is reputedly being harnessed to an entirely new end:...”
– The Paradox of Wealth: Capitalism and Ecological Destruction
John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark
(via silvergrim)
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“If those who are sent to draw water begin by drinking themselves, the army is...”
– Sun Tzu - The Art of War
This seems to be the most metaphorically rich passage in the book.
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Pierre A. Riffard recently published essays examining the lifestyle of philosophers from a psychological and sociological point of view (Les philosophes: vie intime [“Philosophers: private life”], 2004; Philosophie matin, midi et soir [“Philosophy morning, noon and night”], 2006. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France). In Les philosophes: vie intime, he draws attention...
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“The aim of the gift economy is accumulation for de-accumulation; the gift...”
– Ian Morris, Gift and Commodity in Ancient Greece, March 1986 (via teaandthorazine)
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“Something very interesting is happening. There’s been so much corruption on Wall...”
– From an Unlikely Source, a Serious Challenge to Wall Street | Matt Taibbi (via ronmarks)
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Chance favors the concentration of wealth, study... →
tristanpej:
If you think about it, it is actually surprising we didn’t think of this over a century ago. Oh wait…
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What would a world without money be like? - Quora →
ashleylynnsanders:
I asked this question a while ago, and it showed up in the Quora Weekly Digest of a couple of weeks back. Which I am now just seeing, because typically, I am late to all of this stuff.
Big thanks for all of the great and highly informative answers to this question. Must read.
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What’s Wrong with Being No. 2? | Adbusters... →
monnikfeed:
Japan may be the first nation to opt for a no growth, steady state economy.
From the article:
[M]ounting expectations are the engine of capitalist dreams, and Japan, as a summa cum laude student of Western economies, and a status quo-keeper par excellence, learned to dream big, sometimes bigger than its masters did. In the 1980s, Japan as No. 1 made Westerners, especially...
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Japan: The World’s First Post-Growth Economy? |... →
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United States will lose Africa to China. →
kambale:
Just think about it. China comes and say “we will give you $20 billion to build the continent. We will help you in Agriculture” Result: Africans are now learning Mandarin, appreciating China’s different interaction with Africa which does not bring guns that kill its children. The US says “we will send our soldiers in Africa to make your soldiers more efficient. We will kill Kony. And...
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Random fact of the day...
purogallopinto:
Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds, generated about $106m in 2011 vs. Finland’s total GDP of $187bn. In other words, Angry Birds is responsible for .05% of Finland’s economy. That’s 1 dollar out of every 5000.
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“If we made an income pyramid out of a child’s blocks, with each layer portraying...”
– Paul Samuelson, Economics, 6th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), p. 113 (via aow)
Samuelson’s textbook is probably the most influential economics textbook in history, which makes it all the more striking how difficult it is to imagine finding a statement like this in a contemporary econ...
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“Of the more than 1,400 women surveyed — 40 percent of whom were single or...”
– More Than Half Of American Women Are Breadwinners, Study Finds (via huffingtonpost)
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Watchbicc:
1 of 7 Americans on food stamps
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Black Market for Body Parts Spreads Among the Poor...
ohsoanthropological:
BELGRADE, Serbia — Pavle Mircov and his partner, Daniella, nervously scan their e-mail in-box every 15 minutes, desperate for economic salvation: a buyer willing to pay nearly $40,000 for one of their kidneys.
The couple, the parents of two teenagers, put their organs up for sale on a local online classified site six months ago after Mr. Mircov, 50, lost his job at a meat...
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India: The Temp Work Force
emptygravity:
An Indian employment agency is training tens of thousands of workers in an effort to circumvent the country’s strict labor laws, which protect workers but make it difficult for employers to fire them.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/11/30/world/asia/100000001200550/india-the-temp-workforce.html
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Investors Say Hola to Mexico, Country set to be #1... →
micheleinplaya:
Mexico is poised to become Latin America’s largest economy, surpassing Brazil, and become one of the emerging markets’ most dynamic economies.
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Morocco launches public sector recruitment site →
roxygen:
Its nice to see that nepotism will not play out in as obvious of a manner, but I highly doubt that this will do much. Morocco is a country where policemen pull over extra cars to feed their families with bribe money. I don’t think that ramping up competition in the public sector will do much, when university graduates have no desire to even attempt a career (few exist) in the private...
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The Zenawi Paradox: An Ethiopian Leader's Good and... →
Following the news of the past few years, you might get the impression that flamboyance and bellicosity are signature traits of any long-tenured dictator. But for every Muammar Qaddafi there’s a Meles Zenawi, the shrewd, technocratic Prime Minister of Ethiopia. Inside of the country, he’s known for imprisoning his political opponents, withholding development assistance from restive...
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deafmuslimpunx:
How did Malawi end its famine? By ignoring the World Bank and subsiziding its farmers.
Old article from 2007, but still very important.
LILONGWE, Malawi — Malawi hovered for years at the brink of famine. After a disastrous corn harvest in 2005, almost five million of its 13 million people needed emergency food aid.
But this year, a nation that has perennially extended a...
