Money Category
Money in the news and how you are going to pay and pay and pay
Global warming will force more women into prostitution
I AGREE that global warming is a real problem, that it’s one we might want to do something about as well. But that doesn’t stop people from taking the arguments in favour of doing something a little too far. Like this recent bill introduced into the US Congress. Apparently we should fight global warming because more women will become prostitutes:
A group of American politicians has introduced a resolution into Congress saying that climate change (among many other bad things it does) forces women into prostitution, and that as a result the USA should use “gender sensitive frameworks” in battling the scourge of global warming.
Whereas women will disproportionately face harmful impacts from climate change …
… insecure women with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health …
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 2nd, May 2013 | In: Money | Comments (2)
Woman offered payrise to get branded for life with work’s logo
SOME people are thundering bozos and will do anything to get noticed. Take for example, the gasping simpleton that works for a New York real estate agency called Rapid Realty. RR are offering their staff a pay rise if they get a tattoo of the company logo. (On your arse? – ed)
In exchange for carrying a logo of a corporation, you get a 15% wage increase. Astonishingly, 40 members of staff have already taken up the offer.
One member of staff says it isn’t about the money. Robert Trezza says:
“I think it’s a good opportunity to show commitment to a company that makes going to work fun every day.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 2nd, May 2013 | In: Money, Strange But True | Comment
Apple’s Bond deal is the most glorious tax avoidance ruse
CERTAIN people are getting rather angry about yesterday’s bond deal by Apple:
As is par for the course, the financial media is telling a story about a major US company from the perspective of the investing classes, rather than the broader public.
The poster child is the New York Times’ Dealbook, in a story titled “To Satisfy Its Investors, Cash-Rich Apple Borrows Money.” It third paragraph reads:
Apple’s return to the debt markets raises a riddle: Why would a company with so much cash even bother to issue debt?
A full seven paragraphs later, the article gets around to the last, and arguably the most important reason:
By raising cheap debt for the shareholder payout, Apple also avoids a potentially big tax hit. About two-thirds of Apple’s cash — about $102 billion — sits overseas in lower-tax jurisdictions. If it returned some of that cash to the United States to reward its investors, it could have significant tax consequences for the company. In some ways, the bond issue is a response to that tax situation.
Posted: 1st, May 2013 | In: Money | Comment (1)
Waitrose raises property prices
DID you know that Waitrose raises property prices?
The Waitrose effect: How upmarket supermarket can add 50% to the value of your home
And given that it is the Mail of course they get it wrong. The truth lies in this qualification:
Miss Chick admitted there was ‘no real answer’ to whether Waitrose ‘gentrifies’ areas or if the chain only opens in areas which are already upmarket and so more expensive.
Read the rest of this entry »
If Obamacare’s so great why doesn’t Congress want it?
SOMETHING from the other side of the pond to consider today. Obamacare is of course the great hope of the progressive movement in the US. How glorious that finally everyone will be able to have affordable health care insurance!
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 30th, April 2013 | In: Money | Comment (1)
Bangladeshi Building falls down: Primark to blame
YOU’LL have seen the story all over the papers. That appalling disaster in Bangladesh where a building fell down killing hundreds.
As a result of which we’ve got the usual suspects crawling out of the woodwork insisting that the UK fashion chains are to blame for what happened. Primark, for example, should be running building inspectors over the factories and offices of all their suppliers.
All of which is really very slightly odd. The Bangladeshi Government itself is indicating that 90% of the buildings in the capital don’t in fact meet even local building codes. Someone in the UK is supposed to do better than this? Bring them up to scratch?
Read the rest of this entry »
On the Guardian’s coverage of economics: Heidi Moore really doesn’t understand the subject
OR, if I’m to be entirely fair, on the new US Guardian’s coverage of economics. They’ve hired some bird called Heidi Moore from one of the public radio programmes to be their US finance and economics editor. And today she said this:
For one, it will be harder for us to know when we’re in a recession. Right now, a recession means several quarters of negative GDP. Getting to negative from where we are now isn’t hard; getting there when we’re 3% higher will be. While it may seem useful to avoid recession right now, that is actually a bad thing: it means that in periods when we do get negative GDP, we’ll be in truly terrible shape.
Oh my word……
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 25th, April 2013 | In: Money | Comments (3)
Teen pregnancy makes you fat!
TEEN pregnancy makes you fat. That’s according to the latest research at least. Getting pregnant under the age of 19 makes you fat in later life. This research suffers from the same problem that an awful lot of economics research suffers from: getting correlation and causality confused.
‘When taking care of teen mums, we often have so many immediate concerns – childcare, housing, school, social and financial support – that we don’t often think of long-term health effects.’
After controlling for factors such as race, education and background, the scientists found women who gave birth before 19 had a 32 per cent higher risk of obesity than women who had given birth at age 20 or later.
The survey by the University of Michigan of US women aged between 20 and 59 is believed to be the first to identify teen pregnancy as a predictor of obesity.
There’s a problem with this. For we know that fat birds are more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviour. Every young man out on the pull understands this entirely of course but perhaps academics don’t.
Read the rest of this entry »
The great unburnable Carbon Bubble: three reasons why the experts are wrong
I DO think this is a lovely little misunderstanding of how the world works from M’Lord Stern. He’s telling us that all hte oil and coal that people have found is worth nothing because we cannot afford to burn it. So, why are all these companies valuing it at more than nothing?
The world could be heading for a major economic crisis as stock markets inflate an investment bubble in fossil fuels to the tune of trillions of dollars, according to leading economists.
“The financial crisis has shown what happens when risks accumulate unnoticed,” said Lord (Nicholas) Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics. He said the risk was “very big indeed” and that almost all investors and regulators were failing to address it.
The so-called “carbon bubble” is the result of an over-valuation of oil, coal and gas reserves held by fossil fuel companies. According to a report published on Friday, at least two-thirds of these reserves will have to remain underground if the world is to meet existing internationally agreed targets to avoid the threshold for “dangerous” climate change. If the agreements hold, these reserves will be in effect unburnable and so worthless – leading to massive market losses. But the stock markets are betting on countries’ inaction on climate change.
Read the rest of this entry »
The European Carbon Trading system isn’t dead yet
THE Wall Street Journal tells us that the ETS, the European carbon trading system, is dead. This is because the prices are so low that no one can be bothered trading:
One of the great policy bubbles of our times has been cap and trade for carbon emissions, and on Tuesday it may have popped for good. The European Parliament refused to save the EU’s failing program, which is the true-believer equivalent of the pope renouncing celibacy.
Read the rest of this entry »
Woo Hoo! Apple’s new iPhone is coming!
THE new iphone. It’s coming! Aren’t you excited too? I know I am because it’ll be just fabulous allowing me to pose even more effectively as a cool and in touch sort of person. You know, rather than the fat middle aged man I actually am.
The knowledge that the new iPhone is coming is revealed to us by the Wall Street Journal:
TAIPEI—Foxconn Technology Group has resumed hiring assembly-line workers in China after a postholiday freeze, in the latest sign that customer Apple Inc. is gearing up for production of a new iPhone.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 16th, April 2013 | In: Money, Technology | Comment
Mario Soares: Portugal will never be able to pay its debts
THE Grand Old Man of Portuguese politics, too. Mario Soares says:
“Portugal will never be able to pay its debts, however much it impoverishes itself. If you can’t pay, the only solution is not to pay. When Argentina was in crisis it didn’t pay. Did anything happen? No, nothing happened,” he told Antena 1.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 16th, April 2013 | In: Money | Comments (2)
Who really believes that Germany is poorer than Spain or Cyprus? The European Central Bank does
WHO really believes that Germany is poorer than Spain or Cyprus? Well, apparently, the European Central Bank does. Which sounds insane but bear with me. They’ve just released some research showing that German households are in fact poorer than households in Spain or Cyprus. The report is here. In the FT we get the following:
Measured in terms of the median, German households occupy the last place among all eurozone countries, with net wealth of a mere €51,000, while the median Cypriot household has net wealth of €267,000. The explanation for this gap is the low property ownership rate in Germany – well under 50 per cent. This means that the median German does not own a house, while the median Cypriot or Spaniard does.
The median is the statistic to quote when you want to say that your typical German is poorer than your typical Spaniard. But that is a meaningless statement because it is based on distributions within countries. If you want to compare across countries, it is better to take the mean. The gap is not quite as dramatic but it is still very large.
If mean German net wealth is €200,000 per household and mean Spanish net wealth is €300,000.
Read the rest of this entry »
So that’s the end of kiddies TV programmes: the illiberal elite to ban advertising
IT does worry me when people propose these sorts of things. It’s as if they are entirely ignorant of why the darn things exist in the first place:
Companies selling products such as toys, sweets, clothes and video games should be prevented from marketing them towards primary school pupils amid fears the trend is undermining children’s natural development, it is claimed.
In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, the group of academics, authors, MPs and charity leaders warned that aggressive advertising aimed at infants as young as two was leading to a rise in “pester power” as children increasingly nag parents for the most expensive brands.
The development also makes it harder for parents to control their children and teach sons and daughters how to manage small quantities of money, they say.
Today’s letter urges the Government to copy tactics employed in countries such as Sweden and Greece where advertising aimed at young children is banned.
It is claimed that the ban could work by placing curbs on advertising linked to TV programmes, magazines and websites orientated towards under-11s and restricting tactics such as the use of cartoon characters in ad campaigns.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 11th, April 2013 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment
If Bitcoin walks like a Bubble and quacks like a bubble then why isn’t Bitcoin A Bubble?
THE Telegraph managegs to get itself slightly confused this morning:
Bitcoin passes $200 mark for the first time
Bitcoin, the controversial electronic currency, has passed the $200-mark for the first time, setting new records despite talk of a bubble.
This is not despite talk of a bubble. It is the very fact that Bitcoin has just passed $200 which leads to the talk of a bubble.
Read the rest of this entry »
How to prove that the minimum wage destroys jobs
I KNOW, I know, we’re forever told that the minimum wage doesn’t in fact destroy jobs. It’s a lovely cuddly policy that has absolutely no bad effects at all. Except, if we consider Amazon’s Mechanical Turk marketplace this simply cannot be correct.
Estimates of what workers can earn on these crowdsourced tasks range from about $1.20 to $5 an hour without any benefits. Employers treat them as independent contractors not covered by federal minimum-wage legislation.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 10th, April 2013 | In: Money | Comments (2)
Woo Watch: No, your chance of becoming wealthy does not depend upon your star sign
CAN your star sign dictate your wealth? Lordy be, some nonsense in the Daily Heil:
If you’re hoping to make your fortune, it seems your fate may lie in the stars.
A new study suggests those born under the Gemini star sign have the best chance of becoming wealthy, while Scorpios are the least likely to succeed.
The intriguing find was unearthed by researchers who studied the star signs of the top 1,000 richest people in England.
No, just no.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 9th, April 2013 | In: Money | Comments (2)
Woes! It’ll take ten years to get the Northern Rock money back!
IT will take ten years to get Northern Rock money back. Or, as it should more properly be presented, this is a statement of the bleedin’ obvious:
Taxpayers will have to wait up to a decade to get their money back from the bailout of Northern Rock, according to the man charged with managing the rump of the failed bank.
In an interview with Financial Mail, Richard Banks, chief executive of UK Asset Resolution, said: ‘We expect the majority of the Government debt to be repaid within the next ten years.’
But Banks said he could not be precise about the final date as inflation and the state of the economy could push his forecast off course.
Now we know the truth about HBOS: it was nothing to do with casino banking
WE’VE had the report out today about how and why Halifax Bank Of Scotland fell over. You can read it in all its glory here. And the important takeaway point to be made about it is that it was nothing at all to do with speculation, investment banking, weird derivatives, high speed trading or any of the other things that people fulminate against. It was, very simply, a bank going bust in the way that banks have always gone bust. Lending too much money to people who didn’t pay it all back.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 5th, April 2013 | In: Money | Comment (1)
So William Shakespeare was a speculator in grain was he? The man was a saint
AND good on Willy Shakespeare for being a speculator in grant. For it is speculation in food that ekes out the harvest from year to year. Without them we’d all start getting damn hungry around May while waiting for the August harvest.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 3rd, April 2013 | In: Money | Comment (1)
Why you might not want to be a CEO
WHY would you want to be a CEO? Sure, the money’s bloody great but even so most of us would prefer to have a life to what these bozos do for their paycheques. Surprisingly, it’s The Guardian that tells us how hard these CEOs work. The piece is here:
First off – and there’s no getting around this one, I’m afraid – you have to get up early. Really early: 6am is good, but 5am is better. And CEOs don’t hit snooze: most of them claim to leap out of bed in the morning…..They may be in charge of large international companies, but they are absolute slaves to email. Karen Blackett of MediaCom claims to receive 500 a day. They’re emailing first thing in the morning, and last thing at night, and throughout the day. For the modern CEO, dealing with your own email seems to be some kind of touchstone of accessibility. I’m not sure what I’d do if I got 500 emails every day, but I know what I wouldn’t do: I wouldn’t read them.
Read the rest of this entry »
Karl McCartney shocked that politicians can be treated like any poor sod waiting for benefits
A TORY MP has been complaining that the fees office treats them like dirt. They just go along to try and claim what is rightfully theirs, what the law provides for them to have, and they get treated like crap. Paid massively late, they’ve got to go into debt to pay their bills while they wait for the cash to be paid out.
Yes, of course this is what we should be doing to all politicians:
A Conservative MP has criticised the body responsible for overseeing politicians’ expenses claims, claiming they are trying to ‘screw MPs into the ground’.
Karl McCartney, the MP for Lincoln, says he has been forced to borrow £25,000 from his parents because of late payments by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa) caused by delays in the processing of his expenses payments, a situation he claims that many other MPs face.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: 29th, March 2013 | In: Money, Politicians | Comment
Ed Davey is conniving so-and-so on low carbon energy
SO. Here we have Ed Davey, the third runner up in a Wayne Rooney lookalike competition, telling us how all that work they’ve done on renewables is going to save us money:
But my Department has been concentrating on keeping bills as low as possible over the long-term – and for everyone.
Some people think climate change policies on things like wind farms are what are behind high bills. But they couldn’t be more wrong. The biggest single thing driving bills higher is global oil and gas prices. They have been rising remorselessly, fuelled by demand in growing economies like China. They’re likely to keep rising.
The Government can’t control the global market and drive down international wholesale prices. What we can do is try to drive a wedge between global prices and the cost of bills.
Through investment in domestic sources of low carbon energy like nuclear, wind and wave power, and other renewables, we are helping to insulate the public from volatile fossil fuel prices in the future.
Read the rest of this entry »
Surprise! Max Hastings Gets It Wrong on Cyprus!
MAX Hasting on Cyprus:
People who rob old ladies in the street, or hold up security vans, are branded as thieves. Yet when Germany presides over a heist of billions of pounds from private savers’ Cyprus bank accounts, to ‘save the euro’ for the hundredth time, this is claimed as high statesmanship.
It is nothing of the sort. The deal to secure a €10 billion German bailout of the bankrupt Mediterranean island is one of the nastiest and most immoral political acts of modern times.
Finally, a sensible settlement in Cyprus
IN fact, the settlement in Cyprus is so sensible that it’s a wonder they didn’t just do this a week ago. Or even 6 months ago when it was obvious that the place needed help. For is was obvious that the banks were bust,. For what they were doing was taking all that lovely Russian money and then lending it to the Greek Government. Who, as you might recall, then decided not to pay 90% of the money they’d borrowed back. From which point on the Cypriot banks were bust no matter what else happened.
Read the rest of this entry »
