Category Archives: Current events

Banking girlfriends find solace in support group

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Girlfriends, mistresses and wives of fallen bankers can now find solace in a support group to lament the end of shopping sprees at Tiffany’s:

New York’s Dating a Banker Anonymous (DABA) “is a safe place where women can come together — free from the scrutiny of feminists — and share their tearful tales of how the mortgage meltdown has affected their relationship.” In addition to running a blog that actually includes sentences like, “This whole messy ordeal has advanced my Botox start date by at least two years,” DABA convenes weekly to vent, over brunch or cocktails, about the trials and tribulations of recession-era life with a Financial-Guy Boyfriend (FBF).”

Read more on Salon.

Countries are using barter to buy food

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The Financial Times reports that countries are resorting to the old fashioned method of barter to purchase food:

Countries struggling to secure credit have resorted to barter and secretive government-to-government deals to buy food, with some contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In a striking example of how the global financial crisis and high food prices have strained the finances of poor and middle-income nations, countries including Russia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Morocco say they have signed or are discussing inter-government and barter deals to import commodities from rice to vegetable oil.  The revival of these trade practices, used rarely in the last 20 years and usually by nations subject to international embargoes and the old communist bloc, is a result of the countries’ failure to secure trade financing as bank lending has dried up.

During the 2001 Argentine financial crisis, when the peso was devalued and people lost trust in their financial institutions, many Argentines resorted to bartering services for food and other necessary supplies. Will we see this happen in other countries this year?

MP seeks financial aid to small bookstores

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While banks continue getting bailout money to cover up the losses incurred by their incompetent CEOs, who it appears, have been lavishing funds on redecorating their offices, a UK member of parliament has asked the government to help small independent bookstores:

Kaydee Bookshop in Clitheroe, Lancashire, which was named independent bookseller of the year in 1992, has announced that it will be closing down at the end of this month after 60 years in business, with the loss of nine jobs. Its demise follows the news earlier this month that the UK’s only specialist crime bookshop, Murder One in London, will also close at the end of January, and adds to official figures that show the number of independent bookshops in the UK has plummeted by 22% in the last 10 years, with just 1,390 still open according to the most recent count last summer, compared to 1,774 in 1999. Nigel Evans, Conservative MP for the Ribble Valley in Lancashire, believes Kaydee’s closure is “symptomatic of current economic policy”. He has tabled an early day motion in parliament calling on the government “to ensure that small and medium-sized businesses get the support they both need and deserve in order that they may survive the recession”.

In San Francisco, many were stunned to hear that Stacey’s, an independent bookstore on Market Street that has survived the ups and downs of the business cycle over many decades, will be closing. You could argue that Stacey’s is in the wrong location — Market Street in the Financial District — or that it is too large. But what about Cody’s, a SF Bay Area fixture for so long, which closed their downtown SF store a couple of years ago? The entire book business, from publishing to retailing, is going through a period of extreme distress, one that they may not survive. And that is a shame because I love going to bookstores and spend an inordinate amount of time browsing through books.

Whether or not you agree that helping independent bookstores is less worthy than propping up Royal Bank of Scotland, the message is clear: a lot of small businesses are suffering from the financial crisis and the lack of available credit, not just bookstores but also restaurants, bakeries, and boutiques.

The human race is doomed

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From Wired Magazine:

“Is global warming caused by humans? Is Barack Obama a Christian? Is evolution a well-supported theory? You might think these questions have been incontrovertibly answered in the affirmative, proven by settled facts. But for a lot of Americans, they haven’t. Among Republicans, belief in anthropogenic global warming declined from 52 percent to 42 percent between 2003 and 2008. Just days before the election, nearly a quarter of respondents in one Texas poll were convinced that Obama is a Muslim. And the proportion of Americans who believe God did not guide evolution? It’s 14 percent today, a two-point decline since the ’90s, according to Gallup. What’s going on? Normally, we expect society to progress, amassing deeper scientific understanding and basic facts every year. Knowledge only increases, right? Robert Proctor doesn’t think so. A historian of science at Stanford, Proctor points out that when it comes to many contentious subjects, our usual relationship to information is reversed: Ignorance increases.”

Read more: How More Info Leads to Less Knowlegdge

France gives 600 million euros to newspapers and magazines

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Amid the gloom and doom surrounding the printed press in many countries, France is going ahead with a €600 million aid package to help paper-based newspapers and magazines survive the 21st century. The money will be used for:

  • distribution: supporting the kiosks where the papers are sold, home distribution, etc;
  • modernization of printing presses;
  • giving the printed press similar breaks that online publications have; and
  • giving free subscriptions to 18-year olds.

The Sarkozy government’s support for media groups has come under attack from people who accuse the president of giving financial aid to media conglomerates who own the newspapers and magazines. I think it’s a waste of money. What the French government has done is to subsidize an outdated method of delivery. Much as I love books, beautiful magazines and printed matter, I don’t think you can stand in the way of technological development and its consequences. People are mobile. They prefer to get much of their news online. Subsidizing the old-fashioned method of delivering the news makes as much sense as giving money to horse-and-buggy companies when the motor car came on the scene. If they’re giving money to the papers, why not also to bakers, plumbers, and computer programmers?

To read more, go to this article in Le Monde:

L’Etat débloque 600 millions d’euros pour soutenir la presse