The last big thing was green tech – from wave-power generators to the smart grid. Hyped in the bipartisan stimulus bill, it promised gobs of jobs, billions in revenues, and untold riches. Private investors plowed in billions too. It ended up in a massive pileup of capital destruction. Fatalities were everywhere.
Monthly Archives: May 2013
“The Mother Of All Shorts”
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on “The Mother Of All Shorts”
The Dow and S&P 500 are stumbling like drunken but determined sailors from one all-time high to the next, despite lousy employment and economic data, and declining corporate revenues. Bonds have done the same, and their 100-year graph has assumed the terrifying shape of open crocodile jaws, worse even than in 1999 and 2007.
Starving the World for Power and Profit: The Global Agribusiness Model
by Don Quijones • • Comments Off on Starving the World for Power and Profit: The Global Agribusiness Model
Contributed by Don Quijones: A daily ration of bread is now beyond the reach of roughly a billion people on planet Earth. What’s more, hunger is spreading like a pandemic, making incursions from its traditional strongholds in the global south to towns and cities across depression-hit Southern Europe. In Greece….
The Infallible Fed At Verge Of (Not) Admitting Failure
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on The Infallible Fed At Verge Of (Not) Admitting Failure
“Labor market conditions are affected by factors outside a central bank’s control,” admitted Richmond Fed President Lacker as the employment report bounced around the world. Yet for years, the Fed has proclaimed that the heroic motivation for its selfless money-printing mania was the deep desire to improve the unemployment fiasco for average Americans.
Class-Action Lawsuits Come to France
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Class-Action Lawsuits Come to France
In theory, a class-action lawsuit allows the little guy to stand up to a big corporation and seek redress. Alone, the little guy wouldn’t have the means. Justice comes down to money, and class-action lawsuits add leverage. In theory. It’s a world-famous American product, infested with flaws. And it’s about to be imported by … France!
The French Government’s Exquisite Bullying
by Contributor • • Comments Off on The French Government’s Exquisite Bullying
The French government is saddled with enough problems; in theory, it no longer needs to create new ones. But now it wrote another excellent chapter in its tome on how to interfere with private-sector businesses, hamper entrepreneurs, and encourage them to start up their operations elsewhere instead of creating jobs in France.
Abenomics Tries To Make Sure Japan Is Going Down Swinging
by Wolf Richter • • Comments Off on Abenomics Tries To Make Sure Japan Is Going Down Swinging
Anecdotal evidence has been piling up. Lamborghini sales hit the highest level in 14 years. Ferrari sales jumped 40%. Luxury retailers forecast fat profits. They ascribed it to Abenomics. “The sudden improvement in the stock market led to a big rise in sales at our department stores for luxury brands,” one of them said. But there is a price to pay.