BOCA RATON, Florida — Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Thursday there was a risk that rising defaults in subprime mortgage markets could spill over into other economic sectors. Speaking to the Futures Industry Association, Greenspan conceded it was ‘hard to find any such evidence’ about spillover from housing yet, but added: ‘You can’t take 10 percent out of mortgage originations without some impact.’ Greenspan said the downturn in U.S. housing markets appeared to stem more from high housing prices than from a decline in mortgage quality but said he was not downplaying problems in so-called subprime loans. He said that subprime woes were ‘not a small issue’ and seemed to result primarily from buyers coming into lofty housing markets late after big price run-ups that had left them vulnerable to hikes in adjustable mortgage rates. Default rates in the subprime segment of the U.S. mortgage market have jumped in recent months as the housing industry slowed and prices fell. At least 20 lenders in the subprime mortgage sector, which serves borrowers with poor credit histories at high interest rates, have gone out of business as a result. The crisis has triggered […]
How gloomy Americans are about the direction of the country and President George W. Bush’s leadership depends on how much money they make. Twenty-three percent of all Americans said the country is on the right track, a 15-year low, according to a new Bloomberg poll. Among those with higher incomes, 43 percent said the country is on the right path. Three-fifths of Americans disapproved of the job Bush is doing, compared with 38 percent who approved. Among those with household income higher than $100,000, the gap is smaller, with 53 percent disapproving and 46 percent approving. ‘That’s the history of the world and it’s also the history of the United States,” said Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Public opinion ‘is always very directly related to how well you’re doing and how well you think you’re going to do.” The March 3-11 survey followed the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s Feb. 27 fall, its worst in four years, and was conducted during a week when Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff was convicted of perjury and a scandal erupted over conditions at the Army’s Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington. […]
What if you could know that your unborn baby boy is likely to be sexually attracted to other boys? Beyond that, what if hormonal treatments could change the baby’s orientation to heterosexual? Would you do it? Some scientists believe that such developments are just around the corner. For some time now, scientists have been looking for a genetic or hormonal cause of sexual orientation. Thus far, no ‘gay gene’ has been found — at least not in terms of incontrovertible and accepted science. Yet, it is now claimed that a growing body of evidence indicates that biological factors may at least contribute to sexual orientation. The most interesting research along these lines relates to the study of sheep. Scientists at the U.S. Sheep Experiment Station are conducting research into the sexual orientation of sheep through ‘sexual partner preference testing.’ As William Saletan at Slate.com explains: A bare majority of rams turn out to be heterosexual. One in five swings both ways. About 15 percent are asexual, and 7 percent to 10 percent are gay. Why so many gay rams? Is it too much socializing with ewes? Same-sex play with other lambs? Domestication? Nope. Those theories have […]
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Whether it’s the albums you buy, the radio stations you choose or the songs you put in your portable player, music has always been a matter of personal taste. Now, a startup led by a team of veterans in the digital music arena seeks to offer what it considers a new level of ‘personal radio’ by combining elements of Internet radio, portable music and satellite distribution, while letting users choose the tunes, genres or artists they want. Slacker Inc., based in San Diego, plans to launch its radio service Wednesday, when its Web site, http://www.slacker.com, goes live initially in a beta, or testing, stage. A separate Wi-Fi-enabled pocketable gadget that will be able to play the personalized selections will be available in the early summer, with models ranging roughly from $150 to $299, the company said. A car kit that will deliver the music via satellite signals will be available later in the year at a price yet to be disclosed. Here’s how it works: Users must first log on to Slacker online before they can begin listening to music from more than 10,000 stations that are built around specific artists […]
SAN FRANCISCO — Internet censorship is spreading rapidly, being practised by about two dozen countries and applied to a far wider range of online information and applications, according to research by a transatlantic group of academics. The warning comes a week after a Turkish court ordered the blocking of YouTube to silence offensive comments about Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, marking the most visible attack yet on a website that has been widely adopted around the world. A recent six-month investigation into whether 40 countries use censorship shows the practice is spreading, with new countries learning from experienced practitioners such as China and benefiting from technological improvements. OpenNet Initiative, a project by Harvard Law School and the universities of Toronto, Cambridge and Oxford, repeatedly tried to call up specific websites from 1,000 international news and other sites in the countries concerned, and a selection of local-language sites. The research found a trend towards censorship or, as John Palfrey, executive director of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said, ‘a big trend in the reverse direction’, with many countries recently starting to adopt forms of online censorship. Ronald Deibert, associate […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
