In our special briefing, we look at how near Wall Street came to systemic collapse this week-and how the financial system will change as a result. We start with how financiers-and their critics-have laboured under a delusion ‘A COMPANY for carrying out an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.’ This lure for the South Sea Company, published in 1720, has a whiff of the 21st century about it. Modern finance has promised miracles, seduced the brilliant and the greedy-and wrought destruction. Alan Greenspan, formerly chairman of the Federal Reserve, said in 2005 that ‘increasingly complex financial instruments have contributed to the development of a far more flexible, efficient, and hence resilient financial system than the one that existed just a quarter-century ago.’ Tell that to Bear Stearns, Wall Street’s fifth-largest investment bank, the most spectacular corporate casualty so far of the credit crisis. For the critics of modern finance, Bear’s swift end on March 16th was the inevitable consequence of the laissez-faire philosophy that allowed financial services to innovate and spread almost unchecked. This has created a complex, interdependent system prone to conflicts of interest. Fraud has been rampant in the sale of […]
Road Blocks I’ve written a lot about the President of Iran, Mahmoud Admadinejad’s visit. He told the media Iraqis don’t like Americans and Americans should leave. It was expected and he’s right, many Iraqis don’t like Americans. Of course he didn’t mention that Iraqis have very similar feelings towards Iran. Both nations are generally seen as imperialists here. Many Iraqis fear the rise of Persian rule and many feel that most Shiite and Kurdish officials are more loyal to Iran than Iraq. But this is not what I want to write about. What I want to explain to you is the inconvenience of his trip. To have Ahmadinejad safely cruise around Baghdad, the capital shut down. I walked into the office on Sunday and our newsroom was empty, nearly our entire staff didn’t make it to work. Hussein, one of our Iraqi reporters, tried to take a taxi. Halfway through the trip he was stopped by security forces. No vehicle traffic was allowed on the roads to secure Ahmadinejad’s path to President Jalal Talabani’s compound. So, poor Hussein walked nearly a mile. But when he reached a central Baghdad bridge close to Talabani’s compound he […]
Those incoming federal tax-rebate checks could do more than boost the economy. They might also boost your mood, with one caveat: You must spend the cash on others, not yourself. New research reveals that when individuals dole out money for gifts for friends or charitable donations, they get a boost in happiness while those who spend on themselves get no such cheery lift. Scientists have found evidence that income is linked with a person’s satisfaction with their life and other measures of happiness, but less is known about the link between how a person spends their money and happiness. ‘We wanted to test our theory that how people spend their money is at least as important as how much money they earn,’ said Elizabeth Dunn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia. The findings, to be detailed in the March 21 issue of the journal Science, come as no surprise to some marketing scientists. ‘It doesn’t surprise me at all that people find giving money away very rewarding,’ said Aaron Ahuvia, associate professor of marketing at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, who was not involved in the current study. The research was funded by […]
HOUSTON — Hydrogen could be a clean, abundant energy source, but it’s difficult to store in bulk. In new research, materials scientists at Rice University have made the surprising discovery that tiny carbon capsules called buckyballs are so strong they can hold volumes of hydrogen nearly as dense as those at the center of Jupiter. The research appears on the March 2008 cover of the American Chemical Society’s journal Nano Letters. ‘Based on our calculations, it appears that some buckyballs are capable of holding volumes of hydrogen so dense as to be almost metallic,’ said lead researcher Boris Yakobson, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Rice. ‘It appears they can hold about 8 percent of their weight in hydrogen at room temperature, which is considerably better than the federal target of 6 percent.’ The Department of Energy has devoted more than $1 billion to developing technologies for hydrogen-powered automobiles, including technologies to cost-effectively store hydrogen for use in cars. Hydrogen is the lightest element in the universe, and it is very difficult to store in bulk. For hydrogen cars to be competitive with gasoline-powered cars, they need a comparable range and a reasonably compact fuel […]
ATLANTA, Georgia — One of the first large quality-of-life studies on today’s prostate cancer treatments suggests that for some men, it’s a matter of picking your poison and facing potential sexual, urinary or other problems. Of the choices studied — surgery, standard radiation, hormone therapy or radioactive seeds — the seeds seemed to carry a lower risk of several of these side effects. Hormone therapy — when combined with radiation — had a big effect on men’s vitality and sexuality. The radioactive pellets sometimes led to sexual problems too, but more often involved discomfort in urinating. The research, published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, doesn’t address the cure rates of different treatments. Moreover, not every treatment is an option for every man. For example, radioactive pellets are generally used only in men with early stage cancer that is slow-growing. Nor does the study speak to decisions about whether to treat at all a slow-growing form of cancer that can take 10 or 20 years to become life-threatening. VideoWatch more on cancer treatments’ side effects » An 80-year-old man may choose to avoid all treatment and the assorted complications. But for a man of, […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
