LCD maker pleads guilty to display price fixingHannStar Display, a Taiwanese maker of liquid crystal displays (LCDs), has agreed to plead guilty and pay a $30 million fine for participating in a global conspiracy to fix prices of the displays, the US Department of Justice said.
HannStar, based in Taipei, participated in a price fixing conspiracy involving thin-film transistor liquid crystal displays (TFT-LCDs) between September 2001 and January 2006, the DOJ said in a one-count felony charge filed Tuesday in US District Court ... (more) What a joke, just because a company (or group of companies) says they're going to charge so and so a price doesn't mean consumers need to buy it. It's not like an LCD is some essential good which every growing child needs to survive. If the people thought the prices were too high they wouldn't buy them, it's that simple. The same can't be said for the "products" and "services" government produces. - Chris |
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Smokers, cigarette sellers fuming over tax that takes a pack up to at least $12.75No butts about it - smokers and shopkeepers are not fans of New York's $1.60 cigarette tax hike.
In the space of three hours Thursday, four customers at a convenience shop called Candy Store in Times Square declined to buy a pack when they heard the price was up to $12.75.
"This hurts small businesses - big-tim... (more) No price fixing here! |
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Government owns 46 percent of foreclosed inventoryThe latest data for the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index were released today. The home price index for Apri... (more)
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Time to shut down the US Federal Reserve?Like a mad aunt, the Fed is slowly losing its marbles.
Kartik Athreya, senior economist for the Richmond Fed, has written a paper condemning economic bloggers as chronically stupid and a threat to public order.
Matters of economic policy should be reserved to a priesthood with the correct post-doctoral credentials, which would of course have excluded David Hume, Adam Smith, and arguably John Maynard Keynes (a mathematics graduate, with a tripos foray in moral scienc... (more)
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Report: Russian Spies are "Goldbugs" Who May be Plotting to "Destroy the Value of the U.S. Dollar"In what can only be described as a laughable piece of propaganda, CNN/Fortune is reporting the recently caught Russian spies are actually "Goldbugs" who may be secretly plotting to "destroy the value of the American dollar." That the US dollar has been collapsing in value for the last 100 years due to the Federal Reserve's inflationary policies is somehow conveniently missed. Instead, Russia is gearing up some Soviet style espionage plot to destroy the dollar by instituting a "new global curre... (more)
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The New Ideological DivideDespite the apparent deficit-cutting solidarity that emerged from this weekend's G-20 meeting in Toronto, it is clear that the great powers of the industrialized world have not been this philosophically estranged since the end of the Cold War. Ironically, in this new contest, the former belligerents have switched sides – the capitalists are now the socialists, and vice versa.
We now are witnessing a struggle between two camps that I playfully call the "Stimulators" an... (more)
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Krugman and the “Long Depression” MythIn the Paul Krugman column which Israel Curtis posted about yesterday, our generation’s second coming of Keynes shows just how thoroughly he embraces what Ludwig von Mises called the “Inflationist View of History” by espousing the ridiculous notion th... (more)
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Krugman Prophesies Doom As a Result of Government Spending Cuts and Archaic Notions of Sound Fiscal PolicyFor some inexplicable reason (for Keynesians, unfamiliar with being out of economic fashion), the recent G-20 meeting resulted in some consensus (at least outside the US) of controlling inflation and curbing deficits. Paul Krugman, dismayed at such at outcome, called the conference “deeply discouraging”. In his anguish at watching the world leaders contort themselves ever-so-slightly towards controlling their budget deficits and reigning in spending, he penned some his dire predictions in the NY... (more)
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The Fed Has Lost It; Publishes Essay Bashing Bloggers, Tells General Public To Broadly Ignore Those Without An Econ PhDSome Fed economist (with a hard-earned Ph.D mind you) named Kartik Athreya (who lasted at Citigroup as an associate Vice President for a whopping 7 months before getting sacked in 1998 only to find solace for his expiring unemployment benefits in the public sector) has written the most idiotic "research" piece to come out of the Federal Reserve since 1913, and the Fed has written a lot of idiotic research since... (more) They *really* don't like this! |
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RBS tells clients to prepare for 'monster' money-printing by the Federal ReserveEntitled "Deflation: Making Sure It Doesn’t Happen Here", it is a warfare manual for defeating economic slumps by use of extreme monetary stimulus once interest rates have dropped to zero, and implicitly once governments have spent themselves to near bankruptcy.
The speech is best known for its irreverent one-liner: "The US government has a technology, called a printing press, that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost."... (more) Utter nonsense, deflation is another imaginary government bogyman, it's nothing more than an excuse for the government to print money. Watch this video by Jorg Guido Hulsman: The Economics of Deflation |
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Suiting Up for a Post-Dollar World The global financial crisis is playing out like a slow-moving, highly predicable stage play. In the current scene, Western governments are caught between the demands of entitled welfare beneficiaries and the anxiety of bondholders who fear they will be stuck with the bill. As the crisis reaches an apex, prime ministers and presidents are forced into a Sophie's choice between social unrest and bankruptcy. But with the "Club Med" economies set to fall like dominoes, the US Treasury market... (more)
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CHART OF THE DAY: We're Not The First Empire To Have A Serious Currency ProblemThe U.S. government's current debt problem is perceived to be a once in a life time event by some, but governments have long been suffering from debt worries.
Take the Roman Empire which, in 55 BC, was already concerned about its public debt and the devaluing of its currency against silver. Note complaints about "public assistance" even back then.
It had a great many more years of decline before its demise, but the devaluation of the Roman currency seems to have pla... (more)
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Toward a New Monetary OrderHenry Ford is alleged to have said that "it is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning."
The spirit of his words encourages us to put forward questions about the banking and monetary system — especially in view of the international credit-market crisis. Is it a good thing that central banks have cut interest rates essentially to zero and have increased th... (more)
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Central Banks Join Gold RushForeign governments have been getting in on the recent gold rush, driven by continued fears about Europe's debt crisis and the pace of the global economic recovery.
Those concerns have been propelling the precious metal to record highs over the past 18 months. In fact, gold posted a new intra-day high Friday, when it reached $1,260.90 an ounce. A day earlier, it reached a fresh record high closing price of $1,248.70 an ounce.
Last year, foreig... (more)
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Financial Overhaul Gives Government Broad New Powers To Seize Financial FirmsKey House and Senate lawmakers approved far-reaching new financial rules early Friday after weeks of division, delay and frantic last-minute dealmaking. The dawn compromise set up a potential vote in both houses of Congress next week that could send the landmark legislation to President Obama by July 4.
Lawmakers pulled an all-nighter, wrapping up their work at 5:39 a.m. -- more than 20 messy, mind-numbing hours after they began Thursday morning.
"It's a great momen... (more)
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Greece starts putting island land up for sale to save economyThere's little that shouts "seriously rich" as much as a little island in the sun to call your own. For Sir Richard Branson it is Neckar in the Caribbean, the billionaire Barclay brothers prefer Brecqhou in the Channel Islands, while Aristotle Onassis married Jackie Kennedy on Skorpios, his Greek hideway.
Now Greece is making it easier for the rich and famous to fulfill their dreams by preparing to sell, or offering long-term leases on, some of its 6,000 sunkissed islands in a des... (more)
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Ridiculed By Americans Everywhere, Krugman Now Threatens, Gives Unsolicited Advice To Germany, Pisses Entire Nation OffThese days it's hard being a religious fanatic, also known as a Keynesian. It is even harder when you are Paul Krugman (sadly, the cornerstone of NYT's entire paywall strategy), and everyone in your own country is already sick and tired of, and openly ignores your constant appeals to drown the world in new and record amounts of debt, thus ignoring your appeals with impunity. So what do you do when nobody takes you seriously for thousands of miles around? Why you go even further - to the core of ... (more)
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NY Leaders Likely To Soon Reinstate 4% Tax On Everyday ItemsNEW YORK (WPIX) - Purchases of items you rely on, like clothes, shoes, even diapers, you're likely to have to pay more for soon, as an effort by Albany to put New York State on sounder financial footing.
Under a proposal being strongly considered by Governor David Paterson, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Majority Conference Leader John Sampson, retail items costing less than $110, which have been exempt from the four percent state sales tax since 2007, would now be su... (more)
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Lord Rothschild fund joins World Gold Council to put £12.5m into BullionVaultTim Levene of Augmentum Capital, a fund backed by Lord Rothschild's RIT Capital Partners, said the investment was not a bet on the gold price but on "the future growth of the BullionVault platform", which stores physical gold for private clients in London, New York and Zurich. RIT currently has 9pc of its assets in physical gold.
Investment demand for the metal has risen on concerns that sovereign debt problems could spread and the value of currencies plunge. The gold price hit a ... (more) lol@the idea people would trust the Rothschilds to "store" their gold! |
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Rise Of The New Gold Rush...When you buy precious metals, you defy the restrictive nature of central banking and fiat currency. Paper money has never been OUR money, it is the establishment’s money, and always will be. Gold offers us an opportunity to hold our own money, on our own terms. The more widely used gold and silver become, the less dependent we are on Federal Reserve paper, and the less power they have over our financial life. If everyone used PM’s, the elitist central banking system could conceivably disinteg... (more)
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Carbon Tax On Electricity To Send Prices SkyrocketingAmericans already laboring under the financial duress of massive unemployment and the threat of a double-dip recession will be hit with massive electricity bill hikes if President Obama succeeds in ramming through the first salvo of his “green agenda” – a carbon tax on electricity companies which will be passed on to customers.
Obama is in a race against time to exploit fears over climate change as poll numbers show increasing skepticism towards the issue since the Climatega... (more)
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The Exploitation of EntrepreneursIn our society of victims, entrepreneurs are blamed for many of the hardships that ail our economy. Whether it is because of high prices, low wages, or substandard economic conditions, they are often accused of exploitation in their quest for profits.
The real victims in our economy, however, are usually not workers who voluntarily enter contracts to sell their labor nor consumers who voluntarily purchase products and services but instead entrepreneurs who are involuntarily subje... (more)
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