LILA RAJIVA: The Mind-Body Politic
Individuals Not Ideologies
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Archive for May, 2008
Not So Quiet On the Eastern Front….
WASHINGTON - U.S. authorities are investigating whether Chinese officials secretly copied the contents of a government laptop computer during a visit to China by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and used the information to try to hack into Commerce computers, officials and industry experts told The Associated Press.
Surreptitious copying is believed to have occurred when a laptop was left unattended during Gutierrez’s trip to Beijing for trade talks in December, people familiar with the incident told the AP. These people spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident was under investigation….”
Immoral Market or Incompetent Marketer?
As you’ve probably noticed, I’m interested in the way the market operates….and how it intersects with the way we think….. our perceptions, our misperceptions, our ethics — or lack thereof
Can you be good…. and make good?
Is conscience always tugging at your bottom-line like a whiny brat?
Should it?
The Triple Bottom Line comes up with some answers:
“It seems as if there’s a bit of angst among believers in sustainable business over the demise of Nau, an apparel company based in Portland, Oregon, that aimed to make and sell outdoor clothes and sportswear made from recycled materials using environmentally friendly business methods. “Is this a bad omen for sustainable startups?” wonders at least one blogger.
For what it’s worth, my answer is No. The failure of Nau reflects less the inherent weakness of the sustainable business concept and more a series of miscalculations made by the company’s management, most of which had nothing to do with environmentalism or social consciousness but rather with plain old business sense.
As this article details, Nau committed some of the same management blunders that have doomed thousands of other startups. They counted on a website to generate 50 percent of their sales, then dawdled over repairing the site when it proved to be awkward and difficult to use. They chose not to make their products available through traditional retailers, thereby eliminating a potential source of vitally-needed early revenue. They decided to “mute” the appearance of their logo on their garments, eschewing a powerful tool for building brand awareness and loyalty.
And most dangerously, they overspent, especially on personnel: “Among the 60 employees at [Nau's] Pearl District headquarters, about 10 held the title of vice president or higher . . . Most hailed from large companies such as Nike.” In other words, they hired pricey talent accustomed to big-company perks and working conditions–always a risky choice for a brand-new company.”
The Red Tape Chronicles on ID Theft
“Like arriving home to see a broken window, Holli knew something was wrong when she pulled up the statement from her new 401(k) account and saw a stranger’s name there. Under her name and account information, she found a second name: Paulino Rodriguez. But was it an accident, random vandalism or a serious crime? She opened the virtual door to her account and sorted through the broken glass. Her worst fears would soon be confirmed.
After some frantic research, Holli pieced together part of the story. Rodriguez, the 401(k) Web site revealed, lived in Escondido, Calif., about 90 minutes south of Holli’s home in Fountain Valley. He was a restaurant worker in an Escondido Burger King. This was no prank — though Holli would soon feel like several government agencies, corporations and a criminal were having fun at her expense. She was a victim of something experts call Social Security number-only identity theft, generally committed by immigrants who don’t have the necessary credentials to work legally in the U.S….”
More at MSNBC’s The Red Tape Chronicles.
Comment:
When people get treated like numbers, the numbers get gamed. More evidence that large, polyglot states are inherently unworkable.
Bad Subjects On The Right Not to Drive…
“I certainly don’t’ fault people for using cars or supporting their right to drive, because like every other critic of automobility, I recognize that there are few options for people to do otherwise. But that’s exactly the point that automobile critics are trying to make: people are significantly limited in their ability to choose between different forms of mobility. Pro-automobile advocates love to talk about the ‘right to drive’ or the ‘freedom’ to travel, but they never talk about the freedom to choose any other mode of transportation—particularly ones that don’t pollute the Earth or require an infrastructure that engulfs most of the usable public space in our cities. Pro-automobile advocates don’t like to talk about how automobile accidents are the #1 cause of death for people between the ages of 4-34, killing approximately 43,000 people a year. Nor do they address the fact that the 2.9 million annual injuries caused by auto accidents costs our society roughly $230 billion a year. Even when people aren’t getting maimed or killed, the literal financial costs of automobility are staggering. According the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, traffic congestion collectively costs an average of $168 billion a year and the Texas Transportation Institute estimates that the 75 largest metropolitan areas experienced 3.6 billion vehicle-hours of delay, resulting in 5.7 billion US gallons (21.6 billion liters) in wasted fuel and $67.5 billion in lost productivity, or about 0.7% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product. One would think that this raw financial data alone would surely convince people that there are better ways to simply get around. However, it’s hard to make informed decisions about transportation when groups like the Reason Institute can utilize major news outlets to push their agenda.”
More here at Bad Subjects.
Barry Dyke On the Corruption of Bank-owned Life Insurance
“Barry Dyke, a New Hampshire investment adviser who has studied BOLI, said other banks will likely face losses. “It’s a much bigger issue,” he said.
Bank-owned life insurance had been seen as a safe place for banks to invest their capital but it’s grown increasingly risky, said Dyke, president of Castle Asset Management LLC. “What has happened is banks took a really good thing and corrupted the purpose,” he said.
The insurance writedowns is one of a number of missteps that has plagued Wachovai in recent weeks. It reached a $144 million settlement with regulators over its ties to telemarketers and has said it expects a $1 billion charge in the second quarter because of the accounting of controversial leasing tax shelters.”
More at the Charlotte Observer, from our friend Barry Dyke, whose “Pirates of Manhattan” is selling like hot-dogs at a ball game just off his own website, with no big-time New York agent, no big-time New York publishing house, no big web seller like Amazon, no big bookstore chain like Borders, or anything else but his own lung power on local radio shows. Way to go, Barry.
Brits Buying in New South Wales
People from the UK are among the most prolific buyers of property in Australia, new figures have revealed.
According to the Real Estate Institute of Australia, Britons are third-largest group of foreign property buyers in the country, reports Homes Overseas.
Statistics from the group showed that British investors bought more than £1.27 billion worth of property in Australia last year.
This accounts for more than a tenth of the overall amount of foreign investment in Australia attracted last year.
Britons were only outnumbered by people from Singapore, along with investors from the US.
Figures showed that New South Wales was one of the main hotspots for foreign buyers during 2007, along with Queensland.
Collectively, these two regions were said to account for nearly half of the overseas investment in Australia last year.
This comes after the country was described as a “safe bet” for investors by the Foreign Property Buyer website.
Douglas Adams on the Creation
“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” — Douglas Adams.
Inflation-Inflicted Foreign Governments Buy the Farm…..
Farmland, that is. To wit.:
“The Financial Times reports that Chinese companies will be encouraged to buy farmland abroad, particularly in Africa and South America, to help guarantee food security under a plan being considered by Beijing.
A proposal drafted by the Ministry of Agriculture would make supporting offshore land acquisition by domestic agricultural companies a central government policy. Beijing already has similar policies to boost offshore investment by state-owned banks, manufacturers and oil companies, but offshore agricultural investment has so far been limited to a few small projects.
If approved, the plan could face intense opposition abroad given surging global food prices and deforestation fears. However an official close to the deliberations said it was likely to be adopted.
“There should be no problem for this policy to be approved. The problem might come from foreign governments who are unwilling to give up large areas of land,” the official said.
The move comes as oil-rich but food-poor countries in the Middle East and north Africa explore similar options. Libya is talking with Ukraine about growing wheat in the former Soviet republic, while Saudi Arabia has said it would invest in agricultural and livestock projects abroad to ensure food security and control commodity prices….”
Read more in a fascinating article on the prospects for Asian Pacific business at FinFacts.com
(etymological note from Snopes.com)
Buying In a Buyer’s Market
Your First Offer is Your Best Offer
This is the most counter-intuitive part of buying in a buyers market. Ordinarily sellers, or more accurately the seller’s realtor, try to create a sense of urgency to buy the house. They want you to think other people are looking, there is going to be a bidding war, you need to get your offer in today, etc. Remember, in a buyer’s market these ploys are all lies. You are the only buyer, and you can take as long as you want to buy the house. Your task in negotiating is to create a sense of urgency and panic in the seller. This is why you make your first offer your best offer.
Start with a bid at least 10% below asking price; however, it can be less if the most you are willing to pay is less. Lower your bid as follows:
***If you are actively bidding on the property, make your offers expire in 5 days. If you are still interested in the property resubmit a fractionally-lower offer after 7 days (make them sweat for 2 days.) Don’t make is so much lower as to lose consideration, but make it enough lower that the seller gets the message that they need to come to your price before it gets any lower.
***If the seller makes a counter offer, retract your offer and resubmit a lower one. Works the same as the time decay offer above. After you have lowered your offer a few times, the seller may panic and take your offer before it goes any lower. This is what you are after.
***Lower your offer $500 each time you speak with the seller’s realtor. Every time they communicate with you, they will pressure you to buy. Lower your bid each time they speak with you to send a message that their pressure is not working, and it is, in fact, hurting their client.
***Lower your offer $2,000 if the realtor uses one of the standard lies I mentioned above.
***If the realtor tells you there is another bidder on the property, immediately withdraw your offer and tell them to call you if it falls out of escrow with the other buyer. Since this statement from the realtor is almost certainly a lie, it will cause them to have to explain to their client why the only buyer around has pulled their offer.”
More at Redfin’s Real Estate forums
The Boom Follows the Boomers…DC Housing Insiders Say Downtown Prices Will Hold Up
MB: Predictions for a year from now? Are we going to be sitting here talking about another 20 percent appreciation?
JB: I think there’s going to be a healthy seven to ten percent growth. There is a strong, healthy market here, and you have a lot of well qualified buyers who have a lot of cash.MB: You do not think it is going to stop?
JB: It has stopped in other markets already. People forget what happened after September 11? You couldn’t give away an $800,000 house in Washington D.C. for a year. Take Columbia Heights for example. You have a lot of people who bought $350,000 condos and wanted to sell them for $450,000, but you can buy a house for $355,000. It makes no sense. That is a clear example of a housing imbalance. Where you have good housing stock at a fair market price, you will have willing buyers. That is what makes this market very healthy.MB: What is the price per-square-foot in your various markets?
JB: The price per square foot in Georgetown is $753 but a luxury condominium in Georgetown is about $1,000. In Kalorama, it is around the $650 to $700 market, and depending on renovation it can go as high as $750. Georgetown is about 20 to 25 percent more expensive than Kalorama. Logan Circle is comparable to Georgetown and Kalorama. The condo price per square foot could be as high as $700 to $900, and Capitol Hill is getting up there, too.
CM: I have a different market them what is going on downtown. I don’t see that much appreciation next year, maybe four to six percent. There is a possibility that we might get a bump because of the construction costs, because of Katrina. I also believe that the big builders are going to divert resources. Right now they artificially keep up their supply and demand by only allowing so many houses to be sold per month because they don’t want to get too far out and they don’t have the production capacity to build any more. Because the developers are national, houses are built in factories, and are shipped and assembled on site. I think they are going to take some of that capacity away from those projects and use that to deal with Katrina rebuilding. The effect may be a bigger housing shortage, but I also see that there is an affordability problem. When our average price of a home is over $550,000 and the mean is over $600,000 in Fairfax County, some people find it very difficult to afford housing. Even though I work on the luxury end of the market place, it still all trickles up. Long term, we’re going to go up. Short term, I don’t know if we’re going to have as great as an appreciation as we have had over the past few years.MB: And what about square footage?
CM: We’re at $250 to $300 a square foot for houses and $500 per square foot for luxury homes. That is construction price, not including land. The lots are going anywhere from $500,000 on the low end to over $1 million.
JF: My market is different because we operate in scarcity of single family homes. Chevy Chase has a building moratorium that is going to further tighten the supply. Builders are not going to want to go in there and take the risk of knocking a house down and putting up a big house. The few houses that do come on in the market are going to continue to appreciate because there is no place to go. In the last three years, the price per square foot for land has gone from $315 to $750 to $800 in prime locations. If you want to buy something in Edgemoore you are at $2 million, and that’s a tear down. In terms of the condo market, unlike Northern Virginia, we are under built to an extreme. The Adagio, in downtown Bethesda, came on the market with 90 units and sold out in two weeks with a waiting list of 3,000 people. According to the last Census report baby boomers represent 52 percent of our market in the Washington metropolitan area. The last baby boomer will turn 55 in 2020. What do boomers want to buy? They want to buy downtown locations, water properties, golf communities—any kind of a second home market. Follow the boomer and you will make money….”More at Washington Life.
Lord Acton on the Rule of the Unfit
Comment:
And of all classes, “the ruling classes” are usually the least fit. Now, who are the ruling classes today?
Some would say capitalists and corporate leaders.
Here at The Mind Body Politic, where we claim to look more deeply than others into the innards of the political organism, we demur. Our capitalists (that is, the few that remain so among the many more who’ve turned into technocrats) are ruled themselves.
Only look around. Open The Wall Street Journal - Vox Capitis - and check for yourself. Out tumble words and phrases that might as well have come from the Soviet Politburo…. and all of them as soiled, over-handled and badly-fitting as spandex tights in a thrift store: the public good……. democracy… women’s rights…. the national interest….
Now, when have any of these meant anything other than whatever it is any speaker chooses them to mean? (Note: we don’t object to any of these things. We just object to the way these terms are roped into the pursuit of just about any political or economic goal - including those diametrically opposite of the terms themselves”. Remember that “women’s rights’ were a reason we bombed Iraq and Iraqi women and children; we censor political speech for “the public good,” and we want to remake the world “in the national interest.” )
And who, may we ask, shines up these second-hand souvenirs to foist on the average uncritical citizen?
Is it leaders of business….or leaders of opinion ?
My bet is the latter. Over-exposed academics, under-educated journalists, and the whole tribe of professionals experts, prolix pundits and cacophonous commentators who eat up band-width around the planet…..
These are the leaders…as well as the followers…of public opinion.
And it’s public opinion, that great uncouth, whiskered, whisky-soused, splay-footed, smelly-arm-pitted tramp who leads us all around by the nose. High-browed or low-browed, we’re brow-beaten.. one and all… by the chatter of the chattering classes.
Barack Wooster and the Revenge of Jeremiah Jeeves…
“The usual Jeeves story is as follows: Bertie gets in hot water, goes bleating to Jeeves, who brings to bear his infinite sagacity to rescue his master. While doing so, he also extracts a victory of sorts — making Bertie give up something — now a jacket, now a tie, another time his moustache! The story ends with a restored Bertie Wooster calling for a restorative brandy and soda, only to find the effects already at his elbow. Jeeves is perfect.
Unsuitable romantic dalliances are one thing, calling for no more than minor strictures as above, but a permanent change in the status-quo is a different matter altogether. In such instances, Jeeves can be ruthless, as when Wooster contemplates having his sister and her three daughters move in with him (”it will be nice to hear the pitter-patter of little feet about the place, Jeeves“, or words to that effect). Jeeves realizes that immediate and salutary measures are called for. In an unforgettable episode (the only one written in Jeeves’ hand rather than Wooster’s), he puts Bertie before an audience of schoolgirls, from which Wooster emerges a chastened man, cured of his illusions about how charming the young ladies are.
Something similar occurred last month, when Sen. Bertie Wooster (D-IL) was asked about a ripe idea (assumed, naturally, to have emanated from Jeeves). Instead of paying tribute to the great man (”from the collar upward, he stands alone” would have been mot juste), he instead chose to take the tack of I was reluctantly compelled to hand the misguided blighter the mitten……”
Read the rest at Niranjan Ramakrishna’s blogogram.
My Comment (posted at blogogram):
Hey Niranjan -
Good piece. Barack as Bertie, I’ll let fly. But Jeremiah is not Jeeves. He’s some one much more tyrannical and pompous. I’d say, Sir Roderick Spode.
For those who don’t know Wodehouse, here’s a profile of Spode from wiki:
“Spode….. marches his followers around London and the countryside, preaching loudly to the public on the dissoluteness of modern society until a heckler hits him in the eye with a potato….”
And how does Jeeves deflate Spode?
“Before Spode inherited the title of Earl of Sidcup from his uncle, he made a living as the “founder and proprietor of the emporium in Bond Street known as Eulalie Soeurs”, a famed designer of ladies’ lingerie.[1] Out of embarrassment, Spode had long attempted to keep his ownership of the business a secret, though Jeeves discovered the fact in the Junior Ganymede Club’s official Book, where one of Spode’s former valets had inscribed it. In The Code of the Woosters, this discovery allowed Bertie to threaten Spode with public embarrassment and prevent being coshed: as Bertie says, “You can’t be a successful Dictator and design women’s underclothing. One or the other. Not both.” Indeed, whenever Bertie mentions the name “Eulalie” throughout the book, Spode instantly becomes meek and acquiescing….”
Indian reverse harassment cases ending in suicide….
According to the National Crime Bureau of India, more than 15000 husbands have committed suicide after harassment by their wives . Rajesh Hasmukh Desai (November 2006) , Pushkar Singh (February 2008) and Rakesh Sheth (March 2008) are a few.
And in Sheth’s case, the wife was not arrested.
And another case cited on the message board of rediff.com:
“I know of this case in Mumbai.I had mentally predicted knowing the girls family as well as the boy that the so called love marriage would be on the rocks soon.The boy a brilliant software engineer from a traditional family, it appears got enamoured only by her beauty and youth.The girls family was not really well to do but thought of the boy more like the goose that lays the golden egg.
True enough boy played the role of the proverbial goose that laid the golden egg -
somewhere along the line he realised that he was fattening his in laws at the cost of his own aged parents at Bangalore requiring constant medical attention-
he then makes the mistake of correcting his attitude towards his own parents and all hell breaks loose and he is rewarded with a 498A to him and his aged parents as well.
Alas the in laws have killed the golden goose with it…”The Only Way to Control Greedy Capitalists
“I agree with the sentiment that society’s problems can only be solved by a select group of individuals. However, I don’t believe this select group of people is composed of well-meaning politicians, but rather greedy capitalists. Both are self-serving, but while the politician cares only about your vote, the capitalist cares about your actual needs and wants. Furthermore, a politician only has to care towards the end of the election cycle, whereas a capitalist has to care at every moment a business transaction takes place. Ask yourself this question: in a world of greedy self-serving individuals, is society better off with more politicians or are we better off with more competing capitalists?
A free market’s fruits in a particular sector of the economy produce the optimal situation where product innovation increases dramatically, wages increase proportionally, and prices lower substantially. After time, the price, product and wages in a particular sector will plateau and entrepreneurs will look elsewhere for unexploited vistas where the cycle of better products, lower prices, and higher wages begin anew.
So yes, a capitalist only cares about himself, but by extension he must care for the customer – lots of them, or someone else will. Part of that customer care is hiring the right people, and to attract them, he must care about their needs too or some other employer will.
If you want the capitalist to care about the people, if you want the capitalist to pay his employees higher wages, I have one piece of advice – compete with him…..”
More at Lew Rockwell by Todd Steinberg.
The Unfree Web: Malaysian Blogger Charged with Sedition
“Take note of what’s been happening in Malaysia these past few days since popular blogger and political commentator Raja Petra Kamarudin, 58, was imprisoned on Tuesday after a trial which saw him charged with sedition for having written a blog post.
If the Malaysian government was truly worried about bloggers effecting social unrest, now they have it. Remember, this is a country where any politician worth their mutton—Jeff Ooi was one of several Malaysians who rode their blog and calls for reform to Parliament in recent elections—has a blog, and even the old goats now blog too.
Ex-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has a highly-read blog, as does PM hopeful Anwar Ibrahim.
“They set up their blogs, and they try to close down our blogs.”
Raja is one of the sharpest voices both online and off in Malaysia, so it’s highly suggested you check out his statements to the public right after his sentencing, lbogged by Malaysian citizen media stronghold, Malaysiakini.
More at Global Voices Online
Comment:
Over here in the US, there’s always a chorus of voices in defense of every moron’s right to exhibit his moronity (yes, it is a word) in public….in defense of spam, porn, and of course the non-stop invasion of the privacy of the privates of the Brittany-Paris posse…..which is presumed to have no rights, least of all to sympathy, being made up of the rich, the blonde and the giddy.
But the real defense of free speech usually has few cheerleaders.
On Iraq, on Palestine, on racial issues, on the war between the sexes, on religious belief and the state, on terrorism, on any of the most important issues around, the rule in the mainstream media is doublespeak and slogans. And it’s not much better in the alternative press.
Abroad the threat of jail time lends some dignity to political bloggers. Here we only get sentenced to not being read.
Crude Oil Decoupling from the US Dollar
“Crude oil has detached itself from movement in the US dollar. Movement in crude oil prices suggest that the options markets has a big role to play and a part of the rise in crude oil is attributed to covering by option sellers. Frankly, very few traders and investors expected crude oil prices to rise near $125 at this time of the year. Long term investors will exit their investments once crude oil breaks $150 as incremental returns will fall over $150. Investors have made over 100% returns when crude oil prices rose from $50 in early 2007 to now. Crude oil over $150, investors will not get 100% returns in twelve months once crude oil breaks $150. If crude oil prices float over $200 for a long time whether in 2009 or 2010, there will be real evidence of a global slowdown. Even emerging markets like
Chintan Karnani, Asian Metal Markets
Bernard Baruch On A Trading Myth..
Don’t try to buy at the bottom and sell at the top. It can’t be done except by liars. - Bernard Baruch
Goldman Predicts $200 Oil
Bloomberg, May 6
“Crude oil may rise to between $150 and $200 a barrel within two years as growth in supply fails to keep pace with increased demand from developing nations, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts led by Arjun N. Murti said in a report.”
Secretary Gates Announces New Key-log Pact: Cyber-War Without End, Amen…
“With that in mind, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently gave two sharp-edged speeches, one at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base, the other at West Point, each expressing his frustration with the slowness of the armed services to adapt to a counterinsurgency planet and to plan for the next war.
Now, there’s obviously nothing illogical about a country’s military preparing for future wars. That’s what it’s there for and every country has the right to defend itself. But it’s a different matter when you’re preparing for future “wars of choice” (which used to be called wars of aggression) — for the next war(s) on what our secretary of defense now calls the “the 21st century’s global commons.” By that, he means not just planet Earth in its entirety, but “space and cyberspace” as well. For the American military, it turns out, planning for a future “defense” of the United States means planning for planet-wide, over-the-horizon counterinsurgency. It will, of course, be done better, with a military that, as Gates put it, will no longer be “a smaller version of the Fulda Gap force.” (It was at the Fulda Gap, a German plain, that the U.S. military once expected to meet Soviet forces invading Europe in full-scale battle.)
So the secretary of defense is calling for more foreign-language training, a better “expeditionary culture,” and more nation building — you know, all that “hearts and minds” stuff. In essence, he accepts that the future of American war will, indeed, be in the Sadr Cities and Afghan backlands of the planet; or, as he says, that “the asymmetric battlefields of the 21st century” will be “the dominant combat environment in the decades to come.” And the American response will be high-tech indeed — all those unmanned aerial vehicles that he can’t stop talking about.
Gates describes our war-fighting future in this way: “What has been called the ‘Long War’ [i.e. Bush's War on Terror, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq] is likely to be many years of persistent, engaged combat all around the world in differing degrees of size and intensity. This generational campaign cannot be wished away or put on a timetable. There are no exit strategies.”
“There are no exit strategies.” That’s a line to roll around on your tongue for a while. It’s a fancy way of saying that the U.S. military is likely to be in one, two, many Sadr Cities for a long time to come. This is Gates’s ultimate insight as secretary of defense, and his response is to urge the military to plan for more and better of the same. For this we give the Pentagon almost a trillion dollars a year…..”
From Tomgram.
Comment:
Please note Secy. Gates’ promise of war in cyberspace .
In 1928, there was the pact to end all war (the Kellogg-Briand Pact). And now some 80 years later, out of the mouth of the secretary of defense, we have what amounts to a declaration of perpetual war; war that reaches into cyberspace, into your computer hard drive, into your innermost thoughts……like some sordid, key-logging snoop.
Yes, dear reader, as you read this humble missive, you too have become part of the great cyber-war-of- the -worlds; you too are a cyber-trooper, cyber-civilian, cyber-POW…… or cyber-kill…. as the case may be.
Whether you realize it or not.
The new frontier of the state’s aggression (actually, it’s always-and-forever frontier) is now your mind…your thoughts…indeed the space between your thoughts, from keystroke to silent keystroke…..
Fighting for Food: Mobs riot as food prices soar in Somalia….
“Down with those printing the fake money!” the young men yelled, denouncing the growing number of counterfeiters who have contributed to escalating prices. “Down with opportunists!”
The Mogadishu Traders’ Union said it decided Tuesday to again accept the old 1,000-shilling notes and ordered its private security units to enforce that at the city’s main Bakara market.
“We, the big traders, have already decided to accept the old note and today we want to tell other businesses also to accept the decision,” said Abas Mohamed Duale, deputy chairman of the union.
Protests and riots over rising food prices have recently hit other nations, including Haiti, Egypt, Cameroon and Burkina Faso. The price of rice and other staples has risen more than 40 percent since mid-2007.
The Asian Development Bank said Monday that a billion poor people in Asia need food aid to help cope with the skyrocketing prices.
Soaring fuel prices, growing demand from the burgeoning middle classes in India and China and poor weather have contributed to the jump in food prices worldwide, economists say. Africa has been particularly hard-hit.
In Mogadishu, the price of corn meal has more than doubled since January. Rice has risen during the same period from $26 to $47.50 for a 110-pound sack.
The cost of food has also been driven up by the plummeting Somali shilling, which has lost nearly half its value against the U.S. dollar this year because of growing insecurity and a market clogged with millions of counterfeit notes. The shilling has tumbled from about 17,000 to 30,000 per $1…..”
More from AP.
Voltaire on the link between beliefs and actions
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
-VoltaireVoltaire was talking about the church. But the dogma of the modern state is probably even more absurd.
Mumbai Madness: The World’s First Billion Dollar Home…
“Forbes estimated Ambani’s net worth at $43 billion in March. Reliance Industries was founded by Mukesh’s father, Dhirubhai Ambani, in 1966, and is India’s most valuable firm by market capitalization. The couple, who have three children, currently live in a 22-story Mumbai tower that the family has spent years remodeling to meet its needs.
Like many families with the means to do so, the Ambanis wanted to build a custom home. They consulted with architecture firms Perkins + Will and Hirsch Bedner Associates, the designers behind the Mandarin Oriental, based in Dallas and Los Angeles, respectively. Plans were then drawn up for what will be the world’s largest and most expensive home: a 27-story skyscraper in downtown Mumbai with a cost nearing $2 billion, says Thomas Johnson, director of marketing at Hirsch Bedner Associates. The architects and designers are creating as they go, altering floor plans, design elements and concepts as the build…”
with a hat tip to Kevin Duffy for the link.
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