Category: Business

  • An Actuarial Nightmare: GAO Comptroller on 60 Minutes

    Ignore the intro and outro music. [youtube]KGpY2hw7ao8[/youtube]

  • Only 2 Countries Allow Drug Ads on TV

    Talk to your doctor: Q: How many countries in the world allow prescription drug commercials on television? A: 2. Q: Which ones? A; The U.S. and New Zealand.

  • Average US Incomes Still Below 2000 Peak, Rich Get Richer

    But the Dow…? But isn’t it a good thing? You mean wages have been stagnant? That’s unpossible! Total income listed on tax returns grew every year after World War II, with a single one-year exception, until 2001, making the five-year period of lower average incomes and four years of lower total incomes a new experience […]

  • How the Gap Screwed Up

    Consumerist asked for feedback to present to the Gap – summary: Gap sells boring, low quality clothes at prices that are not competitive. The customer service is poor. The materials used are substandard compared to what can be purchased for the same amount of money at other retailers. The sizes are inconsistent. The styles are […]

  • Mortgage Meltdown – Just Blame the Victims?

    From The Agonist: As we do figure out how to handle this problem, however, we should recall that most people borrowed money to have a place to live–not as a means of cashing in on the country’s housing price boom. And the boom made the American dream of owning your home that much riskier. While […]

  • São Paulo Bans Outdoor Advertising

    I would love it if Chicago did this, it would make the entire cityscape less noisy: Excitingly, a new city seems to be emerging from behind the advertising. The siting of billboards generally went unregulated, and many poor people readily accepted cash to have a poster site in their gardens or even in front of […]

  • GE Bails Out of Sub-Prime Market

    (via Reddit) General Electric (GE), the US conglomerate, confirmed today that it is offloading its sub-prime mortgage business as American-based banks increase the number of foreclosures (or repossessions) on homeowners with a poor credit history.

  • Wal-Mart Cashes In On Dead Employees

    I’m assuming this includes Sam: When Karen Armatrout died in 1997, her employer, Wal-Mart, collected thousands of dollars on a life insurance policy the retail giant had taken out without telling her, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court. Armatrout was one of about 350,000 employees Wal-Mart secretly insured nationwide, said Texas attorney […]

  • Texas's Healthcare Implosion

    From USA Today: “Texas is the case study for system implosion,” says neurosurgeon Guy Clifton, founder of the Houston-area group Save Our ERs. The problems here, as elsewhere, are many. Small employers are dropping health coverage. Federal and state subsidies don’t make up the difference. Illegal immigrants represent 21% of the county’s public caseload, even […]

  • The Super-Rich Have a Debt to Society

    From the UK’s Guardian: The super-rich have a responsibility to the morale of society and also – more acutely – to the environment. The spending of these newly acquired fortunes on private planes and helicopters for instance, or on the construction of golf courses, such as the one planned for the rich by Clint Eastwood […]