Andymatic

Category: Business

  • Sun-Times: 14 out of 14 Red Snappers Were Fake

    And might have just been tilapia: The newspaper had DNA tests done on sushi described as red snapper or “Japanese red snapper” bought from 14 restaurants in the city and suburbs. Not a single one was really red snapper. In most cases, the red-tinged flesh draped across the small mound of rice was tilapia — […]

  • Melamine Now Found in Human Food via Poultry and Pork

    Did I call this 4 weeks ago or what? The Food and Drug Administration is enforcing a new import alert that greatly expands its curtailment of some food ingredients imported from China, authorizing border inspectors to detain ingredients used in everything from noodles to breakfast bars. The FDA has also announced that melamine laced products […]

  • China Discovers 2.2 Billion Barrels of Oil

    Now that’s leverage: China became a net oil importer in the late 1990s and now is the world’s No. 2 consumer after the United States, and consumption last year rose another 9.3 percent to 2.4 billion barrels. Imports in 2006 surged by 16.9 percent and accounted for 47 percent of consumption, while domestic production edged […]

  • Palast, Goodman, Hightower, Economic Hit Man and More!

    Heads up pinko-commies: The Green Festival hits Chicago this weekend. I’m very excited now that I’ve seen the lineup and will at least go to hear Goodman and Palast.

  • Getting Things Undone

    T writes about productivity, lack thereof and other under- and over-whelmances: Part of it is also a fear of mine: that if I do everything I’m supposed to do, when I’m supposed to do it, I won’t have any time left for the things I want to do. That and the realization that a lot […]

  • Auditing the Blockbuster Flop ‘Sahara'

    When we saw Sahara I didn’t quite get why it was so heavily promoted (we’d rented it). It just seemed so mediocre. Ten screenwriters were paid $3.8 million. $160-million production and $81.1 million in distribution expenses. 16 “gratuity” or “courtesy” payments were made throughout Morocco. Six of the expenditures were “local bribes” in the amount […]

  • Don't Listen to Jim Cramer

    Why you should never take Jim Cramer seriously. In 2006, however, when the performance of Cramer’s ravings relative to the market went south, he downplayed the idea that he could help viewers whip Wall Street, and, instead, said that he had “just one goal in mind—to help you make money.” According to one observer, he […]

  • Why U.S. tax policy makes saving a sucker's game

    Why U.S. tax policy makes saving a sucker’s game: For the first time since the Great Depression, the U.S. personal savings rate has “gone negative.” In 2005 and 2006, U.S. citizens spent more than they made. Economists disagree about just how ominous this is, but they generally agree on why it’s happening. Americans are “overspending.”

  • Subprime Lending Implosion and Ripping Off the Poor

    The Center for Responsible Lending estimates that between 1998 and 2006, about 1.4 million first-time home buyers purchased their homes using subprime loans. But the study also finds that the number of projected subprime foreclosures in that same period to be a whopping 2.4 million. This means subprime lending results in a net loss of […]

  • Chiquita Will Plead Guilty to Supporting Death Squads

    From Mefi: Chiquita will plead guilty to a count of doing business with a paramilitary group in Colombia. Chiquita has since sold the Colombian arm of its business. Thousands of Colombians have died in four decades of conflict involving the Farc, the AUC and other groups.