Losing $63 Billion to Gray Market – P&G sells the same bleach and diapers to distributors in the US and Honduras, at wildly different prices. Enterprising Central American businessmen then re-ship goods to US making a tidy profit. This is a gray market? Sounds like a free market to me! Industry isn't "losing" $63B, they're just not being allowed to cheat their American customers. Remember how in capitalism competition is supposed to drive the cost of goods to the cost of production? Where were these guys in Econ 101? (tagged: economicstradepolicy )
Britain’s Antiterror Officer Resigns – The prevalence of citizen collected surveillance, whether it be news media or cell-phone videos has made it clear what a bunch of liars the Authorities are. When given the chance to cover their own asses by abusing the institutionalized trust we have in them, they seem almost always to do so. The cameras are here. They are ubiquitous. They are not going away. They might as well record the cops. (tagged: transparencysecuritypoliceterrorismsurveillancemedia )
Sabotage suspected in widespread phone outage in Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties – Two targeted snips of fiber optic cables in the south bay have cut off hundreds of thousands of people from cell, landline, and network connectivity, including 911 access. Working hypothesis: disgruntled union workers, upset at the fact that contract negotiations are ongoing after expiration this Saturday. How fragile our little world is it seems. (tagged: terrorismsecuritytechnologyinternet )
Privacy and the Fourth Amendment – Our laws, or at least, our interpretations of them, desperately need to be updated to deal with information and privacy in a computer mediated world. What will be the framing cases, and how will they shake out? Apparently the warrantless wiretapping wasn't a big enough scandal to get us paying attention. Terrifying to imagine what it will take. (tagged: privacylawsecuritytechnology )
The Quiet Coup – A withering op-ed by Simon Johnson on the policy disaster that is our financial sector. But he's still not willing to re-evaluate the underlying premise of perpetually debt fueled exponential economic growth. How, exactly, was this all supposed to work out? (tagged: politicseconomicsfinancebailoutcrisispolicybankingimf )
MASHSF – Fixies gone wild. Not my kind of riding, but hey, someone's having a good time! Looks like they're making a movie. (tagged: bicyclefixievideocycling )
Simon Johnson of the IMF on the ongoing financial bailouts – Simon Johnson works for the IMF, and what he sees in the US approach to its financial crisis is much more similar to say, Indonesia or Russia, than a "normal" developed world economic mess. He sees a clash between the government, and an oligarchy, in which currently, the oligarchy is winning. Hopefully we'll get our act together here… as the IMF isn't going to be stepping in anytime soon. (tagged: financialeconomypbsmoyerscrisiseconomicspoliticsgeithnerimf )