July 2010
35 posts
Real/not real
“The dream of the internet, Bruce Sterling once said, had been that you would ‘upload yourself into a computer and have this rapture of the nerds. It was a powerful fantasy of escaping the unbearable pressures of being human. But you find that when you escape one of these things you generally bring all your baggage with you.’ It was worse than that, actually: The Internet...
Too big to fail.
“A previously unreleased memorandum by the Congressional Research Service outlined ways that a bankruptcy filing by BP could disrupt the cleanup and compensation.
The letter…stated that economic and environmental claims would fall into line behind the company’s secured creditors as ‘nonpriority, unsecured claims,’ leaving much of the continuing cost of cleanup,...
Houston > Cayman Islands > Switzerland
Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon well, has kept business ties with Myanmar, Iran, and Syria-based companies. It’s being investigated by several (less whack) countries for various criminal abuses, including (duh) tax fraud.
The New York Times
Busted.
“The [OECD] report says unemployment is particularly acute in economies where a boom-bust pattern in the housing market has had a role in the subsequent recession, most notably Spain, the US and to a lesser extent, Ireland.”
The Globe and Mail
