Archive for January 16th, 2009
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Zimbabwe is introducing a Z$100 trillion note, currently worth about US$30 (£20), state media reports.
Other notes in trillion-dollar denominations of 10, 20 and 50 are also being released to help Zimbabweans cope with hyperinflation.
However, the dollarisation of the economy means that few products are available in the local currency.
On Thursday, the opposition leader said he was still committed to power-sharing intended to rescue the failing economy.
Since September, when the deal was signed, talks have stalled over who should control key ministries.
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai said he was due to hold talks with President Robert Mugabe “within this coming week” to try to resolve the political crisis.
He described Mr Mugabe as “part of the problem but also part of the solution”.
The latest annual figure for inflation, estimated in July last year, was 231m% – the world’s highest.
High prices
“In a move meant to ensure that the public has access to their money from banks, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has introduced a new family of banknotes which will gradually come into circulation, starting with the Z$10 trillion,” Zimbabwe’s state-run Herald newspaper quotes a bank statement as saying.
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Zimbabwe is introducing a Z$100 trillion note, currently worth about US$30 (£20), state media reports.
Other notes in trillion-dollar denominations of 10, 20 and 50 are also being released to help Zimbabweans cope with hyperinflation.
However, the dollarisation of the economy means that few products are available in the local currency.
On Thursday, the opposition leader said he was still committed to power-sharing intended to rescue the failing economy.
Since September, when the deal was signed, talks have stalled over who should control key ministries.
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai said he was due to hold talks with President Robert Mugabe “within this coming week” to try to resolve the political crisis.
He described Mr Mugabe as “part of the problem but also part of the solution”.
The latest annual figure for inflation, estimated in July last year, was 231m% – the world’s highest.
High prices
“In a move meant to ensure that the public has access to their money from banks, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has introduced a new family of banknotes which will gradually come into circulation, starting with the Z$10 trillion,” Zimbabwe’s state-run Herald newspaper quotes a bank statement as saying.
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The Toll of Iraq – TIME
Posted on: January 16, 2009
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Except for a brief spike at the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, President Bush’s approval rating has seen a steady decline that is clearly inversely related to the rise in the total death toll of U.S. forces serving in Iraq. His standing certainly hasn’t been helped by the continuinig Iraqi civilian death toll, though the number of casualties has clearly fallen since the U.S. surge began last year.
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John Maynard Keynes, the trendiest dead economist of this apocalyptic moment, was the godfather of government stimulus. Keynes had the radical idea that throwing money at recessions through aggressive deficit spending would resuscitate flatlined economies — and he wasn’t too particular about where the money was thrown. In the depths of the Depression, he suggested that the Treasury could “fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal mines” then sit back and watch a money-mining boom create jobs and prosperity. “It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like,” he wrote, but “the above would be better than nothing.”
As President-elect Barack Obama prepares to throw money at the current downturn — a stimulus package starting at about $800 billion, plus the second $350 billion chunk of the financial bailout — we all really do seem to be Keynesians now. Just about every expert agrees that pumping $1 trillion into a moribund economy will rev up the ethereal goods-and-services engine that Keynes called “aggregate demand” and stimulate at least some short-term activity, even if it is all wasted on money pits. (See pictures of the recession of 1958.)
But Keynes was also right that there would be more sensible ways to spend it. There would also be less sensible ways to spend it. A trillion dollars’ worth of bad ideas — sprawl-inducing highways and bridges to nowhere, ethanol plants and pipelines that accelerate global warming, tax breaks for overleveraged McMansion builders and burdensome new long-term federal entitlements — would be worse than mere waste. It would be smarter to buy every American an iPod, a set of Ginsu knives and 600 Subway foot-longs.
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John Maynard Keynes, the trendiest dead economist of this apocalyptic moment, was the godfather of government stimulus. Keynes had the radical idea that throwing money at recessions through aggressive deficit spending would resuscitate flatlined economies — and he wasn’t too particular about where the money was thrown. In the depths of the Depression, he suggested that the Treasury could “fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal mines” then sit back and watch a money-mining boom create jobs and prosperity. “It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like,” he wrote, but “the above would be better than nothing.”
As President-elect Barack Obama prepares to throw money at the current downturn — a stimulus package starting at about $800 billion, plus the second $350 billion chunk of the financial bailout — we all really do seem to be Keynesians now. Just about every expert agrees that pumping $1 trillion into a moribund economy will rev up the ethereal goods-and-services engine that Keynes called “aggregate demand” and stimulate at least some short-term activity, even if it is all wasted on money pits. (See pictures of the recession of 1958.)
But Keynes was also right that there would be more sensible ways to spend it. There would also be less sensible ways to spend it. A trillion dollars’ worth of bad ideas — sprawl-inducing highways and bridges to nowhere, ethanol plants and pipelines that accelerate global warming, tax breaks for overleveraged McMansion builders and burdensome new long-term federal entitlements — would be worse than mere waste. It would be smarter to buy every American an iPod, a set of Ginsu knives and 600 Subway foot-longs.
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A former executive producer at ABC’s Good Morning America and a senior broadcast producer at NBC Nightly News, Ben Sherwood has written a new book, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science That Could Save Your Life, that discusses, among other things, what you can do to survive a plane crash. Sherwood talked to TIME shortly after a US Airways flight made a crash landing in the Hudson River. (See pictures of the Hudson River plane crash.)
It seems that all the people got off this flight safely. That’s sort of shocking, isn’t it?
I write in The Survivors Club about the “myth of hopelessness.” People think that all plane crashes are fatal. That’s because of TWA 800 and Egypt Air and ValuJet and Pan Am 103 and all these other flight names and numbers that are emblazoned in our mind because everybody died. But in fact, if you look at the last two major incidents involving passenger jets in the United States, in Denver and now this one — I’m assuming from the CNN reporting that they think everyone is safe — but in both of the major incidents, the plane that went off the runway in Denver and this incident, you’ve got very, very high survival rates: 100% in Denver — with some injuries, obviously — and what looks like 100% here. People generally believe that no one survives a plane crash. But according to government data, 95.7% of the passengers involved in airplane crashes categorized as accidents actually survive. Then, if you look at the most serious plane crashes, that’s a smaller number; the survival rate in the most serious kinds of accidents is 76.6%. So the point there is, when the NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board] analyzed all the airplane accidents between 1983 and 2000, 53,000 people were involved in those accidents, and 51,000 survived. That’s an incredibly high survival rate.
Are you surprised that all the passengers seem to have gotten off the plane so quickly?
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LIMA (Reuters) – Peru’s top court has ruled that workers cannot be fired for being drunk on the job, a decision that was criticized by the government on Wednesday for setting a dangerous precedent.
The Constitutional Tribunal ordered that Pablo Cayo be given his job back as a janitor for the municipality of Chorrillos, which fired him for being intoxicated at work.
The firing was excessive because even though Cayo was drunk, he did not offend or hurt anybody, Fernando Calle, one of the justices, said on Wednesday.
Calle said the court would not revise its decision, despite complaints from the government.
“It’s not a good idea to relax rules at workplaces,” said Labor Minister Jorge Villasante.
Celso Becerra, the administrative chief of Chorrillos, a suburb of Lima, denounced the ruling.
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LIMA (Reuters) – Peru’s top court has ruled that workers cannot be fired for being drunk on the job, a decision that was criticized by the government on Wednesday for setting a dangerous precedent.
The Constitutional Tribunal ordered that Pablo Cayo be given his job back as a janitor for the municipality of Chorrillos, which fired him for being intoxicated at work.
The firing was excessive because even though Cayo was drunk, he did not offend or hurt anybody, Fernando Calle, one of the justices, said on Wednesday.
Calle said the court would not revise its decision, despite complaints from the government.
“It’s not a good idea to relax rules at workplaces,” said Labor Minister Jorge Villasante.
Celso Becerra, the administrative chief of Chorrillos, a suburb of Lima, denounced the ruling.
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I still haven’t tried the Windows 7 beta, but everywhere I look I see more and more people speaking very positively about it (our own Dave Freeman positively shines with happiness talking about it). Truth be told, I’m not very interested in operating systems these days: the overwhelming majority of things I use my computers for are done through my web browser, so the OS is becoming less and less relevant to me. I use Ubuntu, and am reasonably happy with it, but according to some Windows 7 will put the final nail in the coffin of desktop Linux.
Nick Farrell, over at the Inquirer, makes the bold claim that Windows 7 is enough to kill Linux on the desktop. I’m left a little perplexed about this claim after reading his thoughts, though. He enumerates a number of small hiccups he experienced, and doesn’t gush about Windows 7 as enthusiastically as the title suggests. Oh, I get it! He’s trolling!
If Microsoft had released Windows 7 instead of Vista there would have been no rise of Ubuntu or OSX. Now, alas, it is only a matter of time until people come back to the claws of [Microsoft]. The Linux crowd were too busy talking about their superiority on the server and ignored the desktop to the OS’s eventual doom. Windows 7 is as pretty as Apple stuff, just as easy to use, and does not treat you like a moron.
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There’s a post title I thought I’d never write. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, posted a video of her cats on her official YouTube page and then promptly RickRolls
viewers at the 37 second mark.
“In honor of the launch of http://YouTube.com/HouseHub, Speaker Pelosi presents a behind the scenes view of the Speaker’s Office in the US Capitol.”
This is the person who becomes President of the United States of America if the right two people go down.
I’m moving to Canada. Thanks for the tip Michael.
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