Duvet-Dayz.com: use this bar code to access our RSS feeds and posts on your mobile phone
Archive for the 'Economics' Category
Quote of the day: Different minds
Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, 1884 - 1962, First Lady of the United States
continue reading…
Germany: How to burn 300 Million of Taxpayer’s money in a second
I guess everybody in the banking world around the globe has heard about the Lehman bankruptcy latest this Monday morning, everybody besides Germany’s largest government owned bank - KfW.
In an attempt to win the Darwin award for banks or by taking the name of the bank to literally (KfW - translated: Bank for Reconstruction), they transferred 300 Million Euros to already bankrupt Lehman during Monday. At the same time their government colleagues were closing the German Lehman subsidiary…
Continue reading…
Banking Crisis: The next domino stones are falling
Certainly when you were watching the news today or read a newspaper this morning you could not avoid learning that the next “most prominent” victims of the current banking crisis were biting the dust.
I was quite interesting what kind of nonsense was pushed around in the mainstream media to calm down Mr & Ms Jones concerns about their money in the bank - one commentator / self-proclaimed expert was even thickheaded enough to say that…
Continue reading…
Animation: The Banking system
As the FDIC has yesterday closed another bank (First Priority Bank) the eight US bank that failed this year, we thought maybe this series on the banking system might be inspiring.
It’s about 50min long and a mixture of animations and images. Anybody having a strong believe in the infallibility of our current economic systems and societies should be warned that this is not too positive about the banking system. Besides that with the…
Continue reading…
USA: Largest Wind Energy project approved
With prices of oil and natural gas skyrocketing, Texas, home to some of the largest US petroleum industry conglomerates, is already planning ahead of current boom times for a future that could turn this state into one of the World’s biggest producers of alternative energy.
Following Oil Billonaire T. Boone Pickens’ declaration of “going green” and his initial purchase of about 670 MW wind turbines from GE earlier this year, regulators have now (preliminary) approved a plan to invest about USD 5 Billion into the electrical grid infrastructure connecting new alternative / wind energy projects in the wind-rich West and the Panhandle to the urban areas of Texas.
According to the approved plan…
continue reading…
Data-Visualization: Oil prices 1861-2008
If every “close encounter” with a petrol station these days gets you into a bad mood and you slowly start believing these gas prices are from another planet, this diagram might not be helping either.
Forbes Magazine brushed up a chart with data from the Commodity Research Bureau and the US Department of Commerce showing the development of oil prices from 1861 to 2008. Data is charted in real prices (constant 2008 Dollar) and nominal.
When you look at this diagram it shows…
Continue reading…
US Credit Crisis: Fed borrowing shown as a chart
If you would like to see the “official version of how much money the Fed is pumping into banks and financial institutions recently, have a look at the chart below.
The gray shaded areas are times officially recognized as recessions. The underlying data is available at the St. Louis Fed web site together with a charting application that allows you to further customize the range and other parameters.
To better visualize the substantial change we have split the data into two charts:
The larger chart shows the borrowing from the FED for the period 1919 to 2007 and the smaller one data for 2008 only. As you can see during these almost 90 years borrowing remained continuously within a range of almost none to max 8 Billion USD per month.
Since the beginning of 2008 the numbers have drastically changed and are now at about 155 Billion USD per month. The monthly figures for 2008 in detail…
Continue reading…
Data Visualization: Impact of the Subprime Crisis
We always love the data visualizations from the New York Times. Their designers are really doing an outstanding job.
Yesterday they have published another great one on a topic that is very hard to visualize - a graphic showing how regions throughout the United States are hit differently by the Subprime Mortgage crisis and the level of foreclosures resulting from that.
More information and the full size graphics at the “New York Times”.
continue reading…
Shopping: Bear Stearns Memorabilia at Ebay
After the whole company went for a fire sales price to competitor J.P. Morgan many of the Bear Stearns employees that now fear loosing their jobs have started to part themselves from their valued memorabilia of the once highly reputable Wall Street firm.
When you search…
continue reading…
Recession: The Movie
The trailer for the latest movie from the producers of “The Iraq War”. Now playing at a theater near you.
continue reading…
