Originally uploaded by Matthew Smith aka LeaderByChoice.
Did you see the early episodes of “The Apprentice” where “The Donald” is walking through his casino? Instead of a wave, he acknowledged everyone by pointing to them.
US ‘could be going bankrupt’
July 17, 2006I came across this great article on the future of the US economy. Oddly enough, I didn’t find it in the US press, but the UK press. It’s quite enlightening and more than a little scary. The irresponsible “who cares about tomorrow” decisions of our government are compounding and will eventually reach a tipping point….
By Edmund Conway, Economics Editor
(Filed: 14/07/2006)
The United States is heading for bankruptcy, according to an extraordinary paper published by one of the key members of the country’s central bank.
A ballooning budget deficit and a pensions and welfare timebomb could send the economic superpower into insolvency, according to research by Professor Laurence Kotlikoff for the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, a leading constituent of the US Federal Reserve.
Prof Kotlikoff said that, by some measures, the US is already bankrupt. “To paraphrase the Oxford English Dictionary, is the United States at the end of its resources, exhausted, stripped bare, destitute, bereft, wanting in property, or wrecked in consequence of failure to pay its creditors,” he asked.
According to his central analysis, “the US government is, indeed, bankrupt, insofar as it will be unable to pay its creditors, who, in this context, are current and future generations to whom it has explicitly or implicitly promised future net payments of various kinds”.
The budget deficit in the US is not massive. The Bush administration this week cut its forecasts for the fiscal shortfall this year by almost a third, saying it will come in at 2.3pc of gross domestic product. This is smaller than most European countries – including the UK – which have deficits north of 3pc of GDP.
READ the full article here
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Foreclosure Listings help investors in cooling housing market
July 13, 2006Over the years, several Foreclosure listing services have popped up on the net. Unfortunately, most of these charge for usage, but some do provide Free Foreclosure Listings with no gimmicks and no registration.
One of the best is www.FreeForeclosureDatabase.com. Here users can access a thousands of foreclosure listings from all around the united states. There are Bank owned properties listed along with government owned properties. It’s a one stop source for all your foreclosure listings. If you haven’t already, check it out Http://www.freeForeclosureDatabase.com.
There was a great article in the WSJ on July 6th talking about this particular issue. Here’s an exerpt of that article written by Ruth Simmons…
Cooling Home Market Spurs
Interest in Foreclosure Sales
Rising interest rates and a cooling housing market are whetting the appetite of real-estate bargain hunters and fueling interest in Web sites that list homes in, or near, foreclosure.
Economists expect delinquencies and foreclosures to increase from today’s historically low levels. Nationwide, the percentage of home loans on which payments were past due fell to 4.41% on a seasonally adjusted basis in the first quarter, after rising to 4.70% in the fourth quarter of 2005, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
A variety of Web sites have sprung up to cater to home buyers and investors looking to purchase properties in or nearing foreclosure. They include RealtyTrac.com, which ranked seventh among real-estate Web sites in terms of unique visitors in May, according to comScore Media Metrix, a unit of comScore Networks Inc. Foreclosure.com, another popular offering, not only runs its own Web site, but also says it supplies data to more than 200 other Web sites.
You can browse the Web sites at no charge, but getting complete access requires a weekly or monthly fee, typically $40 to $50 a month.
Read the full article here (You’ll enjoy it, so check it out!)
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Posted by Smith
Bloody hand
July 12, 2006
Originally uploaded by Matthew Smith aka LeaderByChoice.
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Proof: Driving with cell phone as bad as driving drunk, possibly even worse…
July 11, 2006I hate drivers talking on cell phones. Usually, when I see someone do something stupid on the road I say to myself, “if you’d get off the f’n phone maybe you’d be able to merge without cutting people off, see the red light soon enough to stop, see the green light soon enough to go, drive in only one lane etc. etc.”
About 10% of the time, I’m wrong… the driver wasn’t on a phone afterall. The vast majority of the time, however, the bad, half dead to the world drivers are so caught up in a phone call of such importance that it couldn’t possibly wait and clearly must fully occupy the driver’s mind because their driving is stupid, unpredictable and dangerous.
Now there’s research that shows that driving with a cell phone is at least as bad as driving drunk and in many cases (like as the cause for accidents) even worse than driving drunk…
Driving with cell phone as bad as driving drunk, study says
By Tom Avril
The Philadelphia Inquirer
(MCT)
PHILADELPHIA – Drivers who talk on cell phones may be just as dangerous as those who drink.
That’s the sobering conclusion of a study published Thursday by University of Utah researchers who monitored 40 men and women on a driving simulator.
And drivers using hands-free phones were no better than those with the hand held variety, confirming previous studies.
The findings, published in the journal Human Factors, represent a direct blow at a popular pastime that is taken for granted by millions of multitasking drivers.
At any given moment during the day, 10 percent of drivers on U.S. roads are gabbing away on their wireless devices, according to a 2005 estimate by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Bad idea, said psychologist Frank A. Drews, one of the Utah study’s authors.
“It’s kind of almost unpredictable how they are driving,” Drews said.
When using cell phones, drivers had slower reaction times and more accidents, and they drove inconsistently, sometimes approaching other cars then falling back, he said.
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Aaron’s site..
July 1, 2006I heard that some people have had trouble finding Aaron’s site due to some domain changes I made a few months ago. The reason I changed domains was because I was trying to find a permanent home for the site.
I updated his site today with some video taken from the get together after the memorial service. There’s some great stuff there. I’d encourage everyone to take a look. (special thanks to Lindsay for videotaping that night).
The permanent home is www.AaronPatrickSmith.com
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UnbrandAmerica.org: my contribution
July 1, 2006I was quite pleased the other day that I was able to use my domainer skills (and our incredible system at DomainersEdge.com) to secure a domain that The Adbusters Foundation had inadvertently let expire. After winning the domain in auction, I gave it back to Adbusters. That was two days ago. It’s good to see them using the domain already. Below is an email I received earlier this evening. Be sure do give it a “digg” and watch the google video… you’ll see the domain name, UnbrandAmerica.org, at the end of the video.
Jammers and Cultural Creatives,As Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp buys Myspace, Google sells
free speech off to the highest bidder, and the US Senate bows to
pressure to undermine net neutrality, the web has become a key arena in
which creeping corporatism threatens civil life. So let’s use the very
thing these corporations are trying to kill: the open and democratic
nature of the internet.
Americans of all political stripes are asking: is this my America
anymore? Along with the picnics and fireworks and Corporate American
Flags, what can jammers do to express their resistance and help take
America back?
This July 4th, help spread the meme. Help Unbrand America.
DIGG IT! DIGG.COM
LINK TO IT ! GOOGLE or YOUTUBE
DOWNLOAD IT! ABTV
FORWARD IT! Send this to a friend.
WWW.ADBUSTERS.ORG
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