Ramadan starts today,  Friday, the 21st of August, and will continue for 30 days until Saturday, the 19th of September. Muslims are called upon to

By Jason Kelly and Jonathan Keehner U.S. pension funds contributed to the record $1.2 trillion that private-equity firms raised this decade. Three of the biggest

Warren Bamford, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Boston, said Tuesday that he is baffled by opposition to a proposal to give

By Diana Furchtgott-Roth Buried in the 1,017 pages of the House Democrats’ health-care bill is a little-noticed provision that for the first time could give

Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley Mayor Michael Nutter said the clock is counting down to the implementation of a devastating ‘doomsday budget’ in Philadelphia. During

How do the current deficits compare with past administrations? And how did the national debt get so big anyway? This video tries to answer those

Jackson Hole Every year, the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank sponsors a meeting of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The 2009 event starts tonight.

View Full Size Chart of The Day: Credit May Crunch Again Before Getting Back To Normal

Having received another repayment, I just made my next loan at Kiva.org to an entrepreneur in Palestine starting a grocery store. Learn more about the

By Ed Mendel The CalPERS chief actuary says pension costs are “unsustainable,” and the giant public employee pension system plans to meet with stakeholders to

By William Selway JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to lend California $1.5 billion, a cash infusion that will allow the most-populous U.S. state to stop

The “Impossible” Healthcare Solution: Go Back to Cash Here are the costs of childbirth as of 1952 at one of the finest hospitals on the

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by Meg White I don’t like it when scientists feel the need to explain that they’re scared out of their wits, or use exclamation marks.

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Water Color by Lesta Frank By Anne Stuhldreher …Unless, that is, you’re friends with someone like Maria del Carmen Torres. In between serving up pupusas

Target, Burlington, MA By Eric Janszen The first half of 2009 goes like this: 1. After Christmas sales: 20% to 50% off 2. Liquidation sales:

If you planned to check out a library book, visit a city clinic or have your garbage picked up on Monday, you’re out of luck.

If nuclear weapons exist, then nuclear war is a real possibility. And Delhi is a prime target. It is. But where shall we go? Is

By Rebecca Smith Only a third of nurses have said they are willing to have the vaccine against swine flu amid fears it has not

Sir! No Sir! Sir! No Sir! is a documentary produced, and written by David Zeiger  about the opposition to the Viet Nam War in military

Thank you for all of your wonderful comments at the blog. Alas, not all those commenting had the readers and our best interests at heart.

The Lockheed Fire in Santa Cruz was one of nine big wildfires burning more than 100,000 acres in California last week. It was named after

The 2008 GAAP-based deficit (counting unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities, etc.), using accrual accounting, was $5.1 trillion, up from $1.2 trillion ($4 trillion-plus, using

By Daniel Whitten and Simon Lomax The U.S. Senate should abandon efforts to pass legislation curbing greenhouse-gas emissions this year and concentrate on a narrower

Congressman Paul Broun (R-Ga) also spoke of a “socialistic elite” – Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid – who might

Dear Senator Boxer: You were so right on when you scolded the general on TV for using the term, “ma’am,” instead of “Senator”. After all,

By Laurence Gonzales As a journalist, I’ve been writing about accidents for more than thirty years. In the last 15 or so years, I’ve concentrated

By David Liechty On December 23, 1913, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act (ch. 6, 38 Stat. 251) and again fundamentally changed the monetary structure

“”A lie keeps growing and growing until it’s as plain as the nose on your face.” I keep getting e-mails that militia are on the

Nothing would please Bernanke and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York more than to see both low long term yields and higher highs in

A friend of mine who has worked in the prison system tells me that the prisoners say the way to tell when the economy is

By Peter Whoriskey Hate car salesmen? Want to skip the test drive? General Motors has some cars to show you. The government-rescued automaker announced on

The Case-Shiller has been signalling an improvement in the second derivative of housing prices for a few months, and in the latest report it even

By Joe Weisenthal and Kamelia Angelova Hopefully deficits don’t matter, because if they do, then boy are we screwed. Today’s chart was put together by

By Richard Milne in Amsterdam Manufacturers are abandoning global supply chains for regional ones in a big shift brought about by the financial crisis and

Secret Office, at The General Post-Office Welcome to John Potter’s world. He’s the nation’s postmaster general. Yes, that’s right: for the last nine years, he

When Mexico Had the Blues: A Transatlantic Tale of Bonds, Bankers, and Nationalists, 1862–1910 By Steven C. Topick As Joseph Schumpeter lyrically described the broader

By Gretchen Morgenson and Don Van Natta Jr. Before he became President George W. Bush’s Treasury secretary in 2006, Henry M. Paulson Jr. agreed to

Southern Presidential Peaks By Gary Tompkins By Catherine Austin Fitts As a child, my summers were spent hiking in the White Mountains (New Hampshire). My

“Our goal was to find out whether we could program DNA to assemble into shapes that exhibit custom curvature or twist, with features just a

The United States on Thursday issued new rules on oil market manipulation that prohibits market players from providing misleading information to influence prices. The Federal

Deutsche Bundesbank Germany’s gold is in U.S. custody, Bundesbank confirms. Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: International journalist Max Keiser has just posted a nine-minute

From Wikipedia The South Atlantic Anomaly (or SAA) is the region where Earth’s inner Van Allen radiation belt makes its closest approach to the planet’s

By Brody Mullins Congress plans to spend $550 million to buy eight jets, a substantial upgrade to the fleet used by federal officials at a

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By Charles Abbott For the first time, more than 34 million Americans received food stamps, which help poor people buy groceries, government figures said on

The picture above is an article about allegations of sex slave trafficking relating to a defense government contractor named DynCorp. I became interested in DynCorp

By Joe Weisenthal and Kamelia Angelova The severe bloodletting in the construction industry is slowly waning. The pace of layoffs is coming well off its

Russian Nuclear-powered Submarine By Mark Mazzeti and Thom Shanker A pair of nuclear-powered Russian attack submarines has been patrolling off the eastern seaboard of the

Penumbral Lunar Eclipse February 9, 2009 A penumbral lunar eclipse will take place on August 6, 2009, the third of four lunar eclipses in 2009.

Credit & Copyright: Barry & Noemi Diacon Continue reading Astronomy Picture of the Day

View full article at oftwominds.com So when you’re reading the news about how randomly careless and stupid everybody was, just remember the Argentine plan: all

At tipstrategies.com Go to the website to view an animated graphic of The Geography of Jobs between 2004 and 2009.

Photo: Moises Saman for The New York Times By Campbell Robertson Throughout the marshes, the reed gatherers, standing on land they once floated over, cry

President Barack Obama is nominating Robert Hormats, a vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, to a top economic position at the State Department. Hormats, 66,

Jackpot By Grant McCool  The report said bonuses for Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. were “substantially greater” than the

Our very own Susan Johann just took 1st place at the Artists Guild of Spartanburg with Winter Hydrangea. Susan Johann – Fine Art and Commercial

Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal has transmitted the following memorandum and proposed resolution on state sovereignty to the Wyoming Legislature’s Management Council. Continue Reading Wyoming Governor

Robert Orel Dean at Wikipedia

“Thriller” 1,500 plus inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in Cebu, Philippines practice Michael Jackson’s global mega hit, Thriller.

Why a Recovery May Still Feel Like a Recession New York Times (31 Jul 09)  The recession has produced declines far greater than in previous

One of the great mysteries surrounding the spread of GMO plants around the world since the first commercial crops were released in the early 1990’s