The Joy of Trump
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Davos panel on 2014 global economic
Capitol Report
Heavyweight Davos panel on 2014 global economic outlook steals spotlight
January 25, 2014, 3:44 PM
A heavyweight Davos panel featuring several central bankers stole the spotlight Saturday, as attendees skipped a day on the slopes to hear about the global economic outlook for 2014.
Bloomberg
Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, speaks at Davos
The seven-person panel included the heads of the Bank of Japan, Bank of England and European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, as well as a lone voice from the private sector, BlackRock Inc. Chief Executive Laurence Fink. Other speakers included Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of India’s Planning Commission and Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s federal minister of finance.
Watch a video of the panel here.
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde discussed new risks to the global economy, which include the Federal Reserve’s plan to reduce monetary stimulus and deflation.
The risk from the Fed includes the speed at which the central bank slows the rate of its bond purchases, also called tapering, how the process is communicated, and the spillover effect on emerging-market, she said. Another new risk is the chance of deflation in the euro zone, she said, noting that the region’s inflation is “way below target,” according to Reuters.
ECB President Mario Draghi acknowledged the subdued rate of inflation and reiterated that the ECB was ready to ease further if needed.
The moderator, Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, introduced BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda as the “most exciting central banker in the world” at the moment.
Kuroda said he was “quite optimistic” about economic growth and Japan’s ability to meet its 2% inflation goal within two years, according to the BBC. He added that there’s still a way to go and there could be risks from Japan or other countries.
The BOE’s Mark Carney said stimulus still “remains very relevant,” according to the Reuters report. Carney said Friday at Davos that the BOE will update its forward guidance on interest rates in February as the unemployment rate has declined much faster than expected.
Forward guidance: BOE’s self-inflicted headache.
BlackRock’s Fink said recent volatility, evident across stocks and in emerging markets on Thursday and Friday, is here to stay. “The experience of the marketplace this past week is going to be indicative of this entire year,” he said, according to a report in Bloomberg News.
–Saumya Vaishampayan
Capitol Report is a round-up of news and analysis provided by MarketWatch reporters, editors and commentators based in our Washington, D.C bureau and throughout the U.S.
Follow us on Twitter: Follow @capitolreport
Rob Ford is wearing an Orlando Franklin Broncos jersey
By Rodger Sherman on Jan 27 2014
Rob Ford's Toronto-themed jersey selection.
Perhaps you have
heard of Rob Ford, the man who is somehow mayor of a major North
American city despite his drug use, constant drunkenness, occasional
racism, very public sexual statements and just generally being a huge
buffoon.
None of this is libelous, because all of this is real stuff
that has been documented as having happened. He was elected to public
office, and did that stuff. (He's also fat and makes a lot of funny
faces, which sometimes prevents people from getting elected to public
office, but that's neither here nor there.)
Since he's technically
the mayor of Toronto, he gave a press conference Tuesday to talk about
the city's budget.
Of course, he did that while wearing a Broncos
jersey:
Mayor Ford wearing Broncos jersey at budget media appearance
The world is again captivated by a media and police pursuit of a slow moving white Ford Bronco
Previously, on Rob Ford Football News:
More:
Tuesday, January 28, 2014
Disguise Leads To Freedom
Disguise Leads To Freedom For Former Slaves
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Using her light-skinned hue to her advantage, Ellen, a biracial slave born in 1826 in Georgia, figured that the best way to beat the slave holders in her region of the country was to, in a sense, join them.
Watch the Crafts’ story here:
So Craft cooked up a plan to to pose as a White slave owner by cutting her hair, adopting a man’s walking gait, and hiding the fact that she couldn’t read. All this with her “slave” in tow.
The plan allowed the Crafts to travel through the South to Philadelphia, where they arrived in the winter of 1848. They moved to Boston and became influential abolitionist speakers.
One would think that would be the heartwarming end to the Crafts story of ingenuity and bravery, but one would also be underestimating the brutality of the American slave system.
In 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law, which allowed slave masters to cross in to non-slaveholding areas to retrieve their “property.” The Crafts were forced to run to England but returned to Georgia after the Civil War.
Ellen Craft died in 1891 and William died nine years later.
The story of the Crafts is one of those great stories that has unfortunately slipped between the cracks of African-American history over time. It’s a shame.
We all know about Nat Turner, John Brown, and others who were willing to shed blood (including their own) for the cause of ending slavery. We all know about the bravery of Harriet Tubman and others who used the stars in the sky as a roadmap to freedom for the enslaved.
If we are lucky, someone in Hollywood or New York with deep pockets (Spike Lee, Oprah Winfrey, are you listening?) would throw some money behind a project to tell the Crafts’ story on a television or movie screen.
Told correctly, the movie could conjure up all the emotions of a slavery story like “Roots,” a love story, like “Mahogany” and a freedom story like “Glory.” And best of all, every word would be true.
Link: http://newsone.com/2027294/ellen-and-william-craft-fugitive-slaves/
Colgate Renames Racist ‘Darkie’ Toothpaste
Colgate Renames Racist ‘Darkie’ Toothpaste Sold In Asia On This Day In 1989
Comments: 0 | Leave A Comment
A toothpaste known as “Darkie,” featuring a smiling blackface performer as its logo, was sold for years in various parts of Asia. After pressure from various groups protesting the racist images, though, the companies responsible for bringing the product to market vowed to change the name of the product on this day in 1989.
The Darkie toothpaste was manufactured in Shanghai by the Hawley & Hazel Chemical Company, later moving to Hong Kong and Taiwan. The CEO of Hawley & Hazel designed the logo after seeing blackface performer Al Jolson, a White man, and thought it would be a great fit for marketing the idea of clean, shining teeth. The product was sold in relative obscurity until the mid-1980s when Colgate-Palmolive took over Hawley & Hazel.
Groups of African Americans, religious groups, and Colgate-Palmolive shareholders began to band together in banning the product. As reported by the New York Times, the chairman of Colgate-Palmolive at the time stated that the logo and name would be changed to reflect the company’s will to recognize the sensitive nature of the situation.
From the New York Times:
‘It’s just plain wrong,’ Reuben Mark, chairman and chief executive of Colgate-Palmolive, said about the toothpaste’s name and logotype. ‘It’s just offensive. The morally right thing dictated that we must change. What we have to do is find a way to change that is least damaging to the economic interests of our partners.’Changing the name from Darkie to “Darlie” didn’t seem to be much of a drastic change; for, while the logo did change to a smiling man of ambiguous racial background in a top hat, in Chinese, the world “darlie” means “black person,” according to Wikipedia.
The product, despite its infamous history, is still sold widely across Asia today, expanding into Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia. For many residents of Asia who buy the product, the offensive nature of toothpaste has not been an issue for most, according to reports.
Link: http://wchbnewsdetroit.com/3078767/colgate-renames-racist-darkie-toothpaste-sold-in-asia-on-this-day-in-1989/
Saturday, January 18, 2014
Truck Driver
Video|6:22
Running on Fumes in North Dakota
A young woman, lured to North Dakota for a truck-driving job in the oil industry, shares her agonizing existence in an isolated boom town.
Op-Docs
By LEWIS WILCOX, JAMES CHRISTENSON, ELIOT POPKO and JONAH SARGENT
Since around 2006, North Dakota’s oil boom has been a beacon for recession-ravaged Americans. The oil towns in the western part of the state are a land of possibility and opportunity, a “Kuwait on the prairie,” where the American Dream is alive and well in the rural heartland. Or at least that’s the sales pitch that has lured thousands of job seekers.
But Jonnie Cassens, a 38-year-old truck driver who is the subject of this Op-Doc video, offers a different perspective. Unable to find decent work on the West Coast, she moved to North Dakota carrying unpaid hospital bills, student loans and a commercial driver’s license. It was easy for her to get a job in the oil industry, as a contract “hotshot” truck driver — basically a round-the-clock special-delivery driver. When a rig or a pump jack breaks down, a hotshot is called to rush a new part out to a site, often in very remote areas. Jonnie calls it “U.P.S. on steroids.”
The work is steady, but her life has been agonizing. The pay can be lower than expected (her employer says she earned $34,000 last year) and the cost of living remarkably high (a tight housing market has, in some cases, inflated rents to Manhattan levels). Her loneliness is magnified by a desolate landscape that’s dominated by men.
Jonnie’s story calls into question whether hard work and courage can eventually bring a decent living in contemporary America — a longstanding promise this nation makes to its citizens.
As it happens, we can’t all be winners. Not even in a boomtown.
Lewis Wilcox, Eliot Popko, James Christenson and Jonah Sargent make up The Cheddar Factory, a production company in Minneapolis.
They’re currently completing production of a feature-length documentary that chronicles North Dakota’s oil boom.
Op-Docs is a forum for short, opinionated documentaries, produced with creative latitude by independent filmmakers and artists. Learn more about Op-Docs and how to submit to the series.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/14/opinion/running-on-fumes-in-north-dakota.html?nl=opinion&emc=edit_ty_20140114
Keep Foreign Troops in Afghanistan
Grabbing the Wolf's Tail
Keep Foreign Troops in Afghanistan
GARDEZ, Afghanistan —
... Fear of a Taliban resurgence is so widespread that it is hurting property prices and the value of Afghanistan’s currency, scaring investors away and impelling Afghans to seek foreign asylum. Worries about the year ahead are a kind of pathology here.
In the short term, the Taliban are very unlikely to take over the country, or even march on major cities, but trouble should be expected in smaller outposts. Peace negotiations with the Taliban have stalled. This, combined with the imminent pullout of foreign forces, has given insurgents renewed confidence that the military balance of power will shift in their favor.
Afghan and American leaders must sign a bilateral security agreement to allow a modest number of NATO troops to stay. Afghan forces need more helicopters, as well as logistics, intelligence and medical support. They will need, at a minimum, the $4.1 billion in annual funding promised by participants at the NATO summit in Chicago in 2012.
There is no other option, according to a local journalist in Gardez:
“Fighting in Afghanistan is like grabbing a wolf’s tail, While you hold on, you’re worried it will bite you. But if you let go, you are sure it will bite you.”
Graeme Smith
is a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group and the author
of “The Dogs Are Eating Them Now: Our War in Afghanistan.”
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