Month February 2009

Your daily financial gloom report

Ireland credit default swaps widen. CDS allow speculators to buy and sell “insurance” on Ireland’s debt. The cost of such insurance in now soaring, up 20% in one day. German 10-year bond auction fails for second time. Germany is considered…

Hampshire College divests of Israeli companies

A student group, Students for Justice in Palestine, says they forced the administration to divest because of human rights abuses in Palestine, but the college says it was a broad-based move towards socially responsible investment and wasn’t targeting Israel. Zionists…

FeedBurner: Blogger PSA

If you use FeedBurner you have until Feb. 28 to move it to the new Google Feedburner or Google will do it for you. I moved the Polizeros feed with zero problems. The feed URL changed but Google promises to…

Great Depression stats vs. now

Data from Robert Schiller’s Irrational Exuberance and federal government data. Sue, who is a Goddess of Spreadsheets, compiled the data and created the spreadsheet. (You can download the full spreadsheet from Drop.io) Industrial production and GDP dropped off a cliff…

The Gribble is your friend

Hi, I’m a gribble AKA woodlouse. I like to munch on the bottom of boats, but also on most any non-food source. Scientists want to figure out how I do it so they can use it to create biofuel from…