Silicon Sweatshops is a five-part investigation of the supply chains that produce many of the world’s most popular technology products, from Apple iPhones, to Nokia cell phones, Dell keyboards and more. The series examines the scope of the problem, including its effects on workers from the Philippines, Taiwan and China. It also looks at a novel factory program that may be a blueprint for solving this perennial industry problem.
posted by Joe Beese on Nov 19, 2009 - 9 comments

The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to “The Office”. Warning: link may evoke baleful despair!
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 on Oct 16, 2009 - 57 comments

The Bad Bank Assets Proposal: Even Worse Than You Imagined -- the administration appears intent on building another black swan. This is political capitalism. [via]
posted by kliuless on Feb 4, 2009 - 103 comments

10 out of 13 million tracks available for purchase online didn't sell a single copy. Jut how Long can that Tail be, after all? Is the length of the tail mentioned in the article down to piracy or the state of the music industry as a whole? Is it possible to make a profit or break even on a niche website based on sales alone, and not on advertising revenue?
posted by Grrlscout on Dec 23, 2008 - 56 comments

I asked Nathan Myhrvold, C.E.O. of Intellectual Ventures and widely considered to be one of the smartest people in technology, if he is brilliant. "If you put yourself in that camp, you might be correct," he teased. "But then, you're also an asshole." The Brilliant Issue profiles Porfolio's picks for best game-changers, upstarts, rebels, connectors and other influencers. [more inside]
posted by Non Prosequitur on May 2, 2008 - 10 comments

Open Secrets - the trouble with Enron
posted by Gyan on Jan 2, 2007 - 68 comments

Plunging into the shadows: "In thinly traded, lightly regulated and untransparent markets, the bold can make an awful lot of money—and they can lose it on an even more extravagant scale... In today's caffeine-fuelled dealing rooms, a barely regulated private-equity group could very well borrow money from syndicates of private lenders, including hedge funds, to spend on taking public companies private. At each stage, risks can be converted into securities, sliced up, repackaged, sold on and sliced up again. The endless opportunities to write contracts on underlying debt instruments explains why the outstanding value of credit-derivatives contracts has rocketed to $26 trillion—$9 trillion more than six months ago, and seven times as much as in 2003."
posted by kliuless on Sep 24, 2006 - 27 comments

John T. Reed’s analysis of Robert T. Kiyosaki’s book 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad'. [cache] Kiyosaki has spun a business empire off his book, including follow up publications, TV appearances and columns that make suprisingly broad statements about what's worth doing.
posted by Firas on Feb 25, 2006 - 24 comments

Embracing Illegals: Companies are getting hooked on the buying power of 11 million undocumented immigrants - The Underground Labor Force Is Rising To The Surface [pdf]
posted by kliuless on Jul 11, 2005 - 30 comments

How Powerful Is Productivity? TCS interviews Former Carter Staffer (and Democrat) William Lewis, who makes some interesting remarks about worker productivity: There were many disparaging comments made in the US and maybe even stronger abroad, (and especially in Japan) about how the US labor force was getting what it deserved because it was lazy, uneducated and maybe even dumb. And of course, the Japanese then showed -- the really capable, competent Japanese manufacturing companies -- showed that was wrong by coming here, building their own factories, managing American labor and taking a lot of other local inputs and coming within five percent of reproducing their home country productivity.
posted by Kwantsar on Jun 20, 2005 - 11 comments

Hans Hoppe is in trouble. Why? In one of his lectures at UNLV, the world-renowned economist stated that homosexuals plan less for the future than heterosexuals. According to Hoppe, homosexuals tend not to have children, so they have little stake in the world beyond their own time. Other poor future planners include the very young (no concept of the future) and the very old (their time is almost up). A student filed a compaint against Hoppe for his "anti-gay" remarks, and UNLV wants to issue a letter of reprimand and force Hoppe to give up his next pay increase. So should an economics professor be forced to consider his students feelings prior to presenting economic theories? As Hoppe fights back, the libertarian community voices its support.
posted by b_thinky on Feb 12, 2005 - 88 comments

Economic 'Armageddon' predicted by Stephen Roach, the chief economist at investment banking giant Morgan Stanley. He's been right before.
posted by stbalbach on Nov 23, 2004 - 68 comments

Has the economy got you down? Studies show that if you give suicide the ol' college try your income will increase 36.3%
posted by palegirl on Oct 29, 2003 - 22 comments

Oligopoly Watch. An Oligopoly tracking weblog.
posted by euphorb on Aug 23, 2003 - 8 comments

http://www.Breadhours.org A group of over 300 residents and merchants in California’s Bay Area has established a local currency called BREAD (a rough acronym for Bay Area Regional Exchange and Development), based on hours of work valued at $12 an hour. Through the BREAD network, which now has over $20,000 worth of currency in circulation, members can pay for dinner, carpentry, childcare, tutoring, clerical assistance or organic produce. Tired of traditional activism, founder Miyoko Sakashita wanted to create a positive local economy and “stop our resources from supporting global corporations that are not accountable to people and the environment.” Check it out at Breadhours.org
posted by bureaustyle on Mar 15, 2003 - 28 comments

Ever wonder just who's fattening who's wallet? The Transnational Corporations Observatory [multilingual] seems to know quite a bit. Now if i can only figure out how the ad council gets their money...
posted by phylum sinter on Sep 29, 2002 - 3 comments

Want your independent coffeehouse to be a success? Pray for a Starbucks to open next door.
posted by NortonDC on Sep 24, 2002 - 54 comments

Boston is having a real brouhaha over grass-roots efforts to return to rent control. Here in D.C., some folks aren't happy about a massive vending machine in Adam's Morgan. Meanwhile, D.C. braces for protests surrounding the upcoming meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

Is there, in this day and age, a debate raging about the equity, and even the efficacy, of capitalism? Is Marxism still a viable vein of thought in the modern age? Are free markets as self-policing as some folks argue? Or does industry require a more arduous watchdog?
posted by NedKoppel on Sep 13, 2002 - 33 comments

Screw you worldcom, enron. In Australia we know how to make a loss. AU$11,962,000,000 in fact. One has to wonder how much of this is a "paper loss" or how much of this is "creative accounting for tax purposes". Or just where the hell did the money go?
posted by Neale on Aug 14, 2002 - 17 comments

"Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz talks about the corporate looting spree and Bush's woeful mismanagement of the economy." "The fiscal mismanagement of the current administration -- leading to a change in the fiscal position of the United States over the past year -- is absolutely phenomenal; going from huge surpluses to huge deficits and the deficits are probably going to be larger than people anticipated."
posted by semmi on Jul 6, 2002 - 26 comments

J.K. Galbraith shocked at scale of corporate failures. "I can only say I hadn't expected to see this problem on anything like the magnitude of the last few months – the separation of ownership from management, the monopolisation of control by irresponsible personal money-makers." Myself and chrispy came to the same conclusion on the drive home from the resolutely un- (rather than anti-) corporate Glastonbury Festival today. Profit is valued and rewarded by the vast majority of corporations above all else. As a consquence, people with the same values dominate executive positions, to the exclusion of those with more 'humanitarian' or longer-term outlooks. Where is the balance? Should we make hippie non-exec directors compulsory? Or should I just go back to bed and let the drugs wear off???
posted by barnsoir on Jul 1, 2002 - 9 comments

This is truly awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.

Just the best use of flash, collaborative model/data building and use of interactive interface to explain a complex issue... i.e. the interconnections of money, influence and power in boardrooms of the global economy.

Conceived designed and built by Josh ON and the FutureFarmers I think it's going to move to a more permanent and snappier URL once it's fully ready for prime-time... I hope Josh and the gang don't mind me posting it here... but it's just too good not too... It genuinely deserves a lot of praise and attention, IMHO.
posted by blackbeltjones on Jul 19, 2001 - 24 comments

"At some point Yahoo! will shift emphasis towards a billing relationship, that is as good as fact. What they need to decide, however, is whether to lead with a subscription or ISP model."
posted by grambo on Jun 28, 2001 - 14 comments

¿Headed south anytime soon? This fun, if somewhat depressing, little site is the work of the South to the Future gang. These wicked, evil folks have taken it upon themselves to try and educate the masses here in the SF bay area. What troubles me is despite the pervasive nature of the dang ol' Innernet on our everyday lives, I don't see a lot of people buying into causes of this nature. Maybe I am just jaded and exhausted from dodging SUVs all over town. I mean, there are a lot of hills in SF so why shouldn't people have monster 4X4s? On a lighter note, this seems to be a neat little side project of theirs.....
posted by donkeysuck on Apr 20, 2001 - 14 comments

One Year After Seattle -- "A year has passed since the World Trade Organization's "Millennium Round" collapsed under clouds of tear gas in Seattle," writes Mark Weisbrot, in this useful overview of what was -- and is -- at stake. "The debate over globalization has been altered, perhaps permanently, to include some of the concerns of civil society: poverty and inequality, economic instability, and the environmental costs of globalization...."
posted by johnb on Nov 30, 2000 - 30 comments

marchFirst circles the bowl... Too bad. I thought it would be cool to work for them but now analyst are predicting the demise of the company. I wonder if they will have a great deals on Macs when they go bankrupt?
posted by Brilliantcrank on Nov 21, 2000 - 7 comments