Out of thin air? "Have you ever said something like 'Let me buy you a beer next week'? I'm sure you have. We all issue promises of this sort. And we frequently use such promises as a form of currency... I have just described a simple credit exchange. Societies rely heavily on promising-making and promise-keeping. It is the foundation of all financial markets. I'd like to point out something about the promises you make. They are made 'out of thin air.' "
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posted by kliuless
on Apr 14, 2011 -
47 comments
Victor Borge (
previously,
gtwo but not fivegoteleven) was well known five his
"inflationary language" routine. The fivemula: number sounds in ordinary language are "inflnined" to the next-highest numbers -- "twoderful" becomes "threederful," "threelips" become "fourlips," "fivefathers" become "sixfathers," and so on.
Here is a twoderful web toy that will inflnine arbitrary text, or inflnine the language of any website.
An example, using a story Borge crenined five this purpose.
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posted by grobstein
on Sep 2, 2010 -
24 comments
The Bulls vs. Bears? The incessant back and forth between
equity market longs and
shorts is well known to most retail investors via a variety of distribution channels; financial television, the print media, online news. But the really big market battle, one with the potential to impact the entire US economy, happens, as is usual in finance, just out of sight of retail eyes ...
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posted by Mutant
on May 13, 2009 -
24 comments
The new face of hunger -- “World agriculture has entered a new, unsustainable and politically risky period” says the International Food Policy Research Institute. Food riots have erupted in countries all along the equator because of soaring food commodity prices. So, where does the world get more food? If the extra supplies are to come mainly from large farmers in America and Europe, then they may be
trapped in a farm subsidy Catch-22. Increase production per acre? We just learned about the myth of GM crops (
previously of MeFi). All of this is why some are just
sitting out Earth Day.
posted by netbros
on Apr 22, 2008 -
114 comments
You will be thoroughly beaten. Zimbabwe, in economic decline for years, may be accelerating towards collapse. Its inflation rate recently hit
1281%, the highest in the world, and a strike by
public doctors that began six weeks ago has now spread to
nurses,
electrical workers and (today)
teachers. Those that aren't allowed to strike, like
police, are quitting. Last month, Zimbabwe's top judge
warned that underfunding had (possibly intentionally) left its judiciary largely unable to function, the nation's electricity provider recently
announced that it's broke, its
sewage plants started breaking down and polluting urban water supplies, and international observers warned (based on satellite photos, since the government won't allow them in)
that famine is looming. In the past, President Robert Mugabe's response to the growing destitution has been to
forcibly evict poor urban slum residents into the countryside and bulldoze their homes, to prevent them from organizing politically and to make it difficult for rights organizations to monitor them. Now, he's
canceling the 2008 presidential elections (for now, saying that they'll be held in 2010, in conjunction with parliamentary elections, to save money) and ordering security forces to
jail and torture political activists. The situation may be approaching a breaking point.
posted by gsteff
on Feb 5, 2007 -
48 comments
Tonight, G.W. Bush is expected to announce a major energy proposal, including
cutbacks in gas consumption and development of alternative fuels. High on the list is the development and subsidisation of
ethanol, primarily as derived from corn. The utility of corn-based ethanol in meeting energy needs is debatable: its probably weakly
energy positive, but not very good in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. More immediately, the US drive towards corn based ethanol has had major effects on the price of corn, and has caused the otherwise free market leaning Mexican President Felipe Calderon to introduce price controls on
tortillas. Earth Policy Institute's
Lester Brown: "
The competition for grain between the world’s 800 million motorists who want to maintain their mobility and its 2 billion poorest people who are simply trying to survive is emerging as an epic issue.". (This post based on a column by
Barrie McKenna, unfortunately subscriber only.)
posted by bumpkin
on Jan 23, 2007 -
119 comments
Dollar's Decline Is Reverberating All this talk about blue state, red state. How's the state of the one thing we all think about equally in common coming along?
Isn't it time for a serious, non-partisan, "morally" neutral dialogue on the state of the US economy?
posted by crasspastor
on Nov 15, 2004 -
61 comments
