Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
China’s stock markets continued a seemingly uncontrolled drop on Monday, pulling everything from Asia stock exchanges to commodities down further with them. Despite a huge amount of government stimulus, investors have lost faith in China’s stocks and are now focused on an impossible to answer question: how bad will China’s economic slowdown be? The Shanghai…
Back in the fat years – two or three decades ago, when the “mainstream” media were booming – I was able to earn a living as a freelance writer. My income was meager and I had to hustle to get it, turning out about four articles – essays, reported pieces, reviews – a month at…
Back in May, I penned a missive entitled “If You Don’t Like It, Change It” which discussed the pending changes to the GDP calculation by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). To wit: “Now, for all of you playing the home version of “Nail That GDP Number,” it was just a couple of years ago…
Federal Reserve policy makers said the labor market and housing have improved, moving closer to ending an unprecedented period of near-zero interest rates without providing a clear signal on the timing of liftoff. “The labor market continued to improve, with solid job gains and declining unemployment,” the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement…
Michael Wolff, USA TODAY 2:04 p.m. EDT July 13, 2015 The news media, like most businesses built on craft and culture, have largely worked as an apprentice system. Younger people learned skills and language from older people. A good media job would have been judged on the basis of the caliber of the more senior…
… Rich parents. Jessica Rinaldi / Reuters We noticed that you have an AD BLOCKER ENABLED Please consider disabling it for our site, or supporting our work in one of these ways Subscribe Now > Millions of America’s young people are really struggling financially. Around 30 percent are living with their parents,…
Photo The house at 339 Livingston Street is the home that Johnnie McDowell, shown with his daughter, Erin, would like to buy, but can’t afford. Credit Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times WESTFIELD, N.J. — To Johnnie McDowell, the house on Livingston Street seems to taunt him every time he walks by. It’s…
ATHENS The leader of Greece’s main opposition party, New Democracy said on Friday it would back attempts by the government to seal a deal with international creditors to stave off financial meltdown. “We want an agreement by Sunday for Greece to stay in Europe. We will authorize the Prime Minister to negotiate and come back…
Greece requested a new three-year bailout from its skeptical eurozone creditors and pledged some economic overhauls on Wednesday, but the euphoria some Greeks felt after Sunday’s “no” vote on the last deal was fading fast. Whether European leaders accept the Greek government’s application for more emergency loans at a crisis summit Sunday still depends on Prime Minister…
On Tuesday, Latvia’s central bank chief Ilmars Rimsevics called the introduction of a new currency in Greece the “most realistic scenario.” The country is in its second week of capital controls and banks remain shut in the wake of a referendum which saw some 61% of Greeks vote against the terms of the latest bailout…