Sunday, March 9, 2014

Being Home and News

I have been away from home for the past few days to see my new grandchild. I could have driven home each night; but, decided to rent a hotel near the hospital. I stayed at a nice hotel, had some lovely meals and took care of a lot of business (including getting my cars maintenance done), best of all, I got to hold my grandchild and she is lovely. Having said all that, it sure is great to be home. I came back exhausted, I just don't travel as well as I did when I was younger. While I was gone I saved some links to news stories I thought might be of interest.

Yahoo - The Exchange - Wealth rebounds — but mostly for the wealthy. The bottom line is that the total wealth of the nation has increased since the financial crisis; but, all the increases only went to the wealthy and the rest of us lost out, there has been no trickle down and no job creation. There has only been a transfer of wealth to those who caused the financial meltdown.

NBC Bay Area - NASA Admits to Selling Discount Fuel to Google Execs. Bottom line, Nasa was selling jet fuel to Google at half price. The question is not why Google would buy the fuel; but, why NASA would sell it to them at half price. To really understand that we would have to know what Google was doing for the United States.

Yahoo - Business Insider - Scientists Scanned A Woman's Brain During An Out-Of-Body Experience — And What They Found Was Amazing. Another case of garbage science trying to prove a point. A woman who claims to be able to cause herself to have out of body experiences has a brain scan while going through an episode and some "scientists" extrapolate that her brain activity is therefore the same as people who have a near death experience. One glaring problem, aside from the fact she was not dying, is that if the two things were the same then we would see the same parts of the brain activated during a near death experience; but, we do not because the near death experience has been recorded in people with NO BRAIN ACTIVITY.

Reuters - Man called Bitcoin's father denies ties, leads LA car chase. I love this story, someone managed to find the guy behind Bitcoin; but, he says he cannot talk about it. In addition, the people who actually worked with the person who created Bitcoin say they never met him and all communications were electronic. Doesn't it make you wonder why, if it is true. My answer is simple, this guy was merely feeding information to some programmers so that they would create Bitcoin and then use it to test out how people would use an electronic currency.

Mail Online - It's very hard to know why people go to food banks, claims Tory welfare minister Lord Freud
. A great example of how dissociated the wealthy are from the rest of us. One of the people responsible for taking care of the poor in England cannot figure out why people might go to food banks.

Bloomberg News - Global Debt Exceeds $100 Trillion as Governments Binge, BIS Says. I find it interesting that global debt is up 40% since the crash and yet the debt is claimed to be government debt at a time when governments are providing less and less services to it's citizens. Where did the money go.

Bloomberg News - Carney Faces Leadership Test as Currency Scandal Snares BOE. The central Bank of England (similar to the Federal Reserve) has been caught fixing financial markets again.

Well, I am exhausted and going to bed. Have a great week.