June 2009
Monthly Archives
Latest stories
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8 Companies Behind the 4th of July: Where Your Pool Toys, Beer, and Hot Dogs Come From
Last year at this time, I created Business Pundit’s first 8 Companies Behind the 4th of July list. When I looked over the list again this year, I found that several companies and products listed had dramatically changed since the list was created. InBev bought Anheuser Busch. Kraft was listed on the Dow Jones, no […]
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Property Room: Where Cops Sell Stolen Goods
Property Room is an online police auction site that sells “hot” or stolen goods. It turns out that replacing the classic police auction is good business. The Seattle Times has more: PropertyRoom.com (is) a California-based Web site that receives items from the property rooms of 1,600 law-enforcement agencies in the U.S. — 124 in Washington […]
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Billy Mays’ Tombstone
Rest in Peace, Billy.
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BIS: Financial Products Should Be Regulated Like Drugs
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), a 55-member organization of central banks, announced today that “financial products should be treated like medicines,” according to Reuters. More: The BIS was alarmed by how a collapse in the value of opaque and complex securitised products propelled the world’s financial system into crisis. It said in its annual […]
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Nightmare Layoff
IN case you can’t read the small print, here are the words: The Singapore way! A fire alarm rang at 4PM when almost all shift employees are in office (approx 5000). As usual entire office was evacuated within 3 mins & every employee gathered outside office. 10 mins passed ………. 5 more mins passed………. 5 […]
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Rest in Peace, Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson died of cardiac arrest today in his Los Angeles home. The shocking news almost overloaded the infrastructure of the entire World Wide Web. Go to TMZ to watch events unfold around Michael Jackson’s death. I haven’t felt this rattled by a celebrity death since Princess Di perished in 1997. Michael Jackson was an […]
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How Will the 2010 Census Affect the Economy?
The US Census Bureau has received $11 billion to conduct the 2010 census, which takes place on April 1, 2010. On its surface, the census exists to count people for congressional zoning purposes. However, in a society with the scale and complexity of our current one, a people count can mean a lot more. Here […]
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Matt Taibbi’s “The Great American Bubble Machine” Demystifies Goldman Sachs
Matt Taibbi’s latest Rolling Stone article, “The Great American Bubble Machine,” undresses Goldman Sachs–and finds a “giant vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” Not only do former Goldmanites essentially run the world, they help manufacture and burst economic bubbles, harvesting mean profits the entire time. Taibbi details how the bank manipulated investors, starting […]
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Amazon Warns State of California to Back Off
This week Amazon.com Inc. sent a letter to California legislators threatening to sever business relationships with affiliates in the state if they passed a law forcing the Seattle based company to collect and remit California sales tax. Last week Amazon sent letter to North Carolina and Hawaii as they got closer to passing similar legislation. […]
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5 Successful News Crowdsourcing Experiments
The media likes to complain about its own demise. How many stories have you read about dying newspapers, flailing magazines, and sagging book sales? Fortunately, new models are infiltrating the media landscape. These models, which include crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, and nonprofit media, are like saplings sprouting from a burn area. With enough nurturing, they hold incredible […]
