360 Horizon

14 March 2011

Anonymous Fires Warning Shot Across The Federal Reserve's (And The IMF's) Bow

02 March 2011

Fox News - "Lopsided and Unbalanced - Pt. 1"

I am tired of Faux News distoring the news so as to disinform and misinform the poor people who can't critically think for themselves. So, I will begin collecting distorted Faux News clips here at the Watchworld and file them under the tab "Fox News - "Lopsided and Unbalanced". This way, you can have a quick reference to how many times this network can't report the facts straight.

In today's clip, just look at the background of supposed Wisconsin protesters roughing up members who oppose them. Question for those accept Faux News at face value: when did Wisconsin have palm trees on their streets?

"Greed, Greed, And Fuckin' More Greed!" An Angry Irishman Vents About Banksters, The Credit Crisis And The Collapse Of The Celtic Tiger Economy

I love this guy, whoever he is. And I love how he tells the interviewer to Fuck Off at th end of the interview. This is the kind of truth you will not hear on mainstream TV in America:

17 January 2011

News For The Week of Jan. 17 through Jan. 23, 2011

Company News, Stocks & Bonds

Steve Jobs Takes Leave Of Absence From Apple: Sick Again

Cheapest stocks globally are now in Mexico, Norway and Italy

Global Economy

Chinese President Hu Presses To Make The Yuan A Global Currency While Strengthening Ties With The USA

Swiss Bankings' $20 Trillion In Offshore Accounts To Be Exposed By Wikileaks?

Canada Squeezes Harder On Mortgage Lending To Consumers

Cigarettes Are Big Business For Chinese Government, Very Bad Business For Chinese Citizens

04 January 2011

Jeannette Wicks-Lim: A proposal to combine minimum wage and earned income tax credit policies to guarantee a decent living wage

Peter Jay of Real News interviews Jeannette Wicks-Lim about the proposal to help poor people with a minimum wage combined with an earned tax credit. Wicks-Lim is an Assistant Research Professor at Political Economy Research Institute located at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst:

One in seven Americans now live in poverty
Current policy terms gurantee a decent living standard for only 12 percent of low-income working families
PERI recommends a 70% raise in minimum wage rates, from today's Federal Minimum wage rate of $7.35 to $12.30 per hour
In conjunction, PERI recommends the maxiumum EITC benefit would rise from $5,028 to $9,040 and households with income up to $57,000 would receive some benefit
Hence, this program would take current minimum wage earners making $15,000 per year and push them into a $30,000 a year bracket
PERI says their studies show costs of minimum wage increases in restaurants was only 3-4% on average. Hence a restaurant bill which used to cost $20.00 would cost $20.60 and that small increase would help pay for the minimum wage increase of all the workers in that restaurant
The EITC could be paid for with a doubling of the current $51 Billion outlay for the smaller EITC. Money from the defense budget could go to helping Americans at home.

Wicks-Lim also says that PERI does not look at the extra income as something adding fire to the demand side in the Economy; instead, it looks at it as a more equal distribution of income throughout an Economy. She says with more equal income distribution, the Economy is much more robust and stable.

She points out the following:

Labor costs generally represent less than half of overall business costs
Low-wage workers make up a small proportion of their workforce
Many low-wage workers only receive a fraction of the actual size of a minimum wage hike because their current wages are already near what would be the new minimum rate