Entries Tagged 'Money' ↓

On his web site, Berlin-based artist Andreas Nicolas Fischer, like a German Tom Friedman, says he “works with data, sculpture and code.”

Indizes, above, made of poplar plywood, is a “data sculpture, visualizing the stock market indices S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial, and NASDAQ in the year 2008 from January to November.” The white poplar form, thus, traces the downward spiral of the market over the last year.

No word on price, but art always remains a great investment, even if stocks don’t. Get it for the fired hedge fund manager on your list.

[via BoingBoing]

Let’s hope, for their sake, it’s coming in January. Because, with the Senate turning down the $14 billion auto bailout, the December one sure didn’t work.

I’m going to guess that at least some of you misplaced your invitations to financial mogul John Paulson’s shindig three weeks ago. (That’s the menu for the event, above.)

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A couple of weeks back, author Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine) spoke at an event hosted by University of Chicago faculty campaigning against the planned creation of the Milton Friedman Institute, a research center named after UC’s most famous, most controversial alumnus and professor. (He died in 2006.)

I heard Klein’s speech on Democracy Now, and it was great. But the part that really caught my attention was her reference to an Arnold Schwarzenegger taped intro to the 1990, ten-part documentary, Free To Choose, in which Friedman outlines his ideas for the masses.

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Thanks for the warning: Gold digger in “I’m Keepin’ It Real” mode

Given the leanness of the times, one could say that wikiHow: The How-To Manual That You Can Edit is performing a public service by releasing this among their latest sets of instructions: A nine-point list detailing “How to Spot a Gold Digger.” Sound like anybody you know?

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Did I speak too soon when, two weeks ago, I wistfully blogged that that I wanted to live a year in Iceland, below?

It sure appears so, with the announcement yesterday that—gulp—the whole country is on the verge of “wholesale economic collapse.”

Wrote The London Times,

Queues formed at petrol stations as Icelanders rushed to fill up before reported fuel shortages, while savers who tried to withdraw money from banks or sell bank shares on the internet found websites were not working. …

Sources said that Landsbanki and the country’s third-biggest bank, Glitner, will soon be fully nationalised, while Kaupthing had been forced to take state loans.

Can you imagine?

But the man I want to talk to this morning is James Surowiecki, from The New Yorker‘s financial page. In an April 21 piece—April! Six months ago!—he wrote these words:

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Chances are this will never make the TV news: According to an estimate by Eric De Place of Sightline Daily, “every cent of Africa’s crushing debt” could be retired for $350 billion. (The sum was actually estimated at $320B by the U.N. in 2003, so De Place just adds another $30 billion to make a round number. It could be higher, or lower.)

Now, that would leave $350 billion. Working from this figure, De Place then states,

You could install solar panels on 20 million American homes for $300 billion. …

We could install ground source heat pumps for 5 million American homes for $50 billion.

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Proof? This 115-foot, Ivana Porfiri yacht, appropriately called Guilty, bought recently by Greek billionaire Dakis Joannou.

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Please pee in this cup: Food service at its nadir. Photo by Lena West

Airline service is at a depressing low. As the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index recently noted, Americans are more disastisfied with today’s carriers than they are with the IRS.

But the weight of this didn’t hit me until last week, when I flew round-trip, New York-to-Austin, on Oprah’s favorite carrier, American Airlines (“Something special in the air!”).

During my sojourn, I was charged $15 each way to check a duffle bag; nasally assaulted upon entering Flight 732 to New York—a plane that when boarded smelled like a combination of lavatory sewage, stale cigarette smoke, and moldy jockstraps (something special in the air, indeed); and, with a great deal of fanfare, served the drink in the above photo.

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One heck of an alternate timeline: Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest planned skyscraper, shown for scale in a New York City skyline where 9/11 never happened

Spurred on by this NY Times piece on the Middle Eastern / Asian rush to construct the world’s tallest building, I dug up this impressionistic, 90-second promotional YouTube, below.

In it, both man and beast are awed by the dawn of the Burj Dubai hotel and residence, which, at a yet-unfinished 2,087 feet and a planned 160 stories minimum, is the world’s tallest structure. (I say “planned” because the building’s final height is being kept secret, in order to intimidate would-be one-uppers.) Let’s hope that, along with the Giorgio Armani-designed hotel, the $4,000-a-square-foot office space, and the 700 private apartments, they put in one unbelievable bungee cord.