World economy

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A US super-committee for a US super-comedy

WASHINGTON | No more than a 1% of U.S. citizens accumulate 20% of the income and 35.6% of the wealth (in assets, labor income and capital), which constitutes the largest concentration of wealth on the richest hands since the existence of statistics in this country. But at the same time, they contribute a 38% of federal tax income. In addition, there are 43 states that have their own income tax. In…


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Now, who'd take advantage of Libya?

LONDON | Cheering the crude end that military dictator Muammar Gaddafi met on Wednesday, Libyans in the British capital gathered late in the evening outside the Libyan Embassy near Knightsbridge: they are not the only ones closely watching their freed country. The shots that made history in Misrata will soon open the race among European and US companies to land in Libya and begin doing business, too. Or to renew existing deals. Oil…


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Now, who’d take advantage of Libya?

LONDON | Cheering the crude end that military dictator Muammar Gaddafi met on Wednesday, Libyans in the British capital gathered late in the evening outside the Libyan Embassy near Knightsbridge: they are not the only ones closely watching their freed country. The shots that made history in Misrata will soon open the race among European and US companies to land in Libya and begin doing business, too. Or to renew existing deals. Oil…


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9-9-9 and karaoke

Meet a Republican candidate to the US presidency who dared to sing this at the Omaha press club in 1991: “Imagine there’s no pizza I couldn’t if I tried Eating only tacos Or Kentucky Fried Imagine only burgers It’s frightening and sad…”


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Occupy LSE Sunday Quotes’ Fest

We've selected some comments from public remarks published on social websites by demonstrators and observers of this weekend's globalised protests against the financial state of things. @Izaakson: Occupying the London Stock Exchange twitpic.com/70npad #occupy Sophie Payne What books on economics should we read? Mises and Hayek? Are we allowed to educate ourselves by reading Keynes or Galbraith? Or even…Marx? DMReporter PROTEST: Occupy London Stock Exchange protesters vow to give up worldly possessions and close their bank…


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The war on taxes

“I don’t mean to get all class-warfare on you… But unless we find a way to spread the burden upward and cut the middle class some slack, it isn’t Greece we will soon be resembling”, writes Ellis Henican for Fox News, “it’s those old Caribbean islands Jimmy likes to sing about. Where a few super-rich families own just about everything. Where the vast majority of others have hardly anything at all.”



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IMF sharply reduces US growth forecasts

From Bankia, a Wednesday alert on global economic developments: the International Monetary Fund warns that the global economy is entering yet another new dangerous phase: “activity is weakening across the board, the agents’ confidence has plummeted, regional disparities persist and there are increasing risks of downturns in all different scenarios. “The IMF has revised its general forecasts pointing out a significant downturn: global growth would stand at 4% for both…


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The Fed's twist in the words of JP Morgan

JP Morgan expects that US Federal Reserve will announce that it is to auction between $300bn and $400bn in Treasuries with one to three years to reach maturity, and that it will concentrate 70% of its purchases on seven to 12 year-maturity securities while the other 30% will be on longer maturities. The bank believes that the Fed will carry out these acquisitions within the next 6 months. “The benefit…


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The Fed’s twist in the words of JP Morgan

JP Morgan expects that US Federal Reserve will announce that it is to auction between $300bn and $400bn in Treasuries with one to three years to reach maturity, and that it will concentrate 70% of its purchases on seven to 12 year-maturity securities while the other 30% will be on longer maturities. The bank believes that the Fed will carry out these acquisitions within the next 6 months. “The benefit…