About half of TARP was paid out in bonuses.

Looting

Geekcorps’ international technology experts teach communities how to be digitally independent by expanding private enterprise with innovative, appropriate, and affordable information and communication technologies.

They haven't update their blog since 2007, so maybe this is defunct, but I heard people speaking well of this program this week.

Geekcorps

The slide in gross domestic product... is likely to continue at an alarming pace well into the summer...

In the fourth quarter, rising inventories accounted for the difference between the overall 3.8 percent contraction of the economy and a steeper 5.1 decline in final domestic sales.

“The difference between 3.8 and 5.1 percent is the inventory buildup,” Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight, said. “My only explanation is that companies could not cut production fast enough.”

With inventory accumulation gone, the economy will contract in the first quarter at more than a 5 percent annual rate, Mr. Gault said.

Cutting production means layoffs which will reduce consumption which will reduce orders which means that production will need to be cut which will require more layoffs which will reduce consumption which will reduce orders which means that production will need to be cut which will require more layoffs which will reduce consumption which will reduce orders which means that production will need to be cut which will require more layoffs...

More than half way to depression

The current financial crisis has shut off venture capitalists’ opportunities to cash in their investments by bringing their portfolio firms to public stock markets. As a consequence, they are currently hesitant to invest in young firms in the first place. However, taken together, the evidence supporting the positive impact of VC on innovation is weak at best. Some innovations, especially less profitable ones, may take more time to be commercialised, but innovation is likely to persist even during this downtime, thanks to scientific curiosity and enthusiasm.

I'm not sure I buy the methodology here. For example, I think the patent system is a sham, so I don't think it has any relationship with innovation.

Companies looking to get VC have a tendency to patent, because VC's think patents signify the realness of an entity they are buying into when the cashflow isn't there, but once the money is in, there is no longer a need for patents. Patents don't come up again until the startup gets sucked into a large entity that uses them as a way of extorting money from competitors.

These facts explain the results found by this study, but the study reaches the bizarre conclusion that the VC funds actually discouraged patent application and that the patents were a product of spontaneous creativity or something. The fact is that patents are filed because the VC wants to see them before they will invest. If you take VC away you'll get less total patents, because there will be no need to patent things. If patents are what you want, VC is a way to get them (although large commercial R&D is probably better). However, patents are not actually what you want. Patents are not innovation.

Real innovation involves bringing a product to market, not coming up with an idea on paper, failing to execute on it, and then suing the guy who did it right. Furthermore, patents do not protect real innovators from established interests while they are trying to bring their product to market. Its just the opposite. Patents are used by the big guys to stop innovation that threatens them. They come up with a bunch of potentially dangerous ideas, lock up patents up them, and then sue anyone who gets near them. Real innovators mostly can't afford patents -- not without capital investments that is. IE not without angels and VC.

Venture capital isn’t crucial to innovation | vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

“We have a broken, broken system that rewards incompetence,” says Coburn, 60, who has been examining purchasing breakdowns since his election to Congress in 2005. “We need to totally change contracting.”

Contractors on dozens of jobs at federal departments collected more than $8 billion in what federal auditors said were unwarranted bonuses from 1999 to 2005.

Looting

IT has been described as the world's largest rubbish dump, or the Pacific plastic soup, and it is starting to alarm scientists.

It is a vast area of plastic debris and other flotsam drifting in the northern Pacific Ocean, held there by swirling ocean currents.

The "patch" is in fact two massive, linked areas of circulating rubbish, says Dr Marcus Eriksen, research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, founded by Moore.

"It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States," he says.

Ewww...

Floating rubbish dump 'bigger than US' | Breaking News | News.com.au

"I don't think it's ever been this bad. Not in my tenure," Gore said. "Because the people that we're dealing with now, they have always had [money]. They went to school, they were able to get jobs. Now the jobs are not even out there."

Supervisors at the call-in center say many of these calls are not strictly about mental-health issues, but deal with lapsed medical insurance, foreclosure, bank problems and unemployment benefits.

Suicides - CNN.com

Despite crippling losses, multibillion-dollar bailouts and the passing of some of the most prominent names in the business, employees at financial companies in New York, the now-diminished world capital of capital, collected an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for the year.

That was the sixth-largest haul on record, according to a report released Wednesday by the New York State comptroller.

Looting - NYTimes.com

Former employees of Nortel Networks Corp. (TSX:NT) are urging the company to restore severance payouts that were suspended when the telecom equipment maker got court protection from its creditors.

The situation with Nortel severance payments is highly questionable:

December: Hey, we're having some financial problems and in leu of layoffs we're offering these severance packages to anyone who is willing to take one. You'll get 6 months pay while you are looking for a job.

January: We're bankrupt. We're halting payments on all severance packages. Ya'll can line up behind all the secured creditors, and no, there won't be any money left when we're done, and no, you won't find that out for a couple of years.

Nortel didn't suddenly wake up in January and decide to declare bankruptcy - thats something you plan for and anticipate, which means they knew when they offered these severance packages to employees that they had no intention of making good on them.

This goes beyond the normal situation where earnest commitments are broken in the course of a bankruptcy proceeding. It seems clear that these commitments were made in bad faith to begin with.... that severance packages were fraudulent, which raises serious employee relations questions for the company.

I think legislation is needed here. These people were completely blindsided. But until such legislation is enacted, don't take severance from a company in financial trouble unless they offer to pay it in a lump sum.

570News - Former Nortel staff call for telecom giant to resume suspended severance payouts

And I'llllllllllllllllll be gone!

I love this whole album.

One Of These Mornings - Patti Labell & Moby