Monthly Archives: March 2011
Irish GDP Falls 1.6%
Moody’s Downgrades 30 Spanish Banks
Retail, Resource, and Chemical Stocks Lead European Markets Higher
Commodity Stocks Lead The Charge in Asian Markets
Toyota Starts Hybrid Plants While Honda Keeps Plants Closed
Portugal Bond Spreads Float Above Sustainable Levels; Bailout Expected Soon
Global Markets Mostly Higher
Flash: Egyptian Stock Market Plunges by 5%
The exchange was halted again after a bidless market destroyed stocks for a second consecutive day.
Comments »Flash: Moody’s Downgrades Spanish Banking Sector
Spanish banks are expected to trade lower. This downgrade was widely expected.
Comments »Tokyo Water is Now Safe!
Japanese officials issued a press release declaring that tap water in Tokyo proper is now safe, even for babies.
Feel free to drink as much as your heart desires.
Comments »Korean Smartphone Users Pass 10 million
The Korean Communication Commission is reporting Korean smartphone users have surpassed 10 million, just 16 months after the iPhone was launched there. Moreover, they are projecting that number to surge to over 20 million by the end of this year.
Note: we are talking South Korea here. The baboons in the North are still using tomato cans and wire.
Comments »G-20 Next in Line to Target Large Banks and Raise Capital Requirements
The Little Guy is Back
Clean Energy Has Efficiency Working For It Both in Price and Performance
No Country Leans on Upper-Income Households as Much as U.S.
Be sure to read the whole piece, if for no other reason than to access the tables. The money quotes come in the last paragraph, which I’ve not quoted here.
“During my recent testimony before the Senate Budget Committee (found here), I cited an OECD statistic that the U.S. has the most progressive income tax system among industrialized nations.[1] This prompted one Senator to point out that if the richest 10% of taxpayers earn the most of any OECD country, shouldn’t it make sense that they bear the largest tax burden of any country?
The answer can be found in the OECD table below. This table shows the share of taxes paid by the richest 10 percent of households, the share of all market income earned by that group, and the ratio of what that 10 percent of households pays in taxes versus what they earn as a share of the nation’s income.
The first column shows that the top 10 percent of households in the U.S. pays 45.1 percent of all income taxes (both personal income and payroll taxes combined) in the country. Italy is the only other country in which the top 10 percent of households pays more than 40 percent of the income tax burden (42.2%). Meanwhile, the average tax burden for the top decile of households in OECD countries is 31.6 percent.
By contrast, column #2 shows that the richest decile in America earned 33.5 percent of the market income in the country in 2005 – the year in which this snapshot was taken, but little has changed since then. But, a few other countries do have a greater or similar concentration of income as does the U.S. For example, the OECD table shows that the wealthiest decile of households in Italy and Poland earn a greater share of their country’s market income than do our “rich” – 35.8 percent and 33.9 percent respectively – while the share of income earned by the top decile of households in the U.K. is about on par with those in the U.S. at 32.3 percent.”
Read the rest here.
Comments »Neutron beam observed 13 times at crippled Fukushima nuke plant
Crazy stuff.
“Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday it has observed a neutron beam, a kind of radioactive ray, 13 times on the premises of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after it was crippled by the massive March 11 quake-tsunami disaster.”
Read the rest here.
Comments »Footage from Misrata
The struggle to behead Ghaddafi continues.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2mw-JseOIs&feature=player_embedded 550 400] Comments »Seoul, Heng Seng, All Ordinaries Extend Gains
Heng Seng +0.75%, Seoul +0.95% and All Ordinaries +0.87%.
The NIKKEI is flat; but the rest of Asia is rallying.
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