By Rob Sheridan18 July 2012 The largest oil-tankers booked to haul 2 million-barrel cargoes of crude from ports in the Persian Gulf are poised to slump to a 17-month low as a slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy curbs oil demand. Charters of very large crude carriers to ship Middle East crude will probably fall […]
By Iona Craig, Special for USA TODAY21 July 2012 MARALI, Yemen – In this village under the sweltering summer heat of Yemen’s Red Sea coastal region, six women and a small boy huddle on the floor around a plate of watery tomato sauce mixed with fish remnants. Judging by his size, the boy looks about […]
Each month, The Hamilton Project examines the “jobs gap,” which is the number of jobs that the U.S. economy needs to create in order to return to pre-recession employment levels while also absorbing the people who enter the labor force each month. This chart shows how the jobs gap has evolved since the start of […]
[cf. Photo gallery: Satellite images of the ghost cities of China, 2011] By Ian Williams, NBC News13 July 2012 SHANGHAI, China – It can take two or three hours to drive from bustling Shanghai to the sleepy streets of Thames Town, a new housing development built in the style of an English village complete with […]
By Tom Whipple 11 July 2012 One has to go back to the 1930’s to find a time when so much of civilization was in turmoil at once. The 30’s ended with World War II, tens of millions dead, and much of the industrialized world in ruins. It is not hard to argue that the […]
10 July 2012 (The Week) – China’s leaders are warning that the country, a reliable engine for the global economy in recent years, is facing “huge downward pressure” This week, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao warned that the Chinese economy is facing “huge downward pressure,” the bluntest message to date from Beijing about the Asian […]
By Bruce Alpert, Times-Picayune28 June 2012 Washington – New federal flood insurance legislation could force some homeowners and commercial property owners to pay higher premiums, up to 20 percent a year for the next five years. Currently rate increases are limited to 10 percent annually. The legislation, added to a transportation funding bill expected to […]
SAN FRANCISCO, 28 June 2012 (Reuters) – Stockton, California, became the largest city to file for bankruptcy in U.S. history on Thursday, after years of fiscal mismanagement and a housing market crash left it unable to pay its workers, pensioners and bondholders. The filing by the city of 300,000 people followed three months of confidential […]
By Michele Kambas and Harry Papachristou25 June 2012 NICOSIA/ATHENS (Reuters) – A fifth euro-zone country turned to Brussels for emergency funding on Monday when Cyprus announced it was seeking a lifeline for its banks and its budget, hours after Spain submitted a formal request to bail out its banks. Global share prices and the euro […]
By Julie Johnsson24 June 2012 The coal-fired power industry in the U.S. is facing the biggest plunge in asset values in a decade, risking billions of dollars in pollution-control spending by utilities such as Exelon Corp. (EXC) and American Electric Power Co. (AEP) An indication of how much new emissions rules and cheaper natural gas […]
