FICRY

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In the last year politicians have increasingly pushed for legislation that would limit off-shore banking. Even UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, among others has called for curbs on tax havens despite the fact that a great number of the countries that offer such tax incentives, including the Channel Islands, are British dependencies.  Their rhetoric is [...]

Can the recession save children’s lives? According to economist Michael Greenstone, a decrease in global production due to the current crisis has spared the lives of “…between 257 and 451 British, between 1.104 and 1,933 American, and probably between 58,088 and 101,655 Chinese babies” through the reduction of global emissions (Economist June 2009 issue).  He [...]

“The party is over,” says Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capita, who warned publicly in 2006 of the sub-prime housing crisis. “We bought too many cars, and now we’re broke.” Writing for Reuters journalist Nick Carey argues that the consequences of the automakers failures are likely to last for years. Already, the crisis has [...]

An investigation authored by the Associated Press has concluded that your personal information is vulnerable and unprotected every time you swipe your credit-card and wait for approval.
Sensitive, financial data, including your name and account number are “ferried” to hacker’s computers while the transactions travels from store to bank on the information superhighway, according to [...]

Economic ‘Green Shoots’ in the spring kept moviegoers at the Box office for that old timey recession solution, escapism. But now that Oscar season is in full swing, and the FICRY reality has set-in, movie patrons may be opting for cheaper entertainment, like sitting around their computers.
During the summer season, the bread and butter for [...]

Writing for the Washington Post Foreign Service, Blaine Harden reports that for Kim Jong Il’s birthday, North Korean insurance managers delivered “$20 million in cash into two heavy-duty bags and sent them, via Beijing.” The cash was given to Korean insurance managers by their international counterparts. The money is reimbursements for fraudulent claims.
This incident highlights [...]

Production drove the boom. Now that it’s Bust will workers demand their fair share? Reporting from China, Caijin Online correspondent Andy Xie, claims that the financial sector overestimated its worth by more than 100%, and that in light of this realization, the global financial sector will shrink to half its size. This will cause a [...]

The financial crisis is a global and its consequences extend far beyond Wall Street. Though the tragedy and the struggles in the America and Europe have been both shocking and widespread, impoverished women of the developing world are the hardest hit by the current financial crisis. Ritu Sharma is president and co-founder of Women Thrive, [...]

Investments in unconventional markets are relatively immune to Wall Streets whims, but despite the potential for growth and profit, small-scale lending institutions have been victims of FICRY’s sweeping, invisible hand.
In December of 2007, “socially responsible” investments constituted 10% of all professionally managed assets. In good economic times institutions as well as individuals looked [...]

SmartMoney.com reports that those cheated out of their cash by Ponzi schemers will get a tax break, small consolation. The IRS will allow victims to treat losses as a “tax-favored ordinary loss” rather than a “capital loss.” The latter classification punishes bad investments by limiting deductions to the extent of capital gains for the year; [...]