40 per cent of white Americans don’t have any friends of another race | Toronto Star
“About 40 per cent of white Americans and about 25 per cent of non-white Americans are surrounded exclusively by friends of their own race, according to an ongoing Reuters/Ipsos poll.
The figures highlight how segregated the United States remains in the wake of a debate on race sparked by last month’s acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting of unarmed black Florida teenager Trayvon Martin.”
“Fannie Mae, the largest U.S. mortgage finance company, said on Thursday its second-quarter profit nearly doubled to $10.1 billion, triggering another big payment to the U.S. Treasury that could complicate the debate over revamping Fannie and its smaller sibling, Freddie Mac.
The quarterly profit was Fannie’s sixth in a row, mainly driven by a housing recovery that has reduced mortgage delinquencies and lifted home prices. The government rescued Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2008, covering losses on soured loans. Since then, taxpayers have bailed out the pair to the tune of nearly $188 billion.
Fannie Mae said it will make a $10.2 billion dividend payment in September to the U.S. Treasury for its rescue aid.”
This was the situation before Rajan came onto the scene:
“As India’s rupee hits record lows, some investors see it headed towards the mid-60s against the dollar, a reflection of weak economic fundamentals and expectations the government will struggle to implement meaningful measures to reverse capital outflows.
Domestic forwards markets, which reflect market expectations, see the rupee trading at around 65 to the dollar in a year, while offshore forward markets see it at 66.”
“Nikon Corp. said on Thursday that its net profit fell 72% in the April-June quarter because of a slump at its imaging division driven by a steep slide in demand for compact and interchangeable-lens models. The world’s second-largest maker of digital cameras also cut its sales and profit outlook for the fiscal year to March.
“We expect the business to remain tough,” Junichi Ito, Nikon’s chief financial officer, said at a news conference. “
“When he met Julian Assange for the first time, Sigurdur Thordarson admired the WikiLeaks founder’s attitude and quickly signed up to the cause. But little more than a year later, Thordarson was working as an informant spying on WikiLeaks for the U.S. government—embroiling himself as a teenager in one of the most complicated international events in recent history.”
“Summers would be better off—at least as far as this Fed chair thing is concerned—simply admitting he was wrong, rather than trying to win a fifteen-year-old argument. At the end of the day, however, the whole Brooksley Born affair is a bit beside the point—if the question is trying to understand Larry Summers. The Summers camp thinks they can justify his anti-regulatory stance during the Clinton years by making Born look like an extremist; by implication, he was just a moderate.
But the Born affair (and, or course, the great “thirteen bankers” quote) is just one piece of evidence. We know that Summers opposed derivatives regulation. “
“Barack Obama held a press conference on Friday afternoon, supposedly to announce reforms of the NSA’s far-flung surveillance programs. In reality, the White House briefing was the start of a marketing campaign for the spy programs that have turned so controversial in recent months. And the president’s message really boiled down to this: It’s more important to persuade people surveillance is useful and legal than to make structural changes to the programs.
“The question is, how do I make the American people more comfortable?” Obama said.”
“Android is one of the most open, versatile, and customizable mobile operating systems out there. You may think you don’t need to root your phone, but you’d be surprised at how much more you can accomplish with a little work. Here are 10 reasons rooting your phone is worth the hassle.”
“the experience of the newspaper industry in recent years has shown that offering free content doesn’t pay. Bezos’s priority should be to shore up the Post’s “paywall”—charging for online content. The Post was late to the game in charging, having only implemented a subscriber plan in June.
To be sure, Bezos’s deep pockets are comfort to an organization that lost $49 million in the first half, 50% worse than a year earlier. Someone with a net worth estimated at $25 billion can shield the paper from further newsroom cuts. But for quite a while, Don Graham, CEO of the Washington Post Co. (WPO), has been telling investors that losses are less of a concern than weak revenue and a lack of growth. Average daily circulation was 447,000 in June, 7% below the year-earlier total and 40% below what it was a decade ago. “
“Mr Rajan has also been right about India. In 2010, as hubris in the country soared, he warned that “growth can never be taken for granted” and that “self-delusion is the first step towards disaster.” As he prepares to succeed Duvvuri Subbarao at the helm of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in September that caution seems prescient. India’s economy is in a funk and it faces a balance-of-payments scare. The rupee has fallen by 12% against the dollar in the past three months.”
“After a record 54 strikes last year, there had been a lull in activity after Mr Obama announced a tightening of the rules of engagement in May. American special forces, who already train Yemeni counter-terrorist units, are said to be preparing for more direct action against al-Qaeda.
None of this in itself explains why the White House made such a dramatic public statement of its anxieties, rather than acting quietly to thwart the plot when it heard of it. Disruptions to travel have an economic cost; and there are potentially important security drawbacks as well.”
“Soros Fund Management LLC is withdrawing its money from William Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management due to performance, according to a person close to the matter said on Thursday.”
“Details of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration program that feeds tips to federal agents and then instructs them to alter the investigative trail were published in a manual used by agents of the Internal Revenue Service for two years.”
“The cuts have been most severe in Spain, unraveling years of expansion by regional savings banks, which had landed it with the biggest network in Europe.
Its branch numbers were down 17 percent by the end of 2012 from four years earlier. But at just over 38,200 branches, Spain still had more branches per head than any country in Europe – one for every 1,210 people. A European bailout of weak lenders last year, including Bankia, was conditional on them shrinking further.”
“Banks cut 5,500 branches across the European Union last year, 2.5 percent of the total, leaving the region with 20,000 fewer outlets than it had when the financial industry was plunged into crisis in 2008.”
“After decades of pursuing trade with western Europe, Finland is becoming dependent on Russia again as that country’s burgeoning middle class and wealthy investors provide opportunities for growth lacking in recession-hit Europe.”
“had the U.S. followed Friedman’s (later) advice, matters would have gone far, far better. We’re talking about lender of last resort aid to banks, not just printing currency, and we are talking about a time period before the U.S. economy hit a zero lower bound. (In any case LLR functions still work at a zero lower bound.) The money supply would not have fallen by one third or anything close to that.”
“Der Spiegel cites document from Germany’s central bank saying European governments will agree new aid programme.
The Der Spiegel report could rekindle debate on whether Angela Merkel is deliberately playing down prospects of further help for Greece before next month’s election.”
“China is developing a new trading platform to enable banks to sell off loans to a wider range of investors, in a move that could pave the way for a government bailout of lenders or distressed asset sales to private investors.”
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