Capitalist

So is a catastrophic meltdown coming? If so, probably a majority of the people in the world are thinking: “Serves them right.” For the last 500 years, the West has been striding across the globe, armed to the teeth with firearms, warships, bombers, and—more recently—depleted uranium, enforcing the “white man's burden” by enslaving nations and peoples and confis

Google is considering setting up its own venture capital investment arm, the Wall Street Journal said, quoting several people briefed on the discussions related to the matter. David Drummond, Google’s senior vice president of corporate development, would lead the VC investment business. Google has hired William Maris, a former Web hosting entrepreneur, to help set up the [...]

People don’t want to pay a mortgage on a dwelling that is losing value. The banks don’t want to lend to anyone who isn’t wealthy. And inflation is only going up. During the war on terror China and Russia’s state governed oil industries have been very successful. While the Western energy companies although returning profits, haven’t made such daring [...]

An interesting question and an interesting academic paper that attempts to answer it. The work is taken from the book “Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics” so will be fairly accessible to non academic readers. I am in general agreement with the findings below: Just How Capitalist is China? [MIT Sloane Research Paper] Abstract: This paper is the first chapter [...]

I recently watched the blockbuster Wall-E and was impressed by its cleverness. Additionally, I was impressed with the apt and relevant environmental lessons weaved into the movie. First was the problem with unsustainable consumerism. In Wall-E, Earth was drained and completely commodified. As a result, humans left Earth on starships, since paradise was [...]

A conference full of hope François Sabado On the 31st May and 1st June a Paris conference called by the LCR on "May 68- May 2008" brought together the European anticapitalist left. They all came and were all there from the north and the south of Europe. There were about a hundred representatives of about thirty organisations from sixteen countries present. Among them were the principal o

It is my belief that Jesus living in the 21st century would be a capitalist rather than a socialist. I think he would approve of Roy Kroc and Sam Walton for starting businesses' which have improved the lives of a great number of people by providing work, service, and quality. He would support anyone who's main goal is to create a company, product or service which helps people. This must be the

Indiana Jones stars Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett have been accused of being “capitalist puppets” by Leaders of a Russian Communist Party. The Communist Party of St. Petersburg say the actors promote crude, anti-Soviet propaganda in their new film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; and have urged Russia’s movie-going public to boycott [...]

Interviewed by Martin Thomas; 14 April, 2008 Costas Lapavitsas is a Marxist economist specialising in the study of financial systems. His writings include the chapter on money in Anti-Capitalism: A Marxist Guide (edited by Alfredo Saad Filho), and he is a lecturer at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Interview by Martin Thomas It has gradually become clear that one of the key features of the last thirty years is increasing autonomy of finance. Many things have happened in the world economy since 1973-4, which is basically the end of the long boom, but one thing that is clear is that the financial system has become proportionately much larger and increasingly autonomous from real accumulation - production and circulation of value and surplus value. The reason

Guardate questo servizio molto interessante fatto da La7 che parla di studenti che gestiscono milioni di dollari, scienziati visionari e finanzieri coraggiosi, in due parole: Venture Capital. Un viaggio nel mondo del capitale di rischio, in quella Silicon Valley dove i milioni sposano le idee e creano il futuro.

Yes folks!Yesterday our beloved nation was hit by another dangerous feel-bad-but-still-okay capitalist propaganda. Such propaganda is even more dangerous than feel-good propagandas because it can give unsuspecting citizens of any nations the impression that the situation is bad but still acceptable.Don’t be fooled, folks!This sort of propaganda is deadly! It is just a clever nice way of telling gullible and ignorant (stupid would be more appropriate) citizens that they are heading for mass destruction or mass slaughter. Gullible and ignorant citizens would of course be easily fooled, just like sheep following each other to the slaughterhouse. Bekkk Bekk!!Be careful folks!Steven Gan! MalaysiaKini! HarakahDaily! Malaysia Today! Please counter this new feel-bad-but-still-okay propaganda with everything you got! Bombard it with hard-to-deny facts and figures and make the perpetrators of this deadly feel-bad-but-still-okay propaganda feel uncomfortable. Make them pi*s in their own expensi

Let's celebrate greed free enterprise, comic book style!No kidding? A BB machine gun? I am shocked and outraged, and yet jealous I can't order one._________________________________Hey, kids! Take cheesecake pics of women without their knowledge so you can use them to gratify yourself later! Get the money from your mom right now!__________________________________Micky Mantle, shill:You know, when your last name is "Bikeless," I think that's fate's way of telling you that you were just meant to be walking.Dick Butterfingers.... I would so be pals with Dick Butterfingers, for no other reason than I could tell people, "Well, as my good friend Dick Butterfingers would say..."That would be awesome. I may just start telling people I have a good friend named Dick Butterfingers, even though I really don't.

I must admit that this article by George Soros, originally published in the Atlantic Monthly, now republished online by Free Republic, is thought provoking. The Capitalist Threat discusses the danger that unregulated Capitalism could offer to our society. Even though I do not agree with all of his statements, nor do I accept all the conclusions he makes, I still see potential risks to America from many sources. Wealth Accumulation Out of the article, there is one I want to expound upon: "...perfection is unattainable. Wealth does accumulate in the hands of its owners, and if there is no mechanism for redistribution, the inequities can become intolerable." If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. As so many financially successful people demonstrate, having money makes it easier to accumulate more money. It does not guarantee it, but it certainly helps. Usually, this is not a problem because we only live for so many years, and those talented enough to amass huge fortunes fa

What a blog topic if ever there was one! It may be a heafty topic for a Thursday afternoon but I was reading an article on the Beeb regarding a lady called Naomi Klein. It seems she wrote a book called "no-logo" and she's a pretty big advocate of the anti-capitalist movement. I'm not so much moved to talk about her, more that reading about Naomi Klein has made me think just for a moment

Political Betting asks whether Gordon Brown's 'theft' of policies will damage his reputation and image amongst the media and the general public:It struck me while re-watching this on the net a couple of night’s ago that something significant was happening. That the standard Brown approach of closing down debates by stealing popular policies from his opponents might not be so easy in the future.The notion of Gord the policy thief is starting to gain credence. We saw that line being used by the Sun in its editorial on the inheritance tax plan and increasingly commentators are making the same observation. For once people have noticed what you are doing then it is much harder to do it. The Brown government might need to be a lot more subtle in the language it uses.The key question should not be whether Brown 'steals' policies, but whether this is a bad or unusual thing.All parties 'steal' policy ideas from somewhere. John Redwood did not invent the idea of reducing inheritance tax

It’s been a notoriously busy week for me so far, so I don’t have a financial article prepared. Instead of going two weekdays without a post, I’ll chat about the blog instead. Financial Jungle is an editor’s pick I was thrilled to learn that Money Smart Life selected my article, The Dirty Secret Behind Closet Index Funds, as an editor’s pick for the Carnival of Personal Finance #102. You might want to check out the other 68 articles. Some of which are quite interesting, and I may expand on a few in later posts. Canadian Capitalist votes for Financial Jungle Canadian Capitalist, one of my most admired Canadian financial blogs, generously mentioned Financial Jungle yesterday, and included my blog to his blogroll. Canadian Capitalist is a passive-investing advocate, whom I enjoyed a healthy debate with on passive versus dividend investing just a few days ago. If you’re looking for unbiased opinions on personal finance from a source with integrity, w

While browsing an Objectivist blog, I was reminded of an old joke that used to circulate into my e-mail. DEMOCRATIC You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. Barbara Streisand sings for you. REPUBLICANISM You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So? SOCIALIST You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor. You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow. COMMUNIST You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk. You wait in line for hours to get it. It is expensive and sour. CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows. BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE You have two cows. Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the other, and then pours the milk down the drain. AMERICAN CORPORATION You have two cows. You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one. You force the two cows to prod

You Are 64% Capitalist, 36% Socialist In general, you support a free economy and business interests. You tend to think people should fend for themselves, even when times get tough. However, do think the government should help those who are...

Xilinx, Inc. (XLNX) annnounced today at the Global Entrepolis Singapore event that it would launch a $75 million corporate venture capital fund focused on accelerating programmable systems innovation and development within the Asia Pacific technology market. This is the company's first regionally-focused funding initiative for the Asia Pacific programmable logic device (PLD) market. The fund is designed to seek opportunities to invest in companies throughout the region including China, India, Taiwan and Korea. Xilinx is looking to invest $500,000 to $5 million in emerging companies who are creating innovative applications based on programmable logic, targeted at key vertical markets such as wired/wireless communications, consumer, automotive, audio/video/broadcast, industrial/scientific/medical, and storage/servers or technology domains such as high-performance DSP and embedded processing. Xilinx is also interested to invest in companies developing technologies and solutions to increa

I have been following this Digg controversy all night. I have come to the conclusion that a majority of Internet nerds, especially Digg nerds, are a bunch of socialist scum. To quote a comment on a YTMND (with some modifications to make it make more sense): By ...