Videos
Podcasts
Blogs
Quizzes
GamesPosts Tagged: ‘economy’
This video presents the worst-case scenario for the collapse of the dollar: Just another crazy YouTube video? Or could something like that really happen? The problem is that there is more and more stuff in the mainstream press about the problems with the U.S. deficit and the dollar. This article appeared in Time magazine last [...]
Translation above — “Smile for the tourist swine!” Or, as babelfish says it, “To smile for the pigs of tourists!” I like that one better, actually.
What we’re talking about here is a directive, or maybe that’s too harsh. A plea rather, to French citizens to extend a more welcoming hand for the sake of the board of tourism.
I drove my hobbled Volvo into work today and along Moreland Ave. in East Atlanta I noticed something that caught my attention. The ornate 50s-era stone building tucked between a Long John Silver’s and a Bank of America (and where, on weekends, one can find some really good barbecue for sale in the parking lot) that formerly bore an AIG sign now bears a new one.
“Huh,” I thought to myself. “I know the Fed and the Treasury have rendered it statistically impossible for AIG to go belly up. And I know that I definitely would have heard the pitter-patter of riots in the streets if the nearly $200 billion in taxpayer money had simply disappeared upon the company’s failing. What gives?”
Turns out the business inside was still AIG, they’d just changed the name. So AIG — those three little letters that have become emblematic of the concept of rewarding bad behavior, black holes and vacuums that don’t lose suction…
Some number crunchers out in California (natch) have come up with some compelling financial arguments for legalizing, and in turn taxing the crud out of the little plant the U.S. government loves to hate. An owner of two medical marijuana shops in San Francisco pays the state of California $80,000 a year in sales tax revenue.
It’s a bird … it’s a plane … No — It’s a distraction from the economy!
Here at HowStuffWorks.com, one of our all-time favorite topics is superheroes. That’s why I jumped at the chance to blog about it when I ran across this CNN piece, which discusses how the first superheroes were born out of the Great Depression. At the tail end of the Depression (and as war was starting in Europe), Americans created such larger-than-life characters as Superman and Batman.
In Los Angeles, the Skirball Cultural Center is holding a new exhibit of these classic superheroes. Curators of the exhibit say that the characters were a form of escapism for a public who was losing faith in the American Dream.
A similar thing was already happening in America’s movies at the time. Throughout the Depression era, Hollywood produced lavish flicks that historians often chalk up to “escapism” to distract from the tough economic times.
Back in the day, about 3.2 million years ago, an upright hominid of the Australopithecus afarensis variety, wandered around Ethiopia. Who knows what she did — pick berries and wrestle gazelles and the like is probably a pretty good bet. She was just trying to make her way in the big, wide, comparatively empty world…
Name Your Price Restaurant Rakes in the Dough
by Charles W. Bryant | March 18, 2009
I came an interesting little tidbit yesterday on CNN.com. A cafe owner in Kettering, Ohio has a new pricing policy — pay what you feel like the meal is worth. It sounds crazy, but his business is actually thriving with the new policy and he’s in a position where he may even have to hire more employees to help meet demand. His Bulgarian wife gave him the idea based on similar practices in some European cafes.
If you think that folks might take advantage and pay a penny for a $10 meal, you’ll be pleased to learn that it’s not going down that way. Turns out customers have a hard time looking the owner in the eye and telling him his food isn’t worth much. So far he figured he’s breaking even with some people paying a little more and some a little less than he’d normally charge.
Yesterday on “60 Minutes” Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke went out on a limb and predicted that the economy here in America will edge out of the current recession by the end of 2009 and begin to rebuild itself over the course of 2010. This was a pretty monumental statement because reserve chairmen rarely give interviews at all. So much rides on every word they say, it’s usually not a good idea to have a back-and-forth with a savvy interviewer.
Bernanke was wisely measured in his words and didn’t make any guarantees, but feels the plan is in place to right the ship and with the support of lawmakers and the American people, things will begin to shift toward a more “normal” state by the end of ’09. He also offered a rare peak inside the headquarters of the Federal Reserve, an institution that’s still largely a mystery to most people.
Teens to Obama: Leave Foreclosure Assistance Out of Stimulus Package
by Josh Clark | February 26, 2009
Thanks to our friends at The Obscure Store for pointing the way to a story in the Naples Daily News. Down in Ft. Myers, Fla., this past weekend 17 kids (10 of which were underage) were busted at a house party. It happens, sure, but the problem was — on top of the whole underage drinking thing — is that the house party was thrown at house owned by Wells Fargo Bank.
It seems one upside of the housing bust is the ample foreclosed homes on the market that provide great places to throw ragers for bored teens. The house had been foreclosed on and had been empty for some time.
Apparently berserk on booze and hormones, the teens trashed the place: spraying graffiti on the walls, kicking in windows, and punching holes in the drywall. All told, the kids did around $75,000 worth of damage to the house.
The 2008 US financial crisis has been blamed on the excessive use of mortgage-backed securities. But what exactly is a mortgage-backed security? Learn more about these securities and how they contributed to the crisis in this HowStuffWorks podcast.
Recent Postings by Category
BrainStuff
- Thank You and Best Wishes to Marshall Brain
- Contest – Design a $300 house and win $25,000
- How the Philtrum works – the place under your nose where your face comes together
The Coolest Stuff on the Planet
- Sun, Sand and a Passenger Jet Coming Right for You
- Golden Fields of Canola
- The Park That Never Sleeps: Central Park
Keep Asking
- Why can a 5 foot 8 inch man dunk a basketball on a 10 foot rim while some people of taller stature can’t?
- What happens to our sun once it runs out of fuel?
- How do we know the age of the universe?
Stuff Mom Never Told You
- Who invented the Christmas card?
- How the Kinsey Report Fueled Whiskey Sales
- How to Get Your Wedding Announcement into The New York Times
Stuff to Blow Your Mind
- Blow Your Mind: Nebula in a Box
- Blow Your Mind: Three Minutes Till Impact
- Touching the Void: Psychedelics and Death
Stuff You Should Know
- Stuff You Should Know at SXSW
- The Southern Death Cult, the Maya and Georgia
- Deformed Baby Spider Brains
The Stuff of Genius
CarStuff
- Listener Mail: What’s the world’s largest engine?
- Listener Mail: What makes a “classic car” classic?
- Was Chrysler’s “It’s Halftime in America” Super Bowl commercial a little too political?
How-to Stuff
- How to Enjoy the Fruits of Your Labor
- How to Travel the World in 4 Days
- How to Smell Like Someone at HowStuffWorks
PopStuff
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 69: Perfume: The Culture of Scent
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 68: Astrology: What’s PopStuff’s Sign?
- PopStuff Show Notes: Episode 67: Collecting: PopStuff’s Cabinet of Curiosities
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know
- Good News from the Oldest Mayan Calendar
- One Year Later: Colony Collapse Disorder
- Who Killed Martin Luther King, Jr.?
Stuff to Change the World
- Who will own the Arctic?
- Obesity: The New Global Crisis
- Bill Gates Makes For A Pretty Decent Cartoon
Stuff You Missed in History Class
- Butch Cassidy: Should we read between the lines?
- Are we rooting for D.B. Cooper?
- Party Time: A Look at Unconventional Politics
