The G4S debacle in London is a wake-up call on outsourcing security

By Greg Barton, Monash University

Stuff happens. When organising something as big as the Olympic Games some things are bound to go wrong.

Sometimes the failures are simply funny. Just one day after its public unveiling in Trafalgar Square, the official 500 day Countdown Clock stopped counting down. It was a real-egg-on-face moment for LOCOG but harmless black comedy for everyone else.

Earthquakes and mining - how humans create seismic activity

By Christian Klose, Northwest Research Associates

This week’s 5.3 magnitude earthquake that struck near Moe in Victoria’s brown-coal mining region of the La Trobe Valley brings to mind the 5.6 magnitude quake of 1989 in another coal-mining heartland: NSW’s Hunter Valley.

Mining cannot be blamed for the Moe quake in the La Trobe Valley’s coalfields. However, it can be argued that mining played a large part in the destruction wrought in 1989 upon Newcastle, with its proximity to underground black-coal mining.

The Shock Doctrine and Disaster Capitalism

It’s All a Grand Capitalist Conspiracy

When Milton Friedman died in 2006, the acclaim for his work was nearly universal. Even his ideological opponents, like Paul Krugman and Lawrence Summers, treated this Nobel Prize-winning economist — who taught for decades at the University of Chicago — with respect.

Naomi Klein will have none of it. In her new book, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” she essentially accuses Friedman of being the godfather of a Mafia-like gang, the Chicago Boys, who have exploited the public disorientation associated with catastrophes and political crises to impose an unwanted free-market ideology on much of the world.

Serendipity

  

One day in 1945, a man named Percy Spencer was touring one of the laboratories he managed at Raytheon in Waltham, Massachusetts, a supplier of radar technology to the Allied forces. He was standing by a magnetron, a vacuum tube which generates microwaves, to boost the sensitivity of radar, when he felt a strange sensation. Checking his pocket, he found his chocolate bar had melted. Surprised and intrigued, he sent for a bag of popcorn, and held it up to the magnetron. The popcorn popped. Within a year, Raytheon made a patent application for a microwave oven.

Ideas4Greece

We are all aware of the challenging times Greece is presently facing. That is why we developed the Ideas4Greece campaign. We believe this is the best way to initiate a global discussion and bring awareness to the issues of a country we all cherish so much.  We call you and all members of the Greek diaspora from all corners of the world to share your idea on how to help Greece by answering this question: “if you had the power to change something in the country what would it be?”. Upload your video (up to 2 minutes) stating your idea, via twitter, Facebook or by leaving a comment on this page. Greece needs us so lets be there for her. 

Show your support and share you thoughts on how Greece can thrive again. Let your voice be heard and inspire others to speak up for a good cause.

Russia to help Athens by buying "Made in Greece"

Russian authorities believe ordinary people should help bail out indebted Greece and urged them to buy ‘Made in Greece’, which will give Athens an estimated export revenue of up to 18 billion euros a year. In the meantime, the Russian Gazprom monopoly is eyeing a stake in the Greek DEPA state-owned natural gas company.

A Tale of Greek Enterprise and Olive Oil, Smothered in Red Tape

It was about a year ago that Fotis I. Antonopoulos, a successful Web program designer here, decided he wanted to open an e-business selling olive products.

Luckily, he already had a day job.

It took him 10 months — crisscrossing the city to collect dozens of forms and stamps of approval, including proof that he was up to date on his pension contributions — before he could get started. But even that was not enough. In perhaps the strangest twist of all, his board members were required by the Health Department to submit lung X-rays — and stool samples — since this was a food company.

The Global Minotaur: America, The True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy

The Global Minotaur: America, The True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy by Yanis Varoufakis

I found a flaw… . a flaw in the model.
                   —Alan Greenspan, October 2008

It’s almost three years since the bubble burst. If understanding really does abhor a vacuum, something about why it happened ought to have been learned. Much has been written on the subject, to be sure, lots of it terrifically trenchant. Journalists like Matt Taibbi (in his superb Rolling Stone screeds) and Andrew Ross Sorkin (Too Big Too Fail) establish incontrovertibly that there was colossal greed at work on Wall Street. (The bankers, one can’t help noting, admit as much. It’s only the criminal charges they’re a little defensive about.)

But moral narratives alone will never suffice; what’s being reckoned with here, recall, is arguably the greatest systemic failure of all time. The bankers cannot have been the only ones responsible. A more circumspect explanation is to be found in what might be called the “regulatory capture” version of the moral tale, found in books Simon Johnson’s 13 Bankers or Joseph Stiglitz’s Freefall. In this version of the crisis, self-interested elected officials and the regulators they appointed are (quite rightly) seen to have stood aside for the banks.

Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds

Father Arsenios at the Vatopaidi monastery, overlooking the Aegean Sea, in Mount Athos, Greece. He is considered by many to be Vatopaidi’s C.F.O., “the real brains of the operation.”

As Wall Street hangs on the question “Will Greece default?,” the author heads for riot-stricken Athens, and for the mysterious Vatopaidi monastery, which brought down the last government, laying bare the country’s economic insanity. But beyond a $1.2 trillion debt (roughly a quarter-million dollars for each working adult), there is a more frightening deficit. After systematically looting their own treasury, in a breathtaking binge of tax evasion, bribery, and creative accounting spurred on by Goldman Sachs, Greeks are sure of one thing: they can’t trust their fellow Greeks.

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