] Warren Buffett, one of the world's most successful
] investors, has launched his most withering attack to date
] on the US trade deficit, describing Americans as "rich
] spending junkies" who could turn into a nation of
] "sharecroppers".

Contrast this with another choice. Music: Download and own? Or subscribe and stream.

Guardian Unlimited | Buffett attacks American spending junkies

... an entire generation of lowered expectations ...

This author doesn't understand why we are ignoring the problem. If you look one article back in my MemeStream to "Creative Class War" you'll get the why to go along with this article's what.

Education Is No Protection

] We would achieve this balance by issuing what I will call
] Import Certificates...

This was a lot of information to digest. I too, am not at all savvy with my knowledge of macroeconomics. The best I can say is that this sounds like a pretty reasonable method of constructing a tariff that is both country and product neutral. This would not have been a reasonable idea several years ago, but given electronic markets I could see lively trade of these ICs Buffet suggests creating.

Trade deficits are something to be worried about.. However, I also don't necessarily think everything we "export" is something that can be laid out in a spreadsheet.

Jeremy meme'd something recently about outsourcing where he made a suggestion that in come cases we are making the choice between wealth and security, and there is a balance. There are countries we may find desirable to have a deficit with in order to drive positive growth in their local economy, hence positive change in their society. We do export freedom and democracy, and it comes back in many forms. There is a degree to which this is a hard^Wimpossible thing to fully account for..

This also makes me think of another meme Jeremy recommended about counter-insurgency.. There is a degree to which we are spending our wealth to dry up support for ideals and groups which lead to our security problems. Our wealth is one of the few things we can toss around to confront these asymmetric threats.

Buffet: America's growing trade deficit is selling the nation out from under us.

] Federal investigators have arrested an enigmatic Wall
] Street wiz on insider-trading charges -- and incredibly,
] he claims to be a time-traveler from the year 2256!

] Carlssin declared that he had traveled back in time from
] over 200 years in the future, when it is common knowledge
] that our era experienced one of the worst stock plunges
] in history. Yet anyone armed with knowledge of the
] handful of stocks destined to go through the roof could
] make a fortune.
]
] "It was just too tempting to resist," Carlssin allegedly
] said in his videotaped confession. "I had planned to make
] it look natural, you know, lose a little here and there
] so it doesn't look too perfect. But I just got caught in
] the moment."
]
] In a bid for leniency, Carlssin has reportedly offered to
] divulge "historical facts" such as the whereabouts of
] Osama Bin Laden and a cure for AIDS.

Hahaha..

If the guys managed to nail 126 trades, taking $800 to $350m, he clearly has oodles of inside information. So much so, that time travel is about the only explanation for it.. It is eerie that there is no record of him.. Of course, he might not be using his real name.

What stocks did he buy? Thats the information I want..

Oh yeah.. And that one peice of information that the Weekly World News always leaves out that conclusively proves its all bullshit..

'TIME-TRAVELER' BUSTED FOR INSIDER TRADING

] "It's a phenomenon that's not on the mainstream radar
] quite yet, but it will be in six months."

Wait a minute.. I know the date up there says 2003, but this feels so 1999. Tech company buyout, The Valley, dude with laptop wearing Dead Kennedys t-shirt, something about advertising, where Lycos and AOL stand, etc.. I bet someone got nostalgic when doing this article. You could almost forget that the tech industry is a disaster and many people trying to innovate can barely afford to keep food in their mouths.

Blogging goes mainstream - Mar. 10, 2003

] So who will perform the function of Microsoft in the
] Linux world?

More Sony CEO interview. Mostly stating the obvious, in reference to Linux, IBM, and Sun. In short, they need their OS partner to manage the entire OS chain and be able to work closely with them..

Sony's Idei - Part 2 :: AO