SKIRMISHER

The latest global insight economic outlook index from USA Today seems to indicate that this bleeding diarrhea of an economic recession might be ending, maybe.
The May update of the USA TODAY/IHS Global Insight Economic Outlook Index shows increasing evidence that the recession is likely to end in September, with a mild recovery starting in October.
The [...]

And Lesson No. 8 is “forget about self-esteem.”
But I’m getting ahead of the meat.
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American Express is now actually paying its card holders to close their accounts.
Card holders have until the end of February to accept the offer and must close their accounts in March or April. Each card holder will receive a $300 pre-paid American Express card.
American Express, often seen as catering to relatively wealthy customers and companies, [...]

For some really enterprising people, “depression” is just another word you can attach to “sale! sale! sale!”

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The National Geographic Society announced today that it will launch a full-service record label, Nat Geo Music—which also serves as the music division the company established in 2007.
The label will “record, release and promote modern music from around the globe” from a variety of artists and genres, the company said, and be distributed globally through [...]

Dell announced plans to trim its costs over the next four years by cutting out 20 million pounds of its customary computer packaging materials.
Now claiming to be the only major computer maker with a “global packaging reduction target” for desktops and laptops, Dell expects to reduce packaging materials by 10% worldwide, increase “sustainable content” in [...]

Read the complete strip here

You haven’t yet wrapped your head around the $85 billion the US Fed lent AIG, here comes another $38 billion to keep you jumping up and down on your bed.
The Federal Reserve announced Wednesday it was lending billions of additional funds to cash-strapped American International Group Inc.
Under the program, the New York Federal Reserve Bank [...]

Michael Moore would like you to know that:
Let me cut to the chase. The biggest robbery in the history of this country is taking place as you read this. Though no guns are being used, 300 million hostages are being taken. Make no mistake about it: After stealing a half trillion dollars to line the [...]

$26 quadrillion per antimatter pound? Hmmm… So that’s why they’re all crazy about building that Large Hadron Colliding monstrosity.
Item                                        Price per pound

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“Some poor people see playing the lottery as their best opportunity for improving their financial situations, albeit wrongly so,” said the study’s lead author Emily Haisley, a doctoral student in the Department of Organizational Behavior and Theory at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. “The hope of getting out of poverty encourages people to continue [...]

Receipt for a single dinner in Zimbabwe: 1.2 billion something. The wonderful things you can see when your country’s financial system is mostly similar to the brown stuff that emerges out of George Bush’s sphincter each morning.
At least no prostitute there would ever be called a “10-dollar hooker.” Cheers.

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{Mad: Zimbabwe’s official asswipe}

Look around. The world’s tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is [...]

Zimbabwe’s official asswipe: the 10-million-dollar bill.

lucre
{Mad: Dear baby Jesus, please spank all those banks, hard}

Turns out, money can indeed buy happiness.
Research by two Wharton economists suggests that richer countries are happier than poorer ones and that as countries get richer their inhabitants become happier.
Their finding challenges the conventional wisdom of the past three decades, which held that higher national gross domestic product often did not translate into a greater [...]

“Copyright is a very big issue in the legal world today, but in the business world, when you talk to consumers about protecting copyrights, it’s a dead issue. It’s gone. If you have a business model based on copyright, forget it.”
– Gerry Faulhaber, a professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of [...]

“Moneygami is origami made from currency,” and it’s especially so much fun to do when you have boatloads of the filthy lucre.

More “moneygami” pictures.