Links 04-15-2013
I sold home in Cyprus when my husband died…and bank kept my money
The £155,000 proceeds from the sale of her villa in Paralimni, near Ayia Napa, hit her account two hours before close of business on March 15. The next day, EU officials announced that to qualify for a bailout the bankrupt island must enforce draconian measures, including an unprecedented tax on depositors with more than 100,000 euros (£85,000).
Sharon’s two accounts at the Bank of Cyprus, one set up especially for the transaction, were immediately frozen. The 55-year-old, who fears she could lose £42,000, said: “On the same day that the money went into the bank I sent an e-mail. In it I instructed them to transfer the funds, some of which were in euros and some in sterling, to the UK but on Saturday morning the news broke that Cypriot banks were in major financial difficulty.”
“I believe in our Constitution. I am a veteran, I served for six-and-a-half years proudly and I served to protect our rights,” he said. “Now whenever I have someone coming in and trying to pollute my child’s mind with biased opinions…there’s no education in that.”
How 1960s Radicals Ended Up Teaching Your Kids
On the same day ESPN broadcast the Rutgers tape, The New York Postreportedthat Kathy Boudin, a professor at Columbia University, was named the 2013 Sheinberg Scholar-in-Residence at NYU Law School. In 1984, Boudin, a member of the Weather Underground, a violent, oafish association of upper-class “revolutionaries,” pled guilty to second-degree murder in association with the infamous 1981 Brinks armored car robbery in Nyack, New York. Babbling in the language of anti-racism and anti-imperialism, Boudin assisted in ending the life of three people, including Waverly Brown, the first black police officer on the Nyack police force, and left nine children fatherless. She was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. In 2003, Boudin was released; by 2008 she had landed a coveted teaching position at an Ivy League university.
Indeed, Boudin’s Columbia University biography doesn’t mention her violent past, describing her simply as “an educator and counselor with experience in program development since 1964, working within communities with limited resources to solve social problems.” Neither does an official NYU press release announcing her new gig, instead explaining that Boudin “has been dedicated to community involvement in social change since the 1960’s.” Well, that’s one way of putting it.
VIDEO ’Drug smugglers’ show just how easy it is to cross into US
Your Tax Dollars at Work: Subsidizing the Security of Wealthy Allies
It’s Tax Day, and for millions of Americans that means ponying up to the IRS. The federal government does many things these days—most of which would be more efficiently carried out at the local level, or in the private sector. But Uncle Sam also engages in a particular form of charity that many Americans overlook: spending many tens of billions of dollars to defend wealthy, developed nations.
A new Cato infographic puts it all in perspective. It shows how much American taxpayers spend to subsidize the security, and to defend the interests, of other nations that are more than capable of defending themselves.
9 dark omens show U.S. growth will fall near zero
Bulls love bull markets. History’s most famous bull, Yale economist Irving Fisher, loved the Roaring Twenties of the Great Gatsby.
Remember, weeks before the Crash of 1929 this brilliant Yale professor told investors: “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau. I do not feel there will be soon, if ever, a 50 or 60 point break from present levels, such as bears have predicted. I expect to see the stock market a good deal higher within a few months.”
The Disability Scam: A Great Government Freebie
When asked why he robbed banks, Slick Willie Sutton famously answered, “Because that’s where the money is.” Today, millions of Americans appear to have jumped onto our disability rolls for the very same reason. Today, 8.8 million Americans – nearly 6 percent of our workforce – claim they are physically incapable of working.
Add in dependents, and the figure swells to nearly 10.9 million. The number has grown every month since January 1997, when there was a small dip, and has grown faster than the number of added annually to the workforce. For the United States, this is an expensive proposition. The Social Security Administration spent $137 billion on disability last year; Medicare costs for this group tack on another $80 billion, since folks on disability automatically qualify for Medicare.
Why Home Prices Change (or Don’t)
WHAT prices will today’s home buyers get if they sell a decade from now?
Most people live in their home for many years. They don’t need to view it as an investment at all, but if they do, they surely need a long forecasting horizon.
The problem is that modern economics has a poor understanding of past movements in home prices. And that makes the task of predicting the state of the market in 2023 challenging, at the very least. Still, we can learn something by analyzing the factors that affect home prices in general.
Radiating Remnants: Nuclear Waste Barrels Litter English Channel
German journalists have discovered barrels of radioactive waste on the floor of the English Channel, just a handful of thousands dumped there decades ago. It was previously thought the material had dissipated. Now politicians are calling for the removal of the potentially harmful containers.
