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from http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/retailreport/2012795172_retailreport03.html … He meets farmers online, and if their coffee sounds like a fit, they send samples. Then he draws up contracts to pay them and finds an importer who charges another 30 to 50 cents a pound to move the beans from Central America to the Puget Sound area. It takes time and [...]

See the lengthy article (15 typed single-spaced pages) at http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer  Here are a few excepts: With his brother Charles, who is seventy-four, David Koch owns virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars.   The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, [...]

Read the full article at http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/08599201368300  Here are some excerpts: … the Recovery Act is the most ambitious energy legislation in history, converting the Energy Department into the world’s largest venture-capital fund. It’s pouring $90 billion into clean energy, including unprecedented investments in a smart grid; energy efficiency; electric cars; renewable power from the sun, [...]

from http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/110393/seven-flaws-in-chinas-growth-model …Chinese colleges graduate many times the number of engineers and scientists that American universities produce, but such statistics are misleading. To meet the quotas for graduates set by Beijing, academic programs dilute their standards. … Those engineers and scientists who do measure up — the cream of Chinese universities or those who study [...]

from http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/careers/what-is-the-real-unemployment-rate/19556146/ … “Our numbers are always very accurate, so I was surprised at the discrepancy with the government’s numbers,” says Mayur, whose firm owns the TIPP polling unit, a polling partner for Investors’ Business Daily and Christian Science Monitor. After all, the headline number shows the U.S. unemployment rate today is 9.5%, with a [...]

from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/business/global/07indiadrug.html?_r=1&ref=global-home … The shift to pharmaceuticals is part of a subtle, broader shift in the Indian economy. Moving beyond less sophisticated, outsourced services like telephone call centers, India has been advancing up the business value chain, particularly in law and medical diagnostics. Now it is showing a flair for manufacturing, too, particularly when it [...]

from http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/06/what-economists-can-teach-world-cup-coaches/ … in a paper issued by the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in Munich, Alexander Ebertz and Marc Gronwald argue that the notion of evolutionary finance may help explain why certain styles of soccer seem indomitable for a time, only to eventually be usurped by a new strategy. As described by the authors, evolutionary [...]

Scarcity leads to higher prices.  That’s why there is profit in creating an illusion that the world is short of oil.  We do need to pursue alternative energy sources but we shouldn’t worry about oil shortages. From the NY Times Op Ed, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/opinion/25lynch.html But those are just the latest arguments — for the most part the peak-oil crowd [...]

From the NY Times article “Turning Around the Idea of Student Loans“: LAS VEGAS — Over sandwiches and pizza, a group of high school students here debated the pros and cons of combating poverty in five desperate nations. They scrolled through Web sites, analyzed statistics and considered how much they knew about the economy, language [...]

Because, as Milton Friedman (1912-2006) wrote in an 1928 essay, “Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change. When the crisis occurs the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.” (emphasis added) The New York Times was already re-evaluating Friedman’s legacy in April, 2008 with a short article titled “A [...]