Blog Smith is inspired by the myth of Hephaestus in the creation of blacksmith-like, forged materials: ideas. This blog analyzes topics that interest me: IT, politics, technology, history, education, music, and the history of religions.
The Goodguide has cautioned consumers about the ubiqutous Christmas sensation, the Zhu Zhu Pets, furry robotic hamsters, which are the hottest Christmas craze of 2009-–with millions being flown into the U.S. from China. While Zhu Zhu pets have not faced a Consumer Product Safety Commission recall, a report from GoodGuide.com says they contain antimony, a toxic metal known as a carcinogen. The federal limt for antimony in products is 60 parts per million, while the Zhu Zhu has 93 parts per million in the fur and 103 in the nose. "If ingested in high enough levels, antimony can lead to cancer, reproductive health and other human health hazards," said Dara O'Rourke, an associate professor of environmental science at U.C.-Berkeley and co-founder of GoodGuide.com. "If these toys aren't even meeting the legal standards in the U.S., then I would say that it isn't worth the risk for me to bring it into my household."
Sources in Washington say a recall of the toys is unlikely because of the sheer volume already sold – millions throughout the U.S.
But that's not the case with dozens of other products imported from China just in time for Christmas. Of the 28 products recalled by the Consumer Product Safety Commission so far in November and December, 16 were manufactured in China.
But it's not just children's toys from China that are getting recalled and posing safety hazards. Kids' clothing has also been a target of the CPSC this holiday season. Various kinds of hooded sweatshirts have been targeted as strangulation hazards because of unsafe drawstrings. Some of these items are sold in upper-end department stores like Macy's and Dillards – not just Walmart.
Only one major recall this season was highly publicized. That was Maclaren USA's voluntary action to pull from stores baby strollers that resulted in at least 12 finger amputations. About 1 million of them were in circulation – manufactured, of course, in China. They sold for between $100 and $350.
Thinking about giving someone a kitchen appliance this year? Be warned.
Haier America Trading of New York, N.Y., voluntarily recalled nearly 54,000 blenders made in China when it was learned the blade assemblies came apart or broke, posing laceration risks.
Or maybe you were thinking about getting Dad a gas grill. About 663,000 Perfect Flame grills made in China and sold in Lowe's were voluntarily recalled because they posed burn hazards to users. They caused at least 40 fires resulting in burns to hands, arms and faces and at least one eye injury requiring surgery.
Power adapters used with IBM back-up disk hard drives, also made in China, were recalled when it was found they were failing and exposing live electrical contacts that posed shock hazards to consumers.
Maybe you thought a travel mug made in China was a safe gift. Think again. About 15,000 had to be recalled by the "Life Is Good" company when it was found they posed burn hazards.
And before you get that new baby a pacifier for the stocking this Christmas, be sure to check it out. Some 641,000 "Bobby Chupete" pacifiers had to be recalled this season because they pose a choking hazard.
Not even that Christmas tree stand is necessarily safe. About 13,000 manufactured in China had to be recalled after causing users to fall and sustain serious injuries.
Previously frozen catfish from China was found to have been laced with banned antibiotics and scallops and sardines coated with bacteria.
Chinese toothpaste also has been found by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to have contained a deadly chemical used in antifreeze. In one case, four defendants pleaded guilty to importing from China more than a half million tubes of toothpaste falsely labeled as the popular brand Colgate that contained the toxic antifreeze ingredient.
According to a U.S. Department of Justice statement, the defendants were responsible for 518,028 tubes of toothpaste worth an estimated $730,419 that were shipped into the country and distributed to bargain retail stores in several states.
Chinese imports have been blamed for poisoning America's pets, risking America's human food supply and reintroducing lead poisoning to America's children.
For years, Washington has claimed to be working on the problem of defective consumer products being delivered from China to the United States.
The Environmental Protection Agency took a major step yesterday toward regulating greenhouses gases by concluding that climate changing pollution threatens the public health and the environment.
"CO2 for different people has different attractions. After all, what is it? - it’s not a pollutant, it’s a product of every living creature’s breathing, it’s the product of all plant respiration, it is essential for plant life and photosynthesis, it’s a product of all industrial burning, it’s a product of driving – I mean, if you ever wanted a leverage point to control everything from exhalation to driving, this would be a dream. So it has a kind of fundamental attractiveness to bureaucratic mentality."- Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D. Professor of Atmospheric Science, MIT
In another video--filmed shortly after Obama delivered his "Back to School Speech" in September=--children from the same elementary school say "thank you" to Obama. The teacher also asks one of the students if the President "is like a hero to" her. At about 1 minute and 59 seconds into the video, the children say "Thank You" to Obama while holding a photo with the words, "Extreme Loyalty...." inscribed on the top. Blech.
Types of Unemployment
There are several different types of unemployment, of varying duration and severity (in terms of implications for the economy). This video goes through the types, and addresses why the Macroeconomic goal is "Low Unemployment," rather than "Zero Unemployment."
Fault Lines on Unemployment from al-Jazeera
The difference between GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and GNP (Gross National Product)
Dr. Richard Ebeling, Clemson capitalism, answers a student question about GDP and its usefulness as a measure of economic health.
How To Calculate GDP
Want to Subscribe?
Sign In or Sign Up now!
http://www.informedtrades.com/ A lesson on what traders of the stock, futures, and forex markets look for when the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Number is released. As we have learned in previous...
http://www.informedtrades.com/
A lesson on what traders of the stock, futures, and forex markets look for when the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Number is released.
As we have learned in previous lessons there are many components of the US Economy which can affect overall economic growth and inflation expectations. Some of the major examples here are how many people are employed in the economy vs. unemployed, how much the housing market is growing in different parts of the country, and at what rate the prices for different products in the economy are seeing increases.
As all of these things are so important to the economy and therefore to the markets, there are no shortage of economic reports which are released to try and help people gauge how things are going with different pieces of the economy. It is important for us as traders to understand the major reports here as even if we are trading off of technicals, understanding what is happening in the market from a fundamental standpoint can help establish a longer term bias for trading. In the short term an understanding of these numbers will also help to assess the erratic and sometimes extreme movements which can occur after economic releases.
The granddaddy of all economic reports is the release of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) number for the economy. The Gross Domestic Product for the US or any other country is the final value of all the goods and services produced in that economy. Essentially what you get after calculating GDP by adding up the value of all goods and services produced in the economy is a measure of the size of the overall economy. It is for this reason that market participants will watch the GDP number closely as the rate of growth in this number represents the rate of growth in the overall economy.
As a side note here, GDP also allows a comparison to be made of the sizes of different economies from around the world, as well as their growth rates. To give you an idea of just how large the US Economy is, 2007 GDP for the United States was estimated at 13.7 Trillion dollars. This is in comparison to the next largest economy in the world, Japan which has a GDP of under 5 Trillion Dollars.
Quarterly estimates of GDP are released each month with Advance Estimates which are incomplete and subject to further revision being released near the end of the first month after the end of the quarter being reported. In the second month after the end of the quarter being reported preliminary numbers (which basically means more accurate than advanced) normally are released and then finally the final GDP number is released at the end of the 3rd month after the end of the quarter being reported on.
Traders are going to focus heavily on the growth rate released in the Advanced number and markets will also move on any significant revisions made in the preliminary and final GDP numbers.
Circular Flow Diagram and Micro vs. Macro
This video gives an overview of the circular flow of economic markets and discusses the difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics.
For more information and a complete set of microeconomics videos, see
http://www.economistsdoitwithmodels.com
Business Cycle
Outlining briefly the people and discoveries relating to economic cycles. Beginning with Sir William Herschel who around 1800 found a connection between the Sunspot cycle and wheat prices, mention is made of Clement Juglar 1860s, William Stanley Jevons 1870s, The Rothschild family 1890s and Rockerfeller family, W D Gann 1900s, Joseph Kitchin 1920, Kondratief (who I accidentally left out of this video) and his 54 year cycle in the 1920s, Alexander Chizhevsky and Raymond Wheeler around the 1930s being interisciplinary cycles researchers, R N Elliott, Joseph Schumpeter and Simon Kuznets (later to receive a Nobel Prize) and the formation of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles by Edward R Dewey and others in 1942. The age of computers arrived in cycles research with J M Hurst about 1970.
For more information about cycles research:
http://www.cyclesresearchinstitute.org/
http://foundationforthestudyofcycles....
http://ray.tomes.biz/
There is an interdisciplinary cycles discussion forum open to all people to search and read, and people can join to participate, at http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cy...
For more on the history of economic cycles:
http://www.datacomm.ch/dbesomi/Links/...
http://www.timesizing.com/1kondrat.htm
Posts
All Comments
Share |
CIO and Strategy & Business magazines
Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science
SD Times: Software Development News
SC Magazine for Security Professionals
Government Technology: Solutions for State and Local Government in the Information Age
What's Running is a great tool so that you can see what is running on your desktop.
Process Lasso lets you view your processor and its responsiveness.
Online Armor lets you view your firewall status.
Avast is a terrific scrubber of all virus miscreants.
ClamWin is an effective deterrent for the little nasty things that can crop into your machine.
Ad-Aware is a sound anti-virus tool.
For all your electronic appliance needs research products on this terrific site.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Posts
All Comments
