Search Results for: economy

Rachel Uchitel Is Not a Madam

Longreads Pick

[Not single-page] And the bottle girls who work at clubs are not prostitutes. As Tiger Woods’s very public escapades through the 21st-century courtesan economy suggest, it’s all much more complicated than that.

Published: Apr 4, 2010
Length: 48 minutes (12,208 words)

War of values

Longreads Pick

An epic battle has been raging over who can afford to live in San Francisco. The paper trail reveals that the city’s dominant landlords, the Lembi family of CitiApartments fame, bought up every building they could get their hands on, from the Tenderloin’s rattiest dumps to Nob Hill’s ritziest penthouses, with an audacious plan to drive up everyone’s rent. And their money came from the same financial geniuses who brought the world economy to its knees.

Published: Dec 1, 2009
Length: 39 minutes (9,995 words)

Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle

Longreads Pick

Goldman Sachs and other big banks aren’t just pocketing the trillions we gave them to rescue the economy — they’re re-creating the conditions for another crash

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Feb 17, 2010
Length: 29 minutes (7,408 words)

Person of the Year 2009: Ben Bernanke

Longreads Pick

Bernanke is the 56-year-old chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the U.S., the most important and least understood force shaping the American — and global — economy. Those green bills featuring dead Presidents are labeled “Federal Reserve Note” for a reason: the Fed controls the money supply. It is an independent government agency that conducts monetary policy, which means it sets short-term interest rates — which means it has immense influence over inflation, unemployment, the strength of the dollar and the strength of your wallet. And ever since global credit markets began imploding, its mild-mannered chairman has dramatically expanded those powers and reinvented the Fed.

Source: Time
Published: Dec 16, 2009
Length: 25 minutes (6,462 words)

The Lost Generation

Longreads Pick

The continuing job crisis is hitting young people especially hard—damaging both their future and the economy

Author: Peter Coy
Source: Businessweek
Published: Oct 8, 2009
Length: 8 minutes (2,001 words)

The California Experiment

Longreads Pick

Busted budgets, failing schools, overcrowded prisons, gridlocked government—California no longer beckons as America’s promised land. Except, that is, in one area: creating a new energy economy. But is its path one the rest of the nation can follow?

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Oct 1, 2009
Length: 23 minutes (5,867 words)

How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?

Longreads Pick

Few economists saw our current crisis coming, but this predictive failure was the least of the field’s problems. More important was the profession’s blindness to the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a market economy.

Published: Sep 2, 2009
Length: 26 minutes (6,695 words)

Borrower’s Remorse

Longreads Pick

Why fixing the banks will not revive the economy

Published: Jul 3, 2009
Length: 6 minutes (1,615 words)

Tiananmen Story

Longreads Pick

It was so frustrating. It was early May, 1989 and I was in Tokyo reporting the financial markets for Reuters, fiddling around journalistically with the peak of the Japanese bubble economy. Meanwhile in China, cataclysmic events were unfolding and I wasn’t there. I really wanted to get back to see it and live it.

Source: Earnshaw.com
Published: Jun 28, 2009
Length: 39 minutes (9,771 words)

Secret of Googlenomics: Data-Fueled Recipe Brews Profitability

Longreads Pick

Why does Google even need a chief economist? The simplest reason is that the company is an economy unto itself. The ad auction, marinated in that special sauce, is a seething laboratory of fiduciary forensics, with customers ranging from giant multinationals to dorm-room entrepreneurs, all billed by the world’s largest micropayment system.

Source: Wired
Published: May 22, 2009
Length: 15 minutes (3,878 words)