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IMF WARNING: Britain could follow Greece?

  
Analysis, Economy, Education
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There were fears that Britain could follow Greece into a financial crisis after a global finance chief warned of economic “contagion” spreading across Europe.

The head of the International Monetary Fund urged politicians to finalise a bail-out for the debt-laden Mediterranean country, saying that every day lost in resolving the problems risked spreading the impact “far away”.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s comments came amid more evidence of Europe’s mounting fiscal problems after Spain’s debt was downgraded – a move recently applied to its under-pressure neighbour Portugal as well as Greece.

On Wednesday, shadow chancellor George Osborne raised the spectre of the crisis affecting the public finances of the UK, which faces dealing with its own £163 billion mountain of public borrowing. (more…)

A PERFECT EXPLANATION FOR THE COLLECTIVE MADNESS OF CROWDS

  
  Education
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All I can say about the following is WOW, talk about THE perfect explanation for the reason behind unreasonable and illogical crowded moves in the stock market…

The most striking peculiarity presented by a psychological crowd is the
following: Whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or unlike
be their mode of life, their occupations, their character, or their intelligence,
the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession
of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner
quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think,
and act were he in a state of isolation. There are certain ideas and feelings
which do not come into being, or do not transform themselves into acts except
in the case of individuals forming a crowd. The psychological crowd is a
provisional being formed of heterogeneous elements, which for a moment are
combined, exactly as the cells which constitute a living body form by their
reunion a new being which displays characteristics very different from those
possessed by each of the cells singly.

…and it was written by a psychologist in 1896!

Anyone care to guess who it is? And it is not Charles Mackay.

Bill Gates donates $10 billion for vaccine research

  
Analysis, Education, Life
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bill-gates-1983Gates may be great with computers and technologies, but he’ll just waste money putting it into vaccines.  Best to spend it on sanitation, nutrition and refrigeration if he wants to help the most people of poor countries, because these three things were the major reasons why we had a dramatic decline in infectious diseases in America. DAVOS, Switzerland (Jan. 29) — The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will donate $10 billion over the next decade to research new vaccines and bring them to the world’s poorest countries, the Microsoft co-founder and his wife said Friday.


Calling upon governments and business to also contribute, they said the money will produce higher immunization rates and aims to make sure that 90 percent of children are immunized against dangerous diseases such as diarrhea and pneumonia in poorer nations.

“We must make this the decade of vaccines,” Bill Gates said in a statement. “Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries. Innovation will make it possible to save more children than ever before.”

Gates said the commitment more than doubles the $4.5 billion the foundation has given to vaccine research over the years.

The foundation said up to 7.6 million children under 5 could be saved through 2019 as a result of the donation. It also estimates that an additional 1.1 million kids would be saved if a malaria vaccine can be introduced by 2014. A tuberculosis vaccine would prevent even more deaths.

“Vaccines are a miracle,” said Melinda Gates. “With just a few doses, they can prevent deadly diseases for a lifetime.”

Margaret Chan, head of the World Health Organization, called the Gates contribution unprecedented and urged governments and private donors to add to the initiative.

“An additional two million deaths in children under five years could be prevented by 2015 through widespread use of new vaccines and a 10 percent increase in global vaccination coverage,” said Chan.

The Gates statement said the foundation would help to dramatically reduce child mortality in the next 10 years and urged others to pitch in with research funding and other financial support for poor children….

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