NY Times: Growth Up in Japan in Quarter, but Pace Already Seems to Fade
The economy’s tepid performance has been made worse by falling prices, which erode profits and make debts more burdensome. Five years of deflation have highlighted what economists here call the three excesses plaguing Japanese companies: too many workers, too many assets and too much debt. To raise cash to pay creditors, companies are closing factories and eliminating jobs, and even companies earning solid profits, like Toyota Motor, are freezing wages.
As unemployment rises Û it stood at a near-record 5.4 percent in July, the government reported separately today Û consumers, in turn, are closing their wallets. Retail sales fell 5.7 percent in July from July 2001 as household incomes fell 4 percent.
Another good Ken Belson article on the lameness that is the Japanese economy. Everyone has excuses for why things don’t change there but it’s clear that inaction is worse than any action at all for Japan.
who cares anymore?
The map of greed & deception
Cartoonist & commentator Mark Poyser has a great map of the mess that is Wall Street in this day and age…
NY Times on Joshua Tree, California…
The new pilgrims, many of them commuters from Los Angeles and New York, include the artist Ed Ruscha, who has a house near Pioneer Town, a stage set for westerns with its own O.K. Corral; the New York photographer Jack Pierson; and Blake Simpson, a young Los Angeles furniture designer who is building a compound with a Quonset hut and a 1951 trailer. They are lured not by the night life, which consists largely of Pint Nights at the local cafe, but by what the 37-year-old Mr. Simpson calls “a fascination with stillness.”
Cory Doctorow’s “0wnz0red”
Salon: “0wnz0red”
“But your meat, it’s not under your control. You know you have to exercise for 20 minutes before you start burning any fat at all? In other words, the first twenty minutes are just a goddamned waste of time. It’s sacrificing a chicken to your metabolism. Eat less, exercise more is a giant chicken-sacrifice, so I say screw it. I say, you should be super-user in your own body. You should be leet as you want to be. Every cell in your body should be end-user modifiable.”
Very fun read from Cory of BoingBoing.net. Reminiscent of Stephenson but in the best possible way.
Eric Eto posted a nice list of Japanese restaurants in NYC to Chowhound recently. The list is copied to my post inside for safekeeping 