China contributed 19.2 percent of the world economic growth in 2007, up from 2.3 percent in 1978, a report by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has said.   It said China tops the world in contribution to the global economic growth.
 

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn is using the IMF’s annual meeting here to campaign for turning the fund into a kind of global central bank with at least $1 trillion for lending developing nations in a crisis.
 

The swift rally in stock markets this year caught everyone’s attention. But with far less fanfare, a frenzy has been taking place in the market for corporate bonds.  When credit markets practically shut down last year, businesses had to pay huge premiums to raise money from investors, offering returns of 10 to 20 percent to [...]

Colorado Inventor Showcase
Common misconceptions can cause the best ideas to fall flat – The economic downturn has forced us to rethink our lives. For many, this means a time of stepping into the workshop to give shape to ideas that have been waiting for the right opportunity to emerge.

Nearly 1 million homes nationwide are in the process of foreclosure, according to a report Wednesday from the U.S. Department of the Treasury covering banks and loan servicers that make up 64 percent of all outstanding mortgages.  As of June 30, there were 992,554 homes in the process of foreclosure, up 15.3 percent from March [...]

The U.S. Federal Reserve on Tuesday proposed tough new credit card rules to protect consumers from potentially costly practices by lenders and moved to implement legislation enacted in May.  This action is considered by many to be a step in the right direction, and a step recommended in Thomas Frey’s paper titled the “Hornet Nest [...]

 
Job seekers queue up to attend a job fair  in Chicago.
Despite signs that the economy has resumed growing, unemployed Americans now confront a job market that is bleaker than ever in the current recession, and employment prospects are still getting worse.  Job seekers now outnumber openings six to one, the worst ratio since the government [...]

Pop quiz: Worldwide, what’s the fastest growing primary fuel on a per capita basis?  It should come as no surprise to hear the answer is coal. Cheap and scalable, the ubiquitous black stuff is the first menu choice of nearly all industrializing economies with a growing energy appetite. That was easy; how about the second [...]

“We’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore”
7-Eleven Inc. said Thursday that its franchisees and store operators have collected 1.6 million signatures nationwide in its petition drive against what it calls unfair credit card fees.
The Dallas-based convenience store chain held the signature drive from June 22 through Aug. 10 at store counters [...]

U.S. airlines are raking in more money this year from extra fees, although fewer people are flying.In the first six months of this year, the airlines collected $3.8 billion for checking bags, canceling or rebooking flights, carrying pets and assigning seats, the latest data from the Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics show. That’s [...]

Go Go Gadget Satellite!

R.U. Sirius interviewed Randa Milliron, CEO of Interorbital Systems, “a ‘rocket and spacecraft manufacturing company’ that locates itself at the Mojave Airport and Spaceport in Mojave, California. They recently announced that they were offering to send people’s personal satellites into low-earth orbit on a NEPTUNE 30 rocket for the low low low [...]

Right now, the transportation systems that support the economy appear to be highly efficient.  To the casual observer, whenever a company needs to move its goods around the country or around the globe, it can do so fairly cheaply and easily.  
 

The coming gold rush in apps
People looking to cash in on the next gold rush should consider developing applications — or apps — for the new generation of smart mobile phones, according to a forecast released Tuesday by the Yankee Group.
Consumers will spend more than $4.2 billion on apps in 2013, up from $343 million [...]

My eBay – selling: one jetpack. One careful owner. Easy to control. Ejector-seat-equipped Aston Martin and secret underground lair sold separately. Serious bids only.  The Martin Jetpack – technically a ducted fan pack, rather than a true jetpack – is the brainchild of New Zealand engineer Glenn Martin.
 

Yaskawa Electric’s industrial robots in Tokyo, victims of the global recession.
Play a small violin for thousands of Japanese industrial robots which now stand silent, victims of the global economic downturn in a country that hosts the highest robot-to-human ratio.  Recession times have proved a harsh reality check for Japan’s ongoing love affair with robots. Novelty [...]

The U.S. government plans to propose broad new rules Monday that would force Internet providers to treat all Web traffic equally, seeking to give consumers greater freedom to use their computers or cellphones to enjoy videos, music and other legal services that hog bandwidth.
 

A Seiyu outlet in Akabane, part of Wal-Mart Stores.
Not long ago, many Japanese bought so many $100 melons and $1,000 handbags that this was the only country in the world where luxury products were considered mass market.  Even through the economic stagnation of Japan’s so-called lost decade, which began in the early 1990s, Japanese consumers [...]

Most women are far better at detecting the nuances of beer than men
While a new brewery is all set to open in Australia’s Warnervale on the Central Coast, it is believed that more women would be hired as
Women better beer tasters than men (Getty Images)
professional beer tasters, for they apparently make better tasters than men.
With [...]

Hot money going out, even hotter coming back in
In September 2008, China witnessed a massive exodus of hot money due to the global financial crisis. However, with the Chinese economy showing signs of improvement in the second quarter of 2009, the situation reversed with a rush of hot money returning to China.
In late June 2009, [...]

For years the people in congress have ignored the outrageous
practices of banks and credit card companies
A backlash is brewing on Capitol Hill against banks that charge large fees for overdrafts without asking or telling customers, the latest sign that the financial crisis is shifting the balance of power from banks toward borrowers.
Banks struggling to survive [...]

 
The Great Recession is pushing many highly educated women who had left work to stay at home with their children to dive back into the labor pool, according to several nationally recognized experts on women in the workplace.  Many of these women are sending out job applications for the first time in years because their [...]

Amazon is shaking up retailers, both big rivals and small independent stores.
THE hum of 102 rooftop air conditioners and a chorus of beeping electric carts provide the acoustic backdrop in Amazon.com’s 605,000-square-foot distribution facility on this city’s west side. But the center’s employees can almost always hear Terry Jones.  On a recent summer afternoon, Mr. [...]

Bozen, Denmark’s E-Move Charging Station is the work of that country’s entrepreneur, Valentin Runggaldier, and — while those renders make it look like a flight of fancy — it’s actually real and going through a series of tests. (Pics)

The use of checks on websites before comments, forum posts, or registrations, are allowed to happen are commonplace with probably the best known being the CAPTCHA test. CAPTCHAs present users with characters that are obscured in some way and presented as an image making it very difficult for anything other than a human to decipher.
Those [...]

Premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance rose to an average of $13,375 annually for family coverage this year, with employees on average paying $3,515 and employers paying $9,860, according to a new survey.