People Living In Affluent Areas To Get Lower Pensions In New 'Postcode Lottery' Scheme 'The middle classes face lower annual payouts under a new 'pensions by postcode' scheme. It will assess life expectancy by area to determine how much income retired customers will receive each year. Those living in leafier postcodes will receive a smaller annual pension as they would be expected to live longer.'
Euro MPs To Vote On Anonymous Blog Ban
'Marianne Mikko, an Estonian centre-left MEP, is concerned that growing numbers of blogs are being used by individuals with "malicious intentions or hidden agendas". "The blogosphere has so far been a haven of good intentions and relatively honest dealing. However, with blogs becoming commonplace, less principled people will want to use them," she said. Mrs Mikko has proposed that bloggers should be required to identify themselves and that some popular blogs should come with a declaration of interests. "We do not need to know the exact identity of bloggers. We need some credentials, a quality mark, a certain disclosure of who is writing and why. We need this to be able to trust and rely on the source," she said.'
Ming the Mechanic: The Unknown 20 Trillion Dollar Company
'There is a busy little private company you probably never have heard about, but which you should. Its name is the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation. See their website. Looks pretty boring. Some kind of financial service thing, with a positive slogan and out there to make a little business. You can even get a job there. Now, go and take a look at their annual report. Starts with a nice litte Flash presentation and has a nice message from the CEO. And take a look at the numbers. It turns out that this company holds 23 trillion dollars in assets, and had 917 trillion dollars worth of transactions in 2002. That's trillions, as in thousands of thousands of millions. 23,000,000,000,000 dollars in assets.'
Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009
Posts
