With 79% California in “extreme drought” status, and the agriculture industry suffering its greatest loss of water ever recorded in state history, the $50 billion annual sector will only suffer about $1.5 billion in losses or 3%, of revenue according to
As the three day meeting for the 6th annual “BRICS” conference of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa comes to a close, the most important accomplishment is the founding of the BRICS Development Bank and a currency stabilization pool
China is cracking down after the CCTV state-owned broadcaster secretly recorded a state-owned bank executive bragging that the bank illegally provides in-house money laundering services for wealthy Chinese nationals to violate currency controls and buy real estate in “world cities”
Lyft peer to peer (P2P) shared-ride service said on its blog that Lyft will delay its New York City launch in Brooklyn and Queens after the New York State Attorney General said a court issued a temporary restraining order against the
John Gapper in a Financial Times article titled “US Banks Will Pay Dearly For Their Failure To Modernize” warns that the United States banking system is failing to modernize and is actually falling behind England, India, and Africa, as the
Municipal bond mutual fund investors are panicking this weekend after the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico’s Legislature passed a new law allowing public agencies to default on their debt. Although part of the United States, Puerto Rico in the 1990s
The $288 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System was rocked on July 10 when it was learned that former CEO Federico Buenrostro had cut a plea bargain with the Justice Department to turn “state’s evidence” regarding steering $14 million in placement
A Reason-Rupe Survey of 2,000 American millennials between the ages of 18 and 29 titled “Millennials: The Politically Unclaimed Generation” found that 66% believe government is inefficient and wasteful, up by 24% since 2009. Only 18% of millennials believe government regulators
Bloomberg ran an article this week hyping about summer interns in Silicon Valley that can get glamorous jobs working directly with Mark Zuckerberg, being paid $6,213 per month and even being allowed the perk of flying their mother out for the
With the Wall Street Journal turning 125 years old this week, it is humorous that its tech writer, Christopher Mims, chose to dismiss the lack of “net social benefits” by venture capital (VC) in an article titled “Is Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley in northern California remained the center of the earth for venture capital in the second quarter of 2014 according to PitchBook data. Of the $21.6 billion of venture capital (VC) investment worldwide, $9 billion, or 41.6%, went into
Three weeks ago, President Obama promised that the United States “will not be sending U.S. troops back into combat” in Iraq. But Foreign Policy magazine (FP) just reported that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey acknowledged that
The U.S. economy created 288,000 jobs in June, and unemployment fell from 6.3% to 6.1% according to the Labor Department. Job creation for the months of April and May were also revised up by another 29,000 jobs. June marked the
Possible presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who came up with the idea and led the start-up of the “Consumer Financial Protection Bureau” as a federal watchdog to prevent financial institutions from abusing U.S. consumers, is now at the center
The International Energy Administration (IEA) reported in “More Data, Less Energy: Making Network Standby More Efficient in Billions of Connected Devices” that the world’s 14 billion online electronic devices – such as set-top boxes, modems, printers, and game consoles –
Royal College of Surgeons issued a report that the British National Health Services (NHS) is denying life-saving operations because of age discrimination in defiance of the law. New data documents for the first time that across large areas of the
German lawmakers on July 3rd approved the introduction of the country’s first national minimum wage of $11.75 per hour. For the last decade, Germany’s greater “labor flexibility” allowed its economy to flourish, while most of the other European Union members’
California Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins (D-San Diego) seems to have flunked her first major leadership test by failing to get Governor Brown’s water bond passed during one of California’s worst droughts. Following a failed attempt by Senate President Pro Tem Darrell
As Silicon Valley expands from the Internet of people to the Internet of Things, the failure of Detroit and Google to form a partnership to build self-driving cars is an instructive tale regarding the challenges Silicon Valley and industrial America
After the Ventura County Board of Supervisors on June 10 voted 4 to 1 to put a popular initiative to eliminate public employee defined-benefit pensions on the ballot, a coalition of public employee unions filed suit to prevent the initiative
Some public employees and elected officials might have been busy destroying their personal cell phones, tablets and computers this weekend after the California Supreme Court agreed to review if communications on privately owned electronic devices regarding a public matter are
Although MannKind Corporation (MNKD) finally won its decade-long fight for FDA approval to sell its Afrezza insulin therapy system in the U.S, most investors are disappointed that the powered drug inhaler must carry a warning label that it is not
Barclays Investment Bank Research recently downgraded the entire U.S. electric utility sector because they believe that “a confluence of declining cost trends in distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation and residential-scale power storage is likely to disrupt the status quo”
The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported June 25th that the U.S. GDP in the first quarter of 2014 was a dismal -2.9%, despite unemployment being unchanged and personal income growing at a healthy 3.2% annual rate. According David Stockman,
The Islamic State of Syria and Sham (ISIS) and their Sunni tribal allies reached the strategic Mahmudiyah district southwest of Baghdad in large numbers on June 26th. Kurdish officials said that militants had seized the towns of Iskandariyah and Mahmudiyah.
