Atlanta Mortgage Resource

Japan enters a recession

Japan's economy fell into recession in the third quarter of 2008, as businesses sharply cut back on spending and as net exports made a negative contribution to growth. The data underline the impact that the global financial crisis has begun to have on Japan's real economy, and worse is almost certainly to come.

Japan's GDP contracted by a seasonally adjusted 0.1% quarter on quarter in the three months to September, according to data published by the Cabinet Office on November 17th. This marked the economy's second successive quarterly contraction—putting Japan firmly in recession. Although the decline in GDP was less severe than in the preceding quarter, the country's economic prospects look especially gloomy for two reasons. ...

How many years of healthy living before you die?

PEOPLE are mostly living longer, but are those extra years healthy ones? Whereas the life expectancy for men aged 50 in European countries varies by some nine years, the years of healthy life differ enormously. In 2005, an Estonian man of 50 could look foward to just over nine years more of good health (defined as having no limits on activity). In contrast a typical Danish man could expect 23.6 years, according to a new study published in the Lancet, a British medical journal. The gap between East and West in both life expectancy and years spent in good health is considerable.

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The surprising idea that Hillary Clinton could become Barack Obama's secretary of state

IN THE absence of fact, rumour will dominate: and the latest exciting rumour to emerge from Chicago, where Barack Obama's transition team is headquartered, and Washington, DC, where the political pundits live, is that Hillary Clinton is going to be the new president's secretary of state. “Sources” claim this, though all that is known for sure is that Mrs Clinton visited her former adversary last week; and, of course, that the job has not yet been given to anyone else.

To outsiders, used to administrations in other countries changing top-to-bottom the day after an election, that Mr Obama has made no cabinet appointments a full two weeks after his election might seem sluggish. In fact, he is moving quite fast. He has already named his White House chief of staff, an important position, as well as his press secretary and his chief counsel, and has been filling in some of their deputies and assistants as well. This is quite a bit faster than his recent predecessors managed. ...

A vital but shrinking industry

MOST passengers ignore the earnest safety briefings given at the start of every flight. But as water began gushing into the helicopter cabin, I was doing my best to remember. Use one hand to find your nearest exit (in my case, a window that looked rather too small to fit through). Use the other to find the release mechanism for your four-point seatbelt, but do not activate it immediately. Instead, use the same hand to open the compartment on your lifejacket that contains the rebreather. Put it in your mouth, and the noseclip on your nose. Take a deep breath, squeeze the red sphere to close the valve, and exhale into the bag.

At that point, we began to capsize. It is surprising how easily you become disoriented. You struggle to remain seated upright as the rolling cabin carries you into the air, and then as you are plunged into the water your head is forced sideways against the wall. You know, intellectually, that you must remain in your seat for a few seconds to give the rotors time to stop spinning, but strapped into a chair, upside down, and submerged in a confined space, deep-seated instincts are insisting—vehemently—that you do something, and quickly. ...

Yahoo!’s boss, Jerry Yang, a nice person and a pioneer of the web, is quitting

JERRY YANG of Yahoo!, one of the world’s largest internet companies, appeared at an industry conference in San Francisco in early November to explain how it had all gone so wrong. This has been a “pretty amazing year”, he said with understatement. But he couldn’t quite bring himself to admit that he had made a mistake in June 2007 by taking over as chief executive of the firm that he and his friend David Filo had founded in 1994, at which they had since held only the tongue-in-cheek titles of “chief Yahoos”. Yet a mistake it clearly was and, on Monday November 17th, Mr Yang at last faced that fact and announced that he would step down as soon as a suitable replacement could be found.

Mr Yang had thought that he could, through sheer passion for his creation, revive the ailing company. He had been one of those who, during the dotcom depression, invited a Hollywood mogul, Terry Semel, to run Yahoo! and turn it into a media company. Both Mr Semel and Mr Yang, however, missed the significance of a new rival, Google, even though Messrs Yang and Filo had helped Google’s two founders—all four had been graduate students at Stanford—to get started only a few years earlier. ...