According to a WorldTribune.com article, Blackwater USA now has a brigade-size force (1500–3500 personnel) available for low-intensity conflicts. While speaking at the Special Operations Forces Exhibition in Jordan, J. Cofer Black, vice chairman of Blackwater USA, stated:
When NY attorney general Eliot Spitzer and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) cracked down on Wall Street investment research, they held up “independent” research as the ideal. Unbiased by conflicts of interest with an investment banking business, the independent research would offer more accurate, less bullish advice.
There are a legion of stories of the demise of accounting in corporate America running around out there—loose and undaunted, and perhaps somewhat exaggerated. As one corporate accounting bungle after another makes its way to the top of the headlines, the media reports on them as if detailing out a home brewing recipe. Accounting snafus are not always as simple as their layman’s understanding would have it. One thing that laymen—including economists and business journalists and wannabee criticsdon’t understand is accounting.
An individual kills someone—for money, out of jealousy, as an act of revenge, or because he doesn’t like his victim’s looks. A chorus of left-”liberals” rushes in to excuse his act, especially if he is poor. He is not responsible, they say. The real criminal is “Society,” for having allowed him to live in the conditions that led him to kill.
In 2005, the US current account deficit reached 805 billion US dollars or about 7% of the US gross domestic product. For some analysts, this figure is way beyond the standard critical threshold, while other observers see no risk at all and rather contend that this number indicates the strength and the attractiveness of the United States economy.
Of course, trade deficits indeed present no problem as long as they get financed. What, however, will happen when the United States is forced to reduce the deficit and needs to obtain surpluses in its foreign trade?
