Ikea, the Swedish retail chain, warned today that the housing downturn is hitting sales of its flat-pack furniture and said it is scaling back some of its expansion plans. The world’s largest furniture retailer has suffered falls in like-for-like sales in some of its major markets, and warned the declines could spill over to othercontinue reading
Scary graphic of the day
Courtesy Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis
This doesn’t get any better
By Chris Bowlby BBC News The Olympic torch is being welcomed this weekend in the UK as a symbol of the sporting spirit, uniting people around the world in peaceful competition.But the idea of lighting the torch at the ancient Olympian site in Greece and then running it through different countries has much darker origins.Itcontinue reading
A helmet-wearing, bell-ringing, blinkie-sportin’ good time
Out of San Francisco, Critical Manners: Critical Manners: a revolutionary act of courtesy. Come put the nice back in the bike world with critical manners! A helmet-wearing, bell-ringing, blinkie-sportin’ good time for you and all your bike friends. Practice synchronized signaling, single file riding, stopping at stop signs and NOT blowing red lights. Critical Mannerscontinue reading
Immersed in self-referential mythology
Konrad Yakabuski has a great essay on French immersion in Saturday’s Globe and Mail. Yakabuski doesn’t bother detailing the many studies showing that the literacy levels of French immersion graduates are poor in both languages, but takes as an accepted (and easily proven) premise that their grammar is substandard. And as he observes, French immersioncontinue reading
Our little part to contribute to Global Warming
New car!
And public sector jobs
Dan Gardner gives the gears to policy development in Canada, describing Canadian public life as “stagnation wrapped in delusion.” And he pleads with pundits to stop using the small perfect country comparators: As I said earlier, we are not Iceland with trees. Iceland has excellent governance and clever policies. We have trees.
Works for me
Canada continues to create jobs… of a sort. But, as TD highlights: …while private-sector employment makes up close to 65% of total employment and the public-sector just under 30% (with the remaining 5% self-employed) public-sector job growth has contributed close to 60% of total job growth in the last 12 months compared to just undercontinue reading
Broken rungs on the property ladder
How bad are things looking in Britain? Well, there’s the “mortgage famine” underway: The Bank of England’s gloomy outlook in its Credit Conditions survey follows a recent rush by banks to pull mortgage offers as they seek to conserve cash in the face of the credit crunch which has curbed their ability to raise wholesalecontinue reading
From the NYTimes:
More Heist-able: Your H.D.T.V. or Your A.C.?Burglaries are on the decline across the United States, with at least one notable exception: increasingly, thieves are breaking into foreclosed homes — stripping out the copper pipes, wiring, and appliances — and selling their pilfered goods as scrap. From there, Treehugger reports, the scrap metal is most oftencontinue reading