While You Were Sleeping: November 2008

by Christina Kaminski, October 27, 2008

In 1989, Seymour Durst established the National Debt Clock in New York’s Time Square to track the rising indebtedness of the US government. When Durst put up the sign, the national debt was $2.7 trillion. In October, the clock had to be retrofit with another numerical space as the government debt topped $10 trillion.
Source: Associated Press

The Pew Research Center’s annual global attitude survey (released in September) found that racism is on the rise, especially in continental Europe. In Spain, 46 percent of the population reported viewing Jews unfavorably, while 52 percent reported having negative opinions of Muslims. Italy may be facing what some newspapers have called a “racism emergency.” Violent crime and discrimination against African immigrants has escalated to such a degree that members of the Italian Parliament and high-ranking Vatican officials alike are speaking out about intolerance, prejudice, xenophobia, and racism.
Source: New York Times

A recently released UN study has found that more women have entered politics in the past decade than ever before. Of the 22 countries where women constitute more than 30 percent of the national assembly, 18 have some form of quota. In Rwanda—which recently became the first country in the world to have a parliament in which women outnumber men—the need to end genocide is reported to have incited women to take political action in the country’s reconstruction. According to Unifem (the United Nations Development Fund for Women), if the rate of change holds constant, by 2045 women will reach parity of elective office in the developing world.
Source: New York Times

In Rensselaer County, “Barack Osama” was presented as the Democratic presidential candidate on 300 absentee ballots (proofed and printed in-house to save taxpayer dollars). The Rensselaer County Board of Elections promptly issued new ballots, and voters were reminded that any corrections to a ballot nullify the vote.
Source: Albany Times Union


Ten million homeowners currently have negative equity, meaning they owe more on their mortgages than the value of their homes. In August, more than half of the Californians who sold their homes suffered losses through “short sales”—so called because the sale price leaves the former homeowner “short” of the amount owed in the mortgage. By next June, 25 percent of all homes with mortgages will have negative equity, forcing many homeowners to sell for less than the value of the mortgage on their property and pay the difference out of pocket to avoid foreclosure.
Source: New York Times