Daily Digest 12/30 - Pension Crisis A Global Problem, Bluegrass Uprising

Economy

The restaurant that serves up rejected food (westcoastjan)

The restaurant has two paid employees - a project manager and head chef - but all the other staff are volunteers. It is funded by Danish charity Retro and profits go towards development projects in Sierra Leone.

Chef Ditte Jensen told BBC News why she believes it is possible to make delicious meals from rejected food.

Academics Who Defend Wall St. Reap Reward (westcoastjan)

As energy companies and traders have reaped fortunes by buying and selling oil and other commodities during the recent boom in the commodity markets, Mr. Pirrong has positioned himself as the hard-nosed defender of financial speculators — the combative, occasionally acerbic academic authority to call upon when difficult questions arise in Congress and elsewhere about the multitrillion-dollar global commodities trade.

Tech giants form AllSeen Alliance to fast track "Internet of Everything" (Chris M.)

"Open source software and collaborative development have been proven to accelerate technology innovation in markets where major transformation is underway," said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. "The AllSeen Alliance represents an unprecedented opportunity to advance the Internet of Everything for both home and industry."

Pension crisis a global problem (westcoastjan)

Jean-Pierre Bigand, 66, retired Sept. 1, in time to enjoy all the perks of a retirement system in France that's now in peril. Bigand lives in the countryside outside the city of Rouen in Normandy. He has a second home in Provence. He's just taken a vacation on Oleron Island off the Atlantic coast and is planning a five-week trip to Guadeloupe.

"Travel is our biggest expense," he says.

The Death of a Family, and an American Dream (jdargis)

Once in New York, the men board buses for jobs in the Chinese takeout shops and buffets that sprout improbably along neon-lit highways and inside small-town strip malls: west to Michigan, north to Maine, south to Georgia. America’s Chinese restaurants are a diaspora of the Fuzhounese, nearly half a million of them hoping, like generations of immigrants before them, that long hours and low wages will someday make their uprooting worth it.

Why Oil is Mightier than the Sword for U.S. Foreign Policy (James S.)

The American Petroleum Institute said the United States is emerging as a superpower in terms of energy and should use that leverage by exporting crude oil overseas. Some U.S. lawmakers pressing for tighter sanctions on Iran, meanwhile, oppose the export drive, suggesting potential superpower influence may run up against protectionist policies.

Bluegrass Uprising (westcoastjan)

Ever since this past summer, when land agents approached her—twice—to ask permission to survey a proposed pipeline route across her property, Reed repeats these words to herself. She walks with a limp, an injury from a collision with a dump truck during the years that she worked on road maintenance crews. She owns a pistol because she is afraid of the feral dogs that she says are common in the area. She held the gun in her palm when the pipeline consultants pulled into her gravel driveway. “You’re trespassing,” she told them.

Special Report: Japan's homeless recruited for murky Fukushima clean-up (westcoastjan)

Almost three years ago, a massive earthquake and tsunami leveled villages across Japan's northeast coast and set off multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant. Today, the most ambitious radiation clean-up ever attempted is running behind schedule. The effort is being dogged by both a lack of oversight and a shortage of workers, according to a Reuters analysis of contracts and interviews with dozens of those involved.

Gold & Silver

Click to read the PM Daily Market Commentary: 12/27/13

Provided daily by the Peak Prosperity Gold & Silver Group

Article suggestions for the Daily Digest can be sent to [email protected]. All suggestions are filtered by the Daily Digest team and preference is given to those that are in alignment with the message of the Crash Course and the "3 Es."