Europe wealthiest, like a French suicide

If you're like me, you're almost conditioned to whisper "fries" the moment someone says French (you might also say kiss, but that usually happens when you're close to losing your virginity; I'm not).

Boston Consulting Group is elbowing out Forbes magazine with wealth statistics and hierarchies, claiming that Europe has elbowed out North America to become the wealthiest region in the world, which happens first since 2003. Here’s the numbers:

World’s wealth is down to USD 92.4-trillion in 2008 from 104.7-trillion in the previous year, trend side-stepped by Latin America, which is the only region where assets under management increased 3%. Though millionaire households fell by 17.8% to 9 million, USA still has the most millionaire households – nearly 4 million. Singapore rules in terms of concentration of millionaires, with 8.5% of households being there. Europe’s Singapore, from this perspective, is Switzerland, which also is world’s largest offshore centre. Apparently, wealth has started to grow again at the end of 2008, will increase about 4% p.a. and will catch up with pre-crisis levels in 2013.

Interestingly, Europe has become the wealthiest just as the poor narrowed the gap, say WSJ:

The crisis also narrowed the gap between the wealthy and non-wealthy, with wealth owned by households with less than $100,000 in assets increasing by 2% last year, but declining in all other segments.

Europe nudged ahead because it only fell 5.8% (which compares positively to North America’s 21.8%). This is most likely because North America (USA+Canada) have the most wealth in stocks.

You might wonder (I did!) what are the Europeans doing with their new wealth?

You wanna make it / Suicide France

There have been 22 suicides at France Telecom since 2008 and 13 attempts. This has prompted CEO Didier Lombard to claim he will do everything he could to “stop the infernal spiral”.

The unions blame chronic restructuring and work pressure at France Telecom for the wave of suicides, saying that some staffers are being left behind in the firm's transformation from a staid government agency to a private company with profit targets and intense competition. The pace of incidents at the firm which employees 102,000 staff in France, has picked up lately, with a man stabbing himself in the stomach during a staff meeting on Wednesday and a woman throwing herself out of a window on Friday, the company said. (…) France Telecom also announced other measures, such as a temporary halt to relocations and reassignments as well as 100 additional human resources staffers to monitor employees.

Suicides are definitely bad for business, unless they are a song by INXS. For example, when Gary Hoy - the Toronto lawyer who won a Darwin Award for throwing himself against windows until one gave in – died, his firm also eventually closed shop. I guess it just wasn’t the same without him.

The jump from death to sex is small. The French actually make it very often – perhaps top five in Europe – calling orgasm “the little death”. So it should come as no surprise that the Swiss (who include a sizable French and German speaking population) have combined cadavers and sex in a show..

Gunther von Hagens and his wife Angelina Whalley show corpses prepared using a technique invented by von Hagens called "plastination," that removes water from specimens and preserves them with silicon rubber or epoxy resin. "It's not my intention to show certain sexual poses. My goal is really to show the anatomy and the function," Body Worlds creative director Whalley told Reuters in an interview, adding the sex exhibition may open next year.

USA tightens the screw

While the Swiss indulge in the confluence of their national fetishes, prudish USA indulges its own favourite pastime: bacteria obsessions and denying help to the poor because of sexual hang-ups.

The guys in the image went to ACORN, a poverty advocacy group dressed like conservatives pimp & prostitute. Though they are certainly dressed weird, if I were to see them on the street I’d be thinking they’re trying their Halloween costumes early. To me, they are unconvincing, but then again, I don’t meet pimps and prostitutes all the time. If they were to walk into my office, I’d think that they’re playing a prank and it’s a test. I might even think that it’s a test done by leftists (or “liberals”, as some call them), so I’d play along accordingly

It seems that many conservatives had a beef with ACORN, whom they accused of voter fraud because this group canvassed and help many of the poor register to vote.

O'Keefe, who majored in philosophy at Rutgers University, said he and Giles funded the project themselves. This kind of undercover, guerrilla tactic is the "future of investigative journalism and political activism," he said. Inspired by "Rules for Radicals," Saul Alinsky's bible for rabble-rousing, more often associated with the left, O'Keefe said he has been targeting and exposing the "absurdities of the enemy by employing their own rules and language." "If you can make impossible demands on your enemy, you can destroy them," he said. So he began using a hidden camera "in a location I'd rather not disclose" and started visiting ACORN offices around the Northeast.

See their video below.

As for getting clean, the shower scene, so overused in horror movies, has now a newfound lease on life: germs lurking in the showerhead can give you lung infections. Apparently, an analysis of 50 showerheads from 9 US cities done by University of Colorado at Boulder found that about 30% harboured high levels of Mycobacterium avium. After scaring almost every American, they declared:

"This really shouldn't concern average, healthy people. The main concern is for people who are immune-compromised," researcher Leah Feazel told Reuters Health. The findings, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, are based on tests of about 50 showerheads taken from nine U.S. cities, including New York, Denver and Chicago. The researchers said showerheads are not the only potential bacterial dispersants in the home, however. Feazel said more research is needed to measure bacteria levels in household devices like humidifiers and evaporative coolers.

Sources / More info: france-suicide, gm-europe-wealthiest, pimp-hooker-nyp, telegraph-mit-rickrolled, wsj-europe, wiki-garry-hoy, us-showerheads, suicide-blonde-INXS

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