They want to start off with soft sells and travel related items, but you know it won’t stop there if this is successful. Imagine hard sells on insurance, ShamWows and, of course, Viagra for those thinking of joining the Mile High Club.

Air travelers in the United States are already paying for sandwiches and drinks, pillows and headsets. So, as airlines look for more ways to help their bottom lines, they have started asking the next logical question: Why not sell limousine services or even tickets to Broadway shows?
[...]
Other airlines declined to talk on the record about their plans, but nearly all the major carriers acknowledged that they were working on expanding retail offerings.
[...]
“Look at what’s going on in airports,” he said. “Anytime you have customers who are captive, who have nothing better to do, they’ll shop.”

The technology making the onboard sales possible is being provided by GuestLogix, a Canadian company that sells the credit card readers and sales software to the airline industry. A brochure promoting its products describes onboard retail as unique because “operators are able to lock their doors with their shoppers still inside.”

In an interview, Brett Proud executive vice president of global sales and client support for GuestLogix, described the jetliner as “a retail space that is probably the biggest retail opportunity ever uncovered,” adding, “It’s huge.”

Your tax money at work. As to how the market gets its wares, did you ever read the book or see the movie, Catch 22, with its military entrepreneur Milo Minderbinder? Guess this is what they mean by ‘nation building.’

First came the Brezhnev Market. Then the Bush Market.

Now Afghans are beginning to call their notorious bazaar full of chow and supplies bought or stolen from the vast US military bases by the name of the current American president, a modest counterweight to his Nobel Peace Prize.
[...]
The small market, tucked behind a commercial building in the northwest side of the city, is a US taxpayer’s nightmare. [...] Inside, two assistants were stacking hundreds of bottles onto a wall of shelves full of Gatorade. Shelves on the other walls were jammed with Quaker Instant Grits, Aunt Jemima syrup, McCormick spices and the giant cans of vegetables used in chow halls.

All around were stalls offering cases of MREs (meals-ready-to-eat), new-in-the-box military cots and goods usually sold on base stores, such as American-made shampoo, military ID holders and the huge plastic jars of the food supplements used by bodybuilders.

One shop offered an expensive military-issue sleeping bag, tactical goggles like those used by US troops and a stack of plastic footlockers, including one stenciled “Campbell G Co. 10th Mtn Div.” Another had a sophisticated “red-dot” optical rifle sight of a kind often used by soldiers and contractors.
[...]
NATO officials know about the market, and an ISAF spokesman, Capt. Mike Andrews, said that if any sensitive equipment turned up for sale, security forces would take action.

$2.5 Trillion – That’s the size of the global oil scam.

It’s a number so large that, to put it in perspective, we will now begin measuring the damage done to the global economy in “Madoff Units” ($50Bn rip-offs). That’s right – $2.5Tn is 50 TIMES the amount of money that Bernie Madoff scammed from investors in his lifetime, yet it is also LESS than the MONTHLY EXCESS price the global population is being manipulated into paying for a barrel of oil.

Goldman Sachs (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS), BP (BP), Total (TOT), Shell (RDS.A), Deutsche Bank (DB) and Societe Generale (SCGLY.PK) founded the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in 2000. ICE is an online commodities and futures marketplace. It is outside the US and operates free from the constraints of US laws. The exchange was set up to facilitate “dark pool” trading in the commodities markets. Billions of dollars are being placed on oil futures contracts at the ICE and the beauty of this scam is that they NEVER take delivery, per se. They just ratchet up the price with leveraged speculation using your TARP money. This year alone they ratcheted up the global cost of oil from $40 to $80 per barrel.

A Congressional investigation into energy trading in 2003 discovered that ICE was being used to facilitate “round-trip” trades. ” Round-trip” trades occur when one firm sells energy to another and then the second firm simultaneously sells the same amount of energy back to the first company at exactly the same price. No commodity ever changes hands. But when done on an exchange, these transactions send a price signal to the market and they artificially boost revenue for the company. This is nothing more than a massive fraud, pure and simple.

Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, let’s vote for jobs!

---

Last year Mr Gore’s venture capital firm loaned a small California firm $75m to develop energy-saving technology. The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient.

The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants, the New York Times reports. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts.

The move means that venture capital company Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in coming years.

Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming sceptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.

It is quite interesting that it’s NYDailyNews who’s reporting both stories:

School nurses mistakenly gave the swine flu vaccine to two students who didn’t sign up for it – including a Brooklyn girl with epilepsy who wound up in the hospital.

Officials at Public School 335 in Crown Heights called an ambulance to take Nikiyah to SUNY Downstate Medical Center when she fell ill following the arm jab.

Officials admitted on Friday that a third student was mistakenly given the swine flu vaccine – an error the school nurses union blamed on the city.

Three children have received the H1N1 vaccine without parental permission – including a kid at Public School 8 on Staten Island – since the in-school program began.

It is quite interesting to see some part of the list of people who visited the White House over the last ten months.

Some of the biggest names in finance, including individuals with clear legislative interests before the executive branch, stopped by the White House during Obama’s first nine months in office.

The list includes Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein – who made three visits, and JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon – who stopped by six times. These sessions were primarily to chart the government bailout of their respective institutions and other big banks.

Sarkozy spends £250,000 of French EU budget on shower he did not use – The Guardian

French financial watchdogs slammed Nicolas Sarkozy for spending £160m during his country’s six-month stint in charge of the EU – including £250,000 on a personal presidential shower that he never used. The vast expense is set out in a report blaming poor management and a lack of transparency by the president’s staff.

Costs soared because so many of the EU-related events were organised at the last minute, said the report.

On one occasion Sarkozy triggered the cancellation of an entire EU event he was due to host in Evian, because he wanted to sleep in his own bed at the Élysée palace. By then, hundreds of journalists, EU officials and national delegations had either already arrived in Evian or were on their way.

Golly. The shower must have been made of gold. I’d have thought you could get a golden shower much cheaper than that in Paris.