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THE NUMBERS: U.S. Customs Seizures of counterfeit goods “threatening to health and safety” – FY2008: $62 million FY2009: $32 million WHAT THEY MEAN: The Customs and Border Protection service last year seized 14,841 shipments of counterfeit goods: brand-name running shoes that come apart on sharp corners, sunglasses fully permeable to ultraviolet, perfume cut with pond-water [...]
THE NUMBERS: Total people on line: 2000 2010 World 360 million 1.73 billion United States 120 million 227 million WHAT THEY MEAN: In 1993, as the World Wide Web went public, boosters used the term “borderless world,” implying a vast expanse of unpopulated empty cyber-plains and poetic cyber-vistas, recalling those the Mitochondrial Eve (as human-origins [...]
THE NUMBERS: Per capita income in Haiti – 2005: $420 2008: $620 WHAT THEY MEAN: By 2004, 17 years after the flight of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, Haiti had no army, police force, bus service, fire departments or public school system. The two main export- industries — garments and baseballs — had both collapsed, with [...]
THE NUMBERS: Annualized American household savings rates – 1st Quarter 2008: $127 billion 2nd Quarter 2009: $533 billion WHAT THEY MEAN: To see the coming challenge to American economic policy, think of some letters. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis defines GDP as the combination of “Personal consumption expenditures, private investment, government spending (consumption [...]







