Cuba- Home Sweet Home

Alan Gross, who's permanent home is in Maryland, has found himself in a predicament. He has landed him self in jail at a Cuban prison, for bringing illegal media equipment into the country. The sentence? 15 years of hard time. Moss is hoping for an executive pardon from the country for his release. Former President Jimmy Carter travelled to Cuba and met with Fidel and Raul Castro, in hopes of releasing Moss. The first comment to Jimmy Carter from the Cuba government about his visit "The freedom of Alan Gross will not be granted."

Chinese Espionage

As I was watching 60 minutes the other day, there was a story brought up about chinese espionage. The Chinese, they say, find America to be there biggest threat when it comes to military weapons. The way the Chinese get information about America is the same way America gets there information about China, through spies. A man who had citizenship in the United States was a small business owner, who wanted to expand his business in China. China granted the man his business licenses, but they had a little favor they wanted from him. They wanted him to steal secrets from the pentagon, which the man just so happened he knew a guy. Over a series of months, the FBI recorded the transactions as the Chinese man wine and dined the man with the secrets from the pentagon. The chinese man posed as a guy wanting to know what military weapons the US was going to be selling to Vietnam, but really he was sending the information to the chinese government. Both men were arrested with a sentence of five years each. When the reporter said to the FBI "well isn't that how American gets there secrets from the chinese"? No response was given to that question.

Inside Job

I recently watched a documentary about the collapse of the economy because of the housing bubble. But the documentary starts in Ireland and the deregulation of their banking system. Years ago, the Ireland government decided to deregulate the government banks letting them go private. But the three major banks in Ireland that became privatize started to become corrupt. Many of the banks leaders were borrowing billions of dollars against the banks for their own personal use. One banker took 40 million dollars for his own personal use, to buy a pin striped jet. When the collapse of the banks started to fall, many people turned to the government wondering why they hadn't regulated these banks more closely and lead to the fall of the Ireland economy.

Inflation on Food Prices

Due to the demise of dictators, global food prices are on the rise. The unrest in the middle east has made record high food prices,which were recorded for February the highest in Twenty years. When the price of oil increases, many people try to find alternative energy sources using ethanol, which is derived from corn. When ethanol increases in production, more corn is needed driving the prices of food products up. Another factor of increasing food prices, is that cost that companies take to transport those goods. These cost then get passed on to the consumers. Some people say that they don't need to worry about problems in other countries, because it doesn't affect them. Well it does affect us, sometimes we just don't know what is causing the affect.