Sox First

© TheChanel

If the latest numbers for boob jobs are anything to go by, the US economy is starting to pick up. .

USA Today reports: "Americans got about 1.6 million cosmetic surgeries in 2011, the second year of increase after a big drop in 2009, according to an annual report from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. 'Consumer confidence was up, auto sales rose 10 percent, so it is not surprising that we would also see increased demand for plastic surgery procedures,' the group's president, Malcolm Z. Roth, said in a statement.Still, Americans got fewer nose jobs, facelifts and other big-ticket surgeries than in 2005, when they peaked at 2.1 million. People are going to the same doctors, though, for Botox injections, facial fillers and other forms of non-surgical primping:"

Stocktwits blog calls it the Boob Indicator. What we are seeing is the second consecutive year for growth.

According to statistics released by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), 13.8 million cosmetic plastic surgery procedures (both surgical and minimally invasive) were performed in the United States in 2011, up 5 percent since 2010.

Still, let's get this in perspective. Face lifts are only a fraction of plastic surgeries – bigger breasts are what's keeping the cosmetic surgery industry afloat. They're also a set of economic indicators.

© phault

And so the Greek parliament has passed the controversial package of austerity measures in return for a 130 billion Euro ($US170bn) bailout to avoid default. At the same time, Athens has erupted in riots with ten buildings set ablaze in central Athens by anti-austerity protesters including a bank and a Starbucks café and demonstrators tearing up marble in front of parliament, hurling fire-bombs at police guarding the chamber. Officers in riot gear responded with tear-gas and flash grenades.

Take a look at the numbers and you will see that a default by Greece would be better, both for Greece and the Eurozone. Greek debt in 2008 was approximately 260 billion Euro. The first bailout was 110 billion and this bailout, the one that's tearing the country apart, is 130 billion. All this raises an obvious question: why the hell didn't they pay quarter of a billion Euro four years ago? All they did was set Greece up for failure. Those initial austerity measures only worsened Greece's fiscal imbalances and produced a recession, creating more unemployment and reducing government revenues that are producing no reduction in the debt-to-GDP ratio. In fact, it's getting worse. The bailouts and demands for fiscal rectitude are killing Greece and burying it.

Writing in the Financial Standard, Benjamin Ong who heads the Financial Standard Intelligence Unit with the Rainmaker group, says a default might be the perfect solution. "There might come a time when Greece shouts, 'enough is enough and enough is too much'. That it's better to die from a single shot of default rather than suffering death by a thousand (fiscal spending) cuts. Bankruptcy is bliss. For how much worse would Greece be if it declares bankruptcy? It won't suffer much more, I imagine. Instead, the pain would migrate to those demanding more of it from Greece."

The reality is Greece will 'never' be able to pay back its debts. That means it has to be forgiven its debts – either in full or a large chunk of it. Either that, or it unilaterally declare default – as Russia did when it defaulted back in 1998. Think back to Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed who refused an IMF bailout and its attached conditions during the Asian financial crisis. The Malaysian economy is now booming. There's a lesson in that.

© ssoosay

The story about the scandals at Rupert Murdoch's International keeps getting worse. The big news from Reuters is that five senior staff at London's top-selling daily The Sun have been arrested as part of a probe into journalists paying police for tip-offs. "Four current and former Sun staff had already been arrested last month, and the latest detentions raise questions about the viability of Britain's best selling daily,'' Reuters reports. It also raises serious questions about the long term viability of Murdoch's UK business.

The arrests have been triggered by information supplied to the Yard by the Management and Standards Committee (MSC), an independent committee set up by the New York-based News Corporation, the parent company of News International and as The Guardian says, this could actually do serious damage to the Murdoch empire. "What the committee finds has potentially huge implications, not just for Murdoch's UK newspapers, but the mogul's empire, which stretches across Europe to the US, Latin America and Australia. Legal experts speculate that the bribery allegations could lead to the broadcasting watchdog, Ofcom, reviewing Murdoch's stake in Sky television. Under UK law, owners must prove they are "fit and proper" to own media interests. Any evidence suggesting News International titles were engaged in the corruption of officials could also trigger an investigation by the US authorities into breaches of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) which prohibits corrupt payments to foreign government officials. It is this – the threat of the cancer spreading outside the UK and eating away at an empire that includes Fox News and 20th Century Fox film studios, and last year had revenues of $34bn (£21.5bn) – that really worries Murdoch's lieutenants."