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A 43-story residential tower in south London’s Elephant & Castle neighborhood will receive eight percent of its power from three wind turbines  installed at the top of the structure.  The Strata Tower – nicknamed the Electric Razor – is being developed by Brookfield Europe and eventually will be home to 1,000 residents. The Strata is […]

Jon Levy is a European Union analyst with Eurasia Group and a frequent commentator on European issues, appearing on CNN, CNBC and NPR.  He was previously director of national security policy for John Kerry’s presidential campaign.  In a recent interview for the Alter NOW podcasts, Levy discussed several factors shaping European real estate markets – […]

One-fourth of American workers have saved less than $1,000 for their retirement, according to a report from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).  The EBRI survey reveals that 27 percent reported saving less than $1,000 for retirement, not counting the value of their home or defined-benefit plans.  A similar percentage reported saving between $1,000 and […]

The United States economy is entering an era of sustainable growth as companies begin hiring again.  That’s the opinion of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who said “I think the economy is definitely getting stronger. We’ve made a lot of progress, we’ve got some work to do still and it’s going to take some time to […]

Does the introduction of Apple’s new iPad sound the death knell for laptop computers?  The Wall Street Journal’s Personal Technology columnist Walt Mossberg’s test drive of an iPad has him believing that the new product has “the potential to change portable computing as we know it.”  During the test drive, Mossberg used his laptops only […]

The Obama administration has announced a new initiative to assist troubled homeowners by helping them refinance with government-backed mortgages that cut monthly payments.  The program would also temporarily reduce payments for unemployed borrowers who are actively job hunting.  The government is encouraging lenders to write down the value of loans for borrowers participating in modification […]

The Congressional Budget Office has determined that the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) will cost the government $109 billion – just 16 percent of the $700 billion set aside to rescue the nation from the great recession.  Insurance giant AIG and the auto industry are TARP’s largest beneficiaries. The federal government bought $40 billion in […]

Despite the Snowmageddon that crippled Washington, D.C. and much of the East Coast during February, the economy continued to grow at a modest rate.  This is the opinion of the Federal Reserve’s newly issued Beige Book report – officially known as the “Summary of Commentary on Current Economics Conditions by Federal Reserve District” — which […]

The Bernard Madoff affair is the scandal that keeps on giving.  In the latest twist, Madoff’s daughter-in-law, Stephanie, is seeking legal approval to change her surname to Morgan to protect herself and her two young children against death threats, embarrassment and humiliation. In legal filings made in Manhattan, Stephanie Madoff says that her father-in-law, who […]

The 8.8 magnitude Chilean earthquake was so strong that it literally knocked the earth off its axis – permanently. Richard Gross, a research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, calculated that the earth’s rotation changed so that the length of our day is now roughly 1.26 microseconds shorter.  A microsecond is equivalent to one millionth […]