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Charles Ponzi (March 3, 1882 – January 18, 1949) was one of the greatest swindlers in American history. His aliases include Charles Ponei, Charles P. Bianchi, Carl and Carlo. The term "Ponzi scheme" is a widely known description of any scam that pays early investors returns from the investments of later investors. He promised clients a 50% profit within 45 days, or 100% profit within 90 days, by buying discounted postal reply coupons in other countries and redeeming them at face value in the United States as a form of arbitrage.^[1] Ponzi was probably inspired by the scheme of William F. Miller, a Brooklyn bookkeeper who in 1899 used the same pyramid scheme to take in $1 million.^[2]

Downtown Astana

The economy of Kazakhstan is the largest in Central Asia in both absolute and per capita terms. In 2021, Kazakhstan attracted more than US$370 billion of foreign investments since becoming an independent republic after the collapse of the former Soviet Union.

It possesses oil reserves as well as minerals and metals. It also has considerable agricultural potential, with its vast steppe lands accommodating both livestock and grain production. The mountains in the south are important for apples and walnuts; both species grow wild there. Kazakhstan's industrial sector rests on the extraction and processing of these natural resources. (Full article...)

"Who provides the profits -- these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them -- in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us -- the people -- got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par -- and above. Then the bankers collected their profits.

But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.

If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men -- men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.

Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.

Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face" ! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone."

—Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket, 1935

• ... that the Lebon Patisserie & Café in Istanbul closed in 2022, after 212 years of business, due to the high increase of monthly rent?
• ... that Bill Post helped invent the Pop-Tart?
• ... that the economy of Reineh, now in northern Israel, was so strong in the Mamluk era that they could afford imported pottery from Syria and Italy?
• ... that Celine-Marie Pascale's work focuses on how race and class impact the way "business practices and government policies create, normalize and entrench economic struggles" to benefit the wealthy?
• ... that developmental economist Michael Lipton showed that poor farmers were more resource efficient than rich farmers?
• ... that Malaysian businessman Lim Kok Wing was depicted as "King of Africa"?

May 24:

• 1984 - Vince McMahon, Sr., an American wrestling promoter and businessman, founder of WWE, died on this day.

• ...that Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairman of Biocon, is India's richest woman?

• ...advertising management is a function of marketing starting from market research, continuing through advertising, leading to actual sales or achievement of objectives?

• ... that a value-added service (VAS) is a telecommunications industry term for non-core services or, in short, all services beyond standard voice calls?

• ...that EID Parry is one of the oldest business entities in the Indian subcontinent and owes its origin to Thomas Parry, a Welshman who came to India in late 1780s?

• ... that an agrarian society is one that is based on agriculture as its prime means for support and sustenance?

• ... that the expression Hindu rate of growth is used to refer to the low annual growth rate of the economy of India, which stagnated around 3.5% from 1950 to 1980?

• ...that Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Daron Acemoğlu received the 2005 John Bates Clark Medal for his work on Skill Acquisition and Technological Change, Investment and Growth, Directed Search and Unemployment, The Role of Institutions in Economic Development and Political Economy?

Wikinews Economy and business portal

• July 21: Technological University Dublin senior lecturer Dr Lorcan Sirr speaks to Wikinews on housing market in Ireland
• July 15: California governor signs new state budget, eligible Californians to get stimulus payments
• July 4: 130 OECD countries agree to back global corporate tax rate
• June 30: 'Each makes the other more difficult to recover from': University of Sussex professor L. Alan Winters speaks to Wikinews on trade, COVID-19, Brexit
• June 16: Wikinews interviews Victor Kline, leader of newly registered The New Liberals party in Australia
• April 23: Irish Finance Minister Donohoe criticises OECD's global minimum corporate tax rate
• April 17: People protest in Berlin against German Court overturning five-year rent cap
• March 5: Chancellor Rishi Sunak announces UK budget 2021
• February 10: Disney to shut down Blue Sky Studios, animation studio behind 'Ice Age'
• January 24: World Trade Organization declares US tariff hike illegal, rules in South Korea's favour