In the face of the economic crisis which is happening before people's eyes, this footwear company knows how to appeal to the public: by pandering to their desire to Deny reality:
One thing that's fascinated me of late has been the depth of learned helplessness. When faced with a crisis, people will lie down and die, waiting for "them" to offer rescue. Them don't give a shit folks. In a recent example from Ireland, the water supply was contaminated with toxic carcinogens. It was so foul that animals refused to drink it. Those who could afford to buy bottled water did so, those who were too poor drank the tapwater as "they had no other choice". A few minutes on google would have provided information on water purification: rainwater catchment; solar distillation; transpiration; filtration through sand; etc.
The idea of even attempting to solve the problem by themselves didn't occur to these hapless creatures. Many of the solutions mentioned above needed no more than a plastic bag or a sheet of clingfilm. It bodes ill for the future as the complex food/water/energy/transportation systems continue to fray.
Dmitri Orlov on the USSR/USA collapses. Dmitri is a level head, and has many insights on what's to come...which is why he won't be on CNN any time soon. There's an mp3 of that link available here.
Mindy Babbitt entered Davenport University in her mid-20s to study accounting. Unable to cover the costs with her previous earnings as a cosmetologist, she took out a $35,000 student loan at 9% interest, figuring her postgraduate income would cover the cost.
Instead, the entry-level job her bachelor's degree got her barely covered living expenses. Babbitt deferred loan repayments and was then laid off for a time. Now 41 and living in Plainwell, Mich., she is earning $41,000 a year, or about $10,000 more than the average high school graduate makes. But since she graduated, Babbitt's student loan balance has more than doubled, to $87,000, and she despairs she'll never pay it off.
"Unless I win the lottery or get a job paying a lot more, my student debts are going to follow me to the grave," she says.
Suppose you give me a million dollars with the instructions, "Invest this profitably, and I'll pay you well." I'm a sharp dresser -- why not? So I go out onto the street and hand out stacks of bills to random passers-by. Ten thousand dollars each. In return, each scribbles out an IOU for $20,000, payable in five years. I come back to you and say, "Look at these IOUs! I have generated a 20% annual return on your investment." You are very pleased, and pay me an enormous commission.
Now I've got a big stack of IOUs, so I use these "assets" as collateral to borrow even more money, which I lend out to even more people, or sell them to others like myself who do the same. I also buy insurance to cover me in case the borrowers default -- and I pay for it with those self-same IOUs! Round and round it goes, each new loan becoming somebody's asset on which to borrow yet more money. We all rake in huge commissions and bonuses, as the total face value of all the assets we've created from that initial million dollars is now fifty times that.
Then one day, the first batch of IOUs comes due. But guess what? The person who scribbled his name on the IOU can't pay me back right now. In fact, lots of the borrowers can't. I try to hush up this embarrassing fact as long as possible, but pretty soon you get suspicious. You want your million-plus dollars back -- in cash. I try to sell the IOUs and their derivatives that I hold, but everyone else is suspicious too, and no one buys them. The insurance company tries to cover my losses, but it can only do so by selling the IOUs I gave it!
So finally, the government steps in and buys the IOUs, bails out the insurance company and everyone else holding the IOUs and the derivatives stacked on them. Their total value is way more than a million dollars now. I and my fellow entrepreneurs retire with our lucre. Everyone else pays for it.
This is the first level of what has happened in the financial industry over the past decade. It is a huge transfer of wealth to the financial elite, to be funded by US taxpayers, foreign corporations and governments, and ultimately the foreign workers who subsidize US debt indirectly via the lower purchasing power of their wages. However, to see the current crisis as merely the result of a big con is to miss its true significance.
The World Bank's 2008 survey also contains troubling data about the future availability of food. Although insisting that the planet is capable of producing enough foodstuffs to meet the needs of a growing world population, its analysts were far less confident that sufficient food would be available at prices people could afford, especially once hydrocarbon prices begin to rise again. With ever more farmland being set aside for biofuels production and efforts to increase crop yields through the use of "miracle seeds" losing steam, the Bank's analysts balanced their generally hopeful outlook with a caveat: "If biofuels-related demand for crops is much stronger or productivity performance disappoints, future food supplies may be much more expensive than in the past."
Combine these two World Bank findings - zero economic growth in the developing world and rising food prices - and you have a perfect recipe for unrelenting civil unrest and violence. The eruptions seen in 2008 and early 2009 will then be mere harbingers of a grim future in which, in a given week, any number of cities reel from riots and civil disturbances which could spread like multiple brushfires in a drought...
...Given a global situation in which one startling, often unexpected development follows another, prediction is perilous. At a popular level, however, the basic picture is clear enough: continued economic decline combined with a pervasive sense that existing systems and institutions are incapable of setting things right is already producing a potentially lethal brew of anxiety, fear, and rage. Popular explosions of one sort or another are inevitable.
If you’re planning to buy alcohol in the near future, and prefer not to have your mugshot made available to the local police, best to stock up now. Because, buried deep within the debate around the s.31 of the Policing and Crime Bill are provisions that will allow the Secretary of State to instruct your local corner shop - or pub - to instal CCTV and retain pictures of anyone buying alcohol for at least 60 days. Said pics will, of course, be available to the police on request.
Irish bishop fears recession will hit birth rate. Yeah, because our problem is that we don't have enough people! What, only 6.5 BILLION, padre? Let's go for 10! Of course, we all know that the Catholic clergy LOVES little children, eh?
The Bishop of Killala, John Fleming, said that "in silence and fear", some women were today asking themselves if they could bear the cost of becoming pregnant. Speaking in Athlone, Co Westmeath, at the weekend, he said one of the agonising questions facing women is: "What if the cost of child care causes us to compromise our ability to pay our mortgage?"
Dear Mr. President, you are presiding over an epochal contraction, not a pause in the growth epic. Your assignment is to manage that contraction in a way that does not lead to world war, civil disorder or both. Among other things, contraction means that all the activities of everyday life need to be downscaled including standards of living, ranges of commerce, and levels of governance. "Consumerism" is dead. Revolving credit is dead -- at least at the scale that became normal the last thirty years. The wealth of several future generations has already been spent and there is no equity left there to re-finance.
Here's how it works: You pour the bad water into a black pan, and then you screw on a cone. The black pan absorbs sunlight and heats up the water. Then, the evaporated water condensates into droplets on the cone's inner wall, and the droplets drop into a circular trough at the inner case of the cone. After a few hours, you can unscrew the cap, tip the cone upside down and empty out the clean water into a receptacle.
Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.
In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff’s notorious Ponzi scheme.
Ireland's main stock index dived 4% today, the fifth straight decline, after European media reports over the weekend focused on the possibility of the once-booming Emerald Isle reneging on its debt.
"Fears are mounting that Ireland could default on its soaring national debt pile, amid continuing worries about its troubled banking sector," Britain’s Sunday Times reported.
In the credit-default-swap market, the cost to insure $10 million in Irish sovereign debt against default jumped to $377,000 on Friday, up from $262,000 at the end of January and just $24,000 a year ago, MarketWatch.com reported.
The Times noted that pledges made by Ireland to support its crumbled banking sector amount to 220% of the country’s annual economic output. Loans outstanding at Irish banks are more than 11 times the size of the economy.
Fears are growing that Ireland could default on its national debt after the cost to insure against possible losses on loans to the country rose to record highs at the end of last week.
Credit ratings agency Moody's recently followed rival Standard & Poor's in warning it might downgrade Irish debt, amid fears that one of Europe's former success stories is falling into a deepening recession. The cost to hedge against losses on Irish debt rose last week to a record 355 basis points - meaning that for every £100 of debt, investors have to pay £3.55 to insure against default, according to data firm CMA Datavision. It was about 262 basis points at the end of January.
Moody's has warned there is a more than 50% chance Ireland will lose its triple A rating within 12 to 18 months.
Back in February 2006, LEAP/E2020 estimated that the global systemic crisis would unfold in 4 main structural phases: trigger, acceleration, impact and decanting phases. This process enabled us to properly anticipate events until now. However our team has now come to the conclusion that, due to the global leaders’ incapacity to fully realise the scope of the ongoing crisis (made obvious by their determination to cure the consequences rather than the causes of this crisis), the global systemic crisis will enter a fifth phase in the fourth quarter of 2009, a phase of global geopolitical dislocation.
According to LEAP/E2020, this new stage of the crisis will be shaped by two major processes happening in two parallel sequences:
A. Two major processes:
1. Disappearance of the financial base (Dollar & Debt) all over the world
2. Fragmentation of the interests of the global system’s big players and blocks
B. Two parallel sequences:
1. Quick disintegration of the current international system altogether
2. Strategic dislocation of big global players.
Bullion may top $2,000 an ounce in coming years amid a series of financial catastrophes, the chairman and founder of Toronto-based Sprott Asset Management Inc. said yesterday in an interview. Banks will battle to replenish capital, Treasury auctions stand the risk of failing and the moribund economy will create a dire operating outlook for many companies, he said.
DAVOS, Switzerland (AFP) — The world is heading toward "water bankruptcy" as demand for the precious commodity outstrips even high population growth, a new report warned Friday.
In less than 20 years water scarcity could lose the equivalent of the entire grain crops of India and the United States, said the World Economic Forum report, which added that food demand is expected to sky-rocket in coming decades.
"The world simply cannot manage water in the future in the same way as in the past or the economic web will collapse," said the report.
It's mind-boggling that this report came from the Capital of Corporatism - the World Economic Forum - where capitalists go to figure out the most efficient way to screw the planet:
Corporate chiefs at the forum have also expressed concern. "I am convinced that, under present conditions and considering the way water is being currently managed, we will run out of water long before we run out of fuel," said Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman of Swiss food conglomerate Nestle.
"The only way to measurably and sustainably improve this dire situation is through broad-scale collaborative efforts between governments, industry, academic, and other stakeholders around the world," said Indra Nooyi, chairman and chief executive of PepsiCo Inc, the US drinks major that makes huge use of water.
See? Nestle and Pepsi care about water use. HIPPIES!
Bear with me here...
Our economic system is based on growth. Companies and economies grow or they die. Growth is not linear however, it is exponential - compounded. Economies will double in size in a fixed period given a fixed rate of growth. Here is where we meet "The Rule of 70". To find your double time, divide your growth rate into 70 (72 is closer, but 70 is close enough):
70 / 1% = 70. A 1% growth rate will DOUBLE usage of water in 70 years.
70 / 2% = 35. A 2% growth rate will DOUBLE usage of water in 35 years.
70 / 3% = 25. A 3% growth rate will DOUBLE usage of water in 25 years.
70 / 7% = 10. A 7% growth rate will DOUBLE usage of water in 10 years.
70 / 10% = 7. A 10% growth rate will DOUBLE usage of water in 7 years.
Of course, it's possible to reduce the doubling by improved conservation and better technology, but any savings gained through conservation will be unlikely to mitigate the phenomenal power of exponential doubling.
Now, given that Nestle and Pepsi, like all good capitalists, want their businesses to GROW (preferably at rates far higher than 3%), one has to wonder at the cognitive dissonance/ignorance/intentions behind their sudden concern for water usage.
Systems based on PERPETUAL GROWTH are fundamentally unsustainable (at least as long as they are trapped on the surface of the Earth). As long as we GROW, we are on the path to inevitable doom. The only question is when, not if.
It should be noted that the Socialist model is no better than the capitalist from the perspective of environmental sustainablilty - the USSR and all Socialist state have been based on growth. The Statist "Left" doesn't get it any more than the neo-liberal "right".
A Royal Navy nuclear submarine and a French vessel have been damaged in a collision deep below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.
HMS Vanguard and Le Triomphant, which were carrying nuclear missiles on routine patrols, are reported to have collided while submerged on 3 or 4 February. Between them they had about 250 sailors on board.
The joke is that the assholes who build and work these abominations think that they're 'protecting' us.
US military officials failed to keep proper records on about 87,000 rifles, pistols, mortars and other weapons sent to Afghanistan between December 2004 and June 2008 - about a third of all the weapons sent
There was a similar lack of management of a further 135,000 light weapons donated to Afghan forces via the US military by 21 countries
The military failed even to record the serial numbers of some 46,000 weapons, making it impossible to confirm receipt of weapons or identify any which had fallen into the hands of militants
The serial numbers of 41,000 weapons were recorded, but US military officials still had no idea where they were
The Army said 24 soldiers are believed to have committed suicide in January alone -- six times as many as killed themselves in January 2008, according to statistics released Thursday.
The Army said it already has confirmed seven suicides, with 17 additional cases pending that it believes investigators will confirm as suicides for January.
If those prove true, more soldiers will have killed themselves than died in combat last month. According to Pentagon statistics, there were 16 U.S. combat deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq in January.
"This is terrifying," an Army official said. "We do not know what is going on."
You don't know what's going on? Let me give you clue, Mycroft:
You send soldiers to fight in a war based on neoCon lies, where they spend as much time accidentally killing civilians as "bad guys". You train them to overcome the natural human resistance to murder, to make them into more efficient killing machines. You expose them to Depleted Uranium, White Phosphorous and God only knows what other Satanic substances. You inject them with bizarre vaccine cocktails. You pay them shit. Then, they come home to a wrecked economy (wrecked at least partly due to the cost of the idiotic wars that they've been fighting) where they find that they owe a bank $200,000 on a foreclosed home and a life of never-ending debt slavery. They then face the challenge on how to feed and support themselves and their families on right-wing platitudes and talking-points.
You'll find that platitudes and talking-points don't pay the mortgage.
Clear enough?
The world will never be able to produce more than 89m barrels a day of oil, the head of Europe’s third largest energy group has warned, citing high costs in areas such as Canada and political restrictions in countries like Iran and Iraq.
Christophe de Margerie, chief executive of Total, the French oil and gas company, said he had revised his forecast for 2015 oil production downward by at least 4m barrels a day because of the current economic crisis and the collapse in oil prices.
He noted that national oil companies, which control the vast majority of the world’s oil, and independent producers, which play a key role in finding new sources, were “substantially limited in their ability to fund investments in the current [financial] environment”.
(the industrialists who oppose action on global warming) asked: How could Al Gore and his crew of pointy-headed scientists actually believe in global warming? Couldn’t they feel how cold it was outside?
All the while, the pointy-headed scientists at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration were busy actually measuring and recording the temperature around the nation. Yesterday, they released their results: January was warmer than average - not colder than average.
The sea level in the wake of the collapse is already projected to rise between 16 and 17 feet. The new research suggests the true figure could be almost 21 feet in the North Atlantic.
If this was to happen, many coastal areas in both north America and Europe would be devastated, and much of southern Florida would disappear.
Tim Fox, head of environment and climate change at the IMechE and one of the authors of the publication, denied the institute was being alarmist or seeking to undermine actions against greenhouse gases. They were merely trying to be "pragmatic" engineers who needed to prepare for extreme scenarios, he said.
The action the members of IMechE want includes:
• Building new railways because many of the existing routes use valleys that could be flooded
• Building reservoirs underground to prevent evaporation
• Spending heavily on researching new forms of energy such as fusion
It's amazing that such clever people still don't get it. The problem isn't Energy source-A vs. Energy source-B. The problem is an economic system based on GROWTH (see post on top of this page). If we had limitless clean Fusion energy, we'd just fuck the planet by building millions of Pepsi and Nestle factories and sucking down every last molecule of fresh water instead.
To quote Michael Ruppert: "Until you change the way money works, you change NOTHING."
According to various distinguished sources including the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland -- the central bankers' bank -- the amount of outstanding derivatives worldwide as of December 2007 crossed USD 1.144 Quadrillion, ie, USD 1,144 Trillion...
To put that number in context:
1. The entire GDP of the US is about USD 14 trillion.
2. The entire US money supply is also about USD 15 trillion.
3. The GDP of the entire world is USD 50 trillion. USD 1,144 trillion is 22 times the GDP of the whole world.
4. The real estate of the entire world is valued at about USD 75 trillion.
5. The world stock and bond markets are valued at about USD 100 trillion.
6. The big banks alone own about USD 140 trillion in derivatives.
7. Bear Stearns had USD 13+ trillion in derivatives and went bankrupt in March. Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Lehman Brothers and AIG have all 'collapsed' because of complex securities and derivatives exposures in September.
8. The population of the whole planet is about 6 billion people. So the derivatives market alone represents about USD 190,000 per person on the planet.
The figure, which largely accounts for people who have stopped looking for work or can’t find full-time jobs, is the highest since the Labor Department started the data series in 1994. It’s just shy of a discontinued and even broader measure that hit 15% in late 1982, when the official unemployment rate was 10.8%. (That data series goes back to the 1970s.)
Dominique Strauss-Kahn said the Fund needed an urgent cash infusion if it was to continue bailing out troubled economies in the future. Mr Strauss-Kahn also indicated that the world's advanced economies were now tipping from recession into full-blown depression, cementing fears about the scale of the economic slump in rich nations.
As the audit spread across Wal-Mart's U.S. operations, the mystery thickened. Stores from Arkansas to Washington began reporting missing signs. They numbered in the hundreds at first, then the thousands. Last month Wal-Mart disclosed that about 15,800 of its exit signs – a stunning 20 per cent of its total inventory – are lost, missing, or otherwise unaccounted for at 4,500 facilities in the United States and Puerto Rico.
Poor housekeeping, certainly, but what's the big deal?
In a word: radiation.
The signs contain tritium gas, a radioactive form of hydrogen. Tritium glows when it interacts with phosphor particles, a phenomenon that has led to the creation of glow-in-the-dark emergency exit signs.
Since the late 1970s, Henry's Turkey Service has been shipping mentally retarded men from Texas to Iowa to work in the West Liberty plant. Henry's has acted as the workers' employer, landlord and caregiver — paying the men a reduced wage for their work at the plant and then deducting from their pay the cost of room, board and care. Payroll records indicate the men are left with as little as $65 per month in salary.
Atlas shrugged:
Typically, their days began at 2:30 a.m., when they were awakened. At 4:30 a.m., they were taken into the still-dark yard and loaded into passenger vans for the six-mile drive to the West Liberty plant. Once there, they donned protective clothing and went to work "on the line," cleaning turkeys. Gene Berg, a 53-year-old cancer patient, has worked there as a "gut puller." Billy and Robert Penner, two brothers in their 60s, have pulled guts and plucked feathers.
The Des Moines police bomb squad determined Sunday that an object that looked like a bomb outside the Iowa Judicial Building was in fact a sump or toilet tank float ball...
..."They called us and rightly so," said Police Sgt. Russell Schafnitz. "I wasn't out there but I understand it had a sinister look about it. A ball-shaped thing with something sticking out of it."
Enough doom for today. Here's a clip from "Lagaan" - the best 4 hour long Bollywood musical about cricket that you've probably never seen:
Hindus, Sikhs & Muslims all work together to defeat the British Army (booooo!) Watcha waitin' for? Stick it in your Netflix queue, or grab a copy somewhere. Fantastic film!
Obama's Energy Secretary has told us that California's cities face disaster if global warming isn't stopped. With or without global warming, Southern California (like Australia and many other places) faces a massive water crisis.
One of the great fixtures of LA public TV is a show called "California's Gold", featuring Huell Howser. Huell is the perennial optimist, always seeing the good, even in the most ugly parts of Los Angeles and Southern California. His predictable cry of "THAT'S AMAZING" can be heard every week on his show. To give you a small sample, here's Huell in top form at the US/Mexico Border. Must-watch:
"California's Gold" is mostly charming, but in a recent show it went off the rails. Huell was given mission impossible - to enthuse over the ecological wreck that is the L.A. river.
You've seen it in films - and probably thought that it was an open sewer:
That didn't stop Huell from singing the joys of the river. "That's AMAZING!" he cried, as the mutilated river choked along the concrete tunnel, graffiti on each side. So much asphalt - and so little time to appreciate the post-apocalyptic wonderland.
To be fair, it did seem at times that even Huell's awesome powers of optimism were being put to the ultimate test. The 'gom jibbar', if you will.
Now here's the thing: L.A. spends about $1 BILLION a year to import water - water which the new US energy secretary tells us may soon disappear. 20% of the electricity consumed in LA is used to move water. Yet, what does LA do with the water that falls on the city as rain, or that flows through the city river? You guessed it: LA covers almost all of the river bed in concrete, and flushes it into the Pacific. Way to go. Seriously...
WAY TO GO.
This leads to the depletion of the LA aquifer. When it collapses (as it will without replenishment) then the aquifer will be filled with saltwater, and be lost to human use forever.
NOTE: there are smarter ways to manage runoff, such as swales.
More importantly, the river should be a habitat for native wildlife, flora and fauna - instead of an asphalt wasteland, littered with discarded shopping trolleys and dead homeless people.
Searches to find a clip of Huell's river episode failed - but luckily this parody by the Huell Howser Puppet turned up instead. PURE JOY!
The worst drought in half a century has parched fields across eight provinces in northern China and left nearly four million people without proper drinking water.
Not a drop of rain has fallen on Beijing for more than 100 days, the longest dry spell for 38 years in a city known for its arid climate. The Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters described the drought as a phenomenon “rarely seen in history” as the Government declared a state of emergency.
President Hu Jintao said that all efforts must be made to save the summer grain harvest.
The drought could hardly have come at a worse time for the leadership, which is already gearing for possible social instability with some 20 million rural migrants now out of work after losing their jobs in coastal factories and in cities. Many have returned to work their farms while they wait for the economic climate to improve but may now find they are unable to grow a harvest with no water for irrigation.
Some of us will migrate, but a lot of us have compelling reasons to live where we do – community, culture, and family. What most of us will probably do in dire circumstances is simply consolidate resources with people we can trust – we’ll take in boarders or move in with family or friends. In tough times, we are likely to need family and community more – thus staying close to elderly parents or grandparents who can help with childcare while parents look for work becomes more urgent.
From the article, how Africans survived extreme deprivation:
“Researchers began to notice that there was no economic explanation for how the majority of the population survived. They didn’t own land. They didn’t seem to have any assets. According to conventional economics, they should have died of hunger long ago, but they survived. To understand this, researchers looked at how these people actually lived, rather than at economic models . They found that their way of life was completely the opposite of how a human being in industrial society survives. They didn’t have a job, pension, steady place to work or regular flow of income. Families held a range of occupations from farming and selling in the market to doing odd jobs or handicrafts. Their aim was survival rather than maximization of profit. Rather than earn wages, labor was used within family.”
If the current system fails, hope for some humane alternatives.
Usufruct is an old Roman term for the legal right to enjoying the replenishable fruits or profits from property owned by another. This includes the ability (to) sell or let the enjoyment of the usufruct. But what if the owner was your local community? This would end private property.
In tribal communities usufruct means the land is owned in common by the tribe or community, but families and individuals have the right to use plots of land. Most native tribes owned land as a tribal group and not as individuals. The family never owned the land; they just farmed it. In a usufruct system, absentee ownership is not permitted. Modern usufruct examples include Cuba’s successful agricultural system, the traditional Mexico ejido system, and the right of native Canadian people to hunt and fish on Crown lands.
Fascinating links (click for bigness):
London restaurant abandons bills. Interesting experiment! Good luck.
A London restaurant is tackling the recession head-on by scrapping bills and letting customers pay what they want.
Peter Ilic, who owns the Little Bay restaurant group, will not present a single food bill to diners, leaving it up to them to decide how much the meal and service is worth.
The Swiss bank said it expected investment demand to double over the course of the year when compared to 2007, despite the recent trend of a strengthening dollar, weak oil price and sliding inflation, which are usually bearish for the gold price.
UBS also raised its 2010 estimate to $900 an ounce from $700, although it saw safe-haven demand easing over the year. Gold was trading at $906.88 an ounce on Wednesday night.
WSJ: Oil Stored at Sea Washes Out Rallies. Many oil tankers are sitting offshore, fully loaded - a temporary glut from last year, when oil hit $147 a barrel. That floating storage is keeping the price of oil low - for now.
The accumulation of oil held in "floating storage" gained speed in December, as available space in traditional onshore storage hubs dwindled due to excess supplies. This floating storage is now among the biggest impediments to oil prices recovering any of the ground lost over the past six months. Companies are quick to sell cargoes at the hint of a turnaround, unleashing a flood of oil onto the market.
Almost a third of Britons rely on their credit card for daily items such as groceries, according to Post Office research.
"However, what is worrying, is the trend for people to continue to rely on their cards for basic day-to-day purchases, which could be expensive if you only pay off the minimum amount on your credit card each month and have a high rate of interest."
Recently a 93 year old American froze to death after his utility company cut off his heat, following his failure to pay a $1,000 debt. The story continues:
A 93-year-old man who froze to death while owing about $1,000 to the utility that restricted his electricity usage left an estimated $600,000 to a Bay City hospital.
Marvin Schur's attorney, Cathy Reder, tells the Detroit Free Press the World War II veteran bequeathed his entire fortune to Bay Medical Center.
Schur's frozen body was found Jan. 17, four days after Bay City Electric Light & Power installed a device on his electric meter that cuts power after a predetermined level is reached.
State regulators on Wednesday issued emergency rules designed to protect more people against electricity or heat shutoffs in the winter.
Schur's nephew, William Walworth, said his uncle retired from a tool and die factory in his early 50s. Neither he nor Reder knew why Schur left his fortune to Bay Medical Center.
Regarding yesterday's post (see below) about the history of financial panics from 1792 - present, and the role of gold in preventing/not preventing such panics, Lukas writes:
All those Panics were happening after the introduction of paper money and the implementation of superfast communications.
After the creation of cities (after the colder periods some thousand years ago) came the problem of doing too much to the environment (using it up) and neglecting sustainable methods - so after 200 to 1000 years a society has to pay up. This process sped up with cables, steam and international post offices. Hyperfast with computers. The remediating process is the manipulation through propaganda, most effective with tv and viral marketing, so we all work more to satisfy the interests (banking and personal interests) or shut up not to go to hell :P (middle ages).
Maybe we all have the false impression, that after a big crisis comes the next level. It could be the other way around: the elites got the next level first and we all pay it back via a big crash someday. or a crunch.
Your remark at the end, that most panics occured under a gold standard is invalid in my view. Without having fiat money, you don't have to have a gold standard. And before 1720...1750 there is no fiat money. Just failed states with bad management and/or no more gold heists (like spain, portugal etc.). A gold standard, or just gold as money punishes irresponsible government within months. Bubbles can build up with everything that floats around unused. In 18th century it was coal energy and unclaimed land in america and russia. And... silver was more important in 19th century :) Some historians even emphasise that the ration silver/gold is (was?) constant and seeks an equilibrium.
Just thoughts, not certainties...
The Panic of 1792 was a financial credit crisis that occurred during March and April of 1792 due to the speculation of William Duer and Alexander Macomb against stock held by the Bank of New York. While Duer attempted to drive the price of stocks up, the Livingston family attempted to drive the price of stocks down and in so doing caused a bank run. Macomb and Duer were ruined while the Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton prevented a national crisis by providing hundreds of thousands of dollars in securities for the troubled banks.
The Panic of 1796-1797 was a series of economic downturns that began with the bubble of land speculation bursting in the United States in 1796 and eventually led to a depression of the commerce markets that began in the Bank of England in 1797. It had developing disflationary repercussions in the financial, commercial, and real estate markets of the coastal United States and the Caribbean through the turn of the century.
The Panic of 1819 was the first major financial crisis in the United States, after the depression of the late 1780s (which led directly to the establishment of the dollar and, perhaps indirectly, to the calls for a Constitutional Convention). It resulted in widespread foreclosures, bank failures, unemployment, and a slump in agriculture and manufacturing. It marked the end of the economic expansion that had followed the War of 1812. However, things would change for the US economy after the Second Bank of the United States was founded in 1816, in response to the spread of bank notes across United States from private banks, due to inflation brought on by the debt following the war.
The Panic of 1825 was a stock market crash that started in the Bank of England arising in part out of speculation investments in Latin America including in the fabled imaginary country of Poyais. The crisis was felt most acutely in England where it precipitated the closing of six London banks including Henry Thornton's bank and sixty country banks in England, but was also manifest in the markets of Europe, Latin America, and the United States. An infusion of gold reserves from Banque de France would save the Bank of England from complete collapse.
The Panic of 1837 was a panic in the United States built on a speculative fever. The bubble burst on May 10, 1837 in New York City, when every bank stopped payment in specie (gold and silver coinage). The Panic was followed by a five-year depression, with the failure of banks and record high unemployment levels.
The Panic of 1847 was started as a collapse of British financial markets associated with the end of the 1840s railroad boom. The Bank of England had to request a suspension of the Bank Charter Act to end the crisis.
The Panic of 1857 was a sudden downturn in the economy of the United States that occurred in 1857. A general recession first emerged late in 1856, but the successive failure of banks and businesses that characterized the panic began in mid-1857. While the overall economic downturn was brief, the recovery was unequal, and the lasting impact was more political than economic. The panic began with a loss of confidence in an Ohio bank, but spread as railroads failed, and fears that the US Federal Government would be unable to pay obligations in specie mounted. More than 5,000 American businesses failed within a year, and unemployment was accompanied by protest meetings in urban areas. Eventually the panic and depression spread to Europe, South America and the Far East. No recovery was evident in the northern parts of the United States for a year and a half, and the full impact did not dissipate until the American Civil War.
The Panic of 1866 was an international financial downturn that accompanied the failure of Overend, Gurney and Company in London, and the corso forzoso abandonment of the silver standard in Italy.
The Panic of 1873 was the start of the Long Depression, a severe nationwide economic depression in the United States that lasted until 1879. It was precipitated by the bankruptcy of the Philadelphia banking firm Jay Cooke on September 18, 1873, following the crash on May 9, 1873 of the Vienna Stock Exchange in Austria (the so-called Gründerkrach or “founders' crash”). It was one of a series of economic crises in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The Panic of 1884 was a short-lived small economic downturn. Gold reserves of Europe were depleted and the New York City national banks, with tacit approval of the U.S.Treasury Department halted investments in the rest of the United States and called in outstanding loans. A larger crisis was averted when New York Clearing House bailed out banks in risk of failure. Nevertheless, the investment firm Grant & Ward, Marine Bank of New York, and Penn Bank of Pittsburgh along with more than 10,000 small firms failed.
The Panic of 1890 was an acute depression that was less serious than other panics of the era precipitated by the near insolvency of the Baring Brothers bank in London due mainly to poor investments in Argentina. The Bank of England bailed out the Baring Brothers which prevented a larger depression.[citation needed] Nathan Rothschild remarked that if this had not happened, perhaps the entire private banking system of London would have collapsed which would have made for a tremendous economic catastrophe. The panic was associated with call money reaching an astonishing 45 percent and a slump in the commodity market the world over.
The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States that began in 1893. This panic is sometimes considered a part of the Long Depression which began with the Panic of 1873,[1] and like that of earlier crashes, was caused by railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing; which set off a series of bank failures. Compounding market overbuilding and a railroad bubble was a run on the gold supply and a policy of using both gold and silver metals as a peg for the US Dollar value.
The Panic of 1896 was an acute economic depression in the United States that was less serious than other panics of the era precipitated by a drop in silver reserves and market concerns on the effects it would have on the gold standard. Deflation of commodities prices drove the stock market to new lows in a trend that only began to reverse after the 1896 election of William McKinley. The failure of the National Bank of Illinois in Chicago is remembered as one of the motivating factors in the sensational Adolph Luetgert murder case. During the panic, call money would reach 125 percent, the highest level since the Civil War.
The Panic of 1901 was a stock market crash on the New York Stock Exchange caused in part by struggles between E. H. Harriman, Jacob Schiff, and J. P. Morgan/James J. Hill for the financial control of the Northern Pacific Railroad. The stock cornering was orchestrated by James Stillman and William Rockefeller's First National City Bank financed with Standard Oil money. After reaching a compromise, the moguls formed the Northern Securities Company. As a result of the panic thousands of small investors were ruined.
On May 17th, 1901 the stock market crashed on the New York Stock Exchange for the first time. This crash was a result of the struggle over control of the Northern Pacific Railroad.
The Panic of 1907, also known as the 1907 Bankers' Panic, was a financial crisis that occurred in the United States when the New York Stock Exchange fell close to 50 percent from its peak the previous year. Panic occurred during a time of economic recession, when there were numerous runs on banks and trust companies. The 1907 panic eventually spread throughout the nation when many state and local banks and businesses entered into bankruptcy. Primary causes of the run include a retraction of market liquidity by a number of New York City banks, loss of confidence among depositors, and the absence of a statutory lender of last resort.
The Panic of 1910-1911 was a slight economic depression that followed the enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. It mostly affected the stock market and business traders who were smarting from the activities of trust busters, especially with the breakup of the Standard Oil Company.
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the ’29 Crash, the Crash of 1929, the Great Crash of 1929, the Great Crash of October 1929, the Great Wall Street Crash of 1929, 1929 Great Crash, or the Great Crash was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, taking into consideration the full extent and longevity of its fallout.
In financial markets, Black Monday refers to Monday, October 19, 1987, when stock markets around the world crashed, shedding a huge value in a very short period. The crash began in Hong Kong, spread west through international time zones to Europe, hitting the United States after other markets had already declined by a significant margin. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) dropped by 508 points to 1739 (22.6%). By the end of October, stock markets in Hong Kong had fallen 45.8%, Australia 41.8%, Spain 31%, the United Kingdom 26.4%, the United States 22.68%, and Canada 22.5%. New Zealand's market was hit especially hard, falling about 60% from its 1987 peak, and taking several years to recover.
...The global financial crisis of 2008–2009 is an ongoing major financial crisis. It became prominently visible in September 2008 with the failure, merger, or conservatorship of several large United States-based financial firms. The underlying causes leading to the crisis had been reported in business journals for many months before September, with commentary about the financial stability of leading U.S. and European investment banks, insurance firms and mortgage banks consequent to the subprime mortgage crisis.
Of all the panics, 2008/9 is one of the worst - and likely to be THE worst. It remains to be seen if this time, the wheels come off properly. The next 12 months promise to be a lot of fun.
Let it also be added that most of those panics occured at a time when the currency was backed by GOLD. So much for the gold standard as a panacea.
Resource-poor Japan just discovered a new source of mineral wealth - sewage. A sewage treatment facility in central Japan has recorded a higher gold yield from sludge than can be found at some of the world's best mines.
An official in Nagano prefecture, northwest of Tokyo, said the high percentage of gold found at the Suwa facility was probably due to the large number of precision equipment manufacturers in the vicinity that use the yellow metal.
The facility recently recorded finding 1,890 grams of gold per tonne of ash from incinerated sludge.
Using a $250 Motorola RFID reader and antenna connected to his laptop, Chris recently drove around San Francisco reading RFID tags from passports, driver licenses, and other identity documents. In just 20 minutes, he found and cloned the passports of two very unaware US citizens.
Via Neatorama, Earth's continents through past, present and future:
We will not apologize for our way of life...."
This unfortunate phrase from President Obama's otherwise sturdy inaugural address, echoed through my mind last week as I cruised the suburban outlands of Montgomery, Alabama. All the usual commercial furnishings of consumerist America hugged the flattish ochre and dusty-green landscape of played-out cotton fields where thirty feet of topsoil has washed away in the two hundred years since the mainly English settlers shoved out the native Alabamu, Coosa, and Tallapoosa. Along the low horizon, mall followed strip mall followed "lifestyle center," book-ending the "one house" failed subdivisions of otherwise empty unsold lots in a cavalcade of floundering enterprise. It seemed at times as if the terrain was a kind of sea-like expanse, and all the retail boxes ghost ships drifting to oblivion.
Wadhwa, who trained as a barrister, came across the EMI press when looking at an old Art Deco building. "Chugging away in a small part of it was a vinyl plant," he says. Despite having no experience of the music industry, he and former Olympic sailor Tim Robinson bought it.
The plant now puts out 2m-3m records a year for independent labels, as well as the big four who use it as a mark of quality.
"EMI from 1905 to 1970 spent millions of pounds perfecting the machinery that made their records," says Wadhwa. "The machinery was absolutely unique." As such, the Vinyl Factory has had to develop a method to hand-make replacement parts for the machines.
I believe that many food safety policies do exist for a reason - but the fact that they so hugely prioritize the well being of rich corporations, who still can’t keep the food supply safe (witness the current peanut contamination and cyclical contaminations that show up every few months), that we’d be better off allowing more small scale food production. I personally don’t have a lot of problem circumventing the laws, or campaigning to overturn them, but I do want people to understand the risks.
Yes, the world is going to S**T; but there's one thing we can do: pour a pint of Guinness! Too many barmen and barladies (especially in the U.S., it must be said) simply pour the Guinness into the glass in a single pull. Ye BARBARIANS!
Half of British adults do not believe in evolution, with at least 22% preferring the theories of creationism or intelligent design to explain how the world came about, according to a survey.
The poll found that 25% of Britons believe Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is "definitely true", with another quarter saying it is "probably true". Half of the 2,060 people questioned were either strongly opposed to the theory or confused about it.
As Martin Cartwright, 49, began undoing his trousers, the woman offered him the money.
Cartwright took the cheque and left but warned her: "If you say anything, even in a thousand years, I'll kill you."
Prosecutor Tim Forster told a court: "He paid the money into his bank account. He told cashiers he had won the lottery." When police caught up with Cartwright, he claimed he had heard voices from Jesus "saying I should rape someone".
Police are searching for his accomplice, a long-haired bearded man from the Middle East, speaking fluent Aramaic. He is considered unarmed and dangerous.
More amusing/interesting stuff! (click for linky):
IStan) O'Neal - who ran off with a compensation package of $46 million in 2007 just before the bank (Merril Lynch) posted an $8 billion loss - ran up a bill of $134.50 at an Upper East Side eatery and left a measly $11.50 tip.
If you're poor and the bank is coming for your home, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur has a plan for you.
Just squat, she says.
Yes, this Ohio Democrat is actually encouraging her financially distressed constituents whose homes have been foreclosed upon, to simply stay put.
In a Friday report, CNN's Drew Griffin explored the case of Ohioan Andrea Geiss, whose home was foreclosed upon in April.
"Behind in payments, out of work, a husband sick, she had nowhere to go," said Griffin. "So, she decided to follow the advice of her Congresswoman and go nowhere."
The body count is still rising. For months on end, marked by bankruptcies, foreclosures, evictions, and layoffs, the economic meltdown has taken a heavy toll on Americans. In response, a range of extreme acts including suicide, self-inflicted injury, murder, and arson have hit the local news. By October 2008, an analysis of press reports nationwide indicated that an epidemic of tragedies spurred by the financial crisis had already spread from Pasadena, California, to Taunton, Massachusetts, from Roseville, Minnesota, to Ocala, Florida.
Instead of receiving their state tax refunds in dollars, California residents will receive IOUs. Student aid and payments to disabled and needy will also come in the form of IOUs. California is negotiating with banks to get them to accept the IOUs as deposits.
California is often identified as the world’s eighth largest economy, and it is broke.
A person might think that California’s plight would introduce some realism into Washington, DC, but it has not. President Obama is taking steps to intensify the war in Afghanistan and, perhaps, to expand it to Pakistan.
Obama has retained the Republican warmongers in the Pentagon, and the US continues to illegally bomb Pakistan and to murder its civilians. At the World Economic Forum at Davos this week, Pakistan’s prime minister, Y. R. Gilani, said that the American attacks on Pakistan are counterproductive and done without Pakistan’s permission. In an interview with CNN, Gilani said: “I want to put on record that we do not have any agreement between the government of the United States and the government of Pakistan.”
Iceland's new Prime Minister is a Lesbian. Yay, Iceland!
Iceland was poised last night to give the world its first openly gay prime minister as Johanna Sigurdardottir prepared to be installed as an interim government leader to take the embattled country through to elections in the spring.
Sigurdardottir, who would also be Iceland's first woman prime minister, owes her sudden elevation to the removal of the previous coalition after weeks of raucous street protests whipped up by anger and desolation at the startling collapse of Iceland's financial system. She was expected to head a coalition of her own Social Democratic party with the Left-Greens, who have emerged from the crisis as probably Europe's most popular Green party.
Bruce Sterling (once a techno optimist) now says 2009 will be a year of panic. Welcome to the club, Bruce. Take a seat, and welcome!
As 2009 opens, our financial institutions are deep in massive, irrational panic. That's bad, but it gets worse: Many other respected institutions have rational underpinnings at least as frail as derivatives or bundled real-estate loans. Like finance, these institutions are social constructions. They are games of confidence, underpinned by people's solemn willingness to believe, to conform, to contribute. So why not panic over them, too?
The Obama administration is gearing up for a “big bang” announcement within the next two weeks that will combine a bank clean-up with measures to reduce home foreclosures and probably steps to kick-start credit markets.
I suggest that perhaps it's time for America to take a look around the globe at watch the unrest in the streets. There haven't been major crowds seriously protesting in the US for a very long time, but that shouldn't make us think the country is immune. The focus for government, and for everyone, should be on how to minimize the risk that people freeze to death in their homes or are poisoned by their own drinking water. Trying to save the banking system doesn't address that. Trying to save the banking system with the money that belongs to the people makes it more likely they will freeze to death. That in a few words is the choice before us.
Read the links on that AE link. Pretty grim stuff indeed.
Strenuous efforts were being made this weekend by ministers, officials, unions and conciliators to stamp out the wildcat strikes now threatening to become a nationwide protest. Senior civil servants were ordered to an emergency Cobra meeting on Friday to plan the Government's response to the disputes. Police, army and immigration services have been put on alert, and mediators are talking with unions and employers in an effort to resolve the unofficial strikes that erupted at 13 locations last week.
And yesterday there were fears that the disputes over the employment of foreign workers at refineries and power stations could spread to other areas. Tom Hardacre, national officer for engineering and construction at Unite, the union, told The Independent on Sunday: "I think it is extremely likely that industrial action could continue on Monday... There is so much frustration in all sectors of industry, it could escalate to other sectors. That is not what we want, but if there is no solution we could be faced with serious problems in terms of industrial unrest." Unite is now calling for a national protest in Westminster.
The Bank of England can find time away from the global crisis to give female employees fashion advice.
The Bank of England came under fire last night for "institutional sexism", after it held a seminar for female staff to advise them on what clothing, shoes and make-up to wear.
In a week when the IMF announced that the British economy will be the hardest hit of all the developed nations, when strikes erupted across the country and as world leaders gathered in Davos to discuss global recession, senior figures at the Bank turned their minds to lipstick and high heels.
On Wednesday, Bank of England employees gathered for a Dress for Success summit, at which female employees were lectured on the importance of wearing appropriate jewellery and make-up in the workplace.
A memo leaked from the meeting details the advice given to staff, including the warning that wearing certain accessories would make women workers look like prostitutes.
"Look professional, not fashionable; be careful with perfume; always wear a heel of some sort – maximum two inches; always wear some sort of makeup, even if it's just lipstick," read the memo. It was distributed by the professional image consultancy firm hired by the bank for the event.
"Shoes and skirt must be the same colour. No-nos include ankle chains – "professional, but not the one you want to be associated with" – white high heels; overstuffed handbags; an overload of rings, and double-pierced ears," it continued.
We really have so many reasons to murder bankers in the streets. Can we PLEASE get started already? PLEEEEZZE?
China birth defects up sharply. One unintended consequence of environmental legislation in the US was the movement of polluting industries from the US to Asia - and now they've been enjoying the economic benefits - and also suffering the environmental consequences.
A senior family planning official in China has noted an alarming rise in the number of babies with birth defects, a Chinese media report says.
Jiang Fan, from China's National Population and Family Planning Commission, said environmental pollution was a cause of the increase.
The coal-mining heartland of Shanxi province had the biggest problem.
China has reported the trend before, and it was not clear if Mr Jiang was commenting on new or old statistics.
A 2007 commission report said the rate of defects had risen 40% since 2001, from 104.9 per 10,000 births to 145.5 in 2006.
Officials blame emissions from Shanxi's large coal and chemical industry for the problems there.
Almost half of tested samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contained mercury, which was also found in nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient, according to two new U.S. studies.
Will you be having desert with your meal? Uhm, no.
