In my days at catholic school, which turned me into an atheist faster than any secular school probably would have, we had a nun in the fifth grade who told us that if you bit into the Eucharist, blood would squirt out into your mouth. She meant to scare us into not biting the wafer of course but it had the adverse effect and just made us more curious about the circulatory system of the communion wafer. Several of us made a pact that at the next Mass, we would bite into the body of Christ and see if he would indeed bleed. We were not sure exactly what would happen since we were taught that lying is a sin and surely Sister Mary Margaret, a bride of Christ, would never think about blackening her soul with even a venial sin. But the idea of blood squirting out of a wafer seemed laughable and having recently learned the Scientific Method we set out to find out for ourselves.
Obama wants to enlarge the armed services by 90,000. He pledges to escalate the US war in Afghanistan; to attack Pakistan's territory if it obstructs any unilateral US mission to kill Osama bin Laden; and to wage a war against terror in a hundred countries, creating a new international intelligence and law enforcement "infrastructure" to take down terrorist networks. A fresh start? Where does this differ from Bush's commitment on 20 September 2001, to an ongoing "war on terror" against "every terrorist group of global reach" and "any nation that continues to harbour or support terrorism"?
The November summit in Washington could produce some unwelcome surprises which were hinted at by Thailand's Deputy Prime Minister, Olarn Chaipravat, who told Bloomberg News: ,
"The message of this initiative is for China to consider whether or not China would open up its banking system and allow the strongest currency in the world, which is the Chinese yuan, to be the rightful and anointed convertible currency of the world."
Surely, the present financial malaise which has its roots in Wall Street and at the Federal Reserve, has demonstrated that the dollar must be replaced as the world's "reserve currency" and that America must be deposed as the de facto steward of the global economic system. Leadership implies responsibility and the US must be held to account for its failings. It's time for a change.
Ironically, least affected by the crisis are Islamic banks.
They have largely been immune to the collapse because Islamic banking prohibits the acquisition of wealth via gambling (or alcohol, tobacco, pornography, or stocks in armaments companies), and forbids the buying and selling of a debt as well as usury. Additionally, Shari'ah banking laws forbid investing in any company with debts that exceed thirty percent.
"Islamic banking institutions have not failed per se as they deal in tangible assets and assume the risk" said Dr. Mohammed Ramady, Professor of Economics at King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals. "Although the Islamic banking sector is also part of the global economy, the impact of direct exposure to sub-prime asset investments has been low" he continued. "The liquidity slowdown has especially affected Dubai, with its heavy international borrowing. The most negative effect has been a loss of confidence in the regional stock markets." Instead, said Dr. Ramady, oil surplus Arab nations are "reconsidering overseas investments in financial assets" and speeding up their own domestic projects.
Eight years ago, in May 2000, Saudi Islamic banker His Highness Dr. Nayef bin Fawaaz ibn Sha'alan publicly gave a series of economic lectures in Gulf states. At the time his research showed that Arab investments in the US, to the tune of $1.5 trillion, were effectively being held hostage and he recommended they be pulled out and reinvested in the tangibles of the Arab and Islamic markets. "Not in stocks however because the stock market could be manipulated remotely, as we have seen in the last couple of years in the Arab market where trillions of dollars evaporated" he said.
He warned then that it was a certainty that the US economic system was on the verge of collapse because of its cumulative debts, ever-increasing deficit and the interest on that debt. "When the debts and deficits come due, they just issue new Treasury bonds to cover the old bonds due, with their interest and the new deficit too." The cycle cannot be stopped or the debt cancelled because the US would no longer be able to borrow. The consequence of relieving this cycle would be a total collapse of their economic system as opposed to the partial, albeit massive, crash of 2008.
"Islamic banking", said Dr. Al-Sha'alan, "always protects the individuals' wealth while putting a cap on selfishness and greed. It has the best of capitalism - filtering out its negatives - and the best of socialism - filtering out its negatives too." Both systems inevitably had to fail. Additionally, Europe and Japan did not need to be held accountable and indebted to America anymore for protection against the Soviets.
"The essential difference between the Islamic economic system and the capitalist system", he continued "is that in Islam wealth belongs to God - the individual being only its manager. It is a means, not a goal. In capitalism, it is the reverse: money belongs to the individual, and is a goal in and of itself. In America especially, money is worshipped like God."
In sum, the crash of the entire global economic system is a result of America's fiscal arrogance based upon one set of rules for itself and another for the rest of the world. Its increased creative financing deluded its people into a false sense of security, and now looks like the failure of capitalism altogether.
The whole exercise in democracy by force against Arab Muslim nations has almost bankrupted the US. The Cold War is over and the US has nothing to offer: no exports, no production, few natural resources, and no service sector economy.
The very markets that resisted US economic policies the most, having curbed foreign direct investments into America, are those who will fare best and come out ahead.
A funny thing happened on the way to the Commodities Exchange...
The current official price of Gold is $730 an ounce. This is odd, given that gold dealers are finding it hard to find sufficient coins to meet collector demand. On eBay, I've seen gold eagles which have a theoretical value of $760 or $770 routinely selling for $950-$1000. This suggests that there's a difference in price between ACTUAL GOLD and PAPER GOLD (the kind that Wall Street is so fond of - the kind that can be created on a computer hard drive with the push of a button...)
Yesterday, I was mugged by a member of the McCain/Palin campaign.
I was walking down the street when some asshole flew by in a helicopter, firing at me with a machine gun. I remember hearing a shout of "You Betcha!", and seeing a flash of a $10,000 Louis Vuitton handbag. A bullet grazed my cheek.
I remember an awful woman with an alaskan accent trying to sexually assault me. She was white. I definitely remember that. She was a WHITE woman. I managed to fight her off,but not before she carved some words on my forehead:
I almost forgot: here's the direct link to my youtube channel. If you're a sporadic visitor, be sure to subscribe to it - that way you'll get automatic emails to update you about fresh animated works.
Commercial banks borrowed a record of $105.8 billion a day, on average, from the Federal Reserve's emergency lending window over the past week, according to Fed data released Thursday.
Suffering from the ongoing credit crunch, banks turned to the Federal Reserve for funds, blowing through the previous borrowing record of $99.7 billion, set last week, the central bank reported.
US states are running out of cash. Across the country, state governors are facing the possibility of not being able to pay their policemen, teachers and firemen this month. That's because, when the world's credit markets went into deep freeze, local governments had their lifeline – the municipal bond market – cut. And this source of funding is critical to the daily running of government. Since tax revenues vary from month to month, states raise cash to build bridges or pay their bills by issuing municipal bonds.
So, unless Washington weighs in with a huge bailout for the municipal bond market, public services in America are set to be stripped to the bone. And that means that projects to build new bridges, repair roads and lay water pipelines are likely to be cancelled as states, fearful of civil unrest, divert precious funds to pay police and firemen. As such, California, for example, may find it difficult to resist the temptation to dip into the $20bn that it has set aside for rebuilding its threadbare infrastructure. It seems that the urgent task of replacing America's rusted water mains and faltering bridges may well have to wait a little longer.
The European Think-Tank GEAB makes a Big Prediction: that in the Summer of 2009, the U.S. will default on its debt. Overnight, a "new dollar" will replace the Greenback.
The sudden shock that will result from the US defaulting in summer 2009 is partly due to this decoupling of decision-making processes of the world’s largest economies with regard to the US. It is predictable and can be dampened if global players start to anticipate it. As a matter of fact, it is one of the topics developed in this 28th edition of the GEAB: LEAP/E2020 hopes that the September shock has “educated” the world’s political, economic and financial policy-makers and made them understand that it is easier to act by anticipation than in a panic. It would be a pity if Euroland, Asia and oil-producing countries, as well as US citizens of course, discover one morning of summer 2009 that, after a long-week-end or bank-holiday in the US, their US T-Bonds and Dollars are only worth 10 percent of their value because a « new Dollar » has just been imposed.
...nothing in her growing volume of stupidity on display tops her answer to a third grader who wanted to know what a Vice President does.
From a television interview with KUSA in Colorado:
Q: Brandon Garcia wants to know, "What does the Vice President do?"
PALIN: That's something that Piper would ask me! ... They're in charge of the U.S. Senate so if they want to they can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom.
Say what? The Vice President presides over sessions of the Senate and serves as the tie-breaking vote in case of a tie. That’s the only role the Constitution gives to the Vice President when it comes to the Senate.
In charge of the Senate? This no doubt comes as a surprise to Harry Reid, the majority leader of the Senate and the guy who’s really in charge.
Perhaps the greatest of Bush's many failures: Pakistan, which is now on the brink of total chaos:
Pakistan is experiencing power cuts that have led to hourly blackouts, a doubling of basic food prices and a currency that has lost a third of its value in the past year. "The awful thing is there's no solution in sight – neither in the war on terror nor on the economic side," Mr Khan said during a visit to London. Heightening the sense of national emergency, the government yesterday turned to the International Monetary Fund for $15bn (£9.3bn) to cope with a balance of payments crisis caused by a flight of capital, after previously saying that applying to the IMF would be a last resort.
Almost every day there are retaliatory attacks against police and soldiers and Western targets. Hundreds of soldiers and an unknown number of civilians are losing their lives. The national parliament rejected the US influence on the government by adopting a resolution last night calling for an "independent" foreign policy and urging dialogue with the extremists.
The military operation against the so-called Pakistan Taliban is concentrated in the largely autonomous tribal areas that border Afghanistan. A total of 120,000 troops and paramilitary forces have been deployed against what senior officers say is a skilled and tenacious enemy. "They do not fight in one place, you cannot fight them in one place. It's basically guerrilla warfare," said Lt Col Haider Baseer, a military spokesman. "The area is mountainous, it's vast. And everybody carries a gun. It's the culture."
what makes Scandinavia particularly magical is what it lacks. "There is no national anti-gay rights movement," writes Zuckerman, "there are no 'Jesus fish' imprinted on advertisements in the yellow pages, there are no school boards or school administrators who publicly doubt the evidence for human evolution ... there are no religiously inspired 'abstinence only' sex education curricula ... there are no parental groups lobbying schools and city councils to remove Harry Potter books from school and public libraries ... there are no restaurants that include Bible verses on their menus and placemats, there are no 'Faith Nights' at national sporting events ..."
Sounds like many countries outside the US. I don't think you need to visit Scandinavia to find a sane society.
Merrill Lynch & Co., UBS AG and JPMorgan & Chase Co. are telling senior bankers in Asia to fly coach on short-haul flights and reduce non-essential travel as they step up cost cuts, officials at the firms said.
UBS advised bankers this month to travel economy class for flights of up to five hours, two officials at the biggest Swiss bank said, asking not to be identified because it's an internal policy. Merrill employees have been told to travel economy for flights of as much as three hours since mid-September, two executives at the firm said.
Global shipping is grinding to a halt because of the refusal of banks to issue letters of credit.
I was alerted to this by TJ Marta, RBC Capital Market's New York-based fixed income strategist on the weekend, during an interview for the ABC's Inside Business program.
In fact the Baltic Dry Index of bulk shipping rates has collapsed by 89 per cent – from 12,000 in May to 1355 last night. In October alone it has fallen 61 per cent. Rates for Capesize vessels used to ship grains, iron ore and coal have fallen 95 per cent.
In his column in the London Telegraph last night, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote that he believed shipping was now slowing as fast as it did in late 1931.
Khalid Hashim, managing director of Precious Shipping, Thailand's second-largest shipping company, was quoted in the Taiwan News yesterday as saying: "Letters of credit and the credit lines for trade currently are frozen. Nothing is moving because the trader doesn't want to take the risk of putting cargo on the boat and finding that nobody can pay."
Here is the deal in even simpler terms. In order to prevent the "Great Depression II", the Fed and the Treasury have embarked on a series of measures similar in nature to those that caused the great depression.
The root cause of the great depression was the unsound lending patterns leading up to it. Those same unsound lending practices, now carried to the very limits of legality via Bernanke's alphabet soup of facilities, cannot possibly be the cure.
In retrospect, the title of this post is inaccurate. It really should read Fed is Attempting to Cause "Great Depression II".
Here's a recent animation I've done. It's a test piece for a sequence in my film which tries to explain the futility of exponential growth on a finite planet:
I think I'll start front-loading the home page with funny stuff, and leave the doom for afterwards. Since I started posting scarier economic content - justifiably - the site's traffic has tapered off - as in, HALVED, over the last six months. Well, I tried to warn people - I was yelling about bank failures and a systemic crisis at least as far back in August - 2007.
You might get a kick out of reading those past posts here, and here, and here. I guess people don't want bad news. If I keep it up, I'll probably end up with seven or eight regular readers. Honestly, I'm stumped. No good deed goes unpunished, I suppose. Anyway, first the funnies:
Banks and dealers’ overall direct borrowings from the Fed averaged a record $437.53 billion per day in the week ended October 15, topping the previous week’s $420.16 billion per day.
forget the now-familiar tales of mortgages gone bad. The next horror for beaten-down financial firms is the $950 billion worth of outstanding credit-card debt—much of it toxic...
...The consumer debt bomb is already beginning to spray shrapnel throughout the financial markets, further weakening the U.S. economy. "The next meltdown will be in credit cards," says Gregory Larkin, senior analyst at research firm Innovest Strategic Value Advisors. Adds William Black, senior vice-president of Moody's Investors Service's structured finance team: "We still haven't hit the post-recessionary peaks [in credit-card losses], so things will get worse before they get better."
Current emergency meetings on banks and markets are still only in the stage where politicians and central bankers are bickering over how to create a few more hundred billions Euros and FRNs. But toxic MBS pale in comparison to the mushrooming growth of the derivatives market. According to figures released in the quarterly review of the BIS (pp A103) in September the total notional amount of outstanding derivatives in all categories rose 15% to a mindboggling $596 TRILLION as of December 2007.
Consumption of resources is rising rapidly, biodiversity is plummeting and just about every measure shows humans affecting Earth on a vast scale. Most of us accept the need for a more sustainable way to live, by reducing carbon emissions, developing renewable technology and increasing energy efficiency.
But are these efforts to save the planet doomed? A growing band of experts are looking at figures like these and arguing that personal carbon virtue and collective environmentalism are futile as long as our economic system is built on the assumption of growth. The science tells us that if we are serious about saving Earth, we must reshape our economy.
As we goggle at the fluttering financial figures, a different set of numbers passes us by. On Friday, Pavan Sukhdev, the Deutsche Bank economist leading a European study on ecosystems, reported that we are losing natural capital worth between $2 trillion and $5 trillion every year, as a result of deforestation alone(1). The losses incurred so far by the financial sector amount to between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion. Sukhdev arrived at his figure by estimating the value of the services - such as locking up carbon and providing freshwater - that forests perform, and calculating the cost of either replacing them or living without them. The credit crunch is petty when compared to the nature crunch.
Here's a piece of fluff I put together yesterday about the election - and the utter triviality of the "debates" - which have been aimed at people with the maturity and intelligence of ten year olds. (No offence to ten year olds). We've fallen a long way since Lincoln/Douglass:
Faced as we are by environmental collapse, financial collapse, and energy collapse, the best we get from these pandering clowns is "lipstick on a pig", winks, flagpins, meaningless slogans and flim flam. And don't get me started on the Republicans....
OK, your Republikkkan video of the day (there's a star of david on the effigy):
For 18 months now, code enforcement officials have been after Camargo to turn the bedroom back into a garage. Insisting that her home is her castle, she has ignored more than a dozen warnings. Her resistance crumbled last week when a local judge ordered her to comply or face possible jail time.
"It’s traumatic. It’s like tearing my house down," she said. "I bought this place 30 years ago, and it was always a bedroom. And now they are trying to shove this down my throat."
OMG. The Republicans were right all along. My contacts in the NSA just forwarded me this intercepted letter from Osama Bin Ladin to his second in command, Abdul Alhazred, about Barack HUSSEIN Obama. VOTE McCAIN or we all die!
...input costs to farmers are at an all-time high, despite the recent fall in oil and natural gas prices. Moreover, farmers need loans in the course of their normal operations, and loans are hard to get now. That means many farmers just won’t plant as much as they ordinarily would. Many will decide they just can’t afford their hobby any more and go looking for work that actually pays.
On top of this we have the trends that have already led to high food prices in recent months—biofuels mandates, weather impacts (and crop failures) due to climate change, and higher transport costs for farm inputs and outputs.
The 401K Scam. People are always fodder for the bait-and-switch.
The essential fallacy of the 401(k) has been exposed. It took a historic market collapse -- one that threatens to impoverish workers already in retirement and those who are nearing it. But then, crushing hardship is often what's required to usher out an era of ideological illogic and unconscionable greed.
The advent of the 401(k) in the late 1970s and early 1980s was a leading indicator of what became a political mania for shifting the risk and responsibility for life's big challenges -- health care, an adequate income in retirement -- from employers and other broad-shouldered institutions to the narrower, weaker backs of individuals themselves.
The government is also facing an accelerating economic crisis that includes food and energy shortages, escalating fuel costs, a sinking currency and a massive flight of foreign capital accelerated by the escalating insurgency, the NIE warns.
The Pakistani public is clamoring for relief as the crisis pushes millions more into poverty, giving insurgent groups more opportunities to recruit young Pakistanis.
My wife and I fell through many layers of poverty in a few months. First we revisited the genteel poverty known to grad students, the sort of poverty where you have scary dreams about the rent and eat a simple, wholesome diet towards the end of the month. But we fell right through that into the sort of Dickensian privation spoiled first-worlders like me never expected to experience. That’s the kind of poverty a lot of people are going to be experiencing soon—because I’m here to tell you, it can happen here and it can happen to you. And it’s remarkably unpleasant. You may be saying “Duh!” here but you’re probably not imagining the proper sort of unpleasantness. So I’ll try to lay out what to watch for, how to hunker down when it’s not just a matter of cutting back or selling your second car but having no car at all, having no money for heat or food.
Another Adobe triumph: security hole in the Flash Player. Go to that link, and follow the steps listed. If you don't, there's a chance that malware can take control over your PC's webcam or Mic - allowing some tool to watch your bedroom shenanigans.
I really, truly, despise Adobe, for more reasons than I can enumerate here. They have no business being in business, period.
Here's a must read (via latoc) about Indian call-centers working as debt collectors of Americans:
Few places in India absorb and imitate American culture as much as call centers, where ambitious young Indians with fake American accents and American noms de phone spend hours calling people in Indiana or Maine to help navigate software glitches, plan vacations or sell products. The subculture of call centers tends to foster a cult of America, an over-the-top fantasy where hopes and dreams are easily accomplished by people who live in a brand-name wonderland of high-paying jobs, big houses and luxury getaways.
But collection agents at this call center outside New Delhi are starting to see the flip side of that vision: a country hobbled by debt and filled with people scared of losing their jobs, their houses and their cars.
"Lately, 25-year-old Americans are telling me that they are declaring themselves bankrupt," said Chaturvedi, raising her eyebrows in shock. "These days the situation is so emotional, so fragile. We have to have so much empathy and patience."
"It's like people are totally drowning," said Omkar Gadgil, 24, who goes by the alias Richard Rudy and was a math major in college. He is brainy and considered the office expert on the intricacies of debt collection. "There has just been years of overspending and now: the crash."
In the past, debt-saddled customers were often annoyed by Chaturvedi's calls from the open-air office at Aegis BPO Services. But now they seem depressed, defeated. Even the men sob into the phone, several agents said.
Under the pseudonym Carol Miller, Chaturvedi's ability to deftly work around the standard line, "The check is in the mail," is now being challenged by clients throwing out new responses: "How do you expect me to pay? This is the worst crisis since the Great Depression."
Chaturvedi said she has never seen it so bad. Many of the young employees say they are flabbergasted at just how widespread the financial ruin appears to be.
When I was a kid, we did very little - less than most Americans, definitely. Poor, though not in poverty. I'm glad of that now; it grounded me. My mother drilled a simple rule into us: "Never get into debt". I've obeyed that rule. At one point around 2003/2004, I was down to $100 in my bank account, with a big rent/utilities bill on the way. At no point did it occur to me to pay for that on credit. What's the point? To pay 10 or 20% MORE a few months down the road? That's a tax on stupidity, nothing more. I feel sorry for these people, but honestly, what did they expect?
"My fellow Americans, the time for running aimlessly through streets while shrieking and waving our arms above our heads is now," Bush said. "I understand that many of you are worried about your economic future and our situation overseas, and you have every right to be. Yet there is only one thing we as a nation can do in times like these: give up all hope and devolve into a lawless, post-apocalyptic, every-man-for-himself society."
"For those of you who have remained resolute in your belief that things will turn around eventually, I urge you to close your eyes, take shallow rapid breaths, and begin freaking out immediately," Bush added. "At this point, anyone who isn't scared to death needs to wake the fuck up—because we're screwed here."
JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said he will set aside more money to cover loan losses as the biggest U.S. bank by market value braces for the economic slump to get ``a lot worse.''
JPMorgan, which reported an 84 percent drop in quarterly profit today, said it expects loan losses will continue to climb. The New York-based lender said net charge-offs in the retail bank climbed to 2.44 percent from 1.99 percent in the second quarter and 0.82 percent a year ago...
...Dimon said today JPMorgan is looking to be more prudent as it continues extending credit across all of its businesses.
"If you're not fearful, you're crazy," he said.
Pacific Basin Shipping Ltd., Hong Kong's biggest dry-bulk carrier, and Precious Shipping Pcl. said demand for moving coal, iron ore and other commodities will fall because banks are guaranteeing fewer loads.
"Letters of credit and the credit lines for trade currently are frozen," Khalid Hashim, managing director of Precious Shipping, Thailand's second-largest shipping company, said in Singapore yesterday. "Nothing is moving because the trader doesn't want to take the risk of putting cargo on the boat and finding that nobody can pay."
Demand for oil is falling as world economic activity sputters. Many analysts are now forecasting that the barrel price could go as low as $50 to $60 in the next few weeks.
Meanwhile, however, the marginal cost of bringing a new barrel of oil into production has been rising in recent years, and now stands in the range of $80 to $100. Therefore, as the spot price and futures prices weaken, efforts to develop new oil sources will be mothballed.
At the same time, some recent adaptive efforts to develop renewable energy and energy efficiency, spurred by $150 oil, are getting slammed by lower oil prices and the drying up of investment capital.
On the 10th October, I wrote:
It was very nice of the Russians to send Iceland $4.5 billion to help them out. Surely they should show some gratitude, and allow Russia to have a shiny new naval base at Reykjavik?
More likely, this act of benevolence is being viewed as a way for Russia to help secure a bridgehead for an advance into the Arctic regions to claim the vast hydrocarbon and other mineral deposits there. Iceland also happens to possess a once vital NATO base, which has been in mothballs since 2006, and the Russians may be eyeing that as well.
Suspicious minds think alike - though it was an obvious ploy. I had no idea that there was a ready-made NATO base, ready for their use. That's nice.
Yes, it is still crazy after all these eight years to hear W. say that he will turn the US into communist Bulgaria, by buying up and buying out the part of the banking system that put him where he is, in order to "preserve the free market". I’m going to have to kill you to keep you alive. It’s one or the other, one would think.
In perverse absurdity, though, Hank Paulson does him one better. I saw this quote this morning, where he talked about the nine banks the US bought into, and then I had to look again. And again:
"These are healthy institutions, and they have taken this step for the good of the U.S. economy..."
I must admit, I still don’t think I get it. They are not healthy, they have supposedly not taken "this step" (the Fed and Treasury have), and they neither care for the good of the US economy nor do any good for it. Maybe what I get least of all is that they have the gall to say these things, and nobody reacts.
To see why all these plans, we’re closing in on $4 trillion globally now, won’t work, look no further than Fitch’s downgrade of Morgan Stanley yesterday. MS stock went up over 80% after a $9 billion cash injection (another Treasury guarantee), but Fitch realizes that it’s still a sick company. Because of the downgrade, MS will have to seek more capital. Rinse, lather, repeat.
The Federal Accountancy Standards Board seems unwilling to withdraw its new rules related to mark-to-market, fair-value, accounting, so now the American Bankers Association demands the Securities and Exchange Commission overrule them. I’ll bet if even that doesn’t work, they’ll go straight to Paulson and Bush, and they'll get what they want.
Which is very bad for the US economy, but gives the banks a little more time to squeeze more of your money out of the system. You may feel poor, but there’s still pension and 401k plans that can be milked. And did you catch that the FDIC will now back all new bank debt?
Iceland stocks were down 76% this morning, and its stores face empty shelves. The goverment response: it raises income taxes. Iceland may come back threw a buy out, since it only has 300.000 people, but it’ll have to live on borrowed money. Debt slaves. Take a good look, that'll be you.
The whole world guarantees everything now, Japan and Hong Kong, among others, chimed in with unlimited plans. I was surprised to see that Holland, with 16 million inhabitants, provides $300 billion to their banks. In US terms, that would be almost $6 trillion. What is that, despair?
The next step is easy to predict: the weaker ones will be picked off by big investors and hedge funds. First those who dare not guarantee, then the ones who do but can’t afford it. It’s pure global economic warfare.
I’ll leave you with a light note:
"It's worse than a divorce. I've lost half my net worth and I still have a wife."
After a four-year spending spree, Icelanders are flooding the supermarkets one last time, stocking up on food as the collapse of the banking system threatens to cut the island off from imports.
``We have had crazy days for a week now,'' said Johannes Smari Oluffsson, manager of the Bonus discount grocery store in Reykjavik's main shopping center. ``Sales have doubled.''
Bonus, a nationwide chain, has stock at its warehouse for about two weeks. After that, the shelves will start emptying unless it can get access to foreign currency, the 22-year-old manager said, standing in a walk-in fridge filled with meat products, among the few goods on sale produced locally.
"I have no other option," said Todd Baker, 34, who lost his factory job in July just before his wife gave birth to their third child. Friday was his last permissible day to sell old children's clothing, muffin tins, a fake white Christmas tree, stereo speakers and dozens of household items out of his garage.
"I've never missed a day of work in my life," Baker said. "Man, I'm shocked that I have to shut this down. My neighbors are usually out here, too. We've got regulars who are in the same situation, or lost their house, and when the bank took it, they took everything that was in it. I'm just trying to do as much as I can because the heat bills are going to go up 25 percent this winter, too."
Elkhart, near the Michigan border in an area known as Michiana, is the white-hot center of the meltdown of the American economy. Its main industries, the manufacturing of recreational vehicles and motor homes, have fallen apart over the last year because of high gasoline prices. That has taken down ancillary businesses like RV parts suppliers and storage warehouses.
More than a million Britons will be out of work and on the dole by next month as the toxic fallout from Black October filters down to ordinary families, economists are warning...
Official unemployment figures for September, due on Wednesday, are expected to show another increase in job losses - although this will not yet be the sharp upward spike which is expected as the full consequences of last week's stock-market crash filter through. Some forecasts suggest that unemployment will hit two million by Christmas...
Alan Clarke, economist from the bank BNP Paribas, said the number of those claiming unemployment benefit was due to break the one million mark by the end of next month at the latest, with up to two million looking for work by December: he is forecasting unemployment to hit 7 per cent by the middle of next year and carry on rising until 2010...
At the height of the 1980s recession, three million were unemployed. The question now is how far the pain will spread. As one boss told a senior CBI official: 'We know there is a tsunami coming, but we do not know if it's going to knock us over or just wet our feet.'
The speed with which the bubble burst is one of the most striking factors of this crisis, and could help determine what happens next. Consumer confidence is now lower on some indices than in the 1980s slump or even the mid-1970s, according to the pollster Peter Kellner, suggesting that Britons unused to tough times are quicker to panic than in previous slumps - leading to a more sudden fall in sales, and consequently a more severe immediate threat to jobs.
"A lot of what happened last week was the settlement of the Lehman credit default swaps. I mean that was $400 billion of cash that sellers had to come up with to pay claims, basically insurance claims. Now by my count there are six more of those trigger events out there. So the next one would be the Washington Mutual settlement in about two weeks. ... Please get these swaps onto an exchange because this is a big risk to the marketplace."
Multi-millionaire investor Julian Robertson told CNBC that the United States is "just getting into the recession," and that the poor economy will last as long as 10 to 15 years.
Last year, Robertson had said that the U.S. economy was in for "a doozy of a recession." He said the reason was the credit situation was worse than anyone had thought.
Default risk on Kazakhstan's top banks has risen to 70pc as property bubble bursts in the former Soviet republic and reliance in foreign credit comes back to haunt.
The country has mortgaged its future to oil prices, which crashed below $80 a barrel yesterday as the whole nexus of commodities (except gold) buckled in a wave of forced selling.
Analysts warn that it is leading indicator for what could happen if Russia if crude falls much further.
If so, there will be an ocean of consequences. For those in the tiny universe of environmental NGOs, one of the consequences is this: The time for arguing against economic growth may be over. Yes, everyone who understands our human impact on the environment, and the disastrous implications of our economic growth imperative, knows that it is absolutely essential that the world find an alternative to growth; that instead, the human economy must contract to a point that it no longer threatens the viability of ecosystems. This is the essence of sustainability.
But imagine yourself talking to someone who has just lost her job. You tell this person, “You need to voluntarily further reduce your income and standard of living.” How’s that likely to go over?
I've updated an old flash game that I created in 2000. Now, you have the chance to beat the bejesus out of CNBC's most revolting Financial Expert - none other than Jim Cramer...the most annoying man on Earth. Click on "Start" to play!
"It's a great big shit sandwich, and we all gotta take a bite."
Audio: Chris Martenson on the Crisis. He expects the banks to be shut down for a period of time if things get much worse. It happened in the 30s...and could well happen again. Could be days, could be weeks. You'd better have enough paper cash on hand to last a while, in any event. Do I have to tell you to buy more food again? GO ON...DO IT!!!
With the current economic crisis which seems to be spreading across the world we are dealing with far more than a “subprime” crisis, or an attempt to “quarantine “toxic debt.” There is a much bigger avalanche waiting to come tumbling down. Namely the derivatives market now estimated to be over $1 quadrillion (that is 1,000 trillion) in global derivatives holdings. That makes the current $700 billion bailout look like less than a drop in a very large bucket.
An outraged sheriff in Illinois who refuses to evict "innocent" renters from foreclosed homes criticized mortgage companies Thursday and said the law should protect victims of the mortgage meltdown.
Sheriff Thomas J. Dart said earlier he is suspending foreclosure evictions in Cook County, which includes the city of Chicago.
If you had purchased $1000 of Delta Airlines stock one year ago, you would have $49 today. If you had purchased $1000 of AIG stock one year ago, you would have $33 today. If you had purchased $1000 of Lehman Brothers stock one year ago, you will have $0 today. However, if you had purchased $1000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the aluminum cans for recycling, you would have received $214 today at redemptions. Based on the above, the best current investment plan is to drink heavily & recycle. It is called the 401-KEG Plan.
The US and advanced economies’ financial system is now headed towards a near-term systemic financial meltdown as day after day stock markets are in free fall, money markets have shut down while their spreads are skyrocketing, and credit spreads are surging through the roof. There is now the beginning of a generalized run on the banking system of these economies; a collapse of the shadow banking system, i.e. those non-banks (broker dealers, non-bank mortgage lenders, SIV and conduits, hedge funds, money market funds, private equity firms) that, like banks, borrow short and liquid, are highly leveraged and lend and invest long and illiquid and are thus at risk of a run on their short-term liabilities; and now a roll-off of the short term liabilities of the corporate sectors that may lead to widespread bankruptcies of solvent but illiquid financial and non-financial firms.
It took the European Union almost three decades to agree on what could legitimately be called chocolate. That doesn't bode well for its handling of the worst financial crisis in its history.
The club of 27 governments has been relegated to bit-player status in the drama as global central banks coordinate rate cuts and individual European nations move unilaterally to fortify their own banking systems.
EU finance ministers this week rejected the idea of a region-wide bailout fund. Beyond impromptu joint efforts to aid Fortis, Dexia SA and other cross-border European banks, the EU is essentially stymied by its requirement that major decisions be unanimous and by its lack of a central financial regulator.
As banks' need for capital increases and individual country finances become stretched, Europe's piecemeal approach may prove inadequate.
Iceland is bankrupt, and in deep doo-doo. They now find themselves unable to buy food, as their currency is worthless. I hope they like fish...and seaweed. A lot.
Walking in downtown Reykjavik does not give you any clue about how people are feeling. But you notice that the only ones who seem to crack a smile now and then are the tourists. Standing by my side at the supermarket was a man in a what you could call a business suit. There was nervousness in his eyes. I bought a sandwich and went out into the cold again.
Two days ago there was talk that food store owners have plenty of the Icelandic krona but no foreign currency to pay for imports. That means food shortage. One day ago the morning news was that the Russians where going to save us with a big loan. Vladimir Putin has now got a fan site on facebook where he even talks Icelandic. I am not a fan. Still the shareholders of Icelandic companies see their moneyevaporate. The independent news media and television will be gone from the face of the earth next week. People can’t pay loans of their homes and cars...
The PM of Iceland, in a statement, tells his people "we're screwed". There's an excellent deconstruction of the speech here. I wouldn't be in Iceland now for all the Derivatives on Wall Street.
It was very nice of the Russians to send Iceland $4.5 billion to help them out. Surely they should show some gratitude, and allow Russia to have a shiny new naval base at Reykjavik?
At rallies this week in Florida, crowds jeered and taunted members of the news media. One man hurled a racial epithet at a black television crewman, telling him, "Sit down, boy".
Yesterday, for the second time in three days, a speaker at a McCain rally in Pennsylvania referred to Obama's middle name, Hussein, in an effort to cast doubt in his religion and background. Obama is a Christian.
At the same rally, shouts of "terrorist" and "liar" could be heard following references to the Democratic candidate. On Saturday, McCain running mate Sarah Palin sought to link Obama to Ayers. "Kill him!" one man in the crowd shouted, not specifying who.
Register: US teen cuffed for sending nude phone pics. In our pedo-phobic age, she will now be branded a "child pornographer" for taking nude photos of herself. Another life ruined by the Nanny/Orwellian State.
Thursday is D-Day. "D" is for Derivatives. Toss a coin.
If there are a lot of Lehman CDS out there, and if the auction price comes in high, it could greatly exacerbate the global economic crisis no matter what Bernanke and Paulson do. On the other hand, if there aren't that many CDS out there, or if the price comes in lower than people expect, it would be a huge sign of stability in the CDS market that could reassure financial institutions and investors worldwide, which could "free up liquidity" and help avert a depression (no matter what Bernanke and Paulson do).
Washington Mutual's CDS auction is October 23rd, and we might not have a final answer on how big the CDS crisis is until then.
Fact one—there are several dozen trillion dollars of these things out there—an amount that makes Paulson’s $700 billion look like a rounding error.
Fact two—they are basically insurance policies on bond defaults that are written without regulation, so the usual insurance-industry practice of setting aside reserves does not apply. Oh, and while the premia enter as bank income the pay-out obligations are not on their balance sheets.
Fact three—the large banks think they are hedged since they have "insurance policies" on both sides of the default events. Hedged? In normal times, perhaps. But imagine if one big issuer of these insurance policies went broke at roughly the same time that one of the insured bonds went bad—say, for instance, Ford bonds and a major Wall Street bank headquartered in Europe.
The Ford bond default would trigger a call for a huge payout by many banks, but the disappearance of one of the major issuers would wipe out the hedge that many other banks thought they had. This would leave banks liable for a huge payout for which they would have no reserves. This could trigger a wave of failures that would be very hard to stop given the size of the market.
I never cease to be amazed by the Median IQ of youtube comments. There is a huge percentage of people out there in the wild who are, to put it bluntly, functionally retarded. Yet, they appear to have jobs (for now), and to be at least partly functional. Now, youtube offers them the chance to realise just how dumb they really are: YouTube Commenters Hear Their Own Gibberish
I've saved the global financial system! I'm launching my own currency, to replace the Dollar, Euro and assorted trash. Here's the first note, hot off the presses:
John McCain better have the voting machines fixed, or he's toast.
Kari Durell, a 38-year-old waitress, had her doubts about Barack Obama after reading wild Internet rumors that he trained with al-Qaeda terrorists as a child. She's voting for him anyway.
``My main issue is health care, and I think a Democrat would do more,'' said Durell, who works at a riverside bar near a Ford Motor Co.-managed stamping plant in southeast Michigan that's about to close.
Not that it makes any substantive difference who wins ... but that's pretty damned funny. This woman is prepared to vote for a man who she believes may have trained with Al Qaeda...purely for selfish reason. I doubt she's the only one.
My new PC's HD dropped dead on Saturday. I'm using my old laptop for now. Ironically, I'd bought the new one as a backup for the old one, and now I'm using the old one as a backup for the new one.
The lesson dear reader: not just to be prepared, but to have redundant systems.
So, bear with. Fortunately, I'd backed up all my files two weeks ago, and the machine has two HD's. The rest of my files are safe. Damned annoying though; a full day to reinstall all my software and such.
Anyway, having to live by the flickering light of a solitary candle, I gazed into the tea-leaves in my cup, and saw this year's holiday season. I present you with:
THE FIRST PROPHECY OF NOSTRADERMOT!
In the troubled year 2008,
Paper will fall from the skies.
The cries of Usurers shall be great,
And the people fooled with lies.
In the Halls of Merchants,
The December hordes descend.
They shall produce cards,
And therein with credit spend...
...gorged with pumpkin and turkey leg,
unaware of gathering gloom.
The repo men descend;
Too late, the Sheep see their Doom.
Knights in black corral the weeping,
Faces stretched in pain,
The Lords shall oversee their keeping,
No more for them Cockaigne.
I have a funny feeling that, (assuming the show can be kept on the road until December), this IS GOING TO BE THE BEST XMAS EVER! Why not? People will be so worn down, they'll max out their last credit cards, beg, borrow or steal, to get one final shot at The Dream. The Big Happy. Heads in Sand right until the last minute, just as the winds from the North Pole start to tickle their nethers.
Huddled by the fire like our ancestors every solstice; eating the last of the slaughtered animals, hoping that the Sun, once again, will return for another Summer.
BUY that WII! BUY that DVD box set! BUY that plastic doo-dad! SHOVE the food down your gaping maw like a medieval peasant!
Just like a viagra-engorged John McCain throwing one last clumsy hump into Cindy, before collapsing into a cardiac arrest...chewing the carpet in a hideous spasm of post-coital agony, his ghastly white flesh quivering as his meal ticket ponders whether or not to dial 911...
Yup. It's gonna be a WHITE XMAS!
More financial stressors lie ahead. There's going to be some hot and sweaty derivatives action. She cannae take much moor, captin. She's breakin' up!
The $54,000bn credit derivatives market faces its biggest test this month as billions of dollars worth of contracts on now-defaulted derivatives on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual are settled.
Because of the opacity of this market, it is still not clear how many contracts have to be settled and whether payouts on the defaulted contracts, which could reach billions of dollars, are concentrated with any particular institutions.
According to dealers, insurance companies and investors such as sovereign wealth funds, which are widely believed to have written large amounts of credit protection through credit default swaps on financial institutions, could have to pay out huge amounts.
"There is a lot at stake," said an executive at one big dealer. "This is a crisis time, and if these auctions do not go well, or if the amounts investors and dealers have to pay is seen as not being fair, it could have further negative repercussions on the CDS market."
Europe may fall apart. You may have heard about the reckless plan by the Irish Government to guarantee the Irish banking system to the tune of $700 BILLION. That's right - my motherland, a country with 4 million people, may have to pony up as much cash as the entire US bailout. If the banks fail and that money is needed, then every man, woman and child in Ireland will "owe" about $175,000.
Get out on the street and shake that money-maker, Shamus!
I've been listening to Irish radio a lot recently, to listen to the "national debate". Clueless. They're crowing about it as if the Minister for Finance was an economic genius. This, from a nation even more delusional than America. God help them.
While American home prices rose 100% in the past decade, British real estate "value" went up 400%, and in Ireland it was more like 800%. Spain built more houses in 2005-2006 than Britain, France and Germany combined. And believe me, I could go on like that for a while; I have warned about the risks to Europe for a very long time.
Yes, Germany has a lot going for it: no housing bubble, for one. But that is still not enough, even if the country’s citizens will fare much better than most because of it. The way overinflated credit casino has been a global game, and the Germans and the Dutch have been sitting at the same crap table as the rest of them.
I see for instance the Dutch starting to get worried about the value of their overpriced real estate, demanding that the government guarantee that "value". Guys, you have no idea what’s going to happen, and your politicians ain’t telling. But wait till the next bank needs a bail-out. that’s when the message will start to change.
The European Union, at least in its present shape, will fall apart, country by country. They forgot to write the treaties that could have prevented that. And now individual panicked governments, like the Irish, do crazy things, like guaranteeing all bank deposits, even though they could never pay.
“Ireland’s action last week to guarantee all deposits made a common European approach to deposit guarantees necessary. Germany’s decision today makes it unavoidable,” he said.
That's dandy. If this doesn't work, the Irish will be personae non grata for decades.
When investors don't trust even venerable institutions like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, you know that the financial crisis is as severe as ever. When a nuclear option of a monster $700 billion rescue plan is not even able to rally stock markets, you know this is a global crisis of confidence in the financial system.
The next step of this panic could be the mother of all bank runs, i.e. a run on the trillion dollar-plus of the cross-border short-term interbank liabilities of the U.S. banking and financial system, as foreign banks start to worry about the safety of their liquid exposures to U.S. financial institutions. A silent cross-border bank run has already started, as foreign banks are worried about the solvency of U.S. banks and are starting to reduce their exposure. And if this run accelerates--as it may now--a total meltdown of the U.S. financial system could occur.
Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's largest computer-maker, fired a massive warning shot announcing it would eliminate 24,600 jobs, signaling it will not be just financial activities that are affected.
This holiday season is going to be a dismal one. Expect to see reduced profit margins and cutbacks in hours worked between now and Christmas. Those who supplemented income by working two jobs or by working overtime during the holiday season will find reduced opportunities this year. Expect to see more store closings in January as the shopping center economic model continues its slow death.
Commercial real estate, the last main bastion of job creation, is now crashing. There is no other source of jobs other than health care, and health care alone cannot fuel this economy.
Brace for massive layoffs as they are coming.
I have to say that I disagree with the "dismal xmas" scenario. I think Mish is giving the consumer way too much credit. I think this is going to be the BEST XMAS EVER! (See my prophecy, above).
Keene Valley resident Jerilea Zempel was detained at the U.S. border this summer because she had a drawing of a sport-utility vehicle in her sketchbook.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers told Zempel they suspected her of copyright infringement.
She was released after more than an hour in custody at the Houlton, Maine, port of entry from New Brunswick, Canada.
Her release came only after she persuaded border guards she was an artist doing a project that involved a crocheted SUV as a statement against America's dependence on oil and love for big vehicles.
Maybe some of the massive lay-offs in our near future could be in the Department of Homereich "Security"? Just a modest proposal.
“Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin quoted an unidentified “writer” who extolled the virtues of small-town America: “We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty and sincerity and dignity.” (9/3/08) The unidentified writer was Westbrook Pegler (1894-1969), the ultraconservative newspaper columnist whose widely syndicated columns (at its peak, 200 newspapers and 12 million readers) targeted the New Deal establishment, labor leaders, intellectuals, homosexuals, Jews, and poets.”
Jews, he said, could not be the victims of persecution because persecution “connotes injustice…They are, instead, enduring retaliation, or punishment.” (D. Levitas, The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right, Macmillan, 2002, p. 71.)
He advanced the theory that American Jews of Eastern European descent were “instinctively sympathetic to Communism, however outwardly respectable they appeared.” (The New York Times, Obituary: “Free-Swinging Critic,” June 25, 1969, p. 43).
He had a habit of calling Jews “geese” because they, in his words, hiss when they talk, gulp down everything before them, and foul everything in their wake. (Diane McWhorter, “Revisiting the controversial career of Westbrook Pegler,” Slate, March 4 2004).
(...)In 1963, less than 3 months after Martin Luther King Jr., delivered his famous “I Have a Dream Speech,” he wrote in a column, “[It is] clearly the bounden duty of all intelligent Americans to proclaim and practice bigotry.” (D. Levitas, The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right, Macmillan, 2002, p. 71)
Americans & Green-carders beware: the US has implemented an EXIT TAX.
The exit tax includes a capital gains tax on the unrealised gain in an expatriate’s worldwide assets, and a transfer tax on all gifts and bequests from an expatriate to any US person during the life or upon the expatriate’s death if the expatriate: n has an average annual net income tax liability that exceeds $ 139,000, over the past five years subject to some adjustments; or n has a net worth of more than $2 million on the applicable date; and/or n fails to certify under penalty of perjury that he has complied with all federal tax obligations for the past five years.
It's important to fleece people leaving the country. Someone has to pay for Lehmans assholes to drink $700 bottles of wine out of paper cups. Here, let me pony up a check to cover that, you scumbag Harvard c***suckers.
For many years, now, the nation of Belize on the Caribbean Coast of Central America has offered what's known as an economic citizenship and a second passport. For many, it's meant a more comfortable lifestyle at a much more reasonable cost. For others, it's also meant opportunities for business and investment.
Gilberto "Jay" Picon (aka Joseph Ross) resides in Belize among hundreds of other expats who have settled there over the years. But Ross is unique. In 1986, he was served a U.S. indictment on tax evasion charges alleging he failed to disclose and pay taxes on $500,000 held in a Mexican bank account. He faces up to 20 years in prison and $2 million in fines. Gazing across the slow-moving water of the Mopan River toward his Mopan Resort -- a 10 acre, $1.4 million luxury getaway -- he'll tell you the last sixteen years have been the happiest of his life.
It may surprise you to learn that the early drafts were written by environmentalists. In this version, the rebels do not of course blow up the Death Star, but instead prefer to use other tactics to slow the intergalactic march of Empire.
For example, they set up programs for people on planets about to be destroyed to produce luxury items like hemp hacky sacks and gourmet coffee for sale to inhabitants of the Death Star. Audience members will also discover that there are plans afoot to encourage loads of troopers and other citizens of the Empire to take ecotours of doomed planets. The purpose will be to show to one and all that these planets are economically important to the Empire and so should not be destroyed.
In a surprise move that will rivet viewers to the edges of their seats, other groups of rebels file lawsuits against the Empire, attempting to show that the Environmental Impact Statement Darth Vader was required to file failed to adequately support its decision that blowing up this planet would cause “no significant impact.”
Viewers will thrill to learn of plans to boycott items produced by corporations that have Darth Vader on the board of directors, and will leap to their feet in theaters worldwide when they see bags full of letters written directly to Mr. Vader himself asking that he please not blow up anymore planets. (Scribbled in the margin is a note from one of the screenwriters: “For accuracy’s sake, when we show examples of these letters, it is imperative that all letters to Mr. Vader be respectful and courteous, and that they stress the need to find cooperative solutions to the differences between the rebels and the Empire. Under no circumstances should the letters be such that they would alienate or anger Mr. Vader. If the letters upset Mr. Vader, the rebels’ letter campaign to the Grand Moff Tarkin would certainly fail as well.”) Other plans include sending petitions and filing lawsuits.
Why you should buy some physical gold. It's freaky; there are shortages of gold everywhere now, yet the price is falling. As low as $830 today at one point. So in spite of surging demand, at least for coins, we have falling prices. Deflation? Manipulation? Both?
I may have to take a holiday from doom for a while. It's been getting a bit much lately. You guys know it's all fucked anyway, so it's not like I'm telling you anything you don't know. Maybe I'll do more cartoons or something. We'll see. I've got to take a break from the booze too. 10 hours a day of doom, followed by a bottle of wine, 7 days a week...three freelance jobs bouncing off my head - it all gets a bit wearying after a while.
The Real Markets have marked the "troubled assets" down to zero. They're just waiting for the assets to come out of their hiding places. And what we see happening now, is that the real markets are losing patience. They will increasingly start forcing the troubled assets out of their dark holes. And while I am not the only voice talking about this, I think it's still poorly understood: this poses a very serious concern that the economic system, as it exists today, will collapse in its entirety. $700 billion is just one tenth of one percent of the estimated $700 trillion in outstanding derivatives. It's like owing $100, and offering a dime as full and final payment.
Any subsidies eventually given to the monster banks of Wall Street will be as American as apple pie and obesity. The sums demanded may be unprecedented, but there is nothing new about the principle: corporate welfare is a consistent feature of advanced capitalism. Only one thing has changed: Congress has been forced to confront its contradictions.
One of the best studies of corporate welfare in the US is published by my old enemies at the Cato Institute. Its report, by Stephen Slivinski, estimates that in 2006 the federal government spent $92bn subsidising business. Much of it went to major corporations such as Boeing, IBM and General Electric.
This is funny and infuriating. A 2006 tv debate in which Peter Schiff gives a clinical and precise prediction of the next two years, and is laughed off the screen by a bobblehead and a Reaganite moron:
Here's an idea: someone should re-broadcast all the financial and news shows, WITH A TWO OR THREE YEAR LAG. That way, we'll get to see the full extent of their lying bullshit, and have a laugh. At this point, a one month lag would be sufficient.
Add Malta to my enemies list. I don't think there are any Maltese goods to boycott, but I'll keep an eye out. Shooting endangered species is a Maltese "ancestral tradition". Little wonder that the island is a barren moonscape.
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