"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:
Don't go spending them all at once!
Platinum is approaching parity with gold. Watch carefully. If, by some miracle, the current crisis is averted, platinum could be a steal. A few months ago it was $2,000 an ounce - and is now hovering just over $1000. Gold is just over $900. Platinum is an industrial metal - primary use is in cars. Dangerous game, but there you have it.
Both candidates proved to be complete disasters in more ways than I can mention, and with no clue of economics. I know you can’t be elected with bad news, but that doesn’t make me a fan of crooks and liars.
Which brings me to the IMF, and its warnings of a global recession this morning. Where the fcuk were you 6 months or even 2 years ago, when an entire chorus of people on the web, from Panzner to Schiff to Supkis to Shedlock, Noland to Bonner to Denninger to Stoneleigh, to, yes, me, were warning, each in our own style and fashion, about what we see before our eyes today? Dr. Doom, me? I don’t think so.
US retirement plans lost $2 trillion, or 20% of their value, in the past year. Coincidentally, that’s about the rate that home prices went down. I have said it so many times: nobody born after 1950 can rely on their pension, retirement, 401k, or whatever it’s called where you happen to live. Please don’t. Please.
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.
Text of President Bush's address to the Nation, Tuesday, 30th September, 2008:
Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.
Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.
Oh - I made a mistake. That was F. D. Roosevelt's inaugural address in 1933.
Well, you shouldn't need me to tell you how bad things are...except that they're a lot worse than the media outlets are saying. Their job isn't to report the news - it's to prevent mass panic. And they're doing a capital job! Keep up the good work lads; I still need to buy some supplies. Item #1: a handgun.
Muslim children are gassed in a Mosque by right wing Americans - riled up by a Republican anti-Muslim DVD.
On Friday, September 26, the end of a week in which thousands of copies of Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West -- the fear-mongering, anti-Muslim documentary being distributed by the millions in swing states via DVDs inserted in major newspapers and through the U.S. mail -- were distributed by mail in Ohio, a "chemical irritant" was sprayed through a window of the Islamic Society of Greater Dayton, where 300 people were gathered for a Ramadan prayer service. The room that the chemical was sprayed into was the room where babies and children were being kept while their mothers were engaged in prayers. This, apparently, is what the scare tactic political campaigning of John McCain's supporters has led to -- Americans perpetrating a terrorist attack against innocent children on American soil.
The most disturbing aspect of this?
The presidential campaign edition of the Obsession DVD, currently being distributed by the Clarion Fund, carries the endorsement of the chair of the counter-terrorism department of the U.S. Naval War College, using the name and authority of an official U.S. military institution not only to validate an attack the religion of Islam, but to influence a political campaign. For these reasons, this endorsement has been included in MRFF's second lawsuit against the Department of Defense, which was filed on September 25 in the Federal District Court in Kansas.
For years I've been calling these assholes "fascists" and "brownshirts". It was not, and is not hyperbole. What we have is a thinly veiled white supremacist christofascist 'subculture' dominated by the lowest form of dimwits. These disgusting reptiles exist in vast numbers - NOT a majority, but a substantial minority. About 1/3 of the population would have no problem becoming "Hitler's Willing Executioners".
They are immune to reason. Sufferers of the "Authoritarian Personality" syndrome, they want to be lead. They do not like to think. They want to be ordered. These are the ones who still, in spite of all empirical evidence, approve of George W. Bush.
We have a long way to go before we hit bottom. If this is the kind of thing that happens when times are relatively good, I shudder to imagine events in the near future, when oil and food is not just expensive, but scarce.
Check out this disturbing music video found by survivalacres - a "Der Sturmer"ish attempt to recruit rubes into the National Guard. QED.
Kudos to SpaceX, the first private company to send a spacecraft into orbit. (Burt Rutan's SpaceshipOne was a sub-orbital art-piece). SpaceX is also working on a larger version of their rocket, to be launched next year. They're even developing a manned capsule.
SpaceX was founded by Elon Musk, the creator of PayPal. His ambition is to transform humanity "into a space-faring civilisation". I won't be able to afford a ticket to Mars; hopefully he'll raffle some off.
McCain's midsummer move to begin campaigning on a platform of more offshore drilling has only hardened Simmons's position. "What a hypocrite," says Simmons..."Here's a man who for at least the past 15 years has strenuously, I mean strenuously, opposed offshore drilling. And now it's 'drill, drill, drill.' And he doesn't have any idea that we don't have any drilling rigs. Or that we don't have any idea of exactly where to drill." (As for McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, Simmons says: "She's a very colorful person, but I don't think there's a scrap of evidence that she knows anything about energy.")
For the record, Simmons has been advocating more drilling off the coast of the United States since the early 1990s, but now he says that treating it as our salvation is misguided. "I'm not saying we shouldn't do it," says Simmons. "We should, and the sooner the better. But we shouldn't think that it'll have any impact for a decade or two." The exception, he says, is the reservoir in the hotly debated Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. "ANWR," he says, "is the only place that we could drill right now and it might actually make a difference in a year or two."
As for some other currently voguish sources of fuel coming to the rescue, he's dismissive. Oil shale? "Buck Rogers stuff. It just can't work." Ethanol? "It's a joke. The numbers just don't add up."
Simmons believes that a radical change in the way we live is inevitable. "We should basically be going back to creating a village economy, so that we really reduce the energy intensity of how we live," he says. "We need bigtime conservation, not feel-good conservation. Make things where they're used. You'll end long-distance commuting, and we have the tools to do that now with webcams. Grow food locally. Grow food in your backyard. If they're not commuting, people will have time to do that."
The Energy Department's Sept. 24 inventory report may show that U.S. gasoline supplies fell 8.5 million barrels from a four-decade low as Texas refineries assess damage from Hurricane Ike, a department official said.
``Probably the max is an 8.5 million draw in gasoline because demand is down, and it could be as low as 6.5 million'' barrels, John Duff, survey manager for the Energy Department's weekly petroleum status report, said in an interview. The report will show ``the real impact of the hurricane on the refining sector,'' he said. Supplies will fall ``substantially.''
In American and Britain, and to a lesser extent other Western countries, a type of market fundamentalism became the guiding philosophy. The collapse of American power that is underway is the predictable upshot. Like the Soviet collapse, it will have large geopolitical repercussions. An enfeebled economy cannot support America's over-extended military commitments for much longer. Retrenchment is inevitable and it is unlikely to be gradual or well planned...
...Having created the conditions that produced history's biggest bubble, America's political leaders appear unable to grasp the magnitude of the dangers the country now faces. Mired in their rancorous culture wars and squabbling among themselves, they seem oblivious to the fact that American global leadership is fast ebbing away. A new world is coming into being almost unnoticed, where America is only one of several great powers, facing an uncertain future it can no longer shape.
Preliminary tests have found the chemical melamine in Cadbury's Chinese-made chocolates, the company says.
At least 50,000 Chinese babies have been sickened and four killed by milk tainted with the industrial chemical.
Cadbury had earlier recalled 11 chocolate types from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia because of fears of contamination.
It remains unclear how much melamine was in the recalled products, a Cadbury spokesman told the BBC.
"It's early days, as these are preliminary findings from the tests," the spokesman said.
Click here to see a map of countries affected
He emphasised that the only goods affected were those made in the company's Beijing factory, and not those produced in the UK or elsewhere.
Palin told him that "dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time," Munger said. When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said "she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks," recalled Munger, who teaches music at the University of Alaska in Anchorage and has regularly criticized Palin in recent years on his liberal political blog, called Progressive Alaska.
The EU threatens Russia? Insanity rules not just in DC, I see. Oops.
Fears are mounting that Russia may restrict oil deliveries to Western Europe over coming days, in response to the threat of EU sanctions and Nato naval actions in the Black Sea.
Any such move would be a dramatic escalation of the Georgia crisis and play havoc with the oil markets.
Reports have begun to circulate in Moscow that Russian oil companies are under orders from the Kremlin to prepare for a supply cut to Germany and Poland through the Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline. It is believed that executives from lead-producer LUKoil have been put on weekend alert.
"They have been told to be ready to cut off supplies as soon as Monday," claimed a high-level business source, speaking to The Daily Telegraph. Any move would be timed to coincide with an emergency EU summit in Brussels, where possible sanctions against Russia are on the agenda.
I hope you've got enough food to last a few weeks.
Matt Simmons scares the bejesus out of Peak Oil delegates (not an easy thing to do):
The next speaker was Matt Simmons whom I have heard on numerous occasions, but who this time talked into a silence as intense as any I have heard. He scared the audience in a way I have not seen before, perhaps because we were all much more willing to believe this time, given his record from the past.
He noted at the beginning of his talk that there are 150 miles of unit trains leave Wyoming every day. (Ed note – a 1-mile unit train contains 110 rail cars of 100 tons of coal each.) He talked about the elements of risk that we have now forgotten how to apply. He noted that we have forgotten how savage a collapse can be, or how fast it can occur. (Enron unfolded in 7 days. The events of the last week showed how even faster collapse can come now). The delays in bringing oil production on line from the recent hurricanes will only underline this point.
As a result places are running out of gasoline (Ed note the two folk next to me at the table were from Atlanta and Tennessee and neither town had any gas stations left with fuel, as far as they knew). The South is going to have to cope with a growing shortage until more of the infrastructure comes back on line, and that may be weeks into the future. This will get worse if all motorists suddenly start topping up their tanks, since this will sensibly empty the floating reserve that is the volume moving through the system at the moment. This will, in turn, remove confidence in the system, which will make the situation worse. The heating oil situation for the North East is only going to get worse in this scenario. And there is no data on how close to a collapse we currently are. And the collapse could well be a disaster equivalent to that of Gustav/Ike squared.
He noted that contrary to the solutions for the financial world there is no insurance policy that can help with Peak Oil. The paradigm is changing and sadly the world is still Energy Illiterate.
He also commented, having talked with producers of the new gas wells being drilled in the various shale formations around the country, that this is close to, if not already at a point where the energy costs to sink the well are not returned by the gas recovered from it. Further in talking with Baker Hughes folk (the ones that track the wells that are drilled around the world), he found that those who thought depletion in old fields was less than 5% got no takers from his audience, 60% of the audience thought that depletion was between 6 and 8% and the remainder thought that it was in the range above 10%. ... It was by far the most pessimistic [talk] that I have heard him give.
Don't be fooled by the manipulated shenanigans of The Dow. The best stock exchange in terms of high numbers?
It's ZIMBABWE, baby! Hyperinflation's a bitch. Learn to love it.
The financial system is blowing up. Don't listen to the experts; just look at the numbers. Last week, according to Reuters, "U.S. banks borrowed a record amount from the Federal Reserve nearly $188 billion a day on average, showing the central bank went to extremes to keep the banking system afloat amid the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression." The Fed opened the various "auction facilities" to create the appearance that insolvent banks were thriving businesses, but they are not. They're dead; their liabilities exceed their assets. Now the Fed is desperate because the hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in the banks vaults have bankrupt the entire system and the Fed's balance sheet is ballooning by the day. The market for MBS will not bounce back in the foreseeable future and the banks are unable to roll-over their short term debt. Game over. The Federal Reserve itself is in danger. So, it's on to Plan B; which is to dump all the toxic sludge on the taxpayer before he realizes that the whole system is cratering and his life is about to change forever.
the derivatives monster is about to be let loose on the planet, gaining strength with every single bank failure, like a virus feeding off weakened hosts. The UK government is about to nationalize another Northern Rock, in Bradford and Bingley, Belgian giant Fortis Bank is on life-support (its liabilities are three times the GDP of Belgium), and in the US Wachovia may have been sold as we speak.
We haven’t even started. And when the monster is done, we will have very few banks, if any at all, left. Not a lot of jobs either, for that matter. Retirement funds? You go to be kidding. By Christmas, you'll be lucky if you recognize the town you live in.
U.S. financial institutions borrowed a record $187.75 billion per day on average directly from the Federal Reserve in the latest week, showing the central bank went to extremes to keep the financial system afloat amid the biggest crisis since the Great Depression.
Federal Reserve data showed on Thursday the total amount borrowed nearly quadruples the previous record of $47.97 billion per day notched just the week before and comes as the Bush administration and U.S. lawmakers work on hammering out an agreement on a $700 billion rescue package for the financial system.
"This looks like the balance sheet of a central bank that is keeping the financial system on life support," said Michael Feroli, U.S. economist with JPMorgan in New York.
Banks have scrambled for extra funding at this week's regular cash auction by the Bank of England.
Commercial banks asked for £89.2bn ($165.5bn) in the auction - far more than the £52.8bn that was available.
Strains in the money markets have risen rapidly following the collapse of the US investment bank Lehman Brothers.
Banks are turning to the Bank of England for loans because it is currently too expensive to borrow from other banks as they would usually do.
Wachovia dropped to $8.90 at 6:12 p.m. today from its $10 close during regular New York Stock Exchange trading after the New York Times reported that New York-based Citigroup was in early talks to buy the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank. The Wall Street Journal said bids may come from San Francisco-based Wells Fargo and Spain's Santander.
Takeovers can wipe out bank shareholders if they occur after regulators seize the company. That's what happened yesterday to Seattle-based Washington Mutual Inc., the nation's biggest thrift and now the largest bank failure in history. JPMorgan Chase & Co. paid $1.9 billion for deposits and branches of WaMu, leaving the company with about $28 billion in debt according to Bloomberg data and little means to pay it off.
The seizure of B&B would be explosive, taking more than £40 billion of assets and liabilities on to the Government balance sheet and would be certain to trigger a backlash from shareholders who have only just injected £400 million into the business to beef up its balance sheet.
Belgian and Dutch central banks and regulators were discussing measures to restore confidence in Fortis, the financial-services company whose stock plunged 35 percent in Brussels trading last week.
``We are working on enhancing the confidence in the market of the Fortis share,'' Hein Lannoy, a spokesman for the Belgian financial regulator CBFA, said today by telephone. He declined to be more specific. The parties will hold a conference call and ``if necessary there will be a physical meeting,'' Lannoy said.
Brussels and Amsterdam-based Fortis needs more capital after spending 24 billion euros ($35 billion) on ABN Amro Holding NV assets last year just as the U.S. subprime-mortgage market started to collapse. Fortis tumbled a record 20 percent two days ago, when the company picked Filip Dierckx to replace Herman Verwilst as chief executive officer. The move was aimed at reassuring investors concerned that a plan to raise 8.3 billion euros would force Fortis to sell assets at knock-down prices.
The Dutch-Belgian financial services firm Fortis is very much the keystone of banking in Holland and Belgium. It's also the ninth biggest firm of its type in the world.
The issue at stake this week is whether the banking arm of Fortis will face a run on its deposits in the same way that Northern Rock did in the autumn of 2007.
So far customers have withdrawn nearly 5bn euros of their money, still only 3% of the bank's total deposits but enough to send a shiver down the spines of European financiers and policy makers.
The problems for Fortis started in January this year when it announced it faced around $1.5 bn of losses in the American sub-prime catastrophe.
None of this surprises industry watchers such as Matt Simmons, the chairman of Houston energy industry investment bank Simmons & Co. and chief spokesman for the Peak Oil movement. I recently wrote a profile of Simmons for Fortune ("The prophet of $500 oil") and I can report that he has been warning about the potential of gasoline shortages in the U.S. for months.
"Our system is so fragile," he told me recently. "All you need is a tiny change to go from 'Oh, we're in fine shape' to an unmitigated disaster."
Simmons points out that the gasoline weekly stock reports have been trending sharply downward since last winter (with a brief upturn in the spring), and that even before Gustav and Ike we were in "just in time" supply mode.
Getting back to a safer level of extra capacity isn't simple, either. Once the refineries get back up and running, they'll drain the already low crude oil inventories. Unless gasoline demand stays low, Simmons believes, we'll have a hard time clawing back to stability.
That's why he worries about a top-up catastrophe that could cripple the trucking industry and disrupt food deliveries.
As he told me the other day: "If we end up having gasoline shortages, the odds are about 90% that Americans will do what we always do: We'll top up our tanks. And in topping up our tanks, within three or four days we'll drain the pool dry and then within seven days we'll run out of food."
North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley promised that more gas was on the way from other states, but WXII-TV found many stations dry or with only one or two grades of fuel left.
Easley had asked drivers to conserve fuel until the new supplies arrived and the situation returned to normal, but some consumers remain concerned.
"No gas. What will we do? We won't be able to do anything. We can't go to work. We can't do anything," one driver said.
Greetings from Asheville, NC .. america’s no-go headquarters.
Although authority is trying to downplay this as much as it possibly can … no joke here, I have personally seen fistfights, and one guy get knifed. I have heard reports about cops with heavy ordinance “guarding” those few stations with gas.
The veneer of civilization is indeed quite thin.
As for me, well, I have ~ 150 gallons stored here, and I have a biodiesel vehicle, just for this exact purpose.
an ounce of preparation …
Studying the problem from a sociological perspective, it is interesting to watch how people react when they are forced to finally admit to the idea that one day, the gas might be gone, for good. The truly scary thing is: even amongst the bright, prepared folks, the most common refrains are: “Why isn’t the government doing more about this ? ” “When will they ?”
sigh.
Crikey. Just watched a fascinating documentary about epigenetics. When I heard the phrase a few years ago I thought it was new-age woo-woo, but it's quite real. Here's the doc (1 hour):
To summarise: if you smoke, it won't just affect your health, but the health of your children and grandchildren. Parents' lifestyles are inherited by their immediate descendants.
