Dubai Inc. Scuttled

There were plenty of indicators that things weren’t right at Dubai Inc. even before the fiasco emerged on Wednesday about Dubai World, the emirate’s sovereign wealth holding company. For example, in February 2009 it was reported in the Times UK that expatriates were “abandoning their cars at the airport and fleeing home rather than risk jail for defaulting on loans.” The same forces that were making their way through the capitals of high finance and choking credit were emptying out the professional classes of Dubai Inc’s most notable businesses.

Throughout the past decade, Westerners invested in Dubai’s ever more grandiose aspirations by saddling themselves with overpriced homes, that in many cases were never built, in the hope that they could prosper through perpetual ‘flipping.’ However, as the great recession spread across the globe, property values in Dubai plummeted and construction work was either delayed or outright cancelled. Businesses went unpaid, many lost substantial amounts in real estate speculation, and the economy contracted. The heady days of unrestrained double-digit growth had come to an end, and while Westerners could scurry to safer ports, the Arab rulers of this city-state could not as easily pass the bill onto others. The great de-leveraging that had begun a year earlier and had forced economic re-alignments everywhere, was upon the emirates.

With Wednesday's announcement, Dubai World effectively declared itself insolvent. “People are panicking: this whole process counters everything that the rulers [of Dubai] have been saying and the way it has been communicated before the holidays is confusing,” said one hedge fund manager. International investors across the globe reacted with equal outrage at Dubai World's announcement. Markets declined sharply, with commodities such as gold and oil falling and investors moving to safer investments.

Overall, Dubai World and its real estate arm Nakheel, is shouldering some $60bn (£36.5bn) in debt and was due to repay around $4bn next month. Abu Dhabi, with its oil-rich cash reserves had been touted by both the ruling family of Dubai and investors alike as the most obvious source of assistance. However, it is also widely understood that Abu Dhabi has grown annoyed and frustrated at Dubai's profligacy and was not willing to simply hand over money carte-blanc. Business Week states,

It's been obvious for some time that the emirate owes more money than it can repay. But what remained unclear was the overall extent of the debt load and what officials were doing to avert a panic at a time when the world was in the nascent stages of emerging from its worst recession in over six decades.

Although the amount is not significant in global terms, it presents the undesirable possibility that many other countries (i.e. Greece, Latvia, Hungary…etc) and issues that have been hidden, such as in the case of China, may likewise follow. Arnab Das, of Roubini Global Economics, provides a moderate's assessment of the current circumstances in Bloomberg,

The Dubai situation signifies that although the major central banks around the world have stabilized the financial system, they can’t make all the excesses simply disappear. We still have to work out those balance sheet stresses. The recovery is proceeding, but significant challenges still lie ahead.

Sucky, Sucky, Mr. Jones?

Apparently the real emerging market is not to be found in the Mekong delta or in the bustling streets of Rio de Janeiro, but rather in the pants of lonely Western men, who are desperately in search of that perfectly porcelain-skinned oriental beauty.

Some cunning Beijing entrepreneur (or at least that's the claim) has come up with an i-phone application that allows any man who has fallen victim of a restraining order in the West, to exhibit his worldly grasp of Mandarin through this app and seek the ideal oriental mate.

The creators of the application ask worthy consumers whether they have ever "found [themselves] speechless while dating a Chinese girl?" How one lands a date with someone, who doesn't speak the same language is another question. Although perhaps when the creators of this application talk about dates, they are actually speaking about the nightly rituals and exchanges of bodily fluids that occur in Shanghai's less than refined nightclubs.

Angry Asian Man finds the whole thing sad. Not me! Given that the Chinese have stolen all these jobs from these hard working American men, it is only fair that they have at least the chance to strike back at the heart of their nemesis. As I'm sure Confucius once said, "All's fair in love and trade wars caused by globalization Mr. Jones."

Democrats attempt to Deep-6 FED Audit Bill

The Ron Paul (R-TX) and Alan Grayson (D-FL) amendment to HR 3996, the “Financial Stability Improvement Act of 2009,″ allows the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a wide-ranging audit of the financial activities of the Federal Reserve Board. Specifically:

• Removes the blanket restrictions on GAO audits of the Fed
  
• Allows audit of every item on the Fed’s balance sheet, all credit facilities, all securities purchase programs, etc.
  
• Retains limited audit exemption on unreleased transcripts and minutes
  
• Sets 180-day time lag before details of Fed’s market actions may be released
  
• States that nothing in the amendment shall be construed as interference in or dictation of monetary policy by Congress or the GAO
  

This amendment, if enacted, would permit for the first time, since the inception of the US Federal Reserve in 1913, a complete examination of the underlying financial machinations of this institution.

Only to prove their critics point, that this bankers-only club is rotten to its core, current Chairman Ben Bernake, FED lawyers, and an assortment of affiliated yes-men have said implicitly or as in the case of former FED Governor Laurence Meyer explicitly that, "U.S. stocks, bonds and the dollar would collapse" if the US Federal Reserve was audited. In other words, according to these finely tailored gentlemen, if the current institution is audited, they suggest that the entire financial system of the United States of America, maybe even the world, will be ruined! The conclusion is clear: only a system based on fraud, corruption, and extreme kleptocratic policies that are meant to enrich a small coterie of elite entities (ex. post-Soviet Russia in the 1990's and their oligarchs and criminal syndicates), would make such outrageous statements, if subject to the same rules of transparency, openness, and accountability that every other small business is. The end of crony-capitalism is near, and the only question left is whether the greed-heads in control will take the whole world down with them?

The Torture Debate: Making comparisons

NY Times Editorial column comes down hard on the cowardice that has become the legal system in America when it comes to addressing the high crimes of the Bush junta. It makes the comparison between the Maher Arar case that was recently dismissed in American courts versus the verdict issued last week against CIA operatives in Italy regarding the extraordinary rendition of an Islamic cleric. Again and again as the editorial elaborates, the US judiciary dismisses these cases of gross institutional criminality on the basis of fatuous "state secrets" claims or punts the claimant's to higher courts.

***

NYT: A National Disgrace

Two courts, one in Italy and one in the United States, ruled recently on the Bush administration’s practice of extraordinary rendition, which is the kidnapping of people and sending them to other countries for interrogation — and torture. The Italian court got it right. The American court got it miserably wrong.

In Italy, a judge ruled that a station chief for the Central Intelligence Agency and 22 other Americans broke the law in the 2003 abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, a Muslim cleric who ended up in Egypt, where he said he was tortured.

Two days earlier, a federal appeals court in Manhattan brushed off a lawsuit by Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who was seized in an American airport by federal agents acting on bad information from Canadian officials. He was held incommunicado and harshly interrogated before being sent to Syria, where he was tortured. He spent almost a year in a grave-size underground cell before the Syrians let him go.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided that none of that entitled Mr. Arar to a day in court.

In Mr. Nasr’s case, authorities said that they had reason to suspect he was involved in recruiting militants to go to Iraq. It has long been established that Mr. Arar was not guilty of anything. Canada admitted that it had supplied false information to American authorities, and in 2007, it apologized and offered Mr. Arar $10 million in damages. Neither the Bush nor Obama administrations followed suit, leaving Mr. Arar to pursue litigation.

In June 2008, a three-judge panel of the same court dismissed Mr. Arar’s civil rights suit on flimsy grounds. The court then took a rare step, scheduling a rehearing before all of the court’s active members before an appeal was filed. Sadly, the full court’s decision is even more insensitive to the violation of his rights and the courts’ duty to hold government accountable for breaches of the law.

Written by Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs, the 59-page majority opinion held that no civil damages remedy exists for the horrors visited on Mr. Arar. To “decide how to implement extraordinary rendition,” he wrote, is “for the elected members of Congress — and not for us as judges.” Allowing suits against policy makers for rendition and torture would “affect diplomacy, foreign policy and the security of the nation,” Judge Jacobs said.

The ruling distorts precedent and the Constitutional separation of powers to deny justice to Mr. Arar and give officials a pass for egregious misconduct. The overt disregard for the central role of judges in policing executive branch excesses has frightening implications for safeguarding civil liberties, as four judges suggested in dissenting opinions.

It is painful to recall that this is the same federal circuit court that declared in 1980 that even foreigners accused of torture in foreign countries can be called to account in American courts.

The torturer is the “enemy of all mankind,” the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit declared back then. One of the dissenters, Judge Guido Calabresi, said that “when the history of this distinguished court is written, today’s majority decision will be viewed with dismay.”

The damage to Mr. Arar, America’s reputation and the rule of law is already quite plain. The Supreme Court should reverse this ruling.

Chillout Session: Rammstein ("Das Model")

The Demon of 85 Broad St.: Goldman Sachs

Brian Griffiths, A Goldman Sachs International adviser, recently told a forum on investment ethics in the UK that, “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all.” You have to give it to these folks at Goldman Sachs; they are indisputably some of the most immoral creatures slithering up and down the financial food-chain.

McClatchy Newspapers has published a four-part series on Goldman Sachs investment strategies in the American housing market. The articles outline how the company grew unbelievably rich by,

making massive bets against the housing market while simultaneously selling off billions in soon-to-be worthless securities. In 2006 and 2007, the bank reportedly peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in US housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.

As impressive as Goldman Sachs earnings are, their true achievement isn’t making it big through casino-capitalism. No, its greatest accomplishment is creating a world-wide network of faithful former employees that are embedded throughout the regulatory and legislative branches of government, allowing them to place themselves at the center of a global financial system that has effectively co-opted democracy. The entire securitization game has been shown to be a complex scheme that utilizes outright fraud, deception, and market manipulation to achieve exorbitant profits for the demon bankers insulated at 85 Broad St. New York.

The articles elaborate how throughout the years leading up to the crash, “Goldman Sachs used its name to buy, bundle and sell some of the worst investments in the history of trading. It jumped into the subprime game with dubious mortgage lenders. And it played it ruthlessly, selling off toxic assets that carried bogus quality ratings and the assurance of its venerable name.”

McClatchy's investigation found that Goldman Sachs:

• Bought and converted into high-yield bonds tens of thousands of mortgages from subprime lenders that became the subjects of FBI investigations into whether they'd misled borrowers or exaggerated applicants' incomes to justify making hefty loans.
  
• Used offshore tax havens to shuffle its mortgage-backed securities to institutions worldwide, including European and Asian banks, often in secret deals run through the Cayman Islands, a British territory in the Caribbean that companies use to bypass U.S. disclosure requirements.
  
• Has dispatched lawyers across the country to repossess homes from bankrupt or financially struggling individuals, many of whom lacked sufficient credit or income but got subprime mortgages anyway because Wall Street made it easy for them to qualify.
  
• Was buoyed last fall by key federal bailout decisions, at least two of which involved then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former Goldman chief executive whose staff at Treasury included several other Goldman alumni.

The conclusion one must realize is that Goldman Sachs is not serving its intended commercial and societal purpose of allocating capital to create an efficient market-place nor is it enhancing the public sphere by enriching productive companies. Their racket is and has been to generate maximum earnings solely for themselves at the detriment to society, by exploiting "so-called sophisticated investors", who in actual fact are just dumb insitutional players who knew less than them, and simply steal their money; even if they have to change the laws to do so.

As Dylan Ratigan says,

Now this method of "business" is only possible if the government continues to allow these crooked insurance contracts to be written in secret, allows them to hold little or no money in reserve for payment and allows them to sell enough coverage on enough vital national assets that if there is a default -- the taxpayer has no choice but to pay.

No meaningful legislative change will occur, because the US government and the demon bankers of Broad Street, are one and the same. Just see a few of the recent parties in government (Republican and Democrat) with ties to Goldman Sachs.

Adam Storch: Appointed the SEC’s first Chief Operating Officer on Oct. 15, 2009. This branch of government regulates the securitization industry, including mortgage backed CDO’s and related derivative products. The 29 year old Storch comes directly from Goldman Sach’s business intelligence unit.

Henry Paulson: Served as Treasury Secretary under President George W. Bush. Was CEO of Goldman from 1999 to 2006.

Robert Rubin: Served as Treasury Secretary under President Clinton. Previously, he was co-chairman of Goldman from 1990 to 1992.

Robert K. Steel: Served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance, the principal adviser to the secretary on matters of domestic finance and led the department’s activities with respect to the domestic financial system, fiscal policy and operations, governmental assets and liabilities, and related economic and financial matters. Retired from Goldman as a vice chairman of the firm in 2004, where he worked as head of equities for Europe and head of the Equities Division in New York.

Mark Patterson: Chief of Staff to Secretary Tim Geithner. Was director of government affairs at Goldman.

Dan Jester: Key adviser to Geithner, who played a key role in shaping the takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Was strategic officer at Goldman.

The list goes on. For a comprehensive listing of the numerous figures in positions of government authority that were associated with G-S visit the following link.

Taxi Drivers to the Dark Side Convicted

In common law, rendition "is a transfer of persons from one jurisdiction to another, and the act of handing over, both after legal proceedings and according to law." Whereas, extraordinary rendition is a rendition, which is illegal and exists outside the bounds of international law. Although the practice has existed for some time, according to the ACLU, it was refined during the Clinton administration by CIA officials in the mid-1990s who were trying to track down and dismantle militant Islamic organizations throughout the Middle East. What came next under the watchful eye of the Bush junta and its own clandestine services, has come to exemplify the reckless cowboy-like swagger and irresponsibility of both the policies and people tasked to execute those orders.

Canadians are well versed in the tawdry details involved with the Mahar Arar extraordinary rendition case. As summarized in Wikipedia:

Arar, a Syrian-born dual Syrian and Canadian citizen, was detained at Kennedy International Airport on 26 September 2002, by US Immigration and Naturalization Service officials. He was heading home to Canada after a family holiday in Tunisia. After almost two weeks, enduring hours of interrogation chained, he was sent, shackled and bound, in a private jet to Jordan and then Syria, instead of being extradited to Canada. There, he was interrogated and tortured by Syrian intelligence. Maher Arar was eventually released a year later. He told the BBC that he was repeatedly tortured during 10 months' detention in Syria — often whipped on the palms of his hands with metal cables. Syrian intelligence officers forced him to sign a confession linking him to Al Qaeda. He was finally released following intervention by the Canadian government.

These illegal embarrassments, when revealed, have been completely ignored by the American judiciary and investigations into criminal activities committed by the Executive under George W. Bush have been scuttled by the Obama administration. However, not all countries consider the principles of justice to be malleable and subordinate to governmental abuse. After years legal blockage, an Italian judge has sentenced 23 Americans in absentia to up to eight years in prison on Wednesday for the abduction and extraordinary rendition of a Muslim cleric.

The case surrounds the actions of CIA agents, who were tasked with "the secret kidnapping of a radical Muslim cleric off the streets of Milan in early 2003, his transport via US airbases in Italy and Germany to Egypt, and there, evidently with the CIA station chief for Italy riding shotgun, directly into the hands of Egyptian torturers." The problem with the whole affair was that their actions were anything but secret. Believing they were immune from all prosecution and international law, the agents were observed by Italian police publicly talking on their cell phones, running up huge expenses at luxury hotels, and were caught in their rental cars by local traffic cameras "as they drove illegally through pedestrian walkways." Obviously not being able to watch the Bourne Ultimatum in cinema, they were completely unaware of how clandestine operations were to be conducted.

According to the NY Times,

The heaviest sentence -- eight years in prison -- was handed down to the former head of the CIA's Milan station, Robert Seldon Lady, while 21 other former agents got five years each. U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Romano was also sentenced to five years, despite a request from the Pentagon that the case should be tried by U.S. courts. [Judge] Magi dropped the case against three Americans, including a former CIA Rome station chief, because of diplomatic immunity. Charges were also dropped against five Italians, including the former head of the Sismi military intelligence service, Nicolo Pollari, because evidence against them violated state secrecy rules. However, the judge sentenced two more junior Sismi agents to three years in prison as accomplices, indicating Italian authorities were aware of the abduction.

Instead of having foreign governments with an independent judiciary prosecute the criminal activities of the CIA and members of the Bush administration, the Democratic led Congress and Presidency should be reaffirming constitutional law and prosecuting those persons, agencies, and officials who violated America's treaty obligations and casually prescribed kidnapping, murder, and torture as America's new modus operandi in fighting terrorism. Then again, that would entail caring about anything other than just being elected.

Another Japanese First: A Comic Book Library

According to France24,

"In a move to promote serious study of Japanese manga, a university in Tokyo plans to open a library with two million comic books, animation drawings, video games and other cartoon industry artifacts. Tentatively named the Tokyo International Manga Library, it would open by early 2015 on the campus of the private Meiji University, and be available to researchers and fans from Japan and abroad."

To those of the wider public who have never read or watched Japanese animation, although your children definitely have, it is an ornate and bizarre world (somewhat like Japan culture itself) that includes a broad range of subjects: action-adventure, romance, sports and games, historical drama, comedy, science fiction and fantasy, mystery, horror, sexuality, and business and commerce, among others. Unlike the uber-geek "Comic Book-Guy," who peddles his wares to children in the television cartoon The Simpson's, the manga genre is embraced by people of all ages in Japan.

Manga itself is a hybrid art that combines historical Japanese motifs and modern Western styles of animation. These highly stylized comic-book novels and their televised adaptions, have over the decades depicted the continuous cultural development of the Japanese people and its larger society since the Second World War. The gekiga style of drawing (emotionally dark, realistic, and sometimes violent) focuses on the day-in, day-out grim realities of life, and is often drawn in a fashion that has been described as 'gritty'.

Unlike a number of Japanese re-inventions that have failed to find a foot-hold outside of Japan, Anime or Japanese Animation has produced a significant following around the world. As an example, Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill movies were based on a 1972-3 manga released in Japan called Lady Snowblood. In North America over the past few decades, a variety of children's television programing have highlighted Anime. These westernized adaptions include shows like Sailor Moon, which has been exported to more than 23 countries, and Pokemon, which has spawned a dozen movies and a worldwide audience.

As odd as it may seem, a serious academic exploration of the cultural roots and influence of Japanese animation on modernist artwork and global pop-culture is warranted.

Arigatou gozaimasu.

US Q3 GDP Breakdown

Celebrations have broken out across the American nation, declaring the end of the Great Recession. Statistics published by the government claim that the nation grew at an annualized rate of 3.5%. Consumption, which is almost 71% of GDP contributed roughly proportionally to the increase in GDP. Investment as a whole, which has fallen to just about 11% of GDP amounted to approximately 35% of Q3 growth. However, a further breakdown of the data provides a revealing look at the continued lack of real improvement and growth in the American economy.

Auto Sales: 1.66%, or almost half, of the 3.5% increase in GDP can be attributed to "Cash for Clunkers" program. Upon termination, auto sales dramatically declined and returned to levels seen earlier in the recession. According to Reuters, "U.S. consumers are expected to buy only between 10 million and 10.5 million cars and light trucks this year, well below the pre-recession peak near 17 million hit in 2005." It is therefore certain that future vehicle sales will not have as much contribution as this quarter.

Housing Tax Credit: An $8,000 tax credit was offered to first time buyers of houses as an incentive. This program added another 0.53% to GDP. According to Bloomberg, "Many buyers accelerated purchases of new homes to take advantage of the $8,000 tax credit before it expires Nov. 30." Systematic fraud has been observed in the program. Out of the 400,000 people who participated in the program, at least 70,000 cases could have been fraudulent, as in 500 cases where children applied for the credit. In addition, sales of new homes decreased for the first time in six months, falling 3.6%. Year-over-year, new home sales were 7.8% lower and the year-over-year median sales price of a new home fell 9.1%. Foreclosure rates are up 5% in the Q3 and are at record highs in Nevada, Arizona and California. Altogether, the housing market is far from stabilized and little reprieve should be anticipated.

Military Expenditures: National defense increased 8.4 percent or 0.45% of GDP. This portion represents continued combat in Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan and other related Pentagon build-ups. In terms of real stimulus value, this is the worst of the lot. Under the Bush years, GDP was always inflated due to the immense cost and waste incurred by the GWOT. Iraq alone is still costing the US taxpayer, as of October 2009, nearly $8 billion dollars a month. Unlike infrastructure and other forms of long-term domestic investment in such things as people and the environment, military expenditures are a black hole. There is no wealth creation in producing bullets or tanks except to those who manufacture these implements of war.

Inventory: The final reason for this past quarter’s growth is through companies dumping inventory, though less aggressively than during the previous quarter. This too is hardly any reason to be dancing in the streets.

Thus, what can be discerned from the poor growth numbers is that the government’s attempts at pump-priming the economy, in hopes of restarting the engines of growth, have been inadequate and in the long-term, possibly fruitless as the recession continues to shed jobs, shutter real businesses, and foreclose on homes. The conceit of the consumer being king is dead; the bills are past due, consumer confidence is shot, and everyone is hoarding every penny they have.

At least the rat-bastards at Goldman Sachs are happy.

Ahmadinejad's Poor Choice of Analogies

Under an agreement hammered out by negotiators from France, the US, and Russia, Iran would send 1.2 tons of low-enriched uranium to Russia in a single shipment, where it would be converted to fuel exclusively for a Iranian research reactor. However, Iran's president Ahmadinejad has refused to respond to the proposal and wants in typical fashion to have more discussions on the matter.

In my opinion, Ahmadinejad has always been underwhelming. He clearly has no grasp of international politics and by his own pathetic antics in this summer's bloody suppression, has shown that his primary interest is in propping up the corrupt and exceedingly maladroit theocrats of Tehran. This past Sunday, in response to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's comment that the US was "not going to wait forever" for a response to the IAEA's proposal, Ahmadinejad gave this classic bit of mindless frivolity:

"While enemies have used all their capacities ... the Iranian nation is standing powerfully and they are like a mosquito," a government Web site quoted Ahmadinejad early Sunday as saying. ... "Given the negative record of Western powers, the Iranian government ... looks at the talks with no trust. But realities dictate to them to interact with the Iranian nation.

A mosquito? I'm assuming he meant housefly or some other irritating insect, because there is no single animal that has caused more misery and death than the mosquito. Alexander the Great who conquered and dispatched the ancient Persians was fallen not by foreign swords but by the malaria parasite delivered by a mosquito. Entire armies have been wiped out by malaria and other mosquito borne illnesses throughout the course of history. During the American civil war, for example, malaria accounted for 1,316,000 episodes of illness and 10,000 deaths. The parasite furthermore fell more allied troops in the Pacific theater during World War II than did enemy combat.

If Ahmadinejad does mean to equate the West with mosquitoes, then he should prepare for an adversary that has proven both unstoppable and ultimately lethal.

Propaganda Alert: The World is Not Cooling!

I'm sure you've heard the recent claims made by Climate Change skeptics that much of the data and arguments pointing towards global warming are little more than bulk conspiracy theories. The BBC ran an article a month ago by Paul Hudson, asking "What happened to global warming?" It makes the declaration that "the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998" in the past decade and further states that skeptics believe "there are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature."

While it is true that global temperatures reached a high point in 1998, it is not true that temperatures across the planet have been in decline since. Given the controversy, a re-analysis of the existing data led by the US NOAA's (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency) climate data center was conducted and no statistically significant cooling trend was found. An AP story quotes the agency as stating:

"The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record," said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt. "Even if you analyze the trend during [the skeptics] 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming."

Furthermore, in relation to ocean temperatures, NOAA asserts that of the 10 hottest years recorded, "eight have occurred since 2000, and after this year it will be nine because this year is on track to be the sixth-warmest on record."

What skeptics have done is what they always done: manipulate the truth. Depending on the starting year of their so-called ten year interval and the robustness of the data set, one can get one of three different outcomes: temperatures trending upwards, constant, or downwards. So which one is correct? According to David Peterson, a retired Duke University statistics professor, the methodology used by the skeptics to claim a downward cooling trend is "not scientifically legitimate." AP quotes Ben Santer, a climate scientist at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Lab, who calls their efforts, "a concerted strategy to obfuscate and generate confusion in the minds of the public and policymakers" prior to the international climate talks in Copenhagen this December.

People need to stop listening to these hucksters who are peddling refuted arguments prettied up with bogus statistical data for political gain. These are not trivial matters. For example:

• Heat waves in Europe in 2003 caused nearly 40,000 people to die.
• Global warming is more than a third to blame for a major drop in rainfall, that includes a decade-long drought in Australia and a lengthy dry spell in the United States, according to researcher Peter Baines of Melbourne University in Australia.
• Forest fires that have decimated parts of Australia, the Mediterranean, and Western North America in the past few years have been linked to a "positive feedback loop" caused by increased global temperatures.
• Glaciers across the world continue to melt at an unprecedented rate. Many of the world's most populous regions including India, China, and nations along the Andes are highly dependant on these bodies for water utlized in agriculture. Displacement of these massive bodies of ice has also been predicted by geologists to lead to an increasing number of earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions in unexpected places.

A world that is less stable and less able to sustain human habitation, is simply a world with less humans.

***

I have additional blog entries about recent public opinions shifts in America on Climate Change (here) and a brief discussion on scientific research confirming CO2 concentrations and global temperature increases (here).

Elizabeth Warren: Banks are Jerking us ALL!

At the recent Buttonwood conference held at New York's Pace University and hosted by the Economist magazine, Elizabeth Warren (the TARP overseer) told Yahoo Tech Ticker that:

This is a moment when all around the country people are saying we've had it about up to here with these large financial institutions that want to write the rule then take our money. I find it astonishing that they have the nerve to show up and say, 'I'm a big financial institution. I took your money. And now I'm going to lobby against anything that might offer some protection to ordinary families in this marketplace'

To contextualize, both the American consumer and government are grossly over-leveraged. The gross public debt is estimated to exceed 100% of US GDP ($13 Trillion) next year. Estimates place all government liabilities, from Treasury bonds to Medicare to military pensions, at a value of $63.8 Trillion (490% of GDP). In the meantime, the dollar continues its decline against other currencies, unemployment is rising, foreclosures increased by 5% in Q3 2009, manufacturing industries are running significantly under capacity and at historical lows, and yet the big banks are making record profits and handing out equally obscene bonuses.

The real question is why there aren't angry pitchforked masses storming 'The Bastille' so to speak today?

The hyper-partisan tea-baggers are certainly not a real source of protestation, for their objective is get more "real Americans" or Sarah Palin-esque clones who are dismally educated congenital corporatists that also happen to be WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon persons) back into the White House.

History on the other hand is replete with examples, the French Revolution but one, where the public realizing the criminal excesses of their political and aristocratic masters demand through civil uprising to remove the sclerotic and incompetent regime du jour. Unless the oligarchs of casino-capitalism and the congressional stooges who have been bought and sold like disposable sex-workers are removed (i.e. off with their heads!), America will continue to decline. The Obama administration has proven itself incompetent or at least unwilling to truly challenge big business and deliver the "change" that they endlessly advertised during his presidential campaign. It remains to be determined whether those who voted for change will have the courage to inflict a lasting and necessary punishment on the Democrats and Republicans, in order to rid the nation of these maleficent corporate parasites.

Quote of the Day: Finding new ways of screwing up!

Floyd Norris of the NY Times has an interesting blog entry about the company behind Iridium Satellite phones and the risk that befalls investors who confuse a company's underlying physical assets with the actual economic value of those assets. What I found interesting and perhaps most salient is the author's continued exasperation with the myopic level of thinking that financial investors continues to exhibit (which ties into my earlier quote of the day entry):

the comment heard from time to time: “This cycle will go better because investors have learned from their past mistakes.” In my three decades in the industry I have found almost no evidence of learning in the financial markets. People simply find new ways to make the same mistakes all over again.