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Tuesday 09.11.2012
As the Euro Tumbles, Spaniards Look to Gold
By: J. Luis Martin - GoldSeek.com
The unremitting deterioration of the eurozone's sovereign debt landscape continues to fuel uncertainties about the longevity of the euro as a strong currency. Such uncertainties are not only leading to capital flight from the EMU's periphery to the core and destabilizing markets worldwide, but they are also beginning to frighten southern European savers into seeking refuge outside their 10-year-old currency.
Such is the case in my home country of Spain - the latest tumbling economy to threaten the euro's survival. As the crisis deepens, there is still a window of opportunity for Spaniards to turn to gold as a means to protect their wealth against the risks of increased foreign exchange volatility, forced re-denomination, or even a total currency collapse.
Gold & Silver Slip But "Set to Benefit"
If Fed Begins QE3 This Week
By: Ben Traynor - GoldSeek.com
THE WHOLESALE gold price drifted lower to $1730 per ounce Monday morning in London, some ten Dollars below Friday's six-month high.
Stock markets were broadly flat and US Treasuries fell, meantime.
The silver price dipped below $33.50 per ounce – around 20 cents below last week's close – while other commodities were broadly flat, with the exception of copper, which posted gains.
"Our economists now expect the Fed to ease further at this week's FOMC meeting, providing gold the catalyst it requires to test fresh highs for this year over the coming weeks," says a note from Barclays Capital.
Jim Rogers:
End of Bull Market in Commodities long way away
Commodity Online
While Carl Weinberg, chief economist, High Frequency Economics argues that the European Central Bank proposed Outright Monetary Transactions or OMT is something of such a small scale that it would not affect commodity markets in a big way, Jim Rogers has approved of it.
"Rogers, famed as a long-term commodities bull, said there was no reason to correct this stance." CNBC.com reported.
"The bull market in commodities will end someday – but some day is a long way away," Rogers was quoted by the CNBC as saying.
Jim Rogers Sees Worse Recession in 2013-2014,
Says Fed Already Printing More Money
LewRockwell.com
Legendary global investor and chairman of Singapore-based Rogers Holdings, Jim Rogers reckons the Fed finds it embarrassing to announce QE3 as all previous attempts have failed, but says the central bank is already printing more money. He predicts another recession: "You should be very worried about 2013-2014."
The printing has started
Speaking to India's ET Now on Monday, Rogers said: "I do not know if they will announce it. I know they are going to print more money. They already are."
Fed Watch: Here's Everything They May Do This Week
What Can the Fed Do? 5 Possible Steps
Reuters - CNBC.com
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has made plain that the U.S. central bank is seriously considering additional monetary policy easing at its meeting on Sept. 12-13 to help counter the "grave" stagnation of the U.S. labor market.
The policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee is expected to announce its decision at around 12:30 p.m. (1630 GMT) on Thursday and Bernanke will follow with a news conference at 2:15 p.m. (1815 GMT). The Fed will also release policymakers' quarterly economic and interest rate projections.
Peter Schiff "Economy Collapse Near"
David Stockman: U.S. Faces Permanent Fiscal Cliff
BY FS STAFF - FinancialSense.com
David Stockman, former Reagan OMB Director, opens fire on the Fed, Congress, the fiscal cliff, entitlement reform and a number of other issues on CNBC today. [See video]
Roubini sees 'perfect world economic storm' – why is this new 'news'?, Coming changes to Canada's GDP measurements, Germans voice concerns over ECB's Outright Monetary Transactions Program
Published by Ian R. Campbell - StockResearchPortalBlog.com
Nouriel Roubini, speaking September 7, is reported as predicting we face years of world economic 'gloom' irrespective of what is decided by political leaders in the Eurozone. Roubini said this would be driven by a 'painful process of deleveraging, and up to a decade of low economic growth. The latter is said to be supported by an OECD report released September 6 that said the G7 economies would grow at an annualized rate of 0.3% in Q3 2012 – and that there now exists worldwide "dampening global confidence, weakening trade and employment and slowing economic growth".
IMF chief Lagarde highlights perils of US fiscal cliff
Christine Lagarde has said the "US fiscal cliff" is one of the greatest threats to the global economy.
By Rachel Cooper - Telegraph.co.uk
Speaking at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation Summit in Vladivostok, Russia, the head of the International Monetary Fund said the US tax increases and spending cuts that come into effect in the new year, were one of the largest risks to the global economy.
She also named the eurozone crisis and medium-term public financing, as the two other greatest risk factors.
Soros: Germany's heading into depression
By Deborah Levine, MarketWatch.com
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Europe's recession will intensify and spread to Germany, the euro zone's largest economy, within six months, said George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management.
"The policy of fiscal retrenchment in the midst of rising unemployment is pro-cyclical and pushing Europe into a deeper and longer depression," Soros said in prepared remarks for a Monday speech in Berlin. "That is no longer a forecast; it is an observation. The German public doesn't yet feel it and doesn't quite believe it. But it is all too real in the periphery and it will reach Germany in the next six months or so."
Euro Zone Will Pay 'Terrible Price': Jim Rogers
By: Catherine Boyle - CNBC.com
A "terrible price" will be paid for the euro zone crisis eventually, whether the European Central Bank (ECB) embarks on mass bond purchases or not, Jim Rogers, investor and co-founder of the Quantum Fund with George Soros, told CNBC Monday.
Rogers said: "These guys have been saying the same old garbage for a long time. It's not a game-changer – it's good for the market for maybe a month. The debt keeps going higher and higher and eventually we'll all going to pay a terrible price."
He warned that the market rally, which many have seen as an opportunity to get back into riskier assets, would only be a short-term rebound.
Europe's Solidarity Imperative
By Peter Sutherland - Project-Syndicate.org
LONDON – When Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, publicly proclaimed that the ECB would do "whatever it takes" to ensure the future stability of the euro, the effect of his remarks was immediate and remarkable. Borrowing costs fell dramatically for the governments of Italy and Spain; stock markets rallied; and the recent decline in the external value of the euro was suddenly checked.
It remains unclear how long-lasting the effects of Draghi's intervention – or of the public support offered to him by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President François Hollande, and Italian premier Mario Monti – will prove to be. What we can say with certainty is that Draghi's remarks and the reaction they evoked demonstrate that the fundamental problems of the eurozone are not primarily financial or economic; they are political, psychological, and institutional.
An Unexpected U-Turn
Why Merkel Wants To Keep Greece in Euro Zone
Angela Merkel has made a surprising U-turn in her policy on Greece. The German chancellor now wants to stop Athens from leaving the euro zone at all costs -- even if it means massaging the figures in the upcoming troika report. For the German leader, it is essential to avoid the consequences of a Grexit before national elections next year.
By Konstantin von Hammerstein, Christian Reiermann
and Christoph Schult - Spiegel.de
Mantras are short, formulaic phrases that are repeated over and over for meditative purposes. They can be spoken, sung, whispered, recited mentally or even written down and eaten.
The German chancellor has recently opted for the spoken variety, which is the conventional form. Angela Merkel's mantra consists of a short German sentence. It translates as: "We are waiting for the troika report." She repeats it whenever the opportunity arises -- such as two weeks ago, when Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras visited Berlin.
Why ECB Bond-Buying Plans Undermine Democracy
The ECB's plan to restart its bond-buying program is possibly the most important decision of the euro crisis. But the bank is not subject to control by national parliaments. Europe's leaders seem to consider saving the euro to be more important than preserving democracy.
A Commentary by Armin Mahler - Spiegel.de
Anyone who breaks a law can hardly excuse his actions by claiming that he is acting within the scope of the law. In any case, it won't help him much -- unless his name is Mario Draghi and he is the president of the European Central Bank (ECB).
The ECB is politically independent, but it is not above the law. It is only independent within its mandate, which is clearly defined by the European treaties: The central bank is tasked with safeguarding price stability in the euro zone -- no more and no less.
JPMorgan Chase Libor Subpoenas
Coming From Everybody In The World
By Mark Gongloff - HuffingtonPost.com
Pretty much everybody in the world with subpoena power has hit JPMorgan Chase with requests for information in the Libor-rigging scandal.
The biggest U.S. bank revealed the extent of its involvement in the probe in a filing Thursday morning with the Securities and Exchange Commission, saying regulators in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Switzerland and more had asked it for information:
JPMorgan Chase has received subpoenas and requests for documents and, in some cases, interviews, from the DOJ, CFTC, SEC, European Commission, UK Financial Services Authority, Canadian Competition Bureau, Swiss Competition Commission and other regulatory authorities and banking associations around the world.
Stockman: Our Problem is the Federal Reserve
By Kurt Nimmo - PrisonPlanet.com
Former OMB boss David Stockman told CNBC that Romney's vision of capitalism is not possible if the Federal Reserve continues to run the economy. Stockman said the only candidate that had it right was Ron Paul.
"He was the only one that had it right about the Fed," Stockman said. "The Fed is the heart of the problem. We have destroyed the capital markets, the money markets. Interest rates mean nothing. Everything is trading off the Fed. Wall Street isn't even home. It's a bunch of computers trading word clouds emitted by this central bank or that."
Stockman said that with the insane interest rate policies of the Fed, the crushing debt of entitlements and the neocon-driven war machine with a parasitical military-industrial complex in tow will continue to roll on unless something gives.
Nationalism and Terrorism
By Liah Greenfeld - Project-Syndicate.org
BOSTON – September 11, 2001, may – at least at first – seem like an inappropriate addition to the history of nationalism, given Al Qaeda's explicitly stated global pretensions. In fact, now that the initial shock and confusion have given way to a more sober perspective, the terrorist attacks of that awful day are increasingly seen – as they should be – as one among numerous other nationalist milestones.
From this perspective, the attacks no longer appear, as they did to so many immediately afterwards, to reflect an incomprehensible, irrational, and uncivilized mentality, or a different civilization altogether – pre-modern, unenlightened, and fundamentally "traditional" (in other words, undeveloped). It is in this unflattering sense that Islam, the dominant religion of an economically backward part of the world, was said to have motivated the attacks of September 11, 2001. And, because those who believed this (virtually everyone whose voices were heard) belatedly perceived its insulting connotation, discussing the matter has caused considerable anguish in the years since.
The Real Unemployment Numbers
Are Worse Than You Are Being Told
By Michael Snyder - TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com
According to the Obama administration, the unemployment rate in the United States has been slowly coming down over the past couple of years. But is that actually true? When you take a closer look at the data you quickly realize that the real unemployment numbers are much worse than we are being told. For example, if the labor force participation rate was the same today as it was back when Barack Obama first took office, the unemployment rate in the United States would be a whopping 11.2 percent. But every month the Obama administration has been able to show "progress" because of the fiction that hundreds of thousands of Americans are "disappearing" from the labor force each month. Frankly, the way that they come up with these numbers is an insult to our intelligence. Personally, I much prefer the employment-population ratio. It is a measure of the percentage of working age Americans that actually have jobs.
Every Job We Created and Lost in the Last 5 Years—in 2 Graphs
By Derek Thompson - TheAtlantic.com
The Great Recession hit rock bottom in February 2010. If you compare jobs lost two years before the trough with 30 months after the trough, you'll find only three large sectors have made up their losses:
-- Mining (extractors, operators, engineers), which is up 90,000.
-- Utilities (repairers, installers, more engineers), which is up 11,000.
-- Leisure & Hospitality (fitness trainers, artists, plus everybody who works with food, hotels, or parks), which is up 102,000.
Besides health care and education, which never stopped growing, every other major job sector is net negative compared to five years ago. These graphs from today's Bloomberg Brief by Scott Johnson.
HP to cut 2,000 more jobs, rolls out four new computers
By Salvador Rodriguez - LATimes.com
Hewlett-Packard said it will slash 2,000 more jobs as the technology giant unveiled a bundle of new computers.
In a regulatory filing, the Palo Alto tech company revealed it now plans to cut 29,000 jobs by October 2014, according to a report by the Associated Press. Previously, the company had said it planned to cut 27,000.
The additional job cuts come a month after HP suffered the largest loss in its 73-year history, according to the report. HP said it expects to record charges of $3.7 billion mainly for the job cuts, up from a previous estimate of $3.5 billion.
Fannie Mae regulator to clarify when it won't sue
By Ronald D. Orol, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The regulator for government-seized mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac said the agency plans Tuesday to provide clarity about when they won't sue banks for bad mortgages that the two firms buy.
"The objective of the new framework is to clarify lenders' repurchase exposure and liability on future deliveries," said Federal Housing Finance Agency acting director Ed DeMarco to the American Mortgage Conference in Raleigh, N.C. "Under this framework, lenders will be relieved of certain repurchase obligations for loans that meet specific payment requirements."
The Machine: The Truth Behind Teachers Unions
America's public education system is failing. We're spending more money on education but not getting better results for our children.
That's because the machine that runs the K-12 education system isn't designed to produce better schools. It's designed to produce more money for unions and more donations for politicians...
Updated! Why Chicago Teachers Are Striking
Despite an Offered 16 percent Raise Over Four Years
Nick Gillespie - Reason.com
Update: Read this story about how the 45,000 kids in Chicago's charter schoolsare still going to school even as their counterparts in traditional public schools are cooling their heels as teachers strike.
As Reason 24/7 notes, Chicago's teachers are on strike. This, despite what seems like a pretty plum offer from city officials:
Chicago offered teachers raises of 3 percent this year and another 2 percent annually for the following three years, amounting to an average raise of 16 percent over the duration of the proposed contract, School Board President David Vitale said.
"This is not a small contribution we're making at a time when our financial situation is very challenging," he said.
Union: Chicago teachers to go on strike
By the CNN Wire Staff
(CNN) -- Tens of thousands of teachers and support staff in Chicago are set to go on strike Monday after their union and school officials failed to reach a contract agreement, the union president said.
"Negotiations have been intense but productive, but we have failed to reach an agreement that would prevent a labor strike," Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis told reporters late Sunday night.
Minutes earlier, the president of Chicago's school board said officials offered the city's teachers a contract including pay increases and other measures they'd requested.
Teachers strike expected to go into 2nd day
By Joel Hood and Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah - ChicagoTribune.com
Contract talks between Chicago's school board and its teachers union were locked in negotiations Monday evening, making it increasingly likely that the city's first teachers strike in a quarter century would go into a second day.
While thousands of teachers marched and picketed in front of schools across the city, negotiators from both sides met for on issues that have bogged down contract talks for months – teacher compensation, a re-hire pool for laid-off teachers and job evaluations.
Chicago teachers strike updates: 2nd day of strike likely
ChicagoTribune.com
Continual coverage of the Chicago teachers strike.
How the Market Can Cure the Health Care Crisis
w/Dr. Keith Smith!
The Student Loan Debt Bubble
Is Creating Millions Of Modern Day Serfs
By Michael Snyder - TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com
Every single year, millions of young adults head off to colleges and universities all over America full of hopes and dreams. But what most of those fresh-faced youngsters do not realize is that by taking on student loan debt they are signing up for a life of debt slavery. Student loan debt has become a trillion dollar bubble which has shattered the financial lives of tens of millions of young college graduates. When you are just starting out and you are not making a lot of money, having to make payments on tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt can be absolutely crippling. The total amount of student loan debt in the United States has now surpassed the total amount of credit card debt, and student loan debt is much harder to get rid of. Many young people view college as a "five year party", but when the party is over millions of those young people basically end up as modern day serfs as they struggle to pay off all of the debt that they have accumulated during their party years. Bankruptcy laws have been changed to make it incredibly difficult to get rid of student loan debt, so once you have it you are basically faced with two choices: either you are going to pay it or you are going to die with it.
Gerald Celente - Trends In The News -
"The Franz Roggen House!" - (9/6/12)
How to pick the right Apple iPhone 5 plan
By Kelli B. Grant - MarketWatch.com
Consumers who are counting down the hours until Apple announces its new iPhone may want to pause before they pre-order.
For fans, it's not a question of whether to buy—orders for each successive Apple iPhone have topped analyst expectations, and insiders say the iPhone 5 announcement expected Wednesday will be no different.
But the iPhone market has changed substantially in the year since the 4S came on the scene, which means consumers who want one may need to make a thorough assessment of their current plan and carrier before preordering. "Last time around, the big news was Sprint got the iPhone, and that widened the possibilities, but it was still pretty much the same phone, same networks, roughly similar pricing everywhere," says Eddie Hold, a vice president for market research firm NPD Group.
Apple Device IDs Leaked by Anonymous
Traced to App Developer Blue Toad
BY KIM ZETTER - Wired.com
Those Apple device IDs that an Anonymous offshoot claimed to have hacked from an FBI agent's computer in March appear to have actually originated just weeks ago from the hack of a little-known app development company in Florida.
Thanks to some stellar sleuthing by a computer security consultant, the source of the Apple device IDs leaked to the internet by AntiSec last week has been traced to an application developer called Blue Toad.
David Schuetz, a security consultant with Intrepidus Group, described his method for tracking the IDs to Blue Toad in a blog post on Monday.
Cellphone Tracking is Common and Policies Vary, Says ACLU
J.D. Tuccille - Reason.com
With headlinesabounding about the ease with which our activities and travels can be tracked via those handy, better-than-Star Trek-communicators devices we're so accustomed to toting around,it's worth giving some thought to just how likely it is that our personal cellphones are beng used to snitch on us. Fortunately, the American Civil Liberties Union is doing the hard work of contacting law-enforcement agencies around the country to determine what policies they have in place, and the frequency with which they implement those policies to plot our movements on the map like so many migrating wildebeest. Speaking of maps, the ACLU has an interactive map by which you can find the responses received so far to their queries — and some of those answers are doozies.
How Anonymous plans to use DNS as a weapon
An Anonymous threat to take down the global Domain Name Service may have been …
by Sean Gallagher - Mar 8 2012 - ArsTechnica.com
After engaging in a recent rash of attacks in retaliation for the takedown of file-sharing site Megaupload, the Anonymous denial of service "cannons" have been firing considerably fewer shells of late.
While Anonymous group members managed to take down Interpol's website on February 28 (largely by using a Web version of their "Low Orbit Ion Cannon" denial of service tool) and have defaced a number of vulnerable sites (including, most recently, sites belonging to Panda Security), threats to take down bigger targets have failed to materialize. What some believed to be the group's boldest plan yet—an effort to bring down the Internet's entire Domain Name System (DNS)—is now being called a "troll" by members of the group.
Go Daddy-service Web sites taken down in apparent attack
One hacker claims responsibility for the outage affecting sites for which Go Daddy provides hosting and DNS services.
by Elinor Mills - CNet.com
Web sites serviced by DNS and hosting provider Go Daddy were down for most of today, but were back up later this afternoon. A hacker using the "Anonymous Own3r" Twitter account claimed credit for the outage.
"Things are restored," Go Daddy spokeswoman Elizabeth Driscoll told CNET just before 5 p.m. PT today. She said she did not have many details and was hoping to be able to give an update with more information in the next 24 hours.
GoDaddy Outage Takes Down Millions Of Sites,
Anonymous Member Claims Responsibility
By KLINT FINLEY - TechCrunch.com
According to many customers, sites hosted by major web host and domain registrar GoDaddy are down. According to the official GoDaddy Twitter account the company is aware of the issue and is working to resolve it. Update: customers are complaining that GoDaddy hosted e-mail accounts are down as well, along with GoDaddy phone service and all sites using GoDaddy's DNS service.
Update 2: Anonymous is claiming responsibility. A member of Anonymous known as AnonymousOwn3r is claiming responsibility, and makes it clear this is not an Anonymous collective action.
GoDaddy Goes Down After Apparent DNS Server Outage
BY ROBERT MCMILLAN - Wired.com
Many users of GoDaddy's web hosting services found their websites down and their e-mail not going through on Monday afternoon, apparently following a failure of the company's Domain Name Service servers.
GoDaddy announced the problems around 11 a.m. Pacific with a short Twitter message, saying: "We're aware of the trouble people are having with our site. We're working on it."
At the same time, posters to the Outages mailing list were reporting that GoDaddy's DNS servers — the computers that tell, among other things, internet browsers where to find web servers — had been knocked offline.
Amid Outage, GoDaddy Moves DNS to Competitor VeriSign
BY ROBERT MCMILLAN - Wired.com
Following a day-long Domain Name Service server outage, web hosting provider GoDaddy is letting its competitor, VeriSign, host its DNS servers.
On Monday afternoon — about four hours after it was knocked offline — GoDaddy's administrators made a change to the company's DNS records, indicating that they were shifting control of the servers from GoDaddy to VeriSign.
GoDaddy has not explained the source of its widespread outage which knocked websites and e-mail users offline Monday. "We are experiencing intermittent outages. This is impacting our site and some customers' sites," GoDaddy said in a note sent to customers Monday. "The issue started shortly after 10am PDT."
GoDaddy outage makes websites unavailable
for many Internet users (Updated)
There's no evidence to support claims the outage is caused by Anonymous hackers.
by Dan Goodin - ArsTechnica.com
GoDaddy, one of the Internet's biggest webhosting providers, experienced technical difficulties on Monday that prevented many people from visiting sites that relied on the service for connectivity.
A little after 5 p.m. California time on Monday, company officials took to Twitter to say the outage was mostly resolved.
"Most customer hosted sites back online," the dispatch stated. "We're working out the last few kinks for our site & control centers. No customer data compromised."
Mystery Google Device Appears in Small-Town Iowa
BY CADE METZ - Wired.com
Photos of the mystery computing device appeared on the web in late February. Taken with a smartphone, they were a bit washed out and a little blurry in places, but you could easily read the name printed on the long, thin piece of hardware. "Pluto Switch," the label said.
The images were posted by two men who said the device had unexpectedly turned up at a branch office in the tiny farmland town of Shelby, Iowa — population: 641 — and they were hoping someone could tell them what it was.
Clearly, these two men were familiar with the ins and outs of computer networking, and clearly, this was a networking switch, a way of shuttling data between machines. But they'd never heard of the Pluto Switch, and it was littered with networking ports they'd never seen before. "Any ideas?" they asked. "The writing on the back is Finnish."
Intel and AMD Follow in Footsteps of Mysterious Google Switch
BY ROBERT MCMILLAN - Wired.com
The mysterious Pluto Switch has shone a light on Google's mysterious data centers, but there's another way to look at this networking device from another planet. Take it as a sign of how the complex computer systems that power everything from Gmail to Apple's iCloud are being remade to handle the massive bunches of data caroming around today's internet.
When you're adding servers by the truckload and those devices are spending most of their time talking to each other, you get a pretty clear idea of what you need a networking switch to do, and long ago, Google realized it had to build its own. And the general-purpose gear sold by the Ciscos and Junipers of the world simply wasn't cutting it.
The real Angry Birds remember you...
Crows react to threats in human-like way:
Neural basis of crows' knack for face recognition
(Phys.org)—Cross a crow and it'll remember you for years. Crows and humans share the ability to recognize faces and associate them with negative, as well as positive, feelings. The way the brain activates during that process is something the two species also appear to share, according to new research being published this week.
"The regions of the crow brain that work together are not unlike those that work together in mammals, including humans," said John Marzluff, University of Washington professor of environmental and forest sciences. "These regions were suspected to work in birds but not documented until now.
Chris Hedges Warns of Authoritarian Takeover
Alex talks with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and war correspondent Chris Hedges. "Revolt is all we have left. It is our only hope," Hedges recently wrote.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
By Chuck Baldwin - NewsWithViews.com
Believe it or not, I was thinking that my column of two weeks ago was my last column in which I would focus on Congressman Ron Paul--that was before the Republican National Convention in Tampa took place. I have never seen such a disgusting display of chicanery and duplicity in all of my life. So, in spite of the fact that I have written so much about The Greatest Congressman In US History (my title for Ron Paul), here I go again.
First, a report on Paul Fest: I was honored to be one of the featured speakers for the event, which drew thousands of Ron Paul supporters from all over the country. I was able to meet and speak with hundreds of these wonderful people, as they came up to me before and after I spoke.
The True History of Simpson-Bowles
Paul Ryan didn't kill the deficit commission,
which dodged the biggest issues.
Opinion - WSJ.com
One of the many ways Paul Ryan scandalized the media-political class in his Tampa convention speech was to criticize President Obama for walking away from the report of his own 2010 deficit commission co-chaired by Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson.
How dare the upstart Republican blister Mr. Obama when Mr. Ryan himself refused to endorse the final product! Mr. Ryan even had the impudence to say that Mr. Obama "did exactly nothing" as a result of Simpson-Bowles or Mr. Ryan's own budget proposals or any others, "nothing except to dodge and demagogue the issue."
Takes one to know one...
Kochsare hugh beneficiaries of crony capitalism
Charles G. Koch: Corporate Cronyism Harms America
When businesses feed at the federal trough, they threaten public support for business and free markets.
By CHARLES G. KOCH - WSJ.com
"We didn't build this business—somebody else did."
So reads a sign outside a small roadside craft store in Utah. The message is clearly tongue-in-cheek. But if it hung next to the corporate offices of some of our nation's big financial institutions or auto makers, there would be no irony in the message at all.
It shouldn't surprise us that the role of American business is increasingly vilified or viewed with skepticism. In a Rasmussen poll conducted this year, 68% of voters said they "believe government and big business work together against the rest of us."
WHY CRONYISM IS ALWAYS BAD
By John Hinderaker - PowerLineBlog.com
In today's Wall Street Journal, Charles Koch explains concisely why corporate cronyism, a hallmark of the Obama administration, is bad–not just when it's the other side's cronies, but bad, period:
"We didn't build this business—somebody else did."
So reads a sign outside a small roadside craft store in Utah. The message is clearly tongue-in-cheek. But if it hung next to the corporate offices of some of our nation's big financial institutions or auto makers, there would be no irony in the message at all.
It shouldn't surprise us that the role of American business is increasingly vilified or viewed with skepticism. In a Rasmussen poll conducted this year, 68% of voters said they "believe government and big business work together against the rest of us."
National Conventions: It's My Party and I'll Lie If I Want To
BY DAVID ZEILER, Associate Editor, Money Morning
Now that both the Republican and Democratic national conventions are over, one key question remains: Which side has the best liars?
If America's two major political parties have anything in common, it's the ability to fold, twist and mutilate the facts of any given subject.
Almost every speaker at both national conventions did their utmost to uphold this ignoble tradition of American politics.
When the media called several GOP speakers on their political lies, a pollster for GOP candidate Mitt Romney, Neil Newhouse, responded with what may have been the most truthful words spoken by any political figure over the past two weeks:
"We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers."
Chicago tops nation in travel tax burden
For an average visit to downtown Chicago, a traveler will pay about $40.31 in combined taxes per day, a study finds. Three Florida cities tied for lowest cost.
By Hugo Martín, Los Angeles Times - via ChicagoTribune.com
Chicago, the city that brought us deep-dish pizza, Oprah and "da Bears," is also home to the nation's highest tax burden for travelers.
The lowest taxes imposed on travelers can be found in the Florida cities of Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers and West Palm Beach.
Those are among the findings of new research by the GBTA Foundation, the education and research arm of the Global Business Travel Assn., a trade group for travel managers.
Why General Motors Loses $49,000 on Every Volt
GM's Volt: The Ugly Math of Low Sales, High Costs
Reuters - CNBC.com
General Motors Co sold a record number of Chevrolet Volt sedans in August - but that probably isn't a good thing for the automaker's bottom line.
Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts.
Cheap Volt lease offers meant to drive more customers to Chevy showrooms this summer may have pushed that loss even higher. There are some Americans paying just $5,050 to drive around for two years in a vehicle that cost as much as $89,000 to produce.
Watch Darpa's Robotic Dog Follow Its Master
By Robert Beckhusen - Wired.com
Previously we've seen AlphaDog, Darpa's four-legged, autonomous robot wander the woods and play fetch. Now the Pentagon's robo-beast, designed to haul supplies in rough terrain, has become smart enough to follow troops around like a loyal pet.
In the video above, released on Monday by Darpa, the AlphaDog – known as the LS3 or Legged Squad Support System – climbs rocks and trots after a soldier through wooded terrain. "We have been conducting tests to check out its mobility, perception and autonomy, and human-machine interaction," Lt. Col. Joe Hitt, Darpa's program manager, tells Danger Room. And a lot of what the robot is doing looks familiar. The machine, designed by Boston Dynamics, can stand upright, walk for 20 miles without a break and carry up to 400 pounds.
DARPA Legged Squad Support System (LS3)
Demonstrates New Capabilities
This video depicts field testing of the DARPA Legged Squad Support System (LS3). The goal of the LS3 program is to demonstrate that a legged robot can unburden dismounted squad members by carrying their gear, autonomously following them through rugged terrain, and interpreting verbal and visual commands.
Pigskin Progressivism
By George Will - PatriotPost.us
WASHINGTON -- With two extravagant entertainments under way, it is instructive to note the connection between the presidential election and the college football season: Barack Obama represents progressivism, a doctrine whose many blemishes on American life include universities as football factories, which progressivism helped to create.
Higher education embraced athletics in the first half of the 19th century, when most colleges were denominational and most instruction was considered mental and moral preparation for a small minority -- clergy and other professionals. Physical education had nothing to do with spectator sports entertaining people from outside the campus community. Rather, it was individual fitness -- especially gymnastics -- for the moral and pedagogic purposes of muscular Christianity -- mens sana in corpora sano, a sound mind in a sound body.
Mitt Romney and America's Four Deficits
By Laura Tyson - Project-Syndicate.org
BERKELEY – The United States is beset by four deficits: a fiscal deficit, a jobs deficit, a deficit in public investment, and an opportunity deficit. The budget proposals put forward by presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, could reduce the fiscal deficit, but would exacerbate the other three.
To be sure, Romney and Ryan have failed to provide specifics about how they would reduce the fiscal deficit, relying on "trust me" assertions. But the overarching direction of their proposals is clear: more tax cuts, disproportionately benefiting those at the top, coupled with significantly lower non-defense discretionary spending, disproportionately hurting everybody else – and weakening the economy's growth prospects.
OPEC has Probably Deceived Us
About the Size of its Oil Reserves
By Kurt Cobb - OilPrice.com
Has OPEC misled us about the size of its oil reserves? The short answer is probably. The long answer is that currently, there is no way to know for sure.
The next question we should ask is: Does it matter? The answer is most definitely yes. OPEC, short for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, currently claims that its 12 members hold 81.3% of the world's oil reserves. And, with few exceptions the world believes them. Trouble is these reserves "are not verified by independent auditors," according to a study (PDF) done by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan investigative arm of the U.S. Congress. OPEC reserves are simply self-reported by each country. Essentially, OPEC's members are asking us to take their word for it. But should we?
The Implications of Saudi Arabia becoming a Net Oil Importer
By Ian Nunn - OilPrice.com
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, wrote last week in The Telegraph, Saudi oil well dries up. He presented the following chart of projected Saudi oil consumption, vertical bars, and production, dark blue line. [See chart]
By these estimates, in 2022, Saudi Arabia will no longer be supplying oil into global demand but will be competing in global demand for foreign oil. Long before we reach the trade-off point, however, certain exigencies will emerge.
First consider the area on the chart between the two curves. This area is highly correlated to their balance of trade and their foreign exchange reserve acquisition. The website Suite 101 states that [t]he petroleum sector accounts for more than 90% of the Middle Eastern country's exports. If the two curves are at all representational of what is to come, then it should be noted that they are exponential. The implication is the positive Saudi economic position is decreasing exponentially, doubly so between two diverging exponential trend lines. After 2022, their economic position will deteriorate at the same exponential rate.
Wind Energy Could Meet Global Power Demand 100 Times Over
By James Burgess - OilPrice.com
A new study by the Carnegie Institute and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has discovered that wind power could easily meet the entire planets energy needs.
They study determined to find the geophysical limits of wind power, how much is physically possible before the turbines use up all wind energy in the world. They used computer models to calculate the amount of power that could be generated by wind energy at low altitude (land-based, and offshore turbines) and high altitude (upper atmosphere turbines using kite technology), and also the potential impacts on the climate.
Giant 'balloon of magma'
inflates under Greece's Santorini volcano
Phys.org
A new survey suggests that the chamber of molten rock beneath Santorini's volcano expanded 10-20 million cubic metres – up to 15 times the size of London's Olympic Stadium – between January 2011 and April 2012.
The growth of this 'balloon' of magma has seen the surface of the island rise 8-14 centimetres during this period, a team led by Oxford University scientists has found. The results come from an expedition, funded by the UK's Natural Environment Research Council, which used satellite radar images and Global Positioning System receivers (GPS) that can detect movements of the Earth's surface of just a few millimetres.
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