Going Green for Life

[roeoz] sleepwalking into an oil price trap

2011-01-26T11:03:00.001-08:00

Australia is sleepwalking into an oil price trap

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/rapl

Dr Michelle Zeibots, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney, writes:

CRUDE OIL SUPPLIES, CURRENT OIL PRICES, ELECTRICITY PRICING, GAS, PETROL PRICES, RENEWABLE ENERGY

It's happening again. Petrol prices are rising and the question on everyone's mind is how high will they go this time?

Memories of the brief period in mid-2008, when Singapore Tapis hit $US150 a barrel and Sydney petrol prices soared to $1.60 a litre, still make most people nervous.

Australia sources its oil imports from South-East Asia where prices are measured by Singapore Tapis. Most news outlets quote the West Texas Indicator (WTI), which applies to the US domestic oil market and doesn't always reflect Australian prices. The WTI is usually lower than Tapis by a few dollars. But when global supply becomes tight and struggles to keep up with demand, the difference widens to about $US10 a barrel. This happened just before the 2008 price spike. The gap is now at $US11.

Fear of another price hike is entirely reasonable. All the easy, cheap and quick-to-get-at oil is gone and we're not discovering new reserves at a rate fast enough to replace consumption. Geology is catching up with us.

Canberra has been quiet. It's just business as usual, with no evident plan to meet the gathering crisis. While the inaction continues, we're sleepwalking into a trap -- a vicious cycle of price spikes that damage the parts of the economy unable to adapt, followed by the collapse of its weakest links so that prices fall. As parts of the economy recover, the whole nasty cycle begins again. For big inefficient consumers, the cycle leads to a process economists call demand destruction, which should be avoided by well-planned transition strategies.

In the short-term, how high Australian petrol prices will climb depends on two things -- the strength of the Chinese economy and whether the US continues to recover or is pushed back into recession by rising oil prices.

The fundamental dynamics work like this: our petrol prices depend on the strength of the Aussie dollar against other currencies and for that we depend on the strength of the Chinese economy. China's growth provides a hungry market for Australian coal, gas and mineral exports, providing us with a steady income that keeps our dollar strong. This holds down pump prices by comparison with other countries.

Our petrol prices are also affected by what happens to the American economy. As the US attempts to claw its way out of recession, its demand for oil will increase, driving up global prices. The US is dependent on imports for about 60% of its domestic consumption. If the US economy recovers and grows, there'll be more competition for oil on the open markets of South-East Asia that we rely on for the 40% we currently import to make up the rapidly growing shortfall between domestic production and consumption.

So if the US recovers, we could see 2008 prices return. Alternately, if the US economy stumbles, global prices won't increase by so much. They may even fall like they did by the close of 2008 when the Tapis dropped to $US50 a barrel. Back then, demand collapsed as thousands of American households defaulted on their mortgages because of higher food and fuel prices. Cash flows were interrupted, industries went under and unemployment rose. If this happens again, domestic petrol prices in Australia will be more affordable. But relying on the economic demise of others to keep petrol prices low at home isn't really good news.

The long-term outlook is less clear because the potential for volatility is so great. Within five years we'll be importing about 60% of domestic oil consumption making us more vulnerable.

What we can be certain of is the less oil we use, the less vulnerable we'll be. About 72% of crude oil products consumed in Australia are eaten up by transport, 62% of which is for private cars.

A sound transition strategy for the next decade would see us using more gas in the short term and far more electrified transport in the longer term. While our oil reserves are starting to run low, gas is in better shape. But like oil, gas is a finite resource. Electricity can come from many sources, including renewables, but it's likely to cost more in the future so we have to find demand-side efficiencies, pointing to a bigger role for electrified public transport, walking and cycling.

We also need to be more discriminating about where we deploy investment capital. Urban motorway and tollway development needs to be dumped in exchange for all those public transport projects the community has been calling for.

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Iran not working on bomb: Israel intelligence head

2011-01-25T20:39:00.000-08:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110125/wl_mideast_afp/israelirannuclearpolitics

Iran not working on bomb: Israel intelligence head

Jan 25, 2011

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Iran is not currently working on producing a nuclear weapon but could make one within "a year or two" of taking such a decision, Israel's military intelligence chief said on Tuesday.

"The question is not when Iran will acquire the bomb, but how long until the leader decides to begin enriching (uranium) at 90 percent," Brigadier General Aviv Kochavi told parliament's foreign affairs and defence committee in his first briefing since taking up the role in November.

Once such a decision is made, it would take "a year or two" to produce a nuclear warhead, he said, adding that Iran would then need more time to develop an effective missile delivery system for it.

Kochavi said it was unlikely that Iran, which currently enriches uranium to 20 percent, would start enriching it to the 90 percent level needed for a bomb, because it would be in open breach of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty exposing it to harsher sanctions or even a US or Israeli military strike.

He said Iran was reluctant to do this at a time when the country was going through a period of "instability" and "religious tension."

"At the moment, it's not in Iran's interest to move their programme ahead," he told the committee.

Recently, several senior Israeli officials, including the former head of the Mossad overseas intelligence agency, Meir Dagan, have said that Iran is unlikely to acquire nuclear weapons before 2015.

The comments have come amid reports that Israel was involved in a plot to sabotage Iran's nuclear programme through a destructive computer worm called Stuxnet.

Israel, which has the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear arsenal, regards Iran as its principal threat, after repeated predictions by its hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the Jewish state's demise.

Along with many Western governments, Israel suspects Iran of trying to develop atomic weapons under cover of a civilian nuclear programme -- a charge Tehran denies.

Israel has backed the US policy of leading efforts at the Security Council for tougher UN sanctions against Iran while remaining open to dialogue.

But it has refused to rule out a resort to military action to stop Iran developing a weapons capability.

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[roeoz] utter hypocrisy : Clinton warns Hezbollah-backed government may alter U.S. ties with Lebanon

2011-01-25T20:33:00.000-08:00

http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/clinton-warns-hezbollah-backed-government-may-alter-u-s-ties-with-lebanon-1.339180

Clinton warns Hezbollah-backed government may alter U.S. ties with Lebanon

White House accuses Hezbollah of using 'coercion, intimidation, threats of violence' to achieve its political goals, after its candidate was tapped as Lebanon's new PM-designate.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday that a Hezbollah-dominated government in Lebanon would affect the country's relations with the United States, which regards Hezbollah as a terrorist group.

Hezbollah is on the official U.S. blacklist of terrorist groups, a designation that carries various financial and travel restrictions.

"A Hezbollah-controlled government would clearly have an impact on our bilateral relationship with Lebanon," Clinton told reporters in an appearance with Spain's visiting foreign minister.

"Our bottom lines remain as they always have been," Clinton said. "We believe that justice must be pursued and impunity for murder ended. We believe in Lebanon's sovereignty and an end to outside interference."

The White House on Tuesday accused the Shi'ite Muslim group of using "coercion, intimidation and threats of violence" to achieve its political goals and said the country's new government must abide by the Lebanese constitution and renounce violence.

Clinton said Washington was monitoring moves to form a new government in Lebanon, where Hezbollah-backed politician Najib Mikati has been named prime minister in a move that shifts the balance of power in the country toward Iran and Syria.

"As we see what this new government does, we will judge it accordingly," Clinton said.

Hezbollah's enhanced political strength appears likely to alarm Israel, Washington's chief ally in the region, which in 2006 fought a five-week war in a failed effort to destroy the Iran-backed movement's formidable military capacity.

U.S. officials said earlier this month that Lebanon's political turmoil would not trigger an immediate cut in U.S. aid to the Lebanese Armed Forces, but suggested that the ties would come under speedy review.

Clinton has accused Hezbollah, whose decision to pull out of a coalition toppled the government of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, with attempting to subvert justice before expected indictments against the group over the February 2005 killing of his father, Rafik.

U.S. officials have also accused the movement of seeking to advance the interests of Iran.

"It is hard to imagine any government that is truly representative of all of Lebanon would abandon the effort to end the era of impunity for assassinations in the country. In the meantime, we call on all parties to maintain calm," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement.

The United States ramped up assistance to Lebanon's military after the 2006 war with Israel and has given the Lebanese Armed Forces an estimated e650 million to pay for such things as helicopter maintenance, weapons and ammunition, night-vision goggles and anti-tank missiles.

In a country with a long history of sectarian militias, the United States also hoped to help professionalize the army, reinforce the concept of civilian control of the military and, diminish the influence of Hezbollah's forces -- all goals that look harder to achieve following the latest political crisis.

Republicans, who following November elections have taken control of the House of Representatives, have already pledged to examine U.S. aid for Lebanon more closely.

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[roeoz] Why hasn't Earth warmed as much as expected? New report explores reasons

2010-01-21T15:09:00.000-08:00

Jan. 21, 2010
Why hasn't Earth warmed as much as expected? New report explores reasons
*By **Vince Stricherz*
News and Information

Earth has warmed much less than expected during the industrial era based
on current best estimates of Earth's "climate sensitivity" -- the amount
of global temperature increase expected in response to a given rise in
atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide.

In a study published online on Jan. 19 in the /Journal of Climate/,
Stephen Schwartz of Brookhaven National Laboratory, Robert Charlson of
the UW and colleagues examine the reasons for this discrepancy.

According to current best estimates of climate sensitivity, the amount
of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases added to Earth's
atmosphere since humanity began burning fossil fuels on a significant
scale during the industrial period would be expected to result in a mean
global temperature rise of 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit. That is much more
than the 1.4 degrees F. increase that has been observed for this time span.

"The data show that either we have 40 years of emissions left before the
atmosphere can't absorb any more carbon dioxide, or we're already past
the point of no return. In other words, the uncertainty rate is
unacceptably high," said Charlson, a UW atmospheric sciences professor
who in the 1960s invented a device called the integrating nephelometer
to measure atmospheric haze particles, producing data that is still used
in climate models today.

The new analysis attributes the reasons for the discrepancy between
projected and actual temperature increase to a possible mix of two major
factors: Earth's climate may be less sensitive to rising greenhouse
gases than currently assumed and/or reflection of sunlight by haze
particles in the atmosphere may be offsetting some of the expected warming.

"Because of present uncertainties in climate sensitivity and the
enhanced reflectivity of haze particles," said Schwartz, "it is
impossible to accurately assign weights to the relative contributions of
these two factors. This has major implications for understanding Earth's
climate and how the world will meet its future energy needs."

A third possible reason for the lower-than-expected increase of Earth's
temperature over the industrial period is the slow response of
temperature to the warming influence of heat-trapping gases.

"This is much like the lag time you experience when heating a pot of
water on a stove," said Schwartz. Based on calculations using
measurements of the increase in ocean heat content over the past 50
years, however, the present study found the role of so-called thermal
lag to be minor.

A key question facing policymakers is how much additional carbon dioxide
and other heat-trapping gases can be introduced into the atmosphere,
beyond what is already present, without committing the planet to a
dangerous level of human interference with the climate system. Many
scientists and policymakers consider the threshold for such dangerous
interference to be an increase in global temperature of 3.6 degrees F
above the preindustrial level, although no single threshold would
encompass all effects.

The paper describes three scenarios. If Earth's climate sensitivity is
at the /low end /of current estimates as given by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, then the total maximum future emissions of
heat-trapping gases so as not to exceed the 3.6-degree threshold would
correspond to about 35 years of present annual emissions of carbon
dioxide from fossil-fuel combustion. A climate sensitivity consistent
with the present best estimate would mean that no more heat-trapping
gases can be added to the atmosphere without committing the planet to
exceeding the threshold. And if the sensitivity is at the /high end /of
current estimates, present atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping
gases are such that the planet is already committed to warming that
substantially exceeds the 3.6-degree threshold.

The authors emphasize the need to quantify the influences of haze
particles to narrow the uncertainty in Earth's climate sensitivity. The
task is much more difficult than quantifying the influences of
heat-trapping gases, said Charlson, who likens the focus on
heat-trapping gases to "looking for the lost key under the lamppost."

Schwartz observes that formulating energy policy with the present
uncertainty in climate sensitivity is like navigating a large ship in
perilous waters without charts. "We know we have to change the course of
this ship, and we know the direction of the change, but we don't know
how much we need to change the course or how soon we have to do it."

"These results do not in any way reduce or remove the need for solid
action now to move toward a zero-carbon dioxide-emission economy. The
results tell us that doing our utmost now might work very well if the
most optimistic values of sensitivity are real, but that it is possible
that nothing will work no matter how hard we try," Charlson said.

"If we do not reduce uncertainties, we will be in the same boat 10 or 20
years from now as we are today," he said.

Schwartz and Charlson coauthored the paper with Ralph Kahn, NASA Goddard
Space Flight Center in Maryland; John Ogren, NOAA Earth System Research
Laboratory in Colorado; and Henning Rodhe, Stockholm University.

The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.

[roeoz] Surge in inflation set to trouble Bank of England

2010-01-21T14:00:00.000-08:00

Surge in inflation set to trouble Bank of England

Inflation is now at a nine-month high and has moved substantially above the Bank of England's target level of 2%

Inflation surged in December. Photo: David Sillitoe

The rate of inflation jumped by a record amount in December, approaching the level at which Bank of England governor Mervyn King would have to write his sixth letter to chancellor Alistair Darling, explaining why inflation has crashed through the 3% threshold.

Official figures today showed the annual rate of consumer prices inflation (CPI) jumped to 2.9% in December, up from 1.9% the month before in the biggest rise since records began in 1997. Analysts had forecast an increase to 2.6%.

The Office for National Statistics said the increase was mainly due to the effects of last year's sharp falls in oil prices dropping out of the figures and VAT rising back to 17.5%, from 15%.

Describing the figure as "a very nasty shock", Howard Archer, chief UK economist at research group IHS Global Insight said even allowing for the unfavourable statistical distortions coming from sharply falling oil prices a year ago and the December 2008 VAT cut, the data "will not go down at all well at the Bank of England".

Inflation is now at a nine-month high and has moved substantially above the Bank of England's target level of 2%.

If CPI rises above 3%, King will have to write a letter to the chancellor explaining why. "Indeed, it now seems a stone dead certainty that Bank of England governor Mervyn King will be writing a 'Dear Chancellor' letter next month to explain why consumer price inflation in January rose more than one percentage point above its target level and what the Bank of England is doing about it," Archer said.

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said the figures were almost certainly a "temporary spike". "With inflation expected to fall quickly, it seems unlikely that the Bank of England would want to raise interest rates in the near future. Any recovery in the economy is still very fragile, it would be all too easy to destroy it by putting the brakes on too soon."

But he cautioned that the Bank still needed to be "acutely aware" of the longer term inflationary dangers.

"With the world economy improving at a much quicker rate than the UK, there is a danger that high food and energy prices could hit our economy before it has had a chance to recover," he said.

Inflation measured by the retail prices index, which includes housing costs and is used as the basis for many pay deals, jumped to an annual rate of 2.4%, from 0.3% the previous month. It was the highest rate since November 2008.

Sterling hit a four-month high against the euro, with the pound at €1.14½.

Mark O'Sullivan, director of dealing at foreign exchange firm Currencies Direct, said: "The current sterling rally looks like it may have the potential to move higher over the coming weeks.

"Although there are still considerable worries concerning the UK, both in its fiscal position and potential change of government, there is no doubt that January has proved the month to be long on sterling."

British Telelcom blown away

2009-02-22T16:57:00.000-08:00

British Telelcom blown away

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article5733521.ece
Blown away
Jonathan Leake and Joseph Dunn, The Sunday Times, 15 Feb 2009
ONE of Britain's biggest privately funded eco-projects could be on the verge of collapse. British Telecom said last week that it was preparing to pull the plug on a £250m plan to build electricity-generating wind farms because of a rule change by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).
BT, whose shares hit a record low in trading last week, planned to build 100 turbines on 20-30 sites in England and Scotland capable of generating 25% of its power needs. At a cost of £250m it represented the biggest investment in renewable energy by any British company apart from energy businesses.

But last week the scheme was in disarray, with BT and the government each blaming the other for the impending collapse. BT claims that new rules make the project unviable and that the government is now in effect discouraging companies from switching to renewable energy.

At the root of the dispute is a row over government-issued credits called Renewable Obligation Certificates (Rocs).

"Overall, we support what the government is trying to do to promote energy efficiency, but the ruling on Rocs means there is no sense in us building wind turbines," said Chris Tup-pen, BT's chief sustainability officer. "It is a perverse ruling that will also affect a number of other big businesses that are trying to act responsibly.

"We planned to build wind turbines that would generate a quarter of BT's electricity by 2016. Without the subsidy that will not go ahead."

A spokesman for the DECC blamed the problem on BT's plans to profit from the wind farms by selling electricity and reducing its CO2 footprint at the same time as claiming subsidies, thus "having its cake and eating it".

"It's an accounting thing but it's very important," a government spokesman said. "We have to be very tough on it. The Roc is not a subsidy. If you sell the energy to the National Grid it is used to offset the grid's emissions. You can't both claim the money and use it to offset the company's own emissions. That's double accounting."

Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change secretary, is expected to announce a consultation on its so-called carbon-reduction commitment (CRC) – the scheme that blocks BT from claiming credits at the same time as counting its green energy against its CO2 footprint – in late spring. BT and other firms are already lobbying to block it or change it.

Among them is Tesco, which is becoming increasingly interested in renewable-energy generation. David North, community and government director at Tesco, said: "I can see why the civil servants see this as double counting but the effect is to hold up renewable-energy initiatives. The government needs to find a way around this, perhaps by creating other incentives to help companies that are not power generators or other large fossil fuel users to switch to renewable energy."

So where did it all go wrong? Hailed as an example of how businesses and government could work together to reduce carbon emissions, BT's wind-power project was welcomed by the government when it was revealed two years ago. But the row now illustrates the fiendish complexity of the subsidy regimes devised to encourage the expansion of renewable-energy generation.

Rocs are issued by Ofgem, the energy regulator, to companies that produce green energy and can be sold on to third parties such as power generators, who have to prove – via the Rocs – that they gain a percentage of their power from renewable sources.

By selling the Roc, a company such as BT in effect gains a government subsidy on its green power. The government says BT is not entitled to that subsidy if it also exploits the fact that it produces renewable energy to reduce its overall carbon footprint.

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

UK's ex-science chief predicts century of 'resource' wars

2009-02-22T16:33:00.000-08:00

UK's ex-science chief predicts century of 'resource' wars

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/13/resource-wars-david-king
UK's ex-science chief predicts century of 'resource' wars
James Randerson, The Guardian, 13 Feb 2009
The Iraq war was just the first of this century's "resource wars", in which powerful countries use force to secure valuable commodities, according to the UK government's former chief scientific adviser. Sir David King predicts that with population growth, natural resources dwindling, and seas rising due to climate change, the squeeze on the planet will lead to more conflict.
"Future historians might look back on our particular recent past and see the Iraq war as the first of the conflicts of this kind - the first of the resource wars," he told an audience of 400 in London as he delivered the British Humanist Association's Darwin Day lecture.

Implicitly rejecting the US and British governments' claim they went to war to remove Saddam Hussein and search for weapons of mass destruction, he said the US had in reality been very concerned about energy security and supply, because of its reliance on foreign oil from unstable states. "Casting its eye around the world - there was Iraq," he said.

This strategy could also be used to find and keep supplies of other essentials, such as minerals, water and fertile land, he added. "Unless we get to grips with this problem globally, we potentially are going to lead ourselves into a situation where large, powerful nations will secure resources for their own people at the expense of others."

King was the UK government's chief scientific adviser in the run-up to the start of Iraq war in March 2003, but said he did not express his view of its true motivation to Tony Blair. "It was certainly the view that I held at the time, and I think it is fair to say a view that quite a few people in government held," said King, who is now director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University.

However, before the war loomed he had made an effort to persuade the Bush administration to adopt more climate-friendly policies. "I went into the White House in 2001 to persuade them that de-carbonising their economy was the way forward. I didn't get much shrift at that time. What I can tell you is that, if I had managed to persuade the government of America that investing (instead of going into Iraq) in de-carbonising their economy with roughly a tenth of [the estimated $3 trillion the US spent on the war], they would have managed it."

Commenting on the idea of "resource wars", Alex Evans, of the Centre for International Co-operation at New York University, who last month wrote a report on food security for the Chatham House thinktank, said he believed King was right, but overly pessimistic. "You always get conflict over the allocation of scarce resources," he said. "The question is whether it is violent conflict ... If the political system can't cope, that's when it gets violent."

King's lecture - Can British Science Rise to the Challenges of the 21st Century? - also warned politicians not to allow the financial crisis to distract them from tackling climate change. "I would like to see [in] every speech Gordon Brown makes on the fiscal crisis, that he also includes the global warming crisis," he said, but added: "It's fine for the prime minister to make a good speech on climate change, but you need all members of the cabinet, because reducing carbon by 80% by 2050 will require every part of government to respond."

King summed up by saying that with growing population and dwindling resources, fundamental changes to the global economy and society were necessary. "Consumerism has been a wonderful model for growing up economies in the 20th century. Is that model fit for purpose in the 21st century, when resource shortage is our biggest challenge?"

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

U.S. Gas Production Seen Sliding for 4 Years

2009-02-21T22:22:00.000-08:00

U.S. Gas Production Seen Sliding for 4 Years

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=anyXBvUCQa_M&refer=energy
U.S. Gas Production Seen Sliding for 4 Years: Chart of the Day

By Joe Carroll
Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. production of natural gas, the most widely used furnace fuel in the world's largest economy, may tumble through 2012 as low prices prompt producers to shut down drilling rigs from Louisiana to the Rocky Mountains.

The CHART OF THE DAY shows the relationship between reductions in drilling by U.S. energy companies and output from gas wells. The red line shows the number of rigs drilling for gas in the U.S., as tracked by Baker Hughes Inc. In 2001-02, the so-called rig count declined for nine months in a row. Gas production, shown in white, declined for the next four years and didn't return to the 2001 level until 2007.

Energy companies probably will slash onshore U.S. gas drilling to 800 or 900 rigs this year from a peak of 1,606 in 2008 after prices for the fuel plunged 70 percent from their 2008 high, said Keith Hutton, chief executive officer at Fort Worth, Texas-based producer XTO Energy Inc. As a result, gas output probably will decline by 3 percent to 5 percent in 2009, Hutton told investors on a conference call yesterday.

Idling rigs slows new discoveries and prevents companies from offsetting output declines that average 30 percent a year from established wells, Hutton said.

"If your underlying decline rate is 30 percent and you drop your rig count in half, it's hard as hell to catch back up," said Hutton, 50. "If you start picking rig count up 10 or 15 percent a year and it takes you three or four years to get back to the old rig count, you're going to decline almost the entire time. We're set for falling gas production for quite awhile here."

London-based BP Plc is the largest producer of U.S. gas, followed by Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy Corp. and ConocoPhillips of Houston, according to the Natural Gas Supply Association in Washington.

To contact the reporter on this story: Joe Carroll in Chicago at jcarroll8@bloomberg.net.

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

Brzezinski Warns Of Riots in US

2009-02-21T17:20:00.000-08:00

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22064.htm
Brzezinski Warns Of Riots in US

By Press TV

February 21, 2009 "Press TV" -- - -Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security advisor, has warned that the US could witness riots if economy continues its downward spiral.

"There's going to be growing conflict between the classes and if people are unemployed and really hurting, hell, there could be even riots!" said Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, in a recent interview with NBC.

"In 1907, when we had a massive banking crisis, when banks were beginning to collapse, there were going to be riots in the streets," he added.

At least 3.6 million jobs have been wiped out throughout the US since the recession began in December 2007. The jobless rate officially reached a 16-year high of 7.6% (11.6 million people) last month.

Earlier this week, a new Federal Reserve report said that US unemployment could increase to 8.8%, causing the economy to contract for a full calendar year for the first time since 1991, when a contraction of 0.2% was registered.

The Obama White House has put forward an array of measures, including a $787 billion stimulus package, in the hopes of reviving the flagging economy.

Brzezinski, meanwhile, made some recommendations to the young administration.

He proposed the creation of a voluntary national solidarity fund, whose contributors would be those who became wealthy in recent times.

"Where is the moneyed class today? Why aren't they doing something: the people who made billions, millions. I'm sort of thinking of Paulson, of Rubin [former treasury secretaries]. Why don't they get together, and why don't they organize a national solidarity fund in which they call on all of those who made these extraordinary amounts of money to kick some back?" he argued.

"I was worrying about it because we're going to have millions and millions of unemployed, people really facing dire straits. And we're going to be having that for some period of time before things hopefully improve," said Brzezinski.

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

Climate Change is about more than the mechanism

2009-02-21T12:57:00.001-08:00

Climate Change is about more than the mechanism
Open for comment......

Climate Change is about more than the mechanism
Blog Post Blog of Christine Milne
Friday 20th February 2009, 4:06pm
by ChristineMilne in

http://greensmps.org.au/blog/climate-change-about-more-mechanism

After a year of rushing headlong into an ill-thought out emissions
trading scheme, the global financial meltdown has given Australia
pause for thought in how we deal with the climate meltdown.

Thus far, however, we are still having the wrong debate. With crunch
time on the emissions trading legislation fast approaching, we are
bickering over the right mechanism to use when, fundamentally, our
entire attitude must change.

Think of it on a personal level. The contestants on Australia's
Biggest Loser aren't going to win the competition and get healthy
lives back by setting themselves a meagre weight loss target and then
arguing between Atkins and Weight Watchers to achieve it. They will
only succeed if they make a determined commitment to themselves to
rebuild a healthy body, changing their whole attitude and lifestyle to
achieve that vital and realistic goal.

Instead of fighting over how little we can get away with cutting our
emissions, we need to commit to doing whatever it takes to deliver a
safe climate to our children. Instead of asking whether taxing or
trading carbon is better for achieving incremental emissions cuts, we
need to get moving fast on total decarbonisation of the economy. Until
we accept that challenge, the policy debate is largely a distraction.
Once we change our attitude, either mechanism can succeed.

The carbon tax versus emissions trading argument is a hoary old
chestnut that divides experts and non-experts the world over. Both
sides have strong arguments in their favour and both have their
drawbacks. The Australian Greens tend to support emissions trading
because trading guarantees a particular environmental outcome and lets
the market decide the price, whereas a tax sets the price and lets the
market decide the environmental outcome. Given that Lord Stern warned
us three years ago that climate change is the world's biggest market
failure, we would rather be guided by a definite climate outcome than
by the whims of the market.

Critics of emissions trading point to the mess the Rudd Government has
made of its proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and argue that
a carbon tax would be simpler and therefore preferable, even if it
does not guarantee a specific carbon reduction and therefore climate
outcome.

But the view that a tax is inherently simple can only be held by those
who have not been paying attention to what the Rudd Government has
been doing. At the urging of the big polluters, Ministers Wong and
Ferguson have bravely created complexities where no-one could have
imagined it possible, with the latest example being the ridiculously
complicated arrangements now being discussed for trade exposed
polluters to qualify for compensation.

If the Government has made such a mess of emissions trading, what
guarantee is there that they would not do the same with a carbon tax?
The moment the choice of a carbon tax is taken, you can bet that the
big polluters would be walking corridors and knocking on doors making
sure it is as weak and full of loopholes as possible. There is every
chance that the inherent simplicity of a tax would be muddied beyond
recognition by convoluted and intricate arrangements for compensation,
offsets and rebates, muting the price signal and undermining the
purpose of the exercise just as has happened with the CPRS. If the
level of the tax is geared towards the CPRS's pitifully weak 5%
emission cuts, very little will be achieved even if voluntary action
is counted.

There are signs that the Government is beginning to recognise what the
Greens have long said - that there is an abundance of cheap and easy
emissions reductions out there for the taking in an economy as energy
inefficient as our own. The first steps being taken towards home
energy efficiency in the recent stimulus package, and the rumours that
a big commercial efficiency push is coming, are positive signs. But,
with the current scheme design, they will only make it cheaper for
polluters to meet their weak obligations instead of being a reason to
aim for a stronger target.

The Government will convince no-one with their claims that the CPRS is
about transforming the economy when it is clear as day that its design
is geared to protecting existing industries at all costs. The policy
needs very significant work to make it both environmentally and
economically effective.

The Greens have been thinking about and working on these issues for
many years. We have a wealth of experience and expertise on how best
to design effective policies, garnered from best practice from around
the world, in successful economies such as Germany and California.

Our door is always open. The Government must recognise now that while
quick arrangements could be made in order to pass the stimulus
package, rushing through a deeply flawed CPRS will not be acceptable.

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

A lecture on the future of air travel

2009-02-21T04:15:00.000-08:00

A lecture on the future of air travel
May be of interest to some Adelaide list members

--------------------------------------------

Royal Aeronautical Society Adelaide Branch & Engineers Australia
presents

The Air Transport System
of the Future

Tuesday 24th February 2009 at 5.30pm
(for a 6.00pm start)
The Gallery, National Wine Centre
Cnr Botanic & Hackney Roads, Adelaide SA

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Joachim Szodruch
Member of Executive Board, DLR,
Cologne, Germany

Summary
Air transport fulfils society's needs for mobility and is today a major
economic factor massively supporting also globalisation. After more than
100 years of powered flight we have established a rather optimised
system with dramatic performance improvements at aircraft level (fuel
burn, economy and environment) compared with any other form of
transportation. All the forecasts predict for the next 20 years that
passenger air traffic will increase on average by 5% annually.
The resulting challenges for the entire air transport system have been
discussed
within ACARE – the European Advisory Council for Aeronautics, and the
major goals are quantified in the Vision 2020.

This document is by now the most important and widely accepted strategic
guideline valid for all the aeronautical research activities in Europe.
The Vision 2020 has been further detailed in the Strategic Research
Agenda, where technological solutions for the elements of the air
transport system – the aircraft, the air traffic management and the
airports – are specifically addressed. One of the major research
establishments in Europe, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is
addressing exactly these challenges in their broad and extensive
research activities covering the entire air transport system. Major
contributions in all relevant fields are expected for the next decade.
Still the question remains if we can fulfil the already ambitious goals
of the Vision 2020 at all and if these goals are really sufficient in
order to build a competitive and sustainable air transport system for
the longer term future.

Bio:
Prof. Joachim Szodruch graduated from the Technical University Berlin in
1971 followed by a post-graduate study at Cambridge University, England.
He started his professional career in 1973 as a scientific assistant at
the Aerospace Institute of the Technical University Berlin, where he
obtained his doctorate (Dr.-Ing.). In 1978 he received an Associateship
from the National Research Council and worked for two years at the NASA
Ames Research Center in California, USA.

In 1981 he joined MBB Civil Transport Division in Bremen, where he
started in experimental aerodynamics working on Airbus A310 and future
projects. Later he became responsible manager for all aerodynamic
research and was Assistant Chief Aerodynamicist. He joined Airbus
Industrie in Toulouse 1990 as a General Manager for Research &
Technology.

Returning to Germany he became Vice President Product Development and
Technology at the DaimlerChrysler Aerospace Airbus Headquarter in
Hamburg.
With the formation of Airbus as an integrated company in mid 2001, he
was appointed Vice President Future Projects and Technology based in
Toulouse, France. Since August 2002, he has been a Member of the
Executive Board of DLR – German Aerospace Center, in Cologne,
specifically responsible for Aeronautics and Energy. Within this
function he is Member of the Supervisory Board for the two European
wind-tunnel organisations – DNW and ETW.
Joachim Szodruch is currently President of the DGLR – German Aerospace
Society, and also an Associate Fellow of American Institute of
Aeronautics and Astronautics. Furthermore, he serves as Co-Chairman of
ACARE, the Advisory Council for Aeronautical Research in Europe.

For further information contact: Andrew Clark (0421 051 328)

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

Latvia's government resigns amid economic crisis

2009-02-20T22:03:00.001-08:00

Latvia's government resigns amid economic crisis
http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/world/2009/02/20/D96FB62O0_eu_latvia_government_resigns/

Quote:
Latvia's government resigns amid economic crisis

Feb 20th, 2009 RIGA, Latvia -- Latvia's center-right coalition
government resigned Friday after weeks of instability brought on by
the country's economic collapse.

President Valdis Zatlers said he accepted the resignation of Prime
Minister Ivars Godmanis and his administration, which had been in
power since December 2007. Zatlers said he would begin talks with
party leaders Monday to find a new candidate for prime minister.

Earlier Friday, the two largest parties in the ruling coalition
parties had urged Godmanis to step down.

Godmanis blamed those parties -- the People's Party, and the Greens
and Farmers Union -- for the government's collapse, particularly at a
time when Latvia must carry out tough economic reforms to get a rescue
package from international creditors.

"I am ready to continue working, but I think that responsibility for
the consequences created by this government's resignation must be
taken by those parties that overturned the government," Godmanis told
reporters.

International lenders, including the EU, the International Monetary
Fund and Nordic countries, have pledged euro7.5 billion (US$9.5
billion) to help the Baltic country recover from its economic predicament.

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie

2009-02-20T17:29:00.000-08:00

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22051.htm
Der Spiegel Exposes the Brazilian Ethanol Madness

Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie

By Robert Bryce

February 20, 2009 "Counterpunch" -- For years, the US has been inundated with claims that it should follow Brazil's lead on biofuels. These arguments have largely been made by a small, but influential group of neoconservatives who claim that the US should quit using oil altogether. They claim that using more ethanol – produced from sugar cane, or corn, or some other substance – will impoverish OPEC and America will once again be returned to prosperity.

But these claims wither in the face of a story by Clemens Hoges in the January 22 issue of the German magazine Der Spiegel. Hoges writes that sugar cane "is considered an effective antidote to climate change, but hundreds of thousands of Brazilian plantation workers harvest the cane at slave wages." The story is one of several published in recent years that have exposed the brutality of the Brazilian sugar cane fields. But before looking at Der Spiegel's coverage, let's do a quick review of the Brazilian ethanol boosters.

Thomas Friedman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times has frequently advocated the mirage of "energy independence." And he has cited Brazil as a model. In an August 2005 column, he conflated the issues of oil and terrorism "we are financing both sides in the war on terrorism: our soldiers and the fascist terrorists," he wrote. He went on to claim that many of the technologies needed for energy independence are "already here – from hybrid engines to ethanol." He then quoted Gal Luft, the neoconservative who heads the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security and created Set America Free, a group that advocates "energy independence." Luft claimed that Brazil's success in cutting its oil imports was due to the fact that the South American country was "bringing hydrocarbons and carbohydrates to live happily together in the same fuel tank." In Luft's view, ethanol has brought "Brazil close to energy independence" and insulated it from higher oil prices.

(Luft's claim completely ignores the fact that since 1980, Petrobras, Brazil's national oil company, has been growing its oil production by an average of 9 percent per year thanks to its offshore drilling prowess. Since 1998, Brazil has doubled its oil production and is now producing about 2 million barrels of oil per day. Neither Friedman nor Luft bothered to mention that fact.)

In late 2005, in a speech to the National Press Club, Pennsylvania governor Edward Rendell said that "No longer is investing in alternative fuels a fringe idea….Brazil is perhaps the world's greatest success story. Due to 30 years of hard work, research and investment, Brazil will not need one drop of imported oil this time next year. If anyone suggests to you that these ideas aren't ready for prime time and cost too much, they are living in the past."

Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and former Senate minority leader Tom Daschle have touted Brazil's "energy independence miracle." In a May 2006 opinion piece in the New York Times, they said that ethanol "could set America free from its dependence on foreign oil" and that Brazil proves that "an aggressive strategy of investing in petroleum substitutes like ethanol can end dependence on imported oil."

In October 2006, former president Bill Clinton while in California stumping for Proposition 87 (an alternative energy initiative that later failed) declared that the initiative would "move California toward energy independence with cleaner fuels, with wind and solar power." He continued, "There are people who don't believe you can do it. I do. Look at Brazil. Don't you think you can do it if they did it? They run their cars on ethanol." Clinton later provided a sound bite for the pro-Proposition 87 forces in which he declared that "If Brazil can do it, so can California."

The biofuels madness continued with a May 6, 2008 editorial in the Chicago Tribune, titled "Food vs. fuel, a global myth." The piece, written by Set America Free's Luft, and his fellow traveler, Robert Zubrin, a right-wing zealot who advocates colonizing Mars, claimed, incredibly, that "farm commodity prices have almost no effect on retail prices." The two went on to declare that "rather than shut down biofuel programs, we need to radically augment them, to the point where we can take down" the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.

A big reality check is in order.

First and foremost, over the past two years, 14 studies have found a direct link between the ethanol scam and higher food prices.

Second, Brazil is not the epicenter of ethanol production, the US is. In 2008, the US produced about 9.1 billion gallons of the fuel, all of it from corn. Brazil produced about 6.8 billion gallons. And while sugar cane may be a far better feedstock that corn, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and energy balance, the key issue is one of labor. While US corn is harvested mechanically, the Brazilian sugar cane is harvested almost exclusively by hand. And it is dangerous, back-breaking work.

In 2007, London's The Guardian newspaper ran a story which quoted human rights activists who said that the men who harvest sugar cane for ethanol production "are effectively slaves" and that Brazil's ethanol industry was "a shadowy world of middle men and human rights abuses." It cited figures provided by a Catholic nun, Sister Ines Facioli, who runs a support network in a small town about 200 miles west of São Paolo. She claimed that between 2004 and 2006, 17 cane workers died due to overwork or exhaustion. One laborer, Pedro Castro, told the Guardian's Tom Phillips, that the hot climate, combined with the heavy protective clothing needed to protect his body from the sharp machete blades used to cut the cane, was like working "inside a bread oven."

For their work, the average cane worker gets paid about $1 for every ton of sugar cane they cut. They often work 12-hour shifts. Their housing, according to Phillips' article, consists of "squalid, overcrowded 'guest houses' rented to them at extortionate prices by unscrupulous landlords." The average cane cutter makes less than $200 per month. And some, it appears, make nothing at all.

In July 2007, the Brazilian government freed 1,100 laborers who were found working in horrendous conditions on a sugar cane plantation in the northeastern state of Para. A story by the Associated Press said that the workers were forced to work 13-hour days and that they had no choice but to pay "exorbitant prices for food and medicine." It then cited a source in Brazil's labor ministry who claimed that many of the workers were "sick from spoiled food or unsafe water, slept in cramped quarters on hammocks and did not have proper sanitation facilities." The government-backed raid of the plantation lasted three days. The plantation in question is owned by Para Pastoril e Agricola SA, which produces about 13 million gallons of ethanol per year. The workers were caught up in a situation known as debt slavery in which poor workers are taken to remote farms where they then rack up large debts to the plantation owners who force the workers to pay high prices for everything from food to transportation.

According to Land Pastoral, a group affiliated with Brazil's Roman Catholic Church, about 25,000 workers in Brazil are living in slavery-like conditions, most of them in the Amazon, and many of them working in the sugar cane business. The 2007 raid is not the first. In 2005, 1,000 workers were found living in debt slavery on a sugar cane plantation in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso.

The article in Der Spiegel makes it clear that little has changed over the past few years. Hoges reports that one worker he interviewed, Antonio da Silva, makes just $172 per month during the harvest season, which lasts about six months. During the rest of the year, he has to rely on charity to feed his family. Da Silva's home in the village of Araçoiaba Nova, Hoges reports, is the same as it was five years ago. "They threw plastic tarps over a handful of branches to build the hut where they still live today. The door consists of scraps of cloth nailed to a board, and boards placed around a hole in the tarp form the window. The furniture, arranged on the bare earth floor, consists of the plank beds and a cabinet."

The most compelling quote in the piece is from Father Tiago, a 66 year-old Scottish monk who has been working in Brazil for decades. The Scotsman makes clear what he thinks about the issue: "The promise of biofuel is a lie. Anyone who buys ethanol is pumping blood into his tank," he said. "Ethanol is produced by slaves."

The photos that accompany Hoges' story should be viewed by everyone who retains the misguided belief that the US should emulate Brazil's biofuels industry. Here's the link.

Alas, it doesn't appear the members of Congress are paying much attention. Last month, US Rep. Eliot Engel, a New York Democrat, announced that he would be pushing legislation aimed at eliminating the $0.54-per-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. Doing so, Engel said, "would enable U.S. refiners to purchase cheaper and more climate-friendly ethanol, no matter where it comes from. The result would be an overall increase in the supply of fuel, a decrease in its price, and a decrease in our dependency on petroleum from the Middle East."

Sound bites like the one from Engel ignore basic arithmetic: Even if the US imported all of Brazil's ethanol -- all 6.8 billion gallons per year -- that quantity would only provide the energy equivalent of about 1.4 percent of America's total oil consumption.

Despite those numbers -- despite the ongoing evidence of slavery in the Brazilian ethanol trade -- the energy discussion in America remains stuck in an absurdist fantasy about energy independence and freedom from the sticky problems of the Persian Gulf. But given what has happened in the past few months with regard to rising food prices and the myriad other problems associated with biofuels, one thing is becoming perfectly clear: Ethanol isn't the answer to our energy challenge. Ethanol makes it worse.

Robert Bryce is the author of Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of "Energy Independence."

Edward G. Rendell, "An American Energy Harvest Plan: Jobs, Prosperity, Independence," December 1, 2005.

Tom Daschle and Vinod Khosla, "Miles Per Cob," New York Times, May 8, 2006.

California Progress Report, "President Clinton: Why I Support Proposition 87 and Why the Oil Companies are Wrong – The Complete Speech Delivered at UCLA," October 14, 2006.

Shopfloor.org, "In California, A Bad Proposition," November 3, 2006.

http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2008/may/06/food/chi-oped0506fuelmay06

http://www.ethanolrfa.org/industry/statistics/#B

https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,602951,00.html

Tom Phillips, "Brazil's ethanol slaves: 200,000 migrant sugar cutters who prop up renewable energy boom," The Guardian, March 9, 2007.

Ibid.

Vivian Sequera, "Brazil Raid Frees Ethanol Plant Slaves," Associated Press, July 3, 2007.

Clemens Hoges, The High Price of Clean, Cheap Ethanol," Der Spiegel, January 22, 2009.

http://yonkerstribune.typepad.com/
http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

The stimulus bill

2009-02-20T14:29:00.001-08:00

From the Belize Culture List

Shortly after class, an economics student approaches his economics
professor and says, "I don't understand this
stimulus bill. Can you explain it to me?" The professor replied, "I
don't have any time to explain it at my office, but if you come over
to my house on Saturday and help me with my weekend project, I'll be
glad to explain it to you." The student agreed.

At the agreed-upon time, the student showed up at the professors house.

The professor stated that the weekend project involved his backyard
pool. They both went out back to the pool, and the professor handed
the student a bucket. Demonstrating with his own bucket, the
professor said, "First, go over to the deep end, and fill your
bucket with as much water as you can." The student did as he was
instructed. The professor then continued, "Follow me over to the
shallow end, and then dump all the water from your bucket into it."
The student was naturally confused, but did as he was told.

The professor then explained they were going to do this many more
times, and began walking back to the deep end of the pool. The
confused student asked, "Excuse me, but why are we doing this?" The
professor matter-of-factly stated that he was trying to make the
shallow end much deeper.

The student didn't think the economics professor was serious, but
figured that he would find out the real story soon enough. However,
after the 6th trip between the shallow end and the deep end, the
student began to become worried that his economics professor had
gone mad.

The student finally replied, "All we're doing is wasting valuable
time and effort on unproductive pursuits. Even worse, when this
process is all over, everything will be at the same level it was
before, so all you'll really have accomplished is the destruction of
what could have been truly productive action!"

The professor put down his bucket and replied with a smile,
"Congratulations. You now understand the stimulus bill."

--
Tuh Gawd nuh, di monki dem dih run di zoo fitru!

Kurt
Yay for kRudd and the Pressie**-~-->
http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

France sends forces to Guadeloupe

2009-02-19T17:06:00.000-08:00

France has sent hundreds of police reinforcements to the French-Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, as month-long strikes over declining economic conditions have spilled over into violence.

Michele Alliot-Marie, the French interior minister, said 280 police reinforcements would be sent to the island, after holding an emergency meeting on Wednesday.

The move comes after Jacques Bino, a 50-year-old union activist, was shot dead after driving his car near a roadblock manned by armed youths in Pointe-a-Pitre, the island's largest town, officials said.

Three policemen were targeted by gunmen while attempting to reach Bino and secure the area, Hubert Vernet, a government official, told the Reuters news agency.

Vernet stressed that the police officers were in no way responsible for Bino's death.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, said he would meet with elected officials from the island on Thursday, to "address the anxiety, worries and also a certain form of despair from our compatriots".

Sebastian Walker, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Pointe-a-Pitre, said: "The protesters say they have been ignored by the French government for many years.

"Unemployment here is the third highest in the European Union. Away from the luxury hotels and resorts there is a severe economic situation that has angered a lot of people."

'Spiralling' violence

Union leaders have said that the situation in Guadeloupe is spiralling out of control, and there are fears that the unrest could spread to mainland France.

Bino is the first victim of the violence on the island which has been crippled by strikes that began on January 20 over low pay and the high price of basic goods.

Earlier in the week, protesters set buildings and cars on fire, looted shops, smashed storefront windows and clashed with police in Point-a-Pitre and at least two other towns.

Thousands of tourists have also fled the island and neighbouring Martinique.

Strikers' are demanding a raise of $250 a month for low-wage workers who now make about $1,130 a month.

On Thursday, Francois Fillon, the French prime minister, said the government would make a new wage offer to strikers.

"Mediators have come up with a proposal which I am going to assess and which will be submitted to employers and the unions," he told French radio RTL.

"This allows us to get very close to the quantified financial goals of the workers."

Underlying much of the unrest in Guadeloupe and Martinique is anger within the local Afro-Caribbean community - many of whom are descendants of slaves brought to the island by France - that the vast majority of wealth and land remain in the hands of colonist descendants.

Http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

Stanford International Bank

2009-02-19T14:27:00.000-08:00

Auditor asks: Stanford who?
February 20, 2009 - 7:15AM

http://business.smh.com.au/business/20090220-8csi.html

C.A.S. Hewlett & Co, the small Antiguan firm that Texas billionaire
Allen Stanford identified as the auditors of his offshore bank, said on
Thursday it had no information about ties to the tycoon accused of
fraud.

St. John's-based Hewlett has been identified by the U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC) as the auditors of Stanford's $US8 billion
($12 billion) offshore bank, but executives there provided little
indication they even knew who Stanford was.

The current manager, Eugene Perry, at C.A.S. Hewlett in the Antiguan
capital, said Thursday the firm's former chief executive, Charlesworth
"Shelley" Hewlett, is the only person with possible knowledge of a
relationship to Stanford.

But getting any information from Shelley Hewitt is not likely. He died
January 1 at age 73.

Perry said he never met Stanford in his 10 years working at the firm. He
spoke with a Reuters reporter in the late Hewlett's personal office and
telephoned a woman he identified as the company's principal.

"We are not privy to any information about any relationship with
Stanford," said the woman, who would only identify herself as Celia.
Asked if she was aware of any files at the firm associated with
Stanford, she said she was not.

Hewlett's daughter, named Celia, took over responsibility for the
accounting firm from London after her father died. It couldn't be
determined if the Celia interviewed by telephone was the late Hewlett's
daughter.

On Tuesday, the SEC accused Stanford, a brash, 58-year-old financier and
sports entrepreneur, of operating an $US8 billion fraud centered on the
sale of high-yielding certificates of deposit offered by Stanford
International Bank Ltd (SIB), his Antiguan affiliate.

The interest in Stanford has extended across the Atlantic.

Britain's Serious Fraud Office said Thursday it was monitoring a
possible link between the accounting firm and Stanford.

"It's a situation where there is the possibility there may be a UK link,
and so we are monitoring the situation," a spokesman for the SFO said.

"It's not the case that we have launched investigators at it. We are
making contact and liaising with other authorities," the spokesman
added.

C.A.S. Hewlett has offices at several London addresses, but the phone
numbers were either disconnected, or rang unanswered.

Two people with neighboring businesses in Enfield, a residential suburb
north of London, told Reuters that C.A.S. Hewlett had had a small office
in the building on Southbury Road, but that the employees left about
four years ago.

Anybody home?

The SEC said in its court complaint that it had tried several times to
contact C.A.S. Hewlett during its investigation, but "no one ever
answered the phone."

SIB'S midyear report, released in June, identified C.A.S. Hewlett as its
auditors. The SEC also listed the firm as Stanford's auditor.

But the 10 workers in the Hewlett office in a quiet, largely residential
neighborhood in the capital, seemed an unlikely operation to manage
books for an $US8 billion enterprise.

During two visits over two days by Reuters reporters, no one staffed a
reception desk in the aquamarine building. On one visit to the reception
area that lasted nearly two hours, there was no senior manager in the
building. The occasional sound of reggae music wafted from inside the
office.

C.A.S. Hewlett is listed on the British Commonwealth's website as a
"financial services partner" in Antigua with an offshore client
portfolio that includes banks, insurance companies and other financial
institutions and intermediaries.

Charlesworth Hewlett was born in 1936, according to the website, and
qualified as an accountant in 1970 after attending South West London
College. He also is said to have served in the Britain's Royal Air Force
and earned a medal for active service in Cyprus.

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

[roeoz] Obama Punishes Responsible Parties

2009-02-18T17:40:00.001-08:00

Obama Punishes Responsible Parties

http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/obama-punishes-responsible-parties/13548#comment-18569

Thursday, February 19, 2009, 9:14 am, by cmartenson

This is a headline that I have long been waiting to see because
without accountability at every level, a society is a weak shadow of
what it can and should be.

Unfortunately, the responsible parties I am referring to have never
committed any crime nor do they deserve to be punished.

I am among them. Perhaps you are as well.

If you did not buy more house than you could afford, or never issued a
loan to a party that could (obviously and predictably) not repay that
loan, then you just got punished.

Here's the data:

Obama Plans $75 Billion Outlay to Fight Foreclosures

Published: February 18, 2009

Seeking to stabilize the foundering housing market, President
Obama is offering a plan to help as many as nine million families
refinance their mortgages or avoid foreclosure, according to a summary
released by the White House on Wednesday morning.

The plan, which is more ambitious than expected, would spend $75
billion to help keep as many as four million families in their homes,
and would help as many as five million more refinance their mortgages
to take advantage of lower interest rates.

Okay, there are so many beliefs and opinions wrapped into those
opening salvos that I feel I must step in and expose them. One thing
that I do in conference, and in the Crash Course, is distinguish
between facts, opinions and beliefs. This article, which comes from
the front page of the New York Times will be absorbed by many as
"fact". Let's be more careful.

1. "Seeking to stabilize the foundering housing market…", this is a
statement of opinion, not fact. While this sounds laudable and worthy
as a goal, there can be no doubt that any plan that funnels money to
homeowners is really going to end up in mortgage companies and banks
and very rapidly at that. So it could just as easily be framed as
"Seeking to stabilize the foundering mortgage and banking businesses
that made extremely foolish loans…". The difference between the way
that the NYT framed it and the way that I did does not reflect a
difference over facts, only opinion.
2. Saying, "…help as many as nine million families refinance their
mortgages or avoid foreclosure…" is also presenting something as fact
that does not even stand up to the slightest of scrutiny. The $75
billion price tag divided by 9 million gives us a value of $8,333,33
for each of the nine million homes. There is simply no possible way
that $8,333 each is going to make the difference between 9 million
people keeping or losing their homes. It might if that was applied to
this year's balance gap, but over the life of the loan? No possible way.

But it's not just the NYT that is mis-representing the issue. Obama said:

"The plan not only helps responsible homeowners on the verge of
defaulting, but prevents neighborhoods and communities from being
pulled over the edge too. It will prevent the worst consequences of
this crisis from wreaking even greater havoc on the economy. And by
bringing down the foreclosure rate, it will help to shore up housing
prices for everyone."

He can wrap this with as many words as he wants but the plain facts
are that only people in trouble with their mortgages get any handouts
here. People who are not delinquent or perhaps are renting, only get
the opportunity to pay for the mistakes of others.

Politically, this is a great plan. Good sound bites and it looks like
action. Also, roughly 9 million votes are secured for the next
election. Two thumbs up in this regard.

Economically, it stinks. This is throwing good money after bad and,
worse, by seeking to "shore up sinking house prices" it betrays a
complete ignorance of the actual root of the problem. Blaming sinking
housing prices for the fix we are in is equivalent to blaming the car
for the drunk driving wreck. If Obama were to craft a similar program
for drunk drivers it would include new cars for any that happened to
wreck their own. The problem is not that house prices are sinking,
it's that they got too high to sustain. It was a bubble for goodness
sake! That's the very definition of a bubble. Any and all attempts to
"shore up" bubble prices is a doomed effort that will assuredly
squander both additional capital and valuable time.

Morally, it is a complete disaster. The clear implication here for
every sentient person is that it pays to be reckless. Moral hazard is
written all over this one. I can easily envision millions of people
arriving at the same conclusion; "I need to stop paying my mortgage
right way so that I qualify for a handout!" It's entirely sensible and
I would seriously consider this option if I had a mortgage and little
or no equity in the house. As it is I am a prudent renter who saw the
bubble for what it was and will now pay a double price for having been
so prescient. First I will have to endure government subsidized house
prices set above market rates, and I will have to pay for the reckless
actions of house owner and lenders who behaved recklessly. This is no
way to set an example and is not how I wish my country to be run.

Taken together, these actions represent a near-total lack of vision
and leadership.

Here's one example that should illustrate exactly why this plan is DOA.

Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) -- It has taken Susan Erb just three years to
see the value of her Merced, California, home plunge by more than half
to $350,000. Next month, her mortgage payment jumps 20 percent to
$3,321 and she knows she can't afford it. Her bank won't rework the
loan unless she stops paying altogether.

Think about a house underwater by $350,000. Think about a monthly
payment of $3,321. Now join these to the total $8,333 offered by the
Obama plan. How far will that $8,333 go? About 8 months of payments is
my assessment and then the house will still be more than a third of a
million underwater.

The reason I sometimes despair at ever finding our way equitably
through this mess is captured by this quote (from same link as above):

Rina Serrano, 35, an after-school program supervisor for the
Merced County Office of Education, may lose her job next year due to
budget cuts. The value of her house, built by Calabasas,
California-based Ryland Group Inc. in the Bellevue Ranch development,
fell by at least a third since she purchased it in 2007. Her husband's
cabinetmaking business is down by half.

"Nobody has given us any options, but my feeling is there should
be some assistance," said Serrano, 35, a mother of four. The couple
took out a 30-year fixed loan and aren't behind on payments but they
are underwater by about $70,000.

Here's a person who has not yet missed a payment, but whose house is
worth less than her mortgage, who wants "some assistance". Where you
might think, "Be more careful next time!" there are many who simply
want to be lifted from the impact of their poor decisions.

And who can blame them? I too would like to have every bad decision I
ever made paid for by someone else but I am also mature enough to know
that this is not a realistic way to approach life.

So there it is. If you have been responsible, you have just been
punished. And you know what? Nobody can possibly blame you for
deciding that being responsible is for suckers.

It's not a stretch to imagine that a few folks will even come to the
conclusion that hard work and prudence are no longer the core values
of our country.

Does the current administration really want to foster this sort of a
mindset right at the outset of a nasty recession/depression?

It would seem that the answer is, "yes."

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

Fires spark a new front in the culture wars

2009-02-17T23:44:00.001-08:00

Fires spark a new front in the culture wars

MONDAY, 16 FEBRUARY 2009

Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University Clive Hamilton writes:

The fierce debate over the role of fuel-reduction burning in preventing bushfires has
exposed a deep divide in Australia over attitudes to the natural environment.

Over the last three or four decades the dominant attitude to the environment has shifted
away from seeing the bush as hostile and in need of taming towards an understanding of
it as unique and deserving protection. Instead of transforming the bush for human benefit,
the new attitude privileges the natural over the modified and values biodiversity and
natural areas for their own sakes. Human impacts should therefore be minimised and
reflect an ethic of care rather than of domination.

Forty years ago if you passed a snake on the road it was almost a duty to run over it
because it posed a danger to humans; today that is seen as wanton killing of wildlife. Forty
years ago we killed sharks that came anywhere near a beach for the same reason. Today,
the father of a man taken by a shark will typically declare that he does not want the shark
hunted down and nor would his son, who loved and respected the sea and its creatures.

This huge shift has been due largely to the work of the environment movement. Landmark
campaigns over the Franklin Dam, old-growth forests, the Barrier Reef and Kakadu have
been victorious because they captured the public imagination and governments were
compelled to act. So environmentalism has brought a sweeping and irreversible cultural
change; wherever they live, most Australians now look on the landscape with new eyes.

However, at every stage the revolution in values has met staunch resistance from those
wedded to the old view. Led by an older generation of foresters, "bushies" and their
political spokespersons, the old attitudes have seen a resurgence in response to the
Victorian bushfires, especially over the vexed question of fuel-reduction burning.

Those who hold to the old view believe that it reflects the true nature of the Australian
bush, the one that the pioneers learned the hard way. To give their argument more
authenticity they even claim that the use of prescribed burning is a continuation of the
practice of Aboriginal fire-stick farming.

The old school believes that, despite its apparent foundation in the new science of
ecology, the new view is based on ignorance and softness and could be held only by latte-
sipping urbanites. But increasingly marginalised, the old school's resentment and anger
has simmered, especially among those affected by restrictions on forestry and land-
clearing.

The cultural split has now boiled over under the pressures and stresses of the Victorian
bushfires. The conflagration spurred those of the old school to declare that they had been
right all along and that if the authorities had listened to them and taken control of the
bush then the devastation could have been avoided.

On the Tuesday after the worst of the fires former CSIRO bushfire expert David Packham
launched a ferocious attack on environmentalists, blaming them for the deaths because,
he said, they opposed widespread fuel-reduction burning. He wrote that the "folk of the
bush have lost their battle to live a safe life in a cared-for rural and forest environment,
all because of the environmental fantasies of outraged extremists and latte
conservationists".

Packham's attacks were carried in The Australian newspaper whose editors could
immediately see the opportunity presented by the fires to extend their long-running
culture war. Environmentalists had replaced communists as the principal enemy in neo-
conservative demonology after fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Venting the rage felt by the old school, Packham followed up two days later with the claim
that environmentalists "are behaving like eco-terrorists waging jihad against prescribed
burning and fuel management". (Packham was one of the instigators of the much-
criticised "leave early or stay and fight" policy.)

On the same day, right-wing columnist and greenhouse sceptic Miranda Devine wrote
that it wasn't climate change that killed up to 300 people in Victoria but "the power of
green ideology over government". "It is not the arsonists who should be hanging from
lamp-posts", she fumed, "but greenies."

Roger Underwood, a former regional manager with the Forests Department in WA, also
high-lighted the folly of environmentalist resistance to widespread fuel-reduction
burning. Criticising "climate doomsdayers", he argued that governments can be held to
ransom by pressure groups such as those who oppose effective fire management in
national parks.

In 2007 Underwood had written of the wholesale destruction of remaining jarrah forests by
Alcoa's bauxite mining. Bizarrely, he did not blame this destruction on the company
carrying it out. Alcoa is "an efficient and clever organisation", he wrote, "and it is a
pleasure to see the professional way in which they have approached their operational and
research obligations."

Instead, he insisted that environmentalists are to blame for the vandalising of the jarrah
forests because they failed to campaign against it. He speculated that their passivity may
be because "they have been bought off", presumably by the company whose
professionalism he so admires. The immediacy and vehemence of the attacks on
"greenies" over fuel-reduction burning exposes the deep vein of hatred of
environmentalism that runs through segments of the community.

In fact, no-one has argued for a blanket ban on prescribed burning. But the experts are
divided on the timing and extent of it. Some fuel-reduction burns get out of control,
scarring the landscape and causing unnecessary damage.

This was cruelly illustrated by the case of Sam the koala, who last week became an
emblem of the devastation in Victoria. A photograph picked up around the world showed a
yellow-jacketed fire-fighter in a burnt-out forest giving a singed and shell-shocked koala
a drink from his water bottle. It was a touching image of human-animal unity in the face
of the terrible power of nature. The problem was that the picture had in fact been taken a
few days before the inferno in the course of a fuel-reduction burn.

It may be that the Victorian fires lead to some sort of accommodation between the old and
new understandings of the Australian landscape, a merging of respect for the bush's
natural integrity with a greater respect for its dangers.

Certainly, some tree-changers planning to leave the cities for the romance of bush-living
will have pause for thought, and greens on local councils will be on the back-foot for a
time. But it is hard to see any significant unwinding of four decades of environmental
awakening.

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

[roeoz] Japan in Depression

2009-02-16T12:43:00.001-08:00

http://www.theage.com.au/national/japan-plunges-into-depression-
20090216-899i.html?page=-1

Japan plunges into depression
Peter Martin
February 17, 2009
AUSTRALIA'S biggest and most reliable customer, Japan, has plunged
into depression, with federal Treasurer Wayne Swan now warning of the
worst global downturn "in our lifetimes".

Japan's economy shrank an annualised 12.7 per cent over the December
quarter, its worst result since the 1974 oil shock.

Japan is by far Australia's biggest export customer, accounting for
one in every five container ships that leave Australia's shores.

The new figures put it among the worst-hit casualties of the global
crisis.

The annualised contraction of 12.7 per cent, or 3.3 per cent in
quarterly terms, dwarfs those of the United States and Europe and is
much worse than anything that happened to Japan during its so-
called "lost decade" of recession in the 1990s.

The collapse in growth fits the profile of a depression — a deep
recession in which annual GDP falls by 10 per cent or more.

Australia's other big customer, China, has had its growth rate almost
halved from 13 to 6.8 per cent.

"These figures reveal just how serious the global recession is
becoming," Mr Swan said. "They follow on the heels of the worst
contraction in the euro area since records began in 1980.

"The last three months of 2008 are likely to have seen the sharpest
synchronised downturn in the global economy in our lifetimes.

"It's is a sobering backdrop for Australia as we seek to do
everything we can to cushion the impact the global downturn will have
here," Mr Swan said.

A 14 per cent collapse in exports in the December quarter led Japan's
plunge.

Toyota, Sony and Hitachi are forecasting losses and have begun firing
thousands of workers, heightening the risk that a slump in domestic
spending will deepen the downturn.

"At one time, it looked like Japan had escaped the brunt of the
financial crisis," said Hideo Kumano, chief economist for the Dai-
Ichi Life Research Institute. "This shows how feeble Japan's economic
fundamentals were in the first place."

Access Economics director Chris Richardson said Japan's plight showed
there was "no place for Australia to hide".

"It is true that Japan's statistics are more dodgy and more volatile
than those of other large nations, but this fits what know about the
reach of the crisis," Mr Richardson said. "It is very big and very
nasty.

"It is impossible for Australia to avoid a recession; perhaps not
absolutely impossible, but it is incredibly hard for Australia to
hold against the tide, and the tide pulling us down is getting
stronger every day.

"This is confirmation of what's facing us," said ANZ chief economist
Saul Eslake. "Japan is a more important and more diversified export
market than China.

"Australian GDP per person is already running backwards. What happens
over the next few months will determine how bad things get."

The impact of the downturn in Asia was felt in Albury yesterday when
400 workers at cars parts company Drivetrain Systems International
were stood down without pay.

The business was hit hard by last month's collapse of South Korean
vehicle manufacturer SsangYong, a major customer.

Finance figures released on Monday suggest that Australians resumed
borrowing in December in the wake of a further interest rate cut and
the Government's $8.7 billion fiscal stimulus hand-outs.

New lending commitments climbed 3.5 per cent. All forms of personal
lending increased, including a solid 24 per cent lift in loans to buy
new cars. But the bulk of the new loans were for refinancing or for
debt consolidation. Lending remains 27 per cent down over the year.

Http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

The bonus racket

2009-02-09T12:53:00.001-08:00

The bonus racket

http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13036810

"ISN'T it funny/How they never make any money/When everyone in the
racket/Cleans up such a packet." That Basil Boothroyd poem was
originally written about the movies, but it could just as well apply
to banking.

In its last three years, Bear Stearns paid $11.3 billion in
employee compensation and benefits. According to its 2007 annual
report, Lehman Brothers shelled out $21.6 billion in the three years
before, while Merrill Lynch paid staff over $45 billion during the
three years to 2007.

And what have shareholders got from all this? Lehman's got nothing
(the company went bust). Investors in Bear Stearns received around
$1.4 billion of JPMorgan Chase stock, now worth just half that after
the fall in the acquirer's share price. Merrill Lynch's shareholders
got shares in Bank of America (BofA) which are now worth just $9.6
billion, less than a fifth of the original offer value. Meanwhile,
Citigroup paid $34.4 billion to its employees in 2007 and is now
valued by the stockmarket at just $18.1 billion.
http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

[roeoz] Economists are the forgotten guilty men

2009-02-05T15:29:00.001-08:00

"In the search for the "guilty men" responsible for the near-collapse
of the global economy, one obvious group of scapegoats has escaped
blame: the economists.

By "economists" I do not mean the talking heads (myself included)
employed by the media and financial institutions to "explain",
usually after the event, why share prices or currencies have gone up
or down. Nor do I mean the forecasters whose computers churn out
scientific-looking numbers about what will happen to growth or
inflation, but whose figures are revised so drastically whenever
something "unexpected" happens - as it always does - that their
forecasts are really nothing more than backward-looking descriptions
of recent events.

What I mean by "economists" are the academic theorists who win Nobel
prizes, or dream of winning them.

To see why these seemingly obscure academics deserve to be hauled out
of their ivory towers and put in the dock of public opinion, consider
why the bankers, politicians, accountants and regulators behaved in
the egregious ways that they have. It may be true that all bankers
are greedy, all politicians venal, all regulators blind and all
accountants stupid. But such personal failings do not explain their
behaviour in the past few years. After all, bankers do not like
losing money and politicians do not like losing power. All
these "guilty men" behaved as they did because they thought it made
sense.

And why did these greedy bankers and stupid politicians hold beliefs
that, in hindsight, seem so ludicrous and self-destructive? Why, for
example, did they think it reasonable for a bank with just $1 billion
of capital to borrow an extra $99 billion and then buy $100 billion
of speculative investments?

The answer was beautifully expressed two generations ago by John
Maynard Keynes: "Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite
exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of
some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the
air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a
few years back."...

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com/

http://squidoo.com/2009jobloses

[roeoz] How to control a herd of humans

2009-02-04T20:58:00.001-08:00

How to control a herd of humans

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126945.300-how-to-control-your-herd-of-humans.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg20126945.300

HITLER and Mussolini both had the ability to bend millions of people
to their fascist will. Now evidence from psychology and neurology is
emerging to explain how tactics like organised marching and propaganda
can work to exert mass mind control.

Scott Wiltermuth of Stanford University in California and colleagues
have found that activities performed in unison, such as marching or
dancing, increase loyalty to the group. "It makes us feel as though
we're part of a larger entity, so we see the group's welfare as being
as important as our own," he says.

Wiltermuth's team separated 96 people into four groups who performed
these tasks together: listening to a song while silently mouthing the
words, singing along, singing and dancing, or listening to different
versions of the song so that they sang and danced out of sync. In a
later game, when asked to decide whether to stick with the group or
strive for personal gain, those in the non-synchronised group behaved
less loyally than the rest (Psychological Science, vol 20, p 1).

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt at the University of Virginia in
Charlottesville thinks this research helps explain why fascist
leaders, amongst others, use organised marching and chanting to whip
crowds into a frenzy of devotion to their cause, though these tactics
can be used just as well for peace, he stresses. Community dances and
group singing can ease local tension, for example - a theory he plans
to test experimentally (Journal of Legal Studies, DOI: 10.1086/529447).

Meanwhile, the powerful unifying effects of propaganda images are
being explored by Charles Seger at Indiana University at Bloomington.
His team primed students with pictures of their university - college
sweatshirts or the buildings themselves - then asked how highly they
scored on different emotions, such as pride or happiness. The primed
students gave a strikingly similar emotional profile, in contrast with
non-primed students (Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, DOI:
10.1016/j.jesp.2008.12.004).

Interest in the idea of a herd mentality has been renewed by work into
mirror neurons - cells that fire when we perform an action or watch
someone perform a similar action. It suggests that our brains are
geared to mimic our peers. "We are set up for 'auto-copy'," says Haidt.
Interest in the idea of a herd mentality has been renewed by research
into mirror neurons

Neurological evidence seems to back this idea. Vasily Klucharev, at
the Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging in Nijmegen, the
Netherlands, found that the brain releases more of the reward chemical
dopamine when we fall in line with the group consensus (Neuron, vol
61, p 140). His team asked 24 women to rate more than 200 women for
attractiveness. If a participant discovered their ratings did not
tally with that of the others, they tended to readjust their scores.
When a woman realised her differing opinion, fMRI scans revealed that
her brain generated what the team dubbed an "error signal". This has a
conditioning effect, says Klucharev: it's how we learn to follow the
crowd.
http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

[roeoz] Insulation scheme won't reduce emissions: Australia Institute

2009-02-04T18:57:00.001-08:00

Insulation scheme won't reduce emissions: Australia Institute

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/05/2483104.htm?section=justin

The Australia Institute policy research centre says the Government's
initiative to fund insulation for more than 2 million homes will not
reduce Australia's carbon emissions.

The Government says the scheme will help households save energy and
cut carbon emissions by up to 49 million tonnes by 2020.

But the Australia Institute's executive director Richard Denniss says
the Government's carbon pollution reduction scheme will just
reallocate those emissions.

"The way the Emissions Trading Scheme is designed, every kilogram of
emissions saved by a household frees up an extra permit for a big
polluter," he said.

"So while it's true this scheme will help reduce households' use of
energy, it won't reduce Australia's emissions at all.

"What they do is take those permits freed up by what the individuals
have done and sell those permits to the aluminium industry or the
steel industry or anyone else who wants them.

"So effectively the carbon pollution reduction scheme is really just a
carbon pollution reallocation scheme."

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong says that is a misleading argument.

"What energy efficiency measures do is enable the Government to set
lower and more ambitious targets in years to come, what they do is
ensure is that Australian households can contribute to meeting these
ambitious targets," she said.

Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt says the Government needs
to prove the scheme will help the environment.

"The Government has to come clean today, if it turns out all the
Government is doing is shifting emissions from one source to another,
then there are real questions about the integrity of the Government's
insulation package," he said.

http://truckerweekly.blogpsot.com

http://www.squidoo.com/2009jobloses

World's Biggest Garage Sale Gearing Up

2009-02-02T15:54:00.001-08:00

Another great article in the "Endgame Series" by Charles Hugh Smith, from the blogspot; Of Two Minds which really brings into perspective why our happy-motoring lifestyles are gone, and never coming back. The deflation, the hollowing out of energy investment, systemic sclerosis and the massive deleveraging of the accouterments of consumerism. All culminating in the biggest god damn garage sale ever seen which may last 5 years, maybe more.

What Won't Be Changing
February 2, 2009

Government policy adjustments are feedback loops which will affect small systems,but they are incapable of changing the major trends.

Amidst the debate about whether the "stimulus" and "bad bank" plans will magicallyrestore the U.S. and thus the global economy to what once passed for "health," it'sgood to recall what can't and won't be changed by any government policy adjustments.

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

stimulus anyone?

2009-02-02T15:19:00.001-08:00

Govt to release second stimulus package today

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/03/2480571.htm?section=justin

The Federal Government is expected to release its second economic
stimulus package today to further counter the effects of the global
economic crisis on the domestic economy.

As part of the package, expected to be in the billions, free ceiling
insulation will be provided for more than 2.5 million homes.

The Government says the move will save families about $200 a year on
their energy bills and create jobs for people to install the insulation.

The scheme will be available for 2.2 million owner-occupied homes and
another 500,000 rental properties.

The package is also expected to include infrastructure spending and
measures aimed at boosting employment.

The announcement comes after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday
revealed that the crisis had punched a $115 billion hole in government
revenues.

Opposition housing spokesman Scott Morrison says the package must
ensure effective spending and says the insulation scheme is already 12
months late.

"We've already been waiting 12 months for the initial measure to be
introduced so they're largely playing catch up on their own policy on
this and they've dressed it up as a stimulus measure," he told ABC 2
News Breakfast.

"It's clear that the cash splash before Christmas did not have the
intended effect and they're going to have another go round and we're
waiting to see what the details of that package is," he said.

The Reserve Bank of Australia is also tipped act against the negative
effects of the crisis today by slashing the cash rate by 100 basis points.

Last October, the Government released a $10.4 billion economic
security strategy, which provided almost $9 billion in one-off cash
payments to pensioners and some families.

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

[roeoz] IEA Says Agency Is Likely to Cut Oil Demand Forecast (Update2)

2009-02-02T14:41:00.000-08:00

IEA Says Agency Is Likely to Cut Oil Demand Forecast (Update2)

By Fred Pals
Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The International Energy Agency will probably revise its forecast for world oil demand this month because of slowing economic growth, the agency's executive director said.

"It is likely that a downwards revision happens," Nobuo Tanaka said in an interview today in The Hague. "The global economic growth projections are very pessimistic."

Tanaka said the IEA will take into account the economic forecast by the International Monetary Fund. The IMF said last month gross domestic product in the U.S. will contract 1.6 percent this year, while Japan's will fall 2.6 percent and the euro-area economy will shrink by 2 percent.

The IEA, an energy policy adviser to 28 nations, said in its Jan. 16 monthly report that world consumption in 2009 will fall by 510,000 barrels a day, or 0.6 percent, to 85.3 million barrels a day, for a second year of declining demand. The Paris-based agency is due to publish its next monthly report for Feb. 11.

Oil prices have plunged more than $100 a barrel from a record in July as the U.S., Europe and Japan face their first simultaneous recessions since World War II. The IEA's chief energy economist, Fatih Birol, said Jan. 29 that world oil demand this year may average about 300,000 to 400,000 barrels a day less than last year because of the global recession.

Rebound From December

Crude oil for March delivery fell as much as $1.67, or 4 percent, to $40.01 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That's the lowest since Jan. 20. Oil was at $40.45 a barrel at 14:34 p.m. London time. Still, prices have rebounded from a four-year low of $32.40 reached Dec. 19 as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries implements a record supply reduction.

OPEC, which accounts for about 40 percent of global oil supplies, agreed in December to reduce output by 2.46 million barrels a day, or 9 percent, starting Jan. 1 to stem the slide in prices. The group is due to meet March 15 in Vienna to review its oil output policy.

"If they further reduce supply, the market could be much tighter," Tanaka said. "That is a concern if we think about the health of the economy."

[roeoz] Debt and forgiveness through the ages

2009-02-02T13:21:00.001-08:00

Speaking of biblical decrees, I was surprised to read this today.

There is no guarantee that the measures will succeed. The vast scale of government borrowing may exhaust the stock of global capital. Markets are already beginning to question the credit-worthiness of sovereign states. The Fed may find it harder than it thinks to disengage from colossal intervention in the bond markets.

In the end, the only way out of all this global debt may prove to be a Biblical debt Jubilee.

Jubilee is an interesting tradition that hasn't really been practiced for centuries, but for thousands of years it was an accepted part of middle east tradition. In today's world the idea of a periodic wholesale canceling of debts and the restoration of land to the poor seems utopian and anachronistic.
Unlike today's world, the ideas of morality and religion wasn't excluded from economics. In fact, unlike today, morality and religion was infinitely more important than profit and personal property.

What was radically disturbing in archaic times was the idea of unrestrained wealth-seeking. It took thousands of years for the idea of progress to become inverted, to connote freedom for the wealthy to deprive the peasantry of their lands and personal liberty.

"Land must not be sold in perpetuity, for the land belongs to me and you are only strangers and guests. You will allow a right of redemption on all your landed property."
- Lev. 25:23-28

I first got interested in the concept of Jubilee, not for religious reasons, but for economic reasons. The person who introduced me to the idea was my favorite economic historian, Michael Hudson.

"First they ignore you, then they denounce you, and then they say that they knew what you were saying all the time," said Gandhi. The same might be said of today's overhang of debts in excess of the economy's ability to pay. First the policy makers pretend that they can be paid, then they denounce the pessimists as spreading panic, and then they say that of course students have been taught for four thousand years now how the "magic of compound interest" keeps on doubling and redoubling debts faster than the economy can squeeze out an economic surplus to pay.

What has ended is the idea that "the magic of compound interest" can make economies rich without having to work and without industry. I hope we have seen the end of derivatives formula seeking to make money by playing in a zero-sum game. A debt overhang always ends either in foreclosure of the debtor's property, or in a debt annulment to preserve the economy's overall freedom and equity.

This means that the postmodern economy as we know it must end – either in financial polarization and debt peonage to a new oligarchic elite, or in a debt cancellation, a Jubilee Year to rescue society. But when the government says that it is reviewing "all" the options, this reality is not one of them.

The Federal Reserve has attacked the current financial crisis as if it were a problem of liquidity (not enough money is available to borrow and loan). In fact the problem is the levels of debt in the world today.
To put it another way, it's not the financial system is illiquid. It's that the world's banks are insolvent. Some officials recognize this to be the case.

"This biggest worldwide economic crisis arose by getting into debt," Josef Proell, Austria's new finance minister, said. "You can't fight a debt crisis by getting into more debt."

I would have more confidence in optimism if the optimists lived wisely!
A pessimist is a well informed optimist!
http://www.greenhousedesign.green.net.au

[roeoz] Having more than two children is 'irresponsible' warns Government advisor

2009-02-01T14:33:00.000-08:00

The birth rate in Britain is now at its highest for 30 years
Couples who have more than two children are putting an 'irresponsible' burden on the environment, the Government's leading green advisor has warned.

Jonathon Porritt called on ministers to divert money away from curing illnesses towards contraception and abortion services to limit the country's population and help in the fight against global warming.

And he criticised fellow green campaigners for dodging the issue of population growth and its effect on the environment because it is too 'controversial'.

It came as Catholic bishops in England and Wales lambasted environmentalism as an ideology every bit as dangerous as communism.

In a booklet, they say worshippers should be deeply sceptical of claims the green movement makes on global warming.

Mr Porritt, chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, which advises the Government on green matters, said he was due to publish a report in March calling on ministers to reduce population growth through better family planning.

'We still have one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancies in Europe and we still have relatively high levels of pregnancies going to birth, often among women who are not convinced they want to become mothers,' he said.

Britain's population of 61 million is forecast to exceed 70 million by 2028. The birth rate is now at its highest for almost 30 years, largely because immigrant mothers have higher birth rates, and because teenage pregnancy rates are among the highest in Europe.

The UK's abortion rate is already one of the highest in the western world - second only to the United States.

The Optimum Population Trust, a campaign group of which Mr Porritt is a patron, says each baby born in Britain will, during his lifetime, burn the amount of carbon equivalent to two and a half acres of oak woodland - around the size of Trafalgar Square.

Mr Porritt, who has two children himself, added: 'I am unapologetic about asking people to connect up their own responsibility for their total environmental footprint and how they decide to procreate and how many children they think are appropriate.

'I think we will work our way towards a position that says having more than two children is irresponsible. It is the ghost at the table. We have all these big issues that everybody is looking at and then you don't really hear anyone say the P-word.

'Many organisations think it is not part of their business. My mission with the Friends of the Earths and the Greenpeaces of this world is to say: "You are betraying the interests of your members by refusing to address population issues and you are doing it for the wrong reasons because you think it is too controversial".'

A spokeswoman for the Pro-life Alliance said: 'Yet again we hear an expert calling for more contraception and abortion: but our high abortion figures are the fruit of that kind of approach.

'The unpleasant aspect of this statement is the idea that how many children you have should be down to the state. Wherever we have seen such policies being imposed, such as in China, we have seen a preference for male children and a rise in infanticide.'

The views expressed by Mr Porritt came under attack from the Catholic Church, which views contraception as 'intrinsically evil'.

A booklet by the London-based Catholic Truth Society, a charity under the patronage of Peter Smith, the Archbishop of Cardiff, said there was a proven tendency among the environmental lobby to exaggerate the threat of global warming to exaggerate the threat of global warming to vindicate their calls for radical Government measures to 'forcibly' move the world down a 'sustainable' path.

The book, Global Warming: How Should we Respond, says: 'Just as Marxism advocated Communism as the only solution to the world's ills, so Greens warn us of major catastrophe if we do not adopt their calls for radical change.'

It says the ideology of the Green movement ran counter to Christian beliefs, because it saw 'mankind as just one species among many'.

The book says that population programmes targeting the 'supposedly feckless breeding' of the poor, especially in developing countries, were the result of racist and unfounded prejudices.

'Environmental campaigns which demand that the natural world should be treated with greater respect imply that this is the only issue that matters, ignoring the plight of humanity or any spiritual values,' it said.

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

[roeoz] Violent clashes in Russia

2009-02-01T14:02:00.001-08:00

Violent clashes in Russia as angry protesters call for Putin to resign
over economy

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1133002/Violent-clashes-Russia-angry-protesters-Putin-resign-economy.html

Russia was rocked today by some of its strongest protests yet as
thousands rallied across the vast country to attack the Kremlin's
response to the global economic crisis.

The marches, complete with Soviet-style red flags and banners,
pose a challenge to a government which has faced little threat from
the fragmented opposition and politically apathetic population during
the boom years fueled by oil.

Pro-government thugs beat up some of the protesters.

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

[roeoz] Roubini Sees Global Gloom After Davos Vindication

2009-02-01T13:57:00.000-08:00

Roubini Sees Global Gloom After Davos Vindication

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a6A9lCHrtAqk

Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- At the World Economic Forum two years ago,
Nouriel Roubini warned that record profits and bonuses were obscuring
a "hard landing" to come. "I really disagree," countered Jacob
Frenkel, the American International Group Inc. vice chairman and
former Israeli central banker.

No more. "Roubini was intellectually courageous, and he called the
shots correctly," says Frenkel, whose AIG survives only on the basis
of more than $100 billion of government loans. "He gained credibility,
and he deserves it."

Even as he wins plaudits for his prescience, Roubini, 50, says
worse lies ahead. Banks face bigger credit losses than they realize,
more financial companies will require state takeovers and the world
economy will keep shrinking throughout 2009, he says.

"The consensus is catching up with me, but it's still behind,"
Roubini said in an interview in Davos. "I don't know what some people
are smoking."

`Catastrophic'

As long ago as February 2007, Roubini was writing on his blog that
"the party will soon be over," and warning of "painful consequences
for the U.S. and the global economy." By last February, his tone had
become apocalyptic, raising the specter of a "catastrophic" meltdown
that central banks would fail to prevent, triggering the bankruptcy of
large banks with mortgage holdings and a "sharp drop" in equities.

The next month, Bear Stearns Cos. failed, to be taken over by
JPMorgan Chase & Co. in a government-backed deal. Then, in September,
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. went bankrupt, prompting banks to hoard
cash and depriving businesses and households of access to capital. The
U.S. took over AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Standard &
Poor's 500 Index suffered its worst year since 1937.

"I was intellectually vindicated," Roubini says. "But I was
vindicated by having an economic disaster which has political and
social consequences."

Predecessors

Roubini's predecessors in the role of economic nay-sayer include
some well-known names: Joseph Granville, publisher of the Granville
Market Letter, who forecast the stock-market declines of 1976 and
2000; Henry Kaufman, who as a managing director at Salomon Brothers
projected rising interest rates that led to a U.S. recession in the
early 1980s; Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report,
who predicted the 1987 stock crash; and Yale University's Robert
Shiller, a former colleague of Roubini's, who forecast the end of the
dot-com bubble in his 2000 book "Irrational Exuberance" and said in a
second edition in 2005 that the U.S. housing market had undergone the
biggest speculative boom in U.S. history.

Granville, 85, says the key to being an outlier is not to doubt
your analysis.

"I don't have anything to do with emotion," says Granville, who's
based in Kansas City. "Keep your head, follow the numbers and ignore
the rest."

Roubini was born in Istanbul, the son of an importer- exporter of
carpets, and spent his childhood in Israel, Iran and Italy. It was
while living in Milan from 1962 to 1982, he says, that he became
attracted to economics: "Economics had the tools to understand the
world, and not just understand it but also change it for the better."

Roubini, who's now working on a book about the crisis, says he
takes no particular pleasure in his role as Dr. Doom or the attention
it brings him.

"I'm not a permanent bear," he says. "I'll be the first to call a
recovery, but I just don't see it yet, and it's getting uglier."

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

[roeoz] the sun is setting on a previous era

2009-02-01T01:17:00.000-08:00

We are at the dawn of a new era and more importantly the sun is setting on a previous era. This previous era was a time of exponential growth in energy, population, and material resources.

The conversion of resources and labor into commodities kept up with the demands of a monetary system predicated on compound interest and fractional reserve lending. Admittedly there were some rough spots along the way, but all in all it looked like a pretty good deal.

Then something happened. The system that cranked out all those goods started to run out of markets for those goods. The solution was to buy cheaper labor to make those goods more attractive to buyers. Also, as the resource base started to degrade into lower quality ores and energy, those costs further drove the system to look for more markets and even cheaper labor. As few people had the wages to buy these goods, the system also devised a way to lend people enough money to buy all the neat stuff.

This flooded the system with a lot of new money conjured out of nowhere. Now, as the sellers and financiers of all this neat stuff ran to invest their profits in the making of more neat stuff, they found that there was no way to expand the market for neat stuff. People had about as much neat stuff as they could afford, and arguably a bit more.

But, one of the rules of the system is that money must be put to work and earn more money because of a thing called The Discount Rate. This is when the new conjured up money causes existing money to lose value by inflation. Having nothing tangible to invest in, the brokers and bankers started to invest in instruments that were based on the performance of yet more instruments. This violated the notion that money must confront commodities in a market.

Under this new scheme, money confronted other money or even just the promise of money. What happened? What happened is what happens whenever people make bad promises. Bad things happen. The chain of payments that keeps money and commodities circulating began to break down.

One of the assumptions under the system is that the quantity of money and commodities should always grow. That's what all of the contracts are based on. The system cannot cope with a decline in money or commodities. The system breaks down. The system is like a man driving a tired horse. The horse needs to have it's workload reevaluated. It needs some hay and oats and a long drink, It needs a good rest. But the system cannot stand still. It whips the horse for more work without any concern for the health of the horse. Now we see the horse stagger and fall. It may be too late for the poor horse. Will the horse get up?

If it does, will the system let the horse recover and stop trying to get more from the horse than it can deliver? If the past behavior of the system is any indication, I don't hold out much hope for the horse.

I would have more confidence in optimism if the optimists lived wisely!
A pessimist is a well informed optimist!
http://www.greenhousedesign.green.net.au
http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

[roeoz] Governments across Europe tremble as angry people take to the streets

2009-01-31T18:03:00.000-08:00

31 Jan 2009

France paralysed by a wave of strike action, the boulevards of Paris resembling a debris-strewn battleﬁeld. The Hungarian currency sinks to its lowest level ever against the euro, as the unemployment ﬁgure rises. Greek farmers block the road into Bulgaria in protest at low prices for their produce. New ﬁgures from the biggest bank in the Baltic show that the three post-Soviet states there face the biggest recessions in Europe.

It's a snapshot of a single day – yesterday – in a Europe sinking into the bleakest of times. But while the outlook may be dark in the big wealthy democracies of western Europe, it is in the young, poor, vulnerable states of central and eastern Europe that the trauma of crash, slump and meltdown looks graver.

Exactly 20 years ago, in serial revolutionary rejoicing, they ditched communism to put their faith in a capitalism now in crisis and by which they feel betrayed. The result has been the biggest protests across the former communist bloc since the days of people power.

Europe's time of troubles is gathering depth and scale. Governments are trembling. Revolt is in the air.

Athens
Alexandros Grigoropoulos, a 15-year-old middle-class boy going to a party in a rough neighbourhood on a December Saturday, was the first fatality of Europe's season of strife. Shot dead by a policeman, the boy's killing lit a bonfire of unrest in the city unmatched since the 1970s.

There are many wellsprings of the serial protests rolling across Europe. In Athens, it was students and young people who suddenly mobilised to turn parts of the city into no-go areas. They were sick of the lack of jobs and prospects, the failings of the education system and seized with pessimism over their future.

This week it was the farmers' turn, rolling their tractors out to block the motorways, main road and border crossings across the Balkans to try to obtain better procurement prices for their produce.

Riga
The old Baltic trading city had seen nothing like it since the happy days of kicking out the Russians and overthrowing communism two decades ago. More than 10,000 people converged on the 13th-century cathedral to show the Latvian government what they thought of its efforts at containing the economic crisis. The peaceful protest morphed into a late-night rampage as a minority headed for the parliament, battled with riot police and trashed parts of the old city. The following day there were similar scenes in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital next door.

After Iceland, Latvia looks like the most vulnerable country to be hammered by the financial and economic crisis. The EU and IMF have already mounted a €7.5bn (£6.6bn) rescue plan but the outlook is the worst in Europe.

The biggest bank in the Baltic, Swedbank of Sweden, yesterday predicted a slump this year in Latvia of a whopping 10%, more than double the previous projections. It added that the economy of Estonia would shrink by 7% and of Lithuania by 4.5%.

The Latvian central bank's governor went on national television this week to pronounce the economy "clinically dead. We have only three or four minutes to resuscitate it".

Paris
Burned-out cars, masked youths, smashed shop windows, and more than a million striking workers. The scenes from France are familiar, but not so familiar to President Nicolas Sarkozy, confronting the first big wave of industrial unrest of his time in the Elysée Palace.

Sarkozy has spent most of his time in office trying to fix the world's problems, with less attention devoted to the home front. From Gaza to Georgia, Russia to Washington, Sarkozy has been a man in a hurry to mediate in trouble spots and grab the credit for peacemaking.

France, meanwhile, is moving into recession and unemployment is going up. The latest jobless figures were to have been released yesterday, but were held back, apparently for fear of inflaming the protests.

Budapest
A balance of payments crisis last autumn, heavy indebtedness and a disastrous budget made Hungary the first European candidate for an international rescue. The $26bn (£18bn) IMF-led bail-out shows scant sign of working. Industrial output is at its lowest for 16 years, the national currency - the forint - sank to a record low against the euro yesterday and the government also announced another round of spending cuts yesterday.

So far the streets have been relatively quiet. The Hungarian misery highlights a key difference between eastern and western Europe. While the UK, Germany, France and others plough hundreds of billions into public spending, tax cuts, bank bailouts and guarantees to industry, the east Europeans (plus Iceland and Ireland) are broke, ordering budget cuts, tax rises, and pleading for international help to shore up their economies.

The austerity and the soaring costs of repaying bank loans and mortgages taken out in hard foreign currencies (euro, yen and dollar) are fuelling the misery.

Kiev
The east European upheavals of 1989 hit Ukraine late, maturing into the Orange Revolution on the streets of Kiev only five years ago. The fresh start promised by President Viktor Yushchenko has, though, dissolved into messy, corrupt, and brutal political infighting, with the economy, growing strongly a few years ago, going into freefall.

Three weeks of gas wars with Russia this month ended in defeat and will cost Ukraine dearly. The national currency, at less than half the value of six months ago, is akin to the fate of Iceland's wrecked krona. Ukrainians have been buying dollars by the billion. In November the IMF waded in with the first payments in a $16bn rescue package.

The vicious power struggles between Yushchenko and the prime minister, Yuliya Tymoshenko, are consuming the ruling elite's energy, paralysing government and leaving the economy dysfunctional. Russia is doing its best to keep things that way.

Reykjavik
Proud of its status as one of the world's most developed, most productive and most equal societies, Iceland is in the throes of what is, by its staid standards, a revolution.

Riot police in Reykjavik, the coolest of capitals. Building bonfires in front of the world's oldest parliament. The yoghurt flying at the free market men who have run the country for decades and brought it to its knees.

An openly gay prime minister takes over today as head of a caretaker government. The neocon right has been ditched. The hard left Greens are, at least for the moment, the most popular party in the small Arctic state with a population the size of Bradford.

The IMF's bailout teams have moved in with $11bn. The national currency, the krona, appears to be finished. Iceland is a test case of how one of the most successful societies on the globe suddenly failed.

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

[roeoz] NATO High Commander Issues Illegitimate Order to Kill

2009-01-31T17:38:00.000-08:00

NATO High Commander Issues Illegitimate Order to Kill
By Susanne Koelbl

28 Jan 2009

The approach to combatting the drug mafia in Afghanistan has spurred an open rift inside NATO. According to information obtained by SPIEGEL, top NATO commander John Craddock wants the alliance to kill opium dealers, without proof of connection to the insurgency. NATO commanders, however, do not want to follow the order.

A dispute has emerged among NATO High Command in Afghanistan regarding the conditions under which alliance troops can use deadly violence against those identified as insurgents. In a classified document, which SPIEGEL has obtained, NATO's top commander, US General John Craddock, has issued a "guidance" providing NATO troops with the authority "to attack directly drug producers and facilities throughout Afghanistan."
According to the document, deadly force is to be used even in those cases where there is no proof that suspects are actively engaged in the armed resistance against the Afghanistan government or against Western troops. It is "no longer necessary to produce intelligence or other evidence that each particular drug trafficker or narcotics facility in Afghanistan meets the criteria of being a military objective," Craddock writes.

The NATO commander has long been frustrated by the reluctance of some NATO member states -- particularly Germany -- to take aggressive action against those involved in the drug trade. Craddock rationalizes his directive by writing that the alliance "has decided that (drug traffickers and narcotics facilities) are inextricably linked to the Opposing Military Forces, and thus may be attacked." In the document, Craddock writes that the directive is the result of an October 2008 meeting of NATO defense ministers in which it was agreed that NATO soldiers in Afghanistan may attack opium traffickers.

The directive was sent on Jan. 5 to Egon Ramms, the German leader at NATO Command in Brunssum, Netherlands, which is currently in charge of the NATO ISAF mission, as well as David McKiernan, the commander of the ISAF peacekeeping force in Afghanistan. Neither want to follow it. Both consider the order to be illegitimate and believe it violates both ISAF rules of engagement and international law, the "Law of Armed Conflict."
A classified letter issued by McKiernan's Kabul office in response claims that Craddock is trying to create a "new category" in the rules of engagement for dealing with opposing forces that would "seriously undermine the commitment ISAF has made to the Afghan people and the international community ... to restrain our use of force and avoid civilian casualties to the greatest degree predictable."

A value equivalent to 50 percent of Afghanistan's gross national product is generated through the production and trade of opium and the heroin that is derived from it. Of those earnings, at least $100 million flows each year to the Taliban and its allies, which is used to purchase weapons and pay fighters. That, at least, is the estimate given by Antonio Maria Costas, head of the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime.

But the chain of people profiting from the drug trade goes a lot further -- reaching day laborers in the fields, drug laboratory workers and going all the way up to police stations, provincial governments and high-level government circles that include some with close proximity to President Hamid Karzai. If Craddock's order were to go into effect, it would lead to the addition of thousands of Afghans to the description of so-called "legitimate military targets" and could also land them on so-called targeting lists.

The Taliban are still responsible for the majority of civilian victims in Afghanistan. According to a United Nations report, more than half of the approximately 2,000 citizens killed last year died as a result of suicide attacks, car bombs and fighting with extremists. Nevertheless, relations between the Americans and the local population are extremely tense due the rising number of US-led air strikes and the dramatic increase in the number of civilian casualties.

Afghan villagers complain of the increase in the deaths of relatives who were mistakenly killed during military operations carried out by the Americans and their allies, such as the one carried out recently in Masamut, a village in the eastern Afghan province of Laghman. The US army announced that it had "eliminated" 32 Taliban insurgents. However, survivors claim that 13 civilians had been killed during the search for a Taliban commander. In the eyes of many Afghans the former liberators have long become ruthless occupiers.
German NATO General Ramms made it perfectly clear in his answer to General Craddock that he was not prepared to deviate from the current rules of engagement for attacks, which reportedly deeply angered Craddock. The US general, who is considered a loyal Bush man and fears that he could be replaced by the new US president, has already made his intention known internally that he would like to relieve any commander who doesn't want to follow his instructions to go after the drug mafia of his duties. Back in December, Central Command in Florida, which is responsible for the US Armed Forces deployment in Afghanistan, yet again watered-down provisions in the rules of engagement for the Afghanistan deployment pertaining to the protection of civilians. According to the new rules, US forces can now bomb drug labs if they have previous analysis that the operation would not kill "more than 10 civilians."

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

[roeoz] Global Population Speak Out

2009-01-31T15:10:00.001-08:00

For what it's worth... http://gpso.wordpress.com/

[We'll continue taking pledges into February. To pledge, simply read
the GPSO Letter, then go to the contact page to email your pledge.]

Welcome to the website for the Global Population Speak Out (GPSO).
GPSO is a simple idea in response to our worldwide ecological plight.

The size and growth of the human population is a fundamental driver of
the crisis we face. If we hope to avert worldwide catastrophe, many
experts agree, we'll need a massive shift of attention and resources
toward humane measures designed to stabilize and ultimately reduce
world population to a sustainable level.

Yet there exists today a taboo of sorts against public discussion of
the population issue. Outside the scientific community, calls to
address population often meet vigorous, ill-informed criticism and
even hostility from both the left and right. [1] Understandably, few
in a position to speak out on population care to do so under such
conditions.

Change does not spring from silence. Clearly we must find a way to
break down this taboo and bring population to the center of public
discussion.

That's where GPSO comes in.
The GPSO idea

GPSO was born of a simple idea: What if a large number of qualified
voices worldwide, many of whom might not have emphasized the topic
previously, were to speak out on population all at once? The strength
of numbers might help weaken the taboo and bring population to a more
prominent position in the global discussion.
How it works

GPSO begins with an invitation (the GPSO letter) we're sending to a
large number of scientists and scholars, environmental, science, and
social policy writers, editors, and activists, staff members of
environmental NGOs, politicians, and a variety of prominent public
figures. As a group of concerned scientists and environmental writers
and activists, we invite them merely to pledge to speak out in some
way, during February, 2009, on the problem of the size and growth of
the human population.

But you need not be invited to pledge. We welcome unsolicited pledges.
See this page for details.

Importantly, participants can be sure they will have plenty of good
company in their efforts. Only if we get at least 50 commitments will
we ask respondents to honor their pledges. (We anticipate more.) If we
do, then GPSO happens; a minimum of 50, and perhaps many more
respected voices worldwide will speak out publicly on the population
issue during a single month.

Many of the invited participants will be speaking publicly on the
topic for the first time. Our strongest hope is to bring new voices to
the issue, to break down the barrier for others to follow. If GPSO is
highly successful, it will be a little easier after February for more
people to take up this crucial cause.
This site

Here on the website, you'll find information on the project, a copy of
the GPSO letter to potential participants, a list of the letter's
signers, a record of participants (pledgers) and their efforts to
speak out, a blog for updates, and materials helpful to participants
in formulating their messages or to others seeking basic information
on the global ecological crisis and its link to the size and growth of
the human population.

Thanks for stopping by, and please check back for updates in the near
future.

[roeoz] US set for ‘big bang' financial clean-up

2009-01-31T12:36:00.001-08:00

The Obama administration is gearing up for a "big bang"
announcement next week that will combine a bank clean-up with measures
to reduce home foreclosures and probably steps to kick-start credit
markets.

The plan will involve an overhaul of the troubled asset relief
programme - the $700bn bail-out fund - including strict curbs on
compensation at banks receiving public aid. The Tarp overhaul is
intended to restore public confidence in what is a deeply unpopular
programme and ensure that taxpayer money is not used to fund excessive
pay, bonuses and dividends to shareholders.

"There will definitely be a cap of some sort on bonuses," said a
Wall Street executive who has taken part in talks with the
authorities. "The political climate is such that there is a need to
punish Wall Street."

The announcement will follow Friday's news that the US economy
contracted at an annualised rate of 3.8 per cent in last year's final
quarter - less than analysts were expecting, but still the worst
quarter since 1982. The fall was cushioned by ballooning inventories,
which suggest the economy could shrink faster than expected in the
first quarter.

The "big bang" approach reflects the belief of Tim Geithner,
Treasury secretary, and Lawrence Summers, National Economic Council
director, that the Bush administration was wrong to dribble out policy
initiatives. Mr Geithner intends to present a "comprehensive" plan
that policymakers hope will command market confidence.

Details of the financial overhaul are being finalised and have yet
to be approved by President Barack Obama, but it may include both the
purchase of toxic assets by a "bad bank" and insurance-style
guarantees for problem assets remaining on bank balance sheets.

Anti-foreclosure efforts are likely to focus on subsidising
programmes that reduce unsustainable monthly mortgage payments, though
there may also be support for schemes that subsidise the partial
writedown of loans that exceed the value of the home. Treasury may
also unveil new efforts to revitalise dysfunctional securitisation
markets.

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com

[roeoz] Russians to U.S.: Give us the Fed

2009-01-31T12:32:00.000-08:00

DAVOS, Switzerland (Fortune) -- The Russians are upset that the
U.S. dollar is the world's principal reserve currency, and this week
in Davos they have been putting forward suggestions for how to fix the
issue. First came Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who called in a
speech on Wednesday for efforts to "facilitate the emergence of
several reserve currencies."

On Thursday it was the turn of German Gref, a former Economics
Minister who is now CEO of Russia's largest bank, state-owned
Sberbank. His proposal during a panel discussion went even further
than Putin's: In the absence of any serious competitors to the dollar,
he advocated international control of U.S. monetary policy.

The biggest risk facing the world, he said, is that the U.S.
dollar plays a global role but is managed narrowly "in the vested
interests of only one country." In other words, he's pushing for the
U.S. Federal Reserve to be governed more like an international
institution than "merely" as the U.S. central bank.

Pressed by Fortune to explain what he means, Gref acknowledged
that he hasn't yet worked out the mechanisms for how Russia and other
countries would have a formal say in U.S. monetary policy.

But he insisted that the dollar's status as both the U.S. currency
and as a global one is "one of the three to four main reasons for this
crisis." Moreover, if the situation isn't changed, "we will stay in
the same international crisis."

I talked to several Russians and Russian watchers who are
attending the World Economic Forum, and they say that while the
Kremlin has long grumbled the dominance of the dollar, this is the
first time they've heard Russian officials putting forward specific
solutions - including having a say in U.S. monetary policy.

The Russians are chafing about the greenback because it has been
extremely volatile over the past few years - and because their oil and
gas is sold in dollars. And of course, the dollar is a potent
worldwide symbol of American economic and political power, which they
aren't all that crazy about either.

The Russian central bank has tried to mitigate the issue by
devaluing the ruble against a basket of currencies that comprises the
dollar and the euro, rather than just the dollar. When the financial
crisis exploded last fall, the ruble came under heavy selling pressure.

For several weeks, the central bank tried to prop it up, but after
blowing through about $150 billion to no avail, it has since allowed
the Russian currency to devalue gradually.

Global Recession Triggers Oil's Last Decline In Price?

2009-01-31T11:55:00.001-08:00

If, and when, the world economy begins to recover, no later than 2012, the new supply will not be there to sustain it. Coupled with ongoing depletion, this lack of oil investment will lead to fresh highs for oil - as high as $300 USD per barrel. One can also imagine steeper decline rates (Bakhtiari T3?) by this stage too.

Anyone care to comment on the validity of this viewpoint? My feeling is
that anything much about $200 would see lights out for industrial civilisation,

I agree. Once upon a time, I thought the economy could handle $200
oil, but now that $147 broke the camel's back, I doubt it will ever
rise to those levels very very much.

In fact, with the economy completely screwed now, I think it would
probably go into another tailspin at $100.....

Anyone else noticed how petrol is creeping up to $1.20/L again...?
Very odd. It's on par with diesel for the first time ever.

http://truckerweekly.blogspot.com