Overpopulation is the main problem

Overpopulation is the world’s top environmental issue, followed closely by climate change and the need to develop renewable energy resources to replace fossil fuels, according to a survey of the faculty at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) reported in April 2009.

“Overpopulation is the only problem,” said Dr. Charles A. Hall, a systems ecologist. “If we had 100 million people on Earth — or better, 10 million — no others would be a problem.” (Current estimates put the planet’s population at more than six billion.)

I agree.

Russian Dead Hand Defense Strategy

The "Dead Hand" defense, a sort of Russian Roulette with the certainty of death for the other side in the event of a nuclear explosions that had not been responded to due to no orders from whomever carries the football in Russia these days.

The West believes that hand to now be Vladamir Putin's; making the existence of a system, such as the "Dead Hand", perhaps a little redundant. What it did, upon detecting nuclear tremors, is launch a devastating attack on America. Lucky no major earthquakes triggered this!

Now that the Cold War is over, we can look back at its horrific potential for errors leading to the annihilation of all life on the planet. So last decade. So not current thinking. The constant terror of being educated as a child about nuclear fallout shelters and the possibility that the accelerating state of tension between the USSR and the USA was punctuated with moments of greatness, such as Yuri Gagarin, Sputnik and the Apollo programmes. It was not the putting a man on the moon, which factually achieved less than putting the second one there as well, and so on; but, the very act of being able to populate another world was a significant stage in the evolution of humans.

Insofar as we know, humans seems to adapt more rapidly and inherently in our behavior, primarily language, and as such are the very least stable artifact of nature. Impatient to the very nucleus we are, increasingly prodded into grand magical majesty of change and recombination of elements.

There is no "should" that can dictate to us what we do next. Our self belief has been superseded by our technology. It is only by a process of mutual responsibility and love can we see a path past war, past suffering, where agreements are made as a token of faith in each other rather than a unworthy belief that another causes our decisions.

Can humanity evolve enough frugal inventiveness to conquer the limitations of growth? Imagine one day if the entire earth was one city. Due to the nature of growth, in its second year there would be so many homeless. We must share our resources with all the generations that follow, and we must somehow put an end to this need to destroy each other. If populations were stable, the differences would not matter as much, but there would be budget crises keeping up with pension costs.

Our generation took a time of extreme plenty and turned it into grand larceny on an exceptional scale. Gambling with the future is extreme folly.

Iran Nuclear Memo

A memo leaked in Iran that indicates as recently as 2007 there were discussions about nuclear weapon development. Disturbing, certainly, for Europe and Israel, for the UK and of course for President Barack Obama who will be seen by the world as the person who has to lead the charge against Iran for surging on with their nuclear arms aspirations.

Of course the leak could be propaganda, the BBC was unable to verify if the document was genuine. If it is propaganda, it is disturbing for Iran - what is the motivation?

Either way, it is a sadly revealing moment. Occams razor says that it is more likely that the memo is real, simply as it is reflected by the behaviour of Iran - a leadership that dictates to its population how they must vote, how they must not protest and how they must respond to religious edicts. As well as the ten reactors they have planned.

Danger to Food Chain

Climate change is not being viewed as a complex problem, but more in black and white terms of the likelihood that mankind is causing it.

This article

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8411135.stm

on the BBC introduced a new idea to Copenhagen. The idea that changes in the climate may endanger the food chain by changing the composition of the oceans - to more acidic. Therefore changing the basis of what life survives, thrives or starves.

Dubai bailed out

Abu Dhabi has bailed out Dubai's extraordinary property ventures with a US$10Billion grant to its sister state.

Blair justifies Iraq War

Tony Blair states that Saddam Hussein "had to go" as justification for the invasion of Iraq.

"I would still have thought it right to remove him. Obviously, you would have had to use and deploy different arguments, about the nature of the threat," he said.

"I can't really think we'd be better with him and his two sons still in charge," he added.

This logic puts government above the law. The reckless disregard for international agreements and the sovereignty of nations was not respected by the British Empire, or any other. Although it is hard to defend the acts of Saddam Hussein and the apparent evil in his heirs, it is also hard to defend a "we will employ any rhetoric we can think of" as a reasoned course of action for international intervention.

The rationale is bias. It has led the West (the UK and USA) into the worst deficit crisis in history. It may have been right for the sensibilities of Tony Blair and GW Bush. But the rest of the world thinks that this intervention was handled in the worst possible way.

To have continued to use the Rule of Law would have been far more effective, than a war that has not solved the issue of Iraqi political stability.

Fuel alternative

A genetically engineered bacteria converts CO2 into a liquid fuel. Brilliant - is this the solution to global warming? Perhaps. The disturbing trend we see following discoveries such as this is the justification to continue to produce pollution as it is now safer to do so.

China's inverse bubble

A population constriction, when the population is forcibly reduced by war, disease or policy requires a different set of release valves than a growing economy. Instead of inflation vs interest rates, it is deflation sets in because decreasing numbers of people create demand, in other words nobody is there to buy things. It is hard enough to sell your products into a niche in competition, but when your customer base erodes, there is a sense of that being economically troubling.

Continued/...

The crisis is Energy

The climate change debate has been set on edge by the revelation that records were "homogenised" and the original data lost by the East Anglia researchers. The conservative columnists seem to be convinced that disproving human created pollution is affecting our environment is their duty, even if it is. The risk to cities and low lands over the next 90 years or so, notwithstanding.

It is as though the threat to business, if the oil taps are turned off one day, is simply untenable. It is as though the status quo was a holy relic to be preserved for ever and a day.

The answer is not limiting productivity; it is finding better and less expensive ways to use energy. The oil industry is not really that different to the cancer causing tobacco giants - oil is however intimately tied with the economic model of industry. Industry can change direction, replace oil use by creating opportunities and find ways to produce energy without risk or damage to the environment.

As it is possible to achieve this, and failure to do so results in no conservation of the world as it was, the progress of clean technology remains an important priority for research and development.

Sovereign Debt - UPDATE

Dubai has asked that it may suspend payment on it's extraordinary property development schemes including Palm Island, projects that are owned by a holding company, 100% owned by the Dubai government. It is therefore "Sovereign Debt".

What is disturbing is that loaning governments may respond to Dubai effectively giving the Dubai economy a bail out. There really is no reason to, as the holding company is limited in liability therefore creditors may sit it out and not seek it's downfall, as they have too much invested and the incomplete project has less value than a completed one.

The actual risk involved (apart from the unnecessary environmental intrusion) if Dubai borrowed more to cover payments and keep building, seem minimal. If the company cannot borrow more, then creditors may tolerate late payment.

The news of Dubai's possible default had a large impact on world financial markets

---

December 1st, 2009
UPDATE: Dubai government will not support the debt as it is a problem for negotiation with creditors BBC

Views of Dubai - "you can go to prison for a bounced cheque" "I am trapped here"

Loan Traps

Organisations that feed off poverty by lending with ridiculous rates are coming under a bit of a spotlight of protest in the UK. As they should. Anyone who loans money to another person is entering a business transaction. If the APR is over 15% per annum, and the borrower has to pay more than 15% of their income in loan repayments, it is bound to fail. With APRs as high as hundreds of percent per annum, and incomes being uncertain, it does not take much fancy maths to see that it is a trap that the poor will never see the end of.

However, the same could be said of credit cards, sub-prime mortgages in general and much business debt. It simply has a future of not being repaid.

What does that mean? It means suffering, stress and the undoing of the potential of real lives for the sake of enriching a person or organisation that is essentially criminal in their intent. To profit from the suffering of others.

A new economic model is required. The current one may have suited a smaller world but the majority of humanity is being used by a small rich minority in an intergenerational scam that enslaves the lives of the many.

One solution is revolution. Economic revolution.

US Debt Tsunami

The US debt emergency is coming, and it is a man made Tsunami – after the erasure of an accumulation of massive fictional wealth – the complex debt structures borrowed with leverage against assumptions that have resulted in systemic deficiencies and bailouts – and may result in the collapse of one set of rules in favour of a new set.

More

Head of IMF says keep stimulus

When the head of the IMF speaks, the bankers sit up and listen. But is his advice going to be any more accurate than anyone else's?

It is hard to continue to mount up the debts investing in stability when jobs replacing all those that have vanished from the economy seem to fail to appear again anywhere else.

Governments may not recognise it is not just stability of the institutions that exchange and invest funds but the intergenerational pause that may work out far more costly.

There is a tendency to inherit old political stances and watch polls, instead of knowing what you are doing and hanging on for dear life as your popularity finally rises toward the end of your term.

More... Change is necessary

Grisly Cosmetics

A Peruivan gang made a "wrinkle cream" from human fat collected from scores of murdered peasants.

"The gang have been nicknamed the Pishtacos after the ruthless assassins of indigenous Quechua legend who ambushed solitary victims and drained their fat as an offering to gods to make the land fertile. Another version depicts them as cannibal bandits who ate the skin and sold the fat. The stories date back to before the European conquest."

One answer

Intellectual Ventures - a group of scientists who are coming up with viable scientific ideas that can help quell the effects of arctic ice loss due to global warming but imitation of volcanic spewing of sulphur dixoide into the stratosphere at about 60 degrees north, should cool the atmosphere.

Scientists love to isolate a problem and think outside the box. Intellectual Ventures has some innovative solutions.

The Problem with Global Warming

Reduction targets as a goal seem ignore a fundamental problem. We are overheating the world by increasing our activity levels year on year. It is politically unsound to rail against productivity growth.

More on NZ being the worst climate offender - and what is wrong with our approach to global warming.

Making Peace - Summary

Full article: Automatic Removed Warriors here, ends with this summary:

Military action always brings chaos.

Imagined political change is not sufficient reason to justify violence.

In 40 years nobody has tried peace as a solution.

Sharing the wealth with education and respectively putting up with the strange rituals of the other as something private is progressive as successful pluralities emerge.

Security Asylum

The big difference between today and thirty years ago - nobody needed passwords then. Just a drivers licence. Now they want our retina and finger prints. Next they will be after more...

CO2 emissions

Check this countdown timer for when the atmosphere has 1,000,000,000,000 tonnes of carbon in it - which is approximately past the threshold when the atmosphere will go above 2 degrees average and the real climatic instability proceeds with potentially disasterous consequences predicted.

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America

America has changed culture more than most modern civilizations. This mutability or adaptability is a threat to the older established rigid moral compass of a world that did not have so many variables and survived as a reason of taking great care with physical rules.

Full article

OBAMA WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

President Barack Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the committee said.

"His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

Natures Design

More about natural invention

Afghanistan – prospect of failure?

Army chief warns of prospect of failure in Afghanistan.

When the chief of the army starts a claim for more pay with dire warnings of losing a war in Afghanistan it takes away some edge from the argument he is making. Losing in Afghanistan is a worse result than underpaid soldiers, certainly.

Full article on DT: Predicting Future Politics

The New Wars

In this excellent TED presentation PW Singer talks of military robots and the future of war, being depersonalised by the massive growth in robotic military hardware being employed in the Iraqi war. Perhaps the motivation of GW Bush to go to war was in part to satisfy battlefield testing of a great deal of new technology that the military industrial empire of America was sitting on. Perhaps it was his motivation when early in his presidency, before 9/11 he absolved American's from war crimes in the theatre of modern war he wanted never to be considered for conviction at the world court.

By introducing mechanical toys and sophisticated robotics into the theatre of war, the forced imitation by the perceived enemy will mean that a condition of mutually assured destruction will also inevitably be reached, the "warning" sounded in the ridiculous "terminator" concept of machines having the logic to notice its masters were the real problem is not the future I see, it is more a wasteland of horrific pollution and scrap metal jungles that inevitably deadlock as attrition sets in.

Article continues inside

Shoe Thrower Release

The Iraqi man who was jailed for throwing shoes at George Bush, after 9 months spent paying for his protest, is being released.

It is farcical to observe how the "free world" respected the right of the man to protest at the already naked emperor of GW Bush's presidency. 9 months prison for pointing out the war criminal in the room.

Risking Unemployment

Unemployment is climbing and is rather bound to get worse. The 2 huge banking bailouts followed by the “Main Street” relief aimed at troubled mortgages will not solve the problem. By bailing out the banking industry, that had become a bit of a ponzi scheme attempting to leverage itself to heaven, the gold bricks have been left in place. The rescue of Ma and Pa Mortgages is well and good, but the future payments are still going to be a problem.

read the full article

Global Warming

The rate of global warming since 1886 can be seen in this map.

Leonard Druyan and colleagues at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, US, analysed past weather patterns to determine how well commonly-used climate models performed when replicating this past weather. Source: New Scientist

Map link

The right to bear arms

Political protest is a sign of a healthy democracy.

In America, the Second Amendment gives a citizen a right to bear arms. Right wing protesters carrying assault rifles may be a legal right but is it a legitimate protest? How many presidents has American guns assassinated? On the Right we have Ronald Reagan, on the Left we have JFK. If Reagan had died, perhaps the Right would be a little more sensitive.

Is the right to carry arms relevant in today's world? And is that in fact a valid political protest or just perpetuating the myth that being under the threat of random death is a benefit to anyone?

A man mistaken by a security guard was shot in the back, and left his child without a father. In the back. He kept walking when the guard started to shout at him, trying to get away. He was innocent of any crime. Having a gun does not make you right. It makes you into a potential murderer.

Imprisonment and Torture

The Economic Recovery

Signs of an economic recovery are starting to appear. After recapitalising the financial system, President Obama kept the US economy liquid. This is may have averted more depressing news but as the bankers start to return funds they were lent by the tax payer the question arises, where to now for the US economy?

read more

Shatner does Palin

A view from before the beginning

Time capsule - from 14 March 1998 when the Carlyle Group started to put pressure on Fanny May and Freddie Mac, how quickly the capital on which Bear Stearns dried up and then went super bad. The blog seems to have stopped just as things started to get nasty for the early "victims" of the credit crunch calamities that followed.

Sarah Palin's First Swipe

Sarah Palin has been published in the Washington Post criticizing Barack Obama's "Cap and Tax" energy policy. This appears to be an early evidence of why she resigned her appointment as Governor of Alaska. To take over the role of "Leader the of Opposition" as the now disheveled GOP Republican Party seems to have nobody but the ineligible Dick Cheney to foster its support base? That certainly seems the case, or Dick would have been less assailable in the media. Sarah Palin fares no better.

Sarah Palin, Voice in the Wilderness - full article.

Cultural Definition

The need for culture to define itself in terms of relative values interferes with rightful progress. As we carry past solutions to now non-existent problems, our culture is subsumed by a need for tradition – the tired old call of parents too confused by their offspring to do much else but bark orders to limit action. We exceed our parents as we start where they left off.

Full article

The Dispossesed

Saddam Hussein and Hitler had something in common. From their point of view it was a steel resolve but as a defeated enemy theirs became the view of the discredited. However it could be argued that Hitler’s eventual fate hastened the fate of Palestine whereas Saddam’s fate has given the Kurds more political power.

Full article

Sarah Palin, Politically Spent

In a move universally seen as ridiculous, Sarah Palin resigns as Governer of Alaska. Not during the good times does she hand it over to a well groomed successor, no epic battle, no scars, no situation. Just givin' up is all.

Full article

Iran Government Legitimacy

Two quotes from this article give a fair comparison of the relative positions of the EU and Iran.

"Obviously the regime is trying to preserve its position by very harsh repression," said Carl Bildt, Sweden's foreign minister, whose country takes over the EU's rotating presidency on 1 July. "But that cannot hide the fact that this is a weakened regime. It has lost legitimacy both internally and externally."

and

On Friday a senior cleric, Ahmed Khatami, lashed out at Britain in a televised sermon. "In this unrest, Britons have behaved very mischievously and it is fair to add the slogan of 'down with England' to the slogan of 'down with USA,'" he said. He also called for the execution of what he called "rioters' leaders". The previous week Khamenei had criticised Britain as the "most evil" country.

Taking prisoners from hospitals

The Basaji - the Iranian military secret police are taking prisoners of protesters following their treatment in hospitals.

We have heard on Twitter that PersianKiwi has been taken prisoner by the Government.

More here - article continued with the most disturbing Tweet stream from PersianKiwi...

North Korea

Is North Korea so insecure that it believes that it needs to threaten the United States in order to maintain its independence? The answer is most probably yes.

Read more...

Iran Demonstrations

Live Feed (or video of a live feed) from the Iran Election demostrations. Also see: Article: The Dictator

The above article contains predictions. It was published 12 hours before this appeared (on my screen at least): UPDATE NY Times

The demonstrations in Iran show the Iranian people have an emerging confidence. The corrupt establishment has shaken the illusion that they have the interests of the people at stake.

Fair democratic election must be internally perceived as such, and when it isn’t - economic health becomes impossible.

Regardless of what the West thinks could or should happen - Iran’s government is now perceived by it’s own people as cheating and lying and committing acts of sinful cowardice.

It has damaged the theocratic authenticity it relies upon.

New Zealand Most Peaceful Country

New Zealand has been voted the Most Peaceful Country in the world on Vision of Humanity by an Australian think tank, the Institute for Economics and Peace.

Last week, thousands of Aucklanders marched in a 100% peaceful demonstration of political unity with the Maori people who retain a seat of sovereignty over this nation, undivided but cooperating.

Link

Vision of Humanity site

Images of Maori Hikoi (march) in Auckland

State of Denial

Irate passengers disagree with being held on board ship in quarantine claiming "this is not what we paid for" and calling it some kind of disgrace. They were let ashore and then the motel they were staying in asked them to move as they were "not a quarantine facility".

If the swine flu had mutated into a more deadly form already and not spread over most of America (far far worse), this kind of behaviour would be deadly and very unpatriotic. No human has the right to infect others therefore a maritime state of quarantine is not something that a mere tourists commercial or even freedom can trump and letting these passengers ashore abrogates everyone else's human right.

Stupid idiots.

Predicting the next 100 years

There is a Stratfor article going around the the mainstream media predicting that America will remain the major superpower in the world ultimately due to geo-politics.

Predictions rely upon assumptions which are not definite, it all rather depends upon what individuals chose to do. “Disturbing” Trends represent just a few of those decisions - as they start to show their ugly signs. Predicting the future is not so much a science, as an art and if one is to be very good at it then you need to consider more than one side of the coin.

Military dominance only has so much value.

More/...

P - the disease we can not talk about

P - the drug - its use and manufacture is criminal in most democracies as it should be. The Western meme, “The War on Drugs” is a poor model of how to combat what is a contagion of deliberate disease that quickly spirals into addiction. Catching it early is not as good as prevention but if prevention fails, then catching it early is vital.

Read article

Sustainabilty

Excerpt of article, found here.

...humanity is more like a total organism that infected the Earth, and She (Earth is female, apparently) is about to strike back, big time. There was Lovelock's Gaia theory (and all that stuff Disturbing Trends has rabbited on about for years against the hum drum of stupid wars). The distraction of downtown demolition, emotional election drama and The Presidential Puppy are all very good and all, but what good old gunslingers seem to forget is that aura of fate that arises when doom talk starts.

God, I think I miss Sarah Palin. She was less logical than Thatcher at her most odious. That insane logic that gets us through wars, the ability to use gravitas and effect - that is really the quality that we look for in leaders. Nixon had it. NZ's own Robert Muldoon was popular even as he lunged at our economy with 70s era economic malaise madness. Tawdry effect with no ammo. Blair had it. Palin fills the heart with that confidence that Mummy will come home with a bear in her teeth. Joan of Arc had it. That glare that made you realise that it did not matter, you were their enemy anyway, no matter what you did, they would attack you. Snakes that only exist to menace in nightmares briefly have it too, but the thought of Palin's America still looms on some tattered horizon.

The future is no longer in our own hands, we are inevitably doomed by our own denial and inevitable love of a leader who can frighten others. This possibly brief period of "rational" leadership is only real change if our behaviour changes with it. One is perpetually hopeful as each generation of activist becomes more authentic than the last. The same mistakes will be made over and over again but if inspiration can guide us to radically change our approach to ecology and sustainability, humanity has more than a chance.

Complete article, found here.

Last word on Sarah Palin

Listen carefully to Keith Olbermann's biting logic.

See also: Disturbing Trends analysis of Sarah Palin, during the Presidential election cycle.

Swine Flu Madness

When the WHO declares a pandemic it is not usually due to the plague resurfacing with bodies dropping by the thousand. That is not a pandemic, that is the result of ignoring a disease and letting it get out of control.

Infection is not necessary. With parasites infection tends to be a predictable set of symptoms but viruses like the flu are by their very nature able to steal genes from the host cell and thus sneak into a back door, latch on and start feeding upon a host body. That is not particularly scientific but the problem here is that genetic information is a collection of characteristics with a rapid form of direct evolution binding in more and more of our genetic information as it infects different hosts.

The danger may not be the initial vector. If a pandemic is left to fester, the virus may as a result become far more virulent as it gathers more human information it makes us all more vulnerable to being its prey.

The control of SARS is oft quoted in media as a "reason we should not be worried" but considerable vigilance may have prevented mass infection with the deaths of millions and we can be thankful that it is not so much of a problem.

We have belief and trust in laboratory analysis as it declares a victim has "H1N1" without really understanding what that means. Does not stop the media spouting that expertise like facts that can be easily digested and creating panic. Understanding how viruses work is not casual knowledge.

Pandemic Level 5

The World Health Organisation has called Pandemic Level 5.

This virus could be very serious. It may burn itself out very quickly before combining with other influenza A instances. International measures may include 5 day economic shutdowns and limitations at this early stage that could turn this into a non-event.

The human race has a new enemy in this multi faceted swine flu. It can kill, but like any common sense hygiene issue, its continued spread is prevented by:

Isolation
Intake of fluids and
Immunity

If your immunity to the flu needs a boost, Tamiflu is $90 in NZ. It does work with this instance of the swine flu but if it were to combine with a Tamiflu resistant strain, them it is up to your own immunity. Some of us must gain immunity to the swine flu if infections spread radically and public health systems are overwhelmed.

Natural medicine may indeed be a solution for treating the flu if public health systems can not solve the problem. This is what I know:

An immune reaction is stimulated by Echinacea - a common homeopathic remedy. It stimulates mucus flow - helping to expel the disease from the body. It is advised that you do not take it for very long (or it may seem the symptoms continue).

There are also natural remedies to clear chest congestion, radish or horse radish. But if you get swine flu, isolation is most important. If the virus dies in your body, then it will not infect your friends and family.

Clean Sustainable Future

President Obama has stated that it is time for American leadership to step up and he has picked the one time when the Right certainly have no right to complain about putting America to work solving its dependence on foreign oil economic imbalance in three years.

All it takes is the political will to spend on the economy while saving the banking system. The best and perhaps only way for a modern large economy to work is not so much trickle down as a sort of reverse trickle - or more correctly by "assimulative growth" - growth that absorbs and supports its own as well as taking on new ground. It is the point of winning a war, to be able to improve a worsening situation.

Read more....

Global Fairness and Green Progress

"Sustainable Development" used to mean the kind of financial growth that Bernie Madoff practiced. In a childs game of impressing people with graphs of his snake oil financial empire he gloated in his now repossessed houses and yachts about his ability to make capitalism work for him personally in very special ways.

Sustainable development eventually became, in the 1970s a mantra for civilizing the world. A hundred years ago this civilizing allowed the demise of colonialism. The fruits of which resulted in an extended upper class that ruled things from the 'ouse of Lords or perhaps it was the cricket umpires, after all.

Full article on Disturbing Trends - predicting future politics.

Real Economics

Jayati Ghosh speaks about the current economic crisis.

The blinding gist of what she is saying is that the economic catastrophie is far greater than what caused the depression in scale and effect. Our resources are however far more sophisticated so recovery is inevitable. But for the first time ever, a redress of the conditions imposed by colonialism may occur. A genuine universal participation is now happening with the internet as the ultimate arbiter of relations between individuals anywhere.

In other words, there is a universal currency and the terms of trade between nations may no longer have much relevance. Everyone in the world now must be able to be wealthy or the system will not work. What we called "inflation" was the dilution of value. But how can more people be wealthy without more capital? Capital must grow alongside productivity.

President Obama's message to Iran

Disturbing Trends analysis

Ron Paul should lead the Republicans

Economies go both ways. Capital investment carries risk. If you invest properly, you do not overexpose yourself to risk. No 1 rule. Wall Street invested in risk and imported goods and when that faced by inevitable collapse they expected the Government to ameliorate the risk without addressing the effects on consumers?

The US Government are forced to lower the dollar as the demand for capital was increased by the drainage of credit. AIGs failure was triggered by irrational contracts over Lehman Bros failure.

So Bush bailed out the banks. Obama has prevented the pain being felt by the masses. Ron Paul is Right, but not for this time, thank-you very much. He should lead the Right, however, he far more brilliant than any other Republican leader.

The financial system needs to clean itself out of nonsense. That is what is stopping investment. People do not trust the markets to act in an honest or beneficial way due to ridiculous risk exposure. Trust was destroyed by AIG. You can not put a price on trust.

Good old Dick

Dick Cheney warns America that President Obama's policies "put America at risk".

He thinks that if you torture just about anybody, you protect people. In the process you endanger everyone by creating new enemies.

Dick Cheney should go on trial for his crimes and then perhaps the media will not headline his paranoid excuses for spying on Americans, for holding foreign nationals without trial and in some cases without evidence.

President Obama's policies are for the long road ahead. A road made far more difficult by the policies of the Bush era.

Restarting Credit

The fundamental of the economy of any country is that it’s people are doing something productive, and for that they can eke out a living, whether it be a basic or a more expensive variety - the function they are being rewarded for is difference, change, something as a result of their actions.

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War in Afghanistan

• Watch the 8 part series on vbs.tv
  
• How to Win the War in Afghanistan - in Disturbing Trends - Predicting Future Politics
  

Real Progress

All this focus on the economy may mean we take our attention off the real issue. All the focus on sectional interests and pressure groups that drive the climate change agenda, instead of actual planning to change things that must change is distracting humanity from its mission, its meaning and its life.

Real progress follows talking about it, only if plans are made real without all the political watering down of meaning that occurs.

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The Great Swindling

It just shows that trust in the power of the inheritance as a way to provide tribal continuity is a mirage. The way to provide for all people is to enable everyone to be able to pick themselves up regardless from what station they started...


Latest article on the inside Disturbing Trends - Predicting Future politics

A solution to the banking crisis

The capital crisis may not bleed out. Governments are going down the track of printing money after flattening out interest rates.

Wrong solution. It will stimulate escalating inflation - like what happened in Germany between the world wars. Like Zimbabwe.

A better solution is to reduce the levels of private debt as well as fix the banking system once and for all.

Banking is a bit like bee-keeping. You never know really how many bees you have at any one time in a hive (although with computers these days, you can watch momentary cash flows in a bank in real time, no doubt).

The tragedy of the last eight years is we have 50 times as many hives, but the bees will not expand into them because the surrounding flora has been ignored and now does not support that many bees (although bees will fly up to 5 miles). The bee keeper can remove some honey, but not all or the hive will die.

There is another thing the bee keeper knows. A bee will never go to the wrong hive. Each bee knows its home. Keeping the bad debt sequestered sounded like an easy out, paying the derivatives out will inflate the economy wildly and frankly is unfair. Exposing the bad debt to reality however should bankrupt the system.

These steps are not a presciption but perhaps talking points for those who understand such things, they are suggestions that appear logical, to keep the banks going and to get the money back to the tax payer, enable growth and right this boat to structurally alter things so things start to improve; it would seem we need to immediately:

a) print lots of money [being done]
b) give lots of money away [happening] - give employers who do not lay off staff over the 2009 year a substantial tax benefit
c) raise a tax on banks to get the bailout loans repaid and draw a line, when a bank has public bailout money in its books, existing loans at the time of the funds advanced interest rates are discounted.
d) Introduce declining rates on credit card debt by international agreement - the ridiculous way in which credit card companies encourage you to pay outrageous interest rates is a constant pressure cooker for many young adults. If the debt is being paid each month, interest rates fall by regulation 1% per month until the low rate is reached. The low rate is half the primary rate which is the market rate. Make this permanent so that people who max-out credit cards are not then forced into backruptcy each and every month for the rest of their lives (this is usually the foreclosure trigger!)
e) Raise interest rates to more normal levels but only for NEW loans so the banks can pay for NEW deposits.
f) make the stock market more accessible
g) increase the buy/sell rate spread on the NZD by a margin to decrease speculation and discount direct to stock market investments of foreign exchange
h) don't regulate their bonuses, tax them at 80% until all the bailout funds are repaid
i) banks to centralise all debt of flagged customers and after that six months must pass before forclosure - which can be prevented by the customer making payments.

Some of these should have the effect of reducing the demand on the old monetary agreements and allow new ones to be made.

Banks must be reluctant to lend money out at 0.5% and nothing happens. If their available capital pool were increasing then they would be falling over themselves to get rid of it.

It is better for governments to not have to nationalise banks but how can it be avoided? Give the banks far more to do so they have to work for these million dollar payments - financed by the tax payer. Retrospective tax is to be avoided, but maybe put a year or two limit on it, and the majority would support it. Giving the bankers the toxic assets is another solution, I doubt it would work as their bonuses would be a mere sigh versus the hurricane we may otherwise face?

Faith vs Confidence

...it is not so much an economic crisis but a crisis of confidence in the frightening mathematics. Financial instruments and currency are a form of instant contract - they assume faith - but the gambler, the criminal, the banker - they lose the concept of money as value as they are no longer participating in the “being a part of responsible humanity” model.

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Plane Crash on House in NY

NEW YORK Buffalo

A plane has crashed upon a residential area in New York State.

Almost immediately videos appeared on YouTube.com, update on our Disturbing Trends Predicting Future Politics blog.

What you going to call this “War on Terror”, then?

In a Newsweek article the question is raised, what should this “War on Terror” be called. Since “War on Terror” is meaningless (you can fight terror all you like, but you can’t kill it), perhaps a more accurate statement of the goal of this “war” if it is one, is defined.

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Stimulus Irony

...the very quickly bailed out financial institutions see hope in the fact that people may stay in their jobs through the progress of the crisis their inventions created. That they have confidence in the bailout - that the fruits of capital investment are given a little kick by putting money in the hands of their customers - is logical but quite ironic.

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Is Obama being too gracious?

The cliché “gracious in defeat” does not apply. The man took the US elections by storm, has entered office on a cloud of public approval and reached out over the divide. The sharp discord struck by Republican refusal to back the Obama stimulus plan has seen a return to campaigning for public endorsement. President Obama does not need any more public support for his bail out. It seems that the failure of the Democrats to demonize the Bush administration may have certain blow-back effects on progress. One of these is the simple idea - do not trust your enemy with your valuables. Another - judge the Republican Party based on its more recent values and performance than on its history.

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Bailout is just the start

President Obama’s effort to raise funds to inject into the system will have a number of effects. One of them is not “problem solved”. Pretending that providing more capital to the people will somehow reactivate the flattened markets may have been generated by media expectations but it simply is not real.

It is aimed at saving a number of American families from going to the wall while the bankers sort out the stale paperwork. It also addresses the generalized shortage that prevents the middle class from spending, but the over charging by credit card companies combined with hyper aggressive status marketing has led the average consumer into a very expensive position.

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Desperate or Insane?

A man executes his family because both he and his wife lost their jobs.

Does this tragedy represent how the rest of us may feel about our work and place in life, or is this a very isolated case of extreme psychosis?

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Why the Financial Crisis?

In case you have forgot what is causing the “financial crisis” gripping the world in static non-investment, read this NY Times article by Alan Blinder - Six Errors on the Path to the Financial Crisis.

When considered retrospectively, it certainly seems like another one of those things “they should have warned us about”. The role of Government is oversight; but the role of the monetarist post third-way committee of inspired insanity we have been calling Government has been to submit us to ten years of extreme capitalism to prepare the world for some utopia. Trouble is the electorate became greedy as their mortgages became insignificant and their property values escalated things seemed dandy.

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Helen Clark voted Greatest Living Kiwi

Helen Clark has been voted "Greatest Living New Zealander" - a sort of inherited mantle of public opinion - by The New Zealand Herald.

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On the Brink of Economic Disaster

The last great empire builders - the UK and the USA appear to be on the brink disaster due to the collapse of debt financing.

Due to the mountain of debt compared to productivity mainly in the private sector, the banking crisis looks like it inevitably will move to the next stage despite the extraordinary generousity by Governments of tax payer reserves into the banking sector.

It seems that our addiction to capital is an addiction to “productivity free” capital - in other words the acceleration of capital growth over the past thirty years has been a belief system based on attributed value rather than real value. Notice how your house got more and more valueable?

Continued in End of Empire on DisturbingTrends: predicting future politics

Welcome Mr Obama, President

The rise of Barack Obama to the US presidency marks an historic change in the temperature of the world, it's politics and the way The United States of America exists in the world. Not as a bully or victim but as a cohesive society that strides into the future with hope and a confidence for real change.

Welcome, Mr President Obama.

Letter to Obama

Letters from school children to Mr Obama published in the NY Times included this:

Dear President Obama,

I am small, quiet, smart. I love to swim and play basketball. My mom and dad are from the Dominican Republic. I am going to the Dominican Republic next year. I think you should try to change the world by building shelters for the people who live in the streets. It’s the beginning of January, and it’s cold. Good luck being the president.
— Pamela Mejia, age 11, Boston

Something tells me President Obama will read this letter. Something tells me it is a very good idea. People keep saying “clean up the streets”. This 11 year old smart girl is pointing out that the homeless are people.

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NZ Copyright Law changes

A New Zealand law being introduced in February makes ISPs responsible to 3 strikes and you are disconnected from the net disciplinary action against people who download copyrighted content from the net. This new law may put pressure on ISPs to create take down lists for IPs broadcasting copyright violations; of which, there are many. It is retrograde to attack the audience rather than the criminals. Our position is that copyright law should be cheaply enforceable.

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The Past and the President

Barack Obama hints that he does not really care to upearth the Bush presidency. He is justified, his entire stance is that of a break with "The Past".

There is nothing to learn from the Bush era.

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Money to the rescue

Economic stimulation is a 180 degree reversal from the cold logic of monetary policy. Continued market speculation inflated expectations but the average person could only see property as a path to financial wealth and independence. It would have been but for two immutable facts:

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Let them fail

Disturbing Trends may have unfortunately been spot on in predicting that the bail out was essentially "more of the same" as now we have Paulson leveraging bets with billions trying to put things right.

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Support the homeless

Credit Crunch

The Credit Crunch has been in the news for over a year and many have not noticed anything except the news being reported. But for some it has been horrible and life changing. Houses bought on zero or little equity have turned into negative equity and being forced to sell in those conditions is locking that loss into reality.

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