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February 4, 2010
Canadian climate scientists acknowledges IPCC credibility in ruins Gilad Atzmon: REMEMBERING THE JEWSIH HOLOCAUST ... In the wake of the "International Holocaust Memorial Day" I will say it loudly and openly. To oppose the Jewish state and Jewish nationalism is the true meaning of the memory of the Holocaust. To say NO to Israel is to say NO to racism. This is what ethics and universalism are all about.
The LiFe, an urban electric vehicle that can keep up with the traffic Now they just need to get the price under ten thousand, which will surely be possible, and the gas-powered auto will be on its way to join the Stanley Steamer. UK: Top Foreign Office Lawyer damns Blair, Straw and Croney Goldsmith (This is now the correct link) Sir Michael Wood confirmed today that the consistent advice from the FCO's Legal Advisers was that it was illegal in international law to invade Iraq without a second Security Council Resolution following UNSCR 1441. He also made plain that he consistently over two years advised both Blair and Straw direct that the war would be illegal. Everything Sir Michael Wood said was 100% consistent with my contention that Straw was lying throughout his testimony on the key point of whether it was believed in the FCO that UNSCR 1441 made the war legal. As I stated, every one of the scores of telegrams of instructions to posts between UNSCR 1441 and just before the March invasion clearly was predicated on a second resolution being necessary, and we were telling security council members in asking them to vote for UNSCR 1441 that it conained "No automatic triggers". Michael Wood confirmed that too. ... Knesset members visiting Poland for ceremonies marking International Holocaust Day were surprised to see ads against Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Opposition Chairwoman Tzipi Livni in the city of Krakow on Tuesday evening. Danish banks disvest from Israel
Turkish media report Mossad plot to assassinate Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan We don't like you, we kill you. Anyone complain. They're anti-Semitic. George Monbiot: Wanted - Tony Blair for war crimes So today I am launching a website – www.arrestblair.org – whose purpose is to raise money as a reward for people attempting a peaceful citizen's arrest of the former prime minister. Why not raise funds for billboards also? The Poles, have been successful in getting media coverage of their poster campaign against Israeli war criminals Barak and Livni. The heading, obviously, over a picture of Bush and Blair: "Wanted - dead or alive" Steven Mosher: Climate change and the corruption of science
New Deal 2.0 Earlier (a few items below) we questioned Steve Keen's idea that Obama would hesitate to print a few $trillion to revive the economy, even if it meant trashing the dollar. Well here's a concrete proposal to do just that. Russia, Turkey and the Great Game: Changing teams
UK: Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser Like, British culture sucks, so let's bring in something new: how about colonialist Islamic fundamentalism, plus the Hindu caste system, maybe. Oh, and a touch of Voodoo, with ritual child slaughter. Former UK Archbishop condemns mass immigration policy
A police force is to employ Britain's first full-time "web cop". The officer will surf the internet, spying on chat rooms and blogs for leads and tip-offs that will help track down criminals.
The officer, to be employed in the West Midlands, will also search for criticism of the police and use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Bebo to promote the force. So next time you see anything on the Web commending the police, you'll know it's just some police shill. The assumption that the police can engage in covert operations to manipulate public opinion without undermining public confidence, is an illustration of the lame-brained thinking of the British ruling elite. Pathetic, really, to see a great civilization being flushed down the tubes with barely a murmur of protest from those whose heritage of freedom is being wantonly destroyed by New Labor psychopaths and their hordes of bureaucratic hangers on. And all without significant opposition from the effete so-called Liberal-Democrats or the so-called Conservatives. No, they all want to get their hands on the levers of control of the new fascist state. ISRAEL: PLEASE, NO MORE BIN LADEN TAPES The new audio tape from "Osama bin Laden" taking responsibility for the idiotic and childish incident in Detroit where moronic Nigerian armed with a useless "bomb" is simply too much. Now using audio tapes because, supposedly, nobody in Al Qaeda got a flash drive video recorder for Christmas is even more of a joke. Please, with the hundreds of millions our Saudi allies have given to terrorists, a video camera the size of an Ipod might have been a nice touch. Even funnier was releasing the audio, using algorithm software probably illegally downloaded off the internet, and giving it to Al Jazeera. ... The idea of pinning the failed underwear bomb on the folks who supposedly brought down the Twin Towers at free-fall speed only confirms that the Bin Laden myth is designed solely for consumption by those with the mentality of children. Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction UK: Top Foreign Office Lawyer damns Blair, Straw and Croney Goldsmith (This is now the correct link) Sir Michael Wood confirmed today that the consistent advice from the FCO's Legal Advisers was that it was illegal in international law to invade Iraq without a second Security Council Resolution following UNSCR 1441. He also made plain that he consistently over two years advised both Blair and Straw direct that the war would be illegal. Everything Sir Michael Wood said was 100% consistent with my contention that Straw was lying throughout his testimony on the key point of whether it was believed in the FCO that UNSCR 1441 made the war legal. As I stated, every one of the scores of telegrams of instructions to posts between UNSCR 1441 and just before the March invasion clearly was predicated on a second resolution being necessary, and we were telling security council members in asking them to vote for UNSCR 1441 that it conained "No automatic triggers". Michael Wood confirmed that too. ... American Tyrant: Obama contemplates murder of US citizen While Awlaki has not been charged with any crimes under U.S. law, intelligence officials say recent intelligence reports and electronic intercepts show he played an important role in recruiting the accused "underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Awlaki also carried on extensive e-mail communication with the accused Fort Hood shooter, Major Nidal Hasan, prior to the attack that killed 12 soldiers and one civilian. ... If you have the goods on this supposed criminal, bring him to justice and show the evidence in open court. If you cannot extradite him from Yemen, deliver the Yemen Government an ultimatum. If they fail to respond then go in and get him. All supposing that you really do have evidence and the story is not merely a cover for bombing a country that the United States wishes to control because it is located at a choke-point in the flow of world energy supplies. Russian Interior Ministry Plans Mental Checks for Police MOSCOW - Russia plans to resume the Soviet-era practice of screening police officers for mental maladies amid a surge in violent crime by on- and off-duty cops. Obviously something they should do with candidates for the US presidency and the British Parliament.
Israeli Information Minister Slams All Reports on Gaza War as Anti-Semitic Which confirms what has long been evident that anti-Semitism today rarely has anything to do with racism or the Jewish holocaust and, in fact, often constitutes the only moral position to take. What are the Origins of Anti-Semitism? Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews Obama announces spending freeze on one eigth of the US budget
Saab snapped up by Dutch firm Spyker for $400 mln Cool. My car won't be orphaned after all. How to park in a narrow garage (and learn to speak Dutch at the same time)
Sarkozy defends economic policy, carbon tax Sarkozy may be a CIA puppet, climate research may be largely bunk, but basic physics and biology tell us that substantially raising the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide will significantly affect both the climate and the biosphere. Therefore, until such time as we have a clear idea of what we are doing to our environment, any measure that limits carbon emissions without disrupting the economy is sound policy. A carbon tax does just that. Governments must raise revenue, so it makes sense to tax things such as carbon emissions that we don't want and offset the increased revenue with cuts in taxes on things that we do want, particularly income and beer. The important thing about the French plan, which we advocated a dozen years ago, is that it requires no international agreement, no corrupt UN governance, yet because it envisages a countervailing duty on imports produced where carbon emissions are untaxed, it provides an incentive for the rest of the world to follow France's lead. I think we said this before, but it does no harm to say again, that the French are, obviously, the most intelligent people in the World. Paul Craig Roberts: Rule by the rich ... How can President Obama restart an economy that has been moved offshore? Millions of manufacturing jobs are gone, as are millions of jobs for college graduates, such as software engineering, Information Technology--indeed, any intellectual skill the product of which can be conveyed via the Internet. Even those intellectual skill jobs that do remain in the U.S. are filled increasingly by foreigners brought in on work visas. ... John Hussman: Inflation myth and reality Ottawa (Jan 23, 2010) Thousands of Canadians demand Stephen Harper get back to work Steve MacIntyre: UN Panel on Climate Change Redefines Peer Review WSJ: The Great Recession Continues The despicable relationship between Barack Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize Committee Craig Murray: David Kelly was the first man killed in the Iraq war Mish: Peak Autos: America's Love Affair with the Automobile May Be Coming to an End 20 Reasons Why The U.S. Economy Is Dying And Is Simply Not Going To Recover Gilad Atzmon: The Shoa must go on
Garth Turner: Owe Canada Steve Keen: The economic case against Bernanke ... Bernanke, as the neoclassical economist most responsible for burying Fisher’s accurate explanation of why the Great Depression occurred, is therefore an eminently suitable target for the political sacrifice that America today desperately needs. His extreme actions once the crisis hit have helped reduce the immediate impact of the crisis, but without the ignorance he helped spread about the real cause of the Great Depression, there would not have been a crisis in the first place. As I will also document in an update in early February, some of his advice has made America’s recovery less effective than it could have been. Obama came to office promising change you can believe in. If the Senate votes against Bernanke’s reappointment, that change might finally start to arrive. The Orwellian Word: War is Peace, Torture is Consistent with Civil Rights BBC: British (Propaganda) Broadcasting Corporation
How does 'The Holocaust' manage to remain a major NEWS story, day in day out, 70 years after the event? Whereas the murder of millions of Ukranians and other Soviet citizens, engineered during the 30's by Stalin's Jewish executioners, is hardly ever mentioned. Deciding who rules America is too important to be left Americans: Global corporations now rule David Kelly post mortem to be kept secret for 70 years Operation Sarkozy : how the CIA placed one of its agents at the presidency of the French Republic
Bin Laden claims responsibility for U.S. plane attack Seems kind of pathetic: the guy who brought down the Twin Towers at free fall speed boasting about a failed attempt to set off a fire cracker. This must be the new Bin Liner, you know, the one with the fake face. More IPCC climate warming lies
How the IPCC scammed the Carnegie Trust and the EU No doubt the people who handed out the money were thrilled to have an opportunity to promote the global warming scare. Shutting down the police force: one way to make ends meet
John Maudlin: The Debt Crisis End Game If I have not misunderstood what they are saying, the authors of this piece maintain that money printing to support deficit spending cannot continue indefinitely. But as far as I can see, they give no reason why that is so. And in fact, I believe that it is not so and that a populist government would do just that: print and spend, ruining savers, inpoverishing most retired people, trashing the dollar and thus robbing foreign creditors who have made loans in US dollars, but making America more competitive in the world market and thus restoring employment growth. If there is a fallacy in this argument, I hope someone will point it out. NASA GISS' Adversarial response to Steve MacIntyre's correction of their computing error The Hon Member for PornStar Videos will now address the House James Hansen's former boss calls NASA-GIS Director a climate activist and an embarrassment to NASA
James Hansen endorses call for an end to civilization as we know it Not long ago, the warmers tried having climate skeptics certified as lunatics. Now they just want everyone dead. Who, one wonders, are the real lunatics.
One quarter of US grain crops used for biofuels So if everyone who can affordd it will drive a biofueled SUV we should whip the world population crisis and solve the climate problem in one shot. US Supreme Court Decision: Walmart is a person who can run for President ... millions or billions of dollars ... could flood into our elections from ARAMCO, the Saudi Oil corporation's U.S. unit; or from the maker of "New Order" fashions, the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Or from Bin Laden Construction corporation. Or Bin Laden Destruction Corporation. ... under today's Supreme Court ruling that corporations can support candidates without limit, there is nothing that stops, say, a Delaware-incorporated handmaiden of the Burmese junta from picking a Congressman or two with a cache of loot masked by a corporate alias.
Obama's nominee to head the TSA exposes the Christian-identity-oriented terrorist (U-Tube) This is an administration of nutters. US Supreme Court decision paves the way for unrestricted US Corporatism (aka, Fascism) Ken Taylor, Canadian Ambassador in Tehran (1977-1980) acted the CIA Obama's info CZAR: Ban conspiracy theories As violent crime increases, indiginous Brits become minority in capital city Enforcing political correctness in Britain (U-Tube Vid) Craig Murray: Jack Straw's biggest lie Blair Chief of Staff: We rushed to war with Iraq to conceal the absence of WMD's U.K. Iraq Inquiry: The Smoking Gun Moment MALAYSIA'S former premier Mahathir Mohamad: 9/11 probably staged by the US Government
British fraudster killing Iraqis with fake bomb detector Tee-hee. See how the war opened up great commercial opportunities for British industry. Brown's Britain: How to deal with an economic depression - raise taxes In Canada we deal with the recession by cutting services Eric Walberg: Ukraine elections: Yanukovich -- Man for all seasons Assisted suicide: the death of the West Oh don't bother about this. You just gotta worry about anti-Semitism, pedophile Catholic priests, trashing Western thought and celebrating multi-culturalism. Or as someone said, civilization is just one generation deep and our civilization will end, to general approval so it seems, with the present generation. Anyhow, I guess autogenocide through political correctness is preferable to mass death by bullets, napalm or nuclear radiation. To all those who made this painless extinction posssible -- Google, ever watchful for anti-Semitism; CanWest Global, who bankrupted themselves in the cause; Our very own dearly beloved mass abortionist, the sainted Dr. Henry Morgenthaler, O.C.; the Canadian Human Rights Commission; B'nai Brith and all the rest, including our great schools and universities -- thanks. Jack Straw admits personal responsibility for the criminal invasion of Iraq Human rights in Europe and hypocritical condemnation of Iran Webster Tarpley: Google Attacks China as Washington-Beijing Hostility Deepens Google is part of a cartel of Internet companies which notoriously works closely with the US intelligence community for political purposes, including the subversion and overthrow of foreign governments. ... Chinese media hit at "White House's Google" Accusations in two newspapers that Washington was using Google as a foreign policy tool were echoed by Chinese government officials on Wednesday. ... Obama's USA: Just another managed economy Webster Tarpley: The Massachusetts Senate Race: A Populist Protest Vote Against Wall Street Puppets The Chevvy Volt: a loser for GM
E-Bikes in China: Rubbish report from Poop Murdoch's WSJ For deconstruction, see reader comments.
WHY MORTGAGE DEBT AND HOUSE PRICES ARE SKY HIGH AND WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT
In this Google seminar on debt and asset price inflation, Steve Keen gives the following explanation of the massive growth in consumer debt relative to income that has occurred in most western economies over the last 40 years: lending increases house prices and increasing house prices, by providing additional collateral, give rise to additional lending, the process continuing, if not ad infinitum, at least to an absurd extreme. This is a manifestation of what Keen calls Ponzi capitalism.
I am not sure things are that simple. In the early seventies, in Vancouver, one could buy a nice four bedroom house on a fifty foot lot in Point Grey for eighty thousand. The thing was, the rate on a first mortgage was 18%. With 25% down, that meant a carrying cost of $10,800, or 43% of average family income, which is more than a mortgage lender would have allowed at that time.
Today the same house would cost, maybe $1,600,000, average family income is around $68,000 and mortgage rates are 4%. So with 25% down the carrying cost would be $48,000, or 70% of average family income.
So yes house prices are up relative to income, but the rise over the last 40 years in the ratio of housing debt to income is primarily a consequence of lower interest rates. One can see what Steve Keen means by describing the phenomenon of rising house prices as a result of Ponzi capitalism -- the growth of investment without economic return. And insofar as mortgage lending practices have been predatory (minimal down payments, a life-time or more to pay, etc.) odium is deservedly attached to the mortgage lenders. However, Greenspan's savings glut, leading to low interest rates, is a reality and this, plus an increase in nominal family income, explains most of the 20-fold increase in Vancouver house prices since the early 1970's.
But even if Vancouver's housing market is not as crazy as some people think, the financial implications of house buying today are very different from those in the 1970's. In the 70's when interest rates were high, house prices relative to incomes were low but the direction of mortgage rates was down, whereas wages were rising: a favorable situation for buyers, since it meant that paying off the capital would get easier with time. Today, the capital repayment is huge relative to incomes, the direction of change in interest rates is more likely to be up than down, and incomes are flat or falling, which suggests that it may now be much wiser to rent than to buy. This is not necessarily the case, however, for if we were to experience a period of high inflation, house prices might continue to escalate.
On inflation, Steve Keen appears to takes the same view as Michael Shedlock, who points out that, in the United States, despite a doubling in base money last year from approximately $1 trillion to $2 trillion, the effect on prices, including asset prices, has been more than offset by credit contraction. According to Keen, the US Government would have to print $10-20 trillion to create inflation, a possibility that he seems to rule out. But I don't see why. US unemployment continues to rise, any alleged economic expansion is attributable solely to government stimulus spending, and Obama is America's most unpopular president of the last fifty years. What, then, has he to lose by adopting a policy of large-scale Helicopter finance? It's easy enough for the the US Government to print dollars and easy enough to spend them. No doubt Wall St., which owns the President and Congress, can get a decent cut, and the 25 million unemployed will be glad of a job on some make-work project.
What's the downside? I don't see any, other than for those who are retired or who are approaching retirement and who have saved what should have been enough to cover their needs during their final years -- plus America's foreign creditors. So apart from the true middle class, who are screwed without compunction by every government, inflation's a win-win-win for Obama, Wall St. and the homeless or jobless masses. The suggestion that inflation will cause an unacceptable increase in interest rates seems implausible. Greenspan's savings glut is a reality. What's more, if no one wants to buy US Government debt any longer, who cares. New debt can just sit on the books of the Federal Reserve accumulating interest at whatever rate best suits the Government's purpose.
As to the foreign creditors, I have previously suggested that some of the Fed's loans to foreign central banks would have the effect of saving those banks from losses in the event of a dollar devaluation. The mechanism seems simple enough. The Fed prints dollars and loans them to the Chinese central bank. The Chinese central bank then invest those dollars in non-US currencies, commodities, or other real assets, thereby creating a hedge against dollar devaluation. If the dollar does go down the profit, in dollar terms, on the real investments will offset future losses on China's holdings of US T-bills.
Money printing leading to dollar devaluation would eventually revive the US economy by lowering real US wages and thus lowering the wage advantage of Asian competitors. For the small investor wondering what this means for them, the real problem is with timing and scale. Inflation of 5% is one thing, inflation of 100%-plus per year is quite another. Thus the dynamics of relative price changes is likely impossible to predict without inside information on what is in the works. After the event, when Goldman Sachs is handing out the biggest bonuses ever, the reason for what happened will become clear. For the rest of us, diversification offers the best hope of not losing everything.
Mish: Brown Senate win a repudiation of Obama ... Sunstein defines those who criticize the government's increasingly lawless behavior as "extremists," which, to the general public, sounds much like "terrorists." In essence, Sunstein wants to generalize the F.B.I.'s practice of infiltrating dissidents and organizing them around a "terrorist plot" in order to arrest them. That this proposal comes from a Harvard Law School professor demonstrates the collapse of respect for law among American law professors themselves, ranging from John Yoo at Berkeley, the advocate of torture, to Sunstein at Harvard, a totalitarian who advocates war on the First Amendment.
Michael Crichton: The case for skepticism on global warming A good case for not going overboard to combat the possibility of anthropogenic climate change. But as the climate system is chaotic, we should be careful how we mess with it. For that reason, it makes sense to limit and eventually reduce carbon emissions, and this can best be done with a carbon tax. A carbon tax provides an incentive to those who can cut carbon emissions easily to do so, while allowing those who can cut emissions only a great cost to continue emitting at a limited cost (i.e., the cost of the tax). Since governments need to raise taxes, a carbon tax introduced at a moderate rate and raised only slowly to achieve an eventual decline in carbon emissions need not provide a significant drag on the economy. Revenue from a carbon tax should be balanced by cuts in taxes on desirable things like income and beer. Joseph D'Aleo: Climate data manipulation: NOAA not CRU is ground zero
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NEWS 2010
WHY MORTGAGE DEBT AND HOUSE PRICES ARE SKY HIGH AND WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT
2009
MAKING SURE THAT CLIMATE CHANGE RESEARCH IS REAL SCIENCE, NOT POLITICS
HOW NEW LABOUR RE-ENGINEERED THE BRITISH NATION FOR ELECTORAL ADVANTAGE
DOING AWAY WITH THOSE BRITISH ANGLOS
POOP IN POOP OUT: MURDOCH'S CRAP MEDIA
CHICAGO OLYMPICS? OBAMA SCORES ANOTHER BIG "O"
THAT TERRRIBLE ANTI-SEMITE AHMADINEJAD
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR KNOWS THE TRUTH, BUT WON'T TELL IT
WHY THE U.S. ECONOMY WON'T COLLAPSE
HOW THE GLOBE & MAIL KEEPS YOU MISINFORMED
THE UNITED STATES: A PITIFUL HELPLESS GIANT
SEND REPRESENTATIVES TO PARLIAMENT, NOT PEOPLE IN NEED OF A JOB
GOOD RIDDANCE TO CORPORATE MEDIA RUBBISH
HATE SPEECH FROM THE MURDOCH MEDIA
HOW BERNANKE WILL TRASH THE DOLLAR WITHOUT ANYONE NOTICING
RECESSION IS OVER: BANK OF CANADA
ISRAEL STOKES RACE HATRED FOR ARABS
HOW AMERICA WILL GO TO WAR WITH IRAN
IN MEMORY OF EDWARD TEAGUE, aka, THE BLOGGER POSTMAN PATEL
ORWELL, OBAMA AND DEMOCRATIC AUTHORITARIANISM
WHY AMERICA WILL NOT ATTACK IRAN
WHEN ANTI-RACISM MEANS SELF-DESTRUCTION
2007
SPARE A THOUGHT FOR POOR GEORGE F. WILL AND THE CORPORATE MEDIA |
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