http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1025020/Pictured-The-professional-footballers-car-family-vehicle-collided--leaving-children-dead.html

it matters

Cashless Society: Social Security debit cards debut
Published on Tuesday, June 10, 2008.

Source: RawStory

“No bank account? No problem. Now you can have your Social Security benefits loaded directly onto an electronic debit card that works like a gift card from Uncle Sam,” the Washington Post’s Lori Montgomery writes Tuesday.
The card is a move by the Treasury Department to get the 10.5 million who still get paper checks to come into the information age, and use electronic payments. Recipients save money on check-cashing charges, and the government could save as much as $42 million a year.

Adds Montgomery: “The only stumbling block: About 2.1 million Social Security recipients don’t have bank accounts. Neither do about 1.8 million disabled and low-income people who receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
“The solution: Direct Express cards, managed by Comerica Bank, which allow recipients to carry their benefits on a piece of plastic that can be used like a debit card at any bank, retail outlet or automatic teller machine that accepts MasterCard.

“In a pilot project last year in Illinois, about 3,000 people activated the card. Eighty percent said they were satisfied, with 60 percent reporting that the card saved them money on check-cashing fees. Since then, Treasury has begun slowly advertising the card to all Social Security recipients who receive paper checks, starting in Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Inserts are now going out to the Southeastern states, with the rest of the nation to follow by October.”

To sign up, Or go online to http://https://www.usdirectexpress.com.

Related Stories
45 trillion needed to fight global warming
Group files complaint against McCain campaign
Study: Same sex weddings could boost California economy
OPEC: No need for more oil despite higher prices
Kucinich presents Bush impeachment articles

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`Suicide is Painless' scrawled on abandoned car on NY bridge
By JIM FITZGERALD
Associated Press Writer
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. —
A car abandoned on a bridge with the phrase "Suicide is Painless" scrawled in the dust on its hood is registered to a hedge-fund swindler who was supposed to report to federal prison, state police said Tuesday.

Investigator Bruce Cuccia said suicide has not been established, no body has been found and no one saw anyone jump. The FBI has joined the investigation and a search is under way, he said.

The car, a 2006 GMC Envoy, was registered to Samuel Israel III of Armonk, Cuccia said. It was found on Monday on the Bear Mountain Bridge over the Hudson River, near West Point and about 40 miles north of New York City.

On its hood, etched into the dust and pollen, were the words "Suicide is Painless," the name of the theme of the classic "MASH" television show. The song was sung during the original movie.

No other note was found, Cuccia said.

Investigator Tim Miller said police have not been able to reach Israel. No home telephone number was listed for him.

The U.S. attorney's office, which prosecuted Israel, had no comment, said spokesman Herb Hadad. A call to the FBI was not immediately returned.

Israel, 48, was sentenced in April to 20 years in federal prison for illegally inducing investors to put more than $450 million into now-collapsed Bayou hedge funds. He was also ordered to pay back $300 million to his victims.

Judge Colleen McMahon called him the mastermind of the scheme and said the prison term was meant to show that "people who commit crimes while wearing a tie do not get a break."

She set Monday as the deadline for Israel to surrender. Cuccia said he had been expected at 2 p.m. at the federal prison in Ayer, Mass.

State police aircraft and boats from the Westchester and Rockland county police searched the Hudson on Monday and the boats resumed the search Tuesday morning, Cuccia said.

Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company

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The Real Speculators

By: Theodore Butler

-- Posted 10 June, 2008 | Digg This Article | Discuss This Article - Comments: 0

The unprecedented price volatility in crude oil, grain and other commodities, has focused our attention and galvanized a collective opinion. "Too much speculation" is the cry of the day. There appears to be much truth in that statement, since few can point to supply and demand factors that account for the shocking price moves. But maybe we are not looking closely enough at the speculation angle.

The most visible culprit for the excessive speculation is said to be the index funds. These are huge institutional funds that hold significant long positions in many commodity futures markets (but not in COMEX gold or silver futures). I have previously written about index funds. This is an important topic, although I have been clear to state that I have no vested interest in whether they continue to hold their big long positions or not.

http://www.investmentrarities.com/01-16-07.html

http://www.investmentrarities.com/03-04-08.html

http://www.investmentrarities.com/04-01-08.html

Presently, there is a political frenzy developing to more closely regulate the index funds, and perhaps even force them to sell their long positions, thereby lowering the price of oil and other commodities. While I question whether these index funds should have been allowed to amass such a large position they were permitted to amass their positions legally and openly.

Should the index funds be forced to dump their long positions, that would likely pressure, at least temporarily, oil and other commodity prices. Perhaps a temporary lowering of prices is all the politicians are interested in. That way they could declare victory over the evil speculators and go back to their business of efficiently running (ruining?) the country.

But before the index funds are tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail, let’s clear up a common misperception that it has been a sudden influx of index fund buying that has caused the recent dramatic increase in the price of crude oil. That is simply not true. The index funds are holding the same size, or smaller, long position in crude oil than they held 10 months ago, when crude oil was $70/barrel. Ditto for the large long speculators and smaller (unreported) traders on the NYMEX, according to CFTC data in the Commitment of Traders Report (COT). The data clearly shows that long traders on the NYMEX have not been buying aggressively and running up the price of crude. Well, if speculators are behind the recent sharp run-up in oil prices and the long-side traders haven‘t been buying, then who has been buying oil?

The answer is painfully obvious - the speculative shorts have been doing the buying. Public COT data proves this. The buying back of previously sold short futures contracts, primarily in the commercial category, account for the bulk of the buying over the past eight months or so, when oil was trading at $70.

There is always a short for every long position in every commodity futures contract. When enough longs panic and sell aggressively, prices plummet. When enough shorts panic and buy back their short positions aggressively, prices soar. Oil prices didn’t jump sharply because many new longs came into the market. They jumped because, at the margin, enough shorts panicked and bought back contracts they previously sold short, to prevent their losses from getting larger.

So while I agree that speculation caused oil prices to jump sharply, at least we should correctly identify which speculators did the buying. It was the shorts, not the longs. In fact, the data shows that the longs were selling. That’s not to say that oil prices won’t plunge in the future. They will, when enough longs panic and sell. To a large extent, this is the trading pattern of most markets.

By correctly identifying the real cause of the recent price spike caused by the speculative oil buying, we come to the real hidden problem with speculation. That problem is that large numbers of shorts are, effectively, trapped with their short positions. The shorts are trapped because the index funds buy and hold for the long term. That doesn’t mean prices can’t go down sharply while the index funds are long. For example, the wheat market rose almost 100% and then fell by 40% with hardly a change in the index funds’ large position. But because the index funds hold and don’t sell, regardless of whether prices rise or fall, large numbers of shorts can’t exit their short positions, even if prices fall. And when prices do fall, there are no complaints about index funds, just when prices rise.

Recently, some commentators have labeled the index funds as not playing fairly, because they don’t sell, but instead invest for the long term. But there is no rule that anyone can’t invest in futures for the long term. The index funds were clear in their intentions as they came into the futures market over the past several years. Everyone knew beforehand how they behaved and they certainly didn’t sneak into the market; because they were so big, you could see them coming a mile away. The shorts initially licked their chops, because they knew the index funds wouldn’t demand delivery and therefore attempt to squeeze the shorts. The shorts also knew the index funds would have to roll over their positions constantly, giving the shorts an opportunity to extort spread advantages due to the mandatory roll-over behavior of the index funds.

But there is such a thing as the law of unintended consequences, and that law has prevailed in the trading dance between the index funds and the shorts. When the index funds initially established their positions in oil or grain futures, there was no extreme tight supply/demand situation. That’s why great numbers of shorts sold into the index fund buying. But then conditions tightened up and the shorts appear to be on the wrong side and are looking for a way out. The easiest solution for the shorts is to have the regulators mandate that the index funds sell.

The real story should be told. It doesn’t seem fair to me to label the index funds as the real speculators when they back their purchases with the full cash value of the contracts and hold for the long term, while casting the short speculators masquerading as commercials, who are out for a quick buck, as innocent victims. If the regulators want to change the rules against the index funds, let them do so. Just don’t pretend these funds are evil and the short speculators are without blame. If we get shortages in oil or grain or anything else, prices will go higher, with or without the index funds.

I do have an interest in silver (and gold), so I would like to relate what I think all this index fund business means to those metals. There is no index fund participation in COMEX gold and silver futures (the index funds buy gold and silver through the ETFs and directly). This can be confirmed by observing the consistently small gross and net (ex spreads) long positions in the commercial category of the COT reports (the index funds are included in this category for all commodities). So, first and foremost, any arbitrary edict to limit index fund long commodity futures positions will not involve liquidation of gold and silver futures, because there are none to liquidate.

In fact, any such across the board order of index fund futures contract liquidation may so limit the choices of where to invest by large participants, that it could result in more, not less, buying in precious metals. Increasingly, I have been struck with the thought, independent of the index fund discussion, of just how few good real alternatives are available for investment, other than silver.

Although there is no index fund participation in gold and silver futures trading, there is a somewhat similar short situation connecting all the markets. There is a true speculative connection present in most markets that is hidden and excluded from current debate. That connection is the existence of a large number of shorts who are trapped and can’t easily fulfill the contract delivery requirements, nor extricate themselves from their short obligations by buying back their contracts. This is the real, but unspoken, motivation in the current index fund debate. How can the shorts be secretly rescued from the folly of their own creation that threatens to send many prices explosively higher?

Nowhere is the problem of the trapped shorts more extreme than in COMEX silver (and secondarily, gold). Precisely because there is no index fund long presence in COMEX silver futures, the problem for the shorts is worse. That’s because the corresponding long position is relatively diverse and not subject to an arbitrary edict of forced liquidation. The big shorts in COMEX silver and gold probably wish there was an index fund, or some other big concentrated long position, that they could attack and lobby against to get the shorts off the hook. But the real situation, to the shorts’ dismay, is as opposite as it can get.

While it is my contention that there is a large contingent of short positions trapped in many commodities, only in COMEX silver and gold is that trapped position held in a super-concentrated form. This elevates and intensifies the problem to the highest level. Whereas there is much debate about too much speculation in our markets, like oil, there is no talk of concentration or the intent to manipulate, two vital components in manipulation. That’s because there is no concentration or intent to manipulate in most markets. Except, of course, in silver (and gold).

In other words, while I think the shorts should be more readily blamed for the sudden spike in oil prices, for example, I don’t think that they intentionally manipulated prices upward, or that they held a concentrated position. Common sense and public data confirm this. But that same common sense and public data confirm the opposite in silver and gold, namely, an intentional and documented short-side manipulation.

The data contained in the COTs clearly indicates that the concentration held on the short side in COMEX silver and gold is head and shoulders above the concentration on the short side of oil or any market that has come under the accusation of speculative manipulation. And this is true whether you look at it either in percentage of the entire market terms or in terms of days of world production.

In the most recent COT for positions held as of June 3, the percentage of the entire NYMEX crude oil futures market held net by the 8 largest shorts was 12.8%. This concentration percentage is generally low compared to most other futures markets, mainly because the crude oil market is one of the largest futures markets around. But it is striking compared to the concentrations in silver and gold. The reported concentration of the 8 largest short traders in silver is 53.8% and 57.2% in gold, each more than 4 times the reported short concentration in oil.

And remember, these reported figures grossly understate the real concentrations in these markets, once you remove all the spread transactions, and make the comparisons more stark. Removing all the spreads in crude oil raises the true net concentration of the 8 largest short traders to maybe 19% of the entire market, while the silver percentage jumps to 79% and gold jumps to a new record of 84%, How 8 traders controlling 79% and 84% of an entire market can not be manipulation, in and of itself, is beyond me.

In terms of equivalent days of world production, the comparisons are off the charts. In crude oil, the 8 largest short traders represent 2 days of world oil production (174 million barrels held short vs. 85 million barrels daily production). In gold, the 8 traders hold short 103 days of world mine production (22.8 million ounces vs. 220,000 daily world mine production). In silver, the 8 largest traders hold short 183 days of world mine production (330 million ounces vs. 1.8 million ounces daily mine production). Under this comparison, gold has a concentrated short position more than 50 times the concentration in oil, while silver is 90 times more concentrated than oil. This is simply astounding.

Now here comes the most important message of this piece. If you think I’m just complaining about the super short concentration in silver and gold in terms of proving they are manipulated in price, you are only partially correct. I want to convey something else. If you agree with my premise that the most plausible explanation for the sudden sharp jump in crude oil prices was due to some panicky short covering, then I ask you to contemplate just what is likely to be the price result when some big shorts try to buy back silver?

Yes, I rant and rave about the manipulative and depressing impact of the concentrated short position in silver, as I believe I should, but there are big benefits in this manipulation. The price-support this short position places below the market and the explosive effect it will have on prices yet to be, must not be underappreciated. If such a small amount of short-covering in such a large market, like oil, can have such a big impact on price, it is hard to imagine what the impact on price might be from a large amount of short covering in such a small market as silver.

This is the bullish beauty of the short concentration in silver (and gold). Because the concentrated position is so large (on both a percentage and real world basis) and held by so few participants, any short covering by any of these short traders is virtually guaranteed to impact prices profoundly. Much more profoundly than what we have witnessed in oil. In fact, it is the growing extreme concentration that should tell everyone that the game is coming to an end. That fewer and fewer traders want anything to do with the short side in silver (and gold) means that the manipulators are growing more isolated and desperate. If silver and gold were such attractive free market short candidates, more and more participants would be shorting them, not less.

And to those who think these short traders are so powerful and in control, that they can extend the manipulation in silver indefinitely, please think again. What assures that the short manipulators will fail for sure, at some point, are the realities of the physical realm. The shorts can play all the paper games in the world, but the moment a wholesale physical shortage becomes evident, the shorts are toast. I intend to publish information in the near future which should provide such evidence.

In the meantime, we must try to decipher and understand and learn from the events of the day as they occur. I think oil prices recently shot up, just like wheat and cotton did not so long ago, because a number of shorts, at the margin, decided to buy back short positions in a hurry. I know that the short position in silver is held by very few participants, so when they cover, it will not be an event measured at the margin. It will be an event characterized by a change at the core of the market. The short covering in oil, wheat and cotton are just a hint of what’s to come when the shorts cover in silver.

-- Posted 10 June, 2008

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"The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other." Bertrand Russell: Freedom, Harcourt Brace, 1940

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"Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false." : Bertrand Russell

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"Dogma demands authority, rather than intelligent thought, as the source of opinion; it requires persecution of heretics and hostility to unbelievers; it asks of its disciples that they should inhibit natural kindliness in favor of systematic hatred." - Bertrand Russell, Unpopular essays

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"Philosophy should always know that indifference is a militant thing. It batters down the walls of cities and murders the women and children amid the flames and the purloining of altar vessels. When it goes away it leaves smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery." : Stephen Crane

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Read this newsletter online http://tinyurl.com/dy6yy

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Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered Since The U.S. Invaded Iraq "1,221,154"
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html

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Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In America'sWar On Iraq 4,094
http://icasualties.org/oif/

The War And Occupation Of Iraq Costs
$527,114,486,724

See the cost in your community
http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182

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US Congressman Moves to Impeach Bush

By Belfast Telegraph

The Ohio representative yesterday introduced 35 articles of impeachment against Bush on the floor of the US House of Representatives.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20061.htm

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BBC Uncovers Lost Iraq Billions

By The BBC

"It may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20062.htm

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Iraq Nears Title as World's Most Corrupt

By Joel Brinkley

During the five years the United States has occupied Iraq, the Bush administration has created a new state with a number of notable features: A venal, dysfunctional government. A terrorist haven and training ground. A nation so violent and dangerous that 10 percent of the population has fled.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20060.htm

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Only Nader Has Pointed Out the Danger

Deadly Fallout From Obama's Groveling Before Israel Lobby

By James G. Abourezk

This year we were fortunate enough to witness John McCain, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton taking turns losing their dignity before the AIPAC crowd.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20063.htm

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Who Will Be The Next US President?

AIPAC Decides

By John Stewart

A very telling piece from John Stewart showing what Jimmy Carter said that ANY Presidential Candidate MUST be approved by AIPAC.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20064.htm

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The Spy Who Loves Us

Pay no mind to the Mossad agent on the line.

By Philip Giraldi

After Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard was sentenced to life in prison in 1986, the U.S. negotiated an understanding with Israel-a "gentlemen's agreement" -stipulating that neither nation would thenceforth conduct espionage operations in the other's territory without consent. But the agreement was a sham from the beginning.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20065.htm

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Iraq: Tuesday : At least 5 killed as US occupation continues:

Iraqi and U.S. forces killed three militants and detained five others in northern Iraq in an operation against al Qaeda militants, the U.S. military said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL10384564

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Iraq: Monday : At least 20 killed in another bloody day of US occupation:

A roadside bomb killed at least four people, including an Iraqi soldier, and wounded at least 12 other people
http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GCA-iraq/idUSL0965055220080609

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Iraq Tells US It Wants Troops Back in Barracks:

American troops in Iraq would be confined to their bases and private security guards subject to local law if Iraq gets its way in negotiations with the US over the future status of American forces.
http://tinyurl.com/3otrlc

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Top Iraqi cleric warns of uprising:

A leading Iraqi Shiite cleric said Monday the status of forces agreement between Washington and Baghdad could lead to an uprising in Iraq.
http://tinyurl.com/5jsl38

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U.S. seeking 58 bases in Iraq, Shiite lawmakers say:

"The points that were put forth by the Americans were more abominable than the occupation," said Jalal al Din al Saghir, a leading lawmaker from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/40372.html

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Iranian Leader Warns Iraqi PM of US Deal: -

Supreme Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei said on Monday that presence of the occupying forces is the most important problem facing Iraq and warned against US-Iraq security deal.
http://tinyurl.com/3r5kxt

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All British forces to be pulled out of Iraq within a year:

The pull-out of the remaining 4,000 troops serving in Iraq is sure to be seized on by Labour Ministers as proof that a line has finally been drawn under Tony Blair's biggest foreign policy disaster.
http://tinyurl.com/5yn8ye

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EU to freeze Iranian bank assets if nuclear enrichment continues:

European Union member states have agreed to intensify financial sanctions against Iran, going beyond existing UN measures aimed at containing Tehran's nuclear programme, it emerged last night.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/10/iran.eu

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Iran pulls assets out of European banks:

Iran has withdrawn a huge sum of its foreign exchange reserves from European banks and has deposited some of it into Asian banks.
http://www.payvand.com/news/08/jun/1073.html

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Iran warns of 'pain' if Israel attacks:

Iranian Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar has been quoted as warning Israel of a "very painful" response if it launched a military strike over the Islamic Republic.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=577655

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Israel launches 'Iran Command' for war:

Israel has reportedly started to set up an 'Iran Command' within its air force as part of preparations for a possible war against Iran.
http://www.inteldaily.com/?c=163&a=7016

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US/IRAN: Fearing Escalation, Pentagon Fought Cheney Plan:

Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bases.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=42696

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Congress gets behind Israel's aid request:

A year after U.S. President George W. Bush agreed to increase military aid to Israel by 25 percent, it now seems that all political obstacles that had prevented Democrats in Congress from coming on board and supporting the extra aid have been lifted.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/991252.html

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Israeli occupation forces attack kill 3 Palestinian resistance members:

Israel's military action "clearly indicates that Israel not interested in achieving calm," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said. "Therefore they must be ready to pay the price."
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/06/10/news/Israel-Palestinians.php

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Captured Israeli occupation force soldier's family receive letter:

The letter was passed on to Corporal Shalit's family through the Ramallah office of the Carter Centre, the foundation set up by former US president Jimmy Carter, Channel 10 television and the website of the Haaretz newspaper said.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23839643-5005961,00.html

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IAEA chief hits out at Israel again over Syria attack:

ElBaradei also slammed Israel and the United States for not passing on earlier intelligence that allegedly showed the Al-Kibar site was a covert nuclear reactor.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gs2wzcODbniorWoBwr4h7pUaWosg

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Two dozen Taleban fighters, 5 policemen dead in violence:

Unrest left five Afghan policemen and nearly two dozen Taleban fighters dead Monday, officials said, as Britain reached the grim landmark of 100 occupation force soldiers killed in Afghanistan.
http://tinyurl.com/3sh9ed

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Afghan police kill 2 insurgents:

Police in central Afghanistan's Ghazni province killed two Taliban insurgents as they came in contact on Tuesday, a press release of Afghan interior ministry issued here said.
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?201684

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Explosion in N Afghanistan kills NATO occupation force soldier :

A soldier of the NATO-led Occupation Force died Tuesday from injuries sustained in an explosion in northern Afghanistan, the military alliance said.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-06/10/content_8341600.htm

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Afghans demand withdrawal of NATO and US occupation troops:

The American occupation troops should leave Afghanistan because they are responsible for creating unrest in the country, Afghan leaders said on Monday.
http://tinyurl.com/3lx8vl

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Pakistan elements aiding Taliban insurgents: US think-tank:

The study by the RAND corporation, funded by the US Department of Defense, finds that if Taliban bases in Pakistan are not eliminated, the forces supporting the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai "will face crippling long-term consequences in their effort to stabilize and rebuild Afghanistan."
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?201693

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Four policemen killed in Pakistan:

Suspected Taliban militants killed four policemen in an ambush on their van in northwestern Pakistan despite peace talks in the troubled region, police said today.
http://tinyurl.com/4weflu

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Ongoing Taliban violence: Peace deal with Swat militants scrapped:

The government has scrapped its peace deal with the Taliban as militants have reneged on their promise to stop violence, Prime Minister's Adviser on Interior Affairs Rehman Malik said on Monday.
http://www.pakistanlink.com/Headlines/June08/10/08.htm

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Musharraf allowed CIA base in Pakistan: book:

The base was located in the restive Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, a region considered a safe haven for Taliban and al Quaeda cadres, The News on Tuesday reported, quoting from the book.
http://tinyurl.com/3uwtg6

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Impeachment of Musharraf coming:

PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari is understood to have decided to move a motion of impeachment against President Pervez Musharraf immediately on his return from Saudi Arabia, a move which will force the president to quit rather than be thrown out.
http://paktribune.com/news/index.shtml?201646

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Beef protesters pack Korean capital :

Hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of the South Korean capital as objections to a plan to resume imports of US beef continued to escalate.
http://tinyurl.com/4qjk5a

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Zimbabwe ruled by 'military junta' :

Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe's opposition leader, has said that the country is being run by a military junta ahead of the run-off presidential election later this month.
http://tinyurl.com/4hzf6o

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Somali leader rejects "peace" deal :

Aweys, who is a member of the opposition alliance that signed the deal, on Tuesday called it "a trap" to derail armed Somali resistance against Ethiopian occupation forces.
http://tinyurl.com/4y6lum

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Ireland faces knife-edge poll as EU holds breath:

Leaders from the 27-nation bloc are watching Thursday's plebiscite with barely-contained alarm, after opinion polls indicated that support for the treaty is in the balance.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080610/wl_afp/irelandeureferendum

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Food shortages feared across Spain :

Spanish drivers and shoppers are stockpiling fuel and food after truck drivers blocked deliveries across the country, as an indefinite protest against the high price of fuel entered a second day.
http://tinyurl.com/5t5jga

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U.S., German lawyers seek extraditions of CIA agents:

A group of German and American civil rights attorneys on Monday sued the German government to demand that it pursue the extradition of 13 CIA agents sought in the alleged kidnapping of a German citizen.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-06-09-Germany-CIA_N.htm

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Jailers at Guantanamo urged to destroy interrogation notes: lawyer:

US interrogators of "war on terror" detainees were instructed to destroy handwritten notes that might have exposed harsh or even illegal questioning methods at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a lawyer for one of the prisoners said Sunday.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i-zyzl9b2BIadvTXq9nLKc4AePGg

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Thousands of Bolivians protest at U.S. embassy:

Thousands of supporters of leftist president Evo Morales protested outside the U.S. Embassy in La Paz Monday, demanding the United States send home for trial two right-wing Bolivian politicians.
http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=204650

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Armed revolution in Latin America is over, says Chavez:

Catching his critics off guard, Hugo Chavez called on the Marxist rebel army in neighbouring Colombia to lay down its arms and release its hostages, declaring that guerrilla armies are now "out of place".
http://tinyurl.com/5mt54j

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US trade deficit jumps to 60.9 billion dollars:

The monthly jump in the trade gap by 7.8 percent was the largest since September 2005 and was higher than economists' estimates of 60 billion dollars.
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/US_trade_deficit_jumps_to_60_9_bill_06102008.html

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http://www.signalwatch.com/markets/markets-dow.asp

Updated Tuesday, 6/10 for Wednesday's market.
Key DOW Levels for 6/11
UP Above 12,400
DN Below 12,175
Consolidating..

Dow trades within consolidation, awaits a breakout.

From prior commentary, "...the Dow is building out a clear consolidation at the lows beneath the 12,350 fulcrum level. Typically, this type of behavior is indicative of more selling ahead, especially if the index cannot rise above the 12,350 level..."
The Dow opened the day with early strength this morning, as the index rallied about 160 points to test the 12,350 level, as seen in the 15 Minute Chart. The index eventually turned down into the Close and ended the day with a gain of just 9 points.

The 15 and 60 Minute Charts show the Dow continues to build out a clear consolidation range, which now spans from 12,200 to 12,370. As we mentioned before, this consolidation could be quite bearish since it has formed at the overall lows of the latest sell-off. Look for more weakness ahead should the index remain beneath the 12,400 level. Keep an eye on 12,200 for confirmed selling.

While a break above 12,400 could make for near-term strength, the Dow will likely remain beneath the 12,500, as a clear upper trend line patrols that zone.

Short Term Dow

The Dow closed the day within a tight range from 12,260 to 12,370, seen in the 5 Minute Chart. Watch this range for early direction at the Open.

Medium Term Dow

In the medium term, we are still out of the market and will watch 12,175 down, and 12,400 up; using 25 point stops.

NASDAQ & S&P

The NASDAQ and S&P each traded quietly within their respective consolidation ranges. Look for more of the same until a breakout occurs.

Summary

The Dow closed the day within a clear consolidation range, which we will watch for the next clear medium term move. A breakout from this range could move the market about 225 points fairly quickly.

Thanks for listening, and Good luck in your trading!

Ed Downs

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I care about the environment, says Trump (and not just the greens)
By Andy McSmith
Wednesday, 11 June 2008

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Supporters of Donald Trump turned up to the public inquiry where the tycoon laid out his ambitions for the estate

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Donald Trump wants to create the world's finest golf course on an unspoilt stretch of northern Scotland. Merely creating a "world class" course would not be good enough; it has to be better than the Old Course at St Andrews, he claimed yesterday.

The US billionaire was giving evidence at the opening day of a public inquiry into his plan to develop a site that includes sand dunes that are home to a rich variety of wildlife, on the Menie estate near Aberdeen. Mr Trump presented himself as an ecologically concerned entrepreneur, but when he described himself as "an environmentalist", the reaction from the public gallery was so loud that the inquiry chairman, James McCulloch, demanded silence.

Mr Trump claimed his golf course was more likely to improve the local environment than damage it. He suggested the site was not very attractive in its present condition, though he agreed that it had the potential to be one of the finest sites in the world.

"There are dead birds, there are animals lying over the site which have been shot. Maybe some people are into that – I'm not," he said. The whole site looked "pretty desolate", he claimed. He added: "Before, no one knew what it was. Now they are saying: 'Menie, it's the greatest'."

David Tyldesley, of the RSPB, suggested Mr Trump's original vision had been to create a "world class course" but not necessarily the world's best. But Mr Trump replied: "Let me make it clear so we can perhaps save some time. I am looking to build the finest golf course in the world if given the chance to do it."

Mr Tyldesley said: "I don't doubt that it's an aspiration but can I put it to you that it is only a recent aspiration in order to justify the use of a Site of Special Scientific Interest." Mr Trump retorted: "That is absolutely false – the moment I saw the site I thought it had the potential to be the greatest golf course in the world."

But Mr Trump was none too encouraging when asked whether families would still be able to visit the site after it had been turned into a golf course. "You don't want to be sitting with your family getting smashed by a golf ball," he said. And he added: "In the US we have the expression 'half-assed'. Let's do it properly."

The proposed £1bn development was turned down by the council in Aberdeenshire, on the casting vote of a Liberal Democrat councillor, but it has the backing of Scotland's First Minister, Alex Salmond, who says it will bring jobs to the area.

Mr Trump is well known to American audiences as the progenitor of the NBC reality show The Apprentice, the US forerunner of its British counterpart. He is proposing to construct two golf courses, 900 timeshare apartments, a 450-bed hotel and 500 luxury homes. One of the courses would be on the Foveran Links, a stretch of sand dunes which is home to a variety of wildlife including skylarks, kittiwakes, badgers and otters.

Many local business and tourist agencies are in favour of the development, and Mr Trump has warned that rejecting it would be a "very bad signal" to anyone thinking of investing in Scotland. But environmentalists have objected. Michael Forbes, a local fisherman, turned down the Trump Organisation's offer of £350,000 to sell his family's run-down farm in the centre of the estate.

The inquiry is expected to last between three and four weeks.

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Living near parks doesn't mean more exercise
Wed Jun 11, 2008 6:01am BST Email | Print | Share | Single Page| Recommend (0) <-> Text <+>

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LONDON (Reuters) - Living near green space makes little or no difference in how much people exercise during their leisure time, Dutch researchers said on Wednesday.

In fact, people who live closest to green areas in urban or rural areas walk and cycle less often and for shorter amounts of time than other residents, they reported in the journal BioMed Central Public Health.

"We found that there was either no relationship or only a small one between green space and physical activity," said Jolanda Maas, a researcher at the Nivel Institute in Utrecht, who led the study. "People with more green space walk and cycle less often in their leisure time."

People with 20 percent of green space walked around 250 minutes each week during their leisure time compared to 180 minutes -- more than an hour less -- for those surrounded by 80 percent of green space.

This may be because people in less urban environments need to use their cars more to get to places such as shops, schools and the doctor's office, Maas said.

Living near green space also made no difference in whether people met national health recommendations to get 30 minutes of exercise daily, according to a survey of 5,000 residents across the Netherlands.

"An important implication of the study is when you just look at the availability of green space it is not true people are just more physically active," Maas said. "This study shows you don't really need green space."

(Reporting by Michael Kahn; Editing by Paul Casciato)

© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved.

http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/2008/0610.html

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http://www.financialsense.com/Market/barbera/2008/0610.html

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http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Markets/Global_Markets/Dollar_gains_after_Bernanke_comments/rssarticleshow/3118318.cms

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http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_08/captainhook061008.html

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http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_08/merk061008.html

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http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_08/kasun060908.html

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From The Times
June 11, 2008
Fuel prices: how to save £500 a year (even if it does mean driving at 20mph)

Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent
Record prices at the pumps could succeed where 6,000 cameras and millions of pounds in road-saftey advertising have failed for decades – by securing compliance with the speed limit.

Driving more slowly will save drivers up to £500 a year in fuel costs, according to a study, which reveals that the most efficient speed is much lower than most people think.

With the average price of petrol at £1.17 a litre and diesel at £1.30 – 20 per cent higher than a year ago – the financial incentive to obey the speed limit has never been greater.

Car manufacturers suggest that the optimum speed for fuel efficiency is between 50mph and 60mph and a recent survey found that two thirds of drivers believe this to be the case. But the study, commissioned by What Car? magazine and based on five cars of different sizes ranging from a 1 litre Toyota Aygo to a 2.2 litre Land Rover Freelander, found that the most efficient speed was below 40mph for all five and as low as 20mph for two.

Times Archive, 1896: The requirements of road traffic
It is not necessary that the speed be high; an average of ten to 12 miles an hour would meet all ordinary requirements
Locomotives on Highways Act
Letter to the editor: Motor Cars.
RELATED LINKS
Damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t
Above 40mph, fuel consumption increased sharply and by 90mph the miles per gallon had halved on average.

The study comes as the Government prepares to put in place emergency measures to prevent a strike by Shell oil tanker drivers from creating fuel shortages across the country. Downing Street urged drivers yesterday not to panic buy, which would cause shortages even if fuel deliveries continued as normal.

The study, by Peter De Nayer, a former AA fuel efficiency expert, involved fitting cars with a fuel flow meter and testing them at Millbrook proving ground in Bedfordshire. He found that a Citroën C4 1.6 diesel achieved 99.6mpg at 20mph but only 29.3mpg at 90mph.

The average car consumes 38 per cent more fuel at 70mph than it does over the same distance at 50mph. At 60mph it uses 34 per cent more than at 40mph.

The average driver travelling at 90mph on a motorway will spend £1.20 more on fuel every eight minutes than a driver travelling at 70mph. The 90mph driver will have travelled farther in that time but will still be spending 40 per cent more per mile than the 70mph driver.

The study also found that a driver of the average car travelling 10,000 motorway miles in a year at 80mph would spend £518 more on fuel than if he had driven the same distance at 60mph.

More than half of drivers on motorways break the 70mph limit and a fifth drive at more than 80mph, according to figures from the Department for Transport.

Mr De Nayer said: “There is a huge misconception that the most fuel-efficient speed is around 55mph. The study shows that the slower you go with the vehicle running smoothly, the less fuel you will use.

“By allowing a bit more time for their journeys, drivers will not only protect their licences from speeding points but save themselves a significant amount of money.”

Motorists are also wasting money by using the wrong gear. A car cruising at 40mph on rural roads uses 20 per cent more fuel in fourth gear compared with sixth, the study found. In town, motorists can cut fuel bills by pulling away slowly and smoothly, changing up early and anticipating road conditions to maintain a steady speed.

Mr De Nayer said that improvements by manufacturers to make cars quieter had fooled many drivers into thinking that their engines were running smoothly in lower gears. “They can no longer hear that they should change gear.”

Some manufacturers, including BMW and Audi, have begun installing gearshift indicators to help drivers to improve fuel efficiency.

Greater compliance with the speed limit would spare the environment as well as drivers’ wallets. The UK Energy Research Centre, a govern-ment-funded body, found that if all drivers observed the 70mph limit their vehicles would emit 3.7 million fewer tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. This would be the equivalent of taking three million Ford Focuses off the road.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said: “It is unrealistic to expect people to drive much lower than the limit. You need to keep up with traffic and to maintain a safe and reasonable speed.”

This PM does not understand the meaning of the word Freedom
John Redwood's Diary 11/06/2008 07:28 John Redwood Blog Comments
This morning we hear that the Prime Minister is offering more of our money to try to appease his backbenchers who disagree with him over extended detention without trial. Apparently people locked up for weeks who turn out to be innocent will be offered £3000 a day, as if that were sufficient compensation for the ignominy and frustration of being locked up for a month and a half, cut off from your job, your friends, your family. If you run your own business you would be bankrupt by the time the state had decided it had made a mistake. It shows how desperate the PM is to try to win over his own side. It illustrates that they do at last realise innocent people will be treated in this disgusting way by the government. It also shows a wider point – that Mr Brown now squanders and throws money at any problem, in the mistaken belief that money can buy him popularity.

Many of us who will vote against 42 day detention without charge or trial do so out of principle. We believe in Habeas Corpus. We were proud to be born in a country which had developed strong liberties for the subject over centuries, and can scarce believe that this Labour government is so careless of them. We have hated the incoming tide of European regulation and Napoleonic law, debauching and overwhelming important parts of our law codes. We have loathed the ever more intrusive state, sending us form after form, demanding tax after tax, and expecting us to drop everything when the Inspector calls or the government statistician wishes to record us in yet another data bank. We are spied on continuously, watched over by 4.2 million government spy cameras, and may now even have the contents of our rubbish bins analysed by over zealous Councils. There is no sum of money you could offer us as compensation to the badly treated to persuade us that the state should have yet more power to boss people around and take its time with its investigations.

This government does not know the meaning of the word FREEDOM. Its ignorance of history means it fails to grasp the skilful English settlement based on the presumption that someone is innocent until proven guilty, and we all have the right to know who accuses us of what if we are dragged into the criminal justice system. It also means that the government does not understand the peaceful but doughty resilience of many English people to overmighty government. The opinion polls and the Sun may think the further erosion of Habeas Corpus a good idea, but I know of no true born Englishman or woman who thinks he or his neighbour should be locked away for 42 days on the whim of authority with no good cause shown and no case brought before a Magistrates court.

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/cartoon/

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Spend, spend and spend again
John Redwood's Diary 11/06/2008 08:00 John Redwood Blog Comments
On his way to power at Number 10 Gordon Brown was keen to associate himself with the ever larger sums of public money the government decided to raise and spend on public services. I remember grasping just how single minded and professional he was about the use of public money when I went to a briefing on FE Colleges one day.

I went because my local FE College had asked me to take up a matter for them. I was invited along with every other MP because Ministers wished to use the civil service to help them with the organsation of the meeting, so it could not just be a Labour party affair. I went expecting the HE/FE Minister or maybe a Junior Treasury Minister to take us through the detailed numbers of individual FE Colleges and answer our queries. To my surprise we were greeted by no less a figure than the then Chancellor himself, who showed great grasp of the detailed numbers of each FE College constituency by constituency. Most of the MPs present were Labour MPs, and Gordon Brown was good at either showing them just how well their FE College was already doing, or promising them theirs would do better next year whilst thanking them for their interest and their good work as constituency members.

It was virtuoso performance which told you half of what you need to know to understand how Brown governs (The other half is when in doubt throw the kitchen sink at your opponents, never sparing the vilification). He believes that people vote for you if you associate yourself with spending large sums of money in their town or district. On this view all public spending is good. Big public spending is beter. Lumps of money buy votes. Conservatives can be regularly condemned for not having spent as much, or for probably not spending as much in the future,whatever their true intentions.

Watching the PM I think we should expect more of this simple combination of bash the Tories and spend the money. The fact that the government has spent far too much and is getting such shocking value for what it is spending will not concern him unduly. The fact that the more he has spent the more unpopular he becomes will not be a thought which crosses his mind. The fact that the hugely overborrowed public sector is now the main cause of poor UK economic performance will not occur to him. The limit on new debt and borrowing placed by the high levels of total debt outstanding and of new debt being drawn down will be ignored. Instead the PM will order Ministers to spend what it takes - in the naive belief that more spending will in the end win through.

First World War Generals in the first couple of years of the war, safely encamped well behind the front trenches and far back from the shellfire, ordered yet more men over the top and across No man’s land in the belief that it was just a matter of time and numbers before they won. The PM takes a similar approach to public money in the face of adverse opinion polls. This week we have seen the offer of £1.5 billion to Manchester for public transport schemes, and £3000 a day to anyone wrongfully detained under the government’s lock up anyone suspicious scheme. In recent weeks we have seen £2.7 billion for the Crewe by election problem of the abolition of the 10p tax band. The fact that Crewe did not say “Thank you” for the extra does not seem to have led to any rethink on the strategy.

This generosity is unlikely to extend to constituencies where Labour have no hope. Do not expect a generous package of infrastructure money for Henley this week to help the by election there.

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From The Times
June 11, 2008
Surely Donald Trump's golf course outscores a bird's nest?
‘Castle Trump' is huge and vulgar. But the arguments against it are worse
Magnus Linklater
I'm backing Donald Trump. I'm backing his big ideas, his big ego, his big private jet, and his big hairstyle - especially the way that it takes off in a Highland gale.

I want him to win the argument for his £1 billion golf course, which is, of course, to be the “the best in the world”, along with the 1,000 houses he is planning, and the five-star hotel, to be called, I have no doubt, Castle Trump, all to be built on a deserted stretch of Aberdeenshire coastline. I like the size, the scale, the sheer unadorned vulgarity of it all.

“I like thinking big,” Mr Trump says. “If you're going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big.” Love him or loathe him, you cannot fault him on consistency.

But I'm also backing Mr Trump because of the weakness of the arguments against him. Leading the opposition is a parade of familiar complaints of the kind that have held back ambition and enterprise, particularly in rural Britain, for as long as I can remember.

BACKGROUND
Millions of reasons to cheer the Mac in Donald
Cold recoil as oil goes higher on the boil
Trump criticises charities over opposition to £1bn golf resort
Salmond 'cavalier' in £1bn Trump affair
They fall into two categories: innate suspicion of wealth (“He's just in it for the money”) and deep-dyed hostility to anything that threatens the environment. Not for nothing do the words “conservatism” and “conservation” share all but two letters. Both are instinctively against change.

It was inevitable, as soon as Mr Trump strode across the sand dunes of the Menie Estate, north of Aberdeen, that someone somewhere would find a vital piece of our natural heritage under threat from the rolling fairways and the shaved greens that he proposes. Enter three acronyms whose opposition is as predictable as their language: SNH, RSPB and SSSI. The first is Scottish Natural Heritage, the second the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the third - and most dreaded - Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Combined, they strike terror into the heart of any developer; they have stopped wind farms in their tracks; halted pylons marching across the country; stood four-square behind the lesser-spotted whimbrel and against any of the jobs that might be created on its nesting sites.

As soon as I heard that the RSPB had described Mr Trump's site as “an invaluable piece of natural heritage”, I knew that he had a fight on his hands. Precisely the same argument was made in the late 1960s, when oil was discovered in the North Sea.

We lived then at a place named Nigg on the north of the Cromarty Firth, overlooking fine sand dunes, very much like those on the Menie Estate. An oil-rig construction yard was proposed right in the middle of the unspoilt bay in front of our house.

We minded, of course, but not as much as the conservation bodies, who weighed in on behalf of the curlew, the lapwing, the redshank and the dotterel, along with any number of ruddy duck, whose fate was deemed more important than the jobs that would be created and the industry that would be developed.

Luckily, the objectors lost. The yard was built, the dotterel moved a few miles farther north, and nature adapted to the cranes and the derricks and the vast rigs that floated out every so often to suck oil from under the sea bed and to secure the national economy for the next 40 years. Some 5,000 jobs were created in a rural area that, until then, had been dying on its feet.

Sometime, probably when the oil runs dry and the derricks keel over, nature will doubtless reclaim her heritage. Do the bird-lovers seriously claim that Man's progress, which constitutes a blip in the great march of time, should have been denied for the sake of a dotterel's nest?

The one thing that nobody argued at the time was that sand dunes were unusual. They can be found all along the East Coast of Scotland, from Caithness to the Borders, and although they look splendid, even their greatest fans would have to admit that they provide fairly barren terrain, consisting of degraded stretches of sand and bent grass.

Here and there, they have been reclaimed to create some of our greatest links golf courses, one of which, Dornoch, regularly features in lists of all-time favourites compiled by the world's best golfers.

The three miles that Mr Trump would like to commandeer constitute but a tiny and deserted percentage of the total. Since he took an interest, however, they have acquired a new nomenclature. No longer just sands, they are described as “unspoilt dune ecosystems”, or “mobile dune vegetation”, the “crown jewels” of “our most precious habitat”, even “a benchmark test of environment legislation”.

There's an American word for rubbish that is short, effective and much favoured by Mr Trump to dismiss concepts with which he disagrees. He may, in the interests of diplomacy, have to suppress it as he gives evidence at this week's inquiry, but if he can think big, then I guess he is entitled to think scornful as well. In which case I'm happy to endorse it.

http://www.cockburnassociation.org.uk/default.asp?page=1

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Are men boring?
Last Updated: 12:02am BST 11/06/2008

After a nightmare evening trapped between two egos, Sabine Durrant set out to discover when and why men started boring for Britain

If you think men are dull, wait till you read this… in tomorrow's Daily Telegraph, an indignant male hits back at the fairer sex's failings Recently, at a friend's 40th birthday dinner, I sat between an advertising executive who expounded on his son's musical talent and academic promise, and a commercial lawyer who was keen to drum home the possessive in the phrase "my team".

'There seem to be genuinely primitive pairings between vivacious, chatty women and men who are the opposite'
By pudding, I wanted to push back my chair and introduce them. "John, meet Josh. You've a lot in common. He's an insufferable bore as well."

In the car afterwards, I asked my partner - who, as usual, had been a mainly silent presence - how his evening had been. Did he answer? It was blood from a stone if he did.

Luckily, birthday dinners make up only a fraction of our interaction with each other. (Compensations for lack of small talk within the home include coffee-fetching, shared child care, the possibility of regular sex.) But these days, most of the men I meet are at social functions.

It's not their best light. I remember what it is like to have clever, funny companions - at the newspaper where I used to work, there were lots of them - but where have they gone?

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Are men boring? A straw poll among friends and relations would suggest the contention is so irrefutable that evidence is barely necessary. My friend Esme Jones, 38, who has recently had a baby, spent a precious night out with her husband, a film editor, and said she kept nagging him to talk.

"If I'd been with you or another girlfriend, we'd have been gabbling 19 to the dozen."

Prudence Barratt, 52, a management consultant, attended a dinner party in Hampstead at which the women sat at one end of the table, the men at the other. "It was the nicest dinner party I've been to in ages. It was like in the old days, when the women retired leaving the men to drone on over the port and cigars, but for the whole evening. It was bliss."

Jess Spillane, 44, a teacher in Plymouth, says: "It's to do with macho-ness. The more macho a man is, the more boring he can be - that's why gay men are generally better company. When macho men talk about their work, they have a point to make.

Or they don't talk at all. There are two types: the pompous and the somnolent. Heterosexual men with macho leanings are the opposite of women who are happy to divulge the downsides of their life or job, the moans, the insecurities. You bond with people when they admit their vulnerabilities."

"Of course men are boring," says Maeve Pollard, 48, who cuts my dog's hair, as if I've asked whether Monday follows Sunday. "If there's just the two of you, the woman thinks, 'What shall we talk about?

Let's talk about this.' The man doesn't bother."

So what's going on here? If heterosexual men are really so crashingly dull, the human race would have bored itself to extinction. It may just be a misunderstanding - a matter of communication.

Recent research shows there are essential differences in the functioning of the male and female brain. Simon Baron-Cohen, professor of developmental psychopathology at Cambridge University, argues that the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy, and the male brain for understanding and building systems.

His ES theory (for empathising-systemising) holds that people with autism show an extreme of the typical male profile - high on systems, low on empathy. It is based partly on watching the behaviour of children in social situations.

Give a group of children a camera and the boys will get more than their fair share of looking down the eyepiece: "less empathetic, more self-centred." Leave out a bunch of big plastic cars for kids to ride on, and the boys tend to ram a vehicle deliberately into another child while the girls, on average, drive round more carefully, more sensitive to others.

"When asked to judge when someone might have said something potentially hurtful, girls score higher from at least seven years old, says Baron-Cohen. Women are also more sensitive to facial expressions. They are better at decoding non-verbal communication, picking up subtle nuances from tone of voice or facial expression, or judging a person's character."

You can see how in a social situation these traits lead to easier companionship.

Typical male strengths - focus, dedication, self-belief - might thrust men up the ladder at work and lead them to do most of the talking in certain contexts - in meetings, in Parliament, in the law courts, in tutorials, in panel discussions on television: contexts in which conversation has a purpose.

But the same qualities are more likely to transmute into weaknesses - tunnel vision, limited interests, self-absorption - in social situations, where talking is just an end in itself.

There's a popular contention that in an average day a man utters 2,000 words and a woman 7,000, which nobody seems to have proved. But a lot of research has been conducted into what men and women mean by the words they use.

Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, Washington DC, imagined in her book You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (1990) a simple scenario of a man and a woman driving along in a car.

The woman says: "Would you like to stop for a coffee?" The man says, "No", and the woman seethes for the rest of the journey because she would have quite liked to stop for a coffee. In her mind, her enquiry was the opening to a negotiation.

In his, it was a question requiring a simple yes or no. "For males," she writes, "conversation is the way you negotiate your status in the group and keep people from pushing you around. Females, on the other hand, use conversation to negotiate closeness and intimacy."

The American neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine goes further. "Connecting through talking," she wrote in her book The Female Brain, "activates the pleasure centres in a girl's brain. We're not talking about a small amount of pleasure. This is huge. It's a major dopamine and oxytocin rush, which is the biggest, fattest neurological reward you can get outside of an orgasm."

You can conclude from all this that, biologically, men are not good at conversation for conversation's sake, that they can, on the surface, appear boring - lacking in the charisma that Patsy Rodenberg discusses in her book Presence: How to Use Positive Energy for Success in Every Situation.

Through her experience as a voice coach at the National Theatre and elsewhere, Rodenberg has developed a theory that a person can be in any of "three circles" of energy in relation to other people.

In the first circle, your focus is inward, in the third, you give energy out. Only in the second do you give and receive energy in equal measures. By concentrating on this middle way, she concludes, all your relationships will improve.

Such theories also explain how different a relationship can be with men you work with, where conversation is directional, where jokes and interests are shared.

What they don't explain is the general feeling among women of a certain age that men have got more boring, are duller and more self-centred than the ones they used to meet. "Men don't start boring," Maeve Pollard believes, "they end up boring."

Jess Spillane concedes that the boys she was at school with had the same self-obsession, the same tendency to be one-tracked, ''but they were exciting, young, there was the frisson of potential".

Prudence Barratt makes a similar point: "Men now are not interesting because they are not interested in you. They've stopped making an effort to look beyond themselves because there is nothing in it for them."

Jane Finnigan, 40, a lawyer who has quit to look after her children, recently moved to Geneva, where she finds the men marginally less dull than those she left behind in Manchester: "They ski at weekends, they walk, they don't lead such drudgy lives."

In general, though, she finds men more boring than when she was younger. "In your twenties, you make friends with men and women on their own merits - you meet them through work, or whatever. You select the men you see socially.

As you get older, women tend mainly to meet other women - you make connections through children. And generally, let's face it, the social life is organised by these women and the men get dragged along.

"There seems to be a genuinely primitive pairing," she adds, "between vivacious, chatty women and men who are the opposite. Bright, lovely women who are full of life tend to end up with men who are not. Most of my friends' husbands are just deadly. And my husband agrees."

It's a theory that Paula Hall, a counsellor with Relate, doesn't dismiss. Women tell her that men "just sit there" - but her sympathies are divided. "Often it's true, it's the wife's friends. 'I have nothing in common with these people,' the husband might say. It depends on your job, but successful men, as well as women, work long hours. Socially, they want to relax.

Listening to other people's conversation or spouting off is fine, but to actively engage and explore and find out feels like work… Some people are not interested in people - that's why they chose to be an accountant.

If your brain has been active all day and you're at managerial level and you have to read people, using emotional skills all day, you don't want to do it in the evening. As a psychotherapist who spends all day asking questions, do you think I'm up for conversation in the evening? Forget it. I've been at work all day, let's talk lipstick."

Beyond the biological and social factors, there are environmental ones. Jock Encombe, a corporate psychologist from Edinburgh, points to the spirit of the age. "First," he maintains, "life is more boring than it was.

It's the JG Ballard view - the world is more homogeneous. Modern life is characterised by boredom and anxiety, particularly in business. Is it fair to point a finger at professional men? Yes is a simple answer.

Like with modern athletes, it's due to the pressure of specialisation and intensification. A ruthless focus on shareholder value leads to both career success and a narrowing of outlook.

"The guys in their forties and fifties who are running corporations, their formative years were the 1980s, so they are likely to have those sorts of values. They work very, very hard, they see their family, they go to the gym. They have less time to develop their hinterland. A narrow focus leads to less broad conversation.

"Second, one of the key drivers of what makes people boring is egocentricity. It can take two forms.

Negative egocentricity - 'I'm useless'; being boring can be linked with depression, with the classic midlife crisis - or the other, 'I'm full of myself.' They're both the same, they both mean you're wrapped up in your own stuff and see other people merely as extensions of your ego needs."

Have people become more egocentric? "Research would suggest so, but are men more at fault than women? Men are more extreme - you're more likely to get more Nobel Prize-winning men and more male drunks on the street, more brilliant musicians and more men who are tone-deaf.

Men have a wider bell curve. Therefore one can say there are more interesting men, and more boring men. Women are averagely boring, but when men are boring they are spectacularly boring."

They can also, of course, be spectacularly interesting. "Yes, of course they can," says Esme Jones. "When they are not boring they are really good company, funnier than most women, much better at telling jokes and stories.

''In reality, of course," she adds, suddenly chastened, "no one is boring. Everyone has an internal life, everyone has a background and a history and reasons for being as they are. Humankind is complicated - that is the opposite of boring. It comes down to how you express yourself."

And it's hard not to ignore another voice, too, the one that's nagging, in the tone of one's grandmother, that to find someone boring may well simply to be boring oneself. "The most boring thing," I airily said to the psychotherapist Jock Encombe, "is arrogance, isn't it?"

"And what," he replied, "could be more arrogant than accusing other people of being boring?"

At the 40th birthday party where I found the lawyer and the ad exec so particularly tedious, was it really tedium I felt or irritation, a sense of being put out by their preoccupations? If I'd run with both, forgiven them their maleness for a moment, maybe we could have broken through our communication difficulties.

Novelist Jane Thynne agrees that women can be complicit in the dreariness of men. "Men believe that disgorging maximum detail on abstruse topics counts as communication, as in 'But of course I talk to you! I just gave you a blow-by-blow account of the entire Arsenal-Man U game!'

All too often women exacerbate the problem because of misplaced notions of male sensitivity. Take Casaubon in Middlemarch. Instead of encouraging him in his dullness, why did Dorothea not say: 'Your book is massively dull, it will never sell.' She didn't want to hurt him, of course. But the male psyche is made of Teflon!"

Small talk, in the opinion of Carole Stone, who has written books on networking and is the managing director of YouGovStone, an opinion research company, is "a secret weapon". She takes her own responsibilities seriously. "If I'm the host I'm constantly on the alert for someone being bored. The important thing is gently to investigate what people are interested in."

Keep probing, she advises, and there are few occasions in which your companion will not prove entertaining. "I would also say don't worry if you're snubbed. I have only once sat next to a man who wouldn't speak to me.

I said, 'You're being extraordinarily rude. If you want to change places, so would I.' He looked appalled. He said, 'I'm so sorry, I've got a big deal coming up.' And after that everything was fine.

"I hope it will change, but men are more likely than women to be in the top job, to be in a position of power or influence, to be somehow accountable - and that is interesting. I tend to think it's men who get the raw deal.

"To be honest," she adds, quite crushingly in the circumstances, "I more often feel sorry for my husband."

Abridged from the summer 2008 edition of 'Intelligent Life', © The Economist Newspaper Limited, London

i am coming to a view that stocks are set to rally and pm due to move south, near term, over the next few weeks; further out, i see role reversal

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