"iron/nori"

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Duncan	07-Dec-08, 03:58 AM (GMT)
"iron/nori"
From The Sunday Times December 7, 2008 Business in Wonderland The new, topsy-turvy world of finance has turned the business world upside down – and the old, established rules no longer apply Reporting team: Dominic O’Connell, Jenny Davey, Iain Dey, Ben Marlow and Matthew Goodman FOR 37 years Val Padden worked at the brickworks in Accrington, Lancashire. He is proud of the plant’s history — the works has made bricks for 120 years, including the “Nori” high-strength blocks built into the foundations of the Empire State Building and Blackpool Tower. Local legend has it that the Nori brand originated when its intended name – Iron – was painted upside down on the factory chimney. Last month the credit crunch broke Accrington’s brickmaking tradition. Hanson, the building-materials company that owns the plant, said the housing downturn meant it would be mothballed and 50 staff made redundant. “Nobody thought it would shut,” said Padden. “We thought there would be some lay-offs and fewer hours, but we didn’t predict it would close down altogether. I still haven’t emptied my locker – it just doesn’t feel real.” Several other brickworks, including those at Steerforth near Barnsley in Yorkshire and Caernarvon, North Wales, have shut in recent weeks. Just over a year ago such closures would have been unthinkable. The government had set a target of 3m new houses to be built by 2020, and the housing boom was in full swing. Now, due to the banking crisis and recession, housing is in retreat. Last year the UK made 2.4 billion bricks. This year it will be 1.9 billion, the lowest for 60 years. RELATED LINKS Mandelson: No blank cheque The carnage set to continue for Christmas Unconventional steps may slow the slide The wave of brickwork closures is an example of how big business, like Alice when she followed the White Rabbit into Wonderland, finds itself in a topsy-turvy world. Recession has swept down like an avalanche. Its speed and depth, combined with the disruption of banking and other financial markets, has pushed firms and governments into actions that only a few months ago would have been thought impractical, or downright crazy. Radical measures are now the norm. Take two examples from last week: the Bank of England cut interest rates to 2%, the lowest level since 1951, in a desperate attempt to stimulate the economy. The move made a mockery of the desire to drive out inflation that had obsessed the Bank’s rate-setters only six months ago. And the car-market slump forced Honda to quit Formula One motor racing, ending the Japanese car-maker’s 40-year association with the sport and a competition it recently vowed to spend any amount of money to win. In some cases, such as the reshaping of the car-manufacturing and financial-services industries, the world is being turned upside down with the help – or at the behest – of governments. In other sectors, including commercial airlines and property, the scramble for survival has made businesses ditch long-held assumptions about their future. “The unthinkable has become the inevitable,” said Tim Linacre, chief executive of stockbroker Panmure Gordon, which advises mid-sized public companies on their relations with investors. Robert Silver, senior partner at US law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner and one of America’s top corporate lawyers, said there was no precedent for the shifts now taking place. “I’ve never seen anything like this. Every day is extraordinary,” he said. The difficulty now is predicting what surreal twist the crisis has in store. Senior executives and City advisers fear the rupture in normal business activities – in particular companies’ refinancing of existing loans – will lead to a “bolt from the blue” – the collapse of a big UK group for no obvious reason. “There is now a real risk that fundamentally viable and financially sound companies could fail because of a lack of liquidity,” said Peter Marshall, managing director at Houlihan Lokey, an investment bank that specialises in corporate restructuring. This risk of large corporate defaults is prompting the government and officials to think about even more drastic actions. Gordon Brown and the Bank of England are contemplating whether interest-rate cuts go far enough, or should be augmented with direct economic intervention to reflate the economy. Lord Mandelson, the business secretary, is drawing up a list of industries threatened by the crisis that could receive direct government support – a return to policies not seen since the 1970s. THE descent into Wonderland began with banks. The collapse in trust and drying-up of credit markets over the past year has threatened the survival of the international banking system. The result has been a spectacular shake-out of the big financial institutions, all done with the connivance of governments. Five years ago Lloyds TSB was blocked from acquiring Abbey National on competition grounds. A merged Lloyds and Abbey would have had too large a market share, it was decreed. Yet when Lloyds revealed plans to take over HBOS two months ago, the government had changed its tune. Together the banks will control almost one third of Britain’s mortgage market, but competition concerns were waived in the interests of securing HBOS’s future. On Wall Street, the crisis deepened so swiftly that the institutions seen as saviours had to be bailed out themselves. At the end of September Citigroup was asked to rescue struggling US retail banking giant Wachovia. A rival deal with Wells Fargo was stitched together soon after. Last month Citigroup itself received a $326 billion (£220 billion) government bail-out in a remarkable case of the hunter becoming the hunted. Lehman Brothers had been thought to be one of those firms that was “too big to fail”. It was a false assumption. While Washington had been willing to bail out the mortgage agencies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, had stood behind the rescue of Bear Stearns and took insurance giant AIG on to its books, Lehman was hung out to dry. “Until the day they put me in the ground, I will wonder,” Lehman chief executive Dick Fuld told a congressional committee when asked why he thought the authorities had been unwilling to act. “I wake up every single night thinking what could I have done differently?” Lehman’s collapse has in turn caused an unexpected crisis in the hedge-fund industry. The dozens of hedge funds that dealt with Lehman found their assets and trading books frozen, a gridlock that has still yet to be fully resolved. “The Lehman default has resulted in a state of chaos for fund managers – operationally, legally and from a risk perspective,” said Richard Saunders, chief executive of the Investment Management Association. In other industries the scramble for survival is running ahead of government intervention. British Airways’ planned merger with Qantas, which stunned the City when it was first leaked, then officially confirmed last week, is a prime example. Airlines have proved stubbornly resistant to the pan-national mergers that have swept through other global industries. They are largely protected from takeover by the 70-year-old system that governs international aviation and all but forbids foreign ownership and control of national flag carriers. Reform has been glacial. Europe removed most of the constraints between its member states a decade ago, and last year agreed with America an “open skies” deal which dealt with some of the traffic-right restrictions but none of the ownership curbs. The BA-Qantas deal could drag protectionist governments kicking and screaming into a liberalised brave new world. The pair plan to sidestep restrictions by creating a dual-listed company, a construct that allows the airlines to merge without losing their individual corporate identities. If a subsequent merger with Iberia and tie-up with American Airlines goes ahead, BA will have driven a coach and horses through what were until now regarded as inviolate rules that prevented such deals. “This is the kind of transaction that does cause rules to change. It creates a positive need, and commercial imperative, to change rules rather than just a theoretical desire to change them,” Mike Whittaker, head of regulatory affairs at United Airlines, said. It is the speed of the recession that has bowled over some industries, including Padden’s beloved brickworks. The UK housing market has gone from boom to bust in a little over a year, meaning that demand for bricks, cement blocks and other building materials has evaporated. In April last year the shares of Taylor Wimpey, the UK’s biggest housing group, stood at 517p, giving it a stock-market value of about £4.5 billion. Last week the shares closed at 9.9p, valuing the group at £104.5m. The shares of its rivals have also taken a pummelling. The number of new houses built during the next 12 months is forecast to fall as low as between 50,000 and 60,000. The lower number would represent a quarter of the 209,606 homes built last year and a fraction of the 404,356 houses built in 1967 – the peak year for housebuilding. Not since 1920, when only 2 9 , 7 0 0 homes were built, has output been so low. IT TAKES about nine hours to drive the 520 miles between Dearborn, Michigan, and Washington DC. The road trip offered the bosses of the big three car firms plenty of time to work on their begging strategies. The decision by the bosses of Chrysler, Ford and GM to drive to Washington this week in lean, green hybrid cars was an act of penance. Not so long ago hybrid was a dirty word in Detroit as the trio concentrated on selling gas-guzzling behemoths. High petrol prices and scared, credit-deprived consumers have brought their industry to the edge of destruction, threatening millions of jobs. Two weeks previously, the car bosses had been sent packing by politicians after flying down to Washington in private jets. Now they were back, begging for $34 billion. “We’re here today because we made mistakes,” said GM’s chief, Richard Wagoner. Few doubt that the collapse of one of the three will have a profound impact on the US economy, but polls last week showed that the US public, as well as politicians, are reluctant to simply hand over more money to the car firms. So, once unthinkable solutions are now being considered – such as a forced merger of GM with Chrysler. Silver, of Boies, Schiller & Flexner, said the government’s primary concern was to prevent more shocks to the system. “It’s always a question of what risks do you want to take. Do you want to take a risk that you are going to have too much consolidation? Or do you want to take the risk that you are going to have a business failure that you could have prevented? Given everything that is happening now, and all the fragility, I think governments that would normally go in the first direction will now go in the second.” FOR corporate Britain, the scrabble for funding will dictate the itinerary on the next stage of its trip through Wonderland. The banking crisis means that some groups will struggle to refinance loans that are falling due, and certainly not at the interest rates they enjoyed when the loans were first taken out. Bankers say the funding crisis has been exacerbated by the recent collapse in equity markets. Deficits in defined-benefit pension schemes have soared as a result. “If pension trustees then force firms to take aggressive steps to reduce the pension deficit at the same time as the credit crisis, the results could be disastrous,” said Houlihan Lokey’s Marshall. If loans are unavailable, companies will have to turn to their shareholders for cash injections. Corporate advisers expect a rash of rights issues – where companies give their existing shareholders the option to subscribe for new shares, usually at a substantial discount to the existing price – early next year. “You could see a number of companies look to launch rights issues rather than get into tricky negotiations with their banks further down the line. The best companies will be looking to do this sooner rather than later to make sure they don’t end up at the back of the queue,” said Panmure Gordon’s Linacre. Not all rights issues will succeed, however. There has been a polar swing in investor sentiment. Two years ago, when debt was cheap and the bull market was in full swing, no corporate story was too good to be true. Now, no tale of potential disaster, forced merger or corporate collapse is too outlandish to be believed. “ the world was so different as to be almost beyond remembering. It was ruled by greed, optimism and credulity. In short, it was the opposite of the last few weeks . . . no scenario is too negative to be credible, and any scenario incorporating an element of optimism is dismissed as Pollyannaish,” Howard Marks, chairman of American investment firm Oak-tree Capital Management, told his clients in a recent letter. For those rejected by their shareholders, there is another potential source of funds. Emboldened by government’s willingness to bail out banks, several large industrial groups have made a plea for state subsidy, the most high-profile of which has been Jaguar Land Rover, which is asking for around £1 billion. Mandelson is now drawing up his list, but this weekend told The Sunday Times that he would take a tough line, with no open cheque book for British business. For the moment, it’s hard to see an obvious way out of Wonderland.
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Duncan	07-Dec-08, 04:12 AM (GMT)
1. "Hyperinflation is on the cards"
What is hateful...is not rebellion but the despotism which induces the rebellion; what is hateful are not rebels but the men, who, having the enjoyment of power, do not discharge the duties of power; they are the men who, having the power to redress wrongs, refuse to listen to the petitioners that are sent to them; they are the men who, when they are asked for a loaf, give a stone : Sir Wilfrid Laurier = The great only appear great because we are on our knees. Let us rise. : James Larkin - Source: Statue on O'Connell Street, Dublin, Ireland. = "This focus on money and power may do wonders in the marketplace, but it creates a tremendous crisis in our society. People who have spent all day learning how to sell themselves and to manipulate others are in no position to form lasting friendships or intimate relationships... Many Americans hunger for a different kind of society -- one based on principles of caring, ethical and spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. Their need for meaning is just as intense as their need for economic security." : Michael Lerner === Click here to read this newsletter online http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/ === Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered Since The U.S. Invaded Iraq "1,284,105" http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html === Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In America'sWar On Iraq 4,209 http://icasualties.org/oif/ The War And Occupation Of Iraq Costs $577,278,428,473 See the cost in your community http://nationalpriorities.org/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=182 === "We Let The Crooks Take Over" The plot to shift taxes from wealthy and on the wage earners. Guns and Butter Interview with Dr. Michael Hudson The United States Has become a pariah in the world financial economy. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21395.htm === Whenever I'm in Tajikistan, My Mobile Phone Says I'm in Dubai By Robert Fisk Just look how we've forgotten the CIA's secret prisons. In Afghanistan, a Fisk source who has never - ever - been wrong, tells me that there are at least 20 of these torture centres still active in the country, six in Zabol province alone. But we don't care about Afghans. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21398.htm === Drawing the Future From the Past By Channapha Khamvongsa For nearly three decades, the U.S. secret war in Laos and the impact of the most massive bombing campaign in the world was nearly forgotten. For those who remembered, the events seemed surreal. They witnessed the reckless destruction of a people and their land, and careful efforts by the U.S. government to conceal it. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21397.htm === The History Of The Spanish American War And The Rise Of US Imperialism By Michael Parenti - Audio Michael Parenti uses the history of the Spanish American War to answer several very intriguing questions. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21393.htm === Empire Vs. Democracy Video (2005) Internationally renowned Political Scientist Michael Parenti to the UW Oshkosh campus, Parentis discussion focused on the topic: Empire Vs Democracy. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21394.htm === The Functions of Fascism Michael Parenti - Audio Many of the measures enacted by fascists were frighteningly similar to those enacted today: They include the privatization of state owned enterprises, reduction of corporate taxes and inheritance taxes, defeat of unions, and the suspension of civil liberties. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21392.htm === "Contrary Notions" Video - Michael Parenti Scholar and Political Ideological Surgeon, Michael Parenti, lays the truth down on the intentionality of today's ruling elite and its harmful consequences. Discussion on Michael's latest book, "Contrary Notions". http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21391.htm === The Radicalization Of An American Prisoner By George Peter Jr. My "radicalization" has been incubated and nurtured by this cesspool you call a penal system, and every day your brutality adds yet another name on the rolls. At what point will you sit up and take note? http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21396.htm === 14 Killed In Pakistan: At least one soldier and 13 Taliban militants were killed on Saturday in clashes between security forces and Islamic militants in Pakistan's north-western Swat valley, a military spokesman claimed. http://tinyurl.com/56ls7k === US attack kills six in northwest Pakistan: A suspected US pilotless aircraft Friday targeted a militant hideout in Pakistan's restive tribal region along the border with Afghanistan, killing six people, Pakistani intelligence official said. http://tinyurl.com/6gyj94 === Death toll from Pakistan car bombing rises to 29: The death toll from an overnight car bombing rose to 29 in northwest Pakistan, unnerving a region already dangerously on edge following the attacks on India's commercial capital, police and doctors said Saturday. http://tinyurl.com/6m462f === Unnamed Sources Demonizing Pakistan: Ex-U.S. Official Cites Pakistani Training for India Attackers : A former Defense Department official said Wednesday that American intelligence agencies had determined that former officers from Pakistan's Army and its powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency helped train the Mumbai attackers. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/world/asia/04india.html?em === Rice tells Pakistan to act 'or US will': The US Secretary of State, Dr Condoleezza Rice, is reported to have told Pakistan that there is 'irrefutable evidence' of involvement of elements in the country in the Mumbai attacks and that it needs to act urgently and effectively to avert a strong international response. http://www.dawn.com/2008/12/06/top14.htm === Indian terror suspects linked to Mumbai plot: One of them, Faheem Ahmed Ansari, was carrying a fake Pakistani passport and a list and maps of nine targets in southern Mumbai, including the Taj Mahal hotel and other sites attacked last week, the officer said. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5292508.ece === Muslims condemn terror, say India's their motherland: Indian Muslims are feeling that their patriotism is being questioned again following the Mumbai terror attacks by Pakistan-trained terrorists. http://tinyurl.com/5mwodn === Seven including three Canadian soldiers killed in Afghan attacks: Three Canadian soldiers with the NATO-led security forces in Afghanistan and four Taliban militants were killed in the country's south, while Afghan authorities were investigating the deaths of eight prisoners in country's largest prison, officials said Saturday. http://tinyurl.com/6jlgj6 === Two civilians killed in southern Afghanistan: It was not immediately clear how the civilians were hurt, but local media said the casualties were the result of a foreign military air strike. http://tinyurl.com/5hqagd === Eight killed, five wounded in attacks around Iraq - Summary: Eight people were killed and five wounded on Saturday in separate attacks in the Baquba, Kirkuk and Babel regions. http://tinyurl.com/5g8vxr === 'US in charge of Iraqi shores' security': Iraq 'has signed an agreement' to put the US in charge of the security of its shores along the Persian Gulf without parliament's approval. http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=77683§ionid=351020201 === Referendum seen as way to "correct" U.S.: Iraq pact: A referendum next year on a newly minted U.S.-Iraqi security pact will give Iraqis the chance to "correct and reform" an agreement that has stirred controversy, a senior official in Baghdad said on Saturday. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081206/ts_nm/us_iraq_pact === Bush: America will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon: "For the safety of our people and the peace of the world, America will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon," Bush said at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1044024.html === Head of nuclear watchdog calls efforts against Iran 'a failure': Mohamed ElBaradei urges dialogue between the West and Tehran. He says Obama has given him 'lots of hope.' http://tinyurl.com/62cu9s === 'US condescension not to solve Iran issue': "To continue to pound the table and say, 'I am not going to talk to you,' and act in a sort of a very condescending way -- that exaggerates problems," the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief added. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=77663§ionid=351020104 === 13 dead as insurgents seize Somalia town: The hardline Islamist insurgent group al Shabaab has taken control of a central Somali trading town after fighting that killed at least 13 people and wounded dozens of others, residents said on Saturday. http://www.nation.co.ke/News/africa/-/1066/499184/-/147j04uz/-/index.html === Jewish "settlers" shoot Palestinians: The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has released graphic footage of a shooting incident that took place after yesterday's forced evictions http://tinyurl.com/6lqxfj === Video: PA police: Settlers set fire to Palestinian home in Hebron: Jewish settlers torched a rooftop enclosure of a Palestinian man's home in the West Bank city of Hebron on Saturday, a Palestinian police spokesman said. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1043992.html === UN condemns Israeli settler clashes: The UN Security Council has condemned a rampage by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in Hebron, which came after they were evicted from a disputed building in the West Bank city. http://tinyurl.com/59rh4p === IDF soldier assaults Haaretz photographer in Hebron: An Israeli photographer on assignment for Haaretz was assaulted by an Israel Defense Forces soldier in Hebron on Saturday. The photographer, Tess Scheflan, suffered light head injuries and was taken by an ambulance to hospital. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1044039.html === Gaza banks on brink of collapse: World Bank: The World Bank urged Israel on Saturday to allow cash into the Gaza Strip to pay the wages of civil servants, warning that the liquidity crisis could bring down the besieged territory's banking system. http://tinyurl.com/6q5wpp === Pentagon expanding number of foreigners recruited: The Defense Department already draws from aliens living in the United States on green cards and seeking permanent residency. But under a trial program, it will now look to also recruit from pools of foreigners who've been living in the states on student and work visas, with refugee or political asylum status and other temporary visas. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/12/05/national/w114140S85.DTL === US auto aid plan wins support: The amount is far less than the $34bn in loans requested this week by General Motors, Ford Motor, and Chrysler, but it would keep them going into next year. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2008/12/20081264451844648.html === Investment banks set to cut 30,000 jobs: Up to 20,000 jobs look set to be lost as a result of the imminent merger of Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, as a further 10,000 job losses were announced across the investment banking fraternity. http://tinyurl.com/5kaya9 === One in 10 American on food stamps: With 3.2 million more Americans unemployed than 12 months ago, the need for food assistance has risen. Last month saw the evaporation of 533,000 jobs, the biggest one-month loss since 1974. http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=77565§ionid=3510203 === Record 10% of U.S. homeowners in arrears or foreclosure: A record 10% of the nation's mortgage-burdened homeowners fell behind on their loan payments or were in foreclosure during the third quarter, according to a survey released Friday by the Mortgage Bankers Assn., which said California and Florida were the biggest contributors to the worsening picture. http://tinyurl.com/63rx5e === Retail Sales Are Weakest in 35 Years: The nation's retailers turned in the worst sales figures in at least a generation on Thursday, starting the holiday shopping season with double-digit declines across a broad spectrum of stores. http://tinyurl.com/5gfalk === \ \ \ http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/ \ \ \ U.S. Hyperinflation Right Around the Corner? By: Richard Daughty, The Mogambo Guru - The Daily Reckoning -- Posted Sunday, 7 December 2008 | Digg This Article | Source: GoldSeek.com Ed Steer of CaseyResearch.com writes, "I see in a Reuters story that home prices plummeted a record 17.4% in September from a year earlier…and the US government was providing more free money to more banks. So, what else is new? More money out of thin air. Late in 2007 it was tens of billions per week. By the end of the first quarter of 2008, it was hundreds of billions per week…and starting about a month ago, it's been a trillion dollars or more per week." Naturally, I am thinking to myself that not only have I heard all of this stuff before, but I have spent a lot of time talking about it myself, mostly mumbling under my breath to my imaginary friends and people who dare to sit next to me. So I am not prepared when Mr. Steer asks, "Is hyperinflation heading our way?" Naturally, I am flattered that he should ask my opinion! I say, "Hell, yes, we are going to have hyperinflation if the damned government keeps creating more money and credit to feed the bubbles", first citing the example of Zimbabwe, and which I was going to use as a conversational springboard to seamlessly segue into how the whole last 4,000 years of human history has proven that gold is the only asset to own when a government is creating so much money and credit that everything else will turn to, in a word, crap. Then I find, to my chagrin, that he is not asking my opinion at all, and was merely being rhetorical as a way of introducing the fact that "John Williams over at shadowstats.com sure thinks so", which made me realize that I could recover from my embarrassment and again seize control of the conversation by saying, "Me, too! I expect hyperinflation, too! Hell, everybody with any brains knows that if the government keeps creating more and more money and credit, then consumer prices will rise exponentially and the economy will be ruined, just like Zimbabwe today, and just like every other example in all of history where a stupid bunch of governmental dirtbags created too much money!" But I never got a chance to say anything, which is probably good because I was stunned to speechlessness when he went on that Mr. Williams expects hyperinflation "within the next 18 months." Yikes! I look at this "18 months" thing, and I look at all the unbelievable trillions of dollars being created per month, and then I remember that there is always a lag between the time when a huge supply of money enters the economy and when it affects prices, which is somewhere between 9 months and a year and a half or so, and I shudder. Even more than that, if we do get hyperinflation in 18 months, then at 17 months, inflation will have been extremely, extremely high, but not hyperinflationary. And at 16 months, inflation would have been extremely high, but not hyperinflationary. And at 15 months, inflation would have been very high, but definitely not hyperinflationary. And at 14 months, inflation would have been high, but very definitely not hyperinflationary. I could go on through the other months, and I would, too, if I was getting paid by the word to write this Stupid Mogambo Crap (SMC), but I am not, and so I will not, but will, instead, entertain you with my latest hit tune "Boom boom boom, we're freaking doomed!" This musical gem starts with a drum going "boom, boom, boom", getting the driving beat going really good, and then I wail at the top of my voice (to convey desperation and panic), "We're freaking doooooooommmed!", boom, boom, boom, "Too much new money and credit means", boom, boom, boom, "Inflation out the wazoo!", boom, boom, boom, "We're freaking doooooooommmed!" boom, boom, boom. And perhaps with a catchy hit song with an infectious beat, people will learn about inflation all over again, and why the Founding Fathers wrote into the Constitution that money will be only of silver and gold, which they did solely to prevent the government from letting the banks increase the money supply, which causes inflation in prices. But I realize that my tune will be a flop, as apparently people have to always learn the lesson of inflation by suffering because, as Mark Twain said about trying to carry a cat home by its tail, "it is a lesson that can be learned no other way." P.S. To get The Daily Reckoning sent directly to your inbox, sign up for our free email newsletter, or if you prefer to use RSS, subscribe to the Daily Reckoning RSS feed. Editor's Note: Richard Daughty is general partner and COO for Smith Consultant Group, serving the financial and medical communities, and the editor of The Mogambo Guru economic newsletter - an avocational exercise to heap disrespect on those who desperately deserve it. The Mogambo Guru is quoted frequently in Barron's, The Daily Reckoning and other fine publications. Click here to visit the Mogambo archive page. -- Posted Sunday, 7 December 2008
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Duncan	07-Dec-08, 04:43 AM (GMT)
2. "this really is serious"
International Forecaster December 2008 (#2) - Gold, Silver, Economy + More By: Bob Chapman, The International Forecaster -- Posted Sunday, 7 December 2008 | Digg This Article | Source: GoldSeek.com The following are some snippets from the most recent issue of the International Forecaster. For the full 40 page issue, please see subscription information below. US MARKETS ... It should be obvious that throwing hundreds of billions into a black hole of losses numbering in the tens, and perhaps even hundreds, of trillions (i.e. the Quadrillion Dollar Derivative Death Star), is like trying to empty the Pacific Ocean with a coffee can. Let's take ten trillion and buy out all the mortgages in the US, and then modify all the interest rates to a 5% fixed rate. We can float 10 year treasuries at 2% to fund the deal, and pocket the 3% spread of $300 billion, which we can use to shore up our budget deficit, to rejuvenate zombie corporations after we run them through Chapter 11, and to make loan workouts for those who can't even afford 5%, which would number in the millions, because fogging a mirror was the only qualification for getting a mortgage over the past five or so years. This will cure all real estate defaults and immediately convert the toxic waste into real AAA paper for the first time while everyone gets to buy a new house at 5% fixed also, thus saving the real estate market. The banks, now flush with cash, can start lending again because their balance sheets have been restored, and get back into the mortgage business by doing both refinances and purchases, while our foreign owners of agencies and treasuries rejoice, and while owners of what was once toxic waste start tap dancing on the ceiling. As the government-owned mortgages are paid off, we can use the proceeds to either float new mortgages at a 3% spread, or we can use the payoff money to pay down the ten trillion dollar treasury loan and let the banks take over again, this time with oversight and regulations that will put people in jail if they pull their cute little scams again. We can then also float another ten trillion dollars in bonds at 2%, and give every American, young and old, $33,000, which they would have to use with the following pre-established priorities: (1) Cure any mortgage defaults, (2) pay off any credit cards and car loans, and (3) buy a hybrid car that gets 30+ miles per gallon from an American car manufacturer, or in the alternative, set up an IRA funded by gold and silver to protect against the upcoming hyperinflation, or for the younger citizens, set up a college fund if they can qualify for college. That will cure all the consumer loan defaults and restore value to all the derivatives associated with them, revive our manufacturing sector, solve our energy crisis, provide reliable transportation so everyone can get off welfare and go to work, get our kids educated, and set us all up for retirement with inflation-proofing through gold and silver, while pushing trillions in available loan funds back into the banking sector to totally re-grease the system. What the heck is $20 trillion when we already owe $100 trillion? Sure, it's certainly hyperinflationary, but what is the alternative? The alternative is a purging of the system and ultimate decade long depression for the world financial system with a major war as the cure, which the Illuminists will use to destroy our precious Constitutional rights and pave the way for a one-world government. The same will happen if we hyper-inflate, but much further down the line, and you at least get to have one final party together with some gold and silver protection, and who knows, we might figure a way out in the meantime. You will never see such a plan implemented, because as should be obvious from the $700 billion Paulson Ponzi Plunder Plan, the idea is to bankrupt the middle class, and not to save it, by pumping taxpayer largesse into failed and insolvent banking and business entities so that the dollars are wasted and are used to destroy the middle class with hyper-stagflation, while Illuminist executives walk away with trillions in salaries, bonuses and stock dividends after buying up all the smaller fry in a fresh round of competition elimination. The Illuminists want to play god with your money and decide who lives and dies in the business world. Obviously it is their crony capitalist companies that will survive, while everyone else heads off to see the bankruptcy trustee, who will then auction off all their assets at pennies on the dollar to newly formed and nationalized Illuminist super-conglomerates that will swallow up all the old discarded, insolvent Illuminist companies that have sucked out the value of our money through their black hole of losses. These new super-conglomerates will form the backbone of our new corporatist, fascist, Orwellian police state. As we said, they get the gold mine; you get the shaft. Expecting the Illuminati to do anything that would benefit working Americans is a form of insane delusion. We are told that the Federal Reserve may cut interest rates another ½% to 1% in December. Normally, when the Fed cuts rates, credit-card issuers follow suit, resulting in lower monthly payments for cardholders. Rates have generally fallen slightly, but banks and retailers are trying to offset rising costs and loses by raising fees. Those with less than perfect credit ratings and those with excellent credit ratings are having credit lines cut dramatically. They are raising rates on cash advances and overdraft protection. JP Morgan Chase will start charging a new monthly fee of $10.00 for cardholders who have been carrying large balances for at least two years, while raising their minimum monthly payments to 5% of their outstanding balance, from 2%. Citigroup’s Citibank and American Express will raise such rates 2% to 3%. Amex is raising its rates on cash advances, late payments and defaults, increasing its foreign-exchange fee to 2.7% from 2% on its consumer and small-business cards and eliminating ways to earn rewards on one of its popular cards. Home Depot is reducing credit lines on its in-state cards. Nordstroms and Target are raising interest rates on in-store cards In the third quarter credit card losses at issuer banks were over 5% of total credit card balances and are poised to deteriorate further. This is why interest rates are climbing and fees are rising. You get penalized because others do not pay their bills. Now you can better understand why we have been telling you for the past eight years to eliminate credit card and revolving debt. It is the most expensive of all debt. Credit card use in the second quarter fell 5% from the first quarter to $663 million, the biggest drop in several years. Promotional deals are being done away with or cut back as are reward programs. You will see them in next month’s mailing or you’ve already noticed some changes. All we can say is pay off those balances monthly as they occur and get rid of debt balances ASAP. Gerald Corrigan will take over at Goldman Sachs. He is the former head of the New York Fed. If you do not like speeding tickets stay away from Phoenix. If you live there move. In the first two months of work the state’s new speed cameras have issued 40,000 photo speeding tickets beginning the revenue harvest of $6.6 million. About 60 cameras are in use. Of those, 40 are mounted on vehicles and 20 are at fixed locations along freeways. Twelve more are being added in metro Phoenix. Across the state they hope to have 100 cameras in use by February. The cameras capture video and license plate numbers of drivers breaking the speed limit by 10 MPH or more. At 20 MPH over, the offense becomes “criminal speeding.” Of all the violations, 661 have been criminals. The highest speed logged so far was 130 MPH. Law enforcement say the cameras promote safety. They are wrong, speed doesn’t kill, stupidity kills, and all this represents is another tax on citizens and a boon for insurance companies. It gives them the excuse to increase your rates. Including surcharges a speeding ticket costs $185.00 and your insurance cost rises $1,000 or more a year. Fascist America marches on. You can expect a record number of fund closures in 2008. If your fund is on this path get out fast to avoid a potential tax nightmare. Funds can shut down without shareholder approval and when you see them throw in the towel you head for the exits. When a fund liquidates it sells all holdings and gives shareholders full market value of their holdings. Typically in an IRA, if they hold the fund on the day it closes for good the fund’s transfer agent will send them the proceeds of their account but will automatically take a 10% federal tax withholding because it considers the payout to be a distribution. An investor who is eligible to roll the account over or transfer the proceeds directly into another IRA, can only avoid the tax withholdings by selling before the fund liquidation. Retirement savers can complete some tax paperwork to withdraw the funds without the distribution, but will have 60 days from receiving the monies to complete the transaction or face IRS penalties. If one of your funds is next to give you the ghost, quickly pick a landing pad for the money, determine the tax implications of any transaction, and call the fund’s transfer agent to see how to handle the change most effectively. Get it done and move on, or you could mourn the loss of your fund – specifically what it cost you in taxes or depleted retirement assets – for years. ... GOLD, SILVER, PLATINUM, PALLADIUM AND DIAMONDS ... We have watched over and over again since 10/19/87 our government dump gold on the market to suppress prices. From 10/19/87 until 8/20/88 that was an illegal enterprise. As we moved into the early 1990s, we saw commercials on the Comex shorting and increasing shorts as prices rose, which is not a normal procedure. It exposes one to the possibility of major losses, unless your shorting is covered by the US government. The result has been suppressed gold prices for 30 years, especially over the past 16 years. These methods have been augmented by the selling and leasing of gold by a large number of central banks. These sales were made over and over again to break the back of any gold rally. Due to overwhelming physical demand over the years gold has still managed to achieve new highs. During this month of December we see unusual physical delivery of Comex futures contracts. We have been reporting those figures to you as we receive them. The registered gold available at the Comex for delivery is being depleted something that has never happened before. Due to the fact that the CFTC has never audited the registered Comex holdings we really do not know how much gold is available for delivery. If the demand is high default could occur. We’ll know that by the end of the month or perhaps sooner. A short seller must be 90% covered by gold or by offsetting long contracts. The CFTC is supposed to oversee such activity and if they haven’t then we can assume that the US government is behind the naked shorting of gold contracts without gold as collateral or offsetting long positions. The pros, specs, and traders have seen this going on during 2008 and they have been abandoning the market in droves. Open interest has fallen from 625,000 contracts to 264,000 as a result. Players are tired of being stolen from by their own government. Normally ½% to 1% of contracts are delivered when the contract expires. Thus far into the delivery month we are seeing about 6% take delivery. Over the next three weeks we will find out just what a fix Comex is in. It won’t be a positive event no matter what happens. Large deliveries will force gold higher and default will send gold upward like a rocket. Our government needs much higher gold prices to devalue the dollar. If the Fed curtails the availability of money and credit the stock market will collapse, as well will the economy and the Second Great Depression will be underway. As this transpires we are seeing the beginnings of a trade war as export countries deliberately devalue their currencies, this is a confluence of very bad events. This we believe is about to force the Fed and the Treasury to abandon their gold suppression of many years. The Fed has to devalue the dollar versus gold - it has no other choice. If it doesn’t everything else, financial and economic, collapses. We are at a great crossroads - the event we’ve been waiting years to see. This is the only way Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke can void many years of depression. He knows if gold goes to $6,000 an ounce, debt will be mitigated and pressure will ease on the economy. This is why we are starting to hear insider Illuminists talk of $2,000 gold. They want to be recognized as having forecast the event and they also want to set a mental barrier at $2,000 an ounce. This revaluation of gold and return to the gold standard will neutralize hyperinflation by absorbing excess currencies. Why else would JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup be predicting $2,000 gold? We see Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman and Hong Kong Shanghai Bank HSBC, taking large deliveries of gold because they know what is coming and they can buy cheaper on the Comex. The trade is a lock because they take delivery on the futures market and if they want to they can sell on the spot market and take a profit due to massive physical demand. We are close to seeing a great breakout in the gold price. Stand by we’ll let you know when to add to your positions. ... THE INTERNATIONAL FORECASTER SATURDAY, December 6, 2008 - 120608(2)_IF P. O. Box 510518, Punta Gorda, FL 33951-0518 An international financial, economic, political and social commentary. Published and Edited by: Bob Chapman E-Mail Addresses: international_forecaster@yahoo.com if_distctr@yahoo.com CHECK OUT OUR WEBSITE www.theinternationalforecaster.com 1-YEAR $159.95 U.S. Funds US AND CANADIAN SUBSCRIBERS: Make check payable to Robert Chapman (NOT International Forecaster), and mail to P.O. Box 510518, Punta Gorda, FL 33951-0518. Please include name, address, telephone number and e-mail address. Or: We accept Visa and MasterCard charges. Provide us with your card number and expiration date. We will charge your card US$159.95 for a one-year subscription. You can email us in two separate emails (1- the Credit Card Number with full name, address and your telephone number and (2- the Expiration date on the card. NON US OR CANADIANS SUBSCRIBERS: Due to the time that it takes for your mail to arrive to us from a foreign country, we would like for you to email us as above the CC information in two separate emails. Note: We publish twice a month by surface mail or twice a week by E-mail. international_forecaster@yahoo.com or if_distctr@yahoo.com RADIO APPEARANCES: To check out all of our radio appearances click on this link below: http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com/radio -- Posted Sunday, 7 December 2008 \ \ \ Scammed by Santa: Attraction closes six days after it opened Lapland New Forest folded under a deluge of complaints. David Randall tells a sad saga of criminality, complaints and Christmas Sunday, 7 December 2008 There are Christmas stories; and then there are Christmas stories. And this is one of the latter. It is the tale of Lapland New Forest, a festive attraction that promised a snowy winter wonderland – and delivered instead something that looked more like a muddy travellers' site after the bailiffs had been in. It is the story of absentee Santas, delinquent elves, fisticuffs in the grotto and confrontations by the crib. Above all, it is the saga of how an estimated 50,000 people paid around £2m to visit an attraction run by a man who, unbeknown to them, was a convicted tax evader who once gave evidence for the defence at the Brinks Mat trial. Nativity story it ain't. Today, with Lapland New Forest closing just six days after it opened, this man is somewhere in southern England, rueing, perhaps, that he ever had the idea for his Christmas money-spinner. His customers are determined the matter will not rest there. They have lodged more than 2,000 complaints, and trading standards officers are making inquiries that could yet end up in the courts. It's quite a mess, and it all began, as far as official records show, on 12 August, when a company called Lapland New Forest Ltd was registered. Its sole director was Victor Robert Mears, a 65-year-old member of the Brighton Mears clan and related to Mary Mears, Conservative leader of Brighton council. In the 1980s, he served four years for tax evasion, during which he gave evidence about the Brinks Mat robbery on behalf of the defendant Kenny Noye, later the M25 killer. Mears, then a gold trader, had links to the case through another trader called Derek "Little Legs" Larkins. These are, to say the least, unusual antecedents for a man who planned to spread festive joy. A little more than a month after Mears's firm was formed, a planning application was lodged with East Dorset council. It was for land near Ringwood known locally as Matchams Stadium, where go-karting, bike racing, paintball and boot sales have been held. The application – by Frederick Nash, director of a company called Matchams (South Coast) Ltd, which leases the land – outlined plans for a "Christmas fair" that would include nine log cabins, an ice-skating rink and an ice slide. There was no mention at any point of the involvement of Mears or his company. Instead, an appended page, headed "Winter Wonderland Proposal", claimed the plan was for a "wonderful experience for all the local children to enjoy", and that it would be "managed by a team of people who between them bring a great depth of experience organising this type of event." The idea of a Christmas attraction went down rather well locally. The Southern Daily Echo published a story headlined "Plans unveiled for a 'winter wonderland'", and, despite the "log cabins" plainly being garden sheds supplied by a Horsham firm, the council approved the application on 30 October. There Nash's involvement ceased. He said that all claims in the application were supplied by Mears, and all he had been paid was a "small deposit". He described relations between him and Mears as "strained" and added: "It looks like we will be considerably out of pocket." Activity at Lapland New Forest Ltd, however, was now in full swing. Operating out of Wild Park House, Home Farm Road, Brighton (later described as a "converted police box and public toilet" on an industrial estate), it began to advertise the attraction. Tickets were not cheap (£25-£30 each), but large groups started to book, paying hundreds of pounds at a time. After all, it looked so beguiling on Mears's website. Beneath a picture of spruce trees and pine lodges smothered in snow, were promises of a "Magical Avenue of Light, Hollywood Special FXs, Fantastic Fun Ice Rink, Seasonal Food, Market Stalls... Wood Cabins... & much more!" Soon, thousands of mums, dads and grandparents were handing over their credit card details and telling their children about the pre-Christmas treat in store. The first customers arrived on 28 November. The good news was that there were indeed reindeer, husky dogs and a polar bear, albeit a plastic one standing disconsolately in the woods. The bad was pretty much everything else. Jane Perrett from Bristol, who had paid £285 for her family's tickets, told her local paper: "It looked like a travelling fun fair or a car boot sale ... the tunnel of light was a joke. It was like they had pulled Christmas trees on both sides of a path together, plonked on some fake snow and put hanging netting lights up ... The queue for Father Christmas was a joke. We gave up after half an hour but my sister-in-law was waiting two hours, and when they got there, they were charged £10 for a photograph with Santa." Pictures taken at this would-be Dingley Dell showed elves and a snowman wearing costumes that looked as if they'd been ill-made for one amateur dramatic society but worn by another; a nativity scene that was, in reality, a painted backdrop viewed across a muddy dirt-track area, and the promised snow lay on the ground not so much in drifts as handfuls. Soon there were scores of complaining postings on websites such as mumsnet.com and moneysavingexpert.com. Andy Webb from Portsmouth spoke for many families when he said: "They played on what Christmas means to children and falsified what was on offer." Come Monday, phones at Dorset County Council's trading standards department were ringing off the hook. Manager Ivan Hancock said: "I've never known anything to spark so many complaints in 20 years' working. I've heard of someone spending £3,000 on tickets and terrible stories of real human misery, like a terminally ill grandparent taking all their grandchildren to the park." Helen Jones of Boscombe Down told the Salisbury Journal: "It was basically just a muddy field where they had stuck a few trees and a couple of huskies", and James Wood of Amesbury described it as "a few blowers puffing out fake snow on a bit of wasteland". His father-in-law had paid more than £250 to take a party of 14. Henry Mears, representing the management, conceded there were "very serious problems", and blamed family illness and a Father Christmas phoning in sick. Down at Lapland, things soon turned ugly. Two elves and a Santa were attacked by irate customers, and one, named Daryl, said: "I nearly got lynched." A posting on YouTube showed an elf having a fag behind the grotto. According to Henry Mears, six staff left because of intimidation by customers, and an agency, Richard Events, advised their people to leave. By midweek, the Bournemouth Echo had started a petition demanding full refunds, and several forums opened on Facebook for angry Lapland customers, including "Lapland New Forest Is Rubbish", and "New Forest Lapland Experience – Scam". With complaints building by the hour, and the fiasco achieving cult status in national newspapers, the management had to do something. They made the funfair rides free, got the ice-rink working, and changed the website, always rather more businesslike than the attraction it advertised. "We have been having severe and very unusual technical problems with our server computer," began the equally unusual statement on it. "It has left us completely unable to communicate directly to all our customers... we apologise for any concern this 'silent' situation may have created." The protests were now unstoppable, and a demonstration was planned for Saturday outside the gates. Then, on Thursday afternoon, Lapland closed. A statement by the management said this was due to "intentional organised crowd manipulation and event sabotage... and unscrupulous and inaccurate negative bias media". (Bad publicity was also blamed by Lapland West Midlands – reportedly no relation – for its failure to open on schedule yesterday after trading standards officers toured the site and found it bore little relation to the attractions claimed on its website.) Thousands, both those who went to the New Forest site and those who have paid but not yet been, now want their money back. If they paid more than £100 by credit card, they might succeed, especially as the firm handling these payments has frozen the LNF account. If they didn't, they can probably whistle "Silent Night" for it. Frustrated customers have a lot of questions. Where, they ask, was one of those famous council risk assessments when you need one? Where was some sharp-nosed official to investigate the team "with great depth of experience" of which Mears boasted? And whence came the large sums of money even this attenuated attraction must have cost? But most of all, they are asking themselves: how in the name of King Wenceslas did we fall for that? Additional reporting by James Berrill \ \ \ Andrew Rawnsley: Labour threatens to spank the banks who like to say no Guardian Unlimited home | guardian.co.uk 07/12/2008 24:03 Andrew Rawnsley Labour Gordon Brown Economic policy Conservatives Politics Money Observer Economics Credit crunch Recession UK banking sector Business It will be high noon at the Not OK Corral. Wyatt Brown, his faithful sidekick 'Al' Darling and the Prime Minister's new best friend 'Doc' Mandelson will face off against the bunch of cowboys known as the banking gang. The black hats will either come quietly or there'll be the blood of bankers running in the gutters of Downing Street. That is the showdown we are being led to expect. Some in the media, encouraged by some in government, are getting excited by the prospect of guns blazing over the banks' reluctance to cut interest rates and extend credit. Lloyds TSB and HSBC are so far the only big banks to have passed on in full the latest rate cut to their mortgage borrowers. Northern Rock, which is entirely owned by the government, is one of the outlaws. Yet ministers appear to be more aggravated with HBOS which is one of the banks expected to benefit from the government's bail-out plan. The Prime Minister has encouraged expectations that he is strapping on his gun belt by saying: 'I think the banks should really pass on the interest rate cut.' He adds with menace: 'We are talking to the banks.' Calculated displays of anger with the bankers are as much about politics as they are about the economy. It is not just the state of the credit market that troubles the Prime Minister; it is also about maintaining his own credibility. There is a rising clamour from his MPs for the government to give a kicking to everyone's favourite hate group. Mervyn King, whose resemblance to Fidel Castro has not hitherto been obvious, has even threatened the bankers with effective total nationalisation if they do not act to get lending flowing. The Tories contend that Mr Brown's rescue plan is falling apart, a potentially devastating line of argument against the Prime Minister. In the chronology of the financial crisis, an absolutely crucial moment was when the government committed eye-popping amounts of taxpayers' money to the bank bail-out. It was also the critical juncture in the narrative of Gordon Brown's political recovery. That was the moment when the opinion poll sub-zero began to transform himself into the global financial super-hero. The likes of Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, lauded the Prime Minister for coming up with the plan which would save the world. So it is going to be tricky, to say the least, for Mr Brown if his world-famous, patented, miracle banking elixir does not actually work. It is too soon to say definitively that it has not. The bail-out did prevent the immediate implosion of the entire financial sector which was a gravely serious threat at the time when Mr Brown unveiled the grand plan. Without that emergency action, it is highly likely that we would have seen the simultaneous collapse of several of Britain's biggest banks. The injection of billions of pounds of taxpayers' money kept the banking sector alive. What it has yet to do is get the patient out of intensive care. One senior minister who is currently spending most hours of his days with bank executives compares them to men who have 'suffered a massive heart attack'. George Osborne, who also has a taste for the medical metaphor, is now declaring: 'Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling need to swallow their pride and accept that their bank rescue package needs radical surgery.' The Tories were broadly supportive of the bail-out plan when it was announced. That does not deter them from turning around two months later and attacking the plan as an abject failure. This marks a shift of focus by the Tories back on to the economy after the diversions provided by the Damian Green affair. Some members of the cabinet were quietly rather pleased that the Conservatives decided to make such a huge issue of the arrest of the MP for Ashford and the police raid of the Commons without a warrant. 'If they want to go after the Speaker and the Serjeant at Arms rather than go after us on the economy, good luck to them,' says one senior minister. 'The public, by and large, don't give a toss about Damian Green.' An observation which may be sad, but is probably true. 'They think: these politicians are pontificating about their privileges while Rome is burning.' Labour seeks to portray David Cameron and his shadow Chancellor as the boys who sucked their thumbs while the economy was in flames. The Tories want to paint Gordon Brown as the man who fiddled through the inferno. It is essential to the Tory strategy for winning the argument about the recession that they depict Mr Brown as the author of grandiose schemes at huge expense to the taxpayer which prove to be futile or counter-productive. We are entering a highly hazardous period for the government when it is too late to change the course it has taken, but too early to tell whether its crisis measures are going to work. The theory behind the temporary cut in VAT is that it will leave consumers with extra money in their pockets at the end of each month. Will they spend it to keep the tills ringing in the shops? Or will people put aside any additional cash they have to meet the higher bills that the public know are coming in future? One cabinet member tried to cheer up the Chancellor by saying that he had been in a shop where they were promoting the VAT reduction with the slogan: 'Thanks, Darling.' But we will not know until next year whether voters are going to be saying the same. Once upon a time, a long, long eight weeks ago, the Bank of England reckoned the appropriate level for the base rate was 5 per cent. In the space of just two months, the Bank has slashed it to 2 per cent, reducing the base rate to its lowest level since Gordon Brown was born. Such desperate measures tell us that Threadneedle Street now fears that there are dire times ahead. Even after reducing rates to their lowest level in more than 50 years, the Bank declared that this was not going to be enough. It accompanied the latest cut by saying, in its dry, bankish way, that it was 'unlikely a normal volume of lending would be restored without further measures'. It will not be clear until well into next year whether these interest rate cuts are having the desired effect of stimulating the economy. In the short term, rate cuts may even have a detrimental effect on the psychology of consumers. Members of the cabinet were recently shown polling which suggested that the public started to get deeply scared about the economy when the Bank of England made its first dramatic rate cut last month. One minister tells me: 'It made people go, "Oh fuck, this really is serious."' At the heart of the seizing up of the economy is the growing conflict between the government and the banks. Ministers have the advantage of knowing that this is a rare instance where the politicians are doing battle with a group of people even less popular than themselves. The bankers acted with reckless irresponsibility and have still not issued the collective apology for their foolishness that they owe to the country. In the hierarchy of public esteem, bankers now rank somewhere between estate agents and child molesters. There is an increasingly aggressive tone about them from within government. 'We've given them a helluva lot of money,' says one member of the cabinet, predicting that patience has almost run out. 'We've tried nudging them. We're not far off from spanking them.' The Labour party and much of the public would certainly derive a lot of visceral pleasure from the sight of Gordon Brown putting the bank executives over his knee and taking a slipper to their pinstriped bottoms. The trouble is that it might be emotionally satisfying without actually being at all effective in getting credit flowing again. Talk of spankings and showdowns obscures the complexity of the credit crisis. Slashing interest rates is not a one-way street to salvation. That may help those in debt, but it is negative for the savers whom the banks need in order to meet the demands of borrowers. Peter Mandelson has had to remind some of his less economically literate colleagues that there are more savers than there are borrowers. The banks need the savers if they are to restore their levels of liquidity. One senior minister highly familiar with the negotiations with the banks acknowledges that the government is not speaking to them with 'one voice' and they are being 'asked to do two contradictory things'. Adair Turner's regulators at the Financial Services Authority are putting them under pressure to unwind the bad risks they took in the past and rebuild their balance sheets. At the same time, the government is leaning on the banks to extend lending to households and businesses in a recession. By definition, the home-owners and businesses most likely to want financial support from banks are those at greater risk of going under. Tomorrow, Peter Mandelson will be holding a critical meeting with bank executives. The Business Secretary will more than earn his salary if he can find a solution to the conundrum. If the banks give more loans which go bad, then they will be broke again. If the banks can't be persuaded to lend, then the economy will go bust. In westerns, that is called a Mexican stand-off.
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Duncan	07-Dec-08, 04:43 AM (GMT)
3. "We are going to have to sell up and, as there are no buyers, that's it"
France fears death of village life as cafés call last orders Guardian Unlimited home | guardian.co.uk 07/12/2008 24:05 Jason Burke France World news Observer As he drives through the hills and fields of the Ardennes, José Hody points out the landmarks of a devastated landscape. There's Café de la Paix, on the brink of bankruptcy; there's Le Malibou, which has already shut down. In the town of Sedan, Hody, who hires out games to 100 local establishments, indicates La Taverne, now converted into a florist, and Quai 32, which is on the point of closure. We move on to Vendresse, a village of 550 inhabitants surrounded by muddy fields and the overflowing Meuse river. We visit the last remaining café - once there were five - with the last remaining darts board, a menu du jour at £10, pastis and worn Johnny Hallyday tapes. The table football game, one of scores that Hody once supplied to local businesses, has already gone. 'We are going to have to sell up and, as there are no buyers, that's it for the café,' said Ingrid Meurquin, the patronne of Le Donjon for the past eight years. 'It's sad for us and sad for the village.' All over France it is the same story. Changing social habits, rural depopulation, the recently introduced ban on smoking, strict laws prohibiting fruit machines, inflation, static salaries and the economic crisis are forcing thousands of cafés and bars to the wall. In the big cities, the sheer weight of population and prices are keeping business buoyant. 'We've no problems here,' said Michel Gineston, owner of Le Barricou bar in Paris's fashionable 3rd arrondissement, but in the small villages it is a 'catastrophe'. Meurquin has been in the business for 20 years. Vendresse, a classic cluster of grey-roofed homes around a fortified Gothic church, does not suffer from the loss of inhabitants like so many rural settlements in France, because it is a dormitory for nearby Charleville-Mézières. But that has brought its own problems. 'People do not have the sense of rural life these days. There's no conviviality,' she told The Observer. 'About five of my regulars are from the village. My revenue is down 20 per cent on last year. I feel like I've failed, but I know it's time to do something else.' But no café means no social life in the village. Yesterday Meurquin hosted the local firemen's annual lunch: 'Even if you don't go there all the time, a village needs a café. You don't talk to people in a supermarket. You can't hold a lunch there,' said Jean-Louis Lenoir, 58. 'It's where everybody - young and old, from all social classes - mixes.' The figures speak for themselves. In 1960, France had 200,000 cafés and bars. Now there are just over 40,000. So far this year, another 500 have closed. Studies suggest that the rate of bankruptcy among café owners could be up to 56 per cent higher than last year. 'The hotel and restaurant business has already been undermined by a host of factors before the economic crisis,' said Hervé Lambel, of union Cerf. 'For 30 years there has been the competition from takeaways, dropping alcohol consumption and the advent of television, which means people go out less. And in a crisis, it's beers and cigarettes that are first hit.' Hervé Novelli, France's tourism minister, contested the bankruptcy figures. According to the national institute of statistics, bankruptcies in the sector are only up by 11 per cent. But Lambel fears cafés will soon become relics, catering just to tourists and the nostalgic. 'We have to save a few before we end up just pointing tourists at those which are still there, saying, "Look, that's what it was like in a bygone era",' he said. The wave of closures has made French bar-room grumbling even darker than usual. 'It's bad for us all,' said Didier Baton, of the Café du Chêne, the only one left in Grandfresnoy in the Oise, 60 miles north of Paris. Many café owners are resorting to extreme measures, tolerating smoking, running illicit lotteries, bingo and even gambling. On the door of the only bar tabac in Dresny, a small village in the Loire-Atlantic, a sticker welcomes smokers. Yet Joël Lailler - Jojo the rebel to his fellow bar owners - has now hoisted the white flag. Even a hunger strike and an interview with French president Nicolas Sarkozy has not held back the inevitable. 'I opened a breach, but no one followed me,' Lailler said. 'If the government can't let us decide ourselves whether to let our clients smoke, then I'll take a decision for them and close.' In the Ardennes, café owners complained that, as their Belgian counterparts faced no ban on smoking or on staying open later than 1am, local youths simply drive across the border to spend their evenings there. 'There is no freedom any more,' said Jacky Valente, the 44-year-old owner of Le Sedanais in Sedan, where on Friday afternoon only two clients, one Valente's nephew, sipped beers. 'You can sell cigarettes, but not smoke; buy alcohol, but not drink; buy a car that can go at 150kph, but not drive it faster than 110.' There are now moves to change the law on games in bars to help cafés attract a new clientele, but the owners say it is too little too late. 'We are talking about something that is key to civilisation,' said Philippe Bouton, a parliamentary aide. 'If the cafés disappear and we all end up interacting via computers, we will lose what separates men from beasts. We will lose civilisation itself.'
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Duncan	07-Dec-08, 04:43 AM (GMT)
4. "addicted to alcohol and prescription drugs"
Sunny von Bulow dies after years in coma Guardian Unlimited home | guardian.co.uk 07/12/2008 24:57 Vanessa Thorpe Books Film United States World news Observer After almost three decades in a coma, the wife of British society figure Claus von Bulow died yesterday aged 76. The heiress Martha von Bulow, who was also known as 'Sunny', died at a nursing home in New York. Her estranged husband, who currently lives in London and writes arts reviews, was accused of inducing his late wife's vegetative state 28 years ago with two unsuccessful murder attempts. Mr von Bulow, however, was acquitted of charges alleging that he had tried to kill her by injecting her with insulin at their estate in Newport, Rhode Island. He stood trial twice. In 1982, at the first trial, von Bulow was convicted of trying twice to kill her, but this verdict was thrown out on appeal. He was acquitted at a second trial in 1985, but the case continued to divide Newport society for many years. In 1990 the film Reversal of Fortune, starring Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons as the Von Bulows, maintained public interest in the case. Prosecutors argued that Von Bulow had wanted to kill his wife in order to inherit her wealth. But defence lawyers suggested that Mrs von Bulow, who suffered from low blood sugar, was addicted to alcohol and prescription drugs and had simply drunk herself into a coma. Two years later, her husband was exonerated and agreed to give up his claim to his wife's fortune, estimated at between £17m and £27m. He agreed to divorce her and refused to live on the income of an £81,000 trust she had created. He promised that he would leave the country and would not attempt to profit from the story. Reversal of Fortune was based on a book by Alan Dershowitz, who handled Von Bulow's appeal and his second trial. The lawyer said: 'It's a sad ending to a sad tragedy that some people tried to turn into a crime. There are no winners in a case like this.'
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Duncan	07-Dec-08, 05:13 AM (GMT)
5. "We prefer to keep our businesses small and alive rather than large and dead"
The hidden cost of our growing taste for meat guardian.co.uk From the Observer: Observer 07/12/2008 24:03 Juliette Jowit Paraguay World news Observer Food Forests Ethical living Environment To the European eye, accustomed to square hedgerows and neatly tilled arable land, the countryside of eastern Paraguay is unexceptional, almost pretty. The rolling hills spread out to the far distance. The sky is vast, the horizon broken only by the occasional homestead, leafy copse or bulky metal silo. But to 47-year-old Melitón Ramírez, this is no paradise. It's a wasteland. Juddering down a farm track in a muddy Jeep, he points to a wide field by the road. It has been sown with soya and the green-leafed plants are sprouting. It looks like a huge bed of wild clover. 'Thirty years ago, almost all of this was woodland,' says Ramírez, who's been a farmer in Alto Paraná state all his life. He grew up surrounded by the Interior Atlantic Forest, listening to the sound of bare-throated bellbirds and saffron toucanets. Before the advent of commercial farming, 85 per cent of eastern Paraguay was forest. Now, with roughly 12 per cent of it still standing, silence fills the air. 'There used to be 2,000 families living here. Now there are only 30, if that,' he continues. The story of Ramírez's home village of Minga Porá is familiar in South America. It is a story that starts on the dinner tables of the UK and other rich nations, where a hunger for meat and dairy products fuels an ever-rising demand for the industrial farming of animals using high-protein feed. At the bottom of this food chain is the soya plant. Millions of hectares of intensively cultivated soya are gnawing at tropical forests and savannah - displacing farmers and communities, leading to poverty, ill-health and even violence, ruining habitats and exacerbating global warming. A report by campaign group Friends of the Earth is to be published on Tuesday to focus the attention of UK consumers and the government on the scale of this destruction. It will detail for the first time the cutting, burning and spraying that occurs as a consequence. The report, What's Feeding our Food?, will start a campaign urging the government to take action, ending subsidies and other policies that encourage intensive farming and making sure public money spent on food is not propping up damaging practices. Across the main soya-producing countries of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, an area the size of California has been cleared for this one crop, which is exported around the world, mainly to the European Union and China. As the third biggest customer in the European Union, the UK required nearly 1.2m hectares - an area the size of Devon and Cornwall - to generate the 1.7m tonnes of soya beans and 652,000 tonnes of crushed soya meal imported in the most recent year for which figures are available, 2006-7. That was most of the soya used by UK farmers producing 850 million broiler chickens, 10 billion eggs, 10 million turkeys, 4.9 million pigs and 10 million cattle for dairy and beef. Some of this food is exported, but imports, mostly from the EU, are also reared using soya feed, says the report. 'Even though bacon, burgers, milk and cheese may be produced in the UK, most will have come from animals fed on crops grown on the other side of the world,' it says. Nor is the pace of change slackening: this year official estimates judge that soya production will increase in all three major producers. Although demand for meat is largely flat in the UK, it is growing in developing countries. Attracted by generous offers from Brazilian-born soya growers, Ramírez's neighbours began selling their plots. Soon herbicides began to contaminate the land and water supplies. His own crops began to fail. Worried the chemicals would harm his family, six years ago Ramírez decided to leave. The destruction wreaked by soya has forced about 90,000 families in the neighbouring state of Caaguazú to leave their homes since the mid-Nineties, according to Javiera Rulli, a biologist for Asunción-based research group BASE, and the editor of a book on soya's expansion in South America. 'The expansion of GM soya is leading to social conflict and mass migration,' she says. Some problems are easy to measure, particularly the damage to the Amazon and Atlantic forests and the Cerrado savannah. Only two per cent of Paraguay's tropical and subtropical Atlantic forest is left, according to the report - the same proportion of 16th-century woodland remaining in the UK. Others problems are anecdotal, but the report cites dozens of incidents and statistics to build up a picture of the complex chain of social problems that can be traced back to the growth of the soya farms. Then there are the health impacts of spraying fertilisers and pesticides. In Paraguay, in the tiny rural hamlet of San Isidro, resident Cipriano Vega says there has been a surge in diseases that were almost unknown in the community previously. Diarrhoea, rashes, headaches, allergies, chest infections and epilepsy are all commonplace now, he alleges. The community has asked the local government to test the water supply, but to no avail. Without such data, Vega admits that it is difficult to prove a link to the herbicides. But he is in little doubt. 'The year before last, two kids were born without the ability to move their arms or legs, and two people recently died of brain haemorrhages,' he says. Although it is hard to prove any one person or village has been poisoned by the farming chemicals, the World Health Organisation estimates that, excluding suicide, 355,000 people a year are poisoned by chemicals, and agrochemicals are a major contributor, particularly pesticides. 'Acute exposure can lead to death or serious illness,' particularly when people live close to where chemicals are used, adds the WHO briefing on toxic hazards. Not everybody accepts, however, that the problems of soya production are as widespread as campaigners claim. Robert Newbery, the National Farmers Union's chief poultry adviser, said soya products for animals were only part of a global industry that also produced soya oil for processed food, and most crops were planted on existing agricultural land. Newbery said the NFU would support action to tackle wrongdoing by soya farmers, but said they were confident 'the majority is grown ethically'. Bunge, which with Cargill is one of the biggest soya production companies in the region, also said it had been working for many years, especially in Brazil, to make the industry more sustainable, backing a moratorium on buying soya from newly deforested parts of the Amazon, and working with the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment on promoting best practices among producers. 'A lot has been done, but there is always more to do,' said a spokesman. Melitón Ramírez now lives in the optimistically named El Triunfo (The Triumph), a rural settlement off the trunk road heading west from Ciudad del Este. He and his fellow subsistence farmers hope to prevent soya's continual encroachment by joining the ownership of their lands together so the soya farmers can't pick them off one by one. Back in the UK, FoE is calling for the government to axe subsidies that encourage intensive livestock production, lobby the EU to change trade policies and international aid that bolster the industry, and ensure that the £2.2bn a year spent on food by public bodies such as schools and hospitals does not buy products from intensive soya-fed animals. 'Most people don't realise that there's a hidden chain of events linking the meat and dairy they buy to factory farming and to climate change, deforestation and loss of livelihoods in developing countries,' said Clare Oxborrow, FoE's senior food campaigner. 'The government must revolutionise the way that meat and dairy is produced in this country to urgently tackle these impacts while supporting sustainable UK livestock farming.' A versatile crop • Cultivated for thousands of years in China, soya was considered one of five holy crops, along with rice, wheat, barley and millet. • The beans can be eaten as sprouts, milk, tofu, tempeh, sauce or miso. • Shoyu is the dark brown liquid produced by fermenting soya beans. • According to a report in the journal Biology of Reproduction in 2004, soya may delay baldness and help to prevent prostate cancer. • A two-year study by the Institute for Optimum Nutrition and Copenhagen University Hospital found that soy milk reduces bone loss in post-menopausal women. • Candles made from soya burn for longer than ones made from pure wax. • Compounds in soya known as phyto-oestrogens or plant oestrogens mimic the female hormone oestrogen, so a woman drinking two glasses of soya milk a day will alter the timing of her menstrual cycle. \ \ \ From The Sunday Times December 27, 2008 North Sea oil firm up for sale Danny Fortson and Iain Dey OILEXCO, the ailing North Sea oil producer, has been put up for sale just two weeks after it was forced to scrap a disastrous effort to raise fresh capital. Morgan Stanley has opened a data room for prospective bidders and has already received interest from larger rivals BG Group, Talisman Energy and Petro-Canada. Maersk, the Danish shipping giant, is also mulling a bid. Oilexco hired Morgan Stanley last month to help it find sources of funding. This came after it cancelled a $180m (£123m) bond and share issue the day after publishing a prospectus because it was poorly received by investors. The decision to look for a buyer is a stunning reversal for a group that was once a darling of the sector. This summer Oilexco was worth more than $2.5 billion. The company has since lost more than 90% of its value as attempts to refinance debt with a syndicate of banks led by Royal Bank of Scotland have faltered. RBS agreed a 10-month repayment extension for £70m of a £100m loan due next month, but talks are continuing on the remaining £30m. Morgan Stanley is running the sale alongside efforts to find fresh finance, possibly in the form of mezzanine debt and alternative sources of capital. Oilexco has been caught out by a dwindling cash pile, a large cost base and a heavy reliance on the capital markets to fund an aggressive drilling programme. It needs to make nearly $600m in debt and rig-contract payments in the next year alone, according to company filings. The oil price, meanwhile, continues to plumb new lows, hitting $39.57 last Friday. Sources expect it to be forced into a sale or the disposal of prize assets like the Huntington field, one of the most significant North Sea discoveries in recent years. “If you want to look at a case study for the impact of the credit crunch on independent oil companies, this is it,” said a banker. “This is a mighty fall from grace. It calls into question the fundamental model of companies and shows the fragility of these businesses.” The activity around Oilexco is part of a long-predicted wave of deals in the sector that is beginning to materialise. China’s state-owned chemical company is nearing a deal to buy most of the assets of London-listed Soco International in a deal worth up to £900m. Sinochem, which made an approach to Soco in October, has lined up financing from BNP Paribas to support a possible deal. Although advisers have discussed a takeover of the whole company, the Chinese giant’s main interest lies in the firm’s Vietnamese acreage, where it has 500m barrels of recoverable reserves. Meanwhile, British fund manager Ashmore Group has paid $524m for a 40% stake in the Philippines’ largest oil refiner, Petron. \ \ \ Ex-Dragons' Den Doug Richard calls in administrators for Library House By Mark Kleinman Last Updated: 10:32PM GMT 06 Dec 2008 As one of the ice-cool panellists on the BBC television series Dragons' Den and a business adviser to the Conservative Party, Doug Richard carved out a reputation as one of Britain's foremost entrepreneurs. Mr Richard may now be in need of some advice of his own, however. This weekend, one of his businesses is on life support, with another poised to call in the administrators within days. Library House, which provides data to the venture capital industry, is to appoint the corporate recovery firm Leonard Curtis as its administrator after a sharp slowdown in demand for its services. Trutap, in which Mr Richard is a major investor and which badges itself as the closest thing to a social networking operation on mobile phones, is considering laying off up to 80pc of its staff. Mr Richard said this weekend that Trutap was continuing to perform well but that it had to live within its means. "We prefer to keep our businesses small and alive rather than large and dead," he told The Sunday Telegraph. Mr Richard appeared in the first two series of Dragons' Den, in which aspiring entrepreneurs pitch business ideas to a hard-nosed panel of judges. Since then, he has served as chairman of the Tories' Small Business Task Force and earlier this year produced the "Richard Report", which attacked the Government over what it said was the vast amount of money squandered in attempting to support the enterprise economy. Mr Richard's report disclosed that there were at least 3,000 different schemes, delivered by 2,000 separate agencies, costing £2.5bn a year to operate. This weekend, he lambasted the Treasury over the recent cut to VAT. "They throw £11bn at reducing VAT by 2.5pc when they could be increasing credit for small businesses, which would be a much more productive thing to do," he said. Mr Richard stressed that two of his other businesses, which include AlertMe, a service allowing users to monitor their homes remotely, were performing strongly.
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Duncan	07-Dec-08, 05:28 AM (GMT)
6. "Don’t wait to buy gold, buy gold and wait"
DIY saliva test that tells if you're catching a cold By MAIL ON SUNDAY REPORTER Last updated at 12:16 AM on 07th December 2008 Comments (0) Add to My Stories Scientists have developed a test that predicts how likely you are to catch a cold. They say that by measuring the level of a protein contained in saliva they can provide an advance warning of the risk of infection. In tests over three years on a group of 38 elite America’s Cup yacht racers, the British researchers found that the amount of the bacteria-fighting protein immunoglobulin A – known as IgA – fell significantly shortly before three-quarters of the team fell ill. A saliva test has been developed that predicts how likely you are to catch a cold (file picture) Even though the athletes felt well at the time of testing, they caught a cold two weeks later. The scientists, from Loughborough University, now plan to develop a home test that could warn everyone when their immune systems are vulnerable to attack. People could then take preventative action by getting more sleep, eating well and avoiding public places. Lead researcher and sports scientist Vernon Neville said: ‘We can now say to people that their level of immunity to infection is very low. ‘They can then isolate themselves from that risk by avoiding public transport and restaurants, making sure they wash their hands, eat healthily and get lots of sleep to boost their immune systems. 'It’s entirely possible to use this to make tests for home use and a pharmaceutical company has contacted us with this in mind. ‘A quick test every morning or every couple of days could indicate how you should take care of yourself over the following weeks.’ Professor Ron Eccles, director of the Common Cold Centre at Cardiff University, said the research was interesting but that more work should be done before launching a mass-market test. He added: ‘This research is certainly worth pursuing. But we need more information before we can accurately determine how likely someone is to develop a cold.’ \ \ \ In The News Today Welcome To Jim Sinclair's MineSet 07/12/2008 01:50 Jim Sinclair In The News Comments Jim Sinclair’s Commentary There is only one kind of HONEST MONEY and that is GOLD. Gold has no liability attached to it. Gold has no hidden agenda. Gold is universally accepted. Gold is a time tested and proven storehouse of value. Gold by being a proven storehouse of value is a reliable measure of value. Paper currencies have never survived the test of time. Paper currencies have always had a hidden agenda inherent in central banks. Paper currency has a poor record as always acceptable, as a storehouse of value, and as a measure of value. Good Money always forces out Bad. This is "Gresham’s Law." So it has always been, so it will always be. Why Can’t We Have Honest Money? By Greg Hunter 12/07/08 Back in the late 60’s and early 70’s prime interest rates averaged 6 or 7 percent. Back before 1971 it was possible to save money at a reasonable guaranteed rate of return and easily keep ahead of what little inflation there was in the U.S. economy. That was the beauty of honest money that held its value and paid a real rate of return. In 1971 all that changed when President Richard Nixon took the country off the gold standard and went to a total fiat currency. A few years later the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) was sign into law and that made possible the 401K plan. It allowed people to save in a brand new way largely through the stock market. The stock market is an invaluable tool of capitalism. It is how many companies raise capital and create jobs and prosperity. But what most people do not realize is a 401K is not a savings plan but an investing plan. When you save money, you put it away and get a guaranteed return. In an investment plan the money is put away but not guaranteed. Most people I know do not really understand their 401K plan. Folks are repeatedly told “invest for the long term.” They are also told there is really no other way to save for the future because if you simply save your money inflation will eat up your returns. By and large, working people are pushed into 401K’s. In the right business cycle with the right demographics (as in lots of baby boomers investing in stocks at the same time such as the 80’s and 90’s when business and inflation was stable) the 401K is a not a bad deal especially when you consider that companies often match or contribute funds to make the investment plan advantageous to participants. But in the wrong part of the business cycle (aging baby boomer population and big government bail outs of every big bank) the 401K can provide some gut wrenching lessons about “investing.” People are painfully finding out with every statement that these plans have not been such a good “long term” investment deal. The S&P 500 is back at levels not seen since 1998. And that doesn’t really account for companies whose share prices have been wiped out or bankrupted. A few examples spring to mind such as AIG, WaMu, Wachovia, Bear Stearns, GM, Ford, Fannie, Freddie, Lehman, Enron and World Com. Also, factor in a nearly 30 percent drop in the U.S. Dollar Index and how are people in 401K’s making money for retirement? The short answer: They are not!!! If you would have simply invested in money markets (and taken the company match) back in 1998 with your 401K you would have been hit with inflation but at least you would have a positive nominal return. Most people did take that route. Now, to help fund the multi trillion dollar bailout of Wall Street, the Fed has announced a new policy of “Quantitative Easing.” That means “printing money” to us simple folk. So getting any kind of return on cash will be impossible to do because the government will be printing it faster that you or anyone else can save it. Nobel Peace Prize winner Milton Friedman said it best, “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” Printing lots of fiat currency is going to produce an ugly phenomenon for most people. I see a continuing freak show of bailout and default. If you are an investor then the stock market and all its risks and rewards are for you but if you are a saver then maybe you should have other options. Wouldn’t it be easier for most people to save if we just had honest money? Someday honest money will be necessary for the county and our citizens to survive. Jim Sinclair’s Commentary There is a TV advertisement that says "Don’t wait to buy gold, buy gold and wait." Malaysia wants OIC countries to reconsider gold Dinar for trade Bernama KUALA LUMPUR, SAT: Malaysia wants Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) member countries to reconsider the use of the gold dinar for trade, especially with uncertainties in the international currency market. In stating this today, Second Finance Minister Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop said Malaysia would attempt to hold discussions with the OIC countries so that the issue of using the gold dinar could be studied indepth. “At this time when the currency market is uncertain and challenging, maybe it will be good for the OIC countries to look again at the role of the gold dinnar in increasing trade among members,” he told reporters here today. Earlier he officiated the opening of Wisma Yayasan Ekonomi Sejagat here. Former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad proposed the use of the gold dinar in global trade in 2002. Nor Mohamed said with the challenging economic conditions and weaknesses in the financial system, the use of the gold dinar could be reconsidered. More…
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Duncan	07-Dec-08, 08:50 AM (GMT)
7. "100 Items to Disappear 1st + Sarajevo survivor"
100 Items to Disappear First 1. Generators (Good ones cost dearly. Gas storage, risky. Noisy...target of thieves; maintenance etc.) 2. Water Filters/Purifiers 3. Portable Toilets 4. Seasoned Firewood. Wood takes about 6 - 12 months to become dried, for home uses. 5. Lamp Oil, Wicks, Lamps (First Choice: Buy CLEAR oil. If scarce, stockpile ANY!) 6. Coleman Fuel. Impossible to stockpile too much. 7. Guns, Ammunition, Pepper Spray, Knives, Clubs, Bats & Slingshots. 8. Hand-can openers, & hand egg beaters, whisks. 9. Honey/Syrups/white, brown sugar 10. Rice - Beans - Wheat 11. Vegetable Oil (for cooking) Without it food burns/must be boiled etc.,) 12. Charcoal, Lighter Fluid (Will become scarce suddenly) 13. Water Containers (Urgent Item to obtain.) Any size. Small: HARD CLEAR PLASTIC ONLY - note - food grade if for drinking. 14. Mini Heater head (Propane) (Without this item, propane won't heat a room.) 15. Grain Grinder (Non-electric) 16. Propane Cylinders (Urgent: Definite shortages will occur. 17. Survival Guide Book. 18. Mantles: Aladdin, Coleman, etc. (Without this item, longer-term lighting is difficult.) 19. Baby Supplies: Diapers/formula. ointments/aspirin, etc. 20. Washboards, Mop Bucket w/wringer (for Laundry) 21. Cookstoves (Propane, Coleman & Kerosene) 22. Vitamins 23. Propane Cylinder Handle-Holder (Urgent: Small canister use is dangerous without this item) 24. Feminine Hygiene/Haircare/Skin products. 25. Thermal underwear (Tops & Bottoms) 26. Bow saws, axes and hatchets, Wedges (also, honing oil) 27. Aluminum Foil Reg. & Heavy Duty (Great Cooking and Barter Item) 28. Gasoline Containers (Plastic & Metal) 29. Garbage Bags (Impossible To Have Too Many). 30. Toilet Paper, Kleenex, Paper Towels 31. Milk - Powdered & Condensed (Shake Liquid every 3 to 4 months) 32. Garden Seeds (Non-Hybrid) (A MUST) 33. Clothes pins/line/hangers (A MUST) 34. Coleman's Pump Repair Kit 35. Tuna Fish (in oil) 36. Fire Extinguishers (or..large box of Baking Soda in every room) 37. First aid kits 38. Batteries (all sizes...buy furthest-out for Expiration Dates) 39. Garlic, spices & vinegar, baking supplies 40. Big Dogs (and plenty of dog food) 41. Flour, yeast & salt 42. Matches. {"Strike Anywhere" preferred.) Boxed, wooden matches will go first 43. Writing paper/pads/pencils, solar calculators 44. Insulated ice chests (good for keeping items from freezing in Wintertime.) 45. Workboots, belts, Levis & durable shirts 46. Flashlights/LIGHTSTICKS & torches, "No. 76 Dietz" Lanterns 47. Journals, Diaries & Scrapbooks (jot down ideas, feelings, experience; Historic Times) 48. Garbage cans Plastic (great for storage, water, transporting - if with wheels) 49. Men's Hygiene: Shampoo, Toothbrush/paste, Mouthwash/floss, nail clippers, etc 50. Cast iron cookware (sturdy, efficient) 51. Fishing supplies/tools 52. Mosquito coils/repellent, sprays/creams 53. Duct Tape 54. Tarps/stakes/twine/nails/rope/spikes 55. Candles 56. Laundry Detergent (liquid) 57. Backpacks, Duffel Bags 58. Garden tools & supplies 59. Scissors, fabrics & sewing supplies 60. Canned Fruits, Veggies, Soups, stews, etc. 61. Bleach (plain, NOT scented: 4 to 6% sodium hypochlorite) 62. Canning supplies, (Jars/lids/wax) 63. Knives & Sharpening tools: files, stones, steel 64. Bicycles...Tires/tubes/pumps/chains, etc 65. Sleeping Bags & blankets/pillows/mats 66. Carbon Monoxide Alarm (battery powered) 67. Board Games, Cards, Dice 68. d-con Rat poison, MOUSE PRUFE II, Roach Killer 69. Mousetraps, Ant traps & cockroach magnets 70. Paper plates/cups/utensils (stock up, folks) 71. Baby wipes, oils, waterless & Antibacterial soap (saves a lot of water) 72. Rain gear, rubberized boots, etc. 73. Shaving supplies (razors & creams, talc, after shave) 74. Hand pumps & siphons (for water and for fuels) 75. Soysauce, vinegar, bullions/gravy/soupbase 76. Reading glasses 77. Chocolate/Cocoa/Tang/Punch (water enhancers) 78. "Survival-in-a-Can" 79. Woolen clothing, scarves/ear-muffs/mittens 80. Boy Scout Handbook, / also Leaders Catalog 81. Roll-on Window Insulation Kit (MANCO) 82. Graham crackers, saltines, pretzels, Trail mix/Jerky 83. Popcorn, Peanut Butter, Nuts 84. Socks, Underwear, T-shirts, etc. (extras) 85. Lumber (all types) 86. Wagons & carts (for transport to and from) 87. Cots & Inflatable mattress's 88. Gloves: Work/warming/gardening, etc. 89. Lantern Hangers 90. Screen Patches, glue, nails, screws,, nuts & bolts 91. Teas 92. Coffee 93. Cigarettes 94. Wine/Liquors (for bribes, medicinal, etc,) 95. Paraffin wax 96. Glue, nails, nuts, bolts, screws, etc. 97. Chewing gum/candies 98. Atomizers (for cooling/bathing) 99. Hats & cotton neckerchiefs 100. Goats/chickens From a Sarajevo War Survivor: Experiencing horrible things that can happen in a war - death of parents and friends, hunger and malnutrition, endless freezing cold, fear, sniper attacks. 1. Stockpiling helps. but you never no how long trouble will last, so locate near renewable food sources. 2. Living near a well with a manual pump is like being in Eden. 3. After awhile, even gold can lose its luster. But there is no luxury in war quite like toilet paper. Its surplus value is greater than gold's. 4. If you had to go without one utility, lose electricity - it's the easiest to do without (unless you're in a very nice climate with no need for heat.) 5. Canned foods are awesome, especially if their contents are tasty without heating. One of the best things to stockpile is canned gravy - it makes a lot of the dry unappetizing things you find to eat in war somewhat edible. Only needs enough heat to "warm", not to cook. It's cheap too, especially if you buy it in bulk. 6. Bring some books - escapist ones like romance or mysteries become more valuable as the war continues. Sure, it's great to have a lot of survival guides, but you'll figure most of that out on your own anyway - trust me, you'll have a lot of time on your hands. 7. The feeling that you're human can fade pretty fast. I can't tell you how many people I knew who would have traded a much needed meal for just a little bit of toothpaste, rouge, soap or cologne. Not much point in fighting if you have to lose your humanity. These things are morale-builders like nothing else. 8. Slow burning candles and matches, matches, matches The Power Hour Home Page All logos and trademarks in this site are property of their respective owner. FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Email Address: thepowerhour@thepowerhour.com © The Power Hour 2003
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Duncan	07-Dec-08, 08:50 AM (GMT)
8. "navy blue"
From The Sunday Times December 7, 2008 Admirals walk the plank after Iranian humiliation Naval commanders have paid the price for the fiasco over the arrest of 15 sailors and marines by Revolutionary Guards Michael Smith THE Royal Navy has been accused of carrying out a discreet purge of senior figures involved in the fiasco over the arrest by Iranian Revolutionary Guards of 15 British sailors and Marines. Those involved in the navy’s humiliation have left their high-profile jobs as part of an attempt, it is claimed, to sweep away any reminder of the debacle, regarded as one of the biggest embarrassments to befall the fleet since Admiral Byng failed to relieve Minorca in 1756. He was executed for his incompetence. Victims include two vice-admirals and the captain of the ship on which the boat crews served. A senior official involved in the “spin” operation that followed their return to Britain has left the Ministry of Defence (MoD). “Everyone involved in this debacle knew their careers were going nowhere but this was done in a very British way to avoid the impression of a public purge,” said a senior source close to the internal inquiry. There was widespread anger when eight Royal Marines and seven sailors, including a woman, gave up without firing a shot after being left with no helicopter cover during the incident in March last year. They had been boarding suspect vessels in the northern Gulf to check for insurgents or contraband. Tehran said they were in Iranian waters when seized. The British insisted they were in international waters. They were released after 13 days’ captivity and shown in front of cameras talking to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president. They thanked Iran and were even given “goody bags” to take home. The navy’s embarrassment was compounded by the decision to allow two of them, Leading Seaman Faye Turney and Able Seaman Arthur Batchelor, the youngest at 20, to sell their stories to tabloid newspapers. Batchelor made things worse when he revealed that the extent of his ordeal while in Iranian custody involved jailers flicking their fingers against his neck, calling him “Mr Bean” and taking his iPod. Tony Blair, then prime minister, insisted there would be “no witch-hunt” and no individuals were blamed for the fiasco or the decision to allow the sailors to sell their stories. Behind the scenes, however, senior figures have departed. The most senior was Vice-Admiral Sir Adrian Johns, second sea lord, who publicly took the blame for the decision to allow Turney and Batchelor to sell their stories. He was not given another post and has retired. Vice-Admiral Charles Style, assistant chief of the defence staff in charge of operations, who had to explain to the media what had happened, was replaced after just 18 months in his post. He was sent to command the Royal College of Defence Studies in London, with the three-year term taking him up to retirement. Defence sources claim he was unfairly treated. James Clark, director of news at the MoD when the stories were sold, went on a course at the college and has since left to join a consultancy. He insisted he had not been sidelined, saying: “A great job came up so I took it.” Commander Jeremy Woods, Cornwall’s captain, was relieved of his command in July after an assessment found he was “not in a position to take the ship forward”. He is still in the navy. Des Browne, then defence secretary, lost his job in October’s reshuffle and was widely seen as having been sacked. Turney and Batchelor are still serving. Turney, 27, said at home in Plymouth: “I have not he a rd people have been removed from posts.” Batchelor, 21, still serves on the Cornwall and was unavailable. The MoD denied any purge, insisting those concerned “chose to move to other things”. Recent naval fluffs - February 2002. Royal Marines training in Gibraltar misread their maps and invaded Spain by landing on the beach at La Linea. They apologised and quickly retreated. - July 2002. The destroyer HMS Nottingham ran aground off Australia, tearing a 160ft hole in her side. Returning and repairing the ship cost £42m. Commander Richard Farrington, the captain, was court-martialled and reprimanded and the officer of the watch was “dismissed his ship”. - January 2008. The aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious set off to head a task group bound for the Indian Ocean but returned to Portsmouth when its fridge broke down. Officers feared that meat might go off in the hot climate. Read Michael Smith's defence blog \ \ \
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Duncan	07-Dec-08, 10:41 AM (GMT)
9. "pontificate: express one's opinions in a way considered annoyingly pompous and dogmatic"
When will get some fairness? John Redwood's Diary 07/12/2008 08:21 John Redwood Blog Comments Labour use the language of fairness all the time. They use the idea of fairness to justify all sorts of limitations on liberty and tax attacks on the many. One of the biggest disappointments and surprises is just how unfair they have turned out to be. I feel a speech coming on like Neil Kinnock’s best one, adapted to modern conditions: I warn you, do not be a saver under this government. They will slash your interest rate, undermine the value of your currency, and tax you on the meagre proceeds of your prudence. I warn you, do not be a motorist under this government. They will try to regulate and tax you off the road, blaming you for all the environmental crimes of the planet. I warn you, do not be a resident of the Home counties. They will tax you more to pay for the rest, and will build all over your remaining greenfields. I warn you, do not be a small business owner creating jobs. They will hurl the regulatory book at you, undermine your market by bad economic policy and tax any success you may still have. I warn you, do not seek to avoid dependence on the state to keep your independence. The Inspectors and Regulators will still come after you to capture your every personal detail and movement for their databases. I warn you, do not think you live in a democracy with freedom of information. If you criticise the goverment and publish some government information, you may be hounded and harried. I warn you, do not seek to have thoughts that are different from the government’s. The thought police will monitor your blogs, listen to your conversations, and charge you with thought crimes if you offend the politically correct nostra. I warn you, do not own a TV under this government. If you do you will be expected to pay a Poll Tax and dutifully accept Labour propoganda put out by the BBC in so many of their editorial choices of questions, guests and story lines. I warn you, do not be well educated under this government. To be have done well at school and university shows you are privileged, and part of the problem as the governent sees it. I am all for more fairness for the disabled, the elderly, and those who cannot compete in this fast moving competitive world. That does not require a governemnt which treats many of the prudent, responsible, indepednent people as the enemy. \ \ \ From The Sunday Times December 7, 2008 Jealousy could be crippling your dog, but he’s too proud to say so Jonathan Leake A DOG’S life might be even more difficult than anyone realised. Scientists have found that canines are prone to a raft of complex, unpleasant emotions such as jealousy, pride and envy. They hate to see their owners offering affection to other creatures, especially other dogs, and seem to suffer particularly badly when their owners bring home new boyfriends or girlfriends, perhaps fearing they might be displaced. “We are learning that dogs, horses, and perhaps many other species are far more emotionally complex than we ever realised,” said Dr Paul Morris, a psychologist at the University of Portsmouth who studies animal emotions. “They can suffer simple forms of many emotions we once thought only primates could experience.” Until recently, psychologists believed most animals lacked the “sense of self” needed to experience so-called secondary emotions such as jealousy, embarrassment, empathy or guilt. These are more complex than feelings associated with instant reaction – such as anger, lust or joy. The dog study is the latest into several species, including cows, horses, cats and sheep, which have shown that animals are far more self-aware than previously realised. In the latest, Dr Friederike Range, of the University of Vienna’s neurobiology department, described how dogs feel intense jealously when they spot that they are unfairly treated compared with other dogs. Range’s results, described at a recent conference, will be published tomorrow. “Dogs show a strong aversion to inequity,” she said. Morris goes further. In research among dog owners, he found almost all of them reported jealous behaviour by their pets. The dog often tried to prise their owner away from a new lover in the early days of a relationship. \ \ \ The brilliance of creative chaos A POINT OF VIEW Are we able to think clearly when surrounded by mess because chaos is inherent in all our minds, even those of the great writers and thinkers, asks Clive James. The great thing about this slot is that I can pontificate. But a wise pontificator should always remember that he won't solve a global problem in 10 minutes, or even do much more than usefully touch on it in 10 hours. There are two main reasons for that. One reason is that the global problems are, by their nature, devilishly complicated. But everyone knows, or should know, that. The other reason is less obvious, because it lies within the nature of the pontificator. He, or she - in my case he - speaks with a special pontificating voice: integrated, judicious even in its doubts, purporting to contain the distilled wisdom of a lifetime's experience. Almost always, I suspect, this voice is at odds with the personality from which it emerges, and in my case the discrepancy is so glaring that even I can spot it. As I prepare this script, tapping away at the keyboard as Socrates might have done if he had owned a PC, it seems to me that my brain is at my fingertips, with all its scope and knowledge. But then, after looking up at the screen and noticing that the last two sentences are all in capitals and include various chemical formulae for substances unknown to science, I bounce my forehead off the desk and make the supreme mistake of looking around my room. It's in chaos. The pontificator with plans for fixing the world can't organise his own desk, and as for what lies beyond the desk, forget about it. The evidence that I've spent years forgetting about it is all out there. Piles of old newspapers and magazines. Stacks of box files containing folders containing memos about the necessity to buy more folders and box files. Hundreds of books uselessly hidden behind hundreds of other books. A small statue of a Sumo wrestler, or else a life-sized statue of a small Sumo wrestler. A bag of random receipts that my accountant might have found quite useful in their year of origin, 1998. But let's start with the desk. Or rather, let's not. The desk is too much. Little of its surface is visible through piled notebooks and shuffled papers. But observe this vertically striped earthenware mug full of ball-point pens. If the phone rings with information I must take down, I reach for one of these pens and find that it does not work. Shambolic In the same vertically striped mug there are 15 other pens that do not work either. Vaguely I remember the day when I planned to sort through these pens and retain only those that did work. But I got distracted. What else is in the same mug? Jelly beans, several of which have grown fur. And that's just the mug. What about this desk drawer over here on the right? Ah, there's a touch of organisation here. Every year I put a new set of vital names and addresses in the designated section of my appointments diary. But I never get round to transferring vital names and addresses from previous diaries into the current one. So there are 10 years of diaries in this drawer alone, to supplement the line-up of 20 years of diaries standing over there in the corner of the room behind that valuable stack of obsolete phone books. Or, as I have just typed, obsotel nophe kobos. All over again I count my blessings that I have not been chosen as one of the subjects for Eamonn McCabe's series of photographs called Writer's Rooms. In London, an exhibition of these photographs has just opened. The photographs have been running as a series in one of the upmarket newspapers. When I looked at the early photos in that series I was envious. Would I be chosen? Then I started praying that I wouldn't be, a prayer which has mercifully been answered. There are some prizes I would like. I would quite like the Nobel Prize, if the money could be delivered tomorrow in a suitcase, clearly marked "Nobel Prize money: bank immediately or it will burst into flames." I would quite like the Booker prize, the Whitbread Prize, the Forward prize and the UNICEF prize for the chronically disorganized. I can hear myself pontificating while accepting any or all of those awards. But what I don't want is to be photographed in this room, because any shred of credibility I had as a pontificator would evaporate instantly. I noted with shame that even the most shambolic of the writer's rooms in the photographs was better organised than mine, and the majority of them might have been deliberately arranged to remind me that I myself was working in a skip. These paragons had got it all together without it getting on top of them. Force of nature You could tell that everything was there for a reason. If a woman writer had the propeller of a Sopwith Camel mounted on the wall, it was because her great-grandfather shot down Baron von Richthofen's second cousin in 1917. Writers had their books arranged by category, in alphabetical order. I moved into this office 10 years ago, the books came out of their tea chests in any old order, and any old order is still the only order they maintain on my shelves. There are books I know I own but I have to buy them again because I can't find them. Let me add that everything is well dusted. A cleaner comes in once a week and she does a good job. But she is under instructions not to move anything, in case I need it. So she has learned just to polish the whole lot as if it were an installation at Tate Modern. Other writers clearly find it easier to get their act together, and no doubt most non-writers do too. But judging from my own admittedly extreme experience, they can only get things under control by striving mightily against a force of nature that wants things to be disorganised rather than not. Scientists call it entropy. Back in the early 19th Century, Carl von Clausewitz, in his great work about military strategy On War, called it Friction. Clausewitz said that you have to have a plan for the battle but the plan had better include plenty of room for the absolute certainty that the plan will start growing fur from the first moment of its execution. I have just been checking up in my copy of Clausewitz - I had to buy another copy, because my original copy is somewhere in my bookshelves, which means that it might as well be on Mars - and I can tell from every sentence that he was writing with the insight conferred by self knowledge. I'll bet all the money in my foreign coin collection - it's over there in the fruit bowl, and some of those hundreds of obsolete francs and deutschmarks are sure to be worth something to collectors a hundred years from now. I'll bet all that money in the fruit bowl - and if you're asking where the fruit is, I gathered up all my powers of organisation and threw it out only a month after I forgot to eat it. I'll bet all that money that Clausewitz, when he was working on his magnum opus in his last years, was sitting at a desk that looked like the morning after the Battle of Waterloo. His name for the accumulated effect of Friction was the Fog of War. When I read that, I could tell straight away that here was a man who, like me, couldn't toast a slice of bread without filling his apartment with smoke. When his widow prepared his manuscript for posthumous publication, she probably found sandwiches in it. Dangerous signal When DVDs came in, I rarely played my VHS tapes again, but the VHS tapes did not move out. There are several hundred of them here, stacked on the floor. My first copy of Clausewitz might be somewhere behind them. I know there is a squash racket behind them because I can see the edge of its frame sticking up. Will I ever play squash again? Of course not, so why is the racket still there? Perhaps it's trying to remind me that the best equipped pontificator is the one who is aware of his own propensities towards chaos. Unable to organise his own breakfast, he will be less ready to condemn officials who can't organise an efficient system for sending out student grants, or collecting private information onto a CD-ROM that won't be left on a train. But even the most self-aware pontificator is still likely to expect too much of the world. Rarely will he be sufficiently amazed that society functions at all, considering some of the human material it has to work with. In ancient Greece, the philosopher Diogones, wedded to simplicity, lived in a tub. But he still roamed the streets of Athens by daylight while carrying a lamp. He said that he was looking for an honest man, and everybody wrote it down, saying that Diogones the cynic was a piercing analyst of the human condition. But maybe he just didn't know how to turn the lamp off. Sitting at this computer, on whose keyboard I have just typed the word "lamp" and actually written the word "lump", I am face to face with an item of technology that Diogones would not have known how to switch on. I barely know how to switch it on either, have often failed to switch it off - why does it ask me "do you wish to report the error" when I don't now what the error is? And yet I do know that its mere presence in the pile of rubble I call my desk is sending me a dangerous signal. This miracle of machinery is telling me that order can emerge from chaos after all. Well, yes, it can, but only against heavy odds, because chaos is inherent even in the minds of those who make the miracles. And it is certainly inherent within the pontificator. I can pontificate about that with some certainty, even as I type the last words of this sprict, scirpt, script, reach for my mug of coffee and get a mouthful of ball point pens. Eamonn McCabe's Writers' Rooms exhibition is at the Madison Contemporary Art gallery in London until 17 Januray 2009. Send us a picture of your creative room, to yourpics@bbc.co.uk, subject titled "ROOM". Or add your comments on this story, using the form below. Name Your e-mail address Town/city and country Your comment Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/magazine/7768021.stm Published: 2008/12/05 18:07:09 GMT © BBC MMVIII
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Duncan	07-Dec-08, 01:27 PM (GMT)
10. "totally disproportionate"
Sunday, 7th December 2008 Green-gate coming to an end? JAMES FORSYTH 11:23am Ian Kirby has the scoop about the Damian Green investigation: TORY MP Damian Green and his Home Office mole will NOT be charged in the leak scandal, the News of the World can reveal. Prosecutors say papers seized from Mr Green’s Commons office cannot be used as evidence in a trial. They add that cops FAILED to conduct a proper search in Westminster. The conclusions, in a secret early review by the Crown Prosecution Service, coincide with the initial findings of an independent police probe. That investigation is already concluding the case is “not prosecutable”, and the decision to arrest the Shadow Immigration Minister was “over the top”. One source said: “This was a sledgehammer to crack a nut by Scotland Yard—totally disproportionate.” If it were not so worrying, it would be tempting to describe this whole episode as a farce. It seems remarkable how careless the police have been throughout this investigation when they must have known how high-profile it would become.
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