The Long Cold Winter

[Rolan Headon]

css,
What'd ya think of the film "Crude Awakening"? Interesting about the population surge via oil. Years ago my 15 year old nephew called it the "revenge of the dinosaurs".

Agreed, too much of science is if you can't weigh it or measure it, ignore it. My last SO was "systems science" critic, doctorate on the failings of applied systemic thinking, how statistics rule and all that. (Last year she was the first female president of the Systems Society since Margaret Mead)

As a high school dropout but voracious reader, there is a tendency to be self educated with holes you can drive a semi-truck thru. Admittedly, I'm a balck-belt ignoramus, while many of the people on this board are quite educated. Glib and positive I'm no more...experience slapped that out of me...but I try not to be too swayed by any one voice right away. (Thanks for the links.)

[can't sit still]

Rolan, I didn't see crude awakening. Like you, I read a lot,,, between 3 and 12 hrs a day. I've more or less renounced a social life. I'm an information junkie. You would do well to read Kunstler, "The Long Emergency" He covers a lot of ground.
I'm always looking for the basic info. I don't need to receive it predigested by some schmuck. You can find great links at dollar collapse http://dollarcollapse.com/
This page shows that the rich are getting richer; http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread ... #post33121 Second graph.
Not too surprising. I'm not going to condemn anyone for getting rich. I work hard and I see opportunities that others don't. Nature and nurture provide every person with a set of abilities to find their niche. Those that don't find a viable niche are casualities to nature.
30,000 children under 5 die every day. If we truly are going into global warming, the Ganges and the Indus are expected to become seasonal rivers by 2025. Imagine India and Pakistan without water.
We've tried to make the whole world our niche. It appears that mother nature isn't too keen on the idea.
BTW, I went to college for a whole 20 minutes. I was bored

[Rolan Headon]

"The person who goes in search of knowledge is on active service for God until he returns..." Tabriza, hadith number 220

css, If you enjoyed Crude Awakening on the playa, the movie will bring it home for you.
Where go you with your quest for info? Moth-attraction to the light of truth, desire to expose for others, ...just curious. (About giving up a social life, are we here in this life to connect with others or is the ascetic on top of the lonely peak with himself and his enlightenment on a right track? No criticism implied...a friend with 20 years in hospice said at the ends of their livees, men tend to bemoan they didn't do more and women often wished they'd "dumped their asshole husbands" a long time ago.)

[can't sit still]

"The person who goes in search of knowledge is on active service for God until he returns..." Tabriza, hadith number 220

css, If you enjoyed Crude Awakening on the playa, the movie will bring it home for you.
Where go you with your quest for info? Moth-attraction to the light of truth, desire to expose for others, ...just curious.
<<<<It must be moth attraction. I went to several counties just to find the truth for myself. When it was really hot years ago, i went to Ireland and Northern Ireland. I decided that Willaim of Orange and Woolsey were at fault. I also went to Cuba and Israel.


(About giving up a social life, are we here in this life to connect with others or is the ascetic on top of the lonely peak with himself and his enlightenment on a right track? No criticism implied

<<<None taken. I believe that the secret to a good life is balance. There are and were many people who's life was way out of balance. They made enormous contributions to society because they were so driven,,, which is great. But, I'd have to say that a balanced life is best for most of us.



...a friend with 20 years in hospice said at the ends of their livees, men tend to bemoan they didn't do more and women often wished they'd "dumped their asshole husbands" a long time ago.)

<<<I read a book by Buscaglia,,, "Living, Loving and Learning" In his interviews with terminal people, there was a common thread of regret. One guy summed it up; If i could do it over, I would have fewer imaginary problems and more real problems,,, I would see more sunrises."
When I was bulding my log house in Oregon, I would face my camper so that the sunrise would wake me at 5:00. I'd watch the sunrise and then sleep for a couple of hours more.

<<<I learned years ago to draw a circle,,, pick a point on that circle,,, That point is both your birth and your death. Your years of life are represented by that circle. Assume that you'll live to 70. Mark off the pie-shapped part of the circle that you've already used up.
We tend to think of our lives as being more or less open-ended. If you shade out half of the circle[for say 35 years], it makes you far more concious of the limitations on your remaining time. I just found out that a 35 y.o. friend got killed saturday,,,,, so the system isn't perfect.

As you become more concious of your death, you'll hopefully spend your life more usefully.
We have an innate sense of insecurity. We tend to blow it all out of proportion until no ammount of possesions make us feel secure. Many people find more happiness letting go of material posesions and concentrating on social connections.
Once again,,,balance. Something between Walden Pond and the Trump mansion.
In the West, we tend to shun death so badly that we become terrified of it. When you go to graveside services, they cover the excavated dirt with astroturf and they never lower the body into the ground.
Life is a long journey. We should experience everyting and then check out peacefully. IMHO

[thirt33n]

3" of snow on the ground this morning.

[Ugly Dougly]

[youtube][/youtube]

[thirt33n]

thanks ugly...22nd of august 2008 is the day i'll drive off from here....it will be sunny

[Rolan Headon]

Sunrises are for those who see them. (Sunsets, too). People around here drive for hours to get in the snow.
css, my sister lives in a 95 year old log house. It was moved once several miles. Probably last another 200 years or more. I put in huge windows all the way around, never thought I'd install windows with a chainsaw.

[can't sit still]

Rolan, sunrises and sunsets are great of course. If you really want to increase the "WOW" factor, you need to watch the Aurora Borealis. I drove to Alaska 7 times. The lights are more than spectacular.

I roughed in my windows with a chainsaw. The problem is that logs shrink for years. If you connect anything horizontal to anything vertical, it will cause gaps as the logs settle and shrink. I used a router to cut a deep slot in the ends of the logs and then I fitted in a spline [2X4]. The windows are screwed into the spline and float. As the logs settle, the windows adjust. Great fun, Dan

[can't sit still]

Dutch fiction;
Chinese fact http://www.naturalnews.com/023005.html

[Rolan Headon]

good thing i don't have any money.

[can't sit still]

Congratulatuons Rolan,,,, You 're safe.
For those of you who think that you have money, here's something to consider. The banks "sweep" all acounts up to 27 times a month. Any money that's just sitting there is diverted and invested. The bank considers your deposit to be a loan. They can also make you wait 30 days to withdraw your money; http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot. ... sions.html
Banks have used all sorts of strategies to use your money without maintaining sufficient levels of collateral. They bought bonds, property, and all sorts of things.
There are about 2 trillion in bonds that are insured by the monoline insurers. The insurers only have about 10 billion to cover any and all loses. Freddie-Mack and Fannie May are holding about 82% of the mortgage loans in the US. They are capitalised to about 200 billion dollars to guarantee about 2.7 trillion in loans. They were just alowed to reduce their capital by 200 billion.

The banks shafted them with all the bad loans. But, Citi just reported 2.227 trillion in liabilities. The level 2 assets [which are shaky] for the top 3 banks are reported at 4.1 trillion. The level 3 assets, that are even shakier, arent reported yet,,,I believe.
There are about 200 trillion of derrivatives held by US banks. They aren't holding up well.
Some small banks are introuble too; "Over a third of the nation’s community banks have commercial real estate concentrations exceeding 300 percent of their capital, and almost 30 percent have construction and development loans exceeding 100 percent of capital"
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot. ... el-is.html
Retail property was way overbuilt too.

There is 2.48 trillion in consumer debt. It's completely unsecured. It won't be a huge surprise if some of it falls to default.
There is supposed to be 1.4 trillion in 401K accounts. You can bet that the banks didn't just let it sit there nice and safe.
The banks have spent almost every penny that has passed through their doors. It's all locked up in real estate, bonds and derrivatives. All these things are depreciating. The banks sincerely hope that you don't come in and withdraw your money. They could only cover about the first 1% of the funds. They're technically insolvent, but still fuctioning.

They've borrowed a few hundred billion from the FED, but, it's comprised of 28 and 30 day notes. Forclosures are running about 50,000 a month. Postponing the reconning for a month isn't helping. Forclosures are expected to go to 200,000 a month. If the banks are insolvent now, things are not going to improve for then in the near future.

The US debt is 370% of the GDP. We spend 30% of the GOV income to service our debt. It's the fastest growing segment of the budget. We spend 40% of the budget for the military. The remaining portion is for everything else in the country.
There are very few foreigners buying our bonds now. The interest rate is lower than the inflation rate.
Bush and Bernanke are pushing us right off the cliff and there isn't anything that we can do.
They can talk about all the stimulus packages that they want to. They wouldn't dream of talking about jobs. They're gone.

Most of our economy is based on FIRE. Finance, insurance and real estate. The money is moving east and real estate bubbled out. Where are the jobs going to come from?
Dan

[Ugly Dougly]

While we're being pessimistic, rice prices may have moved in the same trajectory as other grain prices, but the equation of production, consumption and trade of Asia's leading staple is actually quite different from other grains.

Its characteristics suggest that rice's relative value will increase, forcing many poorer consumers with no choice but to rely on alternatives like wheat, corn, sorghum, cassava or potatoes.

Some of the immediate causes of the price spike for rice are similar to that of other crops. The cost of fertilizer, closely related to energy, is the most obvious. Futures speculation by financial intermediaries may also have played a part - though rice futures trading is small compared with other major crops.

But biofuels cannot be blamed because rice is not used for them. Nor has there been any major harvest setback among the top Asian producers. Instead, we are now seeing the impact of a series of longer term trends, some of which probably cannot be reversed. In no particular order these are:

Almost zero growth in land suitable for rice production. Soybeans, corn and wheat acreage can expand in South America or in North America and Europe. Rice - which ideally requires flat land, lots of water and a warm climate - has no equivalent.

[can't sit still]

Ugly, part of the rice problem is drought. OZ used to produce enough rice for 20 million people; http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/17/ ... 17warm.php
Their production has been reduced 98%. There has been so much wild weather that many counries have lost large parts of their crops. Other countries have stopped exports to preserve food for domestic use.
Kazakistan is the 5th largest wheat producer. They have stopped exporting wheat.
NASA projects that the weather will get wilder. The world had maintained a <110> day food supply for the last 60 years. Lately, we've been eating our reserves. China has 1.4 trillion to spend on food and Japan will do OK. Sub-Sahara Africa and the middle-east are going to be priced out.

Indonesia has a couple hundred million muslims, so they might have problems with food. The Phillipines have lots of muslims and food problems. They might find it hard to get help too; http://www.catholic.org/international/i ... p?id=27171
The G7 recently had a meeting on the credit crash. They decided that food shortages were more important than the credit crash.

The continuing water shortages are going to hit rice especially hard.
Some people spend 70% of their income for food. Here's some cool pics; http://www.fixingtheplanet.com/one-week ... our-planet
Dan

[Rabbi Dali Rick]

Here is a page with some interesting links



http://forums.permaculture.org.au/viewt ... f=9&t=6603






the rebbi

[Ugly Dougly]

India is holding back on exporting rice in fear that its own people won't have enough. Even local Sam's Club stores are limiting purchases to 4 bags per customer. Four Bags?

Maybe they can learn to cook with potatoes?

[EvilDustBooger]

.
Some people spend 70% of their income for food. Here's some cool pics; http://www.fixingtheplanet.com/one-week ... our-planet
Dan

I was struck by how much soda-pop(Diabetes in a bottle) was pictured as a daily food stuff all but the poorest countries.

I wonder how much hunger and disease could be averted in the world if the U.S. would change it`s agricultural policies, STOP producing Liberty link corn for processing High fructose corn syrup(poison) and cattle feed(also poison) for huge corporations, and go back to growing high protien corn that we could actually eat?

I can`t help but grind my teeth when I think about this huge agricultural conspiracy that we were suckered into supporting and subsidizing with OUR tax dollars for the sole benefit of the few largest producing corporations.

Earl Butz really fucked us all in my opinion.

[theCryptofishist]

Maybe they can learn to cook with potatoes?

I'm guessing that there's more land suitable for rice cultivation than potato crops in India.

[can't sit still]

INDIA:


The current outbreak of food shortages and famine internationally
should come as no surprise to anyone who knows the history of British
imperial free-trade policy. To buttress that point, we present here
indictments of that policy by two leading statesmen with personal
knowledge—Abraham Lincoln's economic advisor Henry Carey, and the
founder of modern China, Sun Yat-sen—in addition to this overview
article, written in 1991, from the archives of the LaRouche movement.

Before Hitler, there was Britain, and the British famine policy in India.

As many look with horror at the starvation now being induced in Africa
by agencies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the General
Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), and the grain cartels, few know
that in a previous century the British pioneered all these techniques
in India. What follows is a brief outline of the British famine policy
in India from 1764 to 1914, and how the British developed the
deliberate use of famine and food control as the principal means of rule.

To understand the question of famine in India, one must first start
with the fact that India's climate is characterized by the monsoon, in
which a region's weather follows the pattern of a dry climate for most
of the year; then comes a period of rains, which is the monsoon. At
least once in the course of a decade, the monsoon fails to arrive in
any given region.

Traditional agriculture in India and other countries always planned
for this by laying aside foodstocks at the village level, which
ensured that there would be adequate food in drought years. The
central administrative authority, whether it was a Hindu prince, or
the Moghul court, would suspend taxes for that period of economic
insecurity. Prior to British rule, it was understood that famine
needed to be avoided if the central authority was to have any
legitimacy as the ruler of an area. The British changed all this.

As B.M. Bhatia writes in his 1967 book, Famines in India: "From about
the beginning of the eleventh century to the end of the eighteenth
there were 14 major famines in India." This is roughly two per
century. Under the period of East India Company rule from 1765-1858
there occurred 16 major famines, a rate eight times higher than what
had been common before. Then, under the period of British Colonial
Office rule from 1859 to 1914, there was a major famine in India an
average of every two years, or 25 times the historical rate before
British rule! The rest of the world's population was growing due to
technological progress, but the population of India remained at
approximately 220 million for over a century prior to 1914.

Deliberately inducing a major famine more or less every two years,
was, for over half a century, the backbone of British colonial policy
in India.

The history of the British in India is a history of the deliberate
creation of famines. Such famines resulted from the policies of the
East India Company. Those policies included looting through "tax
farming," usury, and outright slavery of the indigenous population.

As we shall see, a limit to this rapine was reached in the middle of
the 19th Century, leading to the first struggle for Indian
independence, which began with the Sepoy Mutiny. Following that
revolt, a new policy was developed by the British Colonial Office,
which took over all the operations of the East India Company. The new
policy revolved around creating famines in selected regions on a
continuous basis, with the goal of creating a mass of starving people
who could be used as slave labor, needed by the British to build the
infrastructure of British rule.
East India Company Rule

The British East India Company began the administrative takeover of
India in 1764-1765. The company was appointed diwan, or governor, over
the area of Bengal by the collapsing Moghul Empire. The British
entered India as the administrative rulers and tax collectors of the
Moghul court.

As tax collectors, the previous supposedly "rapacious" Moghul agents,
had collected the marketable equivalent of £818,000 sterling from the
area of Bengal. In 1765-66, the first year of East India Company
diwanship, the company was able to collect the equivalent of
£1,470,000; and by 1790-1791, this figure had risen to £2,680,000.
According to Jean Beauchamp's British Imperialism in India, Warren
Hastings, the company's chief officer in India, wrote the following to
the company's board of directors in London:

"Not withstanding the loss of at least one-third of the inhabitants of
the province, and consequent decrease in cultivation, net collections
of the year 1771 exceeded those of 1768.... It was naturally to be
expected that the diminution of the revenue should have kept an equal
place with the other consequences of so great a calamity. That it did
not was owing to its being violently kept up to its former standard."

The great calamity mentioned was perhaps the worst famine in Indian
history, which struck the provinces of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. It
is estimated that no fewer than 10 million perished from starvation.
The severity of this famine was a direct result of East India Company
looting.
Tax Farming

What the Company had done to increase the tax revenue was to set up a
system of "outsourcing" the right to tax the land. This is what is
known as "tax farming." The tax collector had the right to obtain as
much tax as he could get, since he had bought these rights at auction.
In turn, the one who was taxed, the registered landholder, called
zamindari, was allowed to extract whatever he could for himself and
for the tax collector from the poor peasant who worked the land.

The zamindari, who was subject only to the payment of the company's
taxes, essentially had complete power over all the land and all its
cultivators.

Through this looting system, the Company left nothing in reserve for
the times when the monsoons would fail. In addition, little or no
maintenance was allowed for the cultivators' infrastructure, such as
the irrigation works.

The results were horrendous, as more of India's land area came under
Company rule.

The drain of wealth from India based on a tax-farming system, the
destruction of native textile industry by the "free market" dumping of
British textiles, and the plantation economy of opium, led eventually
to a fierce resistance from the communal based population.

This finally led to the Sepoy Mutiny of the zamindaris and others,
especially those who lived in areas not totally under Company control.
It almost broke the British Empire.

In the end, the East India Company was relieved of its rule in India
and was replaced by a governor-general, and a colonial administration.
The commission which recommended this change concluded that the
problem was the lack of a transportation and communications
infrastructure, necessary to hold subject such a vast country. Also,
the commissioners concluded, there was a need for an Indian ruling
class that would function as intermediaries for the British
colonialists. [1]
Slave Labor Policy

Britain's colonial overseers agreed on the need for the development of
a rudimentary infrastructure to increase the efficiency of their rule,
and looting of India. But the Empire had a problem. The proposed grid
of railroads and large-scale irrigation works was too expensive, from
the colonialists' point of view. So, the decision was made to force
the already plundered Indian population to pay for these development
projects.

This presented another serious problem. India, at that time, did not
have a landless laboring class which could provide a pool of cheap
labor for such projects. The caste system of India was
all-encompassing. As Bhitia documents, the ritual distribution of
goods at the communal level, based on caste and guild relations, made
it undesirable for families and individuals to leave this system,
especially to become slaves for the British railroad and irrigation
projects.

The British solution to this problem was "famine relief." To build the
railroads, the British set up "famine relief works." A famine would
create the condition, such that, faced with certain death from lack of
food, an Indian would be forced to "choose" to go to a famine relief
center, much like a starving famine victim in Africa would do today.
However, once having done this, the individual lost his caste
relations and privileges. Then he was told that if he wanted to
continue to eat, he must work, building the railroad in exchange for food.

At these projects, less than minimum subsistence was the norm, much
like a Nazi forced-labor concentration camp. As yesterday's famine
victims dropped dead from exhaustion and slow starvation on the
railroad or irrigation project, today's famine refugees were making
their way into this so-called famine relief system. This system would
today be labeled euphemistically, the "recycling" of the work force.

With the advent of railways, it became easier for traders to buy up
food and other goods when they were cheap, and in some cases, even
when costly, and export them to England—much in the same manner as the
British let the Irish starve during the potato famine, rather than
allow the wheat, barley, and rye grown in Ireland for England to be
used to feed the Irish.

Under these conditions, the nature of famines and scarcities began to
change. Whereas in the past, famine had been a regional phenomenon,
under this British policy food became scarce throughout the country,
hitting the poorest in a devastating manner. It was these
famine-stricken poor who then continued to supply the labor for the
relief-works.
Rise of Usury

The development of the railroads also helped to develop a class of
Indian money-lenders, who became the intermediaries for the British.
This allowed for the British to control even areas which were not
affected by crop failures.

Such areas were hit with multiple increases in prices because of the
demand placed on their food from other areas of the country.
Money-lenders would then sell British goods to Indians at inflated
prices, and buy their grain at low prices. Then they would sell that
grain at high prices, either on the international market, or back to
the same people in times of famine.

Since these transactions were carried out largely on a credit basis,
vast segments of the population became debt slaves to the
money-lenders, if they were fortunate enough to escape having to work
on famine relief projects. In addition, the British played this system
of debt-slavery off against the traditional caste and guild system,
which had never had to deal with such a monstrosity.

This system brought to the fore a class of money-lenders who became
the power through which the British were able to offset, in part, the
resistance within India to their rule coming from the communal base.

The spread of famine throughout India can be measured in the expansion
of the railroad system. There were 288 miles of rail in India in 1857;
1,599 miles in 1861; and 3,373 miles in 1865. By 1881, there were
9,891 miles; there were 19,555 miles by 1895; and 34,656 miles by 1914.

With the expansion of the railroads, and "famine relief" which built
the railroads, the exports of food grains rose rapidly. The export of
rice grew from 12,697,983 hundred-weight in 1867-68, to 18,428,625
hundred-weight in 1877-78. Wheat exports grew 22-fold during this same
period, from 299,385 hundred-weight to 6,373,168 hundred-weight. The
criminal nature of this policy is clearly seen, since 1876-78 were
major famine years. The export of rice reached 30.3 million
hundred-weight, and wheat reached 30.3 million hundred-weight in 1891-92.

The worst famine was in 1896-97, which affected 62.4 million people.
This resulted, among other things, according to Bhatia, in "civil
commotion and unrest in Bombay against continuing exports of food
grains from the presidency at a time when the people faced the threat
of famine. The government of India, however, refused to change its
food policy and steadfastly clung to the view so far held that, 'even
in the worst conceivable emergency, so long as trade is free to follow
its normal course, we should do far more harm than good by attempting
to interfere... .' "

Does this sound all too familiar? The [George H.W.] Bush
Administration has proclaimed a New World Order based on "free trade"
and an end to the "restrictions" imposed by national sovereignty. As
food and other basic resources increasingly come under the control of
Euro-Anglo-American cartels, most of the world is slated to become
much like India was under the British.

Bush's New World Order is in fact nothing new, and the principal
instrument of rule in this new world order is scheduled to be famine,
and "famine relief" projects for the victims.

[can't sit still]

Rice isn't the only thing that is having problems; http://moneynews.com/money/archives/st/ ... 4.cfm?s=st

[can't sit still]

Well, here's some numbers;

"But now the U.S. national debt stands above $ 9 trillion, with interest payments in fiscal 2007 adding $ 1.4 billion a day."
The US spends 33% of it's income just to pay the interest on it's debt.

"But there is great danger ahead. Since the trade deficit passed the $ 759 billion mark – 6.3 percent of GDP – foreigners now must shell out about $ 1.5 billion a day just to keep the dollar afloat. "
SOOOO, we pay interest of 1.4 billion a day and recieve foreign investment of 1.5 billion a day.
Now, foreigners are slowly starting to realise that we never intend to pay off the debt. We can't!! http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article4489.html

We inflate the currency by <20> a year and have <10> inflation. Since treasury bills pay about 3%, they're money losers. The Japanese have started to catch on and are deserting treasuries. China is getting rid of dollars as fast as they can without causing a panic.
The US is manufacturing very high inflation and foreign [and domestic] investors see treasuries as another bubble.
Brazil, Russia and India pay much better.
The US has to pump in 6$ to the economy to get a increase of 1$ in the GDP. This is NOT investment,,, it's stupidity.
We hear lots of news about Miley Cyrus's derriere, Britney and Paris. We don't hear a word about new records in forclosures or the fact that bonds are being rapidly downgraded.
Bush now blames congress for the economic problems. He's right though,,,,,, they approved his war-funding bills.

If we attack Iran, it's a given that the Straights of Hormuz will be closed. 40% of the worlds oil goes through there. 3,057,000 barrels a day pass through there bound for the US.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petr ... mport.html
Congress recently asked Bush to stop filling the strategic petroleum reserve for a time so that gas prices wouldn't spike so high. He, of course, said NO!.
If you hear of an attack on Iran, you better be where you want to be for an extended time. Assuming thst GOV has a plan to divert diesel to food production and distribution, [not likely], there won't be much left over for transportation,,,, after GOV takes it's rightful share.
I'd like to think that an attack on Iran could be blocked, but I'm also confident that Israel can manufacture some kind of false-flag excuse to start a war,,,or two.

[Ugly Dougly]

Brazil, Russia and India pay much better.

Weird, they have much higher inflation.

[can't sit still]

Dougly, you're correct, of course. Because India and Brazil don't have much in the way of birth control, they have lots of cheap labor. So, while they have lots of inflation, they manufacture lots of things.
Unfortunately, they also have extermination squads to kill extra kids; http://www.pangaea.org/street_children/ ... wsweek.htm

*** Brazil is booming. Its bonds were upgraded yesterday. Now, they’re considered investment quality. The Brazilian currency is rising against the dollar. Exports tripled in the last five years. The country is now a net creditor with the rest of the world – with $171 billion in reserves. And its stock market is the best-performing major market in the world this year"

India has, I believe, more people than China. It seems like a half billion of them just stand there and watch you. It's hard to get used to 200 people standing there and watching you. They manufacture lots of stuff too.
Russia inflated their currency 84% a year,,, last I read. But, since they're overflowing with oil and gas, they have good opportunities too. You have to invest in the right sector but, there are great opportunities.
The American stock market has been dead for years if you account for inflation. There are some niches. Solar power grows 20% a year. Buffet is betting that mobil home manufacturing is going to grow.
Considering the cost of traditional construction and the increasing cost to heat and cool a big house, he's probably right.

The inflation here is expected to drop into overdrive so, it's hard to justify investments in dollar industries.
It's expected that we'll be severly energy-starved after 2010.
http://www.aspo-usa.com/index.php?optio ... &Itemid=91 I don't see nuke, coal or tar sands being revved up to close the gap in time.
It will be difficult for the US to dig itself out of recession if energy is in short supply.
If hillary or McCain are elected, then we don't have a prayer of good leadership in time of need. It's a sad, sad state of affairs.

[Ugly Dougly]

Sometimes I wonder if inflation has any connection to pervasive bribery. It's an extra expense that doesn't furnish extra goods.

What do I know, I'm a macaque.

[Ugly Dougly]

California chinook fishery's collapse a disaster

Federal officials on Thursday declared a failure in the West Coast ocean salmon fishery, an announcement that will allow the region to seek disaster aid for fishermen and others affected in California, Oregon and Washington.

The disaster declaration results from a collapse of the Sacramento River chinook. These California chinook are a mainstay of the West Coast harvests, and many are believed to have perished several years back as they emerged from freshwater amid poor ocean conditions and reduced food supplies.

To protect the California chinook, there will be a near closure of all ocean salmon harvests off California and most of Oregon. Meanwhile, a small portion of northern Oregon and Washington will have limited seasons for sport, tribal and commercial fishermen to target Columbia River chinook as well as a diminished run of coho salmon.

Overall, it will be the worst harvest in the history of the West Coast salmon fishing.

"This is a bleak year," Jim Balsiger, acting assistant administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Fisheries Service, said in announcing the declaration in Portland.

The governors of Oregon, Washington and California have said they could seek as much as $290 million in disaster aid, citing the ripple effects that the fishery has through the coastal economies. About $36 million of that money would be for Washington.

But the direct effects of the closures are forecast to be a small portion of the overall loss.

A federal economic analysis estimates $60 million in impacts to fishermen, processors, charter-boat operators, bait shops and others involved in the harvests.

That estimate includes about a $22 million hit for commercial fishermen, with about $1 million of that loss coming from Washington state.

For consumers, the closures mean the loss of fresh-caught local salmon. They are hooked — not netted — and typically bled at sea, so they usually command premium prices. But there will still be wild salmon from the much larger Alaska harvests, where most of the fish are netted. Farm salmon have also become a year-round offering in supermarkets.

Prices for all salmon are expected to be higher, due in part to rising fuel costs and the West Coast harvest restrictions.

This dismal West Coast summer season comes as the region is deep into a massive, long-term effort to restore the region's salmon runs by improving freshwater streams and rivers where the fish spawn, develop and migrate en route to the sea.

[can't sit still]

Dougly, It's really sad that the world fisheries are collapsing. Salmon is mighty tasty. As an alternative for omega 3 in fish oil, the new best thing is Chia seed. http://www.arizonachia.com/

Here's something to inspire confidence in American business;

"spring of 2006, Business Week’s Dawn Kopecki reported, “President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006."

SOOO, lying has ben institutionalised,,, officially.

Well, that piece of shit, Hillary should fit right in;

The now retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, say Hillary's history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther‑--and much deeper‑--than anyone realizes.



Jerry Zeifman, a lifelong Democrat, supervised the work of 27‑year‑old Hillary Rodham on the committee. Hillary got a job working on the investigation at the behest of her former law professor, Burke Marshall, who had been Sen. Ted Kennedy's chief counsel, in the Chappaquiddick affair. When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation—one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman's 17-year career.



"Because she was a liar," Zeifman said in a recent interview. "She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality."



Zeifman said she was one of several individuals— including Marshall, special counsel John Doar and senior associate special counsel (and future Clinton White House counsel) Bernard Nussbaum—who engaged in a seemingly implausible scheme to deny Richard Nixon the right to counsel during the inves­tigation.



If Nixon was legally entitled to counsel during the investigation, then his counsel would have been allowed to cross-examine witnesses appearing before the panel. Their concern centered on E. Howard Hunt. Democrats on the committee feared that Nixon's counsel would elicit information from Hunt that would be very damaging to the Kennedys, fear­ing the skeletons hidden in the decade-old JFK clos­et. Ziefrnan said they knew what information Hunt harbored, including Kennedy's purported complicity in the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro.

All this notwithstanding, Zeifman told Hillary that Nixon was entitled to counsel and showed her the legal precedent allowing it. He cited documents in the committee's public file referencing the fact that Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas had received representation four years earlier while he was being investigated.



But Hillary took the matter into her own hands and removed the documents from the committee's public file. She placed them under lock and key in her own office, where they could not be available for media or public scrutiny.

Just think!!!, she could be public turd number 1

[can't sit still]

Historical price of gold and historical inflation.

Millar stresses the periodic upward revaluation of gold as the mechanism for defeating a deflationary debt depression at the end of an economic cycle. Millar writes:

"The first cycle unfolded as follows:

"-- Phase 1: Stability under a gold standard until 1914.

"-- Phase 2: Inflation until 1921, which resulted in a buildup of debt.

"-- Phase 3: Disinflation, which brought stability and allowed asset inflation until 1929, but encouraged a further buildup of debt.

"-- Phase 4: Instability after 1929 caused by deflation of assets from overpriced levels and exacerbated by excessive debt levels, leading to depression of economic activity.

"-- Phase 5: Monetary reform enabled by a revaluation of gold to overcome deflationary debt depression.

"In the second half of the 20th century we saw a repeat of the first three phases of the same cycle:

"-- Phase 1: Stability from 1944 to 1968 under a gold standard.

"-- Phase 2: Inflation from 1968 to 1981, which caused and justified another buildup of debt.

"-- Phase 3: Disinflation from 1981 until the end of the 20th century, and maybe to the present.

"However, it appears that Phase 4 (instability and ultimately deflation due to excessive debt) may have started. If so, Phase 5 (revaluation of the gold price to raise the monetary value of the world monetary base and hence reduce the burden of debt) becomes likely or inevitable. The extent of that revaluation would need to be major according to our calculations, probably by a factor of at least seven times, possibly up to 20 times the current price of gold."

Since gold doesn't really go up or down in the long term, he's calling for a reduction in the price of assets. http://www.gata.org/node/4843

Credit card debt is up to $957 billion and the default rate is above 4%.
Since it's unsecured debt nobody wants it,,,sooo, GOV is buying it.

While the value of assets is going down, the price of commodities is going up.
"The IMF warning came as crude oil prices hit a record of almost $124 a barrel, up 99 per cent in the past 12 months, and customers scrambled to take out insurance against prices rising above $200 a barrel.

In an indication the commodities boom may not be the bubble imagined, Mr Lipsky said the forces pushing prices up "appear to be fundamental in nature" -- and these were being amplified by lower US interest rates and the dollar's decline. "
It looks like $200 oil will get here sooner rather than later. Here's your next ride; http://www.ridelust.com/fuel-vapor-ale- ... -to-sixty/

[Rolan Headon]

Gold is a pretty rock, Indians in most of North America coudn't believe the muderous worth put on it by Europeans. Diamonds same thing. Insane value system. I'm investing in tomatoes.

css...if you have access to net flicks, Crude Awakening could be a part of your expanding vision of things to come..

[can't sit still]

Thanks, Rolan. I'll check it out., As you say, gold is a pretty rock. It does have a bit of intrinsic value also. The central banks refer to it as a "barbaric relic" They hate it. As Greenspan confessed, gold shows how badly the central banks steal from people. It is far more durable than tomatoes. Gold won't lose it's value until it can be manufactured cheaply or until you can convince a few billion people that they can trust the GOV.

GOV relies on central control/taxing. If people were more autonomous, GOV would have far les control. The Amish are a good example. The same is true for banks. If you buy within the community,,,without interest, everyone benefits. Except the banks.

Imagine a world where energy was produced cheaply and easily. You wouldn't have to live cheek to jowel just to be hooked up to the grid.
Here's a vid that's well worth watching to the end.
The premise is that you can break the molecular bonds of water with low-energy resonance. There are a lot of people working on this kind of stuff.
I'm going to do my own investigation, Dan

[can't sit still]

"Despite objections from consumer advocates, in the last two weeks California judge Jed Clampbet has sent 142 delinquent homeowners to state prison for up to three years each, for failing to honor their home mortgage obligations"
http://wallstreetexaminer.com/blogs/mantle/?p=41
I thought debtors prision was outlawed

There is also a big movement to raise animals in a more humane manner. This has caused pork prices in Britian to double. We're doing the same thing here. Food prices in general are going up.
"The CRB Commodities index closed today at an all-time high, sporting a y-t-d gain of 19% and one-year rise of 37%. The Goldman Sachs Commodities index, also ending at a record high, has gained 28% so far this year and 68% over the past 12 months."

"My God! I am stunned and afraid at the rise in these indexes, which mean higher and higher prices, and even then, what is going on INSIDE the indexes is even worse, as Mr. Noland demonstrates when he said "During the past year, soybeans have gained 85%, corn 72%, and wheat 68%. Prices for iron ore, steel and hard commodities have experienced similar price inflation. Gasoline prices are up almost 40%, natural gas about 50%, and heating oil about 90% over the past year."

BUT, don't fear, GOV says that inflation is only 4%. Coulda fooled me.
The local Shell station [Van Nuys] has diesel for only $5.39