I remember when in 2002 Jim recommended copper over gold. He was dead right!
"The supply of everything continues to decline," he said, adding: "If the world economy recovers, commodities will do the best, because supply is being restricted. If the world economy does not recover, commodities will still be the best place to be, because governments are printing huge amounts of money." Rogers, an author whose books include “Investment Biker” and “Adventure Capitalist,” predicted the start of a global commodities rally in 1999. The Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index of 19 raw materials is up 36 percent from Jan. 4, 1999. Rogers said it’s hard for him to predict the timing of market moves.
Gold will surpass its inflation-adjusted all-time high of more than $2,300 an ounce, Rogers said. He said that the timing will depend on many factors, including global politics. Some investors buy gold as a hedge against political instability and to preserve assets.
Favored Materials
Agricultural commodities are among his favorites, because demand for food, including grain and sugar, is rising in countries such as India and China. Rogers said cotton may gain as farmers produce less fiber in favor of growing biofuel crops such as corn.
“I own some cotton,” Rogers said. “I own some sugar,” he said. “Sugar will go much, much higher over the course of the bull market.”
Now, all hail the return of political economy and therefore reality to economics....
Economics Nobel
Ostrom, in work that links the economy with the environment, has shown that informal groups can sometimes manage natural resources such as forests and lakes better than private companies or the government. Her doctorate is in political science rather than economics.
Williamson, who is professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley, is considered one of the founders of organizational economics -- the study of how institutions are created and developed and what impact they have on economic growth. In research that may apply to the financial crisis, he suggested that it is better to regulate large companies than to try to break them up or limit their size.
“Over the last three decades these seminal contributions have advanced economic governance research from the fringe to the forefront of scientific attention,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said today in Stockholm.
Ostrom and Williamson will share 10 million Swedish kronor ($1.4 million) in prize money.
“What you have here is a bow from the academy to those economists who study organization from the inside, and that’s an exciting, interesting field,” said Robert Solow, winner of the Nobel Economics Prize in 1987 and professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Large Companies
Williamson found that large corporations exist primarily because they are efficient and benefit owners, workers, suppliers and customers, the academy said. They can abuse their power and may need to be regulated.
“You could and should interpret Ollie Williamson’s work as a way of getting into the question of how the large investment banks operate and how that led to what looks in retrospect to be very stupid and risky behavior,” Solow said
Dollar stressed..
Oct. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Central banks flush with record reserves are increasingly snubbing dollars in favor of euros and yen, further pressuring the greenback after its biggest two- quarter rout in almost two decades.
Policy makers boosted foreign currency holdings by $413 billion last quarter, the most since at least 2003, to $7.3 trillion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Nations reporting currency breakdowns put 63 percent of the new cash into euros and yen in April, May and June, the latest Barclays Capital data show. That’s the highest percentage in any quarter with more than an $80 billion increase.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601068&sid=a4x9dIJsPn4U
There are broader reasons for the dollar's demise – not least that the sun is now setting on its reserve currency status, as the world's commercial centre of gravity shifts towards the emerging giants of the East. That's a much longer-term trend, though. In the here and now, the dollar is tumbling due to America's ultra-low interest rates, monetary incontinence and fiscal irresponsibility.
The decline became so steep last week that central banks in Asia – including China – spent their own reserves propping up the US currency, so worried were they about the impact of the falling dollar on their all-important exports. Future historians will shake their heads in disbelief.
Keep in mind, though, that the arguments pointing to a weaker dollar also apply to the pound – but even more so. Last week sterling hit a trade-weighted five-month low. Over the last year, the pound has, well, been pounded – losing significant ground against the yen and euro, as well as the ailing dollar.
Like the US, Britain has indulged in grotesque money-printing antics. The two countries might be dubbed the QE2. But the Bank of England's printing presses really have been in overdrive, with the UK's monetary base now equal to almost a fifth of GDP, up a head-spinning 169pc in a single year.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/liamhalligan/6292787/Benign-currency-neglect-could-spell-real-danger-for-US-economy.html
Showing posts with label breaking news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breaking news. Show all posts
13 October 2009
11 September 2009
The Redfern Bugler: Lehman Bros. Anniversary ("BOOM") Edition
C.H. Powell surveys the wreckage....
David Merkel on what ISN'T reported/discussed/queried by the MSM: NB see comments appended below
http://alephblog.com/2009/09/10/what-stories-arent-being-told/
USA State govt's on the rocks:
http://scepticalmarketobserver.blogspot.com/2009/09/state-budgets-we-aint-seen-nothing-yet.html
Its (still) a crooked market:
http://www.theundergroundinvestor.com/2009/09/the-coming-blowback-of-banking-fraud/
China: The next disaster in the wings
http://www.chinastakes.com/BlogArticle.aspx?id=22&aid=1343
ArbitraryVote sums it all up (see neat qualitative model at bottom of piece):
http://www.arbitraryvote.com/warning
One assumes Richard Fuld AND Henry ('The Hammer') Paulson will be keeping a low profile
David Merkel on what ISN'T reported/discussed/queried by the MSM: NB see comments appended below
http://alephblog.com/2009/09/10/what-stories-arent-being-told/
USA State govt's on the rocks:
http://scepticalmarketobserver.blogspot.com/2009/09/state-budgets-we-aint-seen-nothing-yet.html
Its (still) a crooked market:
http://www.theundergroundinvestor.com/2009/09/the-coming-blowback-of-banking-fraud/
China: The next disaster in the wings
http://www.chinastakes.com/BlogArticle.aspx?id=22&aid=1343
ArbitraryVote sums it all up (see neat qualitative model at bottom of piece):
http://www.arbitraryvote.com/warning
One assumes Richard Fuld AND Henry ('The Hammer') Paulson will be keeping a low profile
27 August 2009
The Dollar, denial and money printing ~ News Review
Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) -- The dollar’s role as a good store of value is “questionable” and the currency has a high degree of risk, said Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.
“There is a need for a global reserve system,” Stiglitz, a Columbia University economics professor, said at a conference in Bangkok today. Support from countries like China should ensure orderly discussions on a new reserve system, he added.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aH9O..zWjeHs
Denial is a psychotropic, mind-altering drug that by comparison makes crack cocaine look like health food, and addiction to it shuts down the brain. America’s denial about its out-of-control spending, non-repayable debt, financial sector fraud and deceit, decadent political institutions, epic dereliction of leadership duty, fiscal and monetary immorality, and disastrously dishonest system of cronyism is leading the nation into an economic nuclear winter of desolation and chaos.
http://www.24hgold.com/english/contributor.aspx?contributor=Stewart%20Dougherty&article=2289016786G10020
On average, people in the cities surveyed worked 1,902 hours per year, but in Lyon and Paris they worked 1,582 and 1,594 hours respectively. In Cairo, they worked 2,373 hours, while in Seoul they worked 2,312 hours.
The richest workers are in New York and Zurich, where they would have to work nine hours to buy an iPod nano, while workers in Mumbai needed to work 20 nine-hour days – nearly one month's salary – to buy the gadget.
Copenhagen, Zurich, Geneva and New York were the cities where employees had the highest gross wages.
In terms of the most expensive cities, London fell from the top of the list to the 21st place because of the pound's devaluation, the survey showed.
Oslo is the world's most expensive city now, followed by Zurich, Copenhagen, Geneva and Tokyo, while New York was on the list at number 6.
'76 percent of the Europeans estimate that the crisis will not be over by 2012' (GlobalEurometre June 2009)
A potted history of Fed chairpersons by Quinn.........
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/quinn/2009/0825.html
US money printing goes full tilt....Summary
The Federal Reserve and the federal government are attempting to "plug the gap" caused by a slowdown of private credit/debt creation.
Non-US demand for the dollar must remain high, or the dollar will fall.
Demand for US assets is in negative territory for 2009
The TIC report and Federal Reserve Custody Account are reviewed and compared
The Federal Reserve has effectively been monetizing US government debt by cleverly enabling foreign central banks to swap their Agency debt for Treasury debt.
The shell game that the Fed is currently playing obscures the fact that money is being printed out of thin air and used to buy US government debt.
http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/shell-game-how-federal-reserve-monetizing-debt/25806
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fed-enabling-foreign-central-banks-swap-out-their-agency-debt-treasuries
“There is a need for a global reserve system,” Stiglitz, a Columbia University economics professor, said at a conference in Bangkok today. Support from countries like China should ensure orderly discussions on a new reserve system, he added.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aH9O..zWjeHs
Denial is a psychotropic, mind-altering drug that by comparison makes crack cocaine look like health food, and addiction to it shuts down the brain. America’s denial about its out-of-control spending, non-repayable debt, financial sector fraud and deceit, decadent political institutions, epic dereliction of leadership duty, fiscal and monetary immorality, and disastrously dishonest system of cronyism is leading the nation into an economic nuclear winter of desolation and chaos.
http://www.24hgold.com/english/contributor.aspx?contributor=Stewart%20Dougherty&article=2289016786G10020
On average, people in the cities surveyed worked 1,902 hours per year, but in Lyon and Paris they worked 1,582 and 1,594 hours respectively. In Cairo, they worked 2,373 hours, while in Seoul they worked 2,312 hours.
The richest workers are in New York and Zurich, where they would have to work nine hours to buy an iPod nano, while workers in Mumbai needed to work 20 nine-hour days – nearly one month's salary – to buy the gadget.
Copenhagen, Zurich, Geneva and New York were the cities where employees had the highest gross wages.
In terms of the most expensive cities, London fell from the top of the list to the 21st place because of the pound's devaluation, the survey showed.
Oslo is the world's most expensive city now, followed by Zurich, Copenhagen, Geneva and Tokyo, while New York was on the list at number 6.
'76 percent of the Europeans estimate that the crisis will not be over by 2012' (GlobalEurometre June 2009)
A potted history of Fed chairpersons by Quinn.........
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/quinn/2009/0825.html
US money printing goes full tilt....Summary
The Federal Reserve and the federal government are attempting to "plug the gap" caused by a slowdown of private credit/debt creation.
Non-US demand for the dollar must remain high, or the dollar will fall.
Demand for US assets is in negative territory for 2009
The TIC report and Federal Reserve Custody Account are reviewed and compared
The Federal Reserve has effectively been monetizing US government debt by cleverly enabling foreign central banks to swap their Agency debt for Treasury debt.
The shell game that the Fed is currently playing obscures the fact that money is being printed out of thin air and used to buy US government debt.
http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/shell-game-how-federal-reserve-monetizing-debt/25806
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fed-enabling-foreign-central-banks-swap-out-their-agency-debt-treasuries
19 August 2009
Must reads ~ Why Iceland and Latvia Won't (and Can't) Pay / GoogleWiki to rule
Iceland promises to be merely the first sovereign nation to lead the pendulum swing away from an ostensibly “real economy” ideology of free markets to an awareness that in practice, this rhetoric turns out to be a junk economics favorable to banks and global creditors.
As far as I am aware, this agreement is the first since the Young Plan for Germany’s reparations debt to subordinate international debt obligations to the capacity-to-pay principle.
http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson08182009.html
Gary concours with my disintermediation of elites thesis...but goes a tad too far, like all libertarians......
Wikipedia and Google Will Bring Down Establishments All Over the World
Back in the early 1990's, I was told about a German economist with an American name: Paul C. Martin. He had written a book titled Paymaster Germany. Its thesis: Germany cannot send home its Turkish and other immigrants. They would break the German economy by pulling their money out of the country. Anyway, that's what my German contacts told me about the book. It has never been translated
Recently, I did a search for "Paul C. Martin." I got a page. The #2 entry was a Wikipedia article on him. It is in German. You can find the page here.
There is an option available on the Google entry: Translate this page. I clicked it. Within a few seconds, I had the article in English. Wiki knew I read English.
The article is readable. There are some minor grammatical errors, but I can easily get the gist of it. The author's books are listed in English.
Wiki is available in dozens of languages. It is replacing all other general encyclopedias. The division of labor is working.
If you find a Wiki entry with an error, you can correct it using the Edit feature. I do this from time to time. I don't get paid, but I want things right. This mentality is widespread among Wiki users. The articles keep getting better.
If readers of encyclopedias were evil-minded, they would deface the entries by adding lies. Yet this is not done often, and the errors are found and corrected rapidly.
Ideological wars do break out. Then the page is locked by a committee. You have to apply to update the entry. If there were many such disputes, it would be impossible to sort them out. There would not be enough volunteers to serve on the committees.
The Wiki system relies on volunteers. It works. It relies on honest intentions. This usually works. It relies on digital translation. This works well enough to allow the transmission of basic information – more than most readers can remember. Our minds are the weak links now, not the translation software.
The translation software will get better. In 20 years, it will probably rival the skills of a human translator who did not learn both languages as a bi-lingual child. It may take less time than 20 years.
This will increase the division of intellectual labor. It will vastly expand our horizons. Already, we can find out what other nationalities think about such topics as the origin of specific wars.
The way we learn about history will change for the better. Revisionist history will spread. The Establishments of all nations will suffer.
Wiki has dramatically increased the world's intellectual division of labor by providing software and open access posting. It is self-policed. This lets decentralization find a central location on the Web. Type in any topic and the type "Wiki." Click. You will find it on Google instantly.
Where did the creator of Wiki get this idea on the intellectual division of labor? From a dead economist, F. A. Hayek, who write a 1945 article on "The Use of Knowledge in Society," one of the most important articles in the history of economics. Who told him about Hayek? Mark Thornton, staff economist at the Mises Institute. What organization makes spectacular use of the Web through posting free books in PDF? The Mises Institute.
Neither Google nor Wikipedia existed a decade ago.
Then there is the sheer volume of local historical materials. Think of American Civil War history if every small-town newspaper were on-line. Researchers could compare accounts of battles. The same goes for archives of letters.
On the top floor of the library at Louisiana State University at Shreveport, there is an astounding collection of antiquarian books. It was assembled by an eccentric millionaire. There is a full-time curator. I have seen this collection. It is mind-boggling. There is a large section on Civil War memorial books written by specific army units. Yet almost no one knows of this collection. In effect, it is closed to the general public because of a lack of publicity.
Let me provide another example. A prominent university in the South has the largest collection of Ku Klux Klan material anywhere. I was informed by a far-left Ph.D. historian whose grandfather was the first professor of psychology at that university in 1918 that if you were not a Klan member, you were not hired to be on the faculty. This is hearsay. I happen to believe it. He told me about the KKK collection. Almost no one knows it is there, except for Klan members who are interested in historical scholarship. This is a limited audience. The library does not publicize its existence. Why not? Because questions might be raised about the origin of the collection. Political incorrectness affects libraries.
ON-LINE LIBRARIES
Collection by collection, Google will scan tens of millions of books and post them. Probably 80% of the world's pre-1923 books will be online in 50 years – maybe less. All it will take is manpower and cheap scanning machines, which keep getting cheaper.
It is possible to have a book scanned and converted to a Google-searchable PDF file for 16 cents a page if you allow the outfit to cut the spine of the book. It's 36 cents if you don't allow this. You can set up a website for $10 a year for domain name hosting, plus an extra $10 if you want your identity as the owner concealed from snoopers. Use Hostgator or Hostmonster to host an unlimited number of domains for $8 a month. You can post PDFs.
In every language these books will be online. They will eventually be translated digitally "on the fly."
Then will come archive collections of letters. They will take longer to convert to searchable typeset words. But that day will come.
The cost of writing history will fall. It is costly to do research in a major research library. You must pay for the plane fair, overnight housing, and a rental car. This can easily cost $300 a day – or three times that in cities like London or Berlin. Only a few people can afford this, and only for short visits.
If the library's pre-1923 books and archive materials were online, anyone could do it at home. The little guy would be able to compete.
Say that you want access to all academic journals. These are all on-line. It is expensive to access them. You must be an enrolled student or a faculty member to access them. Solution? Hire a student intern who has on-line access to the library. Then have the student look up the articles you want to read and send PDFs to you. Or just use his access code to do your own research. "That's cheating," says the librarian. But taxpayers pay for the library. I suffer little guilt.
Every time you find a Google link to a locked article on JSTOR, you contact your intern. Presto. Unlocked!
Some interns work for free to gain college credit. Do I have access to such an intern? To ask this question is to answer it.
Soon, brains and insight will rule, not bank accounts and official accreditation by state licensing bureaus. The Establishments will all be in defensive mode.
It is happening today. This is going to increase.
Truth will fragment. New paradigms will emerge from the competition. The quality of thought will improve when bank accounts are not major barriers to entry.
THE GATEKEEPERS' DILEMMA
The gatekeepers can no longer control the flow of information. This has never happened in man's history. Gatekeepers still control the gates. But the walls have holes in them. These holes are widening.
The gatekeepers control accreditation. They no longer control content except where it is very expensive to do primary research, such as nuclear physics. In the social sciences and humanities, it's just about over.
When I think "Establishment," my mind goes back to Rocky III. Mr. T's character tells Apollo Creed, "you're going down."
If you find something worth posting, post it. Call this "post-it notes." It beats armed revolution every time.
Make a free online YouTube or Blip.tv course out of your favorite controversial topic. Imitate Salman Khan: www.KhanAcademy.org. (Note: Khan graduated from MIT and the Harvard Business School.) He did it with these low-cost or free tools.
In short, if you find something evil that wobbles, push it.
August 18, 2009
Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit http://www.garynorth.com. He is also the author of a free 20-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible.
Copyright © 2009 Gary North
Back in the early 1990's, I was told about a German economist with an American name: Paul C. Martin. He had written a book titled Paymaster Germany. Its thesis: Germany cannot send home its Turkish and other immigrants. They would break the German economy by pulling their money out of the country. Anyway, that's what my German contacts told me about the book. It has never been translated
Recently, I did a search for "Paul C. Martin." I got a page. The #2 entry was a Wikipedia article on him. It is in German. You can find the page here.
There is an option available on the Google entry: Translate this page. I clicked it. Within a few seconds, I had the article in English. Wiki knew I read English.
The article is readable. There are some minor grammatical errors, but I can easily get the gist of it. The author's books are listed in English.
Wiki is available in dozens of languages. It is replacing all other general encyclopedias. The division of labor is working.
If you find a Wiki entry with an error, you can correct it using the Edit feature. I do this from time to time. I don't get paid, but I want things right. This mentality is widespread among Wiki users. The articles keep getting better.
If readers of encyclopedias were evil-minded, they would deface the entries by adding lies. Yet this is not done often, and the errors are found and corrected rapidly.
Ideological wars do break out. Then the page is locked by a committee. You have to apply to update the entry. If there were many such disputes, it would be impossible to sort them out. There would not be enough volunteers to serve on the committees.
The Wiki system relies on volunteers. It works. It relies on honest intentions. This usually works. It relies on digital translation. This works well enough to allow the transmission of basic information – more than most readers can remember. Our minds are the weak links now, not the translation software.
The translation software will get better. In 20 years, it will probably rival the skills of a human translator who did not learn both languages as a bi-lingual child. It may take less time than 20 years.
This will increase the division of intellectual labor. It will vastly expand our horizons. Already, we can find out what other nationalities think about such topics as the origin of specific wars.
The way we learn about history will change for the better. Revisionist history will spread. The Establishments of all nations will suffer.
Wiki has dramatically increased the world's intellectual division of labor by providing software and open access posting. It is self-policed. This lets decentralization find a central location on the Web. Type in any topic and the type "Wiki." Click. You will find it on Google instantly.
Where did the creator of Wiki get this idea on the intellectual division of labor? From a dead economist, F. A. Hayek, who write a 1945 article on "The Use of Knowledge in Society," one of the most important articles in the history of economics. Who told him about Hayek? Mark Thornton, staff economist at the Mises Institute. What organization makes spectacular use of the Web through posting free books in PDF? The Mises Institute.
Neither Google nor Wikipedia existed a decade ago.
Then there is the sheer volume of local historical materials. Think of American Civil War history if every small-town newspaper were on-line. Researchers could compare accounts of battles. The same goes for archives of letters.
On the top floor of the library at Louisiana State University at Shreveport, there is an astounding collection of antiquarian books. It was assembled by an eccentric millionaire. There is a full-time curator. I have seen this collection. It is mind-boggling. There is a large section on Civil War memorial books written by specific army units. Yet almost no one knows of this collection. In effect, it is closed to the general public because of a lack of publicity.
Let me provide another example. A prominent university in the South has the largest collection of Ku Klux Klan material anywhere. I was informed by a far-left Ph.D. historian whose grandfather was the first professor of psychology at that university in 1918 that if you were not a Klan member, you were not hired to be on the faculty. This is hearsay. I happen to believe it. He told me about the KKK collection. Almost no one knows it is there, except for Klan members who are interested in historical scholarship. This is a limited audience. The library does not publicize its existence. Why not? Because questions might be raised about the origin of the collection. Political incorrectness affects libraries.
ON-LINE LIBRARIES
Collection by collection, Google will scan tens of millions of books and post them. Probably 80% of the world's pre-1923 books will be online in 50 years – maybe less. All it will take is manpower and cheap scanning machines, which keep getting cheaper.
It is possible to have a book scanned and converted to a Google-searchable PDF file for 16 cents a page if you allow the outfit to cut the spine of the book. It's 36 cents if you don't allow this. You can set up a website for $10 a year for domain name hosting, plus an extra $10 if you want your identity as the owner concealed from snoopers. Use Hostgator or Hostmonster to host an unlimited number of domains for $8 a month. You can post PDFs.
In every language these books will be online. They will eventually be translated digitally "on the fly."
Then will come archive collections of letters. They will take longer to convert to searchable typeset words. But that day will come.
The cost of writing history will fall. It is costly to do research in a major research library. You must pay for the plane fair, overnight housing, and a rental car. This can easily cost $300 a day – or three times that in cities like London or Berlin. Only a few people can afford this, and only for short visits.
If the library's pre-1923 books and archive materials were online, anyone could do it at home. The little guy would be able to compete.
Say that you want access to all academic journals. These are all on-line. It is expensive to access them. You must be an enrolled student or a faculty member to access them. Solution? Hire a student intern who has on-line access to the library. Then have the student look up the articles you want to read and send PDFs to you. Or just use his access code to do your own research. "That's cheating," says the librarian. But taxpayers pay for the library. I suffer little guilt.
Every time you find a Google link to a locked article on JSTOR, you contact your intern. Presto. Unlocked!
Some interns work for free to gain college credit. Do I have access to such an intern? To ask this question is to answer it.
Soon, brains and insight will rule, not bank accounts and official accreditation by state licensing bureaus. The Establishments will all be in defensive mode.
It is happening today. This is going to increase.
Truth will fragment. New paradigms will emerge from the competition. The quality of thought will improve when bank accounts are not major barriers to entry.
THE GATEKEEPERS' DILEMMA
The gatekeepers can no longer control the flow of information. This has never happened in man's history. Gatekeepers still control the gates. But the walls have holes in them. These holes are widening.
The gatekeepers control accreditation. They no longer control content except where it is very expensive to do primary research, such as nuclear physics. In the social sciences and humanities, it's just about over.
When I think "Establishment," my mind goes back to Rocky III. Mr. T's character tells Apollo Creed, "you're going down."
If you find something worth posting, post it. Call this "post-it notes." It beats armed revolution every time.
Make a free online YouTube or Blip.tv course out of your favorite controversial topic. Imitate Salman Khan: www.KhanAcademy.org. (Note: Khan graduated from MIT and the Harvard Business School.) He did it with these low-cost or free tools.
In short, if you find something evil that wobbles, push it.
August 18, 2009
Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit http://www.garynorth.com. He is also the author of a free 20-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible.
Copyright © 2009 Gary North
As far as I am aware, this agreement is the first since the Young Plan for Germany’s reparations debt to subordinate international debt obligations to the capacity-to-pay principle.
http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson08182009.html
Gary concours with my disintermediation of elites thesis...but goes a tad too far, like all libertarians......
Wikipedia and Google Will Bring Down Establishments All Over the World
Back in the early 1990's, I was told about a German economist with an American name: Paul C. Martin. He had written a book titled Paymaster Germany. Its thesis: Germany cannot send home its Turkish and other immigrants. They would break the German economy by pulling their money out of the country. Anyway, that's what my German contacts told me about the book. It has never been translated
Recently, I did a search for "Paul C. Martin." I got a page. The #2 entry was a Wikipedia article on him. It is in German. You can find the page here.
There is an option available on the Google entry: Translate this page. I clicked it. Within a few seconds, I had the article in English. Wiki knew I read English.
The article is readable. There are some minor grammatical errors, but I can easily get the gist of it. The author's books are listed in English.
Wiki is available in dozens of languages. It is replacing all other general encyclopedias. The division of labor is working.
If you find a Wiki entry with an error, you can correct it using the Edit feature. I do this from time to time. I don't get paid, but I want things right. This mentality is widespread among Wiki users. The articles keep getting better.
If readers of encyclopedias were evil-minded, they would deface the entries by adding lies. Yet this is not done often, and the errors are found and corrected rapidly.
Ideological wars do break out. Then the page is locked by a committee. You have to apply to update the entry. If there were many such disputes, it would be impossible to sort them out. There would not be enough volunteers to serve on the committees.
The Wiki system relies on volunteers. It works. It relies on honest intentions. This usually works. It relies on digital translation. This works well enough to allow the transmission of basic information – more than most readers can remember. Our minds are the weak links now, not the translation software.
The translation software will get better. In 20 years, it will probably rival the skills of a human translator who did not learn both languages as a bi-lingual child. It may take less time than 20 years.
This will increase the division of intellectual labor. It will vastly expand our horizons. Already, we can find out what other nationalities think about such topics as the origin of specific wars.
The way we learn about history will change for the better. Revisionist history will spread. The Establishments of all nations will suffer.
Wiki has dramatically increased the world's intellectual division of labor by providing software and open access posting. It is self-policed. This lets decentralization find a central location on the Web. Type in any topic and the type "Wiki." Click. You will find it on Google instantly.
Where did the creator of Wiki get this idea on the intellectual division of labor? From a dead economist, F. A. Hayek, who write a 1945 article on "The Use of Knowledge in Society," one of the most important articles in the history of economics. Who told him about Hayek? Mark Thornton, staff economist at the Mises Institute. What organization makes spectacular use of the Web through posting free books in PDF? The Mises Institute.
Neither Google nor Wikipedia existed a decade ago.
Then there is the sheer volume of local historical materials. Think of American Civil War history if every small-town newspaper were on-line. Researchers could compare accounts of battles. The same goes for archives of letters.
On the top floor of the library at Louisiana State University at Shreveport, there is an astounding collection of antiquarian books. It was assembled by an eccentric millionaire. There is a full-time curator. I have seen this collection. It is mind-boggling. There is a large section on Civil War memorial books written by specific army units. Yet almost no one knows of this collection. In effect, it is closed to the general public because of a lack of publicity.
Let me provide another example. A prominent university in the South has the largest collection of Ku Klux Klan material anywhere. I was informed by a far-left Ph.D. historian whose grandfather was the first professor of psychology at that university in 1918 that if you were not a Klan member, you were not hired to be on the faculty. This is hearsay. I happen to believe it. He told me about the KKK collection. Almost no one knows it is there, except for Klan members who are interested in historical scholarship. This is a limited audience. The library does not publicize its existence. Why not? Because questions might be raised about the origin of the collection. Political incorrectness affects libraries.
ON-LINE LIBRARIES
Collection by collection, Google will scan tens of millions of books and post them. Probably 80% of the world's pre-1923 books will be online in 50 years – maybe less. All it will take is manpower and cheap scanning machines, which keep getting cheaper.
It is possible to have a book scanned and converted to a Google-searchable PDF file for 16 cents a page if you allow the outfit to cut the spine of the book. It's 36 cents if you don't allow this. You can set up a website for $10 a year for domain name hosting, plus an extra $10 if you want your identity as the owner concealed from snoopers. Use Hostgator or Hostmonster to host an unlimited number of domains for $8 a month. You can post PDFs.
In every language these books will be online. They will eventually be translated digitally "on the fly."
Then will come archive collections of letters. They will take longer to convert to searchable typeset words. But that day will come.
The cost of writing history will fall. It is costly to do research in a major research library. You must pay for the plane fair, overnight housing, and a rental car. This can easily cost $300 a day – or three times that in cities like London or Berlin. Only a few people can afford this, and only for short visits.
If the library's pre-1923 books and archive materials were online, anyone could do it at home. The little guy would be able to compete.
Say that you want access to all academic journals. These are all on-line. It is expensive to access them. You must be an enrolled student or a faculty member to access them. Solution? Hire a student intern who has on-line access to the library. Then have the student look up the articles you want to read and send PDFs to you. Or just use his access code to do your own research. "That's cheating," says the librarian. But taxpayers pay for the library. I suffer little guilt.
Every time you find a Google link to a locked article on JSTOR, you contact your intern. Presto. Unlocked!
Some interns work for free to gain college credit. Do I have access to such an intern? To ask this question is to answer it.
Soon, brains and insight will rule, not bank accounts and official accreditation by state licensing bureaus. The Establishments will all be in defensive mode.
It is happening today. This is going to increase.
Truth will fragment. New paradigms will emerge from the competition. The quality of thought will improve when bank accounts are not major barriers to entry.
THE GATEKEEPERS' DILEMMA
The gatekeepers can no longer control the flow of information. This has never happened in man's history. Gatekeepers still control the gates. But the walls have holes in them. These holes are widening.
The gatekeepers control accreditation. They no longer control content except where it is very expensive to do primary research, such as nuclear physics. In the social sciences and humanities, it's just about over.
When I think "Establishment," my mind goes back to Rocky III. Mr. T's character tells Apollo Creed, "you're going down."
If you find something worth posting, post it. Call this "post-it notes." It beats armed revolution every time.
Make a free online YouTube or Blip.tv course out of your favorite controversial topic. Imitate Salman Khan: www.KhanAcademy.org. (Note: Khan graduated from MIT and the Harvard Business School.) He did it with these low-cost or free tools.
In short, if you find something evil that wobbles, push it.
August 18, 2009
Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit http://www.garynorth.com. He is also the author of a free 20-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible.
Copyright © 2009 Gary North
Back in the early 1990's, I was told about a German economist with an American name: Paul C. Martin. He had written a book titled Paymaster Germany. Its thesis: Germany cannot send home its Turkish and other immigrants. They would break the German economy by pulling their money out of the country. Anyway, that's what my German contacts told me about the book. It has never been translated
Recently, I did a search for "Paul C. Martin." I got a page. The #2 entry was a Wikipedia article on him. It is in German. You can find the page here.
There is an option available on the Google entry: Translate this page. I clicked it. Within a few seconds, I had the article in English. Wiki knew I read English.
The article is readable. There are some minor grammatical errors, but I can easily get the gist of it. The author's books are listed in English.
Wiki is available in dozens of languages. It is replacing all other general encyclopedias. The division of labor is working.
If you find a Wiki entry with an error, you can correct it using the Edit feature. I do this from time to time. I don't get paid, but I want things right. This mentality is widespread among Wiki users. The articles keep getting better.
If readers of encyclopedias were evil-minded, they would deface the entries by adding lies. Yet this is not done often, and the errors are found and corrected rapidly.
Ideological wars do break out. Then the page is locked by a committee. You have to apply to update the entry. If there were many such disputes, it would be impossible to sort them out. There would not be enough volunteers to serve on the committees.
The Wiki system relies on volunteers. It works. It relies on honest intentions. This usually works. It relies on digital translation. This works well enough to allow the transmission of basic information – more than most readers can remember. Our minds are the weak links now, not the translation software.
The translation software will get better. In 20 years, it will probably rival the skills of a human translator who did not learn both languages as a bi-lingual child. It may take less time than 20 years.
This will increase the division of intellectual labor. It will vastly expand our horizons. Already, we can find out what other nationalities think about such topics as the origin of specific wars.
The way we learn about history will change for the better. Revisionist history will spread. The Establishments of all nations will suffer.
Wiki has dramatically increased the world's intellectual division of labor by providing software and open access posting. It is self-policed. This lets decentralization find a central location on the Web. Type in any topic and the type "Wiki." Click. You will find it on Google instantly.
Where did the creator of Wiki get this idea on the intellectual division of labor? From a dead economist, F. A. Hayek, who write a 1945 article on "The Use of Knowledge in Society," one of the most important articles in the history of economics. Who told him about Hayek? Mark Thornton, staff economist at the Mises Institute. What organization makes spectacular use of the Web through posting free books in PDF? The Mises Institute.
Neither Google nor Wikipedia existed a decade ago.
Then there is the sheer volume of local historical materials. Think of American Civil War history if every small-town newspaper were on-line. Researchers could compare accounts of battles. The same goes for archives of letters.
On the top floor of the library at Louisiana State University at Shreveport, there is an astounding collection of antiquarian books. It was assembled by an eccentric millionaire. There is a full-time curator. I have seen this collection. It is mind-boggling. There is a large section on Civil War memorial books written by specific army units. Yet almost no one knows of this collection. In effect, it is closed to the general public because of a lack of publicity.
Let me provide another example. A prominent university in the South has the largest collection of Ku Klux Klan material anywhere. I was informed by a far-left Ph.D. historian whose grandfather was the first professor of psychology at that university in 1918 that if you were not a Klan member, you were not hired to be on the faculty. This is hearsay. I happen to believe it. He told me about the KKK collection. Almost no one knows it is there, except for Klan members who are interested in historical scholarship. This is a limited audience. The library does not publicize its existence. Why not? Because questions might be raised about the origin of the collection. Political incorrectness affects libraries.
ON-LINE LIBRARIES
Collection by collection, Google will scan tens of millions of books and post them. Probably 80% of the world's pre-1923 books will be online in 50 years – maybe less. All it will take is manpower and cheap scanning machines, which keep getting cheaper.
It is possible to have a book scanned and converted to a Google-searchable PDF file for 16 cents a page if you allow the outfit to cut the spine of the book. It's 36 cents if you don't allow this. You can set up a website for $10 a year for domain name hosting, plus an extra $10 if you want your identity as the owner concealed from snoopers. Use Hostgator or Hostmonster to host an unlimited number of domains for $8 a month. You can post PDFs.
In every language these books will be online. They will eventually be translated digitally "on the fly."
Then will come archive collections of letters. They will take longer to convert to searchable typeset words. But that day will come.
The cost of writing history will fall. It is costly to do research in a major research library. You must pay for the plane fair, overnight housing, and a rental car. This can easily cost $300 a day – or three times that in cities like London or Berlin. Only a few people can afford this, and only for short visits.
If the library's pre-1923 books and archive materials were online, anyone could do it at home. The little guy would be able to compete.
Say that you want access to all academic journals. These are all on-line. It is expensive to access them. You must be an enrolled student or a faculty member to access them. Solution? Hire a student intern who has on-line access to the library. Then have the student look up the articles you want to read and send PDFs to you. Or just use his access code to do your own research. "That's cheating," says the librarian. But taxpayers pay for the library. I suffer little guilt.
Every time you find a Google link to a locked article on JSTOR, you contact your intern. Presto. Unlocked!
Some interns work for free to gain college credit. Do I have access to such an intern? To ask this question is to answer it.
Soon, brains and insight will rule, not bank accounts and official accreditation by state licensing bureaus. The Establishments will all be in defensive mode.
It is happening today. This is going to increase.
Truth will fragment. New paradigms will emerge from the competition. The quality of thought will improve when bank accounts are not major barriers to entry.
THE GATEKEEPERS' DILEMMA
The gatekeepers can no longer control the flow of information. This has never happened in man's history. Gatekeepers still control the gates. But the walls have holes in them. These holes are widening.
The gatekeepers control accreditation. They no longer control content except where it is very expensive to do primary research, such as nuclear physics. In the social sciences and humanities, it's just about over.
When I think "Establishment," my mind goes back to Rocky III. Mr. T's character tells Apollo Creed, "you're going down."
If you find something worth posting, post it. Call this "post-it notes." It beats armed revolution every time.
Make a free online YouTube or Blip.tv course out of your favorite controversial topic. Imitate Salman Khan: www.KhanAcademy.org. (Note: Khan graduated from MIT and the Harvard Business School.) He did it with these low-cost or free tools.
In short, if you find something evil that wobbles, push it.
August 18, 2009
Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit http://www.garynorth.com. He is also the author of a free 20-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible.
Copyright © 2009 Gary North
2 August 2009
Gold Techs, Kapoom Theory....
But this is no more than an argument that the U.S. is not likely to experience a replica of an Argentina 2001 debt and currency crisis, and of course that is true. But that does not mean that a related, equally unseemly but fundamentally different catastrophic result may follow from similar causes and crisis triggers. Evidence abounds that the U.S. is trapped in a cycle of economic contraction and declining creditworthiness from which an Argentine style default with U.S. characteristics is all but inevitable.
Here we take a deep dive into the macro economics of the Argentine crisis—GDP growth, consumption, investment, inflation, industrial production, unemployment and a dozen other details of the Argentine economy in the period before it collapsed at the end of 2001. We compare the same macro economic measures during the U.S. economic crisis that started in 2008.
A few items, such as currency reserves, stand out in ways that show how different the U.S. situation is now from Argentina’s then, but most of the macro economic comparisons reveal astonishing similarities, especially measures of output and inflation.
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php?p=106493#post106493
GOLD
LONG TERM
The long term P&F chart is still in a bullish phase but it has now set a new upper support at the $915 level. A move to $900 would break below the support and two previous lows as well as an up trend line for a trend reversal signal. Just something to keep in the back of one’s mind if the price should start to drop.
As for our normal chart and indicator analysis, things are still a-okay for now. The price of gold remains above its positive sloping moving average line and the long term momentum indicator (daily version) remains in its positive zone above its positive trigger line. The volume indicator is at its highest point since its highs in late February and is above its long term positive trigger line. Nothing here yet to get worried from the long term standpoint. The rating remains BULLISH.
INTERMEDIATE TERM
Since the end of January the price of gold has been basically in a wide lateral drift with the upper and lower barriers at about the $1000 and $870 levels. I guess as long as it remains in this box, with the right wall continually moving further to the right, it would be hard to really guess which way the eventual direction of future trend will be.
While in this box the intermediate term moving average line will move in a basically lateral direction and the price of gold will continue to fluctuate above and below the moving average line. This makes it very difficult to definitively gauge the influence a crossing of the moving average line by the price will have. So, although I will continue with my normal commentary as to the positive or negative nature of the price versus its intermediate term moving average line one should keep in mind this box situation. An intermediate term trend will most likely start inside the box but its confirmation must await a move outside the box.
Having given myself the cop-out excuse in case my analysis is wrong, let’s go to the intermediate term analysis.
The price of gold has once more moved above its moving average line and the line slope is once more in the positive direction. The momentum indicator has set up a strong support just above the 48% level. This would be a level to watch (instead of the 50% level) for a real change in strength of the price move. In the mean time the momentum continues in its positive zone above its positive trending trigger line. The volume indicator is also trending positively and remains above its positive sloping trigger line. All normal indicators give me an intermediate term rating as BULLISH, at this time.
SHORT TERM
From the short term perspective we are still in good shape. The price remains above its positive trending moving average line and the momentum indicator remains in its positive zone just above its positive trigger line. As for the daily volume action, well that could be a little better but I wouldn’t complain yet. All in all, the short term rating is BULLISH.
As for the immediate direction of least resistance, that’s another story. We have the price above its very short term positive moving average line (8 DMAw) while the line remains above the short term line. However, if one looks carefully the moving average line has started its turn towards the negative (although it’s not there yet) in keeping with the lateral move of the price over the past few days. Of greater concern is the action of the more aggressive Stochastic Oscillator. It had topped out in its overbought zone and has now dropped below the overbought line and its trigger line. It is now heading lower. This is too often a precursor to a turn down in the price, at least for a short while. So, I must go with the down side as the direction of least resistance until something in the indicators changes.
SILVER
First, a quick comment on my P&F chart of silver. It has set up a strong support at the $12.00 level. A move to $11.50 would break that support and would break below an up trend line. From a P&F standpoint this is the level to watch. Until then silver remains long term bullish, P&F wise.
Silver still has a better performance versus gold over the intermediate and long term but is losing its advantage. Although this past week it performed better than gold it still has some catching up to do from the shorter term standpoint. A comparison of the two short term charts here shows that silver dropped more than gold in June and although it is recovering nicely these past two weeks it is a catch-up game and still better performance is required.
From a long term perspective silver had dropped below its moving average for a couple of weeks in early July but is back above the moving average. The average continues to slope upwards. The momentum indicator also dropped into its negative zone at the same time but is also back into the positive, above its positive trigger line. For the long term the rating is back into a BULLISH rating.
The intermediate term is not quite so lucky. Although the momentum indicator has moved back into its positive zone and above its positive trigger line the price of silver remains just below its intermediate term moving average line. The line itself is still in a negative slope. The volume indicator has been moving in a basic lateral direction over the past couple of months although it is presently above its positive sloping trigger line. On the intermediate term the best I can give the rating is a – NEUTRAL rating. Next week, should the price of silver advance again most likely this rating will go full bullish. But we’ll have to wait for it.
The short term is more encouraging. It often tells us what’s ahead for the other time periods. The price is above its moving average line and the line is sloping upwards. The very short term moving average line remains above the short term line for a direction confirmation. The momentum indicator is in its positive zone above its positive trigger line and heading higher. Only the daily volume activity could be a whole lot better. The recent two week advance in price was not accompanied by any significant increase in volume activity, in fact the daily volume seemed to have dried up. This is a real concern for the longevity of this rally. In the mean time the short term rating is BULLISH.
http://www.kitco.com/ind/burak/jul272009.html
Each major bear market in the D. J. I. A. has been accompanied by a bull market in gold and gold shares. The first two major bear markets in the D. J. I. A. did not end until the bottom green area was violated. The third and current major bear market has not yet gone below the bottom green area. This is powerful evidence that the bear market may not be complete but is ongoing.
Based on the previous bull markets in gold and gold shares the current gold bull market will not end until after the bear market in the D. J. I. A. ends.
http://www.kitco.com/ind/rosen/jul272009.html
Here we take a deep dive into the macro economics of the Argentine crisis—GDP growth, consumption, investment, inflation, industrial production, unemployment and a dozen other details of the Argentine economy in the period before it collapsed at the end of 2001. We compare the same macro economic measures during the U.S. economic crisis that started in 2008.
A few items, such as currency reserves, stand out in ways that show how different the U.S. situation is now from Argentina’s then, but most of the macro economic comparisons reveal astonishing similarities, especially measures of output and inflation.
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php?p=106493#post106493
GOLD
LONG TERM
The long term P&F chart is still in a bullish phase but it has now set a new upper support at the $915 level. A move to $900 would break below the support and two previous lows as well as an up trend line for a trend reversal signal. Just something to keep in the back of one’s mind if the price should start to drop.
As for our normal chart and indicator analysis, things are still a-okay for now. The price of gold remains above its positive sloping moving average line and the long term momentum indicator (daily version) remains in its positive zone above its positive trigger line. The volume indicator is at its highest point since its highs in late February and is above its long term positive trigger line. Nothing here yet to get worried from the long term standpoint. The rating remains BULLISH.
INTERMEDIATE TERM
Since the end of January the price of gold has been basically in a wide lateral drift with the upper and lower barriers at about the $1000 and $870 levels. I guess as long as it remains in this box, with the right wall continually moving further to the right, it would be hard to really guess which way the eventual direction of future trend will be.
While in this box the intermediate term moving average line will move in a basically lateral direction and the price of gold will continue to fluctuate above and below the moving average line. This makes it very difficult to definitively gauge the influence a crossing of the moving average line by the price will have. So, although I will continue with my normal commentary as to the positive or negative nature of the price versus its intermediate term moving average line one should keep in mind this box situation. An intermediate term trend will most likely start inside the box but its confirmation must await a move outside the box.
Having given myself the cop-out excuse in case my analysis is wrong, let’s go to the intermediate term analysis.
The price of gold has once more moved above its moving average line and the line slope is once more in the positive direction. The momentum indicator has set up a strong support just above the 48% level. This would be a level to watch (instead of the 50% level) for a real change in strength of the price move. In the mean time the momentum continues in its positive zone above its positive trending trigger line. The volume indicator is also trending positively and remains above its positive sloping trigger line. All normal indicators give me an intermediate term rating as BULLISH, at this time.
SHORT TERM
From the short term perspective we are still in good shape. The price remains above its positive trending moving average line and the momentum indicator remains in its positive zone just above its positive trigger line. As for the daily volume action, well that could be a little better but I wouldn’t complain yet. All in all, the short term rating is BULLISH.
As for the immediate direction of least resistance, that’s another story. We have the price above its very short term positive moving average line (8 DMAw) while the line remains above the short term line. However, if one looks carefully the moving average line has started its turn towards the negative (although it’s not there yet) in keeping with the lateral move of the price over the past few days. Of greater concern is the action of the more aggressive Stochastic Oscillator. It had topped out in its overbought zone and has now dropped below the overbought line and its trigger line. It is now heading lower. This is too often a precursor to a turn down in the price, at least for a short while. So, I must go with the down side as the direction of least resistance until something in the indicators changes.
SILVER
First, a quick comment on my P&F chart of silver. It has set up a strong support at the $12.00 level. A move to $11.50 would break that support and would break below an up trend line. From a P&F standpoint this is the level to watch. Until then silver remains long term bullish, P&F wise.
Silver still has a better performance versus gold over the intermediate and long term but is losing its advantage. Although this past week it performed better than gold it still has some catching up to do from the shorter term standpoint. A comparison of the two short term charts here shows that silver dropped more than gold in June and although it is recovering nicely these past two weeks it is a catch-up game and still better performance is required.
From a long term perspective silver had dropped below its moving average for a couple of weeks in early July but is back above the moving average. The average continues to slope upwards. The momentum indicator also dropped into its negative zone at the same time but is also back into the positive, above its positive trigger line. For the long term the rating is back into a BULLISH rating.
The intermediate term is not quite so lucky. Although the momentum indicator has moved back into its positive zone and above its positive trigger line the price of silver remains just below its intermediate term moving average line. The line itself is still in a negative slope. The volume indicator has been moving in a basic lateral direction over the past couple of months although it is presently above its positive sloping trigger line. On the intermediate term the best I can give the rating is a – NEUTRAL rating. Next week, should the price of silver advance again most likely this rating will go full bullish. But we’ll have to wait for it.
The short term is more encouraging. It often tells us what’s ahead for the other time periods. The price is above its moving average line and the line is sloping upwards. The very short term moving average line remains above the short term line for a direction confirmation. The momentum indicator is in its positive zone above its positive trigger line and heading higher. Only the daily volume activity could be a whole lot better. The recent two week advance in price was not accompanied by any significant increase in volume activity, in fact the daily volume seemed to have dried up. This is a real concern for the longevity of this rally. In the mean time the short term rating is BULLISH.
http://www.kitco.com/ind/burak/jul272009.html
Each major bear market in the D. J. I. A. has been accompanied by a bull market in gold and gold shares. The first two major bear markets in the D. J. I. A. did not end until the bottom green area was violated. The third and current major bear market has not yet gone below the bottom green area. This is powerful evidence that the bear market may not be complete but is ongoing.
Based on the previous bull markets in gold and gold shares the current gold bull market will not end until after the bear market in the D. J. I. A. ends.
http://www.kitco.com/ind/rosen/jul272009.html
19 June 2009
Background on Iran
Iran's Mousavi addresses protesters:
He announced that a rally scheduled for Friday had been cancelled, and that his supporters should prepare for a major march planned for Saturday afternoon from Tehran's Revolution Square to Freedom Square.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/20096181391437647.html
===
Robert Fisk: Secret letter 'proves Mousavi won' in Iran:
In a highly sophisticated society like Iran, forgery is as efficient as anywhere in the West and there are reasons for both distrusting and believing this document.
http://snipurl.com/kdu2t
===
Thousands of Iranians march in defiance as death toll reaches 32:
Ahmadinejad's main election rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, called for massive rallies around the country Thursday to mourn the dead in previous days' protests, which a leading Iranian human rights group said numbered 32.
http://www.newsobserver.com/1573/story/1573122.html
===
National Interest:
What is occurring in the streets of Tehran is greatly misinterpreted by many in the West some of whom still recall similar images of unrest from 1979 when people revolted against the monarchist regime of the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
http://www.iranian.com/main/node/68367
===
Pictures from the protests in Iran:
Warning - Images should only be viewed by a mature audience
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fhashemi/sets/72157619758530748/show/
===
Hat tip to Duncan
He announced that a rally scheduled for Friday had been cancelled, and that his supporters should prepare for a major march planned for Saturday afternoon from Tehran's Revolution Square to Freedom Square.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/20096181391437647.html
===
Robert Fisk: Secret letter 'proves Mousavi won' in Iran:
In a highly sophisticated society like Iran, forgery is as efficient as anywhere in the West and there are reasons for both distrusting and believing this document.
http://snipurl.com/kdu2t
===
Thousands of Iranians march in defiance as death toll reaches 32:
Ahmadinejad's main election rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi, called for massive rallies around the country Thursday to mourn the dead in previous days' protests, which a leading Iranian human rights group said numbered 32.
http://www.newsobserver.com/1573/story/1573122.html
===
National Interest:
What is occurring in the streets of Tehran is greatly misinterpreted by many in the West some of whom still recall similar images of unrest from 1979 when people revolted against the monarchist regime of the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
http://www.iranian.com/main/node/68367
===
Pictures from the protests in Iran:
Warning - Images should only be viewed by a mature audience
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fhashemi/sets/72157619758530748/show/
===
Hat tip to Duncan
2 June 2009
Picture of Air France F-GZCP Airbus A330-20 missing crashed at sea after it broke up in flight ~ Rudder/VS loss/failure
Update:
Speculations. rudder inputs....
"there is a potential for pilots to make large and/or sequential rudder inputs in response to unusual or emergency situations, such as an unusual attitude or upset, turbulence....situation."
Leaky toilet/// Well so much for that one....!!
From the FAB photos yesterday, Row 42 was the only visible seating that I was able to identify from the wreckage. Additional clues are starting to trickle out with the evening article from Le Journal du Dimanche quoting an informed source saying:
“one of the avenues explored by the BEA is a leak in a waste water circuit of the device, reported shortly after take-off by a first automated message warning”
Now this is were the “leakage” problem starts to become very interesting after takeoff. Obviously, Air France, BEA, and the French Government have looked over the history string of warning/maintenance messages from ACARS for this aircraft. Note 2245 first reported problem with toilet:
22 10/06 WRN WN0906010210 221002006AUTO FLT AP OFF 09-06-01 AF 447
38 31/06 FLR FR0905312245 38310006VSC X2 ,,,,,,, LAV CONF 09-05-31 AF 447
From my previous post:
I found it curious this door was not in any of the pictures when the wreckage was arranged inside the hangar for the press last week. As I noted here on June 9th, and also here, this door was getting special attention by investigators. As suspected, now we know that BEA has known the reason for the aircraft loss since the first night.
The below reference requires an ACARS expert verification, however some researchers believe the ACARS messages for the leaking toilet was first reported May 9, 2009. From the ACARS Database (ACARS Mechanics Code Listing / Fault Codes), I show A332 (F-GZCP) report for May 12, 2009:
ACARS mode: 2 Aircraft reg: F-GZCP [Airbus A332] ACARS mode: 2 Aircraft reg: F-GZCP [Airbus A332] Message label: B0 Block id: 2 Msg no: J29A Flight id: AF0031 [IAH-CDG] [Air France] Flight id: AF0031 [IAH-CDG] [Air France] Message content: – /KZWY.AFN/FMHAFR031 F-GZCP 045907/FPON38124W078339, 1/FCOADS,01/FCOATC, 01E36F / —-[ 12/05/2009 06:59 ]- —
Rudder stomp and loss of tail???
The cause of the crash is unknown. France's Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la Sécurité de l'Aviation Civile (BEA) is in charge of the official investigation.[89] The BEA released a press release on 5 June, that stated: [90]
A large quantity of more or less accurate information and attempts at explanations concerning the accident are currently being circulated. The BEA reminds those concerned that in such circumstances, it is advisable to avoid all hasty interpretations and speculation on the basis of partial or non-validated information. At this stage of the investigation, the only established facts are:
the presence near the airplane’s planned route over the Atlantic of significant convective cells typical of the equatorial regions;
based on the analysis of the automatic messages broadcast by the plane, there are inconsistencies between the various speeds measured.
—BEA[91]
The main task currently occupying the investigators is recovering parts of the aircraft, primarily the flight recorders. BEA chief Paul-Louis Arslanian said that he is not optimistic about finding them since they may be under as much as 3,000 m (9,800 ft) of water and the terrain under this portion of the ocean is very rugged.[92] Investigators are hoping to find the aircraft's lower aft section, since the black box is located there.[93] Although France has never recovered a black box from similar depths,[92] there is precedent for such an operation: in 1988, an independent contractor was able to recover the cockpit voice recorder of South African Airways Flight 295 from a depth of 4,900 m (16,000 ft) in a search area of between 80 and 250 square nautical miles (270 and 860 km2).[94][95] The black box contained a water-activated acoustic "pinger", which should have remained active for at least 30 days, allowing search for the location of the signal origin.[96]
On 2 July 2009, the BEA released a detailed intermediate report which detailed descriptions of all known facts, and a summary of the visual examination of the rudder and the other parts of the aircraft that had been recovered at that time.[10] According to the BEA, this examination showed that:
the aircraft was likely to have struck the surface of the sea in a straight line, with high vertical acceleration;
there were no signs of fire or explosion;
the aircraft was not destroyed in flight.[10][97]
[edit]
Airspeed inconsistency
Prior to the disappearance of the aircraft, the automatic reporting system, ACARS, sent messages indicating disagreement in the indicated air speed (IAS) readings. A spokesperson for Airbus claimed that "the air speed of the aircraft was unclear" to the pilots.[64] Paul-Louis Arslanian, of France's air accident investigation agency, confirmed that F-GZCP previously had problems calculating its speed as did other A330 aircraft stating "We have seen a certain number of these types of faults on the A330 ... There is a programme of replacement, of improvement".[98] The problems primarily occurred on the Airbus A320, but, awaiting a recommendation from Airbus, Air France delayed installing new pitots on A330/A340 yet increased inspection frequencies.[99]
There have been several cases where inaccurate airspeed information led to flight incidents on the A330. Two of those incidents specifically involved pitot probes, one of the types of sensor used to measure airspeed.[100][Note 3] In the first incident, an Air France A340-300 (F-GLZL), en route from Japan to France, experienced an event at 31,000 feet (9,400 m) in which the airspeed was incorrectly reported and the autopilot automatically disengaged. Bad weather together with obstructed drainage holes in all three pitot tubes were subsequently found to be the cause.[101] In the second incident, an Air France A340-300 (F-GLZN) en-route to New York encountered turbulence followed by the autoflight systems going offline, warnings over the accuracy of the reported airspeed and two minutes of stall alerts.[101]
On 6 June 2009, Arslanian said that Air France had not replaced pitot probes as Airbus recommended on F-GZCP, saying that "it does not mean that without replacing the probes that the A330 was dangerous."[99] Air France issued a further clarification of the situation:
"1) Malfunctions in the pitot probes on the A320 led the manufacturer to issue a recommendation in September 2007 to change the probes. This recommendation also applies to long-haul aircraft using the same probes and on which a very few incidents of a similar nature had occurred."
Since it was not an airworthiness directive (AD), the guidelines allow the operator to apply the recommendations at its discretion. However, Air France implemented the change on its A320 fleet where the incidents of water ingress were observed.
"2) Starting in May 2008 Air France experienced incidents involving a loss of airspeed data in flight (see two incidents above) in cruise phase on A340s and A330s. These incidents were analysed with Airbus as resulting from pitot probe icing for a few minutes, after which the phenomenon disappeared."
After discussing these with the manufacturer, Air France sought a means of reducing these incidents, and Airbus indicated that the new pitot probe designed for the A320 was not designed to prevent cruise level ice-over. However, in 2009 tests suggested that the new probe could improve its reliability, prompting Air France to initiate and accelerate the replacement program,[102] however not before F-GZCP underwent its major overhaul on April 16.[103] On 4 June, Airbus issued an Accident Information Telex to operators of all Airbus models reminding pilots of the recommended Abnormal and Emergency Procedures to be taken in the case of unreliable airspeed indication.[104] By 17 June 2009, Air France has replaced all Pitot tubes on its A330 type aircraft.[84]
French Transport Minister, Dominique Bussreau, said "Obviously the pilots [of Flight 447] did not have the right speed showing, which can lead to two bad consequences for the life of the aircraft: under-speed, which can lead to a stall, and over-speed, which can lead to the aircraft breaking up because it is approaching the speed of sound and the structure of the plane is not made for resisting such speeds".[105] On 11 June 2009, a spokesman from the BEA reminded that there was no conclusive evidence at the moment linking Pitot malfunction to the AF447 crash, and this was reiterated on 17 June 2009 by the BEA chief, Paul-Louis Arslanian.[84][106][107]
The incident which befell Flight 447 has some parallels with incidents involving A330 aircraft flown by other carriers.[108][109][110][111] Three similar reports are on file at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), with two incidents relating to Airbus A330 with the flight computer problems, plus one which involved a Boeing 777.[Note 4][112] In the October 2008 incident, this fault caused injuries to passengers and damage to the aircraft on Qantas Flight 72, en route from Singapore to Perth, Western Australia, which was forced into a dive by a malfunctioning ADIRU. These incidents often started with the autopilot disengaging and sending ADIRU failure messages. Incorrect speed indications were also observed.[112] The type of airframe and model of ADIRU involved in the Qantas Flight 72 incident were also previously involved in another incident on Qantas Flight 68, 2006.[101] A memo leaked from Airbus suggests that there was no evidence of ADIRU malfunction on Flight 447 similar to the failure in the Qantas incidents.[113] However, the Qantas aircraft were equipped with ADIRUs manufactured by Northrop Grumman, while Flight 447 was equipped with an ADIRU manufactured by Honeywell.[109]
Blue Ice?
Situation “extreme” in the manual Airbus (English Translation)(Emphasis mine)
20 Juin 2009 By Yann PHILIPPIN and Michel Delean
Leak Suspect
The JDD procured manual A 330/340 for the training of pilots (Flight Crew Training Manual “). At the reading, the first automatic alert message sent by the device via the ACARS system corresponds to a sensor failure (code 34-11-15). The manual also provides, in this case, the inconsistency of indications of speed, specifying that it “may result” Pitot “blocked or frozen. Another Acars message indicates a failure of two of the three ADIRU these computers which calculate particular, thanks to information provided by sensors, speed and altitude. The manual describes the alarms that are triggered when “the data produced by two ADIRU are wrong but different.” However, many of these alarms correspond to seven Acars messages sent by plane the night of the crash (disconnect the autopilot and pushing the regulator, etc.)..
Finally, the manual states that “in extreme situations in which two or three ADR [computers] give false information”, it becomes more difficult “for the computer to identify which ADIRU also provides reliable information and disconnect others. In this case, the system may display on the control screens of information “that appear to be reliable but are in fact false.” A sort of bug in the manual provided … Pilots must “rely on their basic skills in piloting and perform corrective actions required, specifies the same document
According to one informed source, one of the avenues explored by the BEA is a leak in a waste water circuit of the device, reported shortly after take-off by a first automated message warning of the Airbus A 330. The hypothesis examined is whether the leak, undetectable to the crew, causing a prolonged flow of water, then when the device crosses temperatures – 50 ° C, a significant gel composite membrane (half metal , half-composite carbon-type) that is located inside the fuselage in the rear of the unit. This gel, according to the same source, which could cause a sudden rupture of the structure of the device in flight.
As suggested in my post earlier today, the below “LePost” article now explains the interest by several on-line aviation professionals on the Lavatory Error Message beginning at 22:45:
Note: The below posting is translated from a foreign message board and is odd to me. Need ACARS expertise explaining the references to the toilet messages.
Nevertheless, the first message after the toilet at 22:45 this post off autopilot
22 10/06 WRN WN0906010210 221002006AUTO FLT AP OFF 09-06-01 AF 447 22 10/06 WRN WN0906010210 221002006AUTO FLT AP OFF 09-06-01 AF 447
38 31/06 FLR FR0905312245 38310006VSC X2,,,,,,,LAV CONF 09-05-31 AF 447 38 31/06 FLR FR0905312245 38310006VSC X2 ,,,,,,, LAV CONF 09-05-31 AF 447
Bottom came first. Do not judge for errors in spelling, copy the text manually. And remember, was a signal of problems with the toilet. Here you are, match the most important. I also think that this should start the investigation.
http://luckybogey.wordpress.com/
-The bodies were intact with flail injuries.
-The bodies were unclothed.
-There were no burns present.
-There was no water in the lungs.
-There were two groups of bodies found 50 miles apart.
Tactical Aviators are familiar with flail injuries. They are associated with ejecting (from a doomed aircraft) at high speed into the airstream. The high speed air fractures extremities, and tears away clothing. Had the aircraft burned or exploded there would have been burn marks and smoke in the lungs, there were neither. Had the aircraft ditched and sank water would have been present in the lungs thus far there is none. Most telling is the two groups 50 miles apart and the bodies were intact. Had it impacted at a high rate of speed neither would be the case.
A very sad tragedy; now the investigators must find out why.
Four hours into the flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, the Airbus A330-200s three speed sensors, or pitot tubes started providing "incoherent" readings.
A faulty air speed indicator could mislead pilots into flying faster than the aircraft could withstand, or faster than it should be flown into turbulence two circumstances that could lead to the craft coming apart in flight.
Air France has promised to replace all first-generation Thales sensors on its 34 long-haul A330 and A340 planes "within days", but the airline's director general, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, said today that he was "not convinced" that the sensors caused the crash.
"This (replacement) programme has been accelerated because we know that when the accident happened there were problems with the speed indicators," he said, before adding: "I am not convinced that the sensors were the cause." Air France launched a programme to replace its old probes on April 27, after recording several icing problems on the speed sensors in May 2008. "We did this because we thought it would reduce the number of non-catastrophic accidents," said Mr Gourgoeon.
It now transpires that the first batch of new probes arrived just three days before the crash of flight AF 447 on June 1.
Airbus today denied a French newspaper report that it was considering grounding its fleet of A330 and A340 planes in the wake of the disaster, reiterating a European Aviation Safety Agency statement that they were "safe to fly".
Meanwhile, two terror suspects who died alongside 226 other passengers on the stricken jet have been ruled out as a cause of the disaster.
The two individuals only "shared the same name" as known Islamic radicals, posthumous security checks found.
Vertical stabliser found.
The stablizer broke at the attach points and did not impact the water at the same speed as other recovered weckage. Loss of the rudder in flight looks increasingly certain.
Analysis from the aircraft nerds at Project Seven
From the picture it appears to be substantially intact; appearing to have been sheared near or at the forward attachment points. The rudder is also in place (60-70%). If the tail section was found apart from the rest of the aircraft and is the first piece in the field of wreckage then I believe the cause is verified.
Max Beta Q is the maximum dynamic pressure (side load) that the Empennage (Tail) is stressed to. As an aircraft accelerates the dynamic pressure increases on the entire airframe. Beta is yaw, an airliner is stressed to rudder throw and release (to counter yaw produced when an engine fails). With an increase in speed the rudder effectiveness also increases to the point it can damage the structure. To prevent this damage a rudder limiter is used to restrict the amount of rudder that can be deflected.
The A 330 had an electrical limiter that was part of the fly by wire system. A fault code was sent before the aircraft broke up. If large rudder movements were input either by the failing computers or the crew it is likely Max Beta Q was exceeded resulting in the vertical tail failing from the side load. In effect the aircraft flies sideways which causes the relative wind to push on the side area of the tail instead of slicing cleanly threw the air with the leading edge. If it reaches a critical pressure (Max Beta Q) then catastrophic failure occurs. The black boxes may not reveal what caused the fly by wire system to fail.
Australian incident provides leads, evedence for this crash senario..
Next some back ground; the A 330 series aircraft has documented flight control events resulting in erroneous inputs and in flight upsets.
“ATSB (Australian Transportation Safety Board) found that the A330’s primary ADIRU sent erroneous data (spikes) on many parameters to systems in the aircraft, including the primary flight computers, that resulted in the autopilot disconnecting and two violent pitch-down events. Disassembly of the units will not be done until EMI testing is complete in order to prevent disturbance to the hardware. After disassembly, individual modules will be tested separately.”
EMI is electromagnetic interference; the ATSB believes that EMI may have caused the anomaly in the ADIRU which then sent improper commands to the flight control causing “violent pitch-down events”. Take note of the sequence: Auto pilot off, violent maneuvers until the crew could disable the ADIRU.
Project Seven.
UPDATES......
Wreckage found by Brazilian military...
Nelson Jobim says the debris, located some 435 miles to the northeast of Brazil's Fernando de Noronha archipelago, does indeed belong to the missing flight. A French commercial ship that was the first to arrive on the scene made the confirmation.
Spotted floating on the water, in two spots located approximately 40 miles apart, were an airplane seat, a life preserver, kerosene, and other non-metalic debris. Brazilian naval ships are heading to the site to recover the items and to continue the search. They are expected to arrive Wednesday morning.
Breaking blog info....detailed weather analysis here..
Geohack location of crash site.
Text messages from Norwegian passengers appear to be rumors only but were reported thus.... According to a Norwegian newspaper, several passengers on board Air France flight 447 sent text messages to family members shortly before the plane disappeared from radar screens in Brazil. The flight was scheduled to arrive in Paris at 11:10 CET on June 1, 2009.
The messages included "I love you" and "I'm afraid."
WIKI
Aircraft
The aircraft involved was an Airbus A330-203, powered by two General Electric CF6-80E1 engines.[10] The manufacturer's serial number was 660, and the French aircraft registration was F-GZCP.[10] The first flight of the aircraft was on 25 February 2005 and at the time of the accident it had flown for 18,870 hours.[10] On 17 August 2006, F-GZCP was involved in a ground collision with Airbus A321-211 F-GTAM at Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris. F-GTAM was substantially damaged and F-GZCP suffered minor damage.[11] F-GZCP underwent a major overhaul on 16 April 2009.[12] From 5 May 2009 until 31 May 2009 the aircraft carried under 24 different flight names from Paris to and from 13 different destinations on 4 continents outside of Europe.[13]
[edit]
Accident
Rio de Janeiro
22:03, 31 May
Fernando de Noronha
01:33, 1 June
Last transmission at
3.5777N 30.3744W
02:14, 1 June
Paris
Expected at 09:10,
1 June
Approximate flight path of AF 447. The solid red line shows the actual route. The dashed line indicates the planned route beginning with the position of the last transmission heard.
The aircraft was on a scheduled international passenger flight from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, France. The aircraft departed Rio de Janeiro-Galeão International Airport on 31 May 2009 at 19:03 local time (22:03 UTC), with a scheduled arrival at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport approximately 11 hours later.
The last verbal contact with the aircraft was at 01:33 UTC, when it was near waypoint INTOL (1°21′39″S 32°49′53″W) located 565 km (351 mi) off Brazil's north-eastern coast. The crew reported that they expected to use UN873 airway and enter Senegalese-controlled airspace at waypoint TASIL (4°0′18″N 29°59′24″W) within 50 minutes, and that the aircraft was flying normally at an altitude of 10,670 m (35,000 ft) and a speed of 840 km/h (520 mph).[14][15][16] The aircraft left Brazil Atlantic radar surveillance at 01:48 UTC.
[edit]
Automated message and equipment malfunction
The last contact with the aircraft was at 02:14 UTC, four hours after take-off, when its avionics automatically transmitted several messages via ACARS indicating multiple systems failures. The first of these messages, at 2:10 UTC, reportedly indicated that the autopilot had disengaged and the fly-by-wire went into 'alternate law' flight control mode. This happens when multiple failures of redundant systems occur[17]. Next, the aircraft transmitted several messages indicating failures of the Air Data Inertial Reference Unit (ADIRU), the Integrated Standby Instrument System (a backup system providing basic flight instruments), and the master units of the primary and secondary flight control computers. The final message received, at 02:14 UTC, indicated a possible cabin depressurization ("cabin vertical speed warning") at location 3°34′40″N 30°22′28″W.[18][19][20]
French accident investigators have claimed that ACARS messages indicated that the aircraft's electronics were giving different airspeeds prior to its final message.[21] A spokesperson for Airbus claimed that "the air speed of the aircraft was unclear" to the pilots.[21] The interpreted airspeed presented to pilots on the Primary Flight Display is derived from the pitot tube, Air Data Reference unit and synthesized from the ADIRU units and finally processed by the flight computers on the aircraft with Normal Law and most Alternative Law circumstances.[22][23]
[edit]
Weather
A satellite image of the area, at the approximate time of the incident, showed severe weather conditions occurring 49,000 ft (15 kilometres (9.3 mi)) above the Atlantic Ocean and over the intended path of Flight 447. According to commercial transport pilots familiar with the route, it is likely that the flight crew of the Air France aircraft was aware of the intensity of the storm in the flight path at that altitude long before actually encountering the thunderstorms.[citation needed] From satellite images taken near the time of the incident, it appears that the aircraft encountered a severe thunderstorm approximately 650 miles (1,050 km) in length, likely containing hail and extreme turbulence.[citation needed]
Commercial air transport crews routinely encounter this type of storm in this area. Generally, according to pilots familiar with this route, when storms of this type are encountered, a course either circumnavigating the storm or diverting to weaker portions of the storm is normally taken.[citation needed]
In this instance, shortly after that last verbal contact with Air Traffic Control about 350 miles (563 km) northeast of Natal, Brazil (station identifier SBNT), the aircraft likely traversed an area of intense deep convection which had formed within a broad band of thunderstorms along the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ).[citation needed] Turbulence in the vicinity of these rapidly-developing storms may have contributed to the accident.[24][25][26][27]
[edit]
Search and rescue
Cockpit of a Brazilian C-130 Hercules involved in search operations. The aircraft flies at low altitude over the ocean, 650 km north of the Fernando de Noronha islands, while the crew surveys the surface.
Brazilian air traffic controllers contacted air traffic control in Dakar at 02:20 UTC, when they noticed that the plane had not made the required radio call signaling its crossing into Senegalese airspace.[14] The Brazilian Air Force then began a search and rescue operation from the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando de Noronha,[14] and at 19:00 UTC on 1 June, Spain sent a CASA 235 maritime patrol plane in search and rescue operations near Cape Verde.[28] French reconnaissance planes were also dispatched, including one Breguet Atlantic from Dakar,[29] and the French requested satellite equipment from the United States to help find the plane.[30] Brazilian Air Force spokesperson Colonel Henry Munhoz told Brazilian TV that radar on Cape Verde failed to pick up the aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean.[14]
Early on, officials with Air France and the French government presumed that the plane had been lost with no survivors. An Air France spokesperson told L'Express that there was "no hope for survivors,"[31][32][33] and French President Nicolas Sarkozy told relatives of the passengers that there was only a "minimal" chance that anyone survived.[30]
Late on 1 June, the deputy chief of the Brazilian Aeronautical Communications Center, Jorge Amaral, confirmed that 30 minutes after the Air France Airbus had emitted the automatic report, a commercial pilot had reported the sighting of "orange dots" in the middle of the Atlantic, which could indicate the glow of wreckage on fire.[34][35] This sighting was reported by a TAM Airlines crew flying from Europe to Brazil, at approximately 1,300 km (800 mi) from Fernando de Noronha.[34][35] The Brazilian newspaper O Globo reported that wreckage debris was discovered off the Senegalese coast, but that its origin was still uncertain.[36] EarthTimes and news.com.au reported that the crew of the French freighter Douce France spotted debris floating on the ocean in the area earlier indicated by the TAM crew.[37][38]
At 15:20 UTC on 2 June, the Brazilian Air Force found wreckage ("white pieces and electrical conductors") and oil spots strewn along a 5 km (3 mi) band.[39] After meeting with relatives of the Brazilians on the plane, the Brazilian Defence Minister Nelson Jobim first believed that the debris found off the coast was from Flight 447,[3][40] but on June 5 at around 9:00 AM EDT, Brazilian officials announced that they had not, in fact, recovered anything from Flight 447, as the oil slick and debris field found on June 2 could not have come from the plane.[41] Brazilian vice-president José Alencar, acting in the stead of president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was out of the country, declared three days of official mourning after the finding was confirmed.[42] However, the confirmation proved to be premature as it was later discovered that none of the items in question was debris from the missing aircraft. The search for the plane's black boxes continued.
On 2 June, two French Navy vessels, Foudre and Vent̫se, were en route to the suspected crash site. Also among the ships sent to the site was the French research vessel Pourquoi Pas?, equipped with two mini-submarines that can descend to 6,000 m (20,000 ft)[43] Рthe area of the Atlantic in which the plane went down may be as deep as 4,700 m (15,000 ft).[44] A United States Navy Lockheed Martin P3 Orion MR submarine-hunting aircraft was also deployed in the search due to its low altitude endurance and patrol capability, sonar and magnetic anomaly detector (MAD) sensor suite.[45]
On 3 June, the first Brazilian Navy ship, the patrol boat NPa Grajaú, reached the area in which the first debris was spotted. The Brazilian Navy has sent a total of five ships to the debris site; the frigate F Constituição and the corvette Cv Caboclo are scheduled to reach the area on 4 June, the frigate F BosÃsio on 6 June and the tankship NT Almirante Gastão Motta on 7 June.[46][47]
On 4 June, the Brazilian Air Force claimed they had recovered the first debris from the Air France crash site, 340 miles (550 km) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha archipelago.[48] However, the Brazilian Air Force later said that the debris did not come from the flight in question.
On 5 June, the French defence minister Hervé Morin announced that a French nuclear submarine is also en route to the crash site to assist in finding the wreckage.[21]
[edit]
Crash site
An oil slick thought to have been caused by the crashed Air France flight, but later determined to be from a cargo ship.
At 15:20 UTC on 2 June, an Embraer R-99 operated by the Brazilian Air Force found wreckage strewn along a 5 km (3 mi) band 650 km (400 mi) northeast of Fernando de Noronha Island, near Saint Peter and Paul Rocks. It included a plane seat, an orange buoy, a barrel, "white pieces and electrical conductors" and signs of oil and jet fuel.[39]
Later that day, after meeting with relatives of the Brazilians on the aircraft, Brazilian Defence Minister Nelson Jobim announced that the Air Force believed the wreckage was from Flight 447.[3][49] Brazilian vice-president José Alencar (acting as president since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was out of the country) declared three days of official mourning.[50]
Early the next morning, French military spokesperson Christophe Prazuck said that the French military believed "there was no longer any room for doubt" that the debris was from the aircraft.[49] However, on 5 June, Brazilian officials announced that none of the debris they had recovered was from the airplane. It is not yet known whether debris spotted earlier, including what appeared to be a large section of fuselage, was from the plane or not.[1] Brazilian air force General Ramon Cardoso said on 5 June that officials now knew the discovery of a cargo pallet was inconsequential because Flight 447 was not carrying wooden pallets.[51]
On 5 June, around 9:00 AM EDT, Brazilian officials announced that they had not, in fact, recovered anything from Flight 447, as the oil slick and debris field found on 2 June could not have come from the plane.[41]
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE55059220090601?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0&sp=true
Aircraft serviced 6 weeks ago. New Item via al Jazerra...
24 May 2009
'WE'RE OUT OF MONEY' ~ Obama
Hat tip to Troy Oz for reading Drudge.
Sat May 23 2009 10:32:18 ET
In a sobering holiday interview with C-SPAN, President Obama boldly told Americans: "We are out of money."
C-SPAN host Steve Scully broke from a meek Washington press corps with probing questions for the new president.
SCULLY: You know the numbers, $1.7 trillion debt, a national deficit of $11 trillion. At what point do we run out of money?
OBAMA: Well, we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we've made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we've seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.
So we've got a short-term problem, which is we had to spend a lot of money to salvage our financial system, we had to deal with the auto companies, a huge recession which drains tax revenue at the same time it's putting more pressure on governments to provide unemployment insurance or make sure that food stamps are available for people who have been laid off.
So we have a short-term problem and we also have a long-term problem. The short-term problem is dwarfed by the long-term problem. And the long-term problem is Medicaid and Medicare. If we don't reduce long-term health care inflation substantially, we can't get control of the deficit.
So, one option is just to do nothing. We say, well, it's too expensive for us to make some short-term investments in health care. We can't afford it. We've got this big deficit. Let's just keep the health care system that we've got now.
Along that trajectory, we will see health care cost as an overall share of our federal spending grow and grow and grow and grow until essentially it consumes everything...
SCULLY: When you see GM though as “Government Motors,” you're reaction?
OBAMA: Well, you know – look we are trying to help an auto industry that is going through a combination of bad decision making over many years and an unprecedented crisis or at least a crisis we haven't seen since the 1930's. And you know the economy is going to bounce back and we want to get out of the business of helping auto companies as quickly as we can. I have got more enough to do without that. In the same way that I want to get out of the business of helping banks, but we have to make some strategic decisions about strategic industries...
SCULLY: States like California in desperate financial situation, will you be forced to bail out the states?
OBAMA: No. I think that what you're seeing in states is that anytime you got a severe recession like this, as I said before, their demands on services are higher. So, they are sending more money out. At the same time, they're bringing less tax revenue in. And that's a painful adjustment, what we're going end up seeing is lot of states making very difficult choices there...
SCULLY: William Howard Taft served on the court after his presidency, would you have any interest in being on the Supreme Court?
OBAMA: You know, I am not sure that I could get through Senate confirmation...
Developing...
Sat May 23 2009 10:32:18 ET
In a sobering holiday interview with C-SPAN, President Obama boldly told Americans: "We are out of money."
C-SPAN host Steve Scully broke from a meek Washington press corps with probing questions for the new president.
SCULLY: You know the numbers, $1.7 trillion debt, a national deficit of $11 trillion. At what point do we run out of money?
OBAMA: Well, we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we've made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we've seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.
So we've got a short-term problem, which is we had to spend a lot of money to salvage our financial system, we had to deal with the auto companies, a huge recession which drains tax revenue at the same time it's putting more pressure on governments to provide unemployment insurance or make sure that food stamps are available for people who have been laid off.
So we have a short-term problem and we also have a long-term problem. The short-term problem is dwarfed by the long-term problem. And the long-term problem is Medicaid and Medicare. If we don't reduce long-term health care inflation substantially, we can't get control of the deficit.
So, one option is just to do nothing. We say, well, it's too expensive for us to make some short-term investments in health care. We can't afford it. We've got this big deficit. Let's just keep the health care system that we've got now.
Along that trajectory, we will see health care cost as an overall share of our federal spending grow and grow and grow and grow until essentially it consumes everything...
SCULLY: When you see GM though as “Government Motors,” you're reaction?
OBAMA: Well, you know – look we are trying to help an auto industry that is going through a combination of bad decision making over many years and an unprecedented crisis or at least a crisis we haven't seen since the 1930's. And you know the economy is going to bounce back and we want to get out of the business of helping auto companies as quickly as we can. I have got more enough to do without that. In the same way that I want to get out of the business of helping banks, but we have to make some strategic decisions about strategic industries...
SCULLY: States like California in desperate financial situation, will you be forced to bail out the states?
OBAMA: No. I think that what you're seeing in states is that anytime you got a severe recession like this, as I said before, their demands on services are higher. So, they are sending more money out. At the same time, they're bringing less tax revenue in. And that's a painful adjustment, what we're going end up seeing is lot of states making very difficult choices there...
SCULLY: William Howard Taft served on the court after his presidency, would you have any interest in being on the Supreme Court?
OBAMA: You know, I am not sure that I could get through Senate confirmation...
Developing...
22 May 2009
News Snippets ~ UK , predictions, silver, Mitch's desert planet boomtown.. Ag/Au on the up..
Britain better put the IMF on speed dial.....
As the UK's public borrowings reach record levels, Britain's credit outlook has been lowered from stable to negative by the ratings agency Standard & Poor's. The agency cited government debt and political uncertainty with an election looming for its decision. It is the first time that Britain has been on negative outlook since S & P introduced outlooks in the 1980s. The move could eventually lead to a cut in the UK's Triple A rating and leave the Government in a position where it would have to pay more to borrow on financial markets. Official data released overnight also shows British public borrowing hit a record high for the month of April. The pound tumbled sharply and shares also fell in response to the Standard & Poor's decision..
................
On the qualification of predictions...
The late JK Galbraith, one of the twentieth century's most prominent economists, observed wryly that the purpose of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. The American baseball star Yogi Berra, famous for his malapropisms, said: "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."
Recent history bears that out. Just about every official forecaster around the world underestimated the impacts of the global financial crisis. Over the past year the International Monetary Fund has revised down its forecasts for the global economy month after month. Just ten months ago, it was predicting that the global economy would expand by more than 4 per cent over the year to the end of 2009. Now it sees global growth going backwards by 1.3 per cent.
The Reserve Bank and the Treasury, too, have been consistently wrong during the course of the crisis - or, to put it more kindly, their forecasts have been overtaken by events. Within weeks of being issued in February, the updated economic and financial outlook from Treasury predicting that Australia would avoid recession looked heroic, bordering on ludicrous. Of course, it's almost certain that these forecasts were based on assumptions chosen to accentuate the positive. The last thing the central bankers or the econocrats want to do is undermine public confidence by predicting a recession until it would be utterly implausible not to.
Silver breaks out...
Mitch Hooke is a boso spruiker not to be taken seriously... the hyperbolic dimple will say anything,imo
The mining industry has released modelling saying 23,500 jobs will be lost by 2020 under the Federal Government's emissions trading scheme.
Around half the job losses are forecast to be in Queensland's coal industry, and Minerals Council head Mitch Hooke says those figures will multiply in the future, with job losses doubling by 2030."New South Wales would be the second highest level of job losses - a bit over 4,000 direct jobs [lost]," he said."Put a multiplier on that and you can see these figures really start to become quite significant."
He says one of the fundamental failures of Australia's emissions trading scheme is that its targets are far ahead of other countries. (Liar, liar, pants on fire Mitch...)
Hey Mitch, how many job losses in agriculture and tourism under this senario.....
Now, the MIT study has been published in a peer-reviewed journal -- The American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate (subs. req'd) -- which obviously it makes it much more credible and high-profile. Reuters has a good story on it, "Global warming could be twice as bad as forecast." The study concludes:
The MIT Integrated Global System Model is used to make probabilistic projections of climate change from 1861 to 2100. Since the model's first projections were published in 2003 substantial improvements have been made to the model and improved estimates of the probability distributions of uncertain input parameters have become available. The new projections are considerably warmer than the 2003 projections, e.g., the median surface warming in 2091 to 2100 is 5.2°C compared to 2.4°C in the earlier study. Many changes contribute to the stronger warming; among the more important ones are taking into account the cooling in the second half of the 20th century due to volcanic eruptions for input parameter estimation and a more sophisticated method for projecting GDP growth which eliminated many low emission scenarios.
[Note: That rise is compared to 1981-2000 temperature levels. So you can add at least 0.5 °C and 1.0 °F for comparison with pre-industrial temperatures, which I did in the headline -- see "A (Hopefully) Clarifying Note on Temperature."]
The MIT press release calls for "rapid and massive" action to avoid this. Study co-author Ronald Prinn, the co-director of the Joint Program and director of MIT's Center for Global Change Science, says, it is important "to base our opinions and policies on the peer-reviewed science... There's no way the world can or should take these risks." Duh!
Global warming will hit us so quickly and dramatically going forward that idiots like Mitch will carry the shame of their denial for the rest of their lives round their necks like a dead albatros...
Standard Chartered say buy Gold Silver...
Standard Chartered is including gold and silver as one of four main recommendations to its private banking clients, according to a presentation by chief investment strategist, Lim Say Boon, in Dubai today.
The UK’s second largest bank by market capitalization has been winning clients in a flight to quality from its crashing rivals, and this global trend has also been evident in the Middle East.
Clients are being recommended to purchase gold and silver on price pull backs as the precious metals have a low correlation to traditional asset classes. The bank will recommend on different ways to invest in the metals.
As the UK's public borrowings reach record levels, Britain's credit outlook has been lowered from stable to negative by the ratings agency Standard & Poor's. The agency cited government debt and political uncertainty with an election looming for its decision. It is the first time that Britain has been on negative outlook since S & P introduced outlooks in the 1980s. The move could eventually lead to a cut in the UK's Triple A rating and leave the Government in a position where it would have to pay more to borrow on financial markets. Official data released overnight also shows British public borrowing hit a record high for the month of April. The pound tumbled sharply and shares also fell in response to the Standard & Poor's decision..
................
On the qualification of predictions...
The late JK Galbraith, one of the twentieth century's most prominent economists, observed wryly that the purpose of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. The American baseball star Yogi Berra, famous for his malapropisms, said: "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future."
Recent history bears that out. Just about every official forecaster around the world underestimated the impacts of the global financial crisis. Over the past year the International Monetary Fund has revised down its forecasts for the global economy month after month. Just ten months ago, it was predicting that the global economy would expand by more than 4 per cent over the year to the end of 2009. Now it sees global growth going backwards by 1.3 per cent.
The Reserve Bank and the Treasury, too, have been consistently wrong during the course of the crisis - or, to put it more kindly, their forecasts have been overtaken by events. Within weeks of being issued in February, the updated economic and financial outlook from Treasury predicting that Australia would avoid recession looked heroic, bordering on ludicrous. Of course, it's almost certain that these forecasts were based on assumptions chosen to accentuate the positive. The last thing the central bankers or the econocrats want to do is undermine public confidence by predicting a recession until it would be utterly implausible not to.
Silver breaks out...
Mitch Hooke is a boso spruiker not to be taken seriously... the hyperbolic dimple will say anything,imo
The mining industry has released modelling saying 23,500 jobs will be lost by 2020 under the Federal Government's emissions trading scheme.
Around half the job losses are forecast to be in Queensland's coal industry, and Minerals Council head Mitch Hooke says those figures will multiply in the future, with job losses doubling by 2030."New South Wales would be the second highest level of job losses - a bit over 4,000 direct jobs [lost]," he said."Put a multiplier on that and you can see these figures really start to become quite significant."
He says one of the fundamental failures of Australia's emissions trading scheme is that its targets are far ahead of other countries. (Liar, liar, pants on fire Mitch...)
Hey Mitch, how many job losses in agriculture and tourism under this senario.....
Now, the MIT study has been published in a peer-reviewed journal -- The American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate (subs. req'd) -- which obviously it makes it much more credible and high-profile. Reuters has a good story on it, "Global warming could be twice as bad as forecast." The study concludes:
The MIT Integrated Global System Model is used to make probabilistic projections of climate change from 1861 to 2100. Since the model's first projections were published in 2003 substantial improvements have been made to the model and improved estimates of the probability distributions of uncertain input parameters have become available. The new projections are considerably warmer than the 2003 projections, e.g., the median surface warming in 2091 to 2100 is 5.2°C compared to 2.4°C in the earlier study. Many changes contribute to the stronger warming; among the more important ones are taking into account the cooling in the second half of the 20th century due to volcanic eruptions for input parameter estimation and a more sophisticated method for projecting GDP growth which eliminated many low emission scenarios.
[Note: That rise is compared to 1981-2000 temperature levels. So you can add at least 0.5 °C and 1.0 °F for comparison with pre-industrial temperatures, which I did in the headline -- see "A (Hopefully) Clarifying Note on Temperature."]
The MIT press release calls for "rapid and massive" action to avoid this. Study co-author Ronald Prinn, the co-director of the Joint Program and director of MIT's Center for Global Change Science, says, it is important "to base our opinions and policies on the peer-reviewed science... There's no way the world can or should take these risks." Duh!
Global warming will hit us so quickly and dramatically going forward that idiots like Mitch will carry the shame of their denial for the rest of their lives round their necks like a dead albatros...
Standard Chartered say buy Gold Silver...
Standard Chartered is including gold and silver as one of four main recommendations to its private banking clients, according to a presentation by chief investment strategist, Lim Say Boon, in Dubai today.
The UK’s second largest bank by market capitalization has been winning clients in a flight to quality from its crashing rivals, and this global trend has also been evident in the Middle East.
Clients are being recommended to purchase gold and silver on price pull backs as the precious metals have a low correlation to traditional asset classes. The bank will recommend on different ways to invest in the metals.
11 May 2009
Around the traps... Money printing, stress tests and an interim market top
Stress test BS.
"The Federal Reserve significantly scaled back the size of the capital hole facing some of the nation’s biggest banks shortly before concluding its stress tests, following two weeks of intense bargaining.
In addition, according to bank and government officials, the Fed used a different measurement of bank-capital levels than analysts and investors had been expecting, resulting in much smaller capital deficits. . .
The Fed ultimately accepted some of the banks’ pleas, but rejected others. Shortly before the test results were unveiled Thursday, the capital shortfalls at some banks shrank, in some cases dramatically, according to people familiar with the matter.”
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/05/banks-watered-down-stress-test/
We are going to start this article with a premise, which is that the bond market and the dollar are much more important to the powers that be in the US than the stockmarket. Two months ago the stockmarket was plumbing new lows and the end of the world was nigh. Now, instead, you walk down Wall St and everything is smelling of roses. Unfortunately, however, there is a massive storm threatening to break that will necessitate the immediate sacrifice of the stockmarket, and especially those mugs who have been taken in by the recovery hype being doled out by the media and have been buying the market in the recent past.
http://news.goldseek.com/CliveMaund/1241982000.php
"The Economic Crisis and Its Implications for The Science of Economics"
Sound/video from a recent conference:
The Perimeter Institute conference on economics is being organized in an effort to better evaluate the state of economics as a predictive and descriptive science in light of the current market crisis. We believe that this requires careful, dispassionate discussion, in an atmosphere governed by the modesty and open mindedness that characterizes the scientific community. To do this we aim to bring leading economists and theorists of finance together with physicists, mathematicians, biologists and computer scientists to evaluate current theories of markets, and identify key issues that can motivate new directions for research. ...
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2009/05/the-economic-crisis-and-its-implications-for-the-science-of-economics.html
At the inflation report on Wednesday, the Bank's Governor will point towards the Bank's own internal calculations which show that the amount of cash flowing around the economy is starting to pick up. The money supply figures - M4 adjusted for the effects of complex financial market fluctuations - show a slight increase in money growth from 3.5pc to 3.9pc in Q1. Although the esoteric statistics are ignored by most City economists, within the Bank they are regarded as the most authoritative sign of whether their radical efforts to control the money supply are working.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/5304794/Money-printing-starting-to-work-says-Bank-of-England.html
"The Federal Reserve significantly scaled back the size of the capital hole facing some of the nation’s biggest banks shortly before concluding its stress tests, following two weeks of intense bargaining.
In addition, according to bank and government officials, the Fed used a different measurement of bank-capital levels than analysts and investors had been expecting, resulting in much smaller capital deficits. . .
The Fed ultimately accepted some of the banks’ pleas, but rejected others. Shortly before the test results were unveiled Thursday, the capital shortfalls at some banks shrank, in some cases dramatically, according to people familiar with the matter.”
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/05/banks-watered-down-stress-test/
We are going to start this article with a premise, which is that the bond market and the dollar are much more important to the powers that be in the US than the stockmarket. Two months ago the stockmarket was plumbing new lows and the end of the world was nigh. Now, instead, you walk down Wall St and everything is smelling of roses. Unfortunately, however, there is a massive storm threatening to break that will necessitate the immediate sacrifice of the stockmarket, and especially those mugs who have been taken in by the recovery hype being doled out by the media and have been buying the market in the recent past.
http://news.goldseek.com/CliveMaund/1241982000.php
"The Economic Crisis and Its Implications for The Science of Economics"
Sound/video from a recent conference:
The Perimeter Institute conference on economics is being organized in an effort to better evaluate the state of economics as a predictive and descriptive science in light of the current market crisis. We believe that this requires careful, dispassionate discussion, in an atmosphere governed by the modesty and open mindedness that characterizes the scientific community. To do this we aim to bring leading economists and theorists of finance together with physicists, mathematicians, biologists and computer scientists to evaluate current theories of markets, and identify key issues that can motivate new directions for research. ...
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2009/05/the-economic-crisis-and-its-implications-for-the-science-of-economics.html
At the inflation report on Wednesday, the Bank's Governor will point towards the Bank's own internal calculations which show that the amount of cash flowing around the economy is starting to pick up. The money supply figures - M4 adjusted for the effects of complex financial market fluctuations - show a slight increase in money growth from 3.5pc to 3.9pc in Q1. Although the esoteric statistics are ignored by most City economists, within the Bank they are regarded as the most authoritative sign of whether their radical efforts to control the money supply are working.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/5304794/Money-printing-starting-to-work-says-Bank-of-England.html
26 April 2009
Weekend reading:yuan swaps,money printing and commodity bulls
HONG KONG - The Chinese government's decision this month to let exporters in a small number of cities settle their overseas trade in yuan rather than in US dollars has far-reaching implications, according to economists, even though the immediate impact is minimal.
The trading hubs of Shanghai at the mouth of the Yangtze River and Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Dongguan in the Pearl River Delta further south can use the yuan in overseas trade settlement, a State Council, or cabinet, meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao said. The two deltas are the base for most of China's export-oriented industry.
The settlement scheme is voluntary and of benefit to relatively
small groups, said Pauline Loong, senior vice president in charge of China policy and risk research at CIMB-GK Securities (HK) Ltd, but "the implication is far-reaching. The scheme extends the use of the Chinese currency outside of the mainland. We see this as the first step on the road to full liberalization of China's capital account and full convertibility for the renminbi," one term for the Chinese currency, also known as the yuan.
Most international trade is carried out in US dollars. The Chinese scheme is aimed at reducing the risk from exchange-rate fluctuations and giving impetus to declining overseas trade, a statement posted on the Chinese government website said. Further details of related regulations will be released as early as possible, the statement said.
China's exports plunged 25.7% year-on-year in February as overseas consumer demand fell away amid the deepening global financial and economic crisis.
The move to allow international trade settlement in yuan in select cities is in line with the government's gradual approach to currency liberalization, said Jing Ulrich, China equities chairwoman at JP Morgan. Beijing earlier allowed companies in Hong Kong and Macau to use yuan to settle deals with partners in Guangdong and the Yangtze Delta.
http://
www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/KD21Cb01.html
Sports fans, $300 billion is just a down payment on the "quantitative easing" they will eventually need to do. They can't announce what they are really going to do or the market would throw up. But we are going to get quarterly or semi-annual announcements, saying, we are going to do another $300 billion here, another $500 billion there. Pretty soon it will be a really large total number.
When we first started out with TALF and everything, it was a couple hundred billion, and now we just throw the word trillions around and it just drips off of our tongues and we don't even think about it. A trillion is a lot. It's a big number. And the total guarantees and backups and all this stuff we are into -- I saw an estimate of $10-12 trillion. That's a lot of money.
Understand, the Fed is going to keep pumping money until we get inflation. You can count on it. I don't know what that number is; I'm guessing maybe as much as $2 trillion. I've seen various studies. Ray Dalio of Bridgewater thinks it's about $1.5 trillion. It's some very big number way beyond $300 billion, and they are going to keep at it until we get inflation.
Side point: what happens if the $300 billion they put in the system comes back to the Fed's books because banks don't put it into the Libor market because they are worried about credit risks? It does absolutely nothing for the money supply. Okay? It's like, goes here, goes back there -- it doesn't help us. The Fed has somehow got to get it into the financial system. They've got to figure out how to create some movement.
Will it create an asset bubble in stocks again? I don't know, it could. Dennis [Gartman] talked about being nervous yesterday. I would be nervous about stock markets both on the long side, as I think we are in a bear market rally, but also there is real risk in being short. Bill Fleckenstein will be here tonight. He is a very famous short trader. He closed a short fund a couple of months ago. He says he doesn't have as many good opportunities, and basically he's scared of being short with so much stimulus coming in. So it's going to work, at least in terms of reflation, but the question is, when? A year? Two years?
http://www.safehaven.com/
article-13190.htm
Commodities to rocket......
For all these reasons, commodities stocks have great potential going forward. I suspect that a year from now, 2 years from now, investors will look back at this still-neglected sector and marvel at its stock-price appreciation since. And this is really saying something, since the best years stock markets ever witness in history occur immediately after the worst years. So after the disastrous 2008, 2009 is due to be a huge up year (approaching 50%) for the general stock markets. Commodities stocks should easily double, triple, or quadruple these already large stock-market gains!
http://www.safehaven.com/article-13181.htm
IMF predicts world recession will deepen:
The International Monetary Fund has slashed growth forecasts for every major country and urged governments to take forceful action to ensure the world economy's recovery from a severe recession.
http://snipurl.com/gn7rw
Taleb on medicine and markets
How long can something be held as wrong before its practice is discontinued? A long, very long time, much longer than we think. We've know that "modern finance" and economics represented a danger to society [since 1961, with close to 400 blowup episodes including the crash of 1987] to no avail --and this blowup of the banking system will not bring any relief. Even the fact that I may have made the point in what may turn out to be the ALL TIME bestseller in economics and philosophy of science [ and the mother of all empirical evidence] might not help displace the charlatans. Some ideas from the history of Medicine (Medicina, soror philosophiae!).
Noga Arikha "Just Life in a Nutshell: Humours as common sense", in The Philosophical Forum Quarterly, XXXIX, 3:
When William Harvey demonstrated the mechanism of blood circulation in the 1620s, humoral theory and its related practices should have disappeared, because the anatomy and physiology on which it relied was incompatible with this picture of the organism. In fact, people continued to refer to spirits and humors, and doctors continued to prescribe phlebotomies, enemas, and cataplasms, for centuries more --even when it was established in the mid-1800, most notably by Louis Pasteur, that germs were the cause of disease.
See also Arikha's book (it was swallowed by my uncatalogued library so I am ...reordering it).
The most complete compendium is in Wooton Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates.
p 184 [...] why doctors for centuries imagined that their theories worked when they didn't; why there was a delay of more than two hundred years between the first experiments designed to disprove spontaneous generation and the final triumph of the alternative, the theory that living creatures always come from other living creatures; why there was a delay of two hundred years between the discovery of germs and the triumph of the germ theory of disease; why there was a delay of thirty years between the germ theory of putrefaction and the development of antisepsis; why there was a delay of sixty years between antisepsis and drug therapy. [he explains elsewhere that there was no money in microscopy, which delayed implementation...]
Elsewhere Wooton shows how surgeons resisted anesthesia (because it was considered cheating), how doctors in France were still bleeding patients at the end of the 19th century, yet: In 1851 [...] Dietl showed that bloodletting tripled the death rate in a pneumonia.
p 240- Pasteur had a sensible distrust of doctors. p 14 I took it for granted that in an open argument, good ideas would always defeat bad ideas. [...] Peer group pressure often halt progress in its track.[...] Despite the brilliant work of philosophers and historians of science, no one has really worked out how to write a history that takes account of this. p 293 Shapin tells us that "The Harvard biochemist L.J. Henderson [1878-1942] was supposed to have remarked "that it was only sometime between 1910 and 1912 ...that a random patient, with a random disease, consulting a doctor chosen at random, had, for the first time in the history of mankind, a better than 50-50 chance of profiting from the encounter."'
Also, something that explains why I am going nuts.
By 1861 [Semmelweiss] was denouncing those who had not adopted his views as murderers.
James Le Fanu: The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine (1999) talks of "collective deception".
I call this the translational problem because of a great paper by Ioannides (my hero) et al. Life Cycle of Translational Research for Medical Interventions in Science (Sept 5, 2008) --they show how long it takes from initial scientific paper to implementation --and how the cycle is lengthening. But my problem is that the gap knowledge/practice is not curable --the arrow goes from practice to knowledge.
New books on medical history: Gloria Origgi have me a book on Semmelweiss by ... Louis Ferdinand Celine! (merci mille fois). Also Francois Lebrun Se soigner autrefois Médecins, saints et sorciers aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles, Georges Vigarello Histoire des pratiques de santé, Jackie Pigeaud La maladie de l'ame, Collectif (Centre Jean Palerne): Rational et irrationel dans la médecine ancienne et médiévale. I also got a long paper by Gerd Gigerenzer on medical practice and conditional probability (I guess it is the misunderstanding of Type 2 error that is costing us so much).
Also I consider the work of Gary Taubes (and soon the book by Art DeVany) as documents in the history of medical errors.
http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/notebook.htm
Thanks to Duncan of http://www.learntotradefutures.com
The trading hubs of Shanghai at the mouth of the Yangtze River and Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Dongguan in the Pearl River Delta further south can use the yuan in overseas trade settlement, a State Council, or cabinet, meeting chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao said. The two deltas are the base for most of China's export-oriented industry.
The settlement scheme is voluntary and of benefit to relatively
small groups, said Pauline Loong, senior vice president in charge of China policy and risk research at CIMB-GK Securities (HK) Ltd, but "the implication is far-reaching. The scheme extends the use of the Chinese currency outside of the mainland. We see this as the first step on the road to full liberalization of China's capital account and full convertibility for the renminbi," one term for the Chinese currency, also known as the yuan.
Most international trade is carried out in US dollars. The Chinese scheme is aimed at reducing the risk from exchange-rate fluctuations and giving impetus to declining overseas trade, a statement posted on the Chinese government website said. Further details of related regulations will be released as early as possible, the statement said.
China's exports plunged 25.7% year-on-year in February as overseas consumer demand fell away amid the deepening global financial and economic crisis.
The move to allow international trade settlement in yuan in select cities is in line with the government's gradual approach to currency liberalization, said Jing Ulrich, China equities chairwoman at JP Morgan. Beijing earlier allowed companies in Hong Kong and Macau to use yuan to settle deals with partners in Guangdong and the Yangtze Delta.
http://
www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/KD21Cb01.html
Sports fans, $300 billion is just a down payment on the "quantitative easing" they will eventually need to do. They can't announce what they are really going to do or the market would throw up. But we are going to get quarterly or semi-annual announcements, saying, we are going to do another $300 billion here, another $500 billion there. Pretty soon it will be a really large total number.
When we first started out with TALF and everything, it was a couple hundred billion, and now we just throw the word trillions around and it just drips off of our tongues and we don't even think about it. A trillion is a lot. It's a big number. And the total guarantees and backups and all this stuff we are into -- I saw an estimate of $10-12 trillion. That's a lot of money.
Understand, the Fed is going to keep pumping money until we get inflation. You can count on it. I don't know what that number is; I'm guessing maybe as much as $2 trillion. I've seen various studies. Ray Dalio of Bridgewater thinks it's about $1.5 trillion. It's some very big number way beyond $300 billion, and they are going to keep at it until we get inflation.
Side point: what happens if the $300 billion they put in the system comes back to the Fed's books because banks don't put it into the Libor market because they are worried about credit risks? It does absolutely nothing for the money supply. Okay? It's like, goes here, goes back there -- it doesn't help us. The Fed has somehow got to get it into the financial system. They've got to figure out how to create some movement.
Will it create an asset bubble in stocks again? I don't know, it could. Dennis [Gartman] talked about being nervous yesterday. I would be nervous about stock markets both on the long side, as I think we are in a bear market rally, but also there is real risk in being short. Bill Fleckenstein will be here tonight. He is a very famous short trader. He closed a short fund a couple of months ago. He says he doesn't have as many good opportunities, and basically he's scared of being short with so much stimulus coming in. So it's going to work, at least in terms of reflation, but the question is, when? A year? Two years?
http://www.safehaven.com/
article-13190.htm
Commodities to rocket......
For all these reasons, commodities stocks have great potential going forward. I suspect that a year from now, 2 years from now, investors will look back at this still-neglected sector and marvel at its stock-price appreciation since. And this is really saying something, since the best years stock markets ever witness in history occur immediately after the worst years. So after the disastrous 2008, 2009 is due to be a huge up year (approaching 50%) for the general stock markets. Commodities stocks should easily double, triple, or quadruple these already large stock-market gains!
http://www.safehaven.com/article-13181.htm
IMF predicts world recession will deepen:
The International Monetary Fund has slashed growth forecasts for every major country and urged governments to take forceful action to ensure the world economy's recovery from a severe recession.
http://snipurl.com/gn7rw
Taleb on medicine and markets
How long can something be held as wrong before its practice is discontinued? A long, very long time, much longer than we think. We've know that "modern finance" and economics represented a danger to society [since 1961, with close to 400 blowup episodes including the crash of 1987] to no avail --and this blowup of the banking system will not bring any relief. Even the fact that I may have made the point in what may turn out to be the ALL TIME bestseller in economics and philosophy of science [ and the mother of all empirical evidence] might not help displace the charlatans. Some ideas from the history of Medicine (Medicina, soror philosophiae!).
Noga Arikha "Just Life in a Nutshell: Humours as common sense", in The Philosophical Forum Quarterly, XXXIX, 3:
When William Harvey demonstrated the mechanism of blood circulation in the 1620s, humoral theory and its related practices should have disappeared, because the anatomy and physiology on which it relied was incompatible with this picture of the organism. In fact, people continued to refer to spirits and humors, and doctors continued to prescribe phlebotomies, enemas, and cataplasms, for centuries more --even when it was established in the mid-1800, most notably by Louis Pasteur, that germs were the cause of disease.
See also Arikha's book (it was swallowed by my uncatalogued library so I am ...reordering it).
The most complete compendium is in Wooton Bad Medicine: Doctors Doing Harm Since Hippocrates.
p 184 [...] why doctors for centuries imagined that their theories worked when they didn't; why there was a delay of more than two hundred years between the first experiments designed to disprove spontaneous generation and the final triumph of the alternative, the theory that living creatures always come from other living creatures; why there was a delay of two hundred years between the discovery of germs and the triumph of the germ theory of disease; why there was a delay of thirty years between the germ theory of putrefaction and the development of antisepsis; why there was a delay of sixty years between antisepsis and drug therapy. [he explains elsewhere that there was no money in microscopy, which delayed implementation...]
Elsewhere Wooton shows how surgeons resisted anesthesia (because it was considered cheating), how doctors in France were still bleeding patients at the end of the 19th century, yet: In 1851 [...] Dietl showed that bloodletting tripled the death rate in a pneumonia.
p 240- Pasteur had a sensible distrust of doctors. p 14 I took it for granted that in an open argument, good ideas would always defeat bad ideas. [...] Peer group pressure often halt progress in its track.[...] Despite the brilliant work of philosophers and historians of science, no one has really worked out how to write a history that takes account of this. p 293 Shapin tells us that "The Harvard biochemist L.J. Henderson [1878-1942] was supposed to have remarked "that it was only sometime between 1910 and 1912 ...that a random patient, with a random disease, consulting a doctor chosen at random, had, for the first time in the history of mankind, a better than 50-50 chance of profiting from the encounter."'
Also, something that explains why I am going nuts.
By 1861 [Semmelweiss] was denouncing those who had not adopted his views as murderers.
James Le Fanu: The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine (1999) talks of "collective deception".
I call this the translational problem because of a great paper by Ioannides (my hero) et al. Life Cycle of Translational Research for Medical Interventions in Science (Sept 5, 2008) --they show how long it takes from initial scientific paper to implementation --and how the cycle is lengthening. But my problem is that the gap knowledge/practice is not curable --the arrow goes from practice to knowledge.
New books on medical history: Gloria Origgi have me a book on Semmelweiss by ... Louis Ferdinand Celine! (merci mille fois). Also Francois Lebrun Se soigner autrefois Médecins, saints et sorciers aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles, Georges Vigarello Histoire des pratiques de santé, Jackie Pigeaud La maladie de l'ame, Collectif (Centre Jean Palerne): Rational et irrationel dans la médecine ancienne et médiévale. I also got a long paper by Gerd Gigerenzer on medical practice and conditional probability (I guess it is the misunderstanding of Type 2 error that is costing us so much).
Also I consider the work of Gary Taubes (and soon the book by Art DeVany) as documents in the history of medical errors.
http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/notebook.htm
Thanks to Duncan of http://www.learntotradefutures.com
20 April 2009
Weekend Roundup
Define Money
http://schott.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/competition-define-money/?apage=1#comments
An Enemy of the People, by Henrik Ibsen
Full text
Whats the OutLook for Copper
Inflation is coming.
Will china decouple from exports
Deutsche Bank predicted there are risks that the U.S. economy could contract by as much as 10 percent in the first quarter, given the relentless wave of dismal economic data being reported in early 2009.
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews...440189320090304
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