Bigger Brother: Interior and Justice ministers from six EU states recommend Europe 'integrate' policing and intelligence gathering and share information on Europe's citizens with the US Security aparat, using drone aircraft, widespread video surveillance, and centralized reporting.
Centennial: The world’s oil will most likely be exhausted in 40 years’ time. Maybe much sooner, but most probably no longer. How old will your children be then? What will we have done to get ready for this? When will we start?
Ever Upward: Moody's estimates that defaults on corporate bonds will climb to 10% or more as economic growth slows worldwide.
In The Dark: The US power grid has crashed before and will crash again. The last time, President Bush vowed that the grid would be modernized. That was 5 years ago and nothing has been done. One day soon it will crash again and the politicians will promise and the electrical industry will keep making profits.
Three Eight Zero: The idea that the world can fumble about and somehow stop global warming some day in the future with perhaps a 2 or 3 degree increase is suicidal. Such a strategy encourages putting off 'till the day after the day after. Today's CO2 concentration is 385 ppm. We don't need to slow its increase, we need to reverse it, which means stopping CO2 emissions. Not cutting back someday. Stopping. No more coal, oil, natural gas. Which we won't do, so we are doomed.
Guesswork: If you take this year's production of crude oil (about 75 mbd, C&Cl), add in new sources brought on-line, subtract out depletion and repeat the process forward to 2015, the estimated global production then will be a tad less than 60 mbd - if all the megaprojects come in on time and as advertised and if the depletion rate doesn't increase. Better hope the economic downturn lasts a long time.
Need For Speed: Mortgages issued in the first half of 2007 are going bad three times as fast as the 2006 vintage, which suggests the US housing market is not through dragging down the rest of the economy.
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