Monday, June 29, 2009

SAR #9180

It's not so much a life I'm having, as a learning experience.


Previews: Japan's core CPI fell 1.1% last month, renewing fears it is"heading for another lengthy period of deflation." Many fear the US is following the path Japan has been on since the 1990's - only much faster.

Alphabet economics: First we hoped for a 'V' shaped event, then a 'U'. Pretty soon 'W' became the Letter of the Day. Now we seem to be going to 'L'.

Not Funny: "How do you put together a consumer economy that works when the consumers are out of work?" Herbert's question and Ilargi's meditation on the theme skirts today's essay question: Outline, in several thousand words, an economic system that produces enough wealth to let Western civilization continue, functions in a way that lets all participate both in the work and in the rewards, does not enslave future generations to debt, does not bankrupt the earth of its resources and does not degrade the environment nor the climate. The current system does not work and is breaking down; there is no viable alternative in sight.

Ooops: After seven years of slash and burn the US has decided it didn't know what it was doing and plans on reversing its plan for controlling the Afghan opium networks. Now if they'd look at the military plan they've been following for the last seven years... Both there and in Iraq.

How High, How Soon? Researchers say that 8o% of Galveston houses will have to be vacated by 2100 if water keeps rising at the rate it has in the past 100 years. That's the good news. The bad news is that this is the optimistic prediction.

Asked and Answered: "Have We Forgotten that Savings Is a Good Thing?" Yes.

Paying the Piper: 15 states' unemployment funds are gone, forcing the US Treasury to advance them money to pay the unemployed. By next year over half the states will be lined up to borrow about $17 billion to pay the idled workers. Soon there will be moves to tighten eligibility and to reduce benefits. In January 3 million were on the dole. Today 9 million are, and the number will keep rising even as the funds keep evaporating.

Doing the Laundry: China has more dollars than it wants and gets more each day, so it uses them to buy hard assets - such as oil and leases on land for agriculture. These acquisitions are not for current use, not even for use in the near future. It is hoarding.

Things Are Looking Up: Even economists are getting hot under the collar as global warming continues.

The End of Information: We seem to be embarking on a new era, the Climate Age, during which we will focus our thoughts, hopes and efforts on but two things: slowing down the rate of climate change and dealing with the damage it will do to our civilization. These tasks will be the focus of our lives and will dominate the lives of our children. The Information Age is over, and most of the information was bad news.

Friday The Thirteent, Part 47: Do you lay awake at night, fearing that bank earnings announcements this summer will be worse than living next to Freddie Krueger? Well it's not all in your mind.

The Quiet Americans: Times are so obviously bad that employees quietly accept cuts in hours, reductions in pay - glad to have a job, any job, when survival is at stake. Nothing like fear to keep the workers in line.

Momentum: President Obama has picked up another of Bush's bad habits - signing statements. In his fifth such, he objected to the part of the $106 billion war finance bill that it would limit his ability to keep hiding the activities of the World Bank and IMF from the public.

By the Numbers: Jim Hansen, Bill McKibben and others tell us that is madatory that we immediately begin lowering carbon emissions by significant amounts, in an attempt to reverse the increase in atmospheric CO2 and bring it down to 350 ppm. Otherwise, we're toast.

Porn O'Graph: All things being Equity...

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I did a search based on IE7's page error info - not coming up with anything specific to Blogger.

I also looked at line 319 of the HTML served up - nothing obviously wrong, but I'm not a coder.

If you've not already done so, edit your blog template in the Blogger page setup editor, move a widget around, move it back, save and see what happens? Perhaps a one-off error by Blogger.

From IE page error info:
Line: 319
Char: 1173
Error: 'this g.rootElement style' is null or not an object
Code: 0