A WEE Independence Celebration July 4, 2012

[Demeter]

The US Markets are closed, the coals are hot (even if they aren't lit yet) so let's make a party of this day that lives in history...for a few more years, at least. I'm not predicting the demise of the USA, but frankly, when George "W" Bush managed to first steal the election, then show that the US government was incapable of protecting either its people or their wealth (through the 9/11 attack and the financial scandals) the continuing days of US democracy were numbered.

Major US accounting scandals (courtesy of Wikipedia):

ENRON (2001)
Adelphia (2002)
AOL (2002)
Bristol-Myers Squibb (2002)
CMS Energy (2002)
Duke Energy (2002)
Dynegy (2002)
El Paso Corporation (2002)
Freddie Mac (2002)
Global Crossing (2002)
Halliburton (2002)
Homestore.com (2002 )
ImClone Systems (2002)
Kmart (2002)
Merck & Co. (2002)
Merrill Lynch (2002)
Mirant (2002)
Nicor (2002)
Peregrine Systems (2002)
Qwest Communications (2002)
Reliant Energy (2002)
Sunbeam (2002)
Tyco International (2002)
WorldCom (2002)
South Corporation (2003)
Chiquita Brands International (2004)
AIG (2004)
Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (2008)

and of course,

Lehman Bros (2010)

Then there are the scandals that DIDN'T just involve accounting irregularities...The most depressing thought is that a lot of the schemes that blew up in 2002 probably got their start under Clinton....it's a sytemic problem.

Well, we are here to document the birth and potential death of a nation through its scandals. Have at it!

[Demeter]

1. This is a revolution! And we are going to have to offend SOMEBODY!

That is a quote from the play "1776", a humorous musical about the signing of the Declaration of Independence, but that quote by John Adams was true, and is still true today. This group of men were tasked to talk, discuss and argue about the best expression that represented how we were declaring our independence from Britain.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness - The Declaration of Independence

Here are a few Independence Day Facts:

The first "draft" of the Declaration of Independence was done by Thomas Jefferson.
After a second draft, or revisions of Jefferson's draft, it was approved on July 2nd but not signed until August 2nd.
Although approved on July 2nd, it was officially adopted on July 4th.
The first celebration of Independence Day was in Philadelphia on July 8, 1776.
On this same day, the Liberty Bell was rung to gather the public for the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence by Colonel John Nixon.
The 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence did not sign at the same time.
Thomas McKean was the last to sign in January, 1777.
In 1941, Congress declared the 4th of July a federal legal holiday It is one of the few federal holidays that have not been moved to the nearest Friday or Monday.

While we take the time to visit with family, eat bar-b-que, and in the south - do a little fishing, take time to recognize that we are truly independent. Independent from outside rule, and independent to think and do as we will.

PacTec (and WEE) wants to wish you a happy and enjoyable Fourth of July weekend!

http://blog.pactecinc.com/bid/58063/Hotdogs-Don-t-Need-Hazardous-Waste-Packaging

[Po_d Mainiac]

17. 1972

My day job was a set carpenter for a summer stock theater. The last week of the season 1776 ran. It was also the last performance by the off Broadway touring company.

After 2 years of touring together, the entire cast was on the edge of either committing mass murder or having a nervous breakdown. It was fuggly.

[Demeter]

2. A New Leaf: New Catalyst Boosts Artificial Photosynthesis as a Solar Alternative to Fossil Fuel

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=artificial-photosynthesis-fuel-alternative&WT.mc_id=SA_IDR_20120614

Scientists have found a single catalyst for artificial photosynthesis that could create storable solar energy in a liquid or gaseous form for use in transportation or electric power generation. But can the fuel be made efficiently? Sunlight can provide more than enough energy to meet our needs—in theory. In practice, the skies are sometimes covered with clouds—and whether fair or overcast, the sun daily disappears behind the horizon. To get around these limitations, scientists have worked for years on new ways of converting sunlight into chemical energy, artificial forms of photosynthesis that would store solar energy in liquid or gaseous form—a "solar fuel." For years, they have sought a chemical catalyst that can perform this complex feat of chemical processing. Now some researchers think they may have found it.

Thomas Meyer came upon the solution almost by accident. Meyer, a chemist at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and director of its Energy Frontier Research Center in Solar Fuels, noticed that two separate groups of researchers working on two separate parts of the photosynthetic reaction happened to be using the same class of catalyst—ones with an atom of the metal ruthenium surrounded by organic molecules. One group used this type of catalyst to split water into hydrogen and oxygen; the other one was splitting carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and oxygen. "Finding a single catalyst that does both was a big surprise," Meyer says. By combining the two steps and using the same catalyst, Meyer realized that they could reproduce photosynthesis in its entirety. Whereas natural photosynthesis, after multiple reactions, converts water, carbon dioxide and sunlight into oxygen and energy-rich fuels such as sugar, Meyer's version converts water and carbon dioxide into oxygen, hydrogen and carbon monoxide—and the latter can be combined with hydrogen to eventually make a fuel such as methanol.

These findings suggest that it may be feasible to take carbon emitted from, say, a coal plant and use it to make a liquid fuel such as methanol that replaces or supplements fossil fuels for transportation or electricity generation. How would it work? Carbon dioxide-laden water from a fossil-fuel plant would pass across ruthenium catalyst membranes, which would trigger artificial photosynthesis, breaking it down into oxygen as well as constituents that can be converted to fuel. Electrical energy to drive the catalytic reaction would come from solar-power cells—although eventually researchers might be able to modify the catalyst to absorb sunlight directly. "That really would make it like photosynthesis," Meyer says. He and his colleagues detailed their findings online June 4 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The work is "a very interesting result from the point of view of fundamental science," says Princeton University chemist Andrew Bocarsly, who did not take part in this research. "It could be a dramatic simplification of a natural system, which could be very useful from a pragmatic point of view." (Bocarsly is working on ways of splitting carbon dioxide to create carbon monoxide, which can then be used to manufacture methanol and other fuels. Massachusetts Institute of Technology chemist Dan Nocera is developing cobalt-based catalysts that split water.) Meyer's finding, however, needs further development before it is ready for commercial-scale use. For instance, Meyer's ruthenium catalyst is not very energy efficient when it comes to splitting carbon dioxide. It requires 1.65 volts to drive the reaction. By contrast, Bocarsly's system can turn carbon dioxide into methanol, "an arguably much more useful molecule, with 0.2 volts." Meyer acknowledges this drawback, and he's working on improving the process so that it works faster and needs less voltage. "We're continuing the process of iteration to make things better," he says. Nevertheless, Meyer's experiment with the ruthenium catalyst, the first to do photosynthesis in its entirety, is a potentially big practical breakthrough.

[Demeter]

3. Fossil Free: Microbe Helps Convert Solar Power to Liquid Fuel

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=microbe-uses-solar-electricity-to-build-liquid-fuel&WT.mc_id=SA_IDR_20120614

A new "bioreactor" could store electricity as liquid fuel with the help of a genetically engineered microbe and copious carbon dioxide. The idea—dubbed "electrofuels" by a federal agency funding the research—could offer electricity storage that would have the energy density of fuels such as gasoline. If it works, the hybrid bioelectric system would also offer a more efficient way of turning sunlight to fuel than growing plants and converting them into biofuel. "The method provides a way to store electrical energy in a form that can be readily used as a transportation fuel," chemical engineer James Liao of the University of California, Los Angeles, explains. Liao and his colleagues report on their "integrated electro-microbial bioreactor" in Science on March 30.

To convert electricity into liquid fuel, Liao and his colleagues focused on Ralstonia eutropha, a soil microbe that can use hydrogen as an energy source to build CO2 into more microbial growth. Already, the microbe's biological machinery is being harnessed for industrial purposes—for example, to churn out plastic instead of proteins. By tweaking the industrial microorganism's genetics, the team now has coaxed it to churn out various butanols—a liquid fuel. "If one speaks with combustion engineers, then they will tell you that the simplest real fuel is butanol," says chemist Andrew Bocarsly of Princeton University, who is not involved in the electrofuel project.

Liao's bioreactor gets its electricity from a solar panel. The current flows into an electrode in the bioreactor, which is full of water, CO2 and R. eutropha. The electricity starts a chemical reaction that uses the CO2 to make formate—carbon dioxide with a hydrogen atom attached, which is an ion (electrically charged) that substitutes for insoluble hydrogen as an energy source for the microbe. The genetically engineered R. eutropha then consumes the formate, yielding butanols, plus more CO2 as a waste product—the latter of which is recycled back through the biochemical process.

R. eutropha doesn't particularly like to be shocked, however, so Liao's team built a "porous ceramic cup" to shield the microbe from the electrical current. Powered by its photovoltaic panel, the bioreactor produced 140 milligrams per liter of butanol fuel over 80 hours, although it then stopped working. "In principle, we can use the same approach to produce other kinds of fuels or chemicals," Liao says...MORE

[Blanks]

29. Anyone can stick a plant in the ground...

And convert CO2 and H2O to sugars which can be converted into either methanol, ethanol or methane gas by adding the correct amount of heat over time.

Why would we want to make such a straight forward conversion into a process which requires 'special' materials.

I'm all for research, but I think it would be a better use of the research money to expand and perfect some of the existing methods that we have of the natural processes.

Next thing you know they'll outlaw regular folks growing certain types of plants...

...I guess they're way ahead of me on that.

[Demeter]

4. 10 Steps We Can Take Right Now to Build the New Economy

http://www.alternet.org/story/155965/10_steps_we_can_take_right_now_to_build_the_new_economy?akid=9012.227380.VoV1LE&rd=1&t=31

First, some definitions. I think we can define the new economy as one where the overriding purpose of economic life is to sustain and to strengthen People, Place, and Planet, and is no longer to grow Profit, Product (as in gross domestic), and Power. And a new politics? No surprises here. A new politics in America is one that replaces today’s creeping corporatocracy and plutocracy with true popular sovereignty...

Step 1

The journey to a new political economy begins when enough Americans have come to two important conclusions. The first is that something is profoundly wrong with our current political economy—the operating system on which our country now runs. That system is now routinely generating terrible results—failing us socially, economically, environmentally, and politically. When big problems emerge across the entire spectrum of national life, as they surely have in our country, it cannot be for small reasons. We have encompassing problems because of fundamental flaws in our economic and political system. The second conclusion follows from the first. It is the imperative of system change, of building a new political economy that routinely delivers good results for people, place and planet. A growing number of Americans are already finding it impossible to accept the deteriorating conditions of life and living. They see frightening gap between the world that is and the one that could be. So, our first step is to become teachers—to help bring these Americans, and many more, to see the basic relationships: that the huge challenges we face are the result of system failure, that our current system of political economy no longer deserves legitimacy because it doesn’t deliver on the values it proclaims, and that, therefore, the path forward is to change the system. As the slogan goes, “System change, not climate change.” This is the core, foundational message, and we must pursue many ways to reach ever-larger numbers of Americans with it.

Step 2

What I call progressive fusion. If the various U. S. progressive communities remain as fragmented and as in-their-silos as today, we won’t be able to take advantage of positive opportunities opened up by rising popular disenchantment and by the inevitable crises ahead. What’s needed, for starters, is a unified progressive identity, a concerted effort to institutionalize coordination, a common infrastructure capable of formulating clear policy objectives and strategic messages, and a commitment to creating a powerful, unified movement beyond isolated campaigns. Critical here is a common progressive platform. It should embrace a profound commitment to social justice, job creation, and environmental protection; a sustained challenge to consumerism and commercialism and the lifestyles they offer; a healthy skepticism of growth mania and a democratic redefinition of what society should be striving to grow; a challenge to corporate dominance and a redefinition of the corporation, its goals and its management and ownership; a commitment to an array of prodemocracy reforms in campaign finance, elections, the regulation of lobbying; and much more. A common agenda would also include an ambitious set of new national indicators beyond GDP to inform us of the true quality of life in America. A powerful part of the drive for transformation must be a compelling envisioning of the world we would like to leave for our children and grandchildren — a new American Dream, if you will.

Step 3

A powerful part of the drive for transformation must be a compelling envisioning of the world we would like to leave for our children and grandchildren—a new American Dream, if you will. When systemic change does come, it does so because the people agitating for change have painted a compelling vision of a better future. And this new dream should be accompanied by a new narrative or story that explains America’s path from yesterday to tomorrow. Harvard’s Howard Gardner stresses that “leaders . . . can change the course of history . . . by creating a compelling story, embodying that story in one’s own life, and presenting the story in many different formats so that it can eventually topple the counterstories in one’s culture. . . . The story must be simple, easy to identify with, emotionally resonant, and evocative of positive experiences.”...

Step 4

One key task for progressives of all stripes is not merely to have a compelling vision but also to pioneer the development of a powerful set of new ideas and policy proposals which confirm that the path to this better world does indeed exist. We must show that when it comes to defining the way forward, we know what we’re talking about. We are dreamers, perhaps, but dreamers with tools. The good news here is that system-changing proposals already exist in many of the key areas of transformation—ideas for dethroning GDP, transcending consumerism, transforming corporations, revitalizing communities, building a different system for money and finance, and more. The goal here is to design and test a new operating system. Carrying forward this work is something to which I know many of the groups represented here today will contribute...MORE

[Demeter]

5. And as Adams Says: "This is a Revolution, dammit! We're Going to Have to Offend SOMEBODY!"

[Fuddnik]

6. It's the Farce of July!

The farce is what we've become.

We've become authoritarian following, dumbed down, mean spirited, greedy assholes. Almost all of us.

Isn't free-dumb great!?!?

[Demeter]

8. Truthfully, it makes me queasy

although, that could be the heat.

[Demeter]

7. 8 Ways America's Headed Back to the Robber-Baron Era

http://www.alternet.org/story/156111/8_ways_america%27s_headed_back_to_the_robber_baron_era?page=entire

We are recreating the Gilded Age, a period when corporations ruled this nation, buying politicians, using violence against unions and engaging in open corruption. Over the past 40 years, corporations and politicians have rolled back many of the gains made by working and middle-class people over the previous century. We have the highest level of income inequality in 90 years, both private and public sector unions are under a concerted attack, and federal and state governments intend to cut deficits by slashing services to the poor. During the Gilded Age, many Americans lived in stark poverty, in crowded tenement housing, without safe workplaces, and lacked any safety net to help lift them out of hard times. With Republicans more committed than ever to repealing every economic gain the working-class has achieved in the last century and the Democrats seemingly unable to resist, we need to understand the Gilded Age to see what conservatives are trying to do to this nation. Here are 8 ways our corporations, politicians and courts are trying to recreate the Gilded Age.

1. Unregulated Corporate Capitalism Creates Economic Collapse

In the late 19th century, corrupt railroad capitalists created the Panic of 1873 and Panic of 1893 through lying about their business activities, buying off politicians and siphoning off capital into their own pockets. Railroad corporations set up phony corporations that allowed them to embezzle money from the railroad into their bank accounts. When exposed, the entire economy collapsed as banks failed around the country. The Panic of 1893 lasted five years, created 25% unemployment, and was the worst economic crisis in American history before the Great Depression. In the early 21st century, the poorly regulated financial industry plunged the nation into the longest economic downturn since the Depression. Like in the Gilded Age, none of the culprits have served a day in prison.

2. Union Busting

In the Gilded Age, business used the power of the state to crush labor unions. President Hayes called in the Army to break the Great Railroad Strike of 1877; President Cleveland did the same against the Pullman strikers in 1894. Today’s corporations don’t have to use such blunt force to destroy unions, but like in the past, they convince the government to do their bidding. Whether it is holding up FAA renewal in order to make it harder for airline employees to unionize, Republican members of the National Labor Relations Board leaking material on cases to Republican insiders, or governors Scott Walker and John Kasich seeking to bust their states’ public sector unions, not since before the Great Depression has the government attacked unions with such force. AND THEN, THERE'S THE AGGRESSION AGAINST THE OCCUPATION...

3. Income Inequality

Today, we have the highest levels of income inequality since the 1920s and the gap is widening to late 19th century levels with great speed. In those days, individuals like John D. Rockefeller had more money than the federal government, while the majority of Americans lived in squalor, poverty and disease.In the Progressive Era, we started creating laws like the federal income tax, child labor laws and workers’ compensation to begin giving workers a fair share of the pie. For decades, labor fought to increase their share and by the 1970s, had turned much of the working class into the middle class. Today, that middle class is under attack by a new generation of plutocrats who wish to recreate the massive fortunes of the Gilded Age.

4. Open Purchase of Elections

In 1890, copper magnate William Clark paid Montana lawmakers $140,000 to elect him to the U.S. Senate. While most plutocrats did not share Clark’s interest in being politicians, they ensured their lackeys would serve in office, often by offering corporate stock to politicians. Disgusted by this corruption, America in the Progressive Era of the early 20th century created a number of reforms, including the 17th Amendment that created direct elections of senators, as well as a 1912 Montana state law limiting corporate expenditures in politics. Beginning with the Citizens United decision and continuing with the recent overturning of that 1912 law, the Supreme Court has allowed corporations and wealthy plutocrats to buy elections openly once again.

5. Supreme Court Partisanship

In the Gilded Age, the Supreme Court interpreted laws not as to the intent of the lawmakers, but to promote business interests. It refused to enforce the 14th Amendment to stop segregation, but it did create the idea that a corporation was a person with rights. The Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 was intended to moderate monopolies; the Supreme Court only enforced it against unions since organized labor “unfairly restrained trade.”

Today’s Supreme Court has resorted to this aggressively partisan stance. The Court is fine with the open flouting of the 4th Amendment, allowing strip searches of middle-school girls if they’re suspected to be carrying drugs, but creates a grotesque expansion of the 14th Amendment in the Citizens United decision. Meanwhile, Antonin Scalia just took the opportunity in a Supreme Court dissent to lambast his colleagues for striking down much of the Arizona anti-immigration law by approvingly citing 19th-century laws in the South that limited the movement of African Americans.

6. Violations of Civil Liberties

In the late 19th century, civil and military authorities looked down upon protesting citizens. Widespread violations of civil liberties took place when Americans protested for almost any reasons, whether it was labor unions, political gatherings in Washington, D.C., or African Americans organizing to protect themselves from white supremacists. Police shot strikers and thugs and mobs murdered organizers. Today we are seeing a growing recreation of this society with no respect for civil liberties. The use of police violence against Occupy protesters, like the pepper-spraying of nonviolent activists at the University of California-Davis did spawn some outrage. But in the aftermath of the PATRIOT Act, the authorities have tremendous power to suppress protest and are not afraid to use it against peaceful citizens.

7. Voter Repression

The Gilded Age saw the rolling back of Reconstruction, with black people unable to vote in the South due to the grandfather clause, poll taxes, literacy tests, and threat of violence. Conservative extremists have chafed at black people voting ever since the civil rights movement ended segregation. Today, voter ID laws and voter roll-purging seek to limit black voting again. Florida Governor Rick Scott hopes to purge enough black people from the voting rolls to swing the Sunshine State to Mitt Romney this fall, while a lawmaker in Pennsylvania openly said the Keystone State’s recently passed voter ID law would do the same. Even more shocking, the recently released Texas Republican Party platform has a plank calling for the repeal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, passed in the wake of police beatings of civil rights protestors in Selma, Alabama.

8. Anti-Immigration Fervor

In the Gilded Age, Americans feared the millions of people coming from eastern and southern Europe, the Middle East and Asia to work in the nation’s growing economy. Fearing these immigrants would never assimilate, Americans looked to bar their entry. Beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 and continuing through the Immigration Act of 1924, the country slowly closed its doors to the world’s tired and hungry. Today’s immigrants face an increasingly militarized border, states like Arizona trying to usurp federal immigration policy, and increased numbers of deportations. Conservatives fear the changes Latinos could bring to the United States and talk about English-only laws and the evils of bilingual education. They also recognize the likelihood of Latinos voting for the Democratic Party in coming decades and thus use the same kind of voter repression strategies that target black voters.

The Gilded Age was a horrible time and I fear the nation slipping back into this hell of poverty, violence and hate.
...AS in the late 19th century, we need to take back our country from corporate control. We need to create well-paid jobs in the United States, revitalize the labor movement, and pass legislation to respect civil liberties, give undocumented immigrants legal status, and ensure that voting rights laws are enforced. Like our ancestors, we can fix these problems. First we need to recognize that the 1% has declared war upon the middle class and then we can start organizing to create the better tomorrow we crave.

****************************************************************************************

Erik Loomis is a professor of labor and environmental history and a blogger at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

[Demeter]

9. The Secret Benefits of Procrastination

http://www.alternet.org/story/156120/the_secret_benefits_of_procrastination?page=entire

Our society is obsessed with productivity and efficiency, and we despise procrastination. The early Americans imported the Earl of Chesterfield’s admonition: “No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination: never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.” They read Jonathan Edwards’s sermon “Procrastination, or The Sin and Folly of Depending on Future Time.” They built on the Puritan work ethic, which wasn’t much fun, but became a major part of American culture. Over time, the admonitions from Chesterfield and Edwards seeped into everyday life, along with the biblical references that Edwards peppered throughout his speech, especially Proverbs 27:1, which advises, “Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.” And then, beginning in the 1970s, the do-it-now anti-procrastination industry burst onto the scene. Managers began following Peter Drucker, the consultant, who advised, “First things first; second things not at all.” Jane Burka and Lenora Yuen wrote a best seller about how to avoid procrastinating, and their “Procrastination Workshops” became popular. Self-help guru Stephen Covey told us that highly effective people do “first things first.” David Allen coached us to “Get Things Done.” Over time we began to feel terribly guilty about procrastinating, yet we did it even more. The percentage of people who say they procrastinate “often” has increased sixfold since 1978. Students report spending over one-third of their time procrastinating. According to some studies, nearly one in five adults is a “chronic” procrastinator. Our focus on procrastination is relentless. America really has become a “Procrasti-Nation.”

But it wasn’t always so. In ancient Egypt and Rome, procrastination was thought to be useful and wise. Only a handful of early writers, such as Cicero and Thucydides, admonished people not to delay. Until the mid-eighteenth century, procrastination-hating was a minority view. Many iconic figures have been inveterate procrastinators, from St. Augustine to Leonardo da Vinci to Duke Ellington to Agatha Christie to John Huston to Bill Clinton. Like many of my colleagues and friends, I tend to procrastinate, and I’ve always bristled at being told that was bad. To the extent I have creative breakthroughs (and they don’t come often), it is because I put something off, not because I meet a deadline. Recent procrastination research suggests I am not alone. Studies find that although procrastination is problematic for some people, others can procrastinate but still get plenty done without stress, coping problems, or low self-esteem.

When the Wall Street Journal recently reported on some “fans of procrastination,” several psychologists who research procrastination shot back. They fumed at the notion that Paul Kedrosky, a successful entrepreneur, would, as he said, “circle topics like a dog trying to tromp down a nice place to sleep.” Joseph Ferrari, a psychology professor at DePaul University, retorted, “The misperception of our culture is that it’s OK to procrastinate. A bigger misperception is that it isn’t a serious problem.” Jane Burka, the psychologist and author, joined Ferrari, saying procrastinators are people who fear failure, success, or being controlled: “It’s a way of protecting yourself from having your true abilities evaluated.” Kedrosky, however, seemed bemused by this criticism, citing the “nagging suspicion that a lot of the things that I get asked to do I don’t actually have to do.”

Academics who study procrastination fall into camps with about as much in common as the tribes of Afghanistan. Many psychologists follow a definition from Piers Steel, a leading researcher, that procrastination is “irrational” delay—in other words, we procrastinate when we know we are acting against our own best interests. However, psychologists don’t agree about what causes our irrationality. Is it dark thoughts, behaviors, and personality traits? Compulsiveness? Is it “unconscious death anxiety”? Rebellion at the finality of existence? Some say the cause is overly indulgent parenting, while others claim it is overly demanding parenting. Another group of psychologists gives procrastination a more positive spin, depending in large part on the amount of energy the procrastinator expends. So-called active procrastination is smart: it simply means managing delay, putting off projects that really don’t need to be done right away. In contrast, passive procrastination is dumb, equivalent to laziness. This group says procrastination might be good or bad, depending on how much effort we put into it. Economists approach procrastination in yet another way. One group observes how common it is, and asks—using the standard classical economics move—how something can be irrational if it is so widespread. Why would human beings engage in procrastination if it weren’t somehow making them better off? Carolyn Fischer, a public finance and natural resources economist, developed a clever mathematical model to show how procrastination can be in our best interests...

AS A SINGLE MOTHER, LET ME SAY THIS: I KNOW A GUILT TRIP WHEN I SEE ONE...NO THANKS! I'M BUSY AVOIDING THOSE KINDS OF THINGS! I CALL IT "PRIORITIZING"! DEMETER

*************************************************************************************

Frank Partnoy is the author of "F.I.A.S.C.O.," "Infectious Greed," and "The Match King." Formerly an investment banker at Morgan Stanley and a practicing corporate lawyer, he is one of the world’s leading experts on market regulation and is a frequent commentator for the Financial Times, the New York Times, NPR, and CBS’s 60 Minutes. Partnoy is a graduate of Yale Law School and is the George E. Barrett Professor of Law and Finance and the founding director of the Center for Corporate and Securities Law at the University of San Diego.

[Demeter]

10. Arizona's New Housing Crisis: No Workers

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-06-28/arizonas-new-housing-crisis-no-workers

There’s a whiff of 2005 in the Arizona air. While D.J. Hughes hunts for carpenters to join his team at a Phoenix-area house-framing company, competitors are tracking down his workers at building sites and offering them more money. “Everybody is trying to pull crews from everyone,” says Hughes, a project manager for J.L. Baugh Construction in Gold Canyon, Ariz., who admits to attempted talent raids on rivals. “I’ve been doing this for a quarter of a century, and this is the biggest shortage of skilled laborers I’ve ever seen.”

Cash-wielding investors are driving demand as they snap up properties, and Arizona’s builders are having trouble finding skilled crews. Building permits are at an almost four-year high, creating a dearth of framers, roofers, and masons, many of whom moved elsewhere when work dried up. Laws aimed at curbing illegal immigration added to the shortage by pushing seasoned hands out of state. After declining by more than half since 2006, construction jobs, a category that includes residential, commercial, and government projects, jumped 9.3 percent in May from a year earlier, to 120,300, according to Arizona’s employment statistics office. Nationally, construction employment rose 0.4 percent. The average hourly wage for construction workers in Arizona increased to $20.72 from $19.53 a year earlier.

Arizona was among the areas hit hardest by the U.S. housing crash. Home prices in April were down about 47 percent from the peak in 2006, exceeding the 31 percent decline nationally, data from CoreLogic (CLGX) show. The state ranked second in the rate of foreclosure filings in May, according to RealtyTrac. “The industry is so wound down that it’s hard to flip the switch on and build as many homes as there is demand right now,” says Ben Sage, director of the Arizona region for Metrostudy, a Houston-based firm that tracks new construction. “The subcontractors are scrambling for workers.”



The inventory of previously owned houses for sale in Phoenix dropped 50 percent as of June 1 from a year earlier, according to a report by Michael Orr, director of the Center for Real Estate Theory and Practice at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business. The tight supply helped push the median price for single-family homes up 32 percent to $147,000 in May. Purchases of new houses surged 57 percent in May from a year earlier, according to the report. The median price for new homes rose 3.7 percent, to $224,759....The bottom line: After declining by more than 50 percent since 2006, Arizona construction employment rose 9.3 percent in May.

[Demeter]

11. Where the (ROMNEY) Money Lives

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/08/investigating-mitt-romney-offshore-accounts

...Particularly jarring were the Romneys’ many offshore accounts. As Newt Gingrich put it during the primary season, “I don’t know of any American president who has had a Swiss bank account.” But Romney has, as well as other interests in such tax havens as Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

To give but one example, there is a Bermuda-based entity called Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd., which has been described in securities filings as “a Bermuda corporation wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney.” It could be that Sankaty is an old vehicle with little importance, but Romney appears to have treated it rather carefully. He set it up in 1997, then transferred it to his wife’s newly created blind trust on January 1, 2003, the day before he was inaugurated as Massachusetts’s governor. The director and president of this entity is R. Bradford Malt, the trustee of the blind trust and Romney’s personal lawyer. Romney failed to list this entity on several financial disclosures, even though such a closely held entity would not qualify as an “excepted investment fund” that would not need to be on his disclosure forms. He finally included it on his 2010 tax return. Even after examining that return, we have no idea what is in this company, but it could be valuable, meaning that it is possible Romney’s wealth is even greater than previous estimates. While the Romneys’ spokespeople insist that the couple has paid all the taxes required by law, investments in tax havens such as Bermuda raise many questions, because they are in “jurisdictions where there is virtually no tax and virtually no compliance,” as one Miami-based offshore lawyer put it.

That’s not the only money Romney has in tax havens. Because of his retirement deal with Bain Capital, his finances are still deeply entangled with the private-equity firm that he founded and spun off from Bain and Co. in 1984. Though he left the firm in 1999, Romney has continued to receive large payments from it—in early June he revealed more than $2 million in new Bain income. The firm today has at least 138 funds organized in the Cayman Islands, and Romney himself has personal interests in at least 12, worth as much as $30 million, hidden behind controversial confidentiality disclaimers. Again, the Romney campaign insists he saves no tax by using them, but there is no way to check this.

Bain Capital is the heart of Romney’s fortune: it was the financial engine that created it. The mantra of his campaign is that he was a businessman who created tens of thousands of jobs, and Bain certainly did bring useful operational skills to many companies it bought. But his critics point to several cases where Bain bought companies, loaded them with debt, and paid itself extravagant fees, thereby bankrupting the companies and destroying tens of thousands of jobs....

[Demeter]

12. How a Grad Student Scooped the Government and Uncovered One of the Biggest Internet Privacy Scandals

http://www.alternet.org/story/156086/how_a_grad_student_scooped_the_government_and_uncovered_one_of_the_biggest_internet_privacy_scandals?page=entire

Jonathan Mayer had a hunch. A gifted computer scientist, Mayer suspected that online advertisers might be getting around browser settings that are designed to block tracking devices known as cookies. If his instinct was right, advertisers were following people as they moved from one website to another even though their browsers were configured to prevent this sort of digital shadowing. Working long hours at his office, Mayer ran a series of clever tests in which he purchased ads that acted as sniffers for the sort of unauthorized cookies he was looking for. He hit the jackpot, unearthing one of the biggest privacy scandals of the past year: Google was secretly planting cookies on a vast number of iPhone browsers. Mayer thinks millions of iPhones were targeted by Google.

This is precisely the type of privacy violation the Federal Trade Commission aims to protect consumers from, and Google, which claims the cookies were not planted in an unethical way, now reportedly faces a fine of more than $10 million. But the FTC didn't discover the violation. Mayer is a 25-year-old student working on law and computer science degrees at Stanford University. He shoehorned his sleuthing between classes and homework, working from an office he shares in the Gates Computer Science Building with students from New Zealand and Hong Kong. He doesn't get paid for his work and he doesn't get much rest.

If it seems odd that a federal regulator was scooped by a sleep-deprived student, get used to it, because the federal government is often the last to know about digital invasions of your privacy. The largest privacy scandal of the past year, also involving Google, wasn't discovered by federal regulators, either. A privacy official in Germany forced Google to hand over the hard drives of cars equipped with 360-degree digital cameras that were taking pictures for its Street View program. The Germans discovered that Google wasn't just shooting photos: The cars downloaded a panoply of sensitive data, including emails and passwords, from open Wi-Fi networks. Google had secretly done the same in the United States, but the FTC, as well as the Federal Communications Commission, which oversees broadcast issues, had no idea until the Germans figured it out.

MORE

[Demeter]

13. How the New York Times Hides the Truth About Wall Street's Catastrophic Misdeeds By Pam Martens

http://www.alternet.org/story/156070/how_the_new_york_times_hides_the_truth_about_wall_street%27s_catastrophic_misdeeds?page=entire

The paper of record is in serious need of a fact checker when it comes to whether the Glass-Steagall Act could have prevented the financial crisis... On April 8, 1998, the New York Times ran a slobbering editorial pushing for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. It sounded like it came straight from Sandy Weill’s public relations flacks. Weill, head of Wall Street brokerage and investment firms Smith Barney and Salomon Brothers, as well as insurance company, Travelers Group, wanted to merge with a large commercial bank, Citicorp, owner of Citibank, and get his speculative hands on that pile of insured deposits. The merger was illegal at the time under the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act. The legislation was enacted after the 1929 stock market crash to keep speculative gambling on margin and risky underwriting of stocks away from conservative savers’ bank deposits. Jamie Dimon, today’s chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who just this year oversaw the blow up of $2 billion of insured depositors’ funds through risky derivatives trading, was Weill’s first lieutenant at the time of the merger and helped to mastermind the deal. The merged firm was called Citigroup. The Glass-Steagall Act...barred banks holding insured deposits from merging with securities firms or investment banks. The Travelers/Citicorp merger was also illegal under the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 which barred bank and insurance company mergers.

The New York Times editorial gushed:

“Congress dithers, so John Reed of Citicorp and Sanford Weill of Travelers Group grandly propose to modernize financial markets on their own. They have announced a $70 billion merger — the biggest in history — that would create the largest financial services company in the world, worth more than $140 billion… In one stroke, Mr. Reed and Mr. Weill will have temporarily demolished the increasingly unnecessary walls built during the Depression to separate commercial banks from investment banks and insurance companies.”

What the New York Times calls “unnecessary walls” were the bulwarks that stood between the small investor and a rigged looting machine; between another Great Depression and a stable economy; between fair distribution of wealth and a nation with 46 million people living below the poverty level, including one in every five children; between a nation where people were proud to save to buy a few shares of stock and a nation that now reviles everything about Wall Street, from its lousy repentance to its obscene pay to its sappy regulators...Having greased the skids for the financial debacle, the New York Times, instead of doing an intense examination of how it got it so wrong, is now permitting the revisionist history of the crisis through the pen of its financial writer, Andrew Ross Sorkin, who doubles as a co-anchor at the serially conflicted CNBC. On May 21, 2012, the Times published a piece by Sorkin titled, “Reinstating an Old Rule Is Not a Cure for Crisis.” The premise was that the Glass-Steagall Act would not have prevented the financial collapse -- the very claptrap coming out of the mouths of Wall Street lobbyists into the attentive ears of the Senate Banking Committee. The article put forth the following “facts.”

“Let’s look at the facts of the financial crisis in the context of Glass-Steagall.

“The first domino to nearly topple over in the financial crisis was Bear Stearns, an investment bank that had nothing to do with commercial banking. Glass-Steagall would have been irrelevant. Then came Lehman Brothers; it too was an investment bank with no commercial banking business and therefore wouldn’t have been covered by Glass-Steagall either. After them, Merrill Lynch was next — and yep, it too was an investment bank that had nothing to do with Glass-Steagall.

“Next in line was the American International Group, an insurance company that was also unrelated to Glass-Steagall.”

There are four companies mentioned in those five sentences and in every case, the information is spectacularly false. Lehman Brothers owned two FDIC insured banks, Lehman Brothers Bank, FSB and Lehman Brothers Commercial Bank. Together, they held $17.2 billion in assets as of June 30, 2008, 75 days before Lehman went belly up. Lehman Brothers Banks FSB is where Lehman handled its mortgage loan originations. When the FDIC approved the Lehman Brothers Commercial Bank application in 2005, it specifically noted that the FDIC-insured bank “anticipates acting as a derivatives intermediary, engaged in matched trading of interest rate products, primarily interest rate swaps, as well as forward purchase agreements and options contracts.” Merrill Lynch also owned three FDIC-insured banks. At an FDIC symposium held at the National Press Club in 2003, Merrill Senior VP, John Qua, explained the banking side of Merrill as follows:

“Merrill Lynch conducts banking in the United States through two depository institutions – Merrill Lynch Bank USA, a Utah industrial loan corporation; and Merrill Lynch Bank and Trust, a New Jersey state non-member bank. We also own a federal savings bank that offers personal trust services to our clients. And we conduct significant banking activities outside the United States through banks in London, Dublin, Switzerland, and elsewhere. The combined balance sheet of our global banks is approximately $100 billion.”

Bear Stearns owned Bear Stearns Bank Ireland, which is now part of JPMorgan and called JPMorgan Bank (Dublin) PLC. According to JPMorgan, “It is the only EU passported bank in the non-bank chain of JPMorgan and provides the firm with direct access to the European Central Bank repo window. It has also been added to the JPMorgan Jumbo issuance programs to issue structured securities for distribution outside the United States.”

As for the statement that AIG was “an insurance company that was also unrelated to Glass-Steagall,” one has the initial reaction to cancel one’s subscription to the New York Times. AIG owned, in 2008 at the time of the crisis, the FDIC insured AIG Federal Savings Bank. On June 30, 2008, it held $1 billion in assets. AIG also owned 71 U.S.-based insurance entities and 176 other financial services companies throughout the world, including AIG Financial Products which blew up the whole company selling credit default derivatives. AIG’s annuities are owned by moms and pops all over this country and around the world. In many cases, they represent a significant source of income to retirees. Had AIG been allowed to fail, state guaranty funds for insurance products could have been wiped out and the taint of buying insurance products would have damaged legitimate businesses for a lifetime...For ongoing evidence as to why insured deposit banks cannot be under the same roof with speculating Wall Street firms, one need only look at what the largest banks in the U.S. are holding today. According to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency which oversees national banks, as of December 31, 2011, inside the insured banks – not their broker-dealer components – were the following derivative holdings: $70.1 trillion at JPMorgan Chase; $52.1 trillion at Citibank; $50.1 trillion at Bank of America; $44.2 trillion at Goldman Sachs Bank USA. These insured deposit banks have a tiny fraction of their derivative holdings in assets. For example, JPMorgan Chase has $2.3 trillion in assets in the insured bank. So why does it need to hedge to the tune of $70.1 trillion in derivatives? That’s the crux of the issue. It is not just hedging for the insured bank, it is hedging for its hedge fund clients and corporate clients and institutional clients in the investment bank as well as making proprietary bets to generate profits...Sorkin goes on in the article to make another factually indefensible statement:

“Citigroup’s problems are probably the closest call when it comes to whether Glass-Steagall would have avoided its problems. It gorged both on underwriting bad loans and buying up collateralized debt obligations…But Citi’s troubles didn’t come until after Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, A.I.G., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were fallen or teetering — when all hell was breaking loose.”

By taking Citigroup out of the lead role in the crisis, Sorkin also marginalizes the Glass-Steagall Act. But he’s dead wrong, again. Bear Stearns got its emergency infusion from the Fed on March 14, 2008 and was bought out by JPMorgan Chase on March 16, 2008. Lehman failed on September 15, 2008; AIG, Fannie and Freddie were all rescued by the government in September 2008. Citigroup’s dire problems began as early as the summer of 2007 according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, regulator of its national bank, and the press was writing about its drastic need for a bailout fund, proposed to be called the SuperSIV, in the fall of 2007. I wrote extensively about its desperate situation in November 2007. Sorkin wrote the 2009 bestseller Too Big to Fail, a 600-page epic on the 2008 crash. How he researched the book without discovering these pivotal players owned insured deposit banks is mystifying. According to Gabriel Sherman in a 2009 piece in New York Magazine, the book party for Sorkin, age 32 at the time, was attended by the titans of Wall Street: Jamie Dimon; John Mack, former head of Morgan Stanley; Steve Rattner, a former New York Times reporter who went on to become a Wall Street investment banker and private equity honcho; Ken Griffin, head of the behemoth Citadel hedge fund; and other luminaries. Sherman reveals in the piece that one of Sorkin’s former editors at the Times called his work “thinly reported or loosely written.” That may not be a big deal if you’re writing gossipy stuff about Wall Street. But when the public has finally gotten the attention of Congress on the topic of restoring the Glass-Steagall Act to save the country from a potentially more apocalyptic meltdown, putting out a spectacularly inaccurate assessment of the role of Glass-Steagall undermines the safety and soundness of the United States.

The New York Times has financial writers who have been delivering consistently reliable information about Wall Street to the public for more than a decade; Gretchen Morgenson stands out in particular. It’s time to let those accurate writers weigh in on the Glass-Steagall Act.

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Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years. She is the editor of Wall Street On Parade.

[Demeter]

14. Street Demonstrations Strangely Muted By Ed Kilgore

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_07/street_demonstrations_strangel038312.php

Per Ezra Klein, a new Kaiser Family Foundation survey casts some doubt on the conservative suggestion that the Supreme Court’s health reform decision will draw an aroused citizenry into the streets to protest this tyranny, before Americans calm down enough to march to the polls to elect Mitt Romney by a landslide. By a 56/38 margin, respondents want to see the law’s opponents “move on to other national issues” rather than “continue to block the law from being implemented.”

The survey’s other big finding should be sobering to all us political junkies: 41% of Americans were not aware of the decision and/or its major finding. That includes 18% of the public who asserted that the decision had not yet been made.

[Demeter]

15. It’s Still a Corporate Court. Here are 10 Lessons From CEO Roberts. By Richard (RJ) Eskow

http://www.nationofchange.org/don-t-kid-yourself-it-s-still-corporate-court-here-are-10-lessons-ceo-roberts-1341234612

Don’t Kid Yourself...Was today's ruling a victory for justice over corporate power? Did Chief Justice John Roberts rise above partisan differences because that's where an honest reading of the law took him? Nah. The majority on this Supreme Court is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Corporate America. Call it SCOTUS™ Inc., and it's brought to you by the same fine folks that gave you Citizens United and Bush v. Gore. John Roberts is its CEO, not its Chief Justice. The point isn't to reinforce anybody's cynicism. But you can't be idealistic in an effective way until you see things as they really are.

Roberts Rules

It was a shrewd move. Remember, as CEO of SCOTUS™ Inc., John Roberts is running the subsidiary of a large conglomerate. I've had that job myself, and trust me: you've got to please the parent or you're out of business.
By casting the decisive vote (who knows whether it really was the deciding vote, or whether the right-wing majority made it look that way) Roberts acted in the best interests of corporate conservatism, for-profit healthcare companies, and - most importantly of all - of the far-right political force which is today's Republican Party. He had three options: Strike down a signature piece of Democratic legislation in its entirety, which would look highly partisan; strike down the individual mandate, which would look even worse since it was a conservative Republican idea; or uphold the law in a way that's designed to do maximum political damage to the Democrats and protect the Court's current corporate status.

Weighing the Options

Striking down the law would have cost the Court immeasurably in what corporate accountants call "good will."It would have widened and deepened the common (and accurate) perception that this Court's majority acts in a partisan, ideological, and pro-corporate manner, regardless of the law. It would have polluted the Court's brand even further. It also would have given new momentum to the single-payer movement, galvanized Democrats, alienated independents, and strengthened the argument against electing a Republican President who would provide more Justices in favor of Bush v. Gore type decisions. What about striking down the individual mandate alone? The mandate has provided great rhetorical fodder for the right (we were among the few to predict it would, or to accurately predict the political impact of this law), so why deprive them of such a good political tool? It was never in the GOP's partisan interests to do that. It would have left the bill's most popular provisions intact, giving the Democrats a stronger bill to run on and weakening the GOP's case against it. Besides, it's a great boon for health insurers. I never believed the court would strike down the mandate and leave the law's other provisions standing. That would be an actuarial nightmare for the insurance industry. They'd never tolerate a move like that.

The Decision

By defending the law, Roberts made the right decision for Corporate America. He was also able to severely limit the Federal government's ability to regulate commerce, which I believe is a major setback in a number of legal areas that's likely to provide a lot of benefit to corporations in the years to come. Since I'm not an attorney, I'll leave that analysis to others. But I'm surprised that aspect of the ruling hasn't received more attention...Stock prices in the for-profit hospital industry soared, rising 7 percent in heavy trading immediately after the Court ruling. Stocks for the nation's largest health insurers barely moved, despite what must have been some heavy pre-Court betting that the conservative majority would overturn the entire law. That tells us something important: Roberts' decision to side with the liberals and moderates didn't exactly create a revolution in our health care economy. Like the head of any subsidiary, Roberts made the choice that was best for his parent. Sure, he's taking some heat from the Right. Like any good executive, he's willing to take one for the team...By joining with the liberals, Roberts was able to write the ruling himself. He did it in a way which the other four disagreed with, but which was designed to provide talking points for Republicans and the Right. He labeled the mandate's penalty a "tax" (which it is; so is the so-called "Cadillac tax" on higher-cost health plans, which Obama campaigned against and then personally inserted into the bill)...Roberts also used the occasion to savage Medicaid's expansion, by limiting the Federal government's ability to withhold funds for states which do not cooperate. This was apparently the result of some horse trading among the justices, but Roberts seized the opportunity for more incendiary conservative language. He called that kind of withdrawal "economic dragooning" on the part of the Federal government, which is more red-meat rhetoric for Republican campaigns to use in November. In the real world, this decision has precisely the opposite effect: It allows states to "dragoon" Federal funds without provide the full range of coverage for which those funds are intended. (Will that happen? George Zornick has more.) In case the political nature of Roberts' language was not clear, he added: "“It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices."

CLICK ON LINK TO CONTINUE WITH:

10 Lessons for the Battles to Come A MUST READ!

[Demeter]

16. SWEET DREAMS, ALL

See you on the 4th!

[Demeter]

18. California Lawmakers Pass Historic Foreclosure Protections

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER, I SUPPOSE

http://truth-out.org/news/item/10124-california-lawmakers-pass-historic-foreclosure-protections


Sacramento - California lawmakers have passed legislation that would provide homeowners with some of the nation's strongest protections from foreclosure and such aggressive bank practices as seizing a home while the owner is negotiating to lower mortgage payments. After years of distress in the housing and mortgage markets, during which lenders seized nearly a million California houses, legislators Monday sent a pair of Assembly and Senate bills to Gov. Jerry Brown designed to help financially troubled borrowers stay in their homes.

The legislation would make California the first state to prohibit lenders from "dual tracking," the practice of negotiating with clients to modify a mortgage so that payments become more affordable while simultaneously pursuing foreclosure. In such cases, homeowners can wind up being evicted even though they had been working with the bank to modify their loans. The measures would outlaw so-called robo-signing — the improper or faulty processing of foreclosure documents— and would allow state agencies and private citizens to sue financial institutions, under limited conditions, for economic compensation and for additional civil damages of up to $50,000 if lenders willfully, intentionally or recklessly violate the law. No lawsuit could go forward if the bank or servicer first fixes the problem with documentation or procedures, according to the bills. The legislation, SB 900 and AB 278, also would simplify dealings between homeowners and their banks or loan servicers by requiring that clients be given a single representative to work with, helping to prevent bureaucratic runarounds.

"This has been an incredibly long and tortuous process to get the kinds of basic protections that borrowers have long needed throughout this six-year crisis," said Paul Leonard, California director of the Center for Responsible Lending in Oakland.

The banking and real estate industries opposed the foreclosure-prevention bills, calling them well-meaning but overly complicated and so legally ambiguous that they would spur frivolous lawsuits. It is crucial that "we don't give borrowers and enterprising attorneys an opportunity to delay foreclosures at will," said Dustin Hobbs, a spokesman for the California Mortgage Bankers Assn. Bankers also said the bills would increase real estate transaction costs, slow the housing recovery, tighten credit and lower home values.

Senate Minority Leader Bob Huff (R-Diamond Bar) on Monday called home foreclosure "a significant and life-changing problem for many Californians and many California communities...But rather than find realistic and reasonable solutions to help those in need, Democrats are wielding a sledgehammer on our fragile housing market," Huff said.

A two-house conference committee made a number of amendments in an effort to address some of the criticisms made by the banks. Committee members narrowed the measures to apply only to modifications on primary, or "first-lien," mortgages. The compromises also limited the protections to owner-occupied residential properties with four or fewer living units. Mortgage holders who bought property for investments and so-called strategic defaulters, who turn in keys and voluntarily go into foreclosure, aren't covered by the proposed law.

On Monday, the Assembly voted 53-25 in favor of the pair of bills that came out of the conference committee; the Senate passed the bills on a 25-13 vote...

[Demeter]

19. As long as the rich can speculate on food, the world's poor go hungry

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/as-long-as-the-rich-can-speculate-on-food-the-worlds-poor-go-hungry-20120630-219ja.html


James Goodman argues foreign aid is a waste of money that will not end poverty...

***************************************************************************************

WHEN we think of overseas aid, we think of helping people who need it. The government says aid helps people overcome poverty. But does it? Obviously, to overcome poverty we have to overcome the causes of poverty, and the big causes of poverty today are untouched by aid. Poor countries are still forced to pay off unpayable debts. The global poor are facing ever-higher food prices, driven by speculation. And climate change is already destroying lands and livelihoods. The United Nations warns that these three factors are now reversing global development. To stop this we need radical change.

We need complete debt cancellation. We need to dismantle financial institutions that use debt to control poor countries, and we need to require banks to finance public goals, not derivatives.

We need to ban food speculation and protect the peasant farmers, who produce the bulk of the world's food. We need to halt ''market access'' rules and limit large-scale agribusiness.

We need real action to leave fossil fuels in the ground - to stop mining coal, oil and gas. And we need to pay our climate debts to poor countries that are facing climate change now...

Our global financial crisis began in 2008 - the financial crisis in poor countries began in the late 1970s, and hasn't stopped for breath. Billions of dollars each year are still transferred from poor to rich. In 2008, $100 billion was given in overseas aid; in the same year, rich countries pocketed $600 billion in debt repayments. The debt burden of developing countries became unpayable when the interest on development loans was suddenly hiked in the early 1980s. Just like subprime mortgages in the US, development loans turned into a debtors' prison. After the 2008 financial crisis, rich countries spent more than $20 trillion in bank bailouts and economic stimuli (incredibly, $20 trillion is a fifth of global income). The total debt of all 128 developing countries stands at $3.7 trillion. It can be cancelled if we want it to be.

Scandalously, the food crisis in developing countries has passed us by, almost unnoticed. Yet it is the biggest threat to poverty reduction. Farming in many developing countries has been decimated by ''free trade'' rules under the World Trade Organisation. Countries have become dependent on food imports, leaving the poor vulnerable to price hikes. From 2006 to 2008, the global price of food doubled, forcing an additional 180 million people into destitution. Why is food suddenly so expensive? The answer came in 2008, when prices halved with the financial collapse, and then doubled again with the financial recovery. Speculation on food prices was big business after the US lifted its ban on the practice in 2000. About $13 trillion surged into food commodities from 2006, and then out again in 2008, and then back in again by 2011. That's why we should reverse the WTO's ''market access'' agenda and support peasant agriculture - rather than global agribusiness - and reimpose the ban on food speculation.

The third threat to poverty reduction - climate change - is already having a devastating impact on the global poor. Nine of the 10 people displaced by climate change live in developing countries. Poverty is already on the increase due to floods and shortages of fresh water and sea-water inundation related to climate change. The World Bank says $100 billion is needed now, each year, to help poor countries cope with the impacts of climate change. Obviously, rich countries are most able to stop burning fossil fuels. We are most to blame for the problem and yet still we stall. And aid donors (including Australia) still refuse to accept that climate aid should be in addition to development aid...MORE

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James Goodman is in the IQ2 debate Foreign Aid is a Waste of Money, Melbourne Town Hall on Wednesday. He is an associate professor at the University of Technology, Sydney.

[Demeter]

20. For Mexicans, It Was the Economy, Stupid

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/opinion/for-mexicans-it-was-the-economy-stupid.html?_r=1

IF ever there were an election preordained as a result of economic performance, it would be Mexico’s election on Sunday. The ruling National Action Party, or PAN, was destined to lose because it had presided over profound economic failure for 11 years. Almost any government in world would have lost under such circumstances.

Commentators, focused on the six-year-old drug war, have largely neglected to note the depth of Mexico’s economic problems. Let’s start with the basics: Since 2000, when the PAN was first elected, income per person in Mexico has grown by just 0.9 percent annually. This is terrible for a developing country, and less than half the rate of growth of the Latin American region during this period — which was itself not stellar. If we just look at per capita growth since the last election, in 2006, Mexico finishes dead last of all the countries in Latin America.

Between 1980 and 2000, when the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, lost control of Mexico for the first time in more than 70 years, the country saw a precipitous drop in economic growth. Before the 1980s, Mexico was growing at a rate that would have lifted the country to European living standards, had it continued. It is not fashionable among observers, in the United States or Mexico, to mention that Mexico’s economy has performed abysmally for more than 30 years. Starting with the recession and Latin American debt crisis in the early 1980s, the PRI shifted toward what economists call “neoliberalism”: abandoning state-led industrial and development policies, tightening monetary and fiscal policies and liberalizing foreign investment and trade. The North American Free Trade Agreement, which took effect in 1994, was only the most visible example of this transformation.

Of course, not all of these policies were mistaken, but the overall result was an unqualified failure. The same thing happened across Latin America from 1980 to 2000, where gross domestic product, per capita, grew by 6 percent, as compared with 92 percent over the prior two decades....More than half of all Mexicans are living below the official poverty line, and the new government does not look like it has much to offer the country’s poor majority. Sadly, Mexico’s economic progress will probably remain very halting until there is a more level playing field for elections.

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Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

[xchrom]

21. happy 4th

[Demeter]

23. And to you!

Stop me before I volunteer again! (already have two new commitments I could live without)

[xchrom]

26. in my best mom's voice: 'Young Lady, you stop that business, right now!'

*** and change that outfit before company arrives -- i don't want them to see you looking like that.

[Demeter]

22. Why is Nobody Freaking Out About the LIBOR Banking Scandal? MATT TAIBBL

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/why-is-nobody-freaking-out-about-the-libor-banking-scandal-20120703#ixzz1zcu88hJ9

The LIBOR manipulation story has exploded into a major scandal overseas. The CEO of Barclays, Bob Diamond, has resigned in disgrace; his was the first of what will undoubtedly be many major banks to walk the regulatory plank for fixing the interbank exchange rate. The Labor party is demanding a sweeping criminal investigation. Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, responded the way a real public official should (i.e. not like Ben Bernanke), blasting the banks:

It is time to do something about the banking system…Many people in the banking industry are hardworking and feel badly let down by some of their colleagues and leaders. It goes to the culture and the structure of banks: the excessive compensation, the shoddy treatment of customers, the deceitful manipulation of a key interest rate, and today, news of yet another mis-selling scandal.

The furor is over revelations that Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and other banks were monkeying with at least $10 trillion in loans (The Wall Street Journal is calculating that that LIBOR affects $800 trillion worth of contracts). The banks gamed LIBOR for two semi-overlapping reasons. As noted here last week, there were instances of Barclays traders badgering the LIBOR submitters to "push down" rates in order to fatten their immediate bottom lines, depending on what they were trading or holding that day. They also apparently rigged LIBOR downward in order to produce a general appearance of better health, essentially tweaking their credit scores a few ticks upward.

Most intriguingly, or perhaps disturbingly, there were revelations last week that Bank of England deputy Governor Paul Tucker had a conversation with Diamond at the peak of the crisis in 2008. The conversation reportedly left Diamond, and subsequently his traders, with the impression that the bank had carte blanche to rig LIBOR downward in order to help allay spiraling public fears about the banks’ poor financial health. British officials, and Tucker individually, deny that Tucker gave Diamond permission to rig rates. But a report by British regulators did conclude that the two were talking about Barclays LIBOR submissions on October 29, 2008, and that as a result of that conversation, Diamond came away with a “misunderstanding.” The Daily Mail quotes the Financial Services Authority report:

However, as the substance of the telephone conversation was relayed down the chain of command at Barclays, a misunderstanding or miscommunication occurred.

This meant that Barclays’ submitters believed mistakenly that they were operating under an instruction from the Bank of England (as conveyed by senior management) to reduce Barclays’ Libor submissions.

That is explosive stuff. Members of Parliament will be grilling Tucker tomorrow about those events in what is sure to be a far more combative and entertaining legislative inquiry than the Jamie Dimon dog-and-pony show we just went through here in the states in recent weeks. The implications of that part of the story should be particularly chilling to Americans, who in recent years have been party to a number of revelations about strange and seemingly inappropriate contacts between senior regulatory officials and big bankers during the heat of the crisis. We know that American officials in 2008-2009 were extremely concerned about the appearance of weakness in the financial markets, so much so that they may have resisted pursuing criminal prosecutions against big banks, and we also know that they spent a lot of time commiserating with Wall Street figures before and during the crisis. If Bob Diamond and Paul Tucker were having these talks about LIBOR, is it fair to wonder what else Hank Paulson and Lloyd Blankfein were talking about in the 24 discussions they had in the six days following the AIG disaster? When Paulson had a secret meeting with the entire board of Goldman Sachs in, of all places, his hotel suite in Moscow, in June of 2008? Or what other material nonpublic information was exchanged when Paulson met with a gang of hedge fund chiefs at the offices of Eton Park management in July 2008, and laid out for them a possible scenario for putting Fannie and Freddie into receivership?

........................................................................

But to me what’s missing from all of this is the “Holy Fucking Shit!” factor. This story is so outrageous that it shocks even the most cynical Wall Street observers. I have a friend who works on Wall Street who for years has been trolling through the stream of financial corruption stories with bemusement, darkly enjoying the spectacle as though the whole post-crisis news arc has been like one long, beautifully-acted, intensely believable sequel to Goodfellas. But even he is just stunned to the point of near-speechlessness by the LIBOR thing. “It’s like finding out that the whole world is on quicksand,” he says.

[Demeter]

24. Defiant Barclays By Felix Salmon

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/07/03/defiant-barclays/

The resignation of Bob Diamond notwithstanding, it seems that Barclays is sticking to its scorched-earth, if-we’re-going-down-we’re-taking-you-with-us strategy. In its submission to the UK parliament in the run-up to Bob Diamond’s testimony tomorrow, Barclays is very aggressive and not at all contrite. The submission starts with a statement that Barclays should somehow be viewed in a better light than all the other banks:

The bank has invested nearly £100m to ensure that no stone has been left unturned in the investigation. The bank’s exceptional level of cooperation was expressly recorded by each of the Authorities, and was described by the DoJ as “extraordinary and extensive, in terms of the quality and types of information provided” and ”the nature and value of Barclays cooperation has exceeded what other entities have provided in the course of this investigation.” That cooperation has led to Barclays being the first to reach resolution of these issues. It ironic that there has been such an intense focus on Barclays alone, caused by our being first to settle in the midst of an industry-wide, global investigation.

It then launches into a long disquisition about the now-notorious phone call between Diamond and the Bank of England’s Paul Tucker:

On 29 October 2008, Bob Diamond received a call from Paul Tucker, the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England. The substance of that call was captured by Bob Diamond via a note prepared at the time…

Subsequent to the call, Bob Diamond relayed the contents of the conversation to Jerry del Missier. Bob Diamond did not believe he received an instruction from Paul Tucker or that he gave an instruction to Jerry del Missier. However Jerry del Missier concluded that an instruction had been passed down from the Bank of England not to keep LIBORs so high and he therefore passed down a direction to that effect to the submitters.

All we know of the phone call is Diamond’s contemporaneous note of it, preserved in a fuzzy photocopy.



This is Barclays’s none-too-subtle attempt to finger the Bank of England in the whole sordid affair, implying that its Libor price-fixing was somehow a consequence of this phone call from Tucker. But if you look at the FSA’s Final Notice on the Libor fixing, all of the dubious activity takes place before the phone call — between January 2005 and July 2008.* Besides, only in the minds of traders who had been fixing Libor for years would Tucker’s conversation have ever been taken as a nod and a wink to do just that. Libor is a measure of the interest rate at which banks lend to each other; Tucker was clearly just saying that Barclays should work with those other banks to get that rate down. There isn’t a transcript of this conversation anywhere, but I can easily imagine Tucker saying something like this: “lots of senior Whitehall types are seeing the high rates you’re paying in the Libor market, and they’re asking me about it. I’m sure you don’t need my advice here, but you really shouldn’t be so high”. That’s a regulator doing what regulators should do — telling banks to get their act together and normalize their operations. What he meant, I’m sure, is that Barclays should do whatever it took to improve its reputation with other banks, so that they would lend to Barclays at lower rates. And yet the corrupt Barclays operation, including Jerry del Missier, reckoned that it would be easier to just go back to their old sordid ways, and nobble the Libor fixings instead. Or at least that’s the impression you get from the Barclays document. If you look at official-sector documents, the worst thing that Barclays did in the wake of the phone call was basically compliance-related.

Barclays, in its submission, tries very hard to show that for most of the time that the Libor price-fixing was going on, it still reported higher rates than most other banks. In other words, Barclays is still trying to exonerate itself, and/or point fingers at other banks and even the Bank of England. I’m sorry, but it’s far too late for that. The verdict has come down, the fine has been paid. The job of Barclays, now, is to put the whole episode in the past, say that it’s sorry, and move on — under a new chairman and a new CEO. But don’t expect much along those lines from Diamond, tomorrow. He’s still sore — and he’s going to make sure that parliament knows it.

*Update: Thanks to James Mackintosh for finding allegations of more dubious activity in paragraph 12, which talks about “numerous occasions between September 2007 and May 2009″. Obviously the beginning of that period still predates the phone call, but the end doesn’t.

[Demeter]

25. Diamond may face a fight for his £20m final payout

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/9374277/Diamond-may-face-a-fight-for-his-20m-final-payout.html

Barclays may try to force Bob Diamond to forfeit up to £20million in pay and bonuses, it has emerged...The outgoing chief executive has received more than £100 million in pay, pension and bonuses since 2005 and is due a significant further payout under his current contract.

Mr Diamond was forced to resign yesterday morning after days of defying calls to step down over the rate-fixing scandal. The banker, who appears before MPs today, has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and is understood to have been cleared by an independent investigation ordered by Barclays. He agreed to resign after Sir Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, contacted Marcus Agius, the Barclays chairman. Barclays’ chief operating officer also quit. Mr Agius, who tendered his resignation on Monday, agreed to return to the bank to recruit a new executive team. He will then step down.

In a statement, Mr Diamond said:

“The external pressure placed on Barclays has reached a level that risks damaging the franchise – I cannot let that happen.

“I am deeply disappointed that the impression created by the events announced last week about what Barclays and its people stand for could not be further from the truth.”

[Ghost Dog]

36. "...invested nearly £100m to ensure that no stone has been left unturned..."

Please make public detailed audited accounts explaining exactly how every penny of this large amount was "invested".

Thanx.

[xchrom]

35. Banks Are Winning The Intimidation Campaign Against Journalists

http://www.businessinsider.com/financial-journalism-sometimes-being-responsible-means-pissing-people-off-2012-7

Last week, Gillian Tett of the Financial Times wrote how five years previously, she and her fellow journalists were intimidated into backing off of a huge story about banks manipulating LIBOR. This is the London Interbank Offered Rate set by a poll of leading banks to determine the benchmark interest rate referenced by many home mortgage loans, floating rate notes, collateralized debt obligations, and many other financial instruments:
"At the time, this sparked furious criticism from the British Bankers' Association, as well as big banks such as Barclays; the word "scaremongering" was used. But now we know that, amid the blustering from the BBA, the reality was worse than we thought. As emails released by the UK Financial Services Authority show, some Barclays traders were engaged in a constant and pervasive attempt to rig the Libor market from 2006 on, with the encouragement of more senior managers. And the British bank may not have been alone." ("LIBOR Affair Shows Banking's Big Conceit," June 28, 2012.)
At the heart of the allegations is what appears to be a blasé criminal conspiracy within Barclays. Moreover, Tett is correct. Barclays is far from alone.
Unfortunately, the intimidation was a success. The BBA and Barclays chose their word carefully, because accusing journalists of "scaremongering" suggests they are irresponsible sensationalist hacks. In essence, through lies and intimidation, they threatened to ruin careers.


Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-tavakoli/financial-journalism-some_b_1647093.html#ixzz1zfAhFLRF

[Demeter]

27. How the Fannie and Freddie Could, But Won’t, Cut the Housing Gordian Knot

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/07/how-the-fannie-and-freddie-could-but-wont-cut-the-housing-gordian-knot.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29

The ongoing, still unresolved issue of the mortgage mess is that irresponsible, unaccountable, self-serving “agents” called servicers manage foreclosures and mortgage modifications. Pretty much anyone who has looked at the problem argues that mortgage modifications to viable borrowers would lead to lower losses to investors and less damage to the housing markets than the Mellonite “Liquidate real estate” program in place now.

The reason we seem unable to get off this destructive path is servicers are paid to foreclose, and not to modify, hence they have set themselves up pretty much only to foreclose. And even with bribes like HAMP 2.0 (and increasingly, threats, like pending legislation in California and other states that puts more teeth in the requirement that a servicer negotiate with a stressed borrower), servicers really can’t be bothered. Part of it is their existing software platforms are held together with bubble gum and rubber bands; the other part is that they’d have to create new infrastructure, with very different staffing and management approaches than in their existing businesses. I’ve had “special servicers,” the boutiques that are set up to do high-touch servicing, tell me that it takes five times the staff levels of regular servicers to handle mods, and they think their business has scale limits (as in once a special servicer gets too large, it has to start increasing the standardization of its operations, which undermines doing mods well).

So it appears servicers need more pressure applied to them to make them offer mods to borrowers. Adam Levitin has come up with a new idea that could be implemented readily, at least for Fannie and Freddie borrowers:

Under current bankruptcy law, a Chapter 13 plan may be confirmed only if secured creditors receive their collateral, receive the value of their collateral, or consent to the plan. The legislative proposals for cramdown all sought to enable involuntary modification of mortgages; cramdown was to be the stick that would encourage voluntary modifications.

But we could have voluntary cramdown under existing law and this could be done on a large scale staring immediately. Specifically, FHFA could require the GSEs to adopt a policy of consenting to Chapter 13 plans that have cramdown. (FHA/VA/Ginnie Mae could adopt a parallel policy for government insured loans.) Such a policy would address the two major objections that have been raised to principal reduction by the GSEs: the much dreaded (and overstated, imho) moral hazard problem and the second lien free-rider problem.

There is actually a bit of an operational issue, which may not be trivial. Levitin noted in an earlier post that:

The GSEs claim that when a loan defaults, the property is automatically transferred to the servicer, so that the servicer can foreclose in its own name (and Fannie and Freddie’s names never appear, which would be bad for P.R.). It’s not clear how this automatic transfer actually works–I don’t know of any legal mechanism that blesses it, but maybe it can be brought into the scope of UCC Article 9 (other than in South Carolina).

I’m going to address this matter in a separate post, but this does raise the question of who is actually the foreclosing party and how the GSEs compel them to play ball (since the whole problem to date has been reluctance to discipline servicers). But we’ll assume this issue can be finessed. He also pointed out that unsecured creditors might throw a spanner in the works...MORE

[Po_d Mainiac]

28. M.A.D. and eating their own offspring :hope hope:

Paul Tucker, the Bank of England executive at the center of the Barclays/Diamond trigger-conversation, has issued a statement requesting a Treasury hearing to show his "keenness to clarify the position with regard to the events" of that hanging chad of a phone-call. What is most troublesome (for every major banker and politician) is his apparent willingness to take more down with him. As the M.A.D. escalates, MNI reports that minutes from 2007 show Tucker (who was/is in line as we noted yesterday for the top-job once King leaves next year) was fully aware from the early days of the financial crisis that market participants believed Libor was rigged. The Group’s November 2007 minutes, from a Tucker-chaired meeting, state “Several group members thought that Libor fixings had been lower than actual traded interbank rates through the period of stress.” The minutes show that not only was the issue raised back in November 2007 but that the BOE went to great lengths as the crisis deepened the following year to keep its finger on the money markets’ pulse. It seems that instead of mounting the 'plead-da-fif' defense Tucker is coming all-guns-blazing and is willing to drag more names into this miasma as a suicide-bomb of a hearing where the truth is realized could well bring every high ranking banking official to admit the continued unreality of Libor rates.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/boes-tucker-preparing-self-immolate-and-take-others-down

Hopefully this is a contagion coming to a particular East Coast city's financial district, in the very near future.

[xchrom]

30. French police search Nicolas Sarkozy home and office

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18693321


Police have carried out searches of the home and offices of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy as part of a campaign financing probe.

A law firm in which Mr Sarkozy owns shares was also searched, reports say.

The investigation is related to allegations that Mr Sarkozy's 2007 presidential election campaign received illegal donations from France's richest woman, Liliane Bettencourt.

Mr Sarkozy has previously denied all wrongdoing.

[Demeter]

38. I can't imagine what they would find, 5 years after the fact

and with all his marital changes, surely anything left from the previous woman would have been thrown out.

[Po_d Mainiac]

41. Are u kidding?

He likely has a trophy room, or at least a cabinet.

[xchrom]

31. Angola's Chinese-built ghost town

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-18646243

The ghost towns of China, Ireland and Spain - full of large empty house estates - may be a phenomenon that is on its way to Africa.

Built for people who never move in, they leave those who did with a worthless property they cannot sell.

Perched in an isolated spot some 30km (18 miles) outside Angola's capital, Luanda, Nova Cidade de Kilamba is a brand-new mixed residential development of 750 eight-storey apartment buildings, a dozen schools and more than 100 retail units.

Designed to house up to half a million people when complete, Kilamba has been built by the state-owned China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC) in under three years at a reported cost of $3.5bn (£2.2bn).

[xchrom]

32. Irish unemployment hits 18-year high of 14.9 pct

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_IRELAND_FINANCIAL_CRISIS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-07-04-07-36-59

DUBLIN (AP) -- Government statisticians say Ireland's unemployment rate has risen to an 18-year high of 14.9 percent, underscoring the country's struggle to stimulate its economy amid debt fears and austerity pressures.

Wednesday's confirmation of rising joblessness could have been worse, but tens of thousands have emigrated this year to stronger job markets in other English-speaking countries, chiefly Britain, Australia and Canada.

Irish unemployment previously stood at 14.7 percent. It last reached 15 percent in March 1994, the year Ireland began to experience its first extended economic boom.

That Celtic Tiger economy slashed unemployment and spurred immigration - but grew overly dependent on cheap credit and property speculation. Boom turned to bust in 2008 when the global credit crunch exposed reckless lending at Irish banks. Ireland's international bailout followed in 2010.

[xchrom]

33. “Spain needs a change in monetary policy; if it fails, the euro will fail” {krugman}

http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/07/03/inenglish/1341345769_329639.html

In the last three years, Paul Krugman hasn’t changed much physically but his message has, and by a lot. He is no longer proposing 30-percent wage cuts or onerous plans to reduce public spending; all he wants is for the European Central Bank (ECB) to step in. His discipline and punctuality is also unchanged as he attends the presentation in Madrid of a Spanish translation his new book End this Depression Now!

Question. Let’s say I am Spaniard with savings. What should I do with my money?

Answer. Oh my God, I don’t want to be responsible for anyone’s savings. But there is a real possibility that the euro will break up. What was once unthinkable is possible today. Obviously I cannot give any clear advice but it is a very complicated situation, and there could be some people who lose part of the value of their savings. I don’t think we are talking about a catastrophic situation, but it doesn’t look very good either.

Q. Do you still see the possibility of an Argentinean-style corralito [freezing of accounts] occurring here in Spain?

A. This would be part of the scenario if the euro failed. It wasn’t my intention to cause a lot of confusion when I said [the word corralito in a blog post]. This is something that would happen until another currency is introduced, but it isn’t something that is going to happen from one day to the next.

[xchrom]

34. India is losing its lure as emerging market darling

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2012/0703/1224319264587.html

SERIOUS MONEY : INDIA HAS BEEN viewed as a tiger economy – rather than a lumbering elephant – ever since it embraced outward-looking, market-friendly policies in 1991.

Income per capita has increased from just $300 three decades ago to $1,700 today, and the economy has not experienced a single year of contraction since the Iranian oil shock and a bad monsoon struck in 1979.

A poor growth mix in recent years, however, has undermined the subcontinent’s status as emerging-market darling.

Persistently large fiscal deficits, a deteriorating external position, and stubbornly high inflation have led to a change in concerns over India’s ability to sustain its high-growth performance to whether it can simply maintain overall stability. Corrective measures are required urgently if the country wishes to avoid a return to the status of lumbering elephant.

[Hotler]

37. It made me cry.

There is a video posted over in the Video & Multimedia forum of Keb Mo play and singing America The Beautiful. It made me cry. It made me think back to a time When I had hope and I did see a future. A time when I felt like I had self-worth, I was rewarded for my hard work, I enjoyed working for my employer, When I felt a oneness with my fellow workers and neighbors. A time when this country wasn't so divided and people looked out for one another. When I cry it is not just about me. I cry because of the pain of millions of others that have been beaten down by the Man and his system of the last 10-15 yrs. Yes there was a time when this country was great and there was promise, but it has been kicked to the curb. Enough of my pitty party, go watch the video and enjoy some good music. Music can be chicken soup for the soul. For a few minutes music can make the shit go away and let you feel whole again. Let me leave you with this gem.

[Demeter]

39. We believe in you, Hotler

And you don't want to disappoint us, do you? You are going to survive. We are all going to survive. And when the present unpleasantness is finally over, and it will be, we will sit around boring the next three generations about the Bad Old Days.

[Demeter]

40. The Computer Sites Say:

It's either 104F, or 96F with a heat index of 107F, OR 96F.

In any event, it's hot. And the Kid is in meltdown. And I have to go work in an hour, and then again when the papers come out....if there's anything left, I'll check in after.

[Demeter]

42. My brother just sent word--our childhood home is up for auction--$500 min bid

http://whydontweownthis.com/dragon/sales/120771

http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/streetview?fov=90&key=ABQIAAAAL6lqe8kSDwiF8BU1Efz4bhTn5OkWXpzcZnbXAfii2qYlpAx7LhSj4jSnrqqb5bNRWhvw1a44hqSisg&location=42.3653504153824%2C-83.2139546927158&pitch=10&sensor=false&size=620x380

My sister and I shared the finished attic...and discovered we were as different as night and day, including our sleep cycles...we slept there (together) for maybe 9 years, and then when we moved, we still shared a (much smaller) room in a Massachusetts suburb, until I moved out. We are much better sisters with 850 miles between us.

I would have to be out of my mind to buy this house....but....

There was an enormous elm tree, just outside the side door, by the chainlink fence. I was nearly electrocuted when it was struck by lightning one sudden thunderstorm.

Solid oak floors and doors, poky little rooms. One tiny bathroom, which I locked myself in TWICE in one day around age 3, my poor father climbing in through the window, his face all red and terrifying....he broke the lock and we went without for years.

[Demeter]

43. The temperature is finally starting to drop

94 F at 7:30PM.