Weekend Economists Rise Again August 10-12, 2012

[Demeter]

Yes, well, it's feeling really strange to be doing this, after an entire week stuck in my local Reality. It's like losing one's mind, when one loses one's computer. So if I fumble, just point me in the right direction....

I'm not the Resurrection NOR the Light, and I won't play one on the tubes, either, but let's see who started the whole idea and where it's taken the human race...

Resurrection (anglicized from Latin resurrectio) is the concept of a living being's literally coming back to life after death. It is largely a religious concept, where it is used in two distinct respects —a belief in the resurrection of individual souls that is current and ongoing (Christian idealism, realized eschatology), or else a belief in a singular "Resurrection of the Dead" event at the end of the world. Most eschatologies believe in a universal resurrection, wherein all people from all history are resurrected. The Resurrection of the Dead is a standard eschatological belief in the Abrahamic religions. In a number of ancient religions, a life-death-rebirth deity is a deity which dies and resurrects. The death and resurrection of Jesus is a central focus of Christianity.

The soul is believed by some to be the divine and immortal part of the human mind[citation needed] and some believe it is the actual vehicle by which people are resurrected.[1] However, theological debate ensues with regard to what kind of resurrection is factual —either a spiritual resurrection with a spirit body (i.e. Heaven), or a material resurrection with a restored human body.[2] While most Christians believe Jesus' resurrection was in a material body; which was seen by over 500 people, a very small minority believe it was spiritual.[3][4][5]

There are documented rare cases of the return to life of the clinically dead which are classified scientifically as examples of the Lazarus syndrome, a term originating from the Biblical story of the Resurrection of Lazarus.

Ancient religions in the Near East

The concept of resurrection is found in the writings of some ancient non-Abrahamic religions in the Middle East. A few extant Egyptian and Canaanite writings allude to dying and rising gods such as Osiris and Baal. Sir James Frazer in his book The Golden Bough relates to these dying and rising gods, but many of his examples, according to various scholars, distort the sources. Taking a more positive position, Mettinger argues in his recent book that the category of rise and return to life is significant for the following deities: Ugaritic Baal, Melqart, Adonis, Eshmun, Osiris and Dumuzi.

So, it's an idea that's been around for a long time....

Let's see if we can spot signs of Resurrection in this moribund economy....

[Demeter]

1. NO BANKS FAILED...YET

but it's only 6pm EDT. Check back later.

[Demeter]

9. FDIC TOOK THE WEEKEND OFF

Small banks everywhere have another 7 days to get it all together....

[Demeter]

2. The Romney / Obama Diversion: Say Goodbye to Social Security by ROB URIE

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/08/03/say-goodbye-to-social-security/

In a New York Times editorial ( http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/12/opinion/recession-why-worry.html?src=pm ) written in 1993 the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith made a point that seems to have been lost on subsequent generations—many in the economic elite benefit from the destitution of others. Even more to the point, activist government could put the unemployed back to work tomorrow, but at a cost to the elite. By tying economic policies long known to work to competing economic interests, Dr. Galbraith explained the current conundrum. Economies in the West aren’t working because a small economic elite benefits from this state of affairs.

With Barack Obama, of his own initiative, slated to begin cutting government expenditures in 2013 (should he be re-elected), a number of his liberal and progressive supporters have taken to granting that the Federal budget ‘crisis,’ to which he purports to be responding, is real. In fact, the ‘debate’ was preceded by forty years of policies designed to systematically de-fund government, reduce labor to a beggar class and to gut any public programs that don’t specifically and directly make the rich richer. To pretend that this is other than a manufactured ‘crisis’ designed to shift more public resources to the already rich is to misread history.

Apparently unbeknownst to many, the working class in America has been living with austerity economics for forty years now. Since the 1970s the proportion of what American labor is paid relative to what it produces has been declining, as have the effective tax rates on corporations and the wealthy. With corporations and the rich who own them receiving a larger proportion of what labor produces and paying less in taxes, there is now little left to pay for necessary social programs such as schools, health care and pensions. But this shortfall is no accident. It is the intended result of four decades of policies specifically designed to enrich the ruling class at the expense of labor, the middle class and the poor.

In modern history the shift of social wealth from labor to the ruling class began in earnest with Democrat Jimmy Carter in the White House in the late-1970s. A series of politically motivated oil embargoes quite predictably led the oil-dependent manufacturing economy to rising prices and lower output—stagflation. Through arcane theory still practiced by the American economic mainstream, the cause—the oil embargoes with attendant rising prices and reduced output, was converted to effect, as if from over-regulation and Keynesian management of the capitalist economy. The proposed solutions derived from these (implausible) economic theories were de-regulation, the destruction of labor’s bargaining power and the return to (long discredited) ‘market’ solutions to policy issues....

MUCH MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

3. Drifting Away From Our Ideals By Gar Alperovitz, The Democracy Collaborative | Book Excerpt

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10786-drifting-away-from-our-ideals

This excerpt from Chapter One of "America Beyond Capitalism" is Part Five of our continuing exclusive series of installments from Gar Alperovitz's visionary book, first published in 2005, whose time has come.

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

We often forget that it was once simply assumed the United States would move inevitably in the direction of ever greater equality. A 1963 American Economic Review article observed that "most recent studies" of U.S. economic history take for granted that "since the end of the depression the nation's wealth has been redistributed and prosperity has been extended to the vast majority." A respected group of researchers declared, "The United States has arrived at the point where poverty could be abolished easily and simply by a stroke of the pen." The title of an important book by the liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith proclaimed the "Affluent Society."

Such assumptions now appear strange, indeed, unreal. Statistical studies show growing, not diminishing, inequality. Writers like Galbraith have been forced to a radical reassessment: "Alas, I am not nearly as optimistic now as then.... [T]hose who dismiss the pro-affluent movement of these past years as a temporary departure from some socially concerned norm are quite wrong."

Compensation of the ten most highly paid CEOs averaged $3.5 million a year in 1981. By 1988 it had jumped to $19.3 million. By 2000 it was $154 million—an increase over this period of 4,300 percent.

In 1948 Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson had attempted to illustrate the extent of inequality in his popular economics textbook with the following example: "If we made ... an income pyramid out of a child's play blocks with each layer portraying $1,000 of income, the peak would be far higher than the Eiffel Tower, but almost all of us would be within a yard of the ground."

CONTINUES AT LINK

[Demeter]

4. RESURRECTION: Ancient Greek religion

In ancient Greek religion, a number of men and women were made physically immortal as they were resurrected from the dead. Asclepius, was killed by Zeus only to be resurrected and transformed into a major deity. Achilles, after being killed, was snatched from his funeral pyre by his divine mother Thetis and resurrected, brought to an immortal existence in either Leuce, Elysian plains or the Islands of the Blessed. Memnon, who was killed by Achilles, seems to have a received a similar fate. Alcmene, Castor, Heracles, and Melicertes were also among the figures sometimes considered to have been resurrected to physical immortality. According to Herodotus's Histories, the seventh century BC sage Aristeas of Proconnesus was first found dead, after which his body disappeared from a locked room. Later he found not only to have been resurrected but to have gained immortality.

Many other figures, like a great part of those who fought in the Trojan and Theban wars, Menelaus, and the historical pugilist Cleomedes of Astupalaea, were also believed to have been made physically immortal, but without having died in the first place. Indeed, in Greek religion, immortality originally always included an eternal union of body and soul. The philosophical idea of an immortal soul was a later invention, which, although influential, never had a breakthrough in the Greek world. As may be witnessed even into the Christian era, not least by the complaints of various philosophers over popular beliefs, traditional Greek believers maintained the conviction that certain individuals were resurrected from the dead and made physically immortal and that for the rest of us, we could only look forward to an existence as disembodied and dead souls.

This traditional religious belief in physical immortality was generally denied by the Greek philosophers. Writing his Lives of Illustrious Men (Parallel Lives) in the first century CE, the Middle Platonic philosopher Plutarch's chapter on Romulus gave an account of his mysterious disappearance and subsequent deification, comparing it to traditional Greek beliefs such as the resurrection and physical immortalization of Alcmene and Aristeas the Proconnesian, "for they say Aristeas died in a fuller's work-shop, and his friends coming to look for him, found his body vanished; and that some presently after, coming from abroad, said they met him traveling towards Croton." Plutarch openly scorned such beliefs held in traditional ancient Greek religion, writing, "many such improbabilities do your fabulous writers relate, deifying creatures naturally mortal."

The parallel between these traditional beliefs and the later resurrection of Jesus was not lost on the early Christians, as Justin Martyr argued: "when we say … Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propose nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you consider sons of Zeus." (1 Apol. 21). There is, however, no belief in a general resurrection in ancient Greek religion, as the Greeks held that not even the gods were able to recreate flesh that had been lost to decay, fire or consumption. The notion of a general resurrection of the dead was therefore apparently quite preposterous to the Greeks. This is made clear in Paul's Areopagus discourse. After having first told about the resurrection of Jesus, which makes the Athenians interested to hear more, Paul goes on, relating how this event relates to a general resurrection of the dead:

"Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead." Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, `We shall hear you again concerning this.'"

---WIKIPEDIA

[Demeter]

5. Time to Rebel! Five Ways We Can Break the Big Banks' Death Grip on the Economy

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10807-time-to-rebel-five-ways-we-can-break-the-big-banks-death-grip-on-the-economy

Wall Street’s incredible greed and arrogance may have finally handed us the tools and leverage we need.

Let’s be honest. Many people are feeling a little hopeless and cynical about whether anything can change how Wall Street banks run roughshod over the economy and our democracy. We’ve marched, rallied, sat-in and thousands have been arrested--and yet bankers have remained unrepentant, unpunished, unindicted and seemingly untouchable. But the wheels of history are turning and Wall Street’s incredible greed and arrogance may have finally handed us the tools and leverage we need to challenge and break the death grip Wall Street has on struggling people and communities around the country.

Two critical tools--the LIBOR fraud scandal and the potential to start exercising eminent domain to seize bank-owned properties--can supercharge the ongoing campaigns focused on Wall Street. For the first time we can align moral and legal arguments with real leverage to demand that banks renegotiate the debt that is bankrupting communities and drowning homeowners around the country. The single most important step we can take to address local budget deficits is to force banks to renegotiate toxic deals held by local government and to rewrite mortgages for underwater homeowners. Combined, this would pump hundreds of billions into local economies...

...Whatever the ultimate number is (there are estimates of hundreds of billions in damages DUE TO LIBOR FIXING), this scandal has permanently torpedoed the notion that there is “moral hazard” in debt relief for regular folks. We can now prove what we’ve always suspected--that the big banks have rigged the game in their favor and that our deals with them are inherently unfair and should be renegotiated. Oakland, California has taken a first step by demanding Goldman Sachs renegotiate a toxic swap the city is trapped in, saying it will boycott Goldman Sachs in the future if the bank won’t renegotiate.

Eminent Domain. Government has long seized property to create room to build shopping malls and stadiums. Those same laws can be used to seize underwater mortgages from banks and then rewrite them at their real value so homeowners can stay in their homes at greatly reduced mortgage costs. If banks are unwilling to reset mortgages at fair market value, then local governments can lawfully seize their property for the common economic good. They would merely have to pay the banks fair market value for the mortgages, which would force the banks to take significant writedowns. San Bernardino County and Berkeley, California have already started down this road...

MORE AT LINK

[bread_and_roses]

6. Thus Spake Zarathushtra on resurrection

http://www.religioustolerance.org/zoroastr.htm

"Zoroastrianism is the oldest of the revealed world-religions, and it has probably had more influence on mankind, directly and indirectly, than any other single faith." Mary Boyce.

horizontal rule
Background:

The religion was founded by Zarathushtra in Persia -- modern-day Iran. It may have been the world's first monotheistic faith. It was once the religion of the Persian empire, but has since been reduced in numbers to fewer than 200,000 today. With the exception of religious conservatives, most religious historians believe the the Jewish, Christian and Muslim beliefs concerning God and Satan, the soul, heaven and hell, the virgin birth of the savior, the slaughter of the innocents, resurrection, the final judgment, etc. were all derived from Zoroastrianism.

and ... A Saoshyant (savior) will be born of a virgin, but of the lineage of the Prophet Zoroaster who will raise the dead and judge everyone in a final judgment. This is a theme that is seen in many world religions.

and ....
The Zorastrian holy book is called the Avesta. This includes the original words of their founder Zarathushtra, preserved in a series of five hymns, called the Gathas. The latter represent the basic source of the religion. The Gathas are abstract sacred poetry, directed toward the worship of the One God, understanding of righteousness and cosmic order, promotion of social justice and individual choice between good and evil. The Gathas have a general and even universal vision.

"ands..." & bold emphasis added

Gore Vidal wrote a book a greatly enjoyed, "Creation," who's protagonist is a Zoroastrian. He ends up traveling about the known world of his time and meeting Confucius, the Buddha, and founders of other religions. I thought it amusing as hell and would like to re-read it.

[Tansy_Gold]

7. Your choice of music -- superb, as always.

[Demeter]

10. I just wish I could hear it myself

I've yet to replace the speakers. No time this weekend, unless everything goes right....

It's so strange, having to shut the windows because it's COLD out there....but I'm so happy for the rain and the relief. The grass has already started greening up. I'm afraid we'll be losing some trees and bushes, though. That was the most brutal summer I've experienced, aside from the Long Hot one, and that was in Detroit, where greenery was the least of our concerns...

[Tobin S.]

8. Hi Demeter

I just started following this group. I'm starting to get an educated perspective on the economy now days. I've been a trucker for many years and you can learn a lot about the economy from that perspective believe it or not, but that's pretty much street wisdom (sorry about the pun). So I decided to get some book learnin. I am now a 39 year old junior at Indiana University majoring in business administration.

I just took two economics courses over the summer; microeconomics and macroeconomics. I aced both of them, but I'm kind of troubled. The texts were written by a fellow named Michael Parkin from the University of Western Ontario. I detected what seemed to me to be a somewhat conservative slant. These were basic economics texts and they were effective at teaching the basics, but as things progressed into the later chapters we started getting stuff about Reagan being good for the economy, school vouchers being the way to go, and the Affordable Care Act being detrimental to sustained economic growth.

I know that there are probably a lot more conservative business people than liberals. I'm kind of wondering if it might have something to do with conservatively biased professors writing the college text books. Is there room in today's economy for liberal business people?

[Demeter]

11. Well, it's because you are in the Business School

The conservative mindset has taken over there for a good thirty years. There's never actually been a liberal business mindset, even during FDR's time, in the larger business world, and the New Deal just gave the 1% fits, hence the impetus to undo it all that Reagan started. Because Business looks upon Labor as an adversary, I don't expect this to change until Business is just Organized Labor (co-operative corporations owned by the workers, instead of passive investors).

You'll have to do extra reading to get the liberal economists--Galbraith is a classic, of course, and we here in t his little forum will post any and all we find. I've noticed that often the conservatives may get the basic economic facts of what is going on correct, but then they go into conservative contortions trying to blame the results on liberal politics. As if!

As it is written, the Affordable Care Act IS detrimental to sustained economic progress. It's a hugely complicated, massively costly drag on people to pay off the insurance companies and the hospitals and other private industries that feed off them. I'm hoping for an early collapse of the whole scheme and a political breakthrough to Single Payer, but that may be after we are all dead...if the country still survives at all. Some days I'm more pessimistic than others.

[Demeter]

12. Resurrection in Judaism

There are three explicit examples in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) of people being resurrected from the dead:

The prophet Elijah prays and God raises a young boy from death (1 Kings 17:17-24)

Elisha raises the son of the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4:32-37); this was the very same child whose birth he previously foretold (2 Kings 4:8-16)

A dead man's body that was thrown into the dead Elisha's tomb is resurrected when the body touches Elisha's bones (2 Kings 13:21)

According to Herbert C. Brichtothe, writing in Reform Judaism's Hebrew Union College Annual, the family tomb is the central concept in understanding biblical views of the afterlife. Brichtothe states that it is "not mere sentimental respect for the physical remains that is...the motivation for the practice, but rather an assumed connection between proper sepulture and the condition of happiness of the deceased in the afterlife" According to Brichtothe, the early Israelites apparently believed that the graves of family, or tribe, united into one, and that this unified collectivity is to what the Biblical Hebrew term Sheol refers. Although not well defined in the Tanakh, Sheol in this view was a subterranean underworld where the souls of the dead went after the body died. The Babylonians had a similar underworld called Aralu, and the Greeks had one known as Hades. For biblical references to Sheol see Genesis 42:38, Isaiah 14:11, Psalm 141 , Daniel 12:2, Proverbs 7:27 and Job 10:21,22, and 17:16, among others. According to Brichtothe, other Biblical names for Sheol were: Abaddon (ruin), found in Psalm 88:11, Job 28:22 and Proverbs 15:11; Bor (the pit), found in Isaiah 14:15, 24:22, Ezekiel 26:20; and Shakhat (corruption), found in Isaiah 38:17, Ezekiel 28:8.--wikipedia

[Demeter]

13. Cat Stevens

[AnneD]

52. Considering Cat Stevens' numerous brushes with death....

I think he is an excellent choice for music. I vote for I'm being followed by a Moonshadow. Daughter use to beg me to sing it for her at bedtime. She would crack up in giggles when I reach the line ...if I should ever lose my mouth, all my teeth north and south. Of course, she had a window pane smile at that point.

[Demeter]

14. The Monsanto Subthread

Some in the Democratic column have decided to take on Monsanto as the epitome of Evil Corporation, and I haven't seen anything to contradict them. Here's this week's findings from the liberal blogs.

It is ironic to contemplate. Agriculture, the very science of Resurrection and Life, is perverted by profiteering into an engine of Death...

It's a special interest of anyone who follows in Demeter's footsteps...

[Demeter]

15. Monsanto GE Sweet Corn to Hit Walmart Shelves

http://www.nationofchange.org/monsanto-ge-sweet-corn-hit-walmart-shelves-1344432509

Like it or not, Monsanto’s genetically modified sweet corn will soon be arriving on grocery store shelves of the world’s largest retailer, Walmart Stores, Inc., and will not be labeled as such. Despite an onslaught of consumer pressure, the company confirmed late last week with the Chicago Tribune that it has no objection to selling the new crop of Monsanto’s genetically modified (GE) sweet corn. Other retailers, including the grocery chains Safeway and Kroger, have not responded on the issue, however Whole Foods, Trader Joes and General Mills have all vowed to not carry or use the GE sweet corn. As the country’s largest grocery retailer, Walmart sells $129 billion worth of food a year, giving it unmatched power in shaping the food supply chain.

The GE sweet corn is the first consumer product developed by Monsanto that will go straight from the farm to the consumer’s plate, rather than first being processed into animal feed, sugars, oils, fibers and other ingredients found in a wide variety of conventional food. It is engineered to be resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, the active ingredient of which is glyphosate. The product is also designed to produce a Bt toxin that will kill insects that feed on the plant. Monsanto’s new sweet corn is being harvested in the Midwest, Northwest, Southeast and Texas.

“After closely looking at both sides of the debate and collaborating with a number of respected food safety experts, we see no scientifically validated safety reasons to implement restrictions on this product,” Walmart officials told the Tribune...

[Demeter]

16. GMO-Fed Hamsters Become Infertile, Have Stunted Growth By Lisa Garber

http://www.nationofchange.org/gmo-fed-hamsters-become-infertile-have-stunted-growth-1344353117

Yet another study has concluded that feeding animals GMOs results in higher rates of infant mortality and causes fertility problems. Russian biologist Alexey V. Surov and other researchers fed Campbell hamsters (which have fast reproduction rates) Monsanto GM soy for two years. It should be noted that hamsters do not evolutionarily eat soy—just as cows fed Monsanto corn are actually ruminants and would not naturally eat corn. “Originally, everything went smoothly,” Surov told broadcasting service The Voice of Russia. Surov and the researchers fed the same diet to three generations of the hamsters, and that’s when they noticed things going awry.

GMO Causes Fertility Problems, Slow Growth, Hair Growth in Mouths

“We noticed quite a serious effect when we selected new pairs from their cubs and continued to feed them as before. These pairs’ growth rate was slower and reached their sexual maturity slowly.” By the third generation, the hamsters were infertile.

Many animals on the GM diet even displayed rare, strange pathologies like hair growing in recessed pouches inside their mouths. “Some of these pouches contained single hairs,” said Surov in Doklady Biological Sciences, “others, thick bundles of colorless or pigmented hairs reaching as high as the chewing surface of the teeth. Sometimes, the tooth row was surrounded with a regular brush of hair bundles on both sides. The hairs grew vertically and had sharp ends, often covered with lumps of mucous.” Surov and other authors concluded that because rates of hairy mouths occurred more frequently in third-generation GM-fed animals, the condition may have resulted of the GM feed. Surov says contaminants and herbicide residue (like Roundup) could be to blame as well.

Other Victims of GMOs

Other than fertility problems, the GMO phenomenon has been noticed elsewhere—even in our own United States. Farmers using GM feed have reported infertile pigs and cows. Other incidents involving GMOs include:

Austrian researchers reporting 4th generation “Frankencorn”-fed mice totally infertile.
Thousands of dead sheep, buffalo, and goats in India after grazing on GM cottonseed.
Offspring of mother rats fed GM soy dead within three weeks and recorded smaller sizes.
Cooked GM soy with up to 7 times the amount of a soy allergen.
Organ lesions, altered liver and pancreas cells, and changed enzyme levels.
Excessive cell growth in the stomach lining of GM-potato-fed rats, potentially leading to cancer.
GMO corn contributing to human obesity and organ disruption.

Overall, GM sounds like a sweet deal only for Monsanto (and our own FDA and USDA, repeatedly found in bed with them). It remains a bad deal for us, the consumers.

[Demeter]

17. Kevlar Tires Now Required to Traverse ‘Spear-Like’ GMO Crops By Anthony Gucciardi

http://www.nationofchange.org/kevlar-tires-now-required-traverse-spear-gmo-crops-1344173364

The news surrounding GMO crops continues to get further and further outlandish as the crops are increasingly mutated and sprayed with a medley of harsh pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides. The latest news comes from an unlikely source — an automotive publication known as Auto blog. The website reports that farmers who have opted to plant Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds have run into one daunting problem (outside of decreased yields and an extremely higher risk of disease): little ‘spear-like’ stalks from the harvested GMOs are absolutely wreaking havoc on the heavy duty tractor tires.

Described by one farmer as a ‘field of little spears’, farmers are now turning to Kevlar tires. In case you’re not aware, Kevlar is the same material used in bulletproof vests to protect from gun bullets...The stalks are so sharp and weapon-like that they can wreck an entire set of wheels, which is a daunting reality when considered that one tractor can have as many as eight heavy duty tires. Furthermore, a single tractor tire can easily cost thousands of dollars. Thanks to the GMO crops, the average lifespan of a tractor tire has dwindled from five or six years down to just one or two — if the farmer is lucky. Add that to the exponentially increased amount of pesticide use required to maintain modified crops thanks to heavily mutated ‘super’ rootworms and other insects, and it’s easy to see how GMO farming is nothing but a monetary pitfall for farmers.

Strange reports like these may ultimately be what it takes for the public to truly be concerned about genetically modified seeds and ingredients. Outside of the massive amount of research highlighting the damaging effects of GMOs on human biology, the environment, and nature as a whole, it oftentimes takes a bizarre incident such as this in order to fully gain the attention of the far-reaching press. The longer the use of GMOs is allowed nationwide, the more bizarre and outlandish stories will begin to emerge.

As if mutant insects, super weeds, decreased biosphere microorganism population, and direct organ stress weren’t enough, now Monsanto’s GMO crops can be easily utilized as a sharp and deadly weapon.

[AnneD]

60. An Native American...

philosophical point of reference.

You eat with gratitude whatever you have. If you were lucky to shoot a deer, duck, catch a fish or kill a rabbit, one says a prayer asking the creature to forgive the taking of his life but that he will live on in you and your family. In our tribal philosophy, you are what you eat. Long before we knew about amino acids or atoms, there was an understanding that the food you ate was the building blocks to your life and the future of your childrens lives.

So do you really trust these scientists to create something better than what has evolved in nature. They have designed something before we have said there was a problem and let it lose before they knew what it was. For year farmers have used nature to be the scientist and genetic engineer. We make hundreds of types of cat food, but nothing is more easily digested or more perfect for a cat than a mouse. Do you really want Monsanto to supply your building blocks. And I especially do not like the fact that they refuse to allow me to have a choice in the matter. They want to cram it down my throat. It has failed in Europe and if this wasn't such a damned corpocracy, it would fail here too.

I had slowly phasing out many products and replacing them with certified organics. Hubby and I made the transition to organics but I have had the damnedest time getting non GMO corn. I am afraid our food supply is already contaminated. High fructose corn syrup is out. Cornmeal is problematic, thus polenta, corn bread and muffins, etc. And unless the corn is from Bradah farm....forget it.

[Demeter]

18. The Drought in the Breadbasket

It may be that the drought and heatwave have broken, here in Michigan....far too late for the corn crop, but if proper conservation steps are taken, perhaps next year won't be as unproductive. If farmers respond to climate change proactively, the business could "weather" the new reality. If not, we are going to starve.

Here are some related items:

Extreme Drought Contributes to Global Warming Trend

http://www.nationofchange.org/extreme-drought-contributes-global-warming-trend-1344093449

Findings from a new scientific study indicate a major carbon release from the extreme turn-of-the-century drought in western North America—the worst of the last millennium—with likelihood of even drier times ahead. The study, titled Reduction in Carbon Uptake During Turn of the Century Drought in Western North America, published this week in Nature-Geoscience, was conducted by a team of researchers led by Christopher Schwalm, assistant research professor for Northern Arizona University’s (NAU) School of Earth Sciences and Sustainability.

The scientists found a major drought that struck western North America in 2000 to 2004 significantly reduced carbon uptake and stressed the region’s water resources. The study illustrates the impact of the drought as seen in reduced precipitation, decreased soil moisture, reduced river flows and lower crop yields. It also poses the question of how common such an extreme event might be in the future.

“To our surprise, the drought, which was severe with respect to recent and past conditions, is forecast to become the wetter end of a new climatology,” Schwalm said. “And it would make the 21st century climate akin to mega-droughts of the last millennium.”

He said the severity of this widespread five-year drought, the worst of its kind over the past 800 years, inhibited carbon uptake, essentially contributing to global warming conditions. And climate models demonstrate a continuing trend toward a warmer planet. Global circulation patterns are expected to shift in a way that would create drier conditions across western North America, expanding the region that is already chronically dry and making today’s drought conditions the new normal.

“At this point, our concerns go beyond carbon uptake,” Schwalm said. “We have to start looking at water resources, especially in parts of North America that already are dealing with water shortages.”

The study was based on analysis of data from NASA satellite remote sensing products and a suite of ground-based monitoring stations that directly measure carbon uptake and release. Data from the monitoring stations are assembled by a global community of scientists participating in FLUXNET, a network of micrometeorological tower sites that measure carbon, water and energy exchanges. The instruments help to monitor plant productivity, evapotranspiration, and carbon and water budgets.

Superinsects Are Thriving in This Summer's Drought—By Tom Philpott

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/08/monsanto-superweeds-and-superinsects-compounding-drought-damage-corn-country

This summer, a severe drought and genetically modified crops are delivering a one-two punch to US crops.

Across the farm country, years of reliance on Monsanto's Roundup Ready corn and soy seeds—engineered for resistance to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide—have given rise to a veritable plague of Roundup-resistant weeds. Meanwhile, Monsanto's other blockbuster genetically modified trait—the toxic gene of the pesticidal bacteria Bt—is also beginning to lose effectiveness, imperiling crops even as they're already bedeviled by drought. Last year, I reported on Bt-resistant western rootworms munching on Bt-engineered corn in isolated counties in Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. This summer, resistant rootworms are back like the next installment of a superhero blockbuster movie franchise. In a July 30 post, University of Minnesota extension agents Ken Ostlie and Bruce Potter report they've seen a "major geographical expansion" of rootworm damage throughout southern Minnesota, where Monsanto's corn is common. The severe drought, they add, has "masked" the problem, because rainstorms typically make rootworm-damaged corn plants fall over, and rainstorms haven't come this year. Drought plus a plague of rootworms presents a compounded problem to farmers: The bugs tend to thrive under dry conditions, and the damage their incessant root munching does to plants above ground, like stunting their growth, is "magnified" by lack of water and heat stress, Ostlie and Potter add.

Last week, Minnesota Public Radio reporter Mark Steil filed a report on a workshop on Bt-resistant rootworms at which Potter spoke. Apparently, the entomologist minced no words:

Potter told the workshop's 100 attendees that the genetically modified corn is basically backfiring.

"Instead of making things easier, we've just made corn rootworm management harder and a heck of a lot more expensive," Potter said.

Here's how Steil describes the interaction between drought and rootworms:

In fields with a rootworm problem, the bug damages the cornstalk's ability to absorb water just when it's needed most. With the roots weakened, the plant can also be more vulnerable to wind.

The Minnesota outbreak isn't the first sighting of rootworms rampaging through Bt corn country this growing season. Back in June, University of Illinois entomologist Michael Gray reported that

"The western corn rootworm 'season' is underway at a pace earlier than I have experienced since I began studying this versatile insect as a graduate student in the late 1970s."

"In response to a request by a seed industry representative," Gray writes, he traveled to a county in west-central Illinois county to "verify a report of severe injury to Bt corn that expresses the Cry3Bb1 protein targeted against corn rootworms." When Gray reached the site, he found himself "amazed at the number of western corn rootworm adults in the whorls of plants." He also found "severe" damage at the roots. Gray doesn't name the company that the seed industry rep worked for, but the Cry3Bb1 protein, which is supposed to kill corn rootworms, is owned by Monsanto. To summarize, rootworms were enjoying an all-you-can-eat buffet on the very corn that Monsanto had engineered to kill them

.

Puzzlingly, Gray declines to conclude that the spectacle he witnessed means that the ravenous rootworms had developed resistance to Monsanto's seeds. This does not mean that a resistant western corn rootworm population has been confirmed in Illinois. The registrant of this technology (i.e., Monsanto) has been notified and will conduct some follow-up investigations in these fields. So, at this point, precise reasons for the continuing performance challenges of some Bt hybrids expressing this protein remain elusive. However, producers should remain vigilant and report any performance issues that surface with their Bt hybrids regarding corn rootworm injury this growing season.

And what's Monsanto's reaction to all of this? Last year, as corn stalks fell over, their roots devastated by the pests, their plight documented in at least one academic paper and confirmed in a blunt EPA report, Monsanto flatly denied the resistance problem. Apparently, it's maintaining that stance. Here's Minnesota Public Radio's Steil:

Monsanto is studying the problem, but so far the company has found no definitive proof that the rootworm has built up resistance to its corn. Company officials say what's being seen in many fields may just be abnormally high rootworm populations that overwhelm even the deadly genetic weapon implanted in their modified corn. In a statement, Monsanto officials said the company collected rootworms from problem fields last summer. The company expects to finalize test results on the bugs this fall. Those results may show whether the rootworms have developed resistance.

While the company peddles such flimflam, its ubiquitous products are making US crops more, not less, vulnerable to drought during the worst dry spell in a generation, at a time when scientists are predicting more-frequent severe weather events as climate change proceeds apace.

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23. Amid drought, USDA cuts corn crop estimate to 17-year low

http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-corn-crop-estimate-drought-usda-20120810,0,808223.story

The punishing Midwest drought is expected to reduce the nation's corn crop to its lowest level in almost two decades.

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cut its estimate for the corn crop by nearly 17% and raised the upper end of its price forecast by 39% to almost $9 a bushel.

In its report, the USDA forecast the nation's corn yield to be about 123.4 bushels per acre -- the lowest level in 17 years.

The agency also revised its previous price predictions. Per bushel, corn is expected to rise as high as $8.90 -- up sharply from previous estimates of $5.40 to $6.40 per bushel.

As a result, food prices are expected to rise, with poultry and dairy products rising before beef.

MORE

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27. How Huge Food Corporations Will Make Upcoming Food Price Hikes Even Worse

http://truth-out.org/news/item/10819-how-huge-food-corporations-will-make-upcoming-food-price-hikes-even-worse

...Now is perhaps a good time to reflect on the extent to which the entire American food system is built on one crop – corn. And within that one crop, we rely on a very narrow range of genetics; although there are more than 250 known genetic races of corn, the U.S. almost exclusively relies on just two of them... In recent years, the already narrow range of corn genes has been impacted by a lack of competition in the seed market. Together, Monsanto and Pioneer control about 70 percent of the corn seed market. Pioneer, now owned by DuPont, has been a giant in the market for decades as it was the first company to commercialize hybrid corn nearly a century ago, but Monsanto is a relative newcomer. As it jumped into the corn seed market, Monsanto bought up major corn seed companies like Holden's and DeKalb. The acquisition of Holden's was especially significant as Holden's produced inbred lines of corn seed and sold them to independent seed companies around the U.S. The independent seed companies then used those inbred lines to produce and sell their own hybrids. Monsanto now not only controls a huge share of the market, it also has the means to deprive independent seed companies of the germplasm they once relied on...Because the U.S. is the world's number-one producer, consumer and exporter of corn, global food prices are also linked to America's ability to grow corn. This year, we are going to find out what happens when the crop fails in many parts of the country. Now is a good time to ask ourselves: is it smart to bet the global food supply on a few varieties of one crop grown in one country?

Globally, the U.S. produces more than 40 percent of the world's corn. Next in line is China, which produces less than half as much corn as the U.S., but we are the world's largest exporter whereas China is the world's largest importer. We export more than five times as much corn as the world's second largest exporter, Argentina. When the U.S. corn crop suffers, the global corn supply suffers – and prices go up around the world...Within the U.S., every state except for one (Alaska) grows corn, but the corn is concentrated geographically in the Midwest. Two states, Iowa and Illinois, grow more than 30 percent of America's corn (measured by acreage). Add in three more states (Nebraska, Minnesota, and Indiana) and you've got nearly 60 percent of U.S. corn. Another six states (South Dakota, Kansas, Ohio, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Michigan) can also be considered major producers. These 11 states grow more than 80 percent of U.S. corn, mostly without irrigation, and right now half of them are severely suffering from the epic drought.

Where does all the corn go? Well, we aren't eating it on the cob. Most of the crop is split between livestock feed and ethanol production with a smaller percentage going to exports and smaller amounts still going to produce foods we actually eat directly like high-fructose corn syrup. Over the past decade, we've seen a dramatic increase in the percent of the crop that goes to produce ethanol. Experts debate how much biofuels impact food prices, but a few trends are clear. As we've devoted more and more of our corn crop to ethanol, corn prices have gone up. Once upon a time, prices hovered around $2.50 per bushel. Now they are well above $7 per bushel. Jeffrey O'Hara, an agricultural economist for the Union of Concerned Scientists, recalls when organic corn sold for $4 per bushel just a few years ago. Now it is going for $16 per bushel. "People are going to start wondering why they don't see organic milk at the grocery store," he says...


The full picture of U.S. farming includes more than just corn, of course. But not much more. Nearly 90 percent of U.S. cropland is comprised of just four crops. This year, the USDA estimates that the nearly 30 percent of U.S. cropland is planted in corn, 23 percent in soybeans, 18 percent in hay, and 17 percent in wheat. Of these, only wheat is significantly different from the others: it mostly goes to feed humans (not livestock), it is less affected by the drought in the U.S., and the U.S. is not the world's top producer (it's fourth). All in all, the U.S. has produced an extremely efficient – but fragile – agricultural system. When all goes well, the U.S. produces massive amounts of incredibly cheap calories. But when something goes wrong, the system can come crashing down like a house of cards....So what can we do to prevent such disasters in the future? Diversify, says O'Hara. The scale of this particular drought is so enormous that we would have suffered consequences no matter what, but we might have reduced them by diversifying the crops we grow, diversifying where we grow them, and diversifying the varieties of each crop grown....When asked, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack dodged a question about whether the drought was related to the climate crisis and instead used it as an occasion to promote drought tolerant seeds. But Union of Concerned Scientists found that Monsanto's new genetically engineered "drought tolerant" corn provides minimal benefits in the face of drought. So maybe we should take a serious look at diversifying our food system and reducing carbon emissions instead of counting on drought tolerant seeds to bail us out after we break the climate.

SEVERELY EDITED--SEE LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE

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28. A Critical Mass for Real Food (AGRICULTURE AND SLAVERY ENTWINED IN HISTORY)

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10779-a-critical-mass-for-real-food

...If, back in the 18th century, you could see all the way across the Atlantic, you would find an unbroken line of plantations that stretched from Buenos Aires to Baltimore. Down this entire line, slaves harvested sugar for British tea, rice for the West Indian consumption, and cotton for the textile mills of New England. These were vast monocrops that broke the body and ruined the soil—but made money for planters and big companies that traded the goods.

Here, you see the logic of the modern industrial food system in its rawest form—a logic of prioritizing profit over human and environmental welfare. A lot has changed in the 400 years since the Elmina Fort was built, but this principle has not gone away. The logic of the plantation is the logic of today's industrial food system...In this system, it is in the interest of the middleman—large companies that dominate the processing and distribution of food—to squeeze farmers and externalize costs. The industrial model may work for some things, but it's time to admit that it doesn't work for food. It doesn't work for Lucas, a tomato-picker in Florida, who toils from dawn to dusk without protection or health care and still cannot escape poverty. It's not good for the farmers in Illinois who have nearly been bullied out of existence by Monsanto. It's not good for teenagers in Brooklyn who, when asked how many of them have diabetes or know someone with diabetes, raise every hand in the room. And it's certainly not good for the 99 percent of us who are left holding the bag of rising health care costs.

It doesn't work for anyone who wants—and needs—real food: food that nourishes the earth, communities, and individuals, both eaters and producers.

If the logic of the industrial system is based on profit, the logic of real food is founded on respect and balance. Real food isn't opposed to profit, but it is opposed to profits that aren't shared fairly with those who work the hardest to feed us. The Door of No Return represents what's we're up against: a global industrial food economy 500 years in the making that exploits both people and land...

SEE ARTICLE FOR WHAT THE AUTHOR PROPOSES AS A SOLUTION--IT'S REVOLUTIONARY!

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30. How Back-to-the-Landers in California Inspired a Japanese Farmer to Fight Desertification

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/10536-how-back-to-the-landers-in-california-inspired-a-japanese-farmer-to-fight-desertification

The following commentary is adapted from the posthumously published "Sowing Seeds in the Desert" by Masanobu Fukuoka (Chelsea Green, 2012). Fukuoka was the author of the international bestseller "One-Straw Revolution." He died in 2008. Given the recent news about the extended drought facing much of the United States, we thought Mr. Fukuoka's deep insight into how Western agricultural practices have helped to create vast deserts across the planet, while on the surface appearing very "green," particularly pertinent. In fact, Mr. Fukuoka notes, below the grassy surface, soils are being depleted and drained - becoming deserts under our feet. As you read this, keep in mind that "Sowing Seeds in the Desert " first appeared in print - in Japanese - in the mid-1990s.
-Shay Totten, Chelsea Green



Introduction

Although the surface of the ground in Europe and the United States appears to be covered with a lovely green, it is only the imitation green of a managed landscape. Beneath the surface, the soil is becoming depleted due to the mistaken agricultural practices of the last two thousand years.

Much of Africa is devoid of vegetation today, while just a few hundred years ago it was covered by deep forests. According to the Statistical Research Bureau in India, the vegetation there has also disappeared rapidly over the past forty-five or fifty years and now covers less than 10 percent of the land's surface. When I went to Nepal, officials lamented the fact that in the last twenty years the Himalayas have become bald, treeless mountains.

In the Philippines, on the islands of Cebu and Mindanao, there are banana plantations but no forests, and there is concern that in a few years even drinking water may be in short supply. In Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, as farming methods that protected nature have been swallowed up by the wave of modern civilization, the condition of the land has also deteriorated. If the deforestation of the tropical rain forests in Asia and Brazil continues at the present rate, oxygen will become scarce on earth and the joy of springtime on the planet will be replaced by the barrenness of winter.

The immediate cause of the rapid loss of vegetation has been the indiscriminate deforestation and large-scale agriculture carried out in order to support the materialistic cultures of the developed countries, but the remote cause stretches back thousands of years...The natural world did not become a desert on its own. Both in the past and at present, human beings, with their "superior" knowledge, have been the ringleader in turning the earth and the human heart into wastelands. If we eliminate the fundamental cause of this destruction - people's knowledge and actions - nature will surely come to life again. I am not proposing to do away with human beings, but rather to change the politics and practice of our authority.

CONTINUES AT LINK

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19. Resurrection in Christianity

In Christianity, resurrection most critically concerns the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, but also includes the resurrection of Judgment Day known as the Resurrection of the Dead by those Christians who subscribe to the Nicene Creed (which is the majority or Mainstream Christianity), as well as the resurrection miracles done by Jesus and the prophets of the Old Testament.

Many Christians regard the resurrection of Jesus as the central doctrine in Christianity. Others take the Incarnation of Jesus to be more central; however, it is the miracles — and particularly his Resurrection — which provide validation of his incarnation. According to Paul, the entire Christian faith hinges upon the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus and the hope for a life after death. The Apostle Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians:

"If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep."

Nearly all Christians - Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant and adherents of the Assyrian Church of the East - accept the resurrection of Jesus as a real historical event, and condemn the denial of the physical reality of the resurrection as a heresy. Docetism, the heresy that denied the death and subsequent resurrection of Jesus by emphasizing that Jesus was only God and not man, was condemned by Proto-orthodox Christianity in the late 1st to early 2nd century.

Resurrection miracles

During the Ministry of Jesus on earth, before his crucifixion, he commissioned his Twelve Apostles to, among other things, raise the dead. In the New Testament, Jesus is said to have raised several persons from death. These resurrections included the daughter of Jairus shortly after death, a young man in the midst of his own funeral procession, and Lazarus, who had been buried for four days. According to the Gospel of Matthew, after Jesus's resurrection, many of the dead saints came out of their tombs and entered Jerusalem, where they appeared to many.

Similar resurrections are credited to Christian apostles and saints. Peter allegedly raised a woman named Dorcas (called Tabitha), and Paul revived a man named Eutychus who had fallen asleep and fell from a window to his death, according to the book of Acts. Proceeding the apostolic era, many saints were said to resurrect the dead, as recorded in Orthodox Christian hagiographies.

Resurrection of the Dead

Christianity started as a religious movement within 1st-century Judaism (late Second Temple Judaism), and it retains the Pharisaic belief in the afterlife and Resurrection of the Dead. Whereas this belief was only one of many beliefs held about the World to Come in Second Temple Judaism, and was notably rejected by the Sadducees, this belief became dominant within Early Christianity and soon included an insistence on the resurrection of the flesh, against gnostic teachings that flesh was evil. Most modern Christian churches continue to uphold the belief that there will be a final Resurrection of the Dead and World to Come, perhaps as prophesied by the Apostle Paul when he said: "...he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world..." (Acts 17:31 KJV) and "...there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust." (Acts 24:15 KJV). Most also teach that it is only as a result of the atoning work of Christ, by grace through faith, that people are spared eternal punishment as divine judgment for their sins.

Belief in the Resurrection of the Dead, and Jesus Christ's role as judge, is codified in the Apostles' Creed, which is the fundamental creed of Christian baptismal faith. The Book of Revelation also makes many references about the Day of Judgment when the dead will be raised up.

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20. If you want to get a Handel on the subject:

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21. Full Employment is Possible: Robert Pollin

http://www.nationofchange.org/full-employment-possible-robert-pollin-1344176040

Prominent economists have been expounding for months on the dire consequences of this country’s unemployment crisis. As recently as this May, Dean Baker and Ken Hassett exhorted us to pay vigilant attention. In an op-ed headlined “The Human Disaster,” they described unemployment as “nothing short of a national emergency.”

Still, the election discussion plods on with barely a nod to the criminal unemployment disaster.

For bracing relief, check out the latest from economist Robert Pollin, professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Pollin’s latest book, Back To Full Employment, lays out a roadmap to recovery that wouldn’t take a miracle. It wouldn’t even require a Democratic sweep this November; merely action by the Fed and a progressive movement worth its salt...

VIDEO INTERVIEW AT LINK

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22. Will Congress Screw Underwater Homeowners on December 31? —By Kevin Drum

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/08/will-congress-screw-underwater-homeowners-december-31

CRAMDOWN DISCUSSION

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26. Justice Dept. Ends Investigation into Goldman Sachs Mortgage Abuses Without Pressing Charges

http://www.nationofchange.org/justice-dept-ends-investigation-goldman-sachs-mortgage-abuses-without-pressing-charges-1344612356

After a year-long investigation into Goldman Sachs, the bank singled out by a Senate investigative committee for its abusive mortgage practices in the run-up to the financial crisis, the Justice Department announced Friday that it would not press charges against the bank. Goldman Sachs became of the face of widespread mortgage fraud and abuse that led to the subprime mortgage crisis when evidence that it had made trades described by its own bankers as “shitty deals” came to light during a Senate investigation in 2011. The Department of Justice, however, concluded that it didn't meet the “burden of proof” required for charges, the Wall Street Journal reports:

“Based on the law and evidence as they exist at this time, there is not a viable basis to bring a criminal prosecution with respect to Goldman Sachs or its employees in regard to the allegations set forth in the report,” the statement read. [...]

In a statement Thursday, Goldman said: “We are pleased that this matter is behind us.”

DOJ’s investigation began after an April 2011 report from the Senate Permanent Committee on Investigations revealed that Goldman Sachs had pushed its clients to make trades on risky mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps even as the bank was betting the same securities would lose value. Though Goldman Sachs was “doing God’s work,” according to chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, other bankers described pushing “shitty deals” on customers. In March of this year, a Goldman Sachs trader lambasted the bank’s “toxic and destructive” culture in a scathing resignation editorial in the New York Times; a former Goldman partner followed up the next week by admitting that the bank’s “commercial animals” had duped customers and peddled “junk” to its clients.

The Securities and Exchange Commission also declined to press charges related to the bank’s role in a $1.3 billion sale of mortgage-backed securities, a reversal from last month when it indicated that it would recommend criminal prosecution. In July, Goldman settled a civil suit with the SEC for $550 million, and it faced sanctions from the Federal Reserve in September.

DOJ reserved the right to re-open the case and press charges should new evidence emerges, but for now, the case seems the latest in a string of them in which the biggest purveyors of the toxic assets that led to the financial crisis walk away with minimal penalties and, in many cases, no penalty at all.

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24. Back from Three Weeks Vacation with a Bold Proposal By Robert Reich

http://www.nationofchange.org/back-three-weeks-vacation-bold-proposal-1344604629

Back from three weeks off grid, much of it hiking in Alaska and Australia....When I left the U.S. economy was in a stall, Greece was on the brink of defaulting, the euro-zone couldn’t get its act together, the Fed couldn’t decide on another round of quantitative easing, congressional Democrats and Republicans were in gridlock, much of the nation was broiling, and neither Obama nor Romney had put forward a bold proposal for boosting the economy, slowing climate change, or much of anything else...What a difference three weeks makes. (HE'S JOKING, SURELY)

Here’s a bold proposal I offer free of charge to Obama or Romney: Every American should get a mandatory minimum of three weeks paid vacation a year. Most Americans only get two weeks off right now. But many don’t even take the full two weeks out of fear of losing their jobs. One in four gets no paid vacation at all, not even holidays. Overall, Americans have less vacation time than workers in any other advanced economy.

This is absurd. A mandatory three weeks off would be good for everyone — including employers.

Studies show workers who take time off are more productive after their batteries are recharged. They have higher morale, and are less likely to mentally check out on the job. This means more output per worker — enough to compensate employers for the cost of hiring additional workers to cover for everyone’s three weeks’ vacation time.

It’s also a win for the economy, because these additional workers would bring down the level of unemployment and put more money into more people’s pockets. This extra purchasing power would boost the economy overall.

More and longer vacations would also improve our health. A study by Wisconsin’s Marshfield Clinic shows women who take regular vacations experience less tension and depression year round. Studies also show that men who take regular vacations have less likelihood of heart disease and fewer heart attacks. Better health is not just good for us as individuals. It also translates into more productive workers, fewer sick days, less absenteeism. And lower health care costs.

In other words, a three-week minimum vacation is a win-win-win — good for workers, good for employers, and good for the economy. And I guarantee it would also be a winner among voters. Obama, Romney — either of you listening?

BOB, BOB, BOB....THAT'S NOT HOW THE GAME IS PLAYED! WORKERS ARE DISPOSABLE! BUSINESS DOESN'T WANT TO IMPROVE THE WORKING MAN, JUST EXPLOIT HIM TO DEATH.

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25. Can Government Create Jobs or Not? By David Sirota

http://www.nationofchange.org/can-government-create-jobs-or-not-1344605218

I'm confused by Republicans in Washington, and here's why: For most of President Obama's term, they have ignored the millions of jobs the Congressional Budget Office says the 2009 stimulus legislation created and instead argued that the government is incapable of boosting employment. Summing up the larger sentiment, Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) in 2011 said "government spending doesn't create jobs," and Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) insisted in 2010 that "it's not the government that's going to create jobs in this country."

Fast-forward to the present debate over impending budget cuts. Incredibly, the same Republican Party that once insisted the government can't create jobs is now barnstorming the country telling us the government can, in fact, create jobs — lots of them. This isn't an exaggeration. As The Hill newspaper reports, Republican senators — many of whom suggested government can't create jobs — are hosting town hall meetings to sound the alarm about how proposed defense spending reductions "would cause significant job losses" and therefore hurt the economy. Ayotte's rhetorical paroxysms are especially illustrative — and perplexing. In a CNN interview to promote the events, the New Hampshire senator — the same lawmaker who said, "it's not the government that's going to create jobs" — implored Americans to "think about (the Pentagon cuts) in terms of jobs, 136,000 defense jobs in Virginia. They have to issue layoff notices before the election, so members of Congress need to come together on this."

So, as I said, I'm confused. Do Republicans believe government cannot create jobs? Or do Republicans believe the government is so good at creating jobs that we can't even minimally reduce the largest military budget in the world for fear of layoffs? Because of the rhetorical backflips, there is no discernible answer to these questions — but there is an explanation for the contradictions. Since at least the 1980s, Americans have been inculcated to think of the military as separate from "government" — even though the military is part of the government. In fact, it's not just any old part of the government — in terms of budget and manpower; it is one of the leading entities that put the "big" in the concept of "Big Government." Yet, in discussions about national priorities and spending, many still reflexively see the Pentagon as wholly separate from everything else. This is not just the view of Republican senators — it is a pervasive misconception in the larger population. As an example of that fact, behold an emblematic locale like Colorado Springs.

According to the Colorado Springs Business Journal, "One of every three residents of the (region) depends directly or indirectly upon the military" — that is, upon the government. That makes the area as close to a ward of the state as it gets in this country. And yet, because residents there (like many Americans) psychologically separate the military from "government," the city's Republican-leaning voters typically send anti-government conservatives to Congress. No surprise, these lawmakers often embrace the same contradictions as their Republican Party brethren in Washington — when it comes to non-military spending, they imply the government can't create jobs, but when it comes to military spending, suddenly they tout the government as a crucial force for job creation. Of course, economic data suggest that in comparison to other government agencies, the Pentagon is a relatively inefficient job creator. But just like so many other public institutions, it does indeed create and sustain jobs. In doing so, then, the Pentagon is a stark reminder that Republicans' contradictory rhetoric on job creation isn't rooted in economic facts — it's driven by an ideology that circumnavigates inconvenient truths.

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29. COULDN'T MAKE THIS UP: Alleged Chinese-Mexican Meth Lord Is Causing A Headache For Sheldon Adelson

http://www.businessinsider.com/zhenli-ye-gon-causes-trouble-for-las-vegas-sands-2012-8#ixzz23EAPsErz

Las Vegas Sands Corp, the casino giant owned by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, is in a spot of hot water this week. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company is being investigated by the US attorney's office in Los Angeles for a series of large money transfers in the mid-2000s by a Chinese-born Mexican businessman Zhenli Ye Gon. Zhenli, who owned a number of pharmaceutical companies in Mexico, was apparently a high roller during his heyday in Las Vegas. He reportedly spent more than $125 million at various Vegas casinos, and was such a good customer at the Sands-owned Venetian casino that they gave him a Rolls Royce.

The allegations

Unfortunately for Adelson, Zhenli was also suspected of being a key associate of the Sinaloa drug cartel, responsible for the import of key ingredients into Mexico. The DEA believes these ingredients were used for the mass manufacture of methamphetamine that was then smuggled into the United States. Zhenli was the legal representative of Unimed Pharm Chem México, a company he founded in 1997. He became a Mexican citizen in 2002, but had been was born in Shanghai. His company had legally been allowed to import a limited amount of pseudoephedrine and ephedrine products into Mexico, but he hit trouble in 2005 when Mexican authorities accused Zhenli and his associates of illicitly importing more than was allowed...In 2007, Zhenli was arrested at P.J. Rice Bistro in Wheaton, Maryland. According to the Washington Post he and his wife had just ordered a meal of codfish and carrots when they were surrounded by DEA agents. He was indicted on a single count of conspiracy. A raid of his home in the wealthy neighborhood of Mexico City produced what police described as "the largest single drug cash seizure the world has ever seen." Almost $207 million sat in the house in cash. Seven high-powered firearms were also in the house, the New York Times reported.



Part of the cash found at Zhenli's Mexico City house.


The victim

Zhenli has a different version of events. He argued that Mexico's labor secretary, Javier Lozano Alarcón, had threatened to kill him if he didn't agree to hide duffel bags stuffed with tens of millions of dollars in his house. Far from a fugitive, he had come to the United States in 2007 to seek political asylum. This version of events has gained some support in Mexico. A poll from La Reforma magazine found that most Mexicans either believed Zhenli's version of events of thought none they had heard was true. Bumper stickers saying "I believe the Chinaman" began to appear in Mexico. Whether or not Zhenli's version of events holds much water, the US charges against him apparently don't. In 2009 the National Law Journal wrote that they "federal prosecutors admit they don't have much of a case". In 2010 the case against Zhenli was dropped due to problems with evidence and witnesses. He is still being held in the US, pending extradition to Mexico for drugs charges. Zhenli was reportedly disappointed when his case in the US was dropped, as he didn't believe he'd get a fair trial in Mexico.

The fallout

While it isn't clear whether Zhenli was transferring money to Las Vegas for laundering purposes, if the money was obtained illicitly it may still be considered money laundering, the Wall Street Journal reports. A court filing suggests that Zhenli's mistress gave him the idea of transferring money there. Apparently Sands either failed to flag the suspicious money-transfers coming in from Zhenli or willfully ignored them. The company say it was only a 2007 newspaper article about Zhenli, by then an international fugitive) that caused them to contact the Nevada gambling regulators. Las Vegas Sands isn't the only company facing controversy for associating with the suspected drug lord. Zhenli was also a long term client for HSBC, and was just one aspect of a wide-ranging Senate-report into the bank's links with money-laundering...While Adelson himself isn't suspected of any crimes in the Zhenli case, it's certainly another headache for a major Romney donor. His company is also facing investigation for bribery in Macau, and reports that he personally approved prostitution at his Macau Sands resorts.

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31. OTHER ASPECTS OF RESURRECTION

Platonic philosophy

In Platonic philosophy and other Greek philosophical thought, at death the soul was said to leave the inferior body behind. The idea that Jesus was resurrected spiritually rather than physically even gained popularity among some Christian teachers, whom the author of 1 John declared to be antichrists. Similar beliefs appeared in the early church as Gnosticism. However, in Luke 24:39, the resurrected Jesus expressly states "behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have."

Islam

Belief in the "Day of Resurrection", Yawm al-Qiyāmah (Arabic: يوم القيامة‎ is also crucial for Muslims. They believe the time of Qiyāmah is preordained by God but unknown to man. The trials and tribulations preceding and during the Qiyāmah are described in the Qur'an and the hadith, and also in the commentaries of scholars. The Qur'an emphasizes bodily resurrection, a break from the pre-Islamic Arabian understanding of death.

Zen Buddhism

There are stories in Buddhism where the power of resurrection was allegedly demonstrated in Chan or Zen tradition. One is the legend of Bodhidharma, the Indian master who brought the Ekayana school of India to China that subsequently became Chan Buddhism.

The other is the passing of Chinese Chan master Puhua (J., Fuke) and is recounted in the Record of Linji (J., Rinzai). Puhua was known for his unusual behavior and teaching style so it is no wonder that he is associated with an event that breaks the usual prohibition on displaying such powers. Here is the account from Irmgard Schloegl's "The Zen Teaching of Rinzai".

"One day at the street market Fuke was begging all and sundry to give him a robe. Everybody offered him one, but he did not want any of them. The master Linji made the superior buy a coffin, and when Fuke returned, said to him: "There, I had this robe made for you." Fuke shouldered the coffin, and went back to the street market, calling loudly: "Rinzai had this robe made for me! I am off to the East Gate to enter transformation" (to die)." The people of the market crowded after him, eager to look. Fuke said: "No, not today. Tomorrow, I shall go to the South Gate to enter transformation." And so for three days. Nobody believed it any longer. On the fourth day, and now without any spectators, Fuke went alone outside the city walls, and laid himself into the coffin. He asked a traveler who chanced by to nail down the lid.

The news spread at once, and the people of the market rushed there. On opening the coffin, they found that the body had vanished, but from high up in the sky they heard the ring of his hand bell."

[xchrom]

32. and what's a good resurrection without one or two of the Sisters?

[Demeter]

40. Morning, X!

How's things?

Weather is cool, 60F for 48 hours! And there's been rain, not enough, but the grass is already greening up.

[xchrom]

41. we've been having a lot of rain -- but it's muggy as Hell.

i was reading where you said it had cooled off -- sounds delightful to me.

so, what's up for the week ahead?

[DemReadingDU]

42. Nice 64 degrees in SW Ohio

I need to trim bushes today

[Demeter]

43. Trying to make up lost ground

Especially board stuff. And the usual. So, double time or nothing.

[xchrom]

33. Greece Clears Sale Of State Stakes In Post Office, Vehicle Maker

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-11/greece-clears-sale-of-state-stakes-in-post-office-vehicle-maker.html

Greece’s inter-ministerial committee for privatizations approved the sale of state stakes in Elta SA, the country’s postal service, and Hellenic Vehicle Industry SA.
Greece’s state assets sales fund will decide on the sale process for as much as 100 percent the state owns in Elta, which will be transferred to the sales fund at a later stage, according to the website for government decisions.
The state will also sell as much as its 57 percent stake in Hellenic Vehicle Industry SA, a Greek maker of buses and military vehicles known as Elvo. Mytilineos Holdings SA (MYTIL) holds the remaining shares. The committee appointed I.K. Rokas & Partners as legal adviser and KPMG LLP as financial adviser for the sale.
Greece’s postal services market is due to be fully liberalized from Jan. 1, according to Elta’s website.

[xchrom]

34. WHY SOME STOCKS ARE SINKING DESPITE BIG PROFITS

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_WALL_STREET_WEEK_AHEAD?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-08-10-16-18-45

NEW YORK (AP) -- For investors, this restaurant chain is as hot as the red chili salsa on its menus. Maybe hotter. Maybe too hot.

The stock of Chipotle Mexican Grill has climbed four-fold in five years, and for good reason. Most quarters, the company would report surprisingly high earnings and investors would clamor to buy. But last month, the pattern broke. Chipotle posted blockbuster earnings, but investors sold.

The company's sin? It missed its target for revenues. The stock fell 21 percent, from $404 to $317, in a day.

Chipotle is not alone. Six in 10 big companies reporting second-quarter results have missed revenue targets, according to FactSet, a financial data provider. That is the worst showing since the recession.

[xchrom]

35. Bank of Ireland to cut up to 1,500 jobs

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2012/0811/1224321990251.html


BANK OF Ireland has signalled that between 1,000 and 1,500 more jobs may have to go to reduce costs and reflect its reduced size, but the lender has ruled out any branch closures.

Richie Boucher, chief executive of Bank of Ireland, would not be drawn on the exact number of redundancies being sought by the bank, but said costs would have to be cut by a third to €1.5 billion by 2014 from their peak in 2009.

The bank, which is 15 per cent owned by the State, had close to 16,000 employees at that time but has since reduced staff numbers by 3,700, which could mean up to 1,500 more jobs are at risk.

Mr Boucher said the bank would base the decision on costs rather than actual staff numbers, as measuring cost cutting by reducing staff can be “deceptive”.

[xchrom]

36. A lot at stake in bank drama

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2012/0810/1224321890443.html

Personal and banking reputations are on the line as tension mounts on both sides of the Atlantic over Standard Chartered Bank

IF YOU ever thought banking was dull, think again. This week London-based Standard Chartered Bank stood accused of enabling “terrorists, weapons dealers, drug kingpins and corrupt regimes”, in the latest scandal to hit Britain’s beleaguered financial institutions.

The charge – made by New York state’s Department of Financial Services – came as a bolt out of the blue and left Standard Chartered (SCB) scrambling to defend itself.

At the heart of the matter is an accusation that, for almost 10 years, SCB “schemed with the government of Iran and hid from regulators roughly 60,000 secret transactions, involving at least $250 billion and reaping SCB hundreds of millions of dollars in fees”.

[xchrom]

37. Norway wealth fund loses 2.2% on debt fears

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2012/0811/1224321991283.html


NORWAY’S SOVEREIGN wealth fund, Europe’s largest stock investor, lost 77 billion kroner (€10.6 billion) in the second quarter as stocks slumped on concern the region’s deepening debt crisis would derail the global economy.

The €505.6 billion Government Pension Fund Global fell 2.2 per cent, as measured by a basket of currencies, the Oslo-based investor said yesterday. Its equity investments fell 4.6 per cent, while its bonds returned 1.5 per cent.

“A weaker-than-anticipated development in the world economy weighed on stock markets in the second quarter,” said Yngve Slyngstad, chief executive officer of Norges Bank Investment Management, which runs the fund. “There was also increased uncertainty about the repercussions of the European sovereign debt crisis.”

Investors fled stocks as European leaders struggled to contain debt woes in the quarter.

[xchrom]

38. FROB bursts Bankia share-trading bubble

http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/08/10/inenglish/1344626824_927501.html

The decision of the Orderly Bank Restructuring Fund (FROB) to warn Bankia shareholders that they will have to assume losses as part of the cleaning up of the bank has put an end to the continued upward rise in its share price since July 25.

The shares of the nationalized bank, which is awaiting 19 billion euros of public money to guarantee its solvency, had tripled their stock market value in that time for no objective reason other than speculation over the imminent arrival of European bailout funds.

The concern that the upward trend might trap minority investors prompted the FROB to issue a rare warning before the market opened on Friday, reminding investors that Bankia and the Banco de Valencia, which both form part of the nationalized Banco Financiero y de Ahorros (BFA) entity, are undergoing “a rigorous process of accounts auditing, revaluation of their net worth — it lost 3.318 billion euros in 2011 — and restructuring of their own resource base and commercial activity.”

The statement had an immediate effect on the stock market, where after rising again after opening, Bankia shares slipped back by 27 percent. By midday the fall had subsided to 8.72 percent, however, and Bankia shares closed the day at 1.21 euros, down 19.83 percent.

[xchrom]

39. China’s slowing economy could complicate relationship with U.S.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/chinas-slowing-economy-could-complicate-relationship-with-us/2012/08/10/d0377084-e305-11e1-98e7-89d659f9c106_story.html

The Chinese economy on Friday showed worrisome signs of slowing down, a development that not only threatens global economic growth but also may complicate the relationship between China and the United States.

China reported that its exports, a critical driver of economy activity, grew by only 1 percent in July, far below the 11 percent rate seen in the prior month. It was the latest evidence that the world’s second-largest economy is losing steam, a problem for U.S. businesses that sell their goods and services to China.

But China’s response to its slowdown, which comes ahead of a rare change in power, could also create new tension with the United States, where the presidential campaign is focused on the economy.

China is turning to policies that may benefit its economy at the expense of the United States’. This year, for instance, China has surprised a wide range of observers by allowing its currency to lose value relative to the dollar, which makes its exports cheaper than America’s. And there are prominent calls inside the country for the renminbi to fall further.

[kickysnana]

44. Well this house's fortunes declined yesterday.

A brake line broke on our rusty trusty van and I found a nearby family owned business that was open late last night and today as we have company coming in next week. On the way over there it started horribly stalling when you stepped on the gas at the stop sign which could be anything from fuel filter, fuel pump or head gasket. The last time it happened to me a Toyota Celica's timing belt jumped. I don't think 1992 Fords have timing chains anymore so the next possibility from my Aunt's experience was head gasket.

When we got the wheel chair lift repaired.this spring, $270 (guy said it should run another 15 years) they had a van in the same condition, two years older for $6,250. A lift costs $5,000 and a handicapped vehicle then becomes that plus the value of the actual vehicle without the lift.

The fellow who gave me a ride home says one of their clients put $150,000 of technology and modifications into his conversion van. My first house cost $6,125 in 1974 sold it for $22,000 after putting a total of $5000 into it including appliances, roof, foundation leveling in 1990. so that much for a van is pretty mind blowing.

[Demeter]

45. Some fool was saying cars will cost $50k soon

didn't say how much the gas would cost to operate them, or how much a burger would cost...

Hope it's a good cheap permanent fix.

[Fuddnik]

46. Lot of that going around lately.

I've been counting down. Seven car payments left, and I'll have a few bucks left each month. Just seven more payments.

Then on Monday, an implant that holds a lower denture in came out. You don't even want to know what the estimate was. Hint: The Prius was cheaper!

[DemReadingDU]

47. Oh no, how awful

Are there any cheaper alternatives?

[Fuddnik]

50. Yeah.

I can live on yogurt and oatmeal. Mmmm........

[DemReadingDU]

48. Jeezo, hope the van gets fixed cheap soon

It is unreal the way prices have escalated.

[kickysnana]

65. No not cheap, but the plan is to keep this going for a few more years...

[DemReadingDU]

49. Can anyone remember the map I posted a few years ago of a possible future United States

The map showed the country broken into regions, instead of states. It is similar to The Nine Nations of North America by Joel Garreau, but I can't find that searching in the archives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Nations_of_North_America

I thought I bookmarked it, but alas I can't find it in the old DU.

[Fuddnik]

51. If I remember correctly,

It was a Russian prediction that the US would break up into six regional, separate countries. I can't remember all the particulars, and have no idea where to look.

[DemReadingDU]

53. Russian was the clue, thanks!

12/29/08 A Russian Professor's Prediction of How the U.S. will be Split
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=411220&mesg_id=412191

Thanks, Fudd!

[Demeter]

54. There's a guy advocating an amicable divorce between North and South (End the Civil War)

It will never be amicable, and I think in another generation it won't even be necessary...but here it is:

http://www.alternet.org/books/it-finally-time-let-south-secede?akid=9202.227380.vqWnXP&rd=1&src=newsletter691401&t=11&paging=off

too much fraternization, IMO. And too much dependency.

[AnneD]

64. I'll take the unoccupied quarter....

Or Canadian influenced for $400 please. Actually, since Indians are their own sovereign nation, I think we have a choice. I know that I have unrestricted travel to Canada with my tribal role card. It is just getting back into the US that is the problem.


Iroquois Defeated by Passport Dispute
By THOMAS KAPLAN
Published: July 16, 2010


WESTBURY, N.Y. — The 23 players on the Iroquois national lacrosse team expected to spend this week vying for a world championship.

Instead, they spent Friday night divvying up their gear in the driveway outside a Hilton hotel here, having officially declared defeat in their weeklong dispute with the British government over whether they should be allowed to travel using their tribal passports.

“I felt it was coming, but I didn’t want to believe it until I actually heard it,” said Ron Cogan, 31, who played defense for the team.

The team, known as the Nationals, forfeited its first game Thursday night against England. Unless the team departed for the tournament by Friday evening, it would have had no choice but to forfeit its next game, scheduled for Saturday afternoon against Japan.

“You can’t go into a world competition and ask a team to tie one hand behind its back,” said Chief Oren Lyons of the Onondaga Nation, one of the six nations that make up the Iroquois Confederacy.

But the team was willing to try, at least until its second forfeit appeared inevitable. The team turned a guest room at the Comfort Inn near Kennedy Airport into a diplomatic command center of sorts, and team officials made a last-ditch effort to get the visas, traveling to the British consulate in Manhattan on Friday to make a final plea. The team dined at the Cheesecake Factory at the Mall at the Source here while awaiting word on their status Friday night.

More...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/17/sports/17lacrosse.html?pagewanted=all

[Demeter]

55. So, I Took the Kid to See "The Bourne Legacy"

It was better than Batman, but almost anything would be...

30 minutes of multiple murder, 45 minutes of stunt/chase scenes. Some nice shots of Alaska and Manilla.

The people could actually act, when there was a call for it (not terribly often, the plot was as thin as tissue).

The heroine was nice. Any more and I'd give it away....it kept the adrenal glands pumping. I jumped twice.

[DemReadingDU]

56. but Matt Damon wasn't in this Bourne, n/t

[Demeter]

59. Several photos of him were, though

You don't have to go cold turkey.

[bread_and_roses]

75. sounds much better than the 15 minutes of "J.Edgar" I watched

last night on TV - maybe I lasted 20 minutes. It felt like the two or so hours the film actually runs. God it was boring. And felt so stale and old - the thought of listening to J. Edgar justify his fascism with the Communist boogie-man for two hours was more than I could stand.

[Demeter]

57. Raging Bulls: How Wall Street Got Addicted to Light-Speed Trading By Jerry Adler MUST READ

http://www.wired.com/business/2012/08/ff_wallstreet_trading/all/

Wall Street used to bet on companies that build things. Now it just bets on technologies that make faster and faster trades. THIS IS A MASSIVE ARTICLE--IT TALKS ABOUT EVERYTHING

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

Editor’s note: One of the most interesting things about the catastrophe at Knight Capital Group—the trading firm that lost $440 million this week—is the speed of the collapse. News reports describe the bulk of the bad trades happening in less than an hour, a computer-driven descent that has the financial community once again asking if its pursuit of profits has led to software agents that are fast yet dumb and out of control. We’re posting this story in advance of its publication in Wired’s September issue because it examines how Wall Street has gotten to the point where flash failures come with increasing frequency, and how much further traders seem willing to go in pursuit of ever-greater speed.

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

The 2012 New York Battle of the Quants, a two-day conference of algorithmic asset traders, took place in New York City at the end of March, just a few days after a group of researchers admitted they had made a mistake in an experiment that purported to overturn modern physics. The scientists had claimed to observe subatomic particles called neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light. But they were wrong; about six months later, they retracted their findings. And while “Special Relativity Upheld” is the world’s most predictable headline, the news that neutrinos actually obey the laws of physics as currently understood marked the end of a brief and tantalizing dream for quants—the physicists, engineers, and mathematicians-turned-financiers who generate as much as 55 percent of all US stock trading. In the pursuit of market-beating returns, sending a signal at faster than light speed could provide the ultimate edge: a way to make trades in the past, the financial equivalent of betting on a horse race after it has been run.

“Between the time the first paper came out in September and last week, a guy in my shop had written two papers explaining how it could be true,” a graying former physicist said ruefully, sipping coffee near an oversize Keith Haring canvas that dominated the room at Christie’s auction house where the conference was held. “Of course, you’d need a particle accelerator to make it work.”

If that were all it took, then by now someone would be building one. One of the major themes of this year’s conference was “the race to the bottom,” the cost-is-no-object competition for the absolute theoretical minimum trade time. This variable, called latency, is rapidly approaching the physical limits of the universe set by quantum mechanics and relativity. But perhaps not even Einstein fully appreciated the degree to which electromagnetic waves bend in the presence of money. Kevin McPartland of the Tabb Group, which compiles information on the financial industry, projected that companies would spend $2.2 billion in 2010 on trading infrastructure—the high-speed servers that process trades and the fiber-optic cables that link them in a globe-spanning network. And that was before projects were launched to connect New York and London by a new transatlantic cable and London and Tokyo by way of the Arctic Ocean, all just to cut a few hundredths of a second off the time it takes to receive data or send an order.

High-frequency traders are a subset of quants, investors who make money the newfangled way: a fraction of a cent at a time, multiplied by hundreds of shares, tens of thousands of times a day. These traders occupy an anomalous position on Wall Street, carrying themselves with a distinctive mixture of diffidence and arrogance that sets them apart from the pure, unmixed arrogance of investment bankers. A pioneering high-frequency trading firm, Tradeworx, has its relatively humble offices two flights up from an Urban Outfitters in a sleepy New Jersey suburb. Twenty people work there, about half of them on the trading floor, monitoring on triple screens the fractions of a penny as they mount up, second by second. Roughly 1.5 percent of the total volume of stocks traded on US exchanges on a given day will pass, however fleetingly, through the hushed, sunlit, brick-walled room. On the first day of the New York conference, Aaron Brown, a legendary quant and former professional poker player, took the stage in rumpled chinos and a leather jacket to lecture the assembly on game theory. He began his talk by saying, “3.14159,” and then pausing expectantly. From the back of the room came the response: “265358.” Together they made up the first 12 digits of pi—a geek shibboleth. “You won’t see a lot of masters of the universe here,” said Charles Jones, a professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School. “A lot of these guys, if they’re wearing a tie, it might be the only one they own.”

Faster and faster turn the wheels of finance, increasing the risk that they will spin out of control, that a perturbation somewhere in the system will scale up to a global crisis in a matter of seconds. “For the first time in financial history, machines can execute trades far faster than humans can intervene,” said Andrew Haldane, a regulatory official with the Bank of England, at another recent conference. “That gap is set to widen.” This movement has been gaining momentum for more than a decade. Human beings who make investment decisions based on their assessment of the economy and on the prospects for individual companies are retreating. Computers—acting on computer-generated market trend data and even newsfeeds, communicating only with one another—have taken up the slack. Conventional economics views all this as an unalloyed good: It is axiomatic that all trades are a net benefit to the economy because they enhance “liquidity,” the ability of investors to buy or sell assets at the best price. Indeed, in 2007 the SEC instituted an ambitious new rule, the national market system, that opened the door to dozens of new venues for stock trading, but now that transaction times are measured in micro­seconds and prices are carried out to six decimal places, those opportunities have arguably gone past a point of diminishing returns.
So, barring any new breakthroughs in physics, we are in the final stages of a trend that began when the Rothschilds, by legend, used carrier pigeons to trade on the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo. For roughly a century leading up to 1970, the state of the art in financial communication was the telegraphic stock ticker (for receiving data) and the telephone (for transmitting orders). Now it is the high-speed server linked to a financial exchange by fiber-optic cable as short as physically possible, because each mile adds about eight microseconds of latency. There is so much money to be made that any expenditure on research and infrastructure to shave those microseconds is worth it.

That plays out in the very hardware of finance. The data center of NYSE Euro­next, the international conglomerate that includes the New York Stock Exchange, is in a building in suburban Mahwah, New Jersey, 27 miles from Wall Street. Besides “matching engine” computers that process trades on the exchange, it also houses high-frequency trading servers, which receive data and spit out orders according to programs—algorithms. Traders pay to put their servers in the same building, and to make things fair, engineers scrupulously add extra lengths of cable to equalize the runs among all the servers. Yes, we are talking about a few feet plus or minus. At nearly the speed of light. Now multiply that effort across the breadth of a continent or an ocean. Factor in the quantum and relativistic effects of machine-to-machine communication untouched by human hands, far faster than a human can react. A trend that began with pigeons ends with subatomic particles, carrying data that is outdated almost before it arrives at its destination.


******************************************************************************
Express Lanes
New York and Chicago, America’s two great trading centers, are 720 miles apart as the photon flies — about 3.9 milliseconds at the speed of light. But variations in transmission technology or how long the route is can make millions of dollars’ worth of difference to high-frequency traders. — Katie M. Palmer



SEE LINK FOR MORE DETAIL ON GRAPHIC
******************************************************************************

Not all trading takes place in New York. By historical accident, derivatives such as futures and options are mostly traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, 720 miles away. So a few years ago, a company called Spread Networks began quietly buying up rights-of-way for a route that would lop about 140 miles off the shortest fiber-optic cable distance between the Chicago Merc and the communications hub of Carteret, New Jersey, the primary data center for Nasdaq. Existing networks tend to follow railroad lines and were designed to serve population centers, not to provide a point-to-point link for traders. Instead of dipping south toward Philadelphia, Spread’s route heads northwest through central Pennsylvania and then due west to Cleveland. Latency is typically measured in round-trip times (i.e., an order and a confirmation); the shortest cable route before Spread lit up its network in 2010 clocked a round-trip time of 14.5 milliseconds, according to Spread executives, but capacity was inadequate, so most customers had to settle for 15.9 milliseconds. Spread cut that to as little as 13.1 milliseconds for its premium “dark fiber” service, a connection that doesn’t have to be shared with other customers. Prices are a closely guarded secret in this world, although the consensus estimate among traders is “plenty.”

Spread quickly began signing up customers, but by the spring of 2012, there was a faster competitor on the horizon. Because of some complicated physics, the speed of light through any medium is inversely proportionate to the medium’s index of refraction—so signals travel about 200,000 kilo­meters per second through fiber-optic cable, compared with 300,000 through the atmosphere. The fastest communication between New York and Chicago would be line-of-sight through the air, which requires a chain of microwave relay towers. Tradeworx is building such a network, as is McKay Brothers, a California firm that hopes its system will be the fastest, with a round-trip latency of less than 9 milliseconds. Its route, cofounder Bob Meade boasts, uses the smallest possible number of towers, 20, and deviates from a perfect geodesic (more poetically known as a “great circle,” the shortest line between two points along a planet’s surface) by just 4 miles. It includes roughly another 2 miles of wiring in the towers themselves, connecting the dish antennas hundreds of feet in the air with amplifiers on the ground. The downside is that microwaves in the 11-gigahertz band can be interrupted by rainstorms or certain atmospheric conditions that duct the signal away from the receiving dish. CEO David Barksdale of Spread Networks, which claims “five nines”—99.999 percent reliability—for its fiber-optic link, says he’s not worried about microwave competition: “People have been talking about building low-latency wireless networks for years. We don’t believe long-haul microwave is a suitable technology for sophisticated trading applications, due to certain key limitations.” (He declined to specify what those were.) But Meade, a former Harvard physicist and quant, is convinced that speed, more than reliability, is the key. If your link is only 99 percent reliable, you don’t make money 1 percent of the time; if it’s slower than the competition, you don’t make money 100 percent of the time.

The other crucial routes are New York to London and London to Tokyo. (Trading hours in the US don’t overlap much with Asia, so there’s less demand for an ultrafast New York–Tokyo link.) At least three companies have announced plans for fiber-optic cables under the Arctic Ocean between Europe and Japan. One route skirts the Russian coast and comes ashore on the northern tip of Murmansk; the other traverses the Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic. When they go into operation around 2014, they will cut latency from about 230 milliseconds on routes through Asia to between 155 and 168 milliseconds. Meanwhile manufacturers have begun making cable for a new New York–London link intended to shave 311 miles off the usual distance and cut the round-trip message time from 65 milliseconds to just under 60. It will do this by taking a great-circle route, traversing the shallow Grand Banks off Newfoundland. Most transatlantic cables head straight for deep water, to get away from sharks. In what some might consider a case of karmic justice, sharks threaten the financial industry by biting its cables, attracted by the electromagnetic fields generated by the wires that power the amplifiers at intervals along their length. Along the continental shelf, cables must be expensively armored against sharks and if possible buried to avoid damage from anchors and fishing trawls. The new cable will be armored for about 60 percent of its length, to take advantage of the shortest possible route. By summer 2013, two ships will begin laying cable, meeting mid-Atlantic in about three months, according to officials of Hibernia Atlantic, the company behind what it calls Project Express. Cost: around $300 million. Estimated useful life before obsolescence: hard to say. But what else can they do? Unlike the New York–Chicago route, the Atlantic Ocean is a highly unsuitable environment for erecting microwave towers. On the other hand, when I raised this point at the Battle of the Quants with Alexander Dziejma, chief architect at a high-frequency trading firm called Dymaxion Capital Management, he scoffed.

“They’re doing amazing things now with drones,” Dziejma said.

“Drones?”

Sure, he said. A fleet of unmanned, solar-powered drones carrying microwave relay stations could hover at intervals across the Atlantic. I started to come up with all the reasons that was a crackpot idea, then realized I’d heard 10 crazier things since 9 am that day. “Someone will do this eventually,” he said.

[Demeter]

58. THERE WAS A DRONE FEATURED IN "THE BOURNE LEGACY", TOO

Blowing up inconvenient US citizens...on US soil...I hate the future because it's already here in the hearts of evil men.

[AnneD]

61. They are psychologically preparing us...

To accept this as normal. Thank you Mr. President.

[Demeter]

62. When Did Sandy Weill Change His Mind About Too Big To Fail? And Why? MATT TAIBBI

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/when-did-sandy-weill-change-his-mind-about-too-big-to-fail-and-why-20120803


WEILL: ... You know I think it is something I’ve been thinking about a lot over the last year and I wanted to really get my thoughts together before I said anything. But I think good things are simple and I think what I’m saying is very simple...


For the moment we can ignore the fact that Weill throughout the interview kept patting himself on the back for his "good thing" of an idea. (Although, if close attention is paid, one does get the impression that Weill sincerely believes he came up with the "break up the banks" idea on his own, and it’s almost like he’s preparing to take credit for it if it happens; this is just one of the many layers of delicious comedy that can be peeled back through careful re-examination of this interview). We can just call all that background noise for now.

Instead, let’s just focus on the "when" question Sorkin raised. Because interestingly enough, Weill addressed this very issue at the close of the year Sorkin mentioned, 2009.

It was back then that Weill’s former co-C.E.O. at Citi, John Reed, paved the way for Weill’s future conversion by issuing his own mea culpa on the issue of Too-Big-To-Fail. Reed wrote a letter to the New York Times on October 22, 2009 calling for the same division of commercial banks and investment banks, saying the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, which had kept those companies separate, was a mistake.

"I would compartmentalize the industry for the same reason you compartmentalize ships," Reed told Bloomberg later on. "If you have a leak, the leak doesn’t spread and sink the whole vessel. So generally speaking you’d have consumer banking separate from trading bonds and equity."

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/when-did-sandy-weill-change-his-mind-about-too-big-to-fail-and-why-20120803#ixzz23HnV0E8v

[Demeter]

63. THE KILLER CONCLUSION

Poor Sandy’s pension is gone. No wonder he’s rethinking things.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/when-did-sandy-weill-change-his-mind-about-too-big-to-fail-and-why-20120803#ixzz23Hnt6of2

[Demeter]

71. MORE TAIBBI ON WEILL--THE HUMOR OF IT ALL

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/ludicrous-times-op-ed-forgets-entire-year-of-wall-street-history-20120801

[xchrom]

66. sunday morning...

[xchrom]

67. German Austerity’s Lutheran Core

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/opinion/sunday/in-euro-crisis-germany-looks-to-martin-luther.html?hp



IF there’s one nationality the rest of the world thinks it readily and totally understands, it is the Germans. Combine their deep involvement with Nazism and anti-Semitism and, voilà! — 2,000 years of gripping, complex history vanishes.

Since the beginning of the euro crisis, this reductionism, which can be found inside Germany as much as outside it, has come in the form of sifting through the fatal legacy of the Weimar era, the years of promising democracy that began in the defeat and humiliation of World War I and ended with the Nazi takeover in 1933.

On the one hand, we’re told, the 1920s legacy of destabilizing inflation explains Germany’s staunch aversion to expansionary monetary and fiscal policies today; on the other hand, the Nazi taint on the interwar years seems to prove for some that, even in 2012, the intentions of democratic Germany can’t be trusted when it comes to Europe’s well-being.

But rather than scour tarnished Weimar, we should read much deeper into Germany’s incomparably rich history, and in particular the indelible mark left by Martin Luther and the “mighty fortress” he built with his strain of Protestantism. Even today Germany, though religiously diverse and politically secular, defines itself and its mission through the writings and actions of the 16th century reformer, who left a succinct definition of Lutheran society in his treatise “The Freedom of a Christian,” which he summarized in two sentences: “A Christian is a perfectly free Lord of all, subject to none, and a Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all.”

[xchrom]

68. i can't even contemplate this...Are You Worth More Dead Than Alive?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/magazine/are-you-worth-more-dead-than-alive.html?ref=economy



‘Do you see lights?” Ruben Robles asked his brother, Mark, in 2007. Bright, star-shaped and white, they flashed before Ruben’s eyes while he was driving, shopping at Costco, feeding the cats. Mark didn’t see anything, so Robles went to a doctor, who thought that the visions might be stress-induced. Robles ran a collection agency in Los Angeles, and the hours were long, the debtors argumentative. Several weeks later, Ruben began suffering seizures. He went to see another doctor, and this one ordered an M.R.I., which revealed a ghostly white orb on his left frontal lobe. The diagnosis was brain cancer. Only 36 years old, Ruben was told that he might not live to see his 38th birthday.

Horrified, Robles says he thought constantly about God. But his crisis was practical as well as existential. Over the next year and a half, surgeons operated on his brain three times, excising as much of the cancer as they safely could. The side effects of the operations left Robles barely able to walk and unable to speak more than a word or two at a time. He shuttered the collection agency. His wife left him, and Robles, needing daily help, squeezed into his mother’s Chihuahua-filled apartment. The medical bills were mounting, and Robles was worried: though he believed God would provide for him in the afterlife, what he desperately needed until then was money.

Ron Escobar, a close friend of Robles’s, went to Carole Fiedler, an insurance expert, for help. Fiedler saw that there was no vacation home or Google stock to unload. But Robles did have a life-insurance policy for half a million dollars. Life insurance is designed to benefit the living, a spouse or heirs, not those who perish. But Fiedler, who owns a firm called Innovative Settlements, knew that a life-insurance policy is an asset that can be resold to a friend or stranger just as a car, boat or house can. In a transaction known as a viatical settlement (for terminally ill patients) or a life settlement (for everyone else), the person selling his insurance gets an immediate cash payment. The buyer, in exchange, is named as the beneficiary and pays the premiums until the insured person dies. Life no longer afforded Robles a traditional way to make money, but to the right investor, Fiedler advised, his imminent death was worth a great deal.

Selling your life and selling a house have more in common than you’d think. The seller puts a listing on the market. Prospective buyers do research and get inspections; there are offers and counteroffers until the seller accepts a bid. The seller doesn’t literally peddle his own life, of course, but his life-insurance policy. The distinction is in many ways moot, however, as the sales value is inextricably linked to a cold-eyed estimation of how much longer the seller has to live. In the case of Robles’s policy, a life-settlement company in Georgia, Habersham Funding, expressed interest. Escobar shipped off six boxes’ worth of Robles’s medical records, thousands of pages in all, to Habersham. The firm, in turn, analyzed the records and also had them scrutinized by an external company specializing in life-expectancy analysis. Fiedler’s recollection is that the reports confirmed the grim prognosis and that Robles had less than two years left to live.

[DemReadingDU]

69. Oh, the viaticals

Not a new concept.
With medical advances, people started living longer and not usually as worthwhile as previously.

[xchrom]

70. Countries With Less Global Exposure Are Actually Doing Better Than Those With More

http://www.businessinsider.com/ubs-sp-500-global-exposure-2012-8

For The First Time In 20 Years, Countries With Less Global Exposure Are Actually Doing Better Than Those With More

***SNIP

Jonathan Golub, Chief U.S. Equity Strategist for UBS, recently wrote about it in a note to clients:

"Over the past 20 years, companies with larger foreign footprints have generally grown faster than those with less global exposure. However, following the onset of the financial crisis and the ensuing global recession, domestically-oriented companies have outperformed their more foreign-exposed peers...

Over the past two years in particular, global macro risks have re-escalated as the European Union has battled sovereign debt issues and emerging markets have faced slowing demand. By contrast, the U.S. has experienced a modest, less turbulent recovery. As a result, more domestically-exposed names have exceeded expectations by a greater amount on both top- and bottom-lines.

This strength is now evident in growth rates as well. More specifically, 2Q earnings and revenue growth has outpaced that of more foreign-exposed names by roughly 5-6%. Given continuing challenges in the global economic environment, we expect this pattern to persist through the end of the year."


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/ubs-sp-500-global-exposure-2012-8#ixzz23KjeXuku

[Demeter]

72. Because They had Protection Against the Bankster and Corporation Pirates

Last edited Sun Aug 12, 2012, 04:39 PM - Edit history (2)

Every Administration since Ford has methodically stripped us of our economic defenses. It was a combination of graft and misplaced idealism and class warfare. First they came for the poor, and most people didn't care, for they were middle class. Next, they went after the Unions, which was the ticket to the middle class. Now, it's small businesses, who cannot compete...

The nations that acted like NATIONS, are nations indeed. Places like us were made over into willing victims for the vultures, in the name of Capitalism, in the name of Globalism, in the wake of graft and corruption that goes on to this day and minute.

[Demeter]

73. If There's a Theme in This Weekend's News

It's the abuse and misapplication of technology for Corporate gain. It's not even that a person will benefit from the pillaging of all that exists.

It's faceless, soulless Corporations, another misapplication of technology, in this case, financial technology, and legal technology, that is destroying the earth and the people on it, so that the Corporations can get bigger and more powerful. To what purpose? To destroy everything?

The non-profits may sit there and try to shame us individuals, guilt us, in the belief that we will change our individual choices, and everything will go right.

But it's the STRUCTURES: Government, Business and yes, Religion, that have turned rogue and destructive.

We the People must take down these rogue institutions, return our would-be Masters back into the Public Servants they are supposed to be. And we must either convert or incarcerate their human components, so that the People can thrive again.


Technology is what was supposed to give us the world of Star Trek. Do those quants and those geneticists at Monsanto know how they have betrayed the Present and the Future? Do those venal, grasping CongressCritters know how they have betrayed 300 years of patriots?

[Demeter]

74. It's a realization like that, puts me off the news.

I'm wrapping it up, folks. Maybe resurrection will start next week...

You can go ahead and keep posting. See you all Monday.

[bread_and_roses]

76. "... it's the STRUCTURES" "... it's the STRUCTURES" "... it's the STRUCTURES"

"... it's the STRUCTURES" "... it's the STRUCTURES" "... it's the STRUCTURES" "... it's the STRUCTURES" "... it's the STRUCTURES"

It can't be said too many times. It's what makes me scream in rage when people say "if they (whichever group happens to be the day's demons) would only ..." do this or that.

Heard - I think it was Richard Wolff (?) a while back talking about how this crisis - like others - arise from people doing exactly what they are supposed to do under capitalism

[Fuddnik]

77. Rogue and destructive being the key words.

Sometimes we get capabilities that turn around and bite us on the ass. Just because we have the capabilities to do something, doesn't mean it's a good idea to use it.

I remember screaming at a TV set during a congressional hearing with one of the directors of the
Fascist Bureau of Investigation. He was talking about all the new capabilities that we had for surveillance and stuff, and the law was hindering their usefulness. Well, yeah. It was illegal for a reason. And intrusive. And unnecessary. Just because you have a gun, doesn't mean you have to find someone to shoot.

[Demeter]

78. Maybe not, but the temptation...

and I can think of lots of good candidates. It's the inability to prioritize, and the futility of it anyway. This mess isn't just one person's fault.

Sometimes I think it's time to leave it all to the cockroaches.