Artificial light: How man-made brightness has changed the way we live and see forever Independent (hat tip Buzz Potamkin)
Dead sharks found in Redwood Shores were suffering from internal bleeding, necropsy shows InsideBayArea (hat tip reader furzy mouse). Eeew.
Oral sex—further information from sexual assault cases Journal of the Forensic Science Society. Richard Smith says research shows I am wrong to doubt that there is such a thing as non-consensual fellatio.
At I.M.F., Men on Prowl and Women on Guard New York Times
Apple causes ‘religious’ reaction in brains of fans, say neuroscientists Digital Trends. I suspect former NeXT owners are immune.
Sir Fred Goodwin injunction: MPs declare ‘victory’ for freedom of speech Telegraph. NC (Richard
Smith and Ian Fraser) broke the superinjunction.
Roach: GD II awaits if China bashing rhetoric turns into protectionism Ed Harrison
FBI lab reports on anthrax attacks suggest another miscue McClatchy (hat tip Buzz Potamkin)
Tepco Posts $15.28 Billion Loss Wall Street Journal. Wow, heretofore, only banks could lose this much money.
In Japan, Capitalists Who Fear Free Markets Floyd Norris, New York Times. The headline is wrong. Bankers are not capitalists.
The New Normal Golem XIV (hat tip reader Crocodile Chuck)
Financial regulation: A shield asunder Financial Times
Watch out for tail risks hanging over Treasuries Gillian Tett, Financial Times
When Regulators Side With the Industries They Regulate Simon Johnson, New York Times
Insurers Told to Justify Rate Increases Over 10 Percent New York Times (hat tip reader furzy mouse). Why not anything higher than the rate of inflation?
Making Things in America Paul Krugman, New York Times
Antidote du jour:
87 comments
Comments are closed.
Tepco losses do not yet include any costs going to reserve for potential damages, the excuse being they are not certain amounts..
The banks have since decided to give better terms for Tepco to keep it afloat, though I find this reporting (Yomiuri?) suspect. Almost as if the banks think Tepco can be made too big to fail. I think the government knows exactly what it’s doing and will find a GM type solution to it soon.
Tepco is to important to fail in the sense that the lights need to stay on. The US railroads were in the same boat in 1893, they could not pay their debts and were restructured, but did not shut down. As an example the Rio Grand Southern in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains went into recievership in 1893 but did not shut down until 1952 so that is a long lived zombie. Tepco will be reorganized as needed to keep the lights on, the stockholders have already lost 80% plus of the price before the earthquake, the price is going to zero. But just like railroads in the old days the lights in Tokoyo can’t go out. Interestingly I read that Japan is now thinking about de-control of electricity to the point where there are no longer exclusive territories for companies.
Ah, the paradoxical economics of nuclear power: too cheap to meter, yet too expensive for the companies who make it to insure.
Why are any private companies still even in the game?
It’s only because, like the banks, they are already too big to fail.
Nuke utilities know explicitly that 1) govts will always pick up the tab after Fukushima-like events, and 2) govts will always pick up the tab for dealing with nuke waste, now and for all time (and we’re talking 100,000 years here!)
Fully half of the UK Dept of Energy’s budget for next year will go to servicing the tonnes and tonnes of the UK’s existing nuke waste – and that’s before any serious attempt to deal with remediation/long-term storage has even begun.
So if this is the cost of pseudo-privately produced nuclear power, what price a sane energy policy?
Anyone?
Yes, but they still have the 50/60 Hz split of the country into two electrical zones, so it is messy. There are no illusions however as to the nature of what a public utility is and given recent history of efforts, for example, to reverse the privatization of mail, not the imagined ideological/political back lash one would find in the USA to nationalization. (It’s just that there is no automatic appeal to nationalize a loss making machine either)
If a woman is an IMF cadre (e.g., the economist mentioned in the article; not so much the admin asssitant), then in the name of what principle would she complain about this kind of predatory work environment? After all, she’s a dedicated Might Makes Right ideologue, as proven by her being at the IMF.
Oh, I get it. It’s the same old “socialism for me, Social Darwinism for you”.
Anytime I see a female libertarian I wonder just how she thinks she’d fare if she got the world she claims to want, among the feral thugs she implicitly wants to see have total power.
Yep. It’s amazing how someone who chooses to work for an organization whose entire raison d’être is the rape and plunder of the weak can then turn around and complain when that happens to them.
You guys just can’t wait to strip people of their rights and/or dignity as soon as possible.
I know you’re going to moan and wail and go totally ape-s**t over this, but you’re no less hypocritical than “they” are. Comments like these show you’re just playing for a different team but by the same fundamental, underlying rules.
You label, then you treat the person you labeled as non-human, then you do whatever you want. Sound familiar?
I see the most amazing self-justifications for your proposals, non-civility and other BS.
Yes, the ends don’t justify the means for those “other” people. For *me*, however, the ends *totally* justify the means.
You’re right for a change Jones; they dropped the ball on this one. Still you didn’t score any points due to your histrionics.
Anonymous Jones,
When the only purpose of a belief system is to provide a blueprint for action, any and all aspects of factual reality are fair game.
And that is what has happened to you. Your comments are increasingly being revealed as not just wrong, but as purpose-driven. And the purpose, as has become abundantly clear, is to run interference for the corporate criminals, in the instant case the IMF. Anything and everything that behooves the interests of the corporate criminals, you’re all for.
So you launch into this tirade to try to make it sound as if the palpable crimes of the IMF are equivalent to the speech crimes you imagine attempter and I to have committed. And in your drive to exculpate the IMF, you take false equivalence to unheard of levels. Speech crimes are now the equivalent of destroying the livelihoods and lives of millions of people around the world.
But just as important, the original question that attempter and I raised still stands, and it is not out of bounds. It is, after all, the same question that Hannah Arendt raised in Eichmann in Jerusalem, and that is what is one to think of someone who willfully chooses to work for a “governmental apparatus” in which “crime is legal and the rule”? After all, when Eichmann “heard that the Security Services of the Reichsführer S.S. (Himmler’s Sicherheitsdienst, or S.D) had jobs open,” he “applied immediately.” And even though the German Jews believed in the “fiction” of the party program that the N.S.D.A.P. formulated in 1920 to convince them that its intent was benign, Eichmann knew otherwise. He testified that: “The Party program did not matter, you knew what you were joining.”
So is it credible to believe that an IMF economist didn’t know what she was joining? Or is she more in league with those who supported the Nazi regime right up until the end and then, at the last moment, as the Allies were closing in on Germany, betrayed it, as Friedrich P. Reck-Malleczewen writes in his “Diary of a Man in Despair”?
A little late, gentlemen, you who made this archdestroyer of Germany and ran after him, as long as everything seemed to be going well; you who…without hesitation swore every oath demanded of you and reduced yourselves to the despicable flunkies of this criminal who is guilty of the murder of hundreds of thousands, burdened with the lamentations and the curse of the whole world; now you have betrayed him…. Now, when the bankruptcy can no longer be concealed, they betray the house that went broke, in order to establish a political alibi for themselves—-the same men who have betrayed everything that was in the way to their claim to power.
This is rich – DownSouth, for whom no post is complete without gratuitous Nazi references, complaining of false equivalence.
Eagle,
You’ve just made my point.
There’s probably no one who comments on NC that consistently stakes out a more extreme right-wing position than you do. And now you’re right in there, batting for Anonymous Jones.
There was a time that Anonymous Jones was perceived to be a voice of moderatation and reason. No more.
Eagle,
And by the way, not everyone lives in your and Anonymous Jones’ fact-free world.
Anyone familiar with the history of Pinochet or the Dirty Wars knows that the methods used by the neoliberals are not that different than those used by the Nazis.
As Friedman and Hayek were fawning over Pinochet, and the World Bank, the IMF, and the Inter-American Development Bank lent him vast sums of money,
In a savage action, Allend partisans were rounded up, gathered in a stadium, and murdered en masse. Others were sent to concentration camps, and still others were exiled and sometimes murdered abroad.
▬Carlos Fuentes, The Burried Mirror
,
For the benefit of those whose ideology clouds their reading comprehension, I merely made a descriptive analysis of an inconsistency. There was nothing normative whatsoever in my comment.
But I figured it might provoke your kind of hysterics, and you didn’t disappoint.
You can say the same thing about women in the military. Still, women shouldn’t be raped–even if they plant landmines on other people’s children’s playgrounds.
From PopBitch today — ‘Goats On Stuff’; hours of du jour will be had as these goats… well… stand on stuff: http://goatsonstuff.com/
From yesterday, but still — ‘Oil Prices Lead to Protests in India’: http://bit.ly/mxdWEk
Protests in Spain may be banned: http://bit.ly/iVARg9
And Jamie Galbraith gave a fine speech at the Economics for Peace and Security Symposium: http://bit.ly/mQHrtA
Also see massive protests in Lisbon against bailouts and austerity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yf4PAuPHW8s
Europe be on fire, mang — but Ireland stays quite, lulled to sleep by the quote-unquote ‘symbolic’ event of the Queen’s visit.
Hey, if you aren’t taking part in the collective ‘debate’ over what the Queen’s visit ‘signifies’ — whether it’s a ‘step forward’ for Irish-British relations (it’s not) or whether it’s a corrupt insult to the Irish people by a colonial leader (it’s not) — you might just be concerned with unemployment, massive public sector cuts that could well cause a ten-year long depression or impending bankruptcy… and that doesn’t make for polite dinner table conversation.
Muito obrigado for that video of the Lisbon protest!
Thanks for Goats on Stuff. Duly disseminated and thoroughly enjoyed.
beautiful stuff for sure, being covered in the U.S. now too. Market Watch says the crowds say they are protesting “a corrupt fusion of banks, businesses and politicians.”
I loved one young woman’s quote:
“We are not anti-system, the system is anti-us.”
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/in-spain-protestors-rally-a-battered-nation-2011-05-20?pagenumber=1
Yep. It’s great stuff.
Is it too much to wish for that Spain and Portugal may be approaching the moment where the people come together to drive a stake into the heart of neoliberalim? That happened in Argentina in the wee hours of the morning of December 20, 2001 when President De la Rua and his neoliberal guru Domingo Cavallo made their escape from the angry crowds in a helicopter.
I thought the sayings from the Spain protest cut to the heart of the problem in very few words:
• “They call it democracy but it isn’t.”
• “We call for a change in society starting with a political change, a social change and to be better represented by the politicans, so they care more for social values and less for stock values.”
I wonder if she got that line for an old Suicidal Tendencies song called “Two Sided Politics”
Lyrics:
I’m not anti-society, society’s anti-me
And I’m not anti-religion, religion is anti-me
And I’m not anti-tradition, tradition is anti-me
And I’m not anti-anything, I just wanna be free
Fascist state, no freedom
Unless you control yourself
Use self expression, lose your freedom
you’re undesirable, you go straight to jail
Two-sided politics
Kill someone in a war
[ Find more Lyrics on http://mp3lyrics.org/M6TR ]
Get a medal you’re a hero
Protect yourself in everyday war
you’re undesirable, you go straight to jail
Two-sided politics
I’m not anti-Reagan, Reagan’s anti-me
And I’m not anti-government, government’s anti-me
And I’m not anti-politics, politics is anti-me
And I’m not anti-anything, I just wanna be free
Innocent, never guilty
High class lawyer, you are rich
If you’re poor must be guilty
Even if you’re innocent you go straight to jail
Two-sided politics
Sometimes it’s even true!
Aslan?
By the way, that NYT article on the sordid sex-dungeon that is the IMF is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever read — massive entertainment, though.
Here, I’ll write an alternative intro.
“Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a notorious French seducer now in jail on allegations of rape, ruled as king over a palace of vice, skin and steamy supply cupboard encounters, it has been revealed to the New York Times.
The IMF — an institution geared toward relieving indebted countries of their burdens — turns out to be nothing more than a cave of debauchery where knuckle-dragging intellectuals allay, not national debt, but merely their more base urges. Cupid strikes from time to time — but more often taboos are trodden, tushies are touched and temptations are tempestuously taken in this most libertine of international economic institutions.”
“Cupid strikes from time to time — but more often taboos are trodden, tushies are touched and temptations are tempestuously taken in this most libertine of international economic institutions.”
This seems like a HR ad.
They will get a long line of volunteers to join this worthy institution.
Yup, that’s how you write tabloid pap — attract and repel, that’s the key. The material shouldn’t come across to the reader as utterly repellent — as for example DSK’s alleged raping a woman. No, you’ll get much more millage out of gossip that suggests at once transgression and debauchery together with suggestion and allure.
These tactics can then be used either to generate sales — as I suspect this piece aims to do — or to take down a person or an institution (it’s a favourite anti-union maneuver used by certain conservative British and Irish dailies with certain target audiences). The key to effectiveness is in the writing style which should ooze a strangely fascinating sleaze — attract and repel, that’s the key.
sounds to me like a fun place to work. as long as everyone keeps it in perspective, which for certain personalities (male and female) can be a challenge.
I guess that’s why there’s speedlimits on highways. But no one will get anywhere if they crawl along at 15 mph all day. ha ha.
Ur… just to be clear: I’m suggesting that the NYT are talking complete crap here. It’s not difficult for the media to paint any institution as a sordid sex-pit — it’s also not difficult for the media to portray an institution as a racist or sexist hellhole.
The editor simply fingers the institution for whatever reason — either because he/she has gripes with it or because they want to leapfrog off a story to produce more high-yield content (as is the case with this one). Then they send a reporter — preferably one with a predilection for the debauch or uncouth — to the scene. The reporter then hangs around the coffee machine picking up rumours from disgruntled employees; takes note of dodgy goings on and complaints, especially those that weren’t dealt with (which happens in every large institution) or just, in some cases, makes things up.
The end result? Instant sleaze — and usually a few layoffs for talking smack to the press, but the friendly reporter ignores those. This sort of thing is usually the terrain of the tabloids, with respectable newspaper editors knowing how the game works and avoiding it at all costs. So, why is the NYT engaged in this low-standard, high-yield muckraking? Eh, because they’re a shitty newspaper who somehow have a good name… duh!
“NYT are talking complete crap here. ”
As they do page after page, day after day, year after year.
What else is new?
Yves,
You are going to hate me for this, but I think that I see why you (well, most of us actually) never seem to be able to find much info about contrarian points of view, especially in certain aspects of politics…
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-05-19/tech/online.privacy.pariser_1_google-news-facebook-internet?_s=PM:TECH
A few tips to avoid this.
Turn off cookies or use Firefox with a cookie manager extension.
Use a webpage like Startpage dot com which does not record your IP so it does not know who is who. Startpage uses Google results.
Jack,
I often use google to format this site for my cell phone (a samsung galaxy, it’s much faster via google) and I cannot see your post when I read it through google, although I can see CHRSB’s reply.
Au Revoir, Monsieur Pig: Le Rapist is a Socialist? Non!
By Sherry Wolf
“When the NY Daily News headline writers have to take a break from bashing Muslims to ravage your party’s key political hope as “Le Perv” on its front page, it’s time to reassess. Dominique Strauss-Kahn is accused of, let’s just call it by its proper name, RAPING a Manhattan hotel maid in his $3,000-a-night room, thus traumatizing a woman in the middle of her workday, obliterating his political career and shaking up French politics.
First of all, if I read one more fucking quote about “Anglo-moralism” regarding the Strauss-Kahn assaults, I’m going to smack the nearest smirking asshole to the portals of hell. He was a serial misogynist who raped a maid in a hotel, he’s not in jail for an affair. Assuming that every female subordinate he’s ever come in contact with is not a liar, Strauss-Kahn is an arrogant pig with enormous power who has gotten away with the sort of crimes that can get you 25 to life in most states.”
….Not to psycho-babbleize Strauss-Kahn, but he’s a caveman—no offense to Neanderthals intended.
Third of all, $3,000 a night?! That’s a lot of mints on your pillow. Strauss-Khan calls himself a socialist (exceedingly small “s”) and heads an organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which pretends to help the poor, but, pardon the parallel, rapes them. The exposure that he is a career misogynist tells us a fair amount about the two institutions Strauss-Kahn led until his arrest this past weekend. In brief, they suck…”
http://www.counterpunch.com/wolf05182011.html
Tried posting this link a while ago, to counter those articles (on Counterpunch) that seem to be defending Strauss-Kahn) But it’s not showing up. Will try again, without excerpts and with all profanity deleted. Apologize if this results in a double posting.
Au Revoir, Monsieur Pig: Le Rapist is a Socialist? Non!
By SHERRY WOLF
http://www.counterpunch.com/wolf05182011.html
This article does a good job of cutting through all the hypocrisy. Thanks for the link.
Since most people don’t bother clicking on links, here are some excerpts:
1. Dominique Strauss-Kahn is accused of, let’s just call it by its proper name, RAPING a Manhattan hotel maid in his $3,000-a-night room, thus traumatizing a woman in the middle of her workday
2. Strauss-Kahn is an arrogant pig with enormous power who has gotten away with the sort of crimes that can get you 25 to life in most states.
3. The fact that he’s in jail… is most likely because his political opponents, who currently control the French government, have given the go-ahead to do him in…
Tant pis, as the French say; tough sh*t is my rough translation.
4. Strauss-Kahn, and by extension, the French Non-Socialist Party and IMF, all appear to have a curious hostility to working women.
5. Not to psycho-babbleize Strauss-Kahn, but he’s a caveman—no offense to Neanderthals intended.
6. Third of all, $3,000 a night?! That’s a lot of mints on your pillow. Strauss-Khan calls himself a socialist (exceedingly small “s”) and heads an organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which pretends to help the poor, but, pardon the parallel, rapes them.
7. We rarely, if ever, see such a powerful man fall, and never for the rape of a Black immigrant woman. I can only assume that he’s p*ssed off people much higher up who decided to cut the cord.
8. In coming weeks we’ll see the institutions he represents and his former hangers-on scurry about to cover their asses, but for now we can take a bit of pleasure in the political, social and personal collapse of such a man. Let’s use his fall to shine a light on the organizations that have protected him all these years.
Au revoir, Monsieur Pig! FSP and IMF, j’accuse!
Please leave Neanderthals out of this.
no kidding.
anybody who sees how they drew on the caves in Lascaux and thinks they were less than us is a lunatic.
I actually think we are less than they were.
Weisbrot weighed in yesterday — he’s always worth listening to:
http://bit.ly/ijn5Md
This, in particular, should be highlighted — as there was a little bit of confusion floating around the comments section of Marshall’s piece regarding what the IMF and their policies are really all about:
“As for changes in IMF policy, these have been relatively small. A review of 41 IMF agreements made during the world financial crisis and recession found that 31 of them contained “pro-cyclical” policies: that is, fiscal or monetary policies that would be expected to further slow the economy.”
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/imf-supported-macroeconomic-policies-and-the-world-recession
Since the SEC and COC wont act New York needs to call the CDC:
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2011/05/the-cdc-says-be-prepared-for-a-zombie-apocalypse/
Schneiderman needs all the bats he can get!
On the Ed Harrison piece, the 4 trillion a day global forex market is hardly ‘protectionism’ at work.
“Why not anything higher than the rate of inflation?”
Because medical cost trends rise faster then that.
They’ve been rising faster than inflation for what, 20 years now? Maybe 30?
Trees do not grow to the sky. We’re due for some mean reversion and buyer pushback.
Mz Smith;
Trees do indeed grow in the sky according to Larry Niven; “The Integral Trees.”
As for buyer pushback in the healthcare field; what are we going to do, commit seppuku in protest. See your own link to the piece about the gynecologists being recruited from “regular” reconstructive and gynecological surgery into the burgeoning field of “Genital Enhancement.”
I’m waiting for Apple-sexual folks to show up. We’re doomed…
Apple used to have special graphics/music processing power. Now they just use the same processors as everyone else.
Apple used to have it’s own operating system. Now they just have a shiny skin on a version of FreeBSD.
Contrast the Apple commercial from the 80’s and 90’s, to the walled garden of internet surfing and application development they provide today. Today Apple stands for denial of freedom and consumer crap.
THe leopard sharks are apparently a “is a “pretty resistant” species.”
Human beings are just turning the planet into one big toilet, aren’t they ?
Protectionism will lead to GDII ?
I thought that the “protectionism caused GDI” myth is exactly that, a myth.
This looks like pure powers-that-be propaganda.
“squeezing the purchasing power of hard-pressed US consumers.”
funny how these twits never talk about the fact that US consumers are hard pressed due to the fact that americans are UNEMPLOYED because their jobs have been destroyed and sent away to these low wage countries, as is part of the plan.
“I think we should take the baseball bat out on Paul Krugman”
And what is it with conservatives and violence ?
What a worthless article.
In an elastic economic system, if you lose jobs from ‘free trade,’ taking away ‘free trade’ (i.e. protectionism) should gain those jobs back so that you end up where you started from.
If not, this is not an elastic economic system. It’s not a good system. You dissipate energy in such a system.
The date on that article “Roach: GD II awaits if China bashing rhetoric turns into protectionism” is 29 March 2010.
Every night just before I go to sleep I utter a little prayer “Dear Lord please don’t let the Chinese put a tariff on American goods”. LOL
Add to that, Stephen Roach is a principal at Morgan Stanley who got a 2 TRILLION bailout. Now he is lecturing us about protectionism. Irony much?
didn’t I read last year that the Chinese bought Morgan Stanley
savethesharks: I thought that the “protectionism caused GDI” myth is exactly that, a myth.
I don’t think it’s entirely a myth, but important details are drowned out by the “protectionism bad” chanting.
Before GD1 the US was highly protectionist (forget Smoot-Hawley, we had average tariffs of around 40% even before that). As a result European countries couldn’t pay off their WW1 loans from the US, which had a lot to do with the European banking crisis.
What the China Cheerleaders conveniently overlook is that China is now in the same position the US was pre-GD1, a major world creditor with a highly protectionist regime.
The New Normal?
That betrays a certain ‘present-centric-ness.’ What is new today will be old tomorrow.
It’s the same with any thoery that is called modern something.
Pure arrogance.
Apple Religion
Interesting article – whether it’s ingrown or a lingering hangover of centuries of state-mandated awe of king and God, even irreligious people do have a tendency to worship and reverence SOMETHING.
But this is too ridiculous to let pass:
““This suggests that the big tech brands have harnessed, or exploit, the brain areas that have evolved to process religion,” one of the scientists says. A meeting with the Bishop of Buckingham, who reads the Bible using his Apple iPad, appeared to back up this assertion. He pointed out how the Apple store in, for example, Covent Garden has a lot of religious imagery built into it, with its stone floors, abundance of arches, and little altars (on which the products are displayed).”
Right – architectural cues are what tell you whether you are worshipping or not. Go to a “primitive” tribal worship and tell me how many arches, stone floors and (probably even) altars you see. I would think that the peace, solemnness and yearning for divinity would dignify the surroundings, not the other way around.
Anyway those arches, stone floors, whatever sound kind of like a mausoleum to me, which when considering the automatic obsolescence of such gadgets is entirely appropriate.
Are you an iMan?
Know any iWomen, iBoys or iGirls?
Do you buy iDolls?
Ever struck an iDeal?
Are you underwater with you iLand?
Do you read with your iEyes (not to be confused with aye-ayes)?
Your iDoctor, he may not know much about eyes though.
iApple >>>>>>>>>>>>> Apple.
iPhone squared = i(iPhone)
Krugman:
“And then there’s the matter of the auto industry, which probably would have imploded if President Obama hadn’t stepped in to rescue General Motors and Chrysler. For those companies would almost surely have gone into liquidation, closing all their factories. And this liquidation would have undermined the rest of America’s auto industry, as essential suppliers went under, too. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were at stake.”
Is Krugman suggesting that the demand for automobiles would have disappeared if GM and Chrusler had gone under? Are there no other motor companies in the United States than those two? Do US-based operations of foreign car producers not count as part of “America’s auto industry”? If GM or Chrysler had some profitable divisions, was it impossible for them to be spun off or bought by outsiders? (I recall attempts at such, but if memory serves GM refused because they were hoping for a big fat bailout.) If ALL of their operations were a disaster, then what good was it protecting such jobs? And didn’t some huge fraction of those jobs and operations get liquidated anyway in the bankruptcy that DID occur?
People seem to respect this Krugman guy so much. I just don’t get it.
In a perfect world with perfect markets you’d be right. Here on Planet Earth, USA, early 21st century, Krugman wins (disclaimer: I score such things on purely pragmatic grounds).
I’m not going to defend GM’s (let alone Chrysler’s) poor management over the years, but prior to The Great Meltdown they weren’t doing so badly. Everybody selling anything remotely discretionary (or postponeable) got creamed. Even Toyota was loosing money for the first time since the shogun stepped down. It was happening for reasons that had everything to do with a crooked irresponsible finance industry and nothing to do with car manufacturing. And a crooked irresponsible finance industry, heavily in bed with the US gubmint, means we’re not talking about a functioning free market, so any arguments about the car bailouts not following free-market or capitalist principals go out the window. Because of the car bailouts many jobs and a big chunk of an important industry were saved. To this pragmatist that trumps all other considerations.
Icing on the cake: the car bailouts, in stark contrast to the bank bailouts, involved actual concessions from the companies involved. And the cost was chump change compared to the bank bailouts.
I’m not the only ‘conspiracy “nut”‘ who’s not buying the entire DSK affair…
http://www.lemonde.fr/depeches/2011/05/18/pour-57-des-francais-strauss-kahn-est-victime-d-un-complot_734547.html
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/79159,news-comment,news-politics,was-dominique-strauss-kahn-set-up-by-vengeful-americans-dsk-conspiracy
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24857
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Amerikan-Police-State-by-paul-craig-roberts-110517-367.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24875 (note: these last two articles are by assistant sectreas for RONALD REAGAN)
good to see, however, the former american newspaper of record (that was, however, before ‘Pinch’ took over his father’s newspaper) playing it’s appointed role in trotting out the appropriate propaganda…
If Paul Craig Roberts is giving Straus-Kahn the benefit of the doubt so am I. Please Mr. Straus-Kahn do not commit suicide and make a statement that it is not your intention. Fight this. It will be poetic: if you raped her you will get what you deserve; if you did not they will.
It’s nice Roberts can be openminded about a misguided Euro-Zonist like Strauss-Khan.
Thinking about our addiction to light and fire… it just occurred to me that I have never seen a serious discussion on two questions: 1. how can we live without electricity, and 2. how can we live without oil? Does everyone assume this is impossible?
1. how can we live without electricity, Susan Truxes
We can’t.
and 2. how can we live without oil? Susan Truxes
With enough energy we could synthesize oil. Thorium reactors could provide that energy.
Does everyone assume this is impossible? Susan Truxes
They should but our inherently crooked banking system has driven a lot of people insane.
But we once did, F. Beard. And not too long ago.
Why do people blame technology when it is evident that our money system, which is based on government backed theft of purchasing power, is to blame?
The Bible commands against honest usury between fellow countrymen in Deuteronomy 23:19-20. How much more then is government backed counterfeiting, the fractional reserve banking system, to be blamed?
Usury alone requires unsustainable exponential growth to pay the interest. But our system is worse than that since it allows near unlimited leverage and thus near unlimited theft of purchasing power. Theft of purchasing power + usury = our money system. Good luck with that!
Sure. Not just a “technology” issue. Also a government and rentier theft issue. And, bigger still, there’s unrestrained population growth, promoted by some religions.
If I am not mistaken, it’s written in the Bible to give unto to Bernanke, Strauss-Kahn and buddies what belongs to the Fed, IMF and others, which includes coins, dollar bills and fiat currencies, and give unto to the Almighty what belongs to Him.
Susan Truxes: “But we once did”
With a vastly lower standard of living. Are you volunteering to live without electricity to show that it can be done?
But why stop there. Once upon a time we also lived without this newfangled “metal” stuff. It was called the Stone Age.
Technology is like a deadly virus.
Once you are inflicted with it, to get rid of it, you almost have to kill yourself.
It’s that hard.
MyLessThanPrimeBeef says: “Technology is like a deadly virus.”
No, it’s more like a highly addictive drug. Surely I could do without the computer I’m using (since I grew up that way), but I’m hooked on conveniences like electric lights and hot and cold running water. If you want to kick the habit, feel free to try. It’s ok to have a cabin in Montana without electricity or indoor plumbing as long as you don’t mail bombs.
Before you recommend that approach to everyone though, consider how you’ll feed 7 billion people without the Green Revolution.
That’s why for many, it’s almost like killing themselves to do without.
That’s also why it’s that hard for billions of people.
consider how you’ll feed 7 billion people without the Green Revolution
By that you mean, how you’ll feed 7 billion people without cheap oil. (The so-called “green revolution” was nothing but eating cheap oil.)
There’s only one way to do it – the complete transformation of food production to agroecological practices on a smallholder and cooperative basis. Agronomy has proven that organic production on smaller plots for local distribution is the most productive.
That means we have to end food commodification and corporatization, including getting rid of GMOs and every other monoculture practice which is geared only to commodification and renders the whole food supply extremely vulnerable to disease, pests, and crop failure.
To oppose this program is implicitly to want the total collapse of the food system and the monumental famine that will follow, since that outcome’s inevitable given the physical facts of fossil fuel supplies and the biological facts of the way ecosystems work.
Susan Truxes: -“But we once did [exist without electricity], F. Beard. And not too long ago.”-
Not several billion of us, is the thing.
>> Does everyone assume this is impossible?
Everyone presumes it’s not possible for 7 billion people to sustain our current standard of living, given current technology.
>> But we once did, F. Beard. And not too long ago.
Yes. And we can again. But, how many billion people were there and what was the standard of living?
Humans are adaptable. When forced, I think some may learn how to exist on a much lower plane of consumption. It will, no doubt, require the quantity of we to become much more wee.
Dylan Ratigan on banksters illegally breaking and entering in order to foreclose on homeowners (runtime: 7:29)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31510813/#43052150
And, bigger still, there’s unrestrained population growth, promoted by some religions. wunsacon
Since prosperity is the best birth control method, population growth may be a non-issue if the theft is eliminated. Besides, though government backed theft is our business, family size is not.
If I am not mistaken, it’s written in the Bible to give unto to Bernanke, Strauss-Kahn and buddies what belongs to the Fed, IMF and others, which includes coins, dollar bills and fiat currencies, and give unto to the Almighty what belongs to Him. MyLessThanPrimeBeef
You have stumbled on the solution to the money problem; separate government and private money supplies per Matthew 22:16-22.
Instead, liberals and progressives insist on a one-size- -fits-all money supply and thus make themselves hostage to the counterfeiting and usury class.
>> Instead, liberals and progressives insist on a one-size- -fits-all money supply and thus make themselves hostage to the counterfeiting and usury class.
Beard, unless you’re in the habit of attributing anything you don’t like to the libruls — my guess is “yes” — then you need to include “conservatives and Republicans” in your list of bad actor. Please cast your aspersions consistently.
unless you’re in the habit of attributing anything you don’t like to the libruls — my guess is “yes” wunsacon
Wrong guess.
— then you need to include “conservatives and Republicans” in your list of bad actor. wunsacon
That’s a given so I don’t waste my time. Conservatives are hopeless and Republicans are deliberate fascists.
Acknowledged, Beard. I’ll remember for next time.
“The headline is wrong. Bankers are not capitalists. ”
From John Ralson Saul’s The Doubter’s Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense.
“Executive The corporate executive is not a capitalist but a technocrat in drag.”
He also points out the word “manager” is derived from the French word “menager” or one who does domestic housework. It’s a good metaphor for unproductive elites, “They spend their time cleaning houses that are falling down.” If they ever get greedy and stop sharing their control of rivers of money with the political elites, the rest of us might get to see how few of them we could get along with.
According to this article, James Grant appears to have joined John Hussman, Jeremy Grantham and others in warning that stocks, bonds and gold are all too overvalued now to justify investing in, thanks to the Fed’s effort to levitate asset prices. He recommends holding cash instead.
Best quote from the interview:
“A few months ago, (Fed Chairman) Ben S. Bernanke, Ph.D., the former chairman of the Princeton economics department, stood before the cameras of CNBC and said that the Russell 2000 is making new highs. The Russell! He sounded like another stock jockey. He was taking credit for new highs in the small cap equities index. The Fed, as never before, or rarely before, is now the steward of this bull market. One wonders what it will do if stocks pull back significantly.”
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Once-bullish-contrarian-Jim-apf-265701620.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=7&asset=&ccode=
Yes, Yves you would be wrong to doubt forcible oral sex. It is not about sex, it about violence, fear, intimidation and power. Think of rape’s historical role as a weapon in war or torture and I think it will easier to see how it can happen. It may seem too much of a physical risk to a man, but that rarely happens because the victims are too terror stricken to think and/or to do it so the survival instinct kicks in instead and a predator knows that and that power is often what really gets him off. An excellent book on the subject despite its off putting title and thesis is “Against Our Will, Men, Women and Rape” by Susan Brownmiller.
I am waiting for the real court trial (not the media trial) to decide if DSK is ultimately guilty or not. I admit that the thought of a conspiracy crossed my mind, but I think there would have been a great many easier and efficient ways to destroy him (and the IMF) than a sexual criminal case which statically has a low conviction rate in this country and not a crime in France. If there was a conspiracy to destroy his reputation in France it seems to have back-fired because there he seems to have gain a great deal of outrage and/or sympathy rather than much in the way of condemnation. Also, the U.S. controls the IMF in any way that seems to matter and rides rough-shod over IMF nose slapping and nothing DSK (nor any Managing Director of the IMF) has done or said he was planning to do would be any kind of threat to the U.S. so what would be the point? It seems more like a case of his unenlightened and revolting attitude toward women finally became his undoing.
One more link for everyone. Minnesota AG gets the go-ahead to sue over robo-signing. http://www.twincities.com/business/ci_18100764?nclick_check=1
This is not mortgage robo-signing but a debt collector. I do want to see the details of how they did THEIR robo-signing ;)