Government Will Borrow $72 Billion in Debt Auctions Next Week
August 3rd, 2011Right back at it.
Via: AP:
The government will borrow $72 billion in debt auctions next week now that Congress has raised the nation’s borrowing limit.
The Treasury Department says it will sell 3-year notes, 10-year notes and 30-year bonds to raise the money. About one-third will go to repay debts that are due on Aug. 15.
President Barack Obama cleared the way for the auction on Tuesday when he signed into a law a bill that raises the debt ceiling and promises more than $2 trillion in cuts to government spending over the next decade.
The U.S. government currently borrows 40 cents of every dollar that it spends.
Court Rules Pesticide Drifting Onto Organic Farm Constitutes Trespass
August 3rd, 2011Via: Star Tribune:
Oluf Johnson’s 1,500-acre farm in Stearns County is an organic island in a sea of chemically treated corn and soybeans.
Improperly applied pesticides repeatedly drift over from neighboring farms, often with dire consequences for Johnson. But now, thanks to a new court ruling, he and other farmers can sue to recover their losses.
Letting damaging chemicals cross property lines is trespassing, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled on Monday. Moreover, since those pesticides made his crop unsalable in the organic market, Johnson is entitled to damages from the company that applied it, the Paynesville Farmers Union Cooperative Oil Co., the court said.
“Whenever this happens it will give people with overspray a legal avenue to pursue,” said Doug Spanier, an attorney with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, which administers pesticide enforcement regulations in the state. And that could go for any farmer whose crop is made inedible by someone else’s chemical spray and even homeowners whose property has been damaged by a neighbor’s overuse of RoundUp, legal experts said.
Tepco Reports Second Deadly Radiation Reading at Fukushima Nuclear Plant
August 3rd, 2011Via: Bloomberg:
Tokyo Electric Power Co. reported its second deadly radiation reading in as many days at its wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant north of Tokyo.
The utility known as Tepco said yesterday it detected 5 sieverts of radiation per hour in the No. 1 reactor building. On Aug. 1 in another area it recorded radiation of 10 sieverts per hour, enough to kill a person “within a few weeks” after a single exposure, according to the World Nuclear Association.
Radiation has impeded attempts to replace cooling systems to bring three melted reactors and four damaged spent fuel ponds under control after a tsunami on March 11 crippled the plant. The latest reading was taken on the second floor of the No. 1 reactor building and will stop workers entering the area.
“It’s probably the first of many more to come,” said Michael Friedlander, who spent 13 years operating nuclear power plants in the U.S., including the Crystal River Station in Florida. “Although I am not surprised, it concerns me greatly; the issue is the worker safety.”
The 10 sieverts of radiation detected on Aug. 1 outside reactor buildings was the highest the Geiger counters used were capable of reading, indicating the level could have been higher, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at the utility, said at a press conference.
SWITZERLAND TRIES TO SLOW RISE OF FRANC; CUTS INTEREST RATE
August 3rd, 2011Warning: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
At a minimum, states will try unilateral capital controls in an attempt to prevent their currencies from disorderly appreciation vs. the toxic dollar.
Via: New York Times:
Switzerland’s central bank moved unexpectedly Wednesday to ease the pressure on the Swiss economy caused by the super-strong franc, which has soared to record highs as debt crises buffet the United States and Europe.
Declaring their currency “massively overvalued,” the Swiss National Bank cut its key interest rate target, and said it would raise the supply of liquidity to the Swiss franc money market in the next few days in a bid to weaken the franc.
An avalanche of dollars and euros has been tumbling into this Alpine outpost at record rates, as investors see the franc as a haven from the twin debt crises in the United States and Europe. But its resulting strength risks undermining economic growth in Switzerland and stoking inflation, the central bank said.
“The franc is like the new gold,” said a Geneva banker who would give only his first name, Dmitri, insisting on the discretion that is the hallmark of this reserved nation. “It’s crazy and it’s all anyone is talking about, in the morning, at lunch, at dinner parties.”
Central Banks Join Rush to Gold
August 3rd, 2011Via: Wall Street Journal:
Central banks are ramping up their gold buying as they seek to diversify their reserves away from the dollar and other beleaguered currencies.
South Korea became the latest government to disclose a big bullion purchase, saying Tuesday that it recently bought 25 metric tons – more than doubling its holdings to 39 metric tons. Mexico, Russia and Thailand have also been major buyers in 2011.
This year, governments have almost tripled their net gold purchases, increasing their holdings by 203.5 metric tons this year, up from a 76-metric ton rise last year, according to the World Gold Council, an industry group backed by miners.
The demand marks a major shift in central banks’ thinking about gold. Increasingly, they see bullion as protection against risks posed by declining paper currencies and global economic upheaval, and their vast resources and conservative bent make them a powerful force in the gold market.
Someone Strapped a Bomb Around the Neck of a Girl Who Is Part of One of Sydney’s Wealthiest Families
August 3rd, 2011Update: ‘Safe and Well’
Via: Sydney Morning Herald:
An 18-year-old Sydney schoolgirl is safe and well after a ten-hour bomb ordeal in her Mosman house.
—End Update—
Via: Daily Telegraph:
POLICE are trying to defuse a bomb strapped to a teenage girl at a multimillion dollar house at Burrawong Avenue in Mosman, Sydney.
The drama unfolded at 2.40pm this afternoon when an 18-year-old girl called police to the mansion “following discovery of a suspicious device”, The Daily Telegraph reported.
It was not clear how the device came to be strapped to the girl but it is understood she did not place it there herself.
A senior police poice officer described the device as an unusual “collar bomb” which has never been seen before in Australia.
He said they believed it was an extortion attempt and that the initial details of the situation were being conveyed to police via the girl’s father.
See: The Incredible True Story of the Collar Bomb Heist
The Secret Patriot Act Is Staying Secret
August 3rd, 2011Via: Wired:
The secret Patriot Act is staying secret.
Two Senators have been warning for months that the government has a secret legal interpretation of the Patriot Act so broad that it amounts to an entirely different law — one that gives the feds massive domestic surveillance powers, and keeps the rest of us in the dark about the snooping.
“There is a significant discrepancy between what most Americans – including many members of Congress – think the Patriot Act allows the government to do and how government officials interpret that same law,” wrote the Senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. “We believe that most members of the American public would be very surprised to learn how federal surveillance law is being interpreted in secret. ”
The Senators tried to get the government to reveal some of the law’s contents, by forcing the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General to produce a report outlining when this secret surveillance has gone overboard. Yesterday, the effort failed. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said no to the report by rejecting Wyden and Udall’s amendment to the FY2012 Intelligence Authorization Act.
In other words: we are all still in the dark about how the government is spying on us.
The Senators won’t say, exactly, what elements of this secret Patriot Act have them so spooked. But Wyden told Danger Room in May that the so-called “business-records provision” is a major source of concern. It empowers the FBI to get businesses, medical offices, banks and other organizations to turn over any “tangible things” it deems relevant to a security investigation.
U.S. Indirectly Arming Al-Qaida-Allied Somali Insurgents
August 3rd, 2011Via: Wired:
Bad news in the five-year-old U.S. proxy war against al-Qaida–allied Somali insurgents. Half of the U.S.-supplied weaponry that enables cash-strapped Ugandan and Burundian troops to fight Somalia’s al-Shabab terror group is winding up in al-Shabab’s hands.
The kicker: It’s the cash-strapped Ugandans who are selling the weapons to the insurgents.
This revelation, buried in U.N. reports and highlighted by controversial war correspondent Robert Young Pelton at his new Somalia Report website, raises some unsettling questions about Washington’s plans to out-source more wars in the future.
Moody’s Confirms U.S. AAA Rating; Food Stamp Use Rises to Record
August 3rd, 2011Just a quick juxtaposition of two stories to demonstrate how absurd the kabuki theater has become.
Moody’s Confirms U.S. AAA Rating, Assigns Negative Outlook
Record Numbers Are Receiving Food Stamps
‘The Chinese Guy’: Chinese Firm Floods U.S. with Fake IDs
August 3rd, 2011Via: Seattle Times / Washington Post:
A Chinese company mails untold thousands of fake driver’s licenses to the United States, many of them to college students.
Research Credit: ottilie
