PROPERTY PRICES IN SOME AREAS COULD BE CUT IN HALF
September 3rd, 2007Via: Finfacts Ireland:
US homes may lose as much as half their value in some US cities as the housing bust deepens, according to Yale University professor Robert Shiller. Meanwhile, Martin Feldstein of Harvard University says that experience suggests that the dramatic decline in residential construction provides an early warning of a coming recession. The likelihood of a recession is increased by what is happening in credit markets and in mortgage borrowing. Feldstein says that most of these forces are inadequately captured by the formal macroeconomic models used by the Federal Reserve and other macro forecasters.
“The examples we have of past cycles indicate that major declines in real home prices — even 50 percent declines in some places — are entirely possible going forward from today or from the not too distant future,†Shiller said in a paper presented last Friday at the Federal Reserve Economic Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Falling real-estate values may undermine consumer spending by spurring households to save more and by preventing them from tapping home equity.
Because price gains were larger and more widespread this time compared with past speculative booms, the risk of “substantial†price declines is greater, wrote Shiller, who is also the chief economist and co-founder of MacroMarkets LLC. Shiller is also the author of Irrational Exuberance, in which he forecast the end of the tech boom in 2000.
Mexico Trucks to Roll on U.S. Highways
September 3rd, 2007Via: Yahoo:
The Bush administration can proceed with a plan to open the U.S. border to long haul Mexican trucks as early as next week after an appeals court rejected a bid by labor, consumer and environmental interests to block the initiative.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco late on Friday denied an emergency petition sought by the Teamsters union, the Sierra Club and consumer group Public Citizen to halt the start of a one-year pilot program that was approved by Congress after years of legal and political wrangling.
The Transportation Department welcomed the decision and said in a statement that allowing more direct shipments from Mexico will benefit U.S. consumers.
MSNBC: Do You Believe Any 9/11 Conspiracy Theories?
September 3rd, 2007Via: MSNBC:
Woops.
U.S. May Invoke ‘State Secrets’ to Squelch Suit Against Swift
September 3rd, 2007Via: International Herald Tribune:
The Bush administration is signaling that it plans to turn once again to a favorite legal tool known as the “state secrets” privilege to try to shut down a lawsuit brought against a Belgium banking cooperative that secretly supplied millions of private financial records to the U.S. government, court documents show.
The lawsuit against the banking consortium, which is known as Swift, threatens to disrupt the operations of a vital national security program and to reveal “highly classified information” if it is allowed to continue, the Justice Department said in several recent court filings asserting its strong interest in seeing the lawsuit dismissed. A hearing on the future of the lawsuit was scheduled for Friday in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.
The “state secrets” privilege, allowing the government to shut down public litigation on national security grounds, was once a rarely used tool. But the Bush administration has turned to it dozens of times in terrorism-related cases in seeking to end public discussion of everything from an FBI whistle-blower’s claims to the abduction of a German terrorism suspect.
Most notably, the Bush administration has sought to use the state secrets assertion to kill numerous lawsuits against telecommunications carriers over the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program, but a judge in California rejected that claim. The issue is now pending before an appeals court, where judges in a hearing two weeks ago expressed skepticism about the administration’s claims.
Asserting the state secrets privilege requires the certification of both the director of national intelligence and the attorney general about the potential harm to national security. If the administration makes good on its intention to invoke the secrets claim in the lawsuit against Swift, it would be one of the most significant cases to test the claim.
Swift is considered the nerve center of the global banking industry, routing trillions of dollars each day between banks, brokerages and other financial institutions. The group’s partnership with the U.S. government, first revealed in media reports in June 2006, gave officials at the CIA access to millions of records on international banking transactions in an effort to trace money that investigators believed might be linked to terrorist financing. Swift agreed to turn over large chunks of its database in response to a series of unusually broad subpoenas issued by the Treasury Department beginning months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Research Credit: Oli
Pentagon ‘Three-Day Blitz’ Plan for Iran
September 3rd, 2007Via: Times Online:
THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.
Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes†against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,†he said.
Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.†It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculusâ€.
President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaustâ€. He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too lateâ€.
Bill Clinton ‘Shocked’ Hillary Donor Was a Fugitive
September 3rd, 2007Bill Mena Airport Clinton was shocked by the revelations…
Via: Newsday:
Former President Bill Clinton said he was “shocked” by revelations that a top fundraiser for his wife is a fugitive from justice and claimed he didn’t even know what “HillRaiser” Norman Hsu did for a living.
“You could have knocked me over with a straw, especially when I heard the L.A. people had been allegedly looking for him for 15 years when he was in plain view,” he told Newsday while touring a county fair in rural New Hampshire Sunday.
“I never knew how he made a living or anything, but I was shocked,” said Clinton of Hsu, who has made millions as an investor in tetxtile and other businesses.
Hsu has been a fugitive after being accused of fraud in the early 1990s in San Mateo, Calif.
Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Hillary Clinton donated $23,000 in Hsu contributions after his criminal history was revealed by the Los Angeles Times last week.
Clinton said it wasn’t necessary to return $100,000 or more collected by Hsu from other donors.
“I think she did the right thing giving the money back pending resolution of his case,” Clinton added. “If the other people say they gave the money of their own accord then I think she should keep it.”
August Earnings
September 3rd, 2007Cryptogon and Farmlet supporters made August a great financial month for the Becky and me. Earnings from all sources came to $1,138.91, or about 2.3X the minimum monthly goal of $500. We’re heading into Spring here in New Zealand and we’re going to be firing up some projects that are long past due: chicken house and run, large compost tea vats and soil testing.
It may not be apparent to many of you out there, but a handful of people are doing some VERY heavy lifting when it comes to these contributions. Most of the people you see in the acknowledgment column are repeat contributors. Some of them have been sending contributions since 2003. Their generosity is especially significant because almost all of these people are making preparations; and many of them are coordinating efforts for their entire families. (In case you think this is just men, think again. While more men contribute than women, the top three contributors are women.)
They know what’s coming. (We communicate behind the scenes.) Yet, instead of buying another solar panel, more seeds or an extra case of ammo, I see a notification that a payment has been received in my inbox. To know what’s coming, yet still be willing to help others who are totally outside of their immediate sphere of day-to-day life… Well, it’s a constant inspiration to me. I make sure that I do the same each month. Thank you.
Thanks also to everyone who remembered to do their Amazon shopping via Cryptogon. We cleared the 7% commission tier by two items. I don’t know who bought the $300 biofeedback system, but I salute you. I could have used that system to calm down when I saw my Amazon Affiliate balance increase by $20 overnight! I was also pleased to see that several of you bought books about nontoxic alternatives to everyday products. Here are all of the Amazon affiliate links for Cryptogon that I’ve established:
amazon.com – amazon.ca – amazon.co.uk – amazon.de – amazon.fr
I was happy to see gold gap up after some Cryptogon readers bought their metal on BullionVault in August. I don’t know who they are, but they did well. Hats off to the buy-the-dips gold bugs out there.
Finally, thanks to Financial Web for their generous and continued sponsorship of Cryptogon.
BARCLAYS ADMITS BORROWING HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS AT BANK’S EMERGENCY RATE
September 1st, 2007More “technical difficulties” at one of the world’s top banks. Remember the recent Wells Fargo disaster…
Via: Guardian:
Barclays has been forced to borrow hundreds of millions of pounds from the Bank of England’s emergency lending facility for the second time in a fortnight, it was revealed last night.
In a hurried and emotive statement after London’s markets had closed, Barclays attempted to calm fears that it faces a cash crisis. Rumours had circulated all day that Barclays was forced to go to the Bank of England after the central bank said it had lent £1.6bn at its penal rate of 6.75%. It is thought that Barclays borrowed the entire amount.
Barclays said: “There are no liquidity issues in the UK markets. Barclays itself is flush with liquidity. In these challenging times the dramatisation of such situations is of no help to markets, their members or their customers.”
The high street bank, which also has a huge investment banking division, said it needed cash only because of a “technical breakdown” in the UK clearing system, through which all the major banks settle their books at the end of the day. Its shares fell 2.5p to 597.5p, raising questions over its £45bn bid to take over the Dutch bank ABN Amro. In its statement, Barclays said: “The Bank of England sterling standby facility is there to facilitate market operations in such circumstances. Had there not been a technical breakdown, this situation would not have occurred.”
The standby facility is usually used a couple of times a month but the size of the loan, and the fact that this is the second time within two weeks that Barclays has gone to the Bank of England, have raised eyebrows.
Barclays’ appeal for calm follows days of speculation about the bank’s exposure to losses in asset-backed security markets.
Research Credit: PW
WHEAT REACHES RECORD, HEADS FOR BIGGEST MONTHLY GAIN SINCE 1973
September 1st, 2007Via: Bloomberg:
Wheat futures in Chicago climbed to a record, heading for the biggest monthly gain in 34 years, as demand from importers including South Korea and India reduced global inventories.
Prices for the grain have doubled in the past year as adverse weather in Ukraine, Canada, Europe and Australia damaged crops. Global stockpiles will fall to the lowest in 26 years by May 31, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Buyers in Egypt, the world’s biggest importer after Brazil, and Taiwan have also sought the grain, used for animal feed and in foods such as bread, biscuits and noodles.
…
Wheat for December delivery rose as much as 23.25 cents, or 3 percent, to $8.0775 a bushel in electronic trading on the Chicago Board of Trade. It was at $8.0525 as of 7:10 a.m. local time. The commodity has gained 28 percent this month, the most since August 1973.
Wheat for November delivery on the Euronext.liffe exchange gained as much as 17.25 euros, or 6.8 percent, to 272 euros ($371.69) a ton in Paris, a record.
Dirt: The Silent Global Crisis
September 1st, 2007The most disturbing thing that I notice about New Zealand is soil erosion. Many farms in the Far North are shockingly overstocked and erosion is, quite simply, washing the deforested land out to sea.
This isn’t some far out theory. I see it happening. It doesn’t take much rain to turn the Oruru river brown with the soil washing away from over grazed, sometimes steep, paddocks. The Taipa harbor is filling up with it.
I don’t know if “normal” people notice this, but it represents national suicide in slow motion.
As usual, don’t take my word for it: soil erosion new zealand
On the one hand, I hate kikuyu grass. On the other hand, I’m thankful for it because it prevents our soil from slipping away during the 50 year deluges that now occur semi-annually.
Soil erosion is the most serious threat facing humanity today. Becky and I realize that, in the near future, our lives will depend A) Building top soil, and B) Keeping it from washing down the ditch.
Via: Stephen Leahy:
Soil erosion is the “silent global crisis†that is undermining food production and water availability, as well as being responsible for 30 percent of the greenhouse gases driving climate change.
“We are overlooking soil as the foundation of all life on Earth,†said Andres Arnalds, assistant director of the Icelandic Soil Conservation Service.
“Soil and vegetation is being lost at an alarming rate around the globe, which in turn has devastating effects on food production and accelerates climate change,†Arnalds told IPS from Selfoss, Iceland, host city of the International Forum on Soils, Society and Climate Change which starts Friday.
Along with many other international partner institutions, Iceland is marking the centenary of its Soil Conservation Service by convening this forum of experts.
Every year, some 100,000 square kilometres of land loses its vegetation and becomes degraded or turns into desert.
“Land degradation and desertification may be regarded as the silent crisis of the world, a genuine threat to the future of humankind,†Arnalds said.
