Will Japan Destroy the Yen to Save the Dollar?
July 11th, 2007Via: Kitco:
The only logical answer I can offer is that the Japanese realize that if they stop the flow of global liquidity they will destroy the dollar and the U.S. economy. To survive, the U.S. must be able to both limitlessly exchange the dollars it prints for the goods the rest of the world makes and then pay low rates of interest on its IOU’s that foreigners accumulate as a result. Were the Japanese to turn off the monetary spigot and raise interest rates to normal levels, Americans would not be able to do either.
Manhattan Takes Cue from London’s ‘Ring of Steel’
July 11th, 2007Via: International Herald Tribune:
By the end of this year, police officials say, more than 100 cameras will have begun monitoring cars moving through Lower Manhattan, the beginning phase of a London-style surveillance system that would be the first in the United States.
The Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, as the plan is called, will resemble London’s so-called Ring of Steel, an extensive web of cameras and roadblocks designed to detect, track and deter terrorists. British officials said images captured by the cameras helped track suspects following the London subway bombings in 2005 and after the car bomb plots last month.
If New York City succeeds in getting the estimated $90 million to build the full network, it will include not only license plate readers but 3,000 public and private security cameras, a coordination center staffed by the police and private security officers, and movable roadblocks.
“This area is very critical to the economic lifeblood of this nation,” New York’s police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, said in an interview last week. “We want to make it less vulnerable.”
…
The license plate readers would check the plates’ numbers and send out alerts if suspect vehicles were detected. The city is already seeking state approval to charge drivers a fee to enter Manhattan below 86th Street, which would require the use of license plate readers. If the plan goes through, the police most likely would collect information from those readers too, Kelly said.
But the city’s security plan is much broader than keeping track of license plates. Three thousand additional surveillance cameras would be installed below Canal Street by the end of next year. Pivoting gates would be installed at critical intersections; they would swing out to block traffic or a suspect car at the push of a button.
Research Credit: EP
Dollar Falls to Record Low Against Euro on Housing Slowdown Concern
July 10th, 2007Via: Bloomberg:
The dollar fell to a record against the euro and dropped the most since March versus the yen on speculation a slumping housing market will slow the U.S. economy.
The U.S. currency also sank against the Swiss franc, British pound and Danish krone after Standard & Poor’s warned it may cut ratings on $12 billion of bonds backed by subprime mortgages, diminishing the appeal of dollar-denominated assets. Futures contracts show traders expect the Federal Reserve to keep borrowing costs on hold through year-end.
U.S. Navy Sends Third Carrier to 5th Fleet Region
July 10th, 2007This information broke a couple of weeks ago on some sites that I wouldn’t admit to reading. I couldn’t confirm it back then, so I didn’t post it.
Well…
Via: Reuters / Yahoo:
The U.S. navy has sent a third aircraft carrier to its Fifth Fleet area of operations, which includes Gulf waters close to Iran, the navy said on Tuesday.
“Enterprise (aircraft carrier) provides navy power to counter the assertive, disruptive and coercive behaviour of some countries, as well as support our soldiers and marines in Iraq and Afghanistan,” a U.S. Navy statement said.
The move comes weeks after a flotilla of U.S. warships sailed through the narrowest point in the Gulf to hold exercises off Iran’s coast in a major show of force.
Tension over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions has raised regional fears of a military confrontation. Recent U.S. naval presence in the Gulf has been the largest since the 2003 Iraq war.
The Fifth Fleet area of operations includes the Arabian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman and parts of the Indian Ocean.
The Elusive Overunity Hamster
July 10th, 2007Anyone who followed Steorn’s gruesome humiliation last week will love this.
The Crashing U.S. Economy Held Hostage
July 10th, 2007Via: Global Research:
Remember when the U.S. was the world’s greatest industrial democracy? Barely thirty years ago the output of our producing economy and the skills of our workforce led the world.
What happened? It’s hard to believe that in the space of a generation our character and capabilities just collapsed as, for example, did our steel and automobile industries and our family farming. What then are the causes of the decline?
Here’s how I would put it today: our economy is on an artificial life-support system, a barely-breathing hostage in a lunatic asylum. That asylum is the U.S. and world financial systems which are on the verge of collapse.
The inmates are the world’s central bankers, along with most of the financial magnates big and small. The fact is that the economy of much of the world is in a decisive downward slide which the financiers cannot stop because the systems they operate are the primary cause. As often happens, the inmates rule the asylum.
The problems aren’t confined to the U.S. Unemployment worldwide is increasing, debt is rampant, infrastructures are crumbling, and commodity prices are rising.
In such an environment, crime, warfare, terrorism, and other forms of violence are endemic. Only the most naïve, self-centered, and deluded jingoist could describe such a scenario in terms of the freedom-loving Western democracies being besieged by the “bad guys.â€
Rather what is happening highlights the growing failures of Western globalist finance whose impact on political stability has been so corrosive. As many responsible commentators are warning, we are likely to see major financial shocks within the next few months. The warnings are even coming from high-flying institutional players like the Bank of International Settlements and the International Monetary Fund.
We may even be seeing the end of an era when the financiers ruled the world. At a certain point, governments or their military and bureaucratic establishments are likely to stop being passive spectators to the onrushing disorder. It is already happening in Russia and elsewhere.
The countries that will be least able to master their own destiny are those like the U.S. where governments have been most passive to economic decomposition from actions of their financial sectors. The financiers are the ones who for the last generation have benefited most from economies marked by privatization, deregulation, and speculation, but that may be about to change. Whether the change will be constructive or catastrophic is yet to be seen.
Within the U.S., foreign investors, above all Communist China, have been propping up our massive trade and fiscal deficits with their capital. To keep them happy, interest rates—after six years of “cheap creditâ€â€”must now be kept relatively high. Otherwise the Chinese, et.al., might bail-out, leaving us to fend for ourselves with our hollowed-out shell of an economy.
Even so, these investors are increasingly uneasy with their dollar holdings and are bailing out anyway. Foreign purchase of U.S. securities has plummeted. And our debt-laden economy, where our manufacturing base has been largely outsourced, is no longer capable of providing our own population with a living by utilizing our own productive resources.
Research Credit: PD
Santorum Suggests New Terror Attacks Will Change View Of War
July 10th, 2007Via: Prison Planet:
In an alarming display of fearmongering, former Republican Senator Rick Santorum has suggested that a series of “unfortunate events,” namely terrorist attacks, will occur within the next year and change American citizen’s perception of the war.
Appearing on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, Santorum also hyped the necessity of “confronting Iran in the Middle East,” and predicted that Giuliani, Romney and Tommy Thompson would be the three surviving Republican candidates who would go head to head in the race for the nomination.
Santorum went on to clearly imply that terror attacks will occur inside America which will alter the body politic and lead to a reversal of the anti-war sentiment now dominating the country.
“Between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public’s going to have a very different view of this war, and it will be because, I think, of some unfortunate events, that like we’re seeing unfold in the UK. But I think the American public’s going to have a very different view,” said the former senator from Pennsylvania.
Bush Uses Privilege to Deny Ex-Aides’ Testimony
July 10th, 2007They must not be part of the Executive branch either.
Via: msnbc:
President Bush invoked executive privilege Monday to deny requests by Congress for testimony from two former aides about the firings of federal prosecutors.
The White House, however, did offer again to make former counsel Harriet Miers and one-time political director Sara Taylor available for private, off-the-record interviews.
In a letter to the heads of the House and Senate Judiciary panels, White House counsel Fred Fielding insisted that Bush was acting in good faith and refused lawmakers’ demand that the president explain the basis for invoking the privilege.
Another Hypocrite Jesus Freak at the Whore House
July 10th, 2007Family values.
Via: CNN:
Sen. David Vitter, R-Louisiana, apologized Monday night for “a very serious sin in my past” after his telephone number appeared among those associated with an escort service operated by the so-called “D.C. Madam.”
Sen. David Vitter apologized after his telephone number appeared among those linked to the “D.C. Madam.”
Vitter’s spokesman, Joel Digrado, confirmed the statement in an e-mail sent to The Associated Press.
“This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible,” Vitter said in the statement. “Several years ago, I asked for and received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling. Out of respect for my family, I will keep my discussion of the matter there — with God and them. But I certainly offer my deep and sincere apologies to all I have disappointed and let down in any way.”
Oil Experts See Supply Crisis in Five Years
July 10th, 2007I’ve got to admit something: With each passing day, this issue bores me more and more. I’ve seen this thing coming for so long, and writing about it, that I’m quite simply sick of it.
I’m content to stop posting stories like this until actual, no-shit collapse events begin to unfold. You know? Wake me up when U.S. Marines are deployed in Los Angeles (again).
You guys tell me: Is it helpful to see stories like this for the 50,000th time? Is this news to a single Cryptogon reader? I’ve said it more than once: Energy scarcity is like the American Dream, you’ve got to be asleep to believe it. But I’ve beaten that thing to death now. Peaknics write in to try to change the subject to peak wheat, or peak copper, or peak water when they see that I’ve cut that energy scarcity nonsense off at the knees. I agree that the other scarcity issues are real, and it repeats, over and over again. It’s like one of those vintage, manual crank egg beaters going through one side of my skull and out the other.
Hint: Press the Peak Oilers into a corner and you know what many of them are actually all about? Depopulation programs. When they can’t argue the energy angle any longer, because it’s absurd, they start talking about kill off. This is a common theme out there in “overshoot” circles. Here are some recent examples in Cryptogon comments: here and here.
If you don’t believe it, well, you don’t need Cryptogon. Just read what the mainstream press is telling you now: Get ready to pay more, doom, useless eaters, no alternatives, doom, panic, too many people, repeat.
Energy scarcity was interesting to me when it was just a few freaks, cranks and lunatics in our Internet backwaters talking about it, but now that this has gone mainstream; Peak Oil and Paris Hilton, together at last… I grit my teeth having to sift through this stuff now.
How about calling “enough” on the Peak Oil stories on Cryptogon until, like I said, things really get weird, and the kill off program accelerates?
Via: Telegraph:
The International Energy Agency has predicted a supply crunch in the world’s oil markets that could send prices soaring and place a severe dent in global growth.
In a report that painted a bleak outlook for the global economy, the IEA said spare capacity in oil production would dry up over the next five years, even as demand continues to jump significantly.
“Oil and gas price pressures look set to remain in the coming years,” the report said. “Slower-than-expected GDP growth may provide a breathing space, but it is abundantly clear that if the path of demand does not change on its own, it may well be driven to change by higher prices.”
The gloomy prognosis puts consumers on warning for higher petrol prices at the pump, soaring utility bills and increased food prices as suppliers bear additional costs for bringing goods to market.
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The price of oil is already closing in on record levels above $75 a barrel amid geo-political tensions, and shows no sign of declining.
