Alistair Darling: UK Facing Worst Economic Crisis in 60 Years
August 30th, 2008Via: BBC:
The UK is facing its worst economic crisis in 60 years, Chancellor Alistair Darling has admitted.
He told the Guardian newspaper that the economic downturn would be more “profound and long-lasting” than most people had feared.
Using strong language, Mr Darling acknowledged voters were angry with Labour’s handling of the economy.
Shadow Chancellor George Osborne said Mr Darling had “let the cat out of the bag” about the state of the economy.
The Chancellor admitted the government had “patently” failed to get its message across that it understood people’s concerns about rising living costs and growing job insecurity.
…
“This coming 12 months will be the most difficult 12 months the Labour party has had in a generation, quite frankly.”
Ministers are expected to announce a package of measures next week to kick-start the moribund housing market.
FDIC Friday: Integrity Bank Becomes 10th U.S. Failure This Year
August 30th, 2008Via: Bloomberg:
Integrity Bank of Alpharetta, Georgia, was closed by U.S. regulators today, the 10th bank to collapse this year amid a surge in soured real-estate loans stemming from the worst housing slump since the Great Depression.
Integrity Bank, with $1.1 billion in assets and $974 million in deposits, was shuttered by the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Regions Financial Corp., Alabama’s biggest bank, will assume all deposits from Integrity, which was run by Integrity Bancshares Inc. The failed bank’s five offices will open on Sept. 2 as branches of Regions, the FDIC said.
“Depositors will continue to be insured with Regions Bank so there is no need for customers to change their banking relationship to retain their deposit insurance,” the FDIC said.
Banks are being closed at the fastest pace in 14 years as financial companies report more than $505 billion in writedowns and credit losses since 2007. California lender IndyMac Bancorp Inc., which had $32 billion in assets, was closed July 11 in the third-largest bank seizure, contributing to a 14 percent drop in the U.S. deposit insurance fund that had $45.2 billion at the end of the in the second quarter.
Regions will buy about $34.4 million in assets and will pay the FDIC a premium of 1.01 percent to assume the failed bank’s deposits, the FDIC said. The FDIC estimates the cost of the Integrity failure to its deposit-insurance fund will be $250 million to $300 million.
Dutch Intelligence: Attack on Iran Expected, Operative Pulled Out
August 29th, 2008Here’s the full story (in Dutch). For those who don’t understand the Dutch language (including me), here’s a DailyKos journal piece about it.
Your mileage may vary. Grain of salt. Etc.
Via: DailyKos:
AMSTERDAM – The Dutch intelligence agency AIVD has conducted an ultrasecret operation in Iran with the purpose of infiltrating and sabotaging the weapons industry in the islamic republic.
The operation, deemed extremely succesfull, has recently been cancelled because of an imminent aerial attack on Iran. Targets include sites that are connected to the Dutch spying.
…
One of the involved agents, that has infiltrated the Iranian industry under supervision of the AIVD, has been called back recently because the US has made the decision to attack Iran with unarmed [SIC- Unmanned?] aircrafts within weeks. Potential targets include not only nuclear facilities, but also military installations that have been mapped by the AIVD. Information from the AIVD-operation has been shared with the American Intelligence Agency CIA, according to sources.
More: Attack on Iran Imminent?
Were American Mercenaries Fighting Against the Russians in Georgia?
August 29th, 2008UPDATE: U.S. Military and Mercenaries Trained Georgian Commandos
Via: Washington Post:
Earlier in the day, a senior Russian military official said at a news briefing that Russian troops had recovered an American passport in the rubble of a village near the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, where a Georgian special forces unit had been based during the war.
“What was the purpose of that gentleman being among the special forces, and what is he doing today, I so far cannot answer,” said Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the general staff, holding up an enlarged color photocopy of the passport. He identified its owner as Michael Lee White, a resident of Houston, born in 1967, state-owned Vesti television reported.
Saakashvili, in an interview Friday morning with The Washington Post, dismissed the passport report as “typical tricks.”
“I wish we had Americans and American weapons, but it’s not the case,” he said. “They are living in a parallel world, with a parallel perception. If you say a lie in Russia, it becomes the truth the next day on TV.”
Russia May Cut Off Oil Flow to the West
August 29th, 2008It might be a swindle to gap the oil price up temporarily on the news for a long oil play. Assuming it happens, of course.
Via: Telegraph:
Fears are mounting that Russia may restrict oil deliveries to Western Europe over coming days, in response to the threat of EU sanctions and Nato naval actions in the Black Sea.
Any such move would be a dramatic escalation of the Georgia crisis and play havoc with the oil markets.
Reports have begun to circulate in Moscow that Russian oil companies are under orders from the Kremlin to prepare for a supply cut to Germany and Poland through the Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline. It is believed that executives from lead-producer LUKoil have been put on weekend alert.
“They have been told to be ready to cut off supplies as soon as Monday,” claimed a high-level business source, speaking to The Daily Telegraph. Any move would be timed to coincide with an emergency EU summit in Brussels, where possible sanctions against Russia are on the agenda.
World’s Largest Gold Refiner Runs Out of Krugerrands
August 29th, 2008Via: Bloomberg:
Rand Refinery Ltd., the world’s largest gold refinery, ran out of South African Krugerrands after an “unusually large” order from a buyer in Switzerland.
The order was for 5,000 ounces and it will take until Sept. 3 for inventories to be replenished, said Johan Botha, a spokesman for Rand Refinery in Germiston, east of Johannesburg. He declined to identify the buyer.
Research Credit: JoKerHill
“Drug Hitmen” Attack Mexican Army Unit
August 28th, 2008Via: Reuters:
Suspected drug hitmen attacked a group of sleeping soldiers with grenades in central Mexico, sparking a battle that killed three gunmen, a state attorney general’s office said on Wednesday.
Around 15 drug gangsters in vehicles surprised the soldiers while they were camped out in the central state of Guanajuato on Tuesday night, shooting at them with automatic weapons.
“Two soldiers were injured in the clash in a firefight that lasted several minutes,” a spokesman for the Guanajuato state attorney general’s office said.
Guanajuato state is famed for its beautiful historic state capital popular with U.S. and European tourists, but drug violence is creeping up in the once quiet area as drug gangs fight over smuggling routes to the United States.
More than 2,300 people have been killed in drug violence across Mexico this year, a faster rate than in 2007, as Mexico’s most-wanted man, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, vies with rivals for control of the country’s lucrative drug trade.
President Felipe Calderon has made crushing drug gangs the main goal so far of his six-year term, sending troops across Mexico on taking office in December 2006.
But drug violence has spiraled as rival gangs fight each other and the army. Endemic police corruption has further complicated efforts to rid Mexico of cartels.
Scores of Chinese Air Passengers Smashed Computers and Desks and Clashed with Police
August 28th, 2008It’s like a scene out of Player Piano.
Via: Reuters:
Scores of Chinese air passengers smashed computers and desks and clashed with police Tuesday after a night stranded at an airport without accommodation, state media said.
More than 170 passengers were due to leave Kunming, capital of southwestern Yunnan province, on three flights operated by China Southern Airlines late Monday, but the flights were cancelled due to bad weather, Xinhua news agency said.
“All the passengers had to spend the night on the planes or in the departure hall,” Xinhua said. “No one came to tend to their food and board.”
The passengers clashed with airport police Tuesday morning, smashing computers and desks, Xinhua said, blaming the melee on China Southern staff’s “inappropriate working attitude.”
At around 2 a.m., many of the passengers — including toddlers and people over 60 — took taxis to a hotel where China Southern said they could stay, only to be turned away once they arrived, Xinhua said.
Frustration at mysterious delays, diversions and cancellations have at times boiled over into violence at Chinese airports as passengers try to storm grounded aircraft and police are brought in to keep the peace.
There have also been cases in which passengers, after delayed arrivals, have refused to get off the planes in protest.
Related: Chinese Cop-Killer Becomes Internet Hero
Research Credit: DrFrost501
The Sanford and Son Salvage Economy: Landfill Sites Are Being Viewed as Mines with Buried Riches
August 28th, 2008Good luck with that.
Via: IHT:
Inspired by high oil prices, a sharp rise in the value of old plastic is encouraging waste companies across the world to dig for buried riches in rotting garbage dumps.
Long a symbol of humanity’s throw-away culture, existing landfill sites are now being viewed as mines of potential that could also help bolster the planet’s dwindling natural resources as the world population grows.
“By 2020 we might have nine billion people on the planet, we could have a very big middle class driving millions more cars, and we could be in a really resource-hungry world with the oil price climbing and a supply situation in Libya, Russia and Saudi, where natural gas is limited,” said Peter Jones, a leading expert on waste management in Britain. “It is those drivers, those conditions, which will encourage the possibility of landfill mining.”
In Britain alone, experts say landfill sites could offer an estimated 200 million tons of old plastic – worth up to £60 billion, or $111 billion, at current prices – to be recovered and recycled, or converted to liquid fuel.
With many oil analysts predicting that oil prices will stay above $100 a barrel, waste experts in the United States, Europe and across Asia have been conducting pilot projects to recoup old plastic and other waste materials.
Related: The Rise of the Sanford and Son Global Economy: Urban Miners Look for Precious Metals in Cell Phones
The Heretic: Giordano Bruno
August 28th, 2008Did the Catholic Church burn alive anyone more interesting than Giordano Bruno?
Via: Salon:
Bruno’s achievements in the “art of memory” were legendary. (The Dominicans had once sent him to Rome where he recited a psalm in Hebrew before the pope, then repeated it backward word for word.) It’s this aspect of the philosopher’s work that most interests scholars of the Renaissance today…
…
Still, the mental powers of Bruno and his fellow memory artists seem almost superhuman today. The basic principle, Rowland explains, is simple enough, “to link words with images.” Nevertheless, the structures employed were mind-boggling: vast, elaborate patterns and nested wheels within wheels (like the color wheels used by visual designers) that could be used to juxtapose and rearrange huge quantities of information without recourse to any extra-mental form of storage (like writing). This ability makes the minds of Renaissance intellectuals radically different from our own, almost incomprehensibly so. Some of the more outlandish things that some of them believed — such as the conviction that the universe is a series of rotating crystalline spheres with planets embedded in them, or that the space in outer space is a liquid — seem merely eccentric by comparison.
More: Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic by Ingrid D. Rowland
Research Credit: Technoccult
