Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 17, 2010

#1) Barack Obama has authorized the deployment of more than 17,000 National Guard members along the Gulf coast to be used “as needed” by state governors.  So what are all of these National Guard troops going to be doing exactly?  Are the troops going to be used to stop the oil or to control the public?

#2) Barack Obama has also announced the creation of a “Gulf recovery czar” who will be in charge of overseeing the restoration of the Gulf of Mexico region following the oil spill.  So is appointing a “czar” Obama’s idea of taking charge of a situation?

#6) If the smell of the oil on some Gulf beaches is already so strong that it burns your nostrils, then what in the world is this oil doing to to wildlife that encounter it?

#7) Is it a bad sign that birds from the Gulf region are flocking north by the thousands?

#8) Why is BP being allowed to use private security contractors to keep the American people away from the oil cleanup sites?

#9) Why is BP openly attempting to manipulate the search results on sites like Google and Yahoo?

#10) Why has the FAA shut down the airspace above the Gulf of Mexico oil spill?   What don’t they want the American people to see?

#11) Senator Bill Nelson of Florida says that there are reports that there are additional ruptures in the sea floor from which oil is leaking.  If there are quite a few of these additional ruptures, then how in the world does BP expect to completely stop this oil leak?

#12) Why are scientists finding concentrations of methane at up to 10,000 times normal background levels in Gulf waters?

#13) At some testing stations in the Gulf of Mexico, levels of benzene have been detected at over 3000 parts per billion, and levels of hydrogen sulfide have been detected as high as 1192 parts per billion.  Considering that these levels would be highly toxic to humans, why hasn’t the general public been warned?   

#14) Why are so many Gulf oil spill disaster workers showing up at local hospitals complaining of a “mysterious illness”?

#15) If “70% or 80%” of the protective booms are doing absolutely nothing at all to stop the oil, then what is going to stop the millions of gallons of oil in the Gulf from eventually reaching shore?

#16) It is being reported that the deepsea oil plumes are creating huge “dead zones” where all creatures are dying as they are deprived of oxygen.  If this oil spill continues to grow could the vast majority of the Gulf of Mexico become one gigantic “dead zone”?

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/16-burning-questions-about-the-gulf-of-mexico-oil-spill-that-we-deserve-some-answers-to

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 17, 2010

Submitted by George Washington

 

 06/17/2010

 

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 17, 2010

Watching for Watchers

June 17, 2010 

By Scott Stewart

In last week’s Security Weekly we discussed how situational awareness is a mindset that can — and should — be practiced by everyone. We also described the different levels of situational awareness and discussed which level is appropriate for different sorts of situations. And we noted how all criminals and terrorists follow a process when planning their acts and that this process is visible at certain times to people who are watching for such behavior.

When one considers these facts, it inevitably leads to the question: “What in the world am I looking for?” The brief answer is: “warning signs of criminal or terrorist behavior.” Since this brief answer is very vague, it becomes necessary to describe the behavior in more detail.

Surveillance

It is important to make one fundamental point clear up front. The operational behavior that most commonly exposes a person planning a criminal or terrorist act to scrutiny by the intended target is surveillance. Other portions of the planning process can be conducted elsewhere, especially in the age of the Internet, when so much information is available online. From an operational standpoint, however, there simply is no substitute for having eyes on the potential target. In military terms, surveillance is often called reconnaissance, and in a criminal context it is often referred to as casing or scoping out. Environmental activist and animal rights groups trained by the Ruckus Society refer to it as “scouting.” No matter what terminology is being used for the activity, it is meant to accomplish the same objective: assessing a potential target for value, vulnerabilities and potential security measures. Surveillance is required so that criminals can conduct a cost-benefit analysis.

The amount of time devoted to the criminal surveillance process will vary, depending on the type of crime and the type of criminal involved. A criminal who operates like an ambush predator, such as a purse-snatcher, may lie in wait for a suitable target to come within striking distance. This is akin to a crocodile lying in a watering hole waiting for an animal to come and get a drink. The criminal will have only a few seconds to size up the potential target and conduct the cost-benefit calculation before formulating his plan, getting ready and striking.

On the other extreme are the criminals who behave more like stalking predators. Such a criminal is like a lion on the savannah that carefully looks over the herd and selects a vulnerable animal believed to be the easiest to take down. A criminal who operates like a stalking predator, such as a kidnapper or terrorist, may select a suitable target and then take days or even weeks to follow the target, assess its vulnerabilities and determine if the potential take is worth the risk. Normally, stalking criminals will prey only on targets they feel are vulnerable and can be successfully hit, although they will occasionally take bigger risks on high-value targets.

Of course, there are many other criminals who fall somewhere in the middle, and they may take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours to watch a potential target. Regardless of the time spent observing the target, all criminals will conduct this surveillance and they are vulnerable to detection during this time.

Given that surveillance is so widely practiced, it is quite amazing to consider that, in general, criminals and terrorists are terrible at conducting surveillance. There are some exceptions, such as the relatively sophisticated surveillance performed by Greenpeace and some of the other groups trained by the Ruckus Society, or the low-key and highly detailed surveillance performed by some high-end art and jewelry thieves, but such surveillance is the exception rather than the rule.

The term “tradecraft” is an espionage term that refers to techniques and procedures used in the field, but term also implies quite a bit of finesse in the practice of these techniques. Tradecraft, then, is really more of an art rather than a science, and surveillance tradecraft is no exception. Like playing the violin or fencing with a foil, it takes time and practice to become a skilled surveillance practitioner. Most individuals involved in criminal and terrorist activity simply do not devote the time necessary to master this skill. Because of this, they have terrible technique, use sloppy procedures and lack finesse when they are watching people.

Although everybody planning a criminal or terrorist attack conducts preoperational surveillance, that does not necessarily mean they are good at it. The simple truth is that these individuals are able to get by with such a poor level of surveillance tradecraft because most victims simply are not looking for them. And this is where we tie the discussion back into last week’s Security Weekly. Most people do not practice situational awareness. For those who do, the poor surveillance tradecraft exhibited by criminals is good news. It gives them time to avoid an immediate threat and contact the authorities.

Demeanor Is the Key

The behavior a person needs to outwardly display in order to master the art of surveillance tradecraft is called good demeanor. Good demeanor is not intuitive. In fact, the things one has to do to maintain good demeanor frequently run counter to human nature. Because of this, intelligence and security professionals who work surveillance operations receive extensive training that includes many hours of heavily critiqued practical exercises, often followed by field training with a team of experienced surveillance professionals. This training teaches and reinforces good demeanor. Criminals and terrorists do not receive this type of training and, as a result, bad surveillance tradecraft has long proved to be an Achilles’ heel for terrorist and criminal organizations.

Surveillance is an unnatural activity, and a person doing it must deal with strong feelings of self-consciousness and of being out of place. People conducting surveillance frequently suffer from what is called “burn syndrome,” the erroneous belief that the people they are watching have spotted them. Feeling “burned” will cause surveillants to do unnatural things, such as suddenly ducking back into a doorway or turning around abruptly when they unexpectedly come face to face with the target. People inexperienced in the art of surveillance find it difficult to control this natural reaction. Even experienced surveillance operatives occasionally have the feeling of being burned; the difference is they have received a lot of training and they are better able to control their reaction and work through it. They are able to maintain a normal looking demeanor while their insides are screaming that the person they are surveilling has seen them.

In addition to doing something unnatural or stupid when feeling burned, another very common mistake made by amateurs when conducting surveillance is the failure to get into proper “character” for the job or, when in character, appearing in places or carrying out activities that are incongruent with the character’s “costume.” The terms used to describe these role-playing aspects of surveillance are “cover for status” and “cover for action.” Cover for status is a person’s purported identity — his costume. A person can pretend to be a student, a businessman, a repairman, etc. Cover for action explains why the person is doing what he or she is doing — why that guy has been standing on that street corner for half an hour.

The purpose of using good cover for action and cover for status is to make the presence of the person conducting the surveillance look routine and normal. When done right, the surveillance operative fits in with the mental snapshot subconsciously taken by the target as the target goes about his or her business. Inexperienced people who conduct surveillance frequently do not use good cover for action or cover for status, and they can be easily detected.

An example of bad cover for status would be someone dressed as “a businessman” walking in the woods or at the beach. An example of bad cover for action is someone pretending to be sitting at a bus stop who remains at that bus stop even when several buses have passed. But mostly, malefactors conducting surveillance practice little or no cover for action or cover for status. They just lurk and look totally out of place. There is no apparent reason for them to be where they are and doing what they are doing.

In addition to “plain old lurking,” other giveaways include a person moving when the target moves, communicating when the target moves, avoiding eye contact with the target, making sudden turns or stops, or even using hand signals to communicate with other members of a surveillance team or criminal gang. Surveillants also can tip off the person they are watching by entering or leaving a building immediately after the person they are watching or simply by running in street clothes. Sometimes, people who are experiencing the burn syndrome exhibit almost imperceptible behaviors that the target can sense more than observe. It may not be something that can be articulated, but the target just gets the gut feeling that there is something wrong or odd about the way a certain person behaves. Innocent bystanders who are not watching someone usually do not exhibit this behavior or trigger these feelings.

The U.S. government often uses the acronym “TEDD” to illustrate the principles that can be used to identify surveillance conducted by counterintelligence agencies, but these same principles also can be used to identify criminal and terrorist surveillance. TEDD stands for time, environment, distance and demeanor. In other words, if a person sees someone repeatedly over time, in different environments and over distance, or someone who displays poor surveillance demeanor, then that person can assume he or she is under surveillance. If a person is being specifically targeted for a planned attack, he or she might be exposed to the time, environment and distance elements of TEDD, but if the subway car the person is riding in or the building where the person works is the target, he or she might only have the demeanor of the attacker to key on because the attacker will not be seen by the observer over time and distance or in different environments. Time, environment and distance are also not applicable in cases involving criminals who behave like ambush predators. Therefore, when we are talking about criminal surveillance, demeanor is the most critical of the four elements. Demeanor will also often work in tandem with the other elements, and poor demeanor will often help the target spot the surveillant at different times and places.

In a situation where a building or subway car is targeted for an attack rather than a specific person, there are still a number of demeanor indicators that can be observed just prior to the attack. Such indicators include people wearing unseasonable clothing in warm weather (such as trench coats); people with odd bulges under their clothing or wires sticking out from their clothing; people who are sweating profusely, mumbling or fidgeting; people who appear to be attempting to avoid security personnel; and people who simply appear to be out of place. According to many reports, suicide attackers will often exhibit an intense stare as they approach the final stage of their attack plan. While not every person exhibiting such behavior is a suicide bomber or shooter, avoiding such a person rarely has much of a downside.

One technique that can be helpful in looking for people conducting long-term surveillance is to identify places that provide optimal visibility of a critical place the surveillant would want to watch (for example, the front door of a potential target’s residence or office). These optimal observation points are often referred to as “perches” in surveillance jargon. Perches can then be watched for signs of hostile surveillance like people who don’t belong there, people making demeanor mistakes, etc.

This principle can also be extended to critical points along frequently and predictably traveled routes. Potential targets can conduct simple pattern and route analyses to determine where along the route they are most predictable and vulnerable. Route analysis looks for vulnerabilities, or choke points, on a particular route of travel. Choke points have two main characteristics: They are places where the potential target must travel and where rapid forward motion is difficult (such as sharp, blind curves). When a choke point provides a place where hostiles can wait with impunity for their victims and have access to a rapid escape route, the choke point becomes a potential attack site. These characteristics are found in attack sites used by highly professional kidnap/assassination teams and by criminal “ambush predators” such as carjackers. While the ideal tactic is to vary routes and times to avoid predictable locations, this is also difficult and disruptive and is warranted only when the threat is high. A more practical alternative is for potential targets to raise their situational awareness a notch as they travel through such areas at predictable times in order to be on the alert for potential hostile surveillance or signs of an impending attack.

The fact that operatives conducting surveillance over an extended period of time can change their clothing and wear hats, wigs or other light disguises — and use different vehicles or license plates — also demonstrates why watching for mistakes in demeanor is critical. Of course, the use of disguises is also an indicator that the surveillants are more advanced and therefore potentially more dangerous. Because of a surveillant’s ability to make superficial changes in appearance, it is important to focus on the things that cannot be changed as easily as clothing or hair, such as a person’s facial features, build, mannerisms and gait. Additionally, while a surveillant can change the license plate on a car, it is not as easy to alter other aspects of the vehicle such as body damage (scratches and dents). Paying attention to small details can produce significant results over time.

As we noted last week — and it is worth repeating here — paying attention to details and practicing situational awareness does not mean being paranoid or obsessively concerned about security. When people live in a state of paranoia, looking for a criminal behind every bush, they become mentally and physically exhausted. Not only is this dangerous to one’s physical and mental health, but security also suffers because it is very hard to be aware of your surroundings when you are exhausted. Therefore, while it is important to watch for the watchers, watching should not involve feelings of fear or paranoia. Knowing what is occurring in the world around them empowers people and gives them a sense of security and well-being, allowing them to spot the good things in life as well as the potential dangers.

www.stratfor.com

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 17, 2010

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average added five points yesterday to close at 10,409 – almost exactly where it closed eleven years ago. Amidst giddy fanfare and high fives, the Dow closed above 10,000 for the very first time on March 29, 1999. One month later, amidst even giddier fanfare and high fives, the Dow closed above 11,000 for the very first time.The economy was booming, the federal government was running a budget surplus, and Alan Greenspan was becoming an economic demigod. Whenever he wasn’t walking on water – or congratulating himself before Congress – he was pulling just the right monetary levers at just the right time to ensure the nation’s prosperity. Over in the stock market, therefore, the sky was the limit. Unfortunately, as the new millennium advanced, the tech stock bubble burst, the housing bubble burst, federal finances deteriorated from hundred-billion dollar surpluses to $1 trillion deficits, and Alan Greenspan’s omnipotence dissolved like the low-budget hologram it had always been. With the benefit of hindsight, it became obvious that Greenspan’s “benevolent control” over the US economy was a myth. A lie. He was the Munchausen-by-proxy Federal Reserve Chairman – continuously poisoning the economy with recklessly low interest rates, then rushing to its aid with a cocktail of rate hikes and econo-babble, hoping to counteract the ill effects of financial bubbles that he, himself, had nurtured. Greenspan’s legacy is not the only American myth that is suffering a harsh de-mythologization. Many long-standing perceptions of America’s legendary economic prowess are – How should we say? – “Under review for possible downgrade.” Many of the most enduring and iconic components of the “American dream” are succumbing to nightmarish realities. The “Land of Opportunity,” for example, has not produced a single net new job in more than a decade. At the end of 1999, 131,402,000 Americans were drawing paychecks. Today, 131,198,000 Americans are drawing paychecks. Meanwhile, the pride of home ownership has become the shame of mortgage default. As home prices nationwide languish at seven-year lows, an astonishing 14% of mortgage-holders are delinquent or in foreclosure. What about the value of a college education? Surely, a four-year degree retains the cach and power to elevate aspiring capitalists from the limitations of blue collar labor to the rarefied air of white collar opportunity! Think again. As we noted in yesterday’s edition of The Daily Reckoning, a college education is “one small part of a vast American myth.” As the US economy continues its non-recovery from the credit debacle of 2008, the dubious utility of a four-year degree is becoming painfully obvious to the nation’s recent college graduates. Unemployment rates for all college graduates – both recent and ancient – have doubled from 2% to 4% during the last year. But this statistic greatly understates the problem because it fails to include the legions of graduates who return to their parent’s houses, apply for the Peace Corps, work at Starbucks or “take a year traveling.” According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, more than half of all 2007 college graduates who had applied for a job had received an offer by Graduation Day. In 2008, that percentage tumbled to 26%, and to less than 20% last year. Statistics like these do not inspire confidence in a college degree, but they may have inspired a recent posting at Nakedlaw.avvo.com entitled, “8 Reasons College Tuition is the Next Bubble to Burst.” Reason #1 is that “tuition is, and has been, increasing at triple the rate of inflation.” Accordingly, therefore, “the number of college students graduating with over $25,000 in student loan debt has [also] tripled in the past decade alone. Today, 66% of students borrow to pay for college, taking on an average of $23,165 in debt. Twelve years ago, 58% borrowed to pay for college, taking on only $13,172 in debt.” But this “new math” isn’t working as well as the old math. For one thing, as of 2005, a student loan is no longer dischargeable in bankruptcy. (So gone are the days of borrow, default and forget). For another thing, as of 2010, a college degree is no longer an automatic entrée into attractive employment opportunities. As a result of these challenging realities, many young Americans are disdaining the mythological virtues of a college education in favor of tangible paychecks. “Fed Up With the Economy And White-collar Drudgery,” a recent Washington Post headline declared, “College Grads Turn to Trades.” The story that followed cited several fascinating examples of college graduates who shunned traditional post-collegiate career paths to become electricians or plumbers or whatever else puts dirt under the fingernails. “Armed with a bachelor’s degree in theology from Notre Dame,” the Post story relates, “Adam Osielski was pondering a route well traveled: law school. He watched his friends work long hours as paralegals while studying law and weighed the all-encompassing commitment. That was five years ago. Today, Osielski, 29, is a journeyman electrician rather than a law firm associate… Osielski is among a small but apparently growing number of the college-educated who are taking up the trades… Ultimately, many earn as much or more as they would in jobs requiring a college degree. Licensed journeymen [plumbers] can expect to be paid $65,000 to $85,000 a year, depending on overtime.” But even this blue-collar sliver of the American dream provides more nightmares than success stories. “Local apprentice programs, which typically last five years, are swamped with applicants nowadays,” the Post relates. “The electricians’ union program, for example, has 2,500 applications for 100 slots. And nearly 4,000 want to get one of the 300 slots at plumbers and pipe fitters school… Nationwide, 550,000 people are enrolled in registered apprenticeship programs, according to the Labor Department, and the number of students in unregistered programs might be almost as high. “Brian Jones…studied physics on an academic scholarship to McDaniel College in Westminster, Md.,” the Post continues, “hoping to get a job as an engineer with NASA or an aviation company after he graduated in 2002. He watched friends with lower grades land jobs through family contacts, but he couldn’t find one. Then a friend suggested that he could make as much money as an electrician. He just finished his third year as an apprentice. “Rateeluck Puvapiromquan, 30, the daughter of two schoolteachers who immigrated to Baltimore…become an electrician when the only jobs she found after graduating from St. Mary’s College in 2001 with a degree in the philosophy of religion were in coffee shops and hotels.” These non-traditional success stories illustrate very poignantly that the Land of Opportunity is offering fewer opportunities these days. Maybe the legendary American economic engine can dust itself off and resume powering the kinds of entrepreneurial activities that generate significant employment growth and national wealth. But we aren’t holding our breath. And neither are foreign nationals who obtain post-graduate degrees from American universities. In the recent past, Ninety-two percent of Chinese Ph.D.s in science and engineering would remain in the United States for at least five years after their studies…and 85 percent of Indians. But according to a recent survey of more than 1,200 foreign-born Ph.D. students, the percentage of Chinese who plan to stay in the US after graduation has tumbled to just 54%, while the number of Indians who expect to remain is only 58%. What’s more, only 7% of Chinese students surveyed and 25% of Indian students believe that the American economy’s best days still lay ahead. But overwhelming majorities of both Indian and Chinese students believe their home countries’ best days still lay ahead. These survey results do not guarantee that America’s best days are behind her, but neither do these statistics inspire much confidence that America’s best days lie ahead. [Eric’s Note: When confronting these vignettes of modern American economic life – as we mentioned in yesterday’s edition of The Daily Reckoning – some folks merely shrug their shoulders and say themselves, “Hey, it ain’t so bad. Life is still pretty darn good here in the US of A.” Other folks, still a distinct minority, offer an opposite perspective. “It’s time to get out of Dodge,” they say. But we’d like to hear what our dear Daily Reckoning readers have to say on the topic [email us here: joel@dailyreckoning.com]. We’d like to hear about the virtues or flaws of the American economy that you have experienced first-hand. Tell us about the personal successes America has nurtured, or about the potential successes the American system may have impeded. At the same time, feel free to share first-hand experiences – good or bad – from any other economy around the globe. This exercise is designed to elicit helpful insights from our unique group of readers. So please refrain from hyperbole or gratuitous America-bashing. Instead, please offer first-hand accounts that may shed valuable light on the American economy past, present and future.]

www.dailyreckoning.com

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 16, 2010

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 16, 2010

Bloomberg — Matthew Simmons, founder of the Ocean Energy Institute, talks with Bloomberg’s Lori Rothman about BP Plc’s oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico and his view that the use of a “small-bore nuclear device” is now the “only option” to stop the flow of oil.

Listen to this news interview……unbelievable.   Click below:
http://video.godlikeproductions.com/video/Simmons_Says_Nuclear_Device_Only_Option_to_Stop_Oil_Flow

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 16, 2010

From Jeff Rense.com ………………

The magnitude and impact of this disaster will eclipse anything we have known in our life times if the worst or even near worst happens…

Contrary to what most of us would think as logical to stop the oil mess, actually opening up the gushing well and making it gush more became direction BP took after confirming that there was a leak. In fact if you note their actions, that should become clear. They have shifted from stopping or restricting the gusher to opening it up and catching it. This only makes sense if they want to relieve pressure at the leak hidden down below the seabed…..and that sort of leak is one of the most dangerous and potentially damaging kind of leak there could be. It is also inaccessible which compounds our problems. There is no way to stop that leak from above, all they can do is relieve the pressure on it and the only way to do that right now is to open up the nozzle above and gush more oil into the gulf and hopefully catch it, which they have done, they just neglected to tell us why, gee thanks.

A down hole leak is dangerous and damaging for several reasons.
There will be erosion throughout the entire beat up, beat on and beat down remainder of the “system” including that inaccessible leak. The same erosion I spoke about in the first post is still present and has never stopped, cannot be stopped, is impossible to stop and will always be present in and acting on anything that is left which has crude oil “Product” rushing through it. There are abrasives still present, swirling flow will create hot spots of wear and this erosion is relentless and will always be present until eventually it wears away enough material to break it’s way out. It will slowly eat the bop away especially at the now pinched off riser head and it will flow more and more. Perhaps BP can outrun or keep up with that out flow with various suckage methods for a period of time, but eventually the well will win that race, just how long that race will be?…no one really knows….However now?…there are other problems that a down hole leak will and must produce that will compound this already bad situation.

This down hole leak will undermine the foundation of the seabed in and around the well area. It also weakens the only thing holding up the massive Blow Out Preventer’s immense bulk of 450 tons. In fact?…we are beginning to the results of the well’s total integrity beginning to fail due to the undermining being caused by the leaking well bore.

The first layer of the sea floor in the gulf is mostly lose material of sand and silt. It doesn’t hold up anything and isn’t meant to, what holds the entire subsea system of the Bop in place is the well itself. The very large steel connectors of the initial well head “spud” stabbed in to the sea floor. The Bop literally sits on top of the pipe and never touches the sea bed, it wouldn’t do anything in way of support if it did. After several tens of feet the seabed does begin to support the well connection laterally (side to side) you couldn’t put a 450 ton piece of machinery on top of a 100′ tall pipe “in the air” and subject it to the side loads caused by the ocean currents and expect it not to bend over…unless that pipe was very much larger than the machine itself, which you all can see it is not. The well’s piping in comparison is actually very much smaller than the Blow Out Preventer and strong as it may be, it relies on some support from the seabed to function and not literally fall over…and it is now showing signs of doing just that….falling over.

If you have been watching the live feed cams you may have noticed that some of the ROVs are using an inclinometer…and inclinometer is an instrument that measures “Incline” or tilt. The BOP is not supposed to be tilting…and after the riser clip off operation it has begun to…

This is not the only problem that occurs due to erosion of the outer area of the well casings. The way a well casing assembly functions it that it is an assembly of different sized “tubes” that decrease in size as they go down. These tubes have a connection to each other that is not unlike a click or snap together locking action. After a certain length is assembled they are cemented around the ouside to the earth that the more rough drill hole is bored through in the well making process. A very well put together and simply explained process of “How to drill a deep water oil well” is available here:
http://www.treesfullofmoney.com/?p=1610

The well bore casings rely on the support that is created by the cementing phase of well construction. Just like if you have many hands holding a pipe up you could put some weight on the top and the many hands could hold the pipe and the weight on top easily…but if there were no hands gripping and holding the pipe?…all the weight must be held up by the pipe alone. The series of connections between the sections of casings are not designed to hold up the immense weight of the BOP without all the “hands” that the cementing provides and they will eventually buckle and fail when stressed beyond their design limits.

These are clear and present dangers to the battered subsea safety structure (bop and lmrp) which is the only loose cork on this well we have left. The immediate (first 1,000 feet) of well structure that remains is now also undoubtedly compromised. However…..as bad as that is?…it is far from the only possible problems with this very problematic well. There were ongoing troubles with the entire process during the drilling of this well. There were also many comprises made by BP IMO which may have resulted in an overall weakened structure of the entire well system all the way to the bottom plug which is over 12,000 feet deep. Problems with the cementing procedure which was done by Haliburton and was deemed as “was against our best practices.” by a Haliburton employee on April 1st weeks before the well blew out. There is much more and I won’t go into detail right now concerning the lower end of the well and the troubles encountered during the whole creation of this well and earlier “Well control” situations that were revieled in various internal BP e-mails. I will add several links to those documents and quotes from them below and for now, address the issues concerning the upper portion of the well and the region of the sea floor.

What is likely to happen now?

Well…none of what is likely to happen is good, in fact…it’s about as bad as it gets. I am convinced the erosion and compromising of the entire system is accelerating and attacking more key structural areas of the well, the blow out preventer and surrounding strata holding it all up and together. This is evidenced by the tilt of the blow out preventer and the erosion which has exposed the well head connection. What eventually will happen is that the blow out preventer will literally tip over if they do not run supports to it as the currents push on it. I suspect they will run those supports as cables tied to anchors very soon, if they don’t, they are inviting disaster that much sooner.

Eventually even that will be futile as the well casings cannot support the weight of the massive system above with out the cement bond to the earth and that bond is being eroded away. When enough is eroded away the casings will buckle and the BOP will collapse the well. If and when you begin to see oil and gas coming up around the well area from under the BOP? or the area around the well head connection and casing sinking more and more rapidly? …it won’t be too long after that the entire system fails. BP must be aware of this, they are mapping the sea floor sonically and that is not a mere exercise. Our Gov’t must be well aware too, they just are not telling us.

All of these things lead to only one place, a fully wide open well bore directly to the oil deposit…after that, it goes into the realm of “the worst things you can think of” The well may come completely apart as the inner liners fail. There is still a very long drill string in the well, that could literally come flying out…as I said…all the worst things you can think of are a possibility, but the very least damaging outcome as bad as it is, is that we are stuck with a wide open gusher blowing out 150,000 barrels a day of raw oil or more. There isn’t any “cap dome” or any other suck fixer device on earth that exists or could be built that will stop it from gushing out and doing more and more damage to the gulf. While at the same time also doing more damage to the well, making the chance of halting it with a kill from the bottom up less and less likely to work, which as it stands now?….is the only real chance we have left to stop it all.

It’s a race now…a race to drill the relief wells and take our last chance at killing this monster before the whole weakened, wore out, blown out, leaking and failing system gives up it’s last gasp in a horrific crescendo.

We are not even 2 months into it, barely half way by even optimistic estimates. The damage done by the leaked oil now is virtually immeasurable already and it will not get better, it can only get worse. No matter how much they can collect, there will still be thousands and thousands of gallons leaking out every minute, every hour of every day. We have 2 months left before the relief wells are even near in position and set up to take a kill shot and that is being optimistic as I said.

Over the next 2 months the mechanical situation also cannot improve, it can only get worse, getting better is an impossibility. While they may make some gains on collecting the leaked oil, the structural situation cannot heal itself. It will continue to erode and flow out more oil and eventually the inevitable collapse which cannot be stopped will happen. It is only a simple matter of who can “get there first”…us or the well.

We can only hope the race against that eventuality is one we can win, but my assessment I am sad to say is that we will not.

The system will collapse or fail substantially before we reach the finish line ahead of the well and the worst is yet to come.

Sorry to bring you that news, I know it is grim, but that is the way I see it….I sincerely hope I am wrong.

We need to prepare for the possibility of this blow out sending more oil into the gulf per week then what we already have now, because that is what a collapse of the system will cause. All the collection efforts that have captured oil will be erased in short order. The magnitude of this disaster will increase exponentially by the time we can do anything to halt it and our odds of actually even being able to halt it will go down.

The magnitude and impact of this disaster will eclipse anything we have known in our life times if the worst or even near worst happens…

We are seeing the puny forces of man vs the awesome forces of nature.
We are going to need some luck and a lot of effort to win…
and if nature decides we ought to lose, we will….

http://www.rense.com/

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 16, 2010

More at :http://www.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE65E5JT20100615

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 16, 2010

June 16 (Bloomberg) — BP Plc’s well in the Gulf of Mexico is gushing as much as 60,000 barrels of oil a day, the government said, again increasing a figure officials put at 1,000 barrels more than seven weeks ago.

The new estimate, with a range of 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day, is more accurate because scientists used additional and better data, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said yesterday in a statement posted on the official spill-response website.

The estimate is four times the average rate BP has been capturing oil at the site. A drillship has been collecting about 15,000 barrels a day while crude continues to gush from the well a mile below the surface. BP began burning oil and gas at a second vessel today to reduce the amount entering the Gulf, according to a statement.

President Barack Obama and BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanbergare meeting today at the White House to discuss funding damage claims from the spill. The disaster was triggered by the April 20 explosion aboard the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig, which killed 11 workers and prompted the biggest U.S. oil spill.

“I’m glad that they’re finally getting a handle on it, but my heart sinks at how much this is,” said Ian MacDonald, an oceanographer at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He estimated the spill rate at 25,000 barrels a day on April 29, when the official estimate was 5,000 barrels a day. “This is a phenomenal formation that they drilled into.”

Exceptional Gulf of Mexico wells yield 30,000 barrels a day, MacDonald said yesterday.

Total cost of the spill may rise to $50.8 billion based on the higher leak estimate, KevinBook, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners LLC, a Washington-based policy analysis firm, wrote today in a note to clients. The analysis assumes the leak continues through the end of August.

BP fell 5 pence, or 1.5 percent, to 337 pence at 4:35 p.m. in London, the lowest price in 13 years. It has fallen 49 percent since the explosion.

Obama said last night he will tell Svanberg the company must set aside “whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company’s recklessness.”

The latest leak estimate was based in part on detailed pressure measurements in the prior 24 hours and more than a week of high-resolution video of the plume of oil spewing from the well, according to yesterday’s statement.

“The increased flow-rate numbers are a result of better data that bring together the work of several scientific teams representing the most comprehensive set of government estimates to date,” Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, said in an e-mailed statement.

On June 10 the same group, comprised of government and academic researchers, estimated the well was gushing 20,000 to 40,000 barrels a day, perhaps 50,000, before BP removed a damaged riser pipe from the well a week earlier.

Yesterday’s statement didn’t elaborate on whether the team concluded that removing the pipe to enable BP to begin recovering oil on the drillship increased the amount escaping from the leak.

ClearView’s cost analysis assumes oil spilled at the lower rate through June 3 before the riser pipe was cut and at the higher rate thereafter. The firm gave a range of potential costs, from $23.7 billion, assuming BP stops the spill July 31 to $50.8 billion should the gusher last until Aug. 31.

Oil isn’t the only threat to the environment escaping from the well, said Florida State’s MacDonald.

“The emphasis has been on the discharge of oil, but at these rates, the discharge of gas has also been truly phenomenal,” he said. “That gas is dissolving below the surface, with the potential to reduce the amount of oxygen and carry forth huge amounts of benzene and other toxic compounds.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aB.A8k3iage4

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 16, 2010

June 16 (Bloomberg) — The city of San Diego should consider Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy to help it reduce fringe benefits, pension and health obligations.

That’s one of the suggestions made by the San Diego County Grand Jury, which does the normal duties of recommending indictments as well as reporting on local governments and special districts.

San Diego is the fifth major city in the U.S. this year, and the second in California, where people are talking about bankruptcy as a means to “restructure and reorganize their assets and debts while providing relief from current and future obligations,” in the words of the grand jury’s 22-page report, published on June 8.

San Diego has unfunded liabilities of $2.2 billion in its pension plan and $1.3 billion for health care, which the report calls “unsustainable.”

More than two years of cutting budgets and the mounting public pension crisis have made the unthinkable an option, maybe even an attractive one.

“Municipalities are not required to raise taxes or cut costs to the bone before filing for reorganization under Chapter 9,” the grand jury report says, quoting from a presentation at an October 2009, San Diego County Taxpayers Association seminar.

San Diego has been wrestling with pension and benefits costs for years. In 2006, the city settled fraud allegations by the Securities and Exchange Commission for failing to disclose to investors that its pension system was underfunded.

The recommendation that the mayor and city council convene a panel of municipal bankruptcy experts to talk about it is the last of 16 suggestions made by the grand jury. That it was made at all, in a wealthy city like San Diego, is disturbing.

“It will be difficult to make the case that the city is insolvent,” said Natalie Cohen of National Municipal Research Inc. in New York in an e-mail this week. “It seems the grand jury report is looking to bust open the discussion about the irrevocable nature of pension obligations — which will continue to eat up the city’s budget.”

As the report says in its introduction: “One of the underlying causes of the current structural imbalance is the underfunding of the city’s pension obligation by previous city administrations.”

This is a familiar story, both in California and around the country. As of June 30, 2009, the San Diego City Employees Retirement System has only 66.5 percent of the money needed to pay for future pension obligations, according to the report.

The report contains an extensive discussion of San Diego’s retirement system, and recommends that the city investigate replacing it with some sort of alternative.

Among the report’s other recommendations are having someone else run the libraries, selling portions of parks and charging for trash collection: a fairly standard grab bag.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aIpb23EbeGvM

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 16, 2010

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 15, 2010

Among those who have loans that aren’t backed by any federal agency, the re-default rate within 12 months is likely to be 65% to 75% under the Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program, according to a report from Fitch Ratings.

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 15, 2010

A bleak Ghazni Province seems to offer little, but a Pentagon study says it may have among the world’s largest deposits of lithium.

By JAMES RISEN

Published: June 13, 2010

 

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 15, 2010

 

I think we all know this!

 

Thursday, June 10, 2010
By Matt Cover, Staff Writer

(CNSNews.com) – Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke delivered a frank assessment to Congress on the fate of the economy if entitlement programs are not restructured. On Wednesday, Bernanke warned that “things will come apart” if Congress allows the federal entitlement programs and the deficit spending they cause to continue on their unsustainable path.

Speaking at a hearing of the House Budget Committee, Bernanke offered his dire prediction after being asked what would happen if Congress did not take action to head off the impending crisis brought on by unsustainable entitlement spending, led primarily by Medicare.

“The entitlement programs are not self-funded,” Bernanke said, “they are unfunded liabilities. They are the single biggest component of spending going forward.”

Bernanke said that there were several ways Congress could fix these problems, which amount to approximately $53 trillion in unfunded liabilities, but that eventually Congress must address the issue.

“There are various ways you could address this – you can restructure entitlement programs [or] you can cut other things – but at some point you need to address the overall budgetary situation. If you don’t, you’ll get a picture like this one [pointing to a graph showing a steep rise in interest rates and debt] where interest rates are rising and debt outstanding is growing exponentially.

More…

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 15, 2010

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 15, 2010

June 15, 2010

 

By Peter Zeihan

STRATFOR often discusses how Russia is on a bit of a roll. The U.S. distraction in the Middle East has offered Russia a golden opportunity to re-establish its spheres of influence in the region, steadily expanding the Russian zone of control into a shape that is eerily reminiscent of the old Soviet Union. Since 2005, when this process began, Russia has clearly reasserted itself as the dominant power in Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Ukraine, and has intimidated places like Georgia and Turkmenistan into a sort of silent acquiescence.

But we have not spent a great amount of time explaining why this is the case. It is undeniable that Russia is a Great Power, but few things in geopolitics are immutable, and Russia is no exception.

Russian Geography, Strategy and Demographics

Russia’s geography is extremely open, with few geographic barriers to hunker behind. There are no oceans, mountains or deserts to protect Russia from outside influences — or armies — and Russia’s forests, which might provide some measure of protection, are on the wrong side of the country. The Russian taiga is in the north and, as such, can only provide refuge for Russians after the country’s more economically useful parts have already fallen to invaders (as during the Mongol occupation).

Despite its poor geographic hand, Russia has managed to cope via a three-part strategy:

1. Lay claim to as large a piece of land as possible.
2. Flood it with ethnic Russians to assert reliable control.
3. Establish an internal intelligence presence that can monitor and, if need be, suppress the indigenous population.

Throughout Russian history, this strategy has been repeated until the Russian state reached an ocean, a mountain chain, a desert, or a foe that fought back too strongly. In many ways, the strategies of the Kremlin of 2010 are extremely similar to those of Catherine the Great, Ivan the Terrible or Joseph Stalin.

But it is no longer the 17th century, and this strategy does not necessarily play to Russia’s strengths anymore. The second prong of the strategy — flooding the region with ethnic Russians — is no longer an option because of Russia’s demographic profile. The Russian birth rate has been in decline for a century, and in the post-Cold War era, the youngest tranche of the Russian population simply collapsed. The situation transformed from an academic debate about Russia’s future to a policy debate about Russia’s present.

The bust in the birth rate in the 1990s and 2000s has generated the smallest population cohort in Russian history, and in a very few years, those post-Cold War children will themselves be at the age where they will be having children. A small cohort will create an even smaller cohort, and Russia’s population problems could well evolve from crushing to irrecoverable. Even if this cohort reproduces at a sub-Saharan African birthrate, even if the indications of high tuberculosis and HIV infections among this population cohort are all wrong, and even if Russia can provide a level of services for this group that it couldn’t manage during the height of Soviet power, any demographic bounce would not occur until the 2050s — once the children of this cohort have sufficiently aged to raise their own children. Until 2050, Russia simply has to learn to work with less. A lot less. And this is the best-case scenario for Russia in the next generation.

Simply put, Russia does not have the population to sustain the country at its present boundaries. As time grinds on, Russia’s capacity for doing so will decrease drastically. Moscow understands all this extremely well, and this is a leading rationale behind current Russian foreign policy: Russia’s demographics will never again be as “positive” as they are now, and the Americans are unlikely to be any more distracted than they are now. So Russia is moving quickly and, more important, intelligently.

Russia is thus attempting to reach some natural anchor points, e.g., some geographic barriers that would limit the state’s exposure to outside powers. The Russians hope they will be able to husband their strength from these anchor points. Moscow’s long-term strategy consistently has been to trade space for time ahead of the beginning of the Russian twilight; if the Russians can expand to these anchor points, Moscow hopes it can trade less space for more time.

Unfortunately for Moscow, there are not many of these anchor points in Russia’s neighborhood. One is the Baltic Sea, a fact that terrifies the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Another is the Carpathian Mountains. This necessitates the de facto absorption not only of Ukraine, but also of Moldova, something that makes Romania lose sleep at night. And then there are the Tien Shan Mountains of Central Asia — which brings us to the crisis of the moment.

The Crisis in Kyrgyzstan

The former Soviet Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan is not a particularly nice piece of real estate. While it is in one of those mountainous regions that could be used to anchor Russian power, it is on the far side of the Eurasian steppe from the Russian core, more than 3,000 kilometers (1,800 miles) removed from the Russian heartland. The geography of Kyrgyzstan itself also leaves a great deal to be desired. Kyrgyzstan is an artificial construct created by none other than Stalin, who rearranged internal Soviet borders in the region to maximize the chances of dislocation, dispute and disruption among the indigenous populations in case the Soviet provinces ever gained independence.

Stalin drew his lines well: Central Asia’s only meaningful population center is the Fergana Valley. Kyrgyzstan obtained the region’s foothills and highlands, which provide the region’s water; Uzbekistan gained the fertile floor of the valley; and Tajikistan walked away with the only decent access to the valley as a whole. As such, the three states continuously are jockeying for control over the only decent real estate in the region.

Arguably, Kyrgyzstan has the least to work with of any of the region’s states. Nearly all of its territory is mountainous; what flat patches of land it does have on which to build cities are scattered about. There is, accordingly, no real Kyrgyz core. Consequently, the country suffers from sharp internal differences: Individual clans hold dominion over tiny patches of land separated from each other by rugged tracts of mountains. In nearly all cases, those clans have tighter economic and security relationships with foreigners than they do with each other.

(click here to enlarge image)

 

A little more than five years ago, Western nongovernmental organizations (and undoubtedly a handful of intelligence services) joined forces with some of these regional factions in Kyrgyzstan to overthrow the country’s pro-Russian ruling elite in what is known as a “color revolution” in the former Soviet Union. Subsequently, Kyrgyzstan — while not exactly pro-Western — dwelled in a political middle ground the Russians found displeasing. In April, Russia proved that it, too, can throw a color revolution and Kyrgyzstan’s government switched yet again. Since then, violence has wracked the southern regions of Jalal-Abad, Batken and Osh — strongholds of the previous government. In recent days, nearly 100,000 Kyrgyz residents have fled to Uzbekistan.

The interim government of Prime Minister Roza Otunbayeva is totally outmatched. It is not so much that her government is in danger of falling — those same mountains that make it nearly impossible for Bishkek to control Osh make it equally difficult for Osh to take over Bishkek – but that the country has de facto split into (at least) two pieces. As such, Otunbayeva — whose government only coalesced due to the Russian intervention — has publicly and directly called upon the Russians to provide troops to help hold the country together. This request cuts to the core weakness in the Russian strategy.

Despite much degradation in the period after the Soviet dissolution, Russia’s intelligence services remain without peer. In fact, now that they have the direct patronage of the Russian prime minister, they have proportionally more resources and influence than ever. They have proved that they can rewire Ukraine’s political world to expunge American influence, manipulate events in the Caucasus to whittle away at Turkey’s authority, cause riots in the Baltics to unbalance NATO members, and reverse Kyrgyzstan’s color revolution.

But they do not have backup. Were this the 19th century, there would already be scads of Russian settlers en route to the Fergana to dilute the control of the locals (although they would certainly be arriving after the Russian army), to construct a local economy dependent upon imported labor and linked to the Russian core, and to establish a new ruling elite. (It is worth noting that the resistance of Central Asians to Russian encroachment meant that the Russians never seriously attempted to make the region into a majority-Russian one. Even so, the Russians still introduced their own demographic to help shape the region more to Moscow’s liking.) Instead, Russia’s relatively few young families are busy holding the demographic line in Russia proper. For the first time in Russian history, there is no surplus Russian population that can be relocated to the provinces.

And without that population, the Russian view of the Fergana — to say nothing of Kyrgyzstan — changes dramatically. The region is remote and densely populated, and reaching it requires transiting three countries. And one of these states would have something to say about that. That state is Uzbekistan.

The Uzbek Goliath

After the Russians and Ukrainians, the Uzbeks are the most populous ethnicity in the former Soviet Union. They are a Turkic people who do not enjoy particularly good relations with anyone. Uzbekistan’s ruling Karimov family is roundly hated both at home and abroad; the Central Asian country boasts one of the most repressive governing systems in modern times.

Uzbekistan also happens to be quite powerful by Central Asian standards. There are more Uzbeks in Central Asia than there are Kyrgyz, Turkmen, Tajiks and Russians combined. The Uzbek intelligence services are modeled after their Russian counterparts, interspersing agents throughout the Uzbek population to ensure loyalty and to root out dissidents. It is the only country of the five former Soviet states in the region that actually has a military that can engage in military action. It is the only one of the five that has most of its cities in logical proximity and linked with decent infrastructure (even if it is split into the Tashkent region and the Fergana region by Stalinesque cartographic creativity). It is the only one of the five that is both politically stable (if politically brittle) and that has the ability to project power. And it is also the only Central Asian state that is self-sufficient in both food and energy. To top it all off, some 2.5 million ethnic Uzbeks reside in the other four former Soviet Central Asian states, providing Tashkent a wealth of tools for manipulating developments throughout the region.

And manipulate it does. In addition to the odd border spat, Uzbekistan intervened decisively in Tajikistan’s civil war in the 1990s. Tashkent is not shy about noting that it thinks most Tajik, and especially Kyrgyz, territory should belong to Uzbekistan, particularly the territory of southern Kyrgyzstan, where the current violence is strongest. Uzbekistan views many of the Russian strategies to expunge Western interests from Central Asia as preparation for moves against Uzbekistan, with the Russian-sponsored coup in Kyrgyzstan an excellent case in point.

From March through May, Uzbekistan began activating its reserves and reinforcing its Fergana border regions, which heightened the state of fear in Bishkek from shrill to panic mode. Given Uzbek means, motive and opportunity, Moscow is fairly confident that sending Russian peacekeepers to southern Kyrgyzstan would provoke a direct military confrontation with an angry and nervous Uzbekistan.

In STRATFOR’s view, Russia would win this war, but this victory would come neither easily nor cheaply. The Fergana is a long way from Russia, and the vast bulk of Russia’s military is static, not expeditionary like its U.S. counterpart. Uzbek supply lines would be measured in hundreds of meters, Russian lines in thousands of kilometers. Moreover, Uzbekistan could interrupt nearly all Central Asian natural gas that currently flows to Russia without even launching a single attack. (The Turkmen natural gas that Russia’s Gazprom normally depends upon travels to Russia via Uzbek territory.)

Yet this may be a conflict Russia feels it cannot avoid. The Russians have not forward-garrisoned a military force sufficient to protect Kyrgyzstan, nor can they resettle a population that could transform Kyrgyzstan. Therefore, the Russian relationship with Kyrgyzstan is based neither on military strategy nor on economic rationality. Instead, it is based on the need to preserve a certain level of credibility and fear — credibility that the Russians will protect Kyrgyzstan should push come to shove, and Kyrgyz fear of what Russia will do to it should they not sign on to the Russian sphere of influence.

It is a strategy strongly reminiscent of the U.S. Cold War containment doctrine, under which the United States promised to aid any ally, anytime, anywhere if in exchange they would help contain the Soviets. This allowed the Soviet Union to choose the time and place of conflicts, and triggered U.S. involvement in places like Vietnam. Had the United States refused battle, the American alliance structure could have crumbled. Russia now faces a similar dilemma, and just as the United States had no economic desire to be in Vietnam, the Russians really do not much care what happens to Kyrgyzstan — except as it impacts Russian interests elsewhere.

But even victory over Uzbekistan would not solve the problem. Smashing the only coherent government in the region would create a security vacuum. Again, the Americans provide a useful corollary: The U.S. “victory” over Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the Taliban’s Afghanistan proved that “winning” is the easy part. Occupying the region over the long haul to make sure that the victory is not worse than the status quo antebellum is a decade-to-generational effort that requires a significant expenditure of blood and treasure. Russia desperately needs to devote such resources elsewhere — particularly once the United States is no longer so preoccupied in the Middle East.

Russia is attempting to finesse a middle ground by talking the Uzbeks down and offering the compromise of non-Russian troops from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a Russian-led military organization, as an alternative to Russian forces. This may resolve the immediate crisis, but neither the Uzbeks nor the challenges they pose are going anywhere. And unlike Russia, Uzbekistan boasts very high demographic growth.

The bottom line is this: Despite all of Russia’s recent gains, Moscow’s strategy requires tools that the Russians no longer have. It requires Moscow delving into the subregional politics of places that could well bleed Russia dry — and this is before any power that wishes Russia ill begins exploring what it and the Uzbeks might achieve together.

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20100614_kyrgyzstan_crisis_and_russian_dilemma?utm_source=GWeekly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=100615&utm_content=readmore&elq=90f0a7b1de5a453e948ab864595afb1a

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 15, 2010

Mexico on Tuesday put a limit of 4,000 US dollars per month on bank deposits by individuals, a move meant to thwart drug traffickers who use the US currency to stash away their illicit profits.

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 15, 2010

China’s holdings of US debt climbed to the highest level this year, the U.S. Treasury said Tuesday even as Beijing stepped up attacks on the United States for its burgeoning debt.

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 14, 2010

Gulf Oil Spill ‘Could Go Years’ If Not Dealt With

by F. William Engdahl

 Senior  researchers tell us that the BP drilling hit one of the oil migration channels and that the leakage could continue for years unless decisive steps are undertaken, something that seems far from the present strategy.

In a recent discussion, Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the Russian State University of Oil and Gas, predicted that the present oil spill flooding the Gulf Coast shores of the United States “could go on for years and years  many years. ¹

According to Kutcherov, a leading specialist in the theory of abiogenic deep origin of petroleum, What BP drilled into was what we call a ‘migration channel,’ a deep fault on which hydrocarbons generated in the depth of our planet migrate to the crust and are accumulated in rocks, something like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia.³ Ghawar, the world’s most prolific oilfield has been producing millions of barrels daily for almost 70 years with no end in sight. According to the abiotic science, Ghawar like all elephant and giant oil and gas deposits all over the world, is located on a migration channel similar to that in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico.

As I wrote at the time of the January 2010 Haiti earthquake disaster,³ Haiti had been identified as having potentially huge hydrocasrbon reserves, as has neighboring Cuba. Kutcherov estimates that the entire Gulf of Mexico is one of the planet’s most abundant accessible locations to extract oil and gas, at least before the Deepwater Horizon event this April.

“In my view the heads of BP reacted with panic at the scale of the oil spewing out of the well, Kutcherov adds. What is inexplicable at this point is why they are trying one thing, failing, then trying a second, failing, then a third. Given the scale of the disaster they should try every conceivable option, even if it is ten, all at once in hope one works. Otherwise, this oil source could spew oil for years given the volumes coming to the surface already. ⁴

He stresses, It is difficult to estimate how big this leakage is. There is no objective information available. But taking into consideration information about the last BP ‘giant’ discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, the Tiber field, some six miles deep, Kutcherov agrees with Ira Leifer a researcher in the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara who says the oil may be gushing out at a rate of more than 100,000 barrels a day.⁵

What the enormoity of the oil spill does is to also further discredit clearly the oil companies’ myth of  peak oil which claims that the world is at or near the peak of economical oil extraction. That myth, which has been propagated in recent years by circles close to former oilman and Bush Vice President, Dick Cheney, has been effectively used by the giant oil majors to justify far higher oil prices than would be politically possible otherwise, by claiming a non-existent petroleum scarcity crisis.

Obama & BP Try to Hide 

According to a report from Washington investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, the Obama White House and British Petroleum are covering up the magnitude of the volcanic-level oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and working together to limit BP’s liability for damage caused by what can be called a ‘mega-disaster.’ ⁶ Madsen cites sources within the US Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, and Florida Department of Environmental Protection for his assertion.

Obama and his senior White House staff, as well as Interior Secretary Salazar, are working with BP’s chief executive officer Tony Hayward on legislation that would raise the cap on liability for damage claims from those affected by the oil disaster from $75 million to $10 billion. According to informed estimates cited by Madsen, however, the disaster has a real potential cost of at least $1,000 billion ($1 trillion). That estimate would support the pessimistic assessment of Kutcherov that the spill, if not rapidly controlled, will destroy the entire coastline of the United States.

According to the Washington report of Madsen, BP statements that one of the leaks has been contained, are pure public relations disinformation designed to avoid panic and demands for greater action by the Obama administration., according to FEMA and Corps of Engineers sources. ⁷

The White House has been resisting releasing any damaging information about the oil disaster. Coast Guard and Corps of Engineers experts estimate that if the ocean oil geyser is not stopped within 90 days, there will be irreversible damage to the marine eco-systems of the Gulf of Mexico, north Atlantic Ocean, and beyond. At best, some Corps of Engineers experts say it could take two years to cement the chasm on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. ⁸

Only after the magnitude of the disaster became evident did Obama order Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano to declare the oil disaster a national security issue.  Although the Coast Guard and FEMA are part of her department, Napolitano’s actual reasoning for invoking national security, according to Madsen, was merely to block media coverage of the immensity of the disaster that is unfolding for the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean and their coastlines.

The Obama administration also conspired with BP to hide the extent of the oil leak, according to the cited federal and state sources. After the oil rig exploded and sank, the government stated that 42,000 gallons per day were gushing from the seabed chasm. Five days later, the federal government upped the leakage to 210,000 gallons a day. However, submersibles monitoring the escaping oil from the Gulf seabed are viewing television pictures of what they describe as a volcanic-like eruption of oil.

When the Army Corps of Engineers first attempted to obtain NASA imagery of the Gulf oil slick, which is larger than is being reported by the media, it was reportedly denied the access. By chance, National Geographic managed to obtain satellite imagery shots of the extent of the disaster and posted them on their web site. Other satellite imagery reportedly being withheld by the Obama administration, shows that what lies under the gaping chasm spewing oil at an ever-alarming rate is a cavern estimated to be the size of Mount Everest. This information has been given an almost national security-level classification to keep it from the public, according to Madsen’s sources.

The Corps of Engineers and FEMA are reported to be highly critical of the lack of support for quick action after the oil disaster by the Obama White House and the US Coast Guard. Only now has the Coast Guard understood the magnitude of the disaster, dispatching nearly 70 vessels to the affected area. Under the loose regulatory measures implemented by the Bush-Cheney Administration, the US Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service became a simple rubber stamp, approving whatever the oil companies wanted in terms of safety precautions that could have averted such a disaster. Madsen describes a state of criminal collusion between Cheney’s former firm, Halliburton, and the Interior Department’s MMS, and that the potential for similar disasters exists with the other 30,000 off-shore rigs that use the same shut-off valves. ⁹

Silence from Eco groups?… Follow the money

Without doubt at this point we are in the midst of what could be the greatest ecological catastrophe in history. The oil platform explosion took place almost within the current loop where the Gulf Stream originates. This has huge ecological and climatological consequences.

A cursory look at a map of the Gulf Stream shows that the oil is not just going to cover the beaches in the Gulf, it will spread to the Atlantic coasts up through North Carolina then on to the North Sea and Iceland. And beyond the damage to the beaches, sea life and water supplies, the Gulf stream has a very distinct chemistry, composition (marine organisms), density, temperature. What happens if the oil and the dispersants and all the toxic compounds they create actually change the nature of the Gulf Stream? No one can rule out potential changes including changes in the path of the Gulf Stream, and even small changes could have huge impacts. Europe, including England, is not an icy wasteland due to the warming from the Gulf Stream.

Yet there is a deafening silence from the very environmental organizations which ought to be at the barricades demanding that BP, the US Government and others act decisively. 

That deafening silence of leading green or ecology organizations such as Greenpeace, Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club and others may well be tied to a money trail that leads right back to the oil industry, notably to BP. Leading environmental organizations have gotten significant financial payoffs in recent years from BP in order that the oil company could remake itself with an environment-friendly face, as in beyond petroleum the company’s new branding.

The Nature Conservancy, described as the world’s most powerful environmental group,¹⁰ has awarded BP a seat on its International Leadership Council after the oil company gave the organization more than $10 million in recent years. ¹¹

Until recently, the Conservancy and other environmental groups worked with BP in a coalition that lobbied Congress on climate-change issues. An employee of BP Exploration serves as an unpaid Conservancy trustee in Alaska. In addition, according to a recent report published by the Washington Post, Conservation International, another environmental group, has accepted $2 million in donations from BP and worked with the company on a number of projects, including one examining oil-extraction methods. From 2000 to 2006, John Browne, then BP’s chief executive, sat on the CI board.

Further, The Environmental Defense Fund, another influential ecologist organization, joined with BP, Shell and other major corporations to form a Partnership for Climate Action, to promote ‘market-based mechanisms’ (sic) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Environmental non-profit groups that have accepted donations from or joined in projects with BP include Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club and Audubon. That could explain why the political outcry to date for decisive action in the Gulf has been so muted. ¹²

Of course those organizations are not going to be  the ones to solve this catastrophe. The central point at this point is who is prepared to put the urgently demanded federal and international scientific resources into solving this crisis. Further actions of the likes of that from the Obama White House to date or from BP can only lead to the conclusion that some very powerful people want this debacle to continue. The next weeks will be critical to that assessment.

Copyright © 2010 F. William Engdahl

F. William Engdahl

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 14, 2010

Rick’s Picks 

Monday, June 14, 2010

“Phenomenally accurate forecasts”

We’ve railed at traders and speculators recently for their arrogant and sometimes breathtaking stupidity in failing to discount an onslaught of world-shattering news. If the dolts, rubes, bozos and mountebanks who have kept stocks afloat even remotely understood what has been going on in this world, we wrote here recently, the Dow Industrials would plummet 6000 points in mere days.  And the news has been grave, indeed.  America’s wholly imagined economic recovery died for good on Friday with the release of shocking retail figures for May. Household incomes have been falling, consumer credit imploding, M3 plummeting, and now it turns out that corporations have allowed $1.8 trillion to sit idle in low-yielding bank accounts, hastening the economy’s deflationary collapse and the onset of a Second Great Depression. We face the impossible task of getting out from beneath $130 Trillion of debt and liabilities amassed by government at all levels. The nation is adrift under a weak president whose radical leftist politics have sharply divided the voters. Iran and Turkey (a NATO member!) have declared war on Israel, sending warships to run the Gaza blockade. Europe’s financial house of cards is within months, or even weeks, of total collapse. The jihadists may be turning the tide against U.S. and British forces in Afghanistan. 

Unfortunately the list does not end there. For in fact, there is one crisis that greatly overshadows all of them:  the seabed irruption in the Gulf of Mexico. We won’t even pretend any longer that there is a market “angle” to this story.  In fact, the markets are a sides show, and politics a droll burlesque, in comparison to the geophysical dreadnought taking shape in the Gulf.  Because it could eventually threaten all life on this planet, there may be no “investable issues” here.

Seabed Fissures

The problem is no longer a leak or a spill, you see, but a volcanic gusher – one that appears to be defeating the efforts of the most capable petroleum engineers in the world. More and more, it is looking like a sci-fi disaster film with no hero and an unhappy ending. Even our supposed best hope for containing the gusher – a second well that would intersect and plug the leak by sometime in August – may be doomed to failure, since the well casing itself may be too damaged to seal off.  Read about it by clicking here.  But the scariest story currently making the rounds is that there are fissures springing up all over the seabed, and that if the weak bedrock that holds the oil gives way, it will release a quantity of hydrocarbons greater in volume than the Gulf itself. Click here for that story.

Whenever we’ve tried to predict the “black swan” event that might eventually send the U.S. and global economies into deepest coma, we believed in our heart that, no matter what happened, everything would turn out all right.  The real estate market might collapse, taking our standard of living with it, but Americans would somehow get through hard times together and emerge better and stronger for it.  Even the prospect of a nuclear conflagration in the Middle East implied a beginning and an end — a radioactive half-life, as it were.

Human Error

Who could have imagined that there was an even bigger disaster lurking — or that mere human error could trigger a cataclysm of seismological proportions?  Or will it be of Biblical proportions, with rivers and seas turned into wormwood?   Has BP tapped, not an oil well, but a hole into volcanic Hell?  While these questions are almost too frightening to contemplate, the answers may be staring us in the face within months or even weeks.  For the moment, though, it has become difficult to sort out fact from fiction.  Are clean-up workers getting sick from toxic hydrogen sulfide fumes? Is the Obama administration covering up the true magnitude of the crisis to avoid a panic?  Why are nearly all of the satellite photos of the spill on the Web a month old?  Can BP really handle a crisis whose costs may soon mount into the trillions?  Is the problem even solvable?

***

Information and commentary contained herein comes from sources believed to be reliable, but this cannot be guaranteed. Past performance should not be construed as an indicator of future results, so let the buyer beware. There is a substantial risk of loss in futures and option trading, and even experts can, and sometimes do, lose their proverbial shirts.  Rick’s Picks does not provide investment advice to individuals, nor act as an investment advisor, nor individually advocate the purchase or sale of any security or investment. From time to time, its editor may hold positions in issues referred to in this service, and he may alter or augment them at any time. Investments recommended herein should be made only after consulting with your investment advisor, and only after reviewing the prospectus or financial statements of the company. Rick’s Picks reserves the right to use e-mail endorsements and/or profit claims from its subscribers for marketing purposes. All names will be kept anonymous and only subscribers’ initials will be used unless express written permission has been granted to the contrary. All Contents © 2010, Rick Ackerman. All Rights Reserved. www.rickackerman.com

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 14, 2010

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/14/2010

“If you were to have faxed me this balance sheet and asked me to guess who it belonged to, I would have guessed, Citadel, Magnetar or even a proprietary trading desk at a bank.” So begins a story by Alexandra Harris of the Medill Journalism school at Northwestern, which, however, does not focus on some exotic product-specialized hedge fund, or some discount window (taxpayer capital) backed prop desk (hedge fund) at a TBTF bank, but instead at the 61% underfunded, $33.7 billion Illinois Teachers Retirement System (TRS), which just happened to lose $4.4 billion in 2009 (a year when, courtesy of America’s conversion from capitalism to socialism, the market rose 60%), and 5% in2008. Yet underperformance can be explained. What can not, is that the TRS has now become a shadow AIG. As Harris notes “TRS is largely on the risky side of the contracts, selling and writing OTC derivatives, including credit default swaps, insurance-like contracts that guarantee payment in the event of a default, that were blamed in part for the 2008 collapse of Lehman Bros. and bailout of insurance giant American International Group Inc., or AIG.” Demonstrating just how far the fund is willing to go in the “for broke” category, knowing full well that if it repeats AIG’s implosion, the government will likely bail it out, is the disclosure that a stunning 81.5% of the fund’s investments are considered risky – this means it is the fourth-riskiest investment portfolio for a pension fund in the U.S! All it will take is another Flash Crash-like event, or a liquidity crunch, and the 355,000 “full-time, part-time and substitute public school teachers and administrators working outside the city of Chicago” will likely end up with a big, fat donut in their retirement portfolios courtesy of some deranged lunatic, portfolio manager, situated externally at a bank like Goldman Sachs, who in taking a page straight out of Obama’s bailout nation, has decided there is no such thing as risk. And to those naive enough to think the TRS is the only such fund which has now gone all-in on “no risk and infinite return”, wait until such stories start emerging about every single massively underfunded pension and fully insolvent fund in the US.

www.zerohedge.com

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 14, 2010

June 14 (Bloomberg) — The cost of fixing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage companies that last year bought or guaranteed three-quarters of all U.S. home loans, will be at least $160 billion and could grow to as much as $1 trillion after the biggest bailout in American history.

Fannie and Freddie, now 80 percent owned by U.S. taxpayers, already have drawn $145 billion from an unlimited line of government credit granted to ensure that home buyers can get loans while the private housing-finance industry is moribund. That surpasses the amount spent on rescues of American International Group Inc., General Motors Co. or Citigroup Inc., which have begun repaying their debts.

“It is the mother of all bailouts,” said Edward Pinto, a former chief credit officer at Fannie Mae, who is now a consultant to the mortgage-finance industry.

More at:http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601010&sid=an_hcY9YaJas

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 13, 2010

The cat is clearly out of the bag concerning the forthcoming bankruptcy of 33 states of the USA.
 
This moronic New York non-solution to borrow from state pension funds, which now cannot meet their pension requirements, screams bankruptcy. The Administration calling for $50 billion for states and cities would appear to be confirmation of this financial phenomenon. The sign that the financial problems of the states of the USA are going critical and will make the EU situation look like kindergarten, in market terms, will be a stronger euro and stronger gold, sort of like now (9:09 EST).
 
A shift in the recent relationship between gold and the euro would signal that recognition by markets.

                  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

State Plan Makes Fund Both Borrower and Lender

By DANNY HAKIM
Published: June 11, 2010
 
ALBANY – Gov. David A. Paterson and legislative leaders have tentatively agreed to allow the state and municipalities to borrow nearly $6 billion to help them make their required annual payments to the state pension fund.
 
And, in classic budgetary sleight-of-hand, they will borrow the money to make the payments to the pension fund – from the same pension fund.
 
As word of the plan spread, some denounced it as a shell game and a blatant effort by state leaders to avoid making difficult decisions, like cutting government spending or reducing pension benefits.
 
“It’s a classic Albany example of kicking the can down the road,” said Harry Wilson, the Republican candidate for comptroller, who holds an M.B.A. from Harvard.
 
Pension costs for the state and municipalities are soaring, a result of enhanced retirement benefits for public employees and the decline in the stock market over the past two years. And, given declines in tax revenue and larger budget shortfalls, the governments are struggling to come up with the money to make the contributions.
 
Under the plan, the state and municipalities would borrow the money to reduce their pension contributions for the next three years, in exchange for higher payments over the following decade. They would begin repaying what they borrowed, with interest, in 2013.
 
More…

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 13, 2010

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 13, 2010

The State and local governments are broke.  This will amount to an endless amount of state aid.  It will end when, not if…..foreigners flee our bonds and then interest rates explode because of it!

Obama Pushes for $50 Billion in State Aid
by CalculatedRisk on 6/13/2010

From Jackie Calmes and Sheryl Gay Stolberg at the NY Times: Obama Presses for Aid to Cities and States

President Obama on Saturday implored Congress to provide more aid to states and cities to blunt “the devastating economic impact of budget cuts” by local governments that imperil the jobs of teachers, the police, firefighters and other public employees.

In a letter to Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders, Mr. Obama said the “mounting employment crisis” in the states “could set back the pace of our economic recovery.” … education secretary, Arne Duncan, has said that without federal aid, up to 300,000 fewer teachers would be in classrooms this fall …

The WaPo quotes Obama as writing there will be “massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters” without the additional funds.

www.jsmineset.com

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 11, 2010

The financial raid against the middle class – 9 of the 10 largest occupations in the U.S. have median wages between $8 per hour and $14per hour. The middle class is inheriting a new serfdom drowning in mountains of debt. The new two income trap.

Posted: Fri, 11 Jun 2010 18:02:10 +0000

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 11, 2010

The Japanese PM is alluding to confidence; Confidence in the currency that denominates their debt. Since gold is rising in all global currencies, it suggests that confidence in those managing the existing fiat system is beginning to fray. Once confidence reaches critical mass, there is no stopping the deterioration.

Japan could face a financial mess like the one that has crippled Greece if it does not deal urgently with its swelling national debt, the new prime minister warned Friday.

“It is difficult to sustain a policy that relies too heavily on issuing debt. As we have seen with the financial confusion in the European community stemming from Greece, our finances could collapse if trust in national bonds is lost and growing national debt is left alone,” he said.

Source: finance.yahoo.com

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 11, 2010

The downward spiral in Western world economics will continue, here is why!   This is not rocket science folks!

 

$1.2 Quadrillion Derivatives Market
            

           By PETER COHAN        

One of the biggest risks to the world’s financial health is the $1.2 quadrillion derivatives market. It’s complex, it’s unregulated, and it ought to be of concern to world leaders that its notional value is 20 times the size of the world economy. But traders rule the roost — and as much as risk managers and regulators might want to limit that risk, they lack the power or knowledge to do so.

A quadrillion is a big number: 1,000 times a trillion. Yet according to one of the world’s leading derivatives experts, Paul Wilmott, who holds a doctorate in applied mathematics from Oxford University (and whose speaking voice sounds eerily like John Lennon’s), $1.2 quadrillion is the so-called notional value of the worldwide derivatives market. To put that in perspective, the world’s annual gross domestic product is between $50 trillion and $60 trillion.

More…

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 11, 2010

June 11 (Bloomberg) — Sales at U.S. retailers unexpectedly dropped in May for the first time in eight months, indicating the rebound in consumer spending is cooling as Americans boost savings.

Purchases fell 1.2 percent, led by a record plunge in demand at building-material stores that may reflect the end of a government rebate on sales of energy-saving appliances, according to figures from the Commerce Department issued today in Washington. Another report showed consumer sentiment climbed this month to the highest level in two years.

From ShadowStats.com.

– Ski-Jump-Shaped Depression 
– May Retail Sales Drop: Tentative Confirmation of 
   Intensified Business Downturn 
– April Trade Deficit: A Negative for Second-Quarter GDP

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 10, 2010

Arizona Sells Supreme Court Building in $300 Million Bond Deal
          By Allison Bennett and Brendan A. McGrail

June 8 (Bloomberg) — Arizona, which sold state prisons and offices to raise cash six months ago, plans to borrow $300 million by marketing its Supreme Court building and about a dozen more properties through leaseback bonds starting today.

Investors will hold ownership of the court building in Phoenix, the fifth-largest U.S. city, and the Arizona Schools for the Deaf and the Blind in Tucson for as much as 20 years, with the securities maturing serially from 2012 through 2029, according to offering documents. Lease payments will back the debt, known as certificates of participation.

Arizona, whose foreclosure rate last year was ranked second-highest after Nevada by RealtyTrac Inc., will use the sale to pay for three months of school aid. The state raised $709 million for education payments when it sold and then leased back nine properties to investors in January.

“From an investor point of view, this is great,” state Treasurer Dean Martin, 35, said in an interview. “The state has to have buildings to operate and we’re the largest employer in Arizona.”

Arizona’s last such sale was Jan. 14. Five-year securities were priced to yield 3.07 percent, 32 basis points above a Bloomberg Fair Market Value index of comparable certificates at the time. The debt traded June 4 at an average yield of 2.79 percent, according to Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board data, 3 basis points above the index.

More at:   http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-08/arizona-sells-supreme-court-building-in-300-million-bond-deal.html

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 10, 2010

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 8, 2010

         Tuesday, 8 June 2010
Spanish public sector workers are holding a strike in protest against an average 5% cut in pay that comes into effect this month.  The cuts are part of a government austerity package aimed at reducing the country’s budget deficit, swollen by almost two years of recession.  Hundreds of protesters gathered in front of Madrid’s finance ministry blowing horns and chanting slogans.  Spanish unions said 75-80% of public sector workers had joined the strike.  The labour ministry, however, put the figure at 16%.  “This government is totally inept,” said protester Alfredo Barrero Sanchez.  He accused the government of ignoring the crisis until it was too late.  “In the end, look what has happened to this country,” he told Associated Press news agency.  Spain has suffered one of the toughest recessions in the EU, and has its highest unemployment rate. It recently had its credit rating downgraded, amid fears it could follow Greece into a debt crisis.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/10261567.stm

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 8, 2010

Fitch Ratings agency warned Tuesday that Britain faces a “formidable” fiscal challenge and must cut its budget deficit faster to maintain its top credit rating.

In a special report ahead of an emergency budget planned by the new coalition government, Fitch noted that the rise in public debt ratios since 2008 is faster than any other AAA-rated country.  It added that the primary deficit is almost twice as large as during previous economic downturns in the 1970s and early 1990s.  Britain’s budget deficit is forecast to reach 10.4 per cent of gross domestic product this year, while debt as a percentage of GDP was 62 per cent in 2009/10.  “The scale of the United Kingdom’s fiscal challenge is formidable and warrants a strong medium term consolidation strategy,” the report said

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/fitch-warns-britain-about-deficit/article1595945/

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 8, 2010

 From Art Cashin on the floor of The New York Stock Exchange today!

Fedspeak – Chairman Bernanke gave a speech last night.  It wasn’t exactly a barn burner but he did suggest that while the recovery will be slow and joyless, it will not produce a double dip. 

 Janet Yellen, in her Monday speech did not seem so sure.  Here’s a bit of what she said:

Although signs of recovery do abound, there are obviously significant headwinds to stability that remain…Those headwinds come from structural imbalances from financial sector weaknesses and uncertainties from unanticipated environmental and political events.

The key take-away for me is the phrase “headwinds to stability”.  She did not say headwinds to recovery.  It is stability itself that she fears is threatened.  Sounds like worrying about a double dip to me.

Hope Among The Ashes? – Yesterday, we wrote about the very rare occurrence of the Trin hitting double digits.  We noted that it has only hit double digits three times in 40 years.  Thanks to Barry Ritholtz’s nifty and informative blog “The Big Picture” we have access to Richard Arms assessment of the potential meaning of such an occurrence.  Arms, as you know is the father of the Trin and, thus, should be most knowledgeable on the topic.  He suggests it could be suggesting a bottom rather than the start of a selloff.  It’s an interesting read but too long to print here.  Go The Big Picture and link it up.

Ouch! – Here’s a bit from a Bloomberg piece on some downbeat comments by Tony Crescenzi.

June 8 (Bloomberg) — Nations have reached a “Keynesian endpoint” as exhausted balance sheets leave policy makers with few options to bolster economic growth, according to Anthony Crescenzi, an investor at Pacific Investment Management Co., the world’s largest bond-fund manager.

“Time, devaluations, and debt restructurings might be the only way out for many nations,” Crescenzi wrote in an e-mailed note titled “Keynesian Endpoint” that referenced the Great Depression era economist John Maynard Keynes.   Debt-fueled spending programs aimed at combating the global financial crisis of 2008 are among policy tools now “being seen as a magic elixir that has morphed into poison.”

Tony’s point is pretty much that the canteen is empty.  A double dip would be faced with no ammo left.

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Posted By thestatedtruth.com on June 8, 2010

Remember this was done in 1948, that’s 62 years ago!!  The formula for success hasn’t changed.

Keep in mind as you watch this that it was done in ‘1948‘. Keep that in mind as you view it. 
 
Click on 1948 Cartoon below – this cartoon is timeless and is just as true today as it was in 1948!   It is not hard to cast the character of the snake oil salesman as one of today’s political leaders.
 
Look at this: 1948 Cartoon and then think about where we are today!  Click on it below.

http://nationaljuggernaut.blogspot.com/2009/09/this-cartoon-seemed-far-fetched-in-1948.html

 

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