Here's my Top 10 links from around the Internet at 11 am in association with NZ Mint.
I welcome your additions in the comments below or via email tobernard.hickey@interest.co.nz.
I'll pop the extras into the comment stream. See all previous Top 10s here.
Martin Wolf at #7 is today's must read. And our Spanish speaking readers will enjoy the video from Don Quixote Airport.
1. Watch China - New Zealand's future is with China in the Chinese century.
So we need to watch closely the connections and trade flows between China and those parts of the world in trouble (ie it's main trading partners Europe and America).
About a third of China's exports go to the Eurozone and one of the problems seen in the last trade slump in 2008 was a lack of trade finance, in particular for shipping.
Now there are fresh signs the European financial turmoil is beginning to affect trade flows and the shipping sector. The Baltic Dry Index of prices for bulk shipping has fallen 60% in the last two years.
Shipping companies are struggling to get finance and in some cases are behind on their payments.
Bloomberg reports Grand China Logistic Holdings, a state-owned shipping logistics company, has failed to make payments recently.
“We are actively talking to every shipowner and are actively raising funds to make payments,” President Li Zhong said yesterday in an interview in Shanghai. “Give us some time and we will definitely pay the money back.” He said the amounts owed are “not very big.”
Closely held Grand China has also lowered charter rates through re-negotiations, cut container-shipping services and drawn up plans to return all leased-in vessels, Li said, as tumbling freight rates cause industrywide losses. China Cosco Holdings Co., the nation’s biggest shipping line, has said it will lose money this year even after reaching agreements on at least 18 ships following payment disputes.
“The shipping industry isn’t in good shape because of the global trade slowdown,” Li said. The Baltic Dry Index, a benchmark for commodity-shipping rates, has tumbled 60 percent in the past two years as expansion in the global fleet outpaces Chinese demand for iron ore, coal and other raw materials.
2. Hungary seeks IMF aid - The ugliness rolls on through Europe and central Europe with Hungary, which has been hovering near bankruptcy for a while, formally asking for assistance from the IMF and Europe.
Hungary's economy ministry said last week that it will start talks with the IMF and the EU on securing some form of backing to reassure investors. It stressed it is looking for a precautionary, insurance-type contract as a means to reassure investors and spur economic growth.
"This was a move necessary to assure risk-free growth for the country," Economy Minister Gyorgy Matolcsy said in Parliament on Monday, confirming that Hungary manages to successfully finance itself via markets, indicating that the country doesn't need IMF support to finance government debt.
"Hungary is a warning sign," said Neil Shearing from Capital Economics. "It is the country where the risks are most acute in the region, so this is where you would expect to trouble to start. We fear this may spread to Ukraine and the Balkans. Eastern Europe has enormous external financing needs for the banking system. They won't be able to roll over debts if there is a credit freeze in Western Europe." Mr Shearing said Hungary has to raise external finance equal to 18pc of GDP over the next year. The figures are 14pc for Croatia, and 13pc for Bulgaria.
Eastern Europe is dependent on eurozone lenders and their subsidiaries for about 80pc of its banking system. This leaves the region vulnerable to a credit crunch as foreign groups slash loan books – by €2 trillion over 18 months, according to a Deutsche Bank study – to meet the EU's requirement for 9pc core tier 1 capital.
4. Austrian banks stop lending in Eastern Europe - Bloomberg reports Austrian banks have been told to stop lending into Eastern Europe to ensure Austria keeps its AAA credit rating.
The great deleveraging across Europe is gathering pace, starting at the fringes.
Erste Group Bank AG, Raiffeisen Bank International AG and UniCredit SpA's Bank Austria AG will be prevented from loaning significantly more than they raise in local deposits in countries such as Hungary, Romania and the Ukraine starting next year, the Austrian central bank said in a statement today. That would limit their ability to fund credit growth with loans from the parent company.
“This is certainly going to affect the availability of credit,” said Christian Keller, head of emerging EMEA research at Barclays Capital in London. “There's also going to be more differentiation, which will put pressure on countries like Hungary, Romania, Ukraine or Bulgaria.”
Austrian banks have lent $266 billion to borrowers in the formerly communist parts of Europe, the most of all countries reporting to the Bank for International Settlements and equivalent to about 70 percent of Austria's gross domestic product. Those numbers don't include the investments of Vienna- based Bank Austria, which are attributed to Italy.
5. Don Quixote Airport - Regular readers may remember a promotional video I included at #9 in Saturday's Top 10 of Spain's 1.1 billion euro Real Ciudad airport in the middle of nowhere with no customers.
Here's a Spanish language news video of the airport. Think Tumbleweed in Spanish with video of a very fast (and expensive) train running through it.
6. Australian property slump - The SMH reports that Australia's housing market is headed for its worst year since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.
Melbourne may post the gloomiest results for 2011 among the major cities, with the clearance rate at auctions on course to fall to levels not seen since 2004, according to data from the Real Estate Institute of Victoria.
The REIV predicts Melbourne's auction clearance rate to average about 57 per cent for 2011, once the final weekends of the year are included. That's down from a 71 per cent rate last year.
Advertisement: Story continues belowIn Sydney, the clearance rates were 52.4 per cent last weekend, down from 55.1 per cent the previous weekend, Fairfax-owned Australian Property Monitors data show. Barring a surge in buying in the first part of December, clearance rates for 2011 are on track to average 54 per cent, the weakest since 2008, APM data show.
7. The lessons from Iceland - Martin Wolf writes in a publicly available at FT.com on how Iceland is faring three years after its crisis. Well worth a click.
Here's his final thoughts, which sound like someone on the front lines of an Occupy Wall St encampment. Quite something from someone who is the most respected commentator of the bible of the financial capital of the world.
The most unacceptable consequence of the crisis, across the globe, is that those whose irresponsibility caused the havoc have largely escaped accountability, while the innocent have been severely punished. In the case of Iceland, those responsible got off largely free. But some effort has been made to cushion the plight of the innocent. Yet the sense of injustice remains palpable.
The market economy will not endure if it is seen to be a racket run by a relatively small number of insiders against the interests of a vast number of outsiders. That happened to Iceland. But, as Simon Johnson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Peterson Institute of International Economics pointed out, in a rousing speech, the threat is not to Iceland alone. It could happen anywhere.
8. Bye bye Eurozone - BBC Business Editor Robert Peston writes well about the problems faced by Europe.
Here's his conclusion
Which is why you might say that it's either bye-bye eurozone, because the costs for borrowing of an unreformed eurozone remain prohibitively high, or it's bye-bye eurozone, because it turns into something that looks more like a giant single country.
9. What Europe's bank runs look like - They're very quiet now, but here's Michael Pettis talking about them here at BusinessInsider.
As soon as any depositor realizes that bank deposits are likely to be redenominated into drachma, he will pull his deposits out of the banks so as to protect the value of his savings. But obviously only a few depositors will be able to do this before forcing the bank into closing. In order to prevent the resulting collapse in the banking system, the only thing Athens can do is to freeze bank deposits long before most depositors have had a chance to cash out. But depositors know this. As the probability of Greece’s leaving the euro rises – and clearly it rose dramatically this past week – anxious depositors eager to prevent their deposits from being frozen and redenominated in a weaker currency know that they will have to speed up their withdrawal of deposits from banks. And of course as anxious depositors withdraw their deposits, the likelihood of a banking crisis rises, and with it the likelihood of Greece’s being forced to freeze deposits and leave the euro.
We are caught, it seems, in one of those self-reinforcing loops that almost always presage a collapse. Rational behavior by individual agents leads towards a catastrophic event the threat of which reinforces the behavior. I don’t see any way to get out of this loop except with a Bagehot-style intervention – a very unlikely but immediately credible announcement by Germany and France that they are prepared to guarantee all deposits in the Greek banking system. I call it a “Bagehot intervention”, but of course Walter Bagehot would never have recommended bailing out an insolvent borrower. Without a credible intervention this process almost always ends the same way.
There is in my opinion a very high probability that within weeks, or months at most, Greece will be forced to freeze bank deposits as a prelude to leaving the euro.
As households from Italy, Spain, Ireland, Portuguese, and other vulnerable countries read every day about hardships faced by Greek families (and those, it will be noted, who trusted the authorities were the worst hit), what will they do? I know what many of my wealthy Spanish friends are already doing. They are moving their deposits to safer havens.
He then makes the excellent point about decisions about who eventually pays.
Deposit withdrawals, after all, are one of the kinds of actions that different sectors of the economy will take to protect their interests in the face of a crisis, even though this behavior increases the likelihood of the crisis. This is simply part of the logic of sovereign financial distress – declining credibility causes stakeholders to act in ways that reduce credibility further. What’s more, deterioration in the political process is part of financial distress at the sovereign level. Remember, as Keynes pointed out back in 1922, that resolving these kinds of crises is always political – it is about which sector of the economy (or class) ends up paying for the adjustment.
Workers can pay in the form of high unemployment and declining wages, the middle class can pay by having its savings inflated away, private businesses can pay in the form of confiscatory taxes and expropriation, creditors can pay through forced debt forgiveness, and so on, but ultimately someone must pay. Politics becomes about deciding which groups will be forced to foot the bill. Historical precedents suggest that political fault lines are likely to develop as different groups organizes politically to protect themselves.
10. Totally Stephen Colbert on Washington's lobbyists.
"They're the one that pick up the lunch bill and write the legislative bill."
The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive
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WSJ reports on how US regulators are worried about Bank of America, and how it's board
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203710704577052491450383120.html
Since mid-2009, Bank of America has appointed eight new directors and made a number of internal changes ranging from how it classified credit to risk and liquidity-management controls. After Mr. Moynihan became CEO in 2010, he began selling noncore assets and preserving capital as a way of shoring up the bank's balance sheet.
But frustration is building as the two sides now view Bank of America's progress differently, these people said. "The Fed does not believe Bank of America has done all the work," while Bank of America officials believe "they have done all the work and the Fed keeps moving the goal line on them," said one person familiar with the situation.
Here's what the Chief Economist of Danish bank Saxo is actually saying should/might happen in Europe.
He's saying it's time to shut down the European banking system for a few days.
Astonishing really:
Well worth a read.
This guy is serious.
Europe may need to pull a Chapter 11 – a US-style bankruptcy, which would permit a market shutdown and Euro Zone reorganization before reopening for business.
The EU desperately needs a break from market pressures in order to allow the political apparatus to really gather its forces and finally move Europe and its debt crisis ahead of the curve. Here we are just a couple of weeks after the feeble attempt to apply an EFSF plaster on the problem and we’re already back to Square One: the EU debt crisis has reached the point at which none of the readily available tools or institutions are sufficient to match the magnitude of the crisis. This dictates the need for an out-of-the-box solution.
EU policy makers played the extend and pretend game for as long as they could - but now the writing is on the wall: popular outrage is on the rise and putting increasing pressure on the political process - as we are seeing increased demonstrations and grass-root activity taking over both the political agenda and the media. And markets are now balking as empty promises and now a real lack of funds are seeing bond yields beginning to spike out of control. The self-reinforcing cycle of downgrades and austerity and recession are taking us to the very brink of a full scale Crisis 2.0.
So what form might a Chapter 11 for the Euro Zone take? It is increasingly likely that some kind of total “bank holiday” is enforced to put a stop to market pressures – and then to reinforce and relaunch a stricter EU Growth and Stability Pact as a price for cranking up the ECB printing presses to full speed.
Before accusing me of lunacy on my idea of a market holiday, it’s important to point out that banking holidays are not without precedent. In 1933, PresidentRoosevelt declared a bank holiday that ran for an entire week in March of 1933, during which he passed the Emergency Banking Act and the Federal Reserve moved to supply currency to banks.
It could work as part of a process of issuing Eurobonds in place on individual sovereign debt.
The "markets" may accept that a closure for retooling is necessary during the transition to a stable ECB/German backed Eurobond.
It may not be politically palatable but it sure beats collapsing a currency... a bank holiday vs a bankruptcy.
For my part, having a single currency while allowing individual states to issue debt in a uncoordinated fashion was always a recipe for disaster.
A spanner in the climate "works"
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/22/climategate-2-0/#more-51549
Do you go to a witch doctor for healthcare or a GP? I assume in your case its a witch doctor...I go to a GP.....same with tony watt's site, its pure voodoo.....there is no science in there and even the maths is dodgy.
na....there is no spanner there......and once the BEST report came out FOR AGW instead of the expected against, its pretty much killed any credibility in the denier industry.....
troll time I guess....
regards
Steven, this is a really childish response. BEST showed that there has been no warming for more than 10 years and made no connection to CO2.
"None of the warmistas have apparently listened to the somewhat skeptical pronouncements from Prof. Muller. He emphasizes that the analysis is based only on land data, covering less than 30% of the earth’s surface and housing recording stations that are poorly distributed, mainly in the U.S. and Western Europe. In addition, he admits that 70% of U.S. stations are badly sited and don’t meet the standards set by government; the rest of the world is probably worse. He disclaims to know the cause of the warming found by BEST and favors naturally caused oscillations of the atmosphere-ocean system that no climate model has yet simulated or explained."
So Steven, what is your reason for attempting to hide information using smear tactics? Political parties world wide are basing billion dollar policies on some shonky science and this is "a travesty."
LOL, cherry picking....BEST showed 1 Deg rise in 100 years I think from memory. The reason there is little rise for a decade is we can have other climate effects like la nina / el nino over ride the overall trend for a period which it has. The report also showed that the position of the stations made no material difference to the results.....ie there really is warming. What is most interesting about the results is it was sponsored from the denier industry for a denier to look at the data and confirm the deniers position.....its back fired with BESt coming out and saying the previous studies are actually robust.
Oh and if heat islands were material, why is it the warming before the last decade occurs then none for a decade? If the "heat" islands were truly causing an effect that effect doesnt go away for a period.....therefore that logic alone says it cant be the heat islands myth, not without some explanation for that flat decade added..and there isnt one.
Now if you want to live in a world of make believe Tont Watts is your story teller.....I avoid such nursery stories.
Govn's are acting on the best science can tell them....simple....so far the science looks very robust and more so every day. The science makes it clear that the cost of doing nothing will be severe...simple. However really Govn's are doing diddly....
regards
I thought you would like to know scientist in a peer review journal are say CO2 is ls not a "sensitive" as they organically thought
OK, I bit the troll and had a read. All that I saw was scientists complaining in private emails about how their data was being mis-represented. If that really is the worst that could be found on the East Anglia mail server then the break-in by unknown parties was a total waste of time. So much for Climate-gate......
Yep...climategate is long dead.....they didnt know it was going to be a waste of time when they broke in of course. Pity, we will never find out who did the criminal act and in turn the bank rolling of it will never be discovered.....now that could open up a can of worms....
regards
Blatant... Hudson's latest
"My second caveat is to prevent this full-employment program from creating a later privatization giveaway to Wall Street – that is, infrastructure that the government will sell off to the ruling party’s major campaign contributors for pennies on the dollar. This is what Public/Private Partnerships have become, as pioneered in England under Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. Wall Street is rubbing its metaphoric hands and saying, “That’s a great idea! Let the government pay for infrastructure and spend a billion dollars on a bridge – and then sell it to us for a dollar.” The “us” may not be the banks themselves, but their customers, who will borrow the money and pay the banks an underwriting commission as well as interest on the money they use to buy what the government is privatizing."
Looks like NZ might get the call to fund the IMF as the the IMF is now set to bail out the EU.....
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2011/11/november-22-2011-europe-t…
So the USA will pay 17%...whats NZ;s share? some Billions? we had better go broke quick before the IMF does and we are left with no one to bail us out.....
regards
"Spanish 10-year bond yields were up five basis points on the day at 6.64pc and five-year paper yielded 6.11pc"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8906946/Spanish-bond…
not good........
regards
"credit deflation; a process that acts broadly and swiftly across nearly all asset classes around the world."
Coming to a housing market near you....
I guess JK will get back in before this blows......only 2 or 3 days after all...EU might hang in ther til xmas....
oh crystall ball just how long can this last before it starts in earnest.....
regards
FYI the MF Global mess is now hurting farmer confidence in America's agricultural futures markets.
http://peterlbrandt.com/mf-global-default-hurting-u-s-ag-industry/
“I would be hedging some feeder cattle right now, but I’m not going to do it. I’m leaving them exposed to the cash market and I don’t like that,” Rietzke said.
Rietzke may reside far from the trading pit in Chicago, but he and thousands of other ranchers and farmers across the country are at the heart of futures trading.
With billions of their dollars locked up by MF Global’s October 31 bankruptcy filing, they are a key voice in determining if and when the futures business regains its poise and reputation.
“I have no confidence in the market, because it could happen at any other brokerage,” Rietzke told Reuters from his 8,000 acre ranch near the southwest Kansas town of Coldwater.
And the Fed is planning a fresh round of stress tests for US banks...
http://www.gfmag.com/latestnews/latest-news-old.html?newsid=1.2021545E7
The U.S. Federal Reserve outlined plans for annual tests of the financial strength of the largest U.S. banks, including their ability to withstand a European financial shock.
Banks must submit their plans to the Fed by Jan. 9 for the "stress tests," which apply to 19 firms that participated in similar tests earlier this yearand 12 more with at least $50 billion in assets that have not participated in similar tests before, the Fed said Tuesday.
Just in case you all think I'm being alarmist (I'm looking at you Gummy ;) ) here's the Chief Global Strategist for Credit Suisse suggesting big turmoil for European markets in coming weeks.
We seem to have entered the last days of the euro as we currently know it.
That doesn’t make a break-up very likely, but it does mean some extraordinary things will almost certainly need to happen – probably by mid-January – to prevent the progressive closure of all the euro zone sovereign bond markets, potentially accompanied by escalating runs on even the strongest banks.
That may sound overdramatic, but it reflects the inexorable logic of investors realizing that – as things currently stand – they simply cannot be sure what exactly they are holding or buying in the euro zone sovereign bond markets.
In the short run, this cannot be fixed by the ECB or by new governments in Greece, Italy or Spain: it’s about markets needing credible signals on the shape of fiscal and political union long before final treaty changes can take place. We suspect this spells the death of “muddle-through” as market pressures effectively force France and Germany to strike a momentous deal on fiscal union much sooner than currently seems possible, or than either would like. Then and only then do we think the ECB will agree to provide the bridge finance needed to prevent systemic collapse.
And more on the rolling Euro mess from former ANZ Group CEO John McFarlane and Westpac CEO Gail Kelly....
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/markets/westpac-warns-of-conta…
ANZ Bank chief John McFarlane told The Australian this week that the eurozone crisis was "very serious" and that many European "banks will not survive or be a shadow of their former selves".
Steven Go read "The Delinquent Teenager" who was mistaken for the world's Top Climate Expert. The research done by Donna Laframboise.
"Climate skepticism is free speech. Alternative points-of-view deserve to be heard.
This blog began as working notes for my book, The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert.
What began as a book about reasons to remain calm, cool, and collected in the face of hype and hysteria morphed into a rather different project – an exposé of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
This organization performs one of the most important jobs in the world. It surveys climate research and writes a report about what it all means. That report, informally known as the Climate Bible, is cited by governments around the world. It is the reason trillions of dollars are being spent on climate change measures.
Yet, until now, the IPCC has received almost no serious media scrutiny. The only other book about this organization was written by the man who served as its chairman for the first 11 years."
Breaking News today Climategate II: More skeletons in the closet of anthropogenic global warming
Yes for sure politicians have blatantly aided and abetted the most costly, undemocratic blunder in generations. The mass attacks on sceptics by ‘warmists,’ has concealed what has been taking place in the halls of power where politicians have allowed their governments to ‘swindle’ the people they are meant to represent.
Like I said I avoid such novels......
This isnt about alternative equal points of view....
There is a difference between on one side climate science, saying yes there is AGW and its looking bad and on the other, a point of view based on personal beliefes, politics and/or religion saying there is not.
A quick google shows,
Donna Laframboise is a Canadian feminist[citation needed], writer, and photographer. She holds a degree in women's studies, and her writing has often supported organizations such as fathers' rights groups.[1] She is the author of The Princess at the Window: A New Gender Morality (1997), a book critical of many aspects of contemporary feminism; and of The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World's Top Climate Expert (2011), a book about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She maintains noconsensus.org, a website that argues that there is no scientific consensus on global warming. [2][3]
So she has no scientific training at all it seems....no mathematical training.......no peer reviewed papers establishing her as a creditable source on the subject of climate science, or indeed any science....taking a few photos of icebergs maybe?
regards
You are posting rubbish, Steven, the arch troll here @interest.co. Laframboise did not attack the science, what she did was a forensic study of those involved in the IPCC process and she discovered that the WWF has successfully infiltrated this institution to the highest level.
From Judith Curry's website.http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/19/laframboise-on-the-ipcc/
The book is well written with ample documentation (numerous hyperlinks in the kindle version). The target audience is the broader public, and the “spoiled child” metaphor provides a readable narrative for her arguments about the IPCC. Most (not all) of this material I’ve seen before, but Laframboise’s narrative makes a clear and compelling case regarding problems with the IPCC. Notably, she covers distinctly different ground from Montford’s book “The Hockey Stick Illusion.” Her final chapter is entitled “Disband the IPCC.” She makes a good case for this.
A quote from an IPCC insider: “As far as I can tell, there is no data quality assurance associated with what the IPCC is doing.”
Statement from Pachauri: “everything that we look at and take into acount in our assessments has to carry the credibility of peer-reveiwed publications, we don’t settle for anything less than that.”
From Laframboise’s Citizen Audit: “Of the 18531 references in the 2007 Climate Bible we found 5,587 – a full 30% – to be non peer-reviewed.”
The bankrupt world, so relished by the likes of Steven, is not going to be able to fund grandiose programmes to fight a non problem. But do keep trolling away, Steven, you provide amusement which helps keep interest.co's traffic up
The only reason that this second set of emails have been released and that we have the likes of Goron and OMG promoting it on forums such as this one is that a UN climate change summit is about to begin in Durban. Unbiased observers are not impressed, e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15846886
What the BEEB unbiased!
"It has also come to light that Mr Harrabin, science and environmental correspondent for the BBC received £15000 from the UEA for services rendered. Harrabin established the BBC as media of choice for climate alarmism."
If you’ve ever wondered why the BBC has been so biased towards the global warming movement, perhaps the UK Express has provided the answer. It appears that huge swathes of the BBC’s own massive pension fund is invested in companies “whose success depends on the theory [of AGW] being widely accepted.”
And
The corporation is under investigation after being inundated with complaints that its editorial coverage of climate change is biased in favour of those who say it is a man-made phenomenon.
The £8billion pension fund is likely to come under close scrutiny over its commitment to promote a low-carbon economy while struggling to reverse an estimated £2billion deficit.
Concerns are growing that BBC journalists and their bosses regard disputed scientific theory that climate change is caused by mankind as “mainstream” while huge sums of employees’ money is invested in companies whose success depends on the theory being widely accepted.
The fund, which has 58,744 members, accounts for about £8 of the £142.50 licence fee and the proportion looks likely to rise while programme budgets may have to be cut to help reduce the deficit.
The BBC is the only media organisation in Britain whose pension fund is a member of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which has more than 50 members across Europe.
Its chairman is Peter Dunscombe, also the BBC’s Head of Pensions Investment.
Prominent among its recent campaigns was a call for a “strong and binding” global agreement on climate change – one that fell on deaf ears after the UN climate summit in Copenhagen failed to reach agreement on emissions targets and a cut in greenhouse gases.
OMG, How could you write all that in less than 10 minutes? This must be a pre-written response to anyone who quotes the BBC. OK, here's the Guardian's and the Washington Post's takes on the leak and they share similar conclusions.
Actually I'm a good reader
How about this then.
A blog by a self-confessed right winger...though interestingly so was Margert Thatcher, she of course had a great intelect...
Lets look at it...220,000 emails and the best they can do is show a few paragraphs with no context.....what have we got waht 200 words of not saying much out of 100s of thousands of emails? 200 out of maybe 500k or 1million words? what a non-event....
and you talk about smears....
Then of course it gets worse....
"if you're going to favour costly, landscape-blighting, inefficient renewables over real, abundant, relatively cheap energy that works like shale gas and oil"
Shale gas doesnt scale and never will....its a dubious paybak, its expensive technology pushed by tose who own it, or have used it and cant admit its a failure or their share price will collapse over-night.
Oil is at our about peak flow about now....we are not going to get anymore out per day and even at today's flows for deacdes at a price the world's economy can afford....
Renewables like wind offr a energy return on energy invested of about 12 to 15 to 1.....ditto hyrdo, tide, geo thermal.....
Oil is dropping in that ratio...20 to 1 maybe even looking at 15 to 1 and shale and hvy oil is worse....so e need to move off it because to do so will take decades...and to do that without price spikes that will " cause food riots and starvation in the developing world" needs to be started now....though 5 years ago will probably be proven to be the last date...
"by giving over farmland (and rainforests) to biofuel production" its well recognised that these are dubious.....which raises huge issues that will defy not only the deveolping world bu the developed world not to "cause food riots and starvation"...
Wake up and smell the coffee mate.....the world is in a very weak even dangerous position.....if we dont start fixing these issues we as a global society will be overwelmed by events....
regards
I can't help feeling that we are watching a managed destruction of Europe, and out of all the destruction will emerge a United States Of Europe, set up exactly like the United States Of America.
I say this because those in power know that the people will opose such a thing. However, bring the people to their knees and they will be glad of a solution, ANY solution, that they are brainwashed into believing is the only way forward (Remember TINA - There Is No Alternative and how everyone got sucked in).
So, at a gues, i would say that by this time next year, we will see the USE (United States of Europe) monster starting to emerge.
Those pushing for a global (United States of the World), will never give up and they weild great power.
Just a hunch
Spain in race against time to avert bail-out Markets have dashed any lingering hopes of an investor honeymoon for Spain's incoming leader Mariano Rajoy, sending the IBEX index in Madrid crashing through the 8,000 level and pushing borrowing costs to toxic levels. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8907507/Spain-in-rac… Ambrose
The Germans know that for as long as they have the majority of EMU citizens preferring the Euro to a re-introduction of domestic currencies, even in the face of grinding austerity, then they, the Germans, have the whip hand over any local politician regardless of their democratic majority.
It is no different for Spain. The German grip over the Spanish budget will only be broken when there is popular demand for a return of the Peseta.
Is there popular demand for the return of the Peseta in Spain? No.
The reason is simple to understand. The aggregate purchasing power of the Euros in Spanish pockets at the moment is higher than what the aggregate purchasing power of Peseta would be.
However this balance of purchasing power in favour of the Euro cannot last for two reasons.
The first is that depression levels of austerity will radically reduce the number of Euros in the pockets of Spaniards to the point where the aggregate purchasing power of the Peseta will exceed that of the Euro.
The second reason is that if the ECB prints without limit the per unit purchasing power of the Euro will fall thereby reducing the aggregate purchasing power of the Euros in the pockets of Spaniards.
It is important to note that the aggregate purchasing power of the Euro does not have to fall below that of the Peseta for a popular demand for the return of the Peseta to happen.
The reason is that the Euro offers only austerity and no hope of organic growth. Therefore the attractions of organic growth under a return of the Peseta needs to be factored into the calculation of any tipping point.
The Spanish will, like Br'er Rabbit, cling to the Euro tar-baby for a little longer yet. The danger is that the economic justification for the exit from the Euro, when it arrives, will probably be the political oxygen of extreme forms of nationalism.
Like a drunk, those who stagger out of the Euro dictatorship ditch on the left side of the road will immediately fall into a Peseta dictatorship ditch on the right side of the road.
Jonathan
Italy is poked, what's holding done the Italian rate is the ECB I suspect, no private investors at all....I really dont think anyone else is buying. So now the investors are bailing out of spain....its rate is going expotential....and lets not forget Belgium....its rate is looking dodgy as well....
regards
Geithner puts the evil eye on big American banks
The Federal Reserve has ordered all the largest US banks to test their loan portfolios and trading books against a severe recession and a European market shock. The most severe point of the test will assume a 13% unemployment rate, and a staggering 8% decline in U.S. gross domestic product.
Arguably the US has a real un-employment rate of 16% ish today....with 9% ish admitted to.....if we are adding 5% to that 9% that suggests 21% minimum real....if not 25% which is Great Depression territory....
8% decline year on year....
That isnt the most severe IMHO.....severe is a depression at 10% per year for 3 to 6 years...the problem with only taking 8% is once the drop really starts it will set in....
I wonder if he's picked 8% on "advice" from the banks.....I wouldnt be surprised....
regards
http://www.payplan.com/debt-news/2011/11/22/the-eurozone-debt-crisis-ex…
Cool slider of per capita debt changes by country. From Andrews Slog link above.
Steven and Simon P, re: Climategate. I am surprised that anyone takes the Climate Research Unit seriously after the Harry-Read-Me file was published on the net. It is painfully obvious that Ian Harris was in a hopeless situation trying to produce meaningful conclusions for the CRU. His most fundamental problem was that the data from the temperature stations was an undecipherable mess. On top of that he was trying to understand what methodology his predecessor, Tim, had used to write the analysis software. Even if you do not know much about stats or programming it is well worth reading a few pages of the Harry-Read-Me file to feel the pain of Ian's struggle to provide something worthwhile. In the end he could not, but the CRU reported the 'hockey stick' anyway. This is the great scandal of Climategate, useless data, incompetence and lying. And you do not even need to read a peer-reviewed report to find it, you can just read it all in the researcher's own words! Page after page of it!
.....But what are all those monthly files? DON'T KNOW, UNDOCUMENTED. Wherever I look, there are data files, no info about what they are other than their names.....
It's Sunday evening, I've worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I'm hitting yet another problem that's based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity, it's just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they're found....
"Austrian" real scientists take them seriously...right wing politicos do not. Personally I'd rather trust a scientist against a right wing economist/politico contingent that have got us into the greatest mess since if not worse than the Great Depression.
And the piece quotes out of context, something it seems the right wing cherry pickers try very hard on....and fail......this is a scientist recognising he has a huge problem and has to address it.....its not brushed under the carpet.....unlike pollies with inconvienient failures....'
His commenst are there are several databases, the data differs in each so he has to use a method or algorithm to make them consistant, this is often the case with data is disparet databases.....and I bet if you look at the research papers based on these you will find this work documented on how it was done so it can be peer reviewed and repeated.....
The hockey stick has been proven by re-looking at this data and by using other data sets and methods....time and time again its found to be acceptably robust work.
regards
And while all these clowns are side tracked trying to put down the climate change argument, the world is running chronically short of minerals. Less than one generation remains of Chromium, Lead, Zinc and Tin.
We are wavering on the edge of sufficient water, with a lot of the middle east importing significant portions of their water via food.
re: #1 - so many - indeed most economists - make the mistake of not understanding bi-directional (feedback) flows in economies. Sooooo......Europe slumps, this slows China (how much is a big question), which then feedbacks to worsen the European situation (as Europe has become quite reliant on Chinese economic strength), which then feedbacks to weaken China, and so on.........................
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