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Going To Hell In A Very Stylish Handbasket.

"El diablo sabes mas por viejo que por diablo" - old Mexican proverb

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Achtung! Das machine ist nicht für gerfingerpoken und mittengraben. Ist too easen für schnappen der pringenwerk, blowenfusen, und poppencorken mit spitzensparken. Ist nicht für gewerken by dast dumkopfen - das rubbernecken sightseeren ban keepen das hands in der pocketsen, relaxen und vatchen das blinkenlights.

links:
Grandfather Economic Report
Tom Paine
The Nation
RGE Monitor
The Economist
Landover Baptist Church
The Onion
Ernie's House of Whoop Ass

The European and Aussie press is all over this story, but the US press is focused on gas prices and (of all things) Mugabe. This is one of those stories that is super huge, but nobody is talking about it.

If this story is true, and the International Monetary Fund does indeed force an audit on the USA Federal Reserve, oh, how the mighty have fallen! For if memory serves me right, the USA has been the undisputed master of the IMF since it's inception, and many of the regional economic and currency collapses such as happened throughout Latin America in the 80's and 90's can be laid directly at the feet of the IMF, who demanded fiscally absurd policies and actions from those nations that were guaranteed to collapse their economies and open their resources to American corporations.

The problem is that we've overspent ourselves into a massive hole, and printed so much money to keep that hole going that inflation is now out of control. More of the same (spending and printing) is a Weimar/Zimbabwe solution. From TODAY's news headlines - the irony and willful blindness is everywhere:

"Der Spiegel reports that the IMF is threatening to seriously study the accounts of America, something President George Bush is determined to prevent at least while he is in the White House, informing the IMF that it can begin its investigation but cannot complete it until he leaves office."

Well, no duh. If it was offcial how Dubya and the Boyz have looted the country, there might be impeachment talk, mobs in the street, even expensive investigations... that's why they hired Ben to begin with, to take the fall.

IMF finally knocks on Uncle Sam's door

by David Hirst, TheAge Australia

IMAGINE the Reserve Bank of Australia, concerned that its friends in the city of Sydney (but perhaps Melbourne) who, having wallowed in wealth all their adult lives, were no longer gainfully employable and their wildly extravagant lifestyles were in danger, and, having the powers to intervene in the market, decided to do just that on their behalf.

Imagine them offering to enter the market and buy shares that would prop up the foolish gambles of the bankers, gambles they had encouraged them, until recently, to take by providing them with cheap money.

On top of that, they told this group they would provide hundreds of billions of dollars in credits to these same profiteers on the grounds they were so big and important to the economy they were indeed too big to fail.

Then, imagine, despite pouring untold taxpayers money into stocks and allowing their cronies access to vast sums, the system continued to fail. So they announced they would need greater power and with it more secrecy.

For its growing band of critics has, perhaps unwittingly and in the interest of public good, this has become the principal function of the US Federal Reserve.

If this was to happen in Australia the International Monetary Fund would be hammering at the door of the Reserve Bank. But Australia does not have a President's Working Group on Financial Markets, commonly known as the Plunge Protection Team, that allows the US Government to prop up the markets by buying shares. But to imagine the IMF investigating the US financial system is unthinkable, or was. But, at the weekend, Der Spiegel reported that the IMF would conduct a full investigation into virtually every aspect of it.

Der Spiegel wrote that the IMF had "informed" Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke of plans that would have been unheard of in the past: a general examination of the US financial system. The IMF's board of directors has ruled that a so-called Financial Sector Assessment Program is to be carried out in the US.

This, Der Spiegel wrote, "is nothing less than an X-ray of the entire US financial system", adding that "no Fed chief in US history has been forced to submit to the kind of humiliation that Ben Bernanke is facing".

The fact that the IMF is knocking on the very doors of its parents and waving legal papers about who lost the house, the car and the kids will, if the past is anything to go by, be buried in the US by pom-pom waving on CNBC telling all what a great time it is to buy.

But the news that the US Fed has now lost its last vestige of credibility did not end with the German report.

The Telegraph from London weighed in, following the Royal Bank of Scotland's statement last week (also lost on the US public) that it was time to head for the crags, and reported Barclays Capital's closely watched Global Outlook analysis that said US headline inflation would hit 5.5% by August and the Fed would have to raise interest rates six times by the end of next year to prevent a wage spiral.

If the Fed hesitates, the bond markets will take matters into their own hands. "This is the first test for central banks in 30 years and they have fluffed it," the report found. "They have zero credibility, and the Fed is negative if that's possible. It has lost all credibility."

Der Spiegel reports that the IMF is threatening to seriously study the accounts of America, something President George Bush is determined to prevent at least while he is in the White House, informing the IMF that it can begin its investigation but cannot complete it until he leaves office.

But the reckoning will come and it will shine a light in places where light has been desperately wanted for all too long.

"As part of the assessment," Der Spiegel said, "the Fed, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the major investment banks, mortgage banks and hedge funds will be asked to hand over confidential documents to the IMF team. They will be required to answer the questions they are asked during interviews. Their databases will be subjected to so-called stress tests - worst-case scenarios designed to simulate the broader effects of failures of other major financial institutions or a continuing decline of the dollar."

Under its by-laws, the IMF is charged with the supervision of the international monetary system. About two-thirds of IMF members - but never the US - have already endured this painful procedure.

Australian banks have been buffeted by the storms generated in the US, but strict standards enforced by a Reserve Bank that is independent of private banking interests has prevented such excesses, as vouched by their performance as compared with the broker-trader banks and the retail banks of the US. Shares in once-massive banks and brokerage firms have been stripped by as much as 70%, 80% and even almost 100%. We are taking a trim while US banks are getting a full haircut and shave.

Part of the problem is the US media, which has for so long pretended that all is or soon will be well, a bottom is near, a recovery awaits in the second half of the financial year that will sweep away all problems, sown over decades, in a new expansion, a cycle that is ordained to come. The latest fantasy is that with the quarter's end, new profit figures will invigorate the bull, which will seed fertility.

The next President will be handed at least two wars gone horrible wrong and, by then, an economy in similar shape. The bull will have to be a particularly fertile beast.

Der Spiegel reports: "When the final report on the risks of the US financial system is released in 2010 - and it is likely to cause a stir internationally - only one of the people in positions of responsibility today will still be in office: Ben Bernanke."

While Der Spiegel claims that IMF intervention (my expression) is a humiliation for the US, the real significance may be that this is another blow to American exceptionism.

While the examination is far reaching, and deeply intrusive, Canada, Britain, Italy, indeed two-thirds of IMF members, have participated in the program. The new President will soon discover the age of US exceptionism is over.

Meanwhile the US markets have entered bear territory, the economy has done likewise and we are at the beginning of a long and tortuous process before rebuilding can even commence.

...and this is just residential real estate. Wait until the stripmall loans start going belly up...

The growing belief that if gas price goes down prices across the board will drop, is naive. Here's why (from an insightful analysis from the excellent Monty Guild):

IT IS NOT THE CASE THAT FOOD AND ENERGY ARE THE SOLE OR MOST IMPORTANT DRIVERS OF INFLATION TODAY.

INFLATION DRIVER #1: THE LONG GLOBAL ECONOMIC EXPANSION CREATES INFLATIONARY TENDENCIES IN AN ECONOMY

APART FROM THE DEVELOPED WORLD, EVERYONE IS STILL GROWING…AND SOME BIG COUNTRIES ARE GROWING VERY FAST.

PROLONGED AND INCREASING ECONOMIC GROWTH STIMULATES INFLATIONARY EVENTS IN THE ECONOMY.

IN BOOM TIMES, PRICE INCREASES ARE EASY TO PASS THROUGH. THIS LEADS TO PROFIT MARGIN EXPANSION.

INFLATION DRIVER #2: GOVERNMENTS ARE QUICK TO ADDRESS THE DOWNSIDE RISKS TO THE BANKS AND THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM. THIS IS DUE TO A NUMBER OF FACTORS, BUT PRIMARILY IT IS DUE TO A CHANGE IN THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GOVERNMENTS REGARDING BANK SOLVENCY AND ECONOMIC GROWTH.

SIMULTANEOUSLY, THEY HAVE BECOME SLOWER TO MOVE TO STOP INFLATION FROM BECOMING EMBEDDED IN THE SYSTEM.

MORAL HAZARD

INFLATION DRIVER #3: GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES

INFLATION DRIVER #4: PRICE CONTROLS

INFLATION DRIVER #5: TARIFFS

INFLATION DRIVER #6: GLOBAL COMMODITY DEMAND IS GROWING FASTER THAN NEW SUPPLIES CAN BE ADDED

INFLATION DRIVER #7: THE FUTURE SUPPLY OF SOME COMMODITIES, AND THE INFRASTRUCTURE TO DELIVER OTHER COMMODITIES, IS LIMITED. THIS IS ANOTHER DRIVER OF LONG-TERM PRICE INFLATION.

INFLATION DRIVER #8: WAGE INFLATION

... and in doing so, threw the ordinary American citizen to the wolves. They're deliberately scuttling the ship so the Fat Rats can offload their loot.

Socialized Medicine: Bad, Socialized Bailouts of Wall Street FatCats: Good

Notice who the head of Goldman Sachs, one of the Fed Owners, was in 2005 - that's right, our keeper of the loot, current Secretary of the Treasury, Hanky Panky Paulson!:

Fed aided Wall Street to avert "contagion"

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Federal Reserve was scrambling to prevent a "contagion" from infecting the nation's financial system when it took unprecedented actions to back a Bear Stearns rescue package and provide emergency loans to big Wall Street firms.

The Federal Reserve released documents Friday providing insights into its private deliberations in March that led to those controversial decisions. The Fed's actions came at a time when credit and financial problems were intensifying, threatening to paralyze the entire financial system and plunge the economy into a recession.

Given the fragile conditions of the financial markets at that time, the Fed said it felt compelled to intervene because an "immediate failure" of Bear Stearns would bring about an "expected contagion."

[Note: fuck free markets, fuck investors, fuck hard working joes and janes, fuck the dollar - let's save Big Wall Street Firms! OLIGARCHY FOREVER!]

The reason the framers insisted on the citizenry have the right to bear arms was to give them a way to protect themselves from all threats, including a government that would subjugate them!

Supreme Court says Americans have right to guns

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Americans can keep guns at home for self-defense, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday in the justices' first-ever pronouncement on the meaning of gun rights under the Second Amendment.

The court's 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia's ban on handguns. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most federal firearms restrictions intact.

District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty responded with a plan to require residents of the nation's capital to register their handguns. "More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence," Fenty said.

[Note: bullshit - studies show over and over that communities that encourage legally armed citizenry show a marked DROP in gun-related violence. Criminals think twice if they believe a victim and/or bystander has the ability to blow their fucking heads off.]

The court had not conclusively interpreted the Second Amendment since its ratification in 1791. The amendment reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

The basic issue for the justices was whether the amendment protects an individual's right to own guns no matter what, or whether that right is somehow tied to service in a state militia.

Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia said that an individual right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.

""They want to increase the price without the consumer realizing..... manufacturers are "hoping you won't notice"."

On the plus side of inflation, we'll have forced portion control. On the minus side, corporations are just trying to bamboozle us some more in order to boost profits. Again. As always.

US manufacturers beat inflation by selling less for same price

WASHINGTON (AFP) - As Americans struggle with soaring fuel and food prices, it must come as a relief that the cost of some items in their shopping baskets are staying the same. Or are they?

While the price of some processed food may be staying put, the amount Americans get for their money is surreptitiously shrinking as manufacturers shrink quantity sizes.

"There's a grocery shrink ray that has been unleashed on supermarkets across America," Ben Popken of Consumerist.com, a consumer information website, told AFP.

"Manufacturers have kicked up the stun rate of the shrink gun this year because of rising oil prices and the rising costs of commodities like grain and milk," Popken told AFP.

Hellmann's mayonnaise -- a vital ingredient in the egg- or tuna-salad sandwiches that feature prominently in US bag lunches -- has seen its jar trimmed from 32 ounces to 30 ounces, Dean Mastrojohn, the US spokesman for Unilever, the global conglomerate that makes Hellmann's, told AFP.

Country Crock margarine tubs were reduced by around six percent, from three pounds to two pounds 13 ounces, and Breyers ice cream by 14 percent from 56 ounces to 48 ounces, Mastrojohn said.

"Package size reduction is mainly focused on the US, and is only one of our responses to dramatic input cost increases," he said.

Seriously - nobody is paying any real attention, nobody is willing to take any real action. If we truly are at the tipping point, we are completely fucked.

NASA warming scientist: 'This is the last chance'

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Exactly 20 years after warning America about global warming, a top NASA scientist said the situation has gotten so bad that the world's only hope is drastic action.

James Hansen told Congress on Monday that the world has long passed the "dangerous level" for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and needs to get back to 1988 levels. He said Earth's atmosphere can only stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises.

"We're toast if we don't get on a very different path," Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences who is sometimes called the godfather of global warming science, told The Associated Press. "This is the last chance."

Oh, wait, he died from a heart attack... never mind... Anyways, take that, yo-yo fad diets! Grandma was right - big breakfast, medium lunch, small dinner, and not too much fat or sweets. Boom, baby!

Lose weight on the carb-packed "big breakfast" diet

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - To lose weight and keep it off, eat a big breakfast packed with carbohydrates and protein, then follow a low-carb, low-calorie diet the rest of the day, a small study suggests.

The "big breakfast" diet works, researchers say, because it controls appetite and satisfies cravings for sweets and starches. It's also healthier than popular low-carb diets because it allows people to eat more fiber- and vitamin-rich fruit, according to Dr. Daniela Jakubowicz, of the Hospital de Clinicas in Caracas, Venezuela.

She told the Endocrine Society's annual meeting in San Francisco that she's successfully used this diet in her patients for more than 15 years.

"Most weight loss studies have determined that a very low carbohydrate diet is not a good method to reduce weight," Jakubowicz noted in a written statement issued by the Endocrine Society. "It exacerbates the craving for carbohydrates and slows metabolism. As a result, after a short period of weight loss, there is a quick return to obesity."

With scientists from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Jakubowicz and her colleagues compared their high-carb and protein "big breakfast" diet with a strict low-carb diet in 94 obese, sedentary women. Both diets were low in fat and total calories but differed markedly in their carbohydrate content.

The 46 women on the very-low-carb diet consumed 1,085 calories a day, consisting of 17 grams of carbohydrates, 51 grams of protein and 78 grams of fat. The smallest meal was breakfast, at 290 calories. For breakfast, the low-carb dieters were allowed only 7 grams of carbohydrates, such as bread, fruit, cereal and milk, and they could eat just 12 grams of protein, such as meat and eggs, in the morning.

In contrast, the 48 women on the "big breakfast diet" consumed 1,240 calories a day. Although lower in total fat (46 grams) than the other diet, the big breakfast diet had higher daily allotments of carbs (97 grams) and protein (93 grams). Dieters ate a 610-calorie breakfast, consisting of 58 grams of carbs, 47 grams of protein and 22 fat grams.

For lunch, they got 395 calories, made up of 34 grams of carbs, 28 grams of protein and 13 grams of fat. Dinner -- the smallest meal of the day -- was made up of 235 calories (5, 18 and 26 grams of carbs, protein, and fat, respectively).

At four months, there was no significant weight-loss difference between the two diet groups. Women on the strict low-carb diet shed an average of about 28 pounds, while women on the big breakfast diet lost nearly 23 pounds, on average.

But at eight months, the low-carb dieters regained an average of 18 pounds, while the big breakfast dieters continued to lose weight, shedding another 16.5 pounds.

Those on the big breakfast diet lost more than 21 percent of their body weight, compared with just 4.5 percent for the low-carb group.

How to Find Happiness: 7 Timeless Tips from the Last 2500 Years

by Henrik Edberg September 26th, 2007

What do you want?

A great job?

A fulfilling relationship?

Go sailing around the Pacific for a few years in your very own luxurious boat?

Or just to get along better with yourself?

Perhaps you want one of more of those things. But beneath those and many common wishes, if you take it a step further, often lies a wish to find happiness.

One good way to find a few useful, life-improving and time-tested tips is to look back. To look way back through history. To find ideas that have arisen in minds over and over the last few thousand years. Here are seven such ideas about how you can find happiness. Maybe you´ll find them helpful.

1. You choose.

Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.

Abraham Lincoln

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

The world of those who are happy is different from the world of those who are not.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

How your view yourself and your world are conscious choices and habits. The lens you choose to view everything through determines how you will interpret what is happening. And from your interpretation you act. And all of this becomes your life.

You can choose to find happiness in small, everyday things. You can choose to interpret what happens in a positive way. Or in a negative way.

And your choices controls much of how much happiness your will find and create in your life.

2. Focus on the present, not yesterday or tomorrow.

When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.

Helen Keller

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.

James Oppenheim

You only have now. And now. And now. Yesterday is a memory and you cannot change it. Tomorrow is just a fantasy in your mind right now. So live more in the now, focus on the present moment and today. Think and worry less about yesterday and tomorrow. Otherwise you might miss a great deal of happiness that is available to you right now.

3. Don’t forget to be grateful.

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.

Frederick Keonig

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

Marcel Proust

One of the simplest and quickest ways to turn a negative and sour mood into a more positive one is to be grateful.

A few things you can feel gratitude for are for instance: The sunshine and the weather. Your roof. Your health. A good TV-show, a movie or a song. Your friends, family, co-workers and just about anyone walking down the street.

Just try if for a minute and see how it changes how you feel. And it’s a win/win solution. You feel great because you are grateful about your world and the people you are grateful for feel great too because they feel appreciated. So don´t forget about gratitude or you may forget about the happiness that is already in your life.

4. Help someone else find happiness.

Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

Buddha

If you want happiness for an hour — take a nap.

If you want happiness for a day — go fishing.

If you want happiness for a year — inherit a fortune.

If you want happiness for a lifetime — help someone else.

Chinese Proverb

Happiness is like a kiss. You must share it to enjoy it.

Bernard Meltzer

This is certainly one of the most popular ideas I’ve found about happiness. And it might sound clichéd and empty. But it works very well. When you make someone else happy – by, for example, helping them with something - you can sense, see, feel and hear it. And that happy feeling flows back to you. And then, if you’d like, you can boost you own ego by thinking something like: ”Wow, I really made him/her happy!”.

And since the Law of Reciprocity is strong there is another upside. People will feel like giving back to you. Or they might feel like helping/sharing it with someone else. And so the two – or more – of you keep spreading the happiness.

5. Get rid of a couple of your less valuable desires.

If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.

Epicurus

You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.

Eric Hoffer

That man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.

Henry David Thoreau

If you want less instead of more, more, more then your desires are more likely to be fulfilled. And if you throw away a few of those desires that you may not really want or need that much anyway you’ll probably start to feel less stressed and worried. This is a calmer and better place to be to enjoy your day (tip #2) and to take the time discover the happiness that is already in your life (tip #3).

6. Do what you like to do.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

Albert Schweitzer

Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

A pretty obvious one. But it’s still easy to trap yourself into doing what you don’t want to for many, many hours. And seldom do what you really love to do. And I guess this one ties into tip #1. You may not be able to choose to do what you want to do right now. Or for many hours each day or week. But you almost always have a choice to do more of what you really want to do. There is always time. Or time you can free up. You have a choice.

7. Or at least do something.

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

Benjamin Disraeli

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.

So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain

One of the funniest, most insightful guys on the planet died. I've seen George Carlin perform many times, and been a fan since I was a kid in the 70's. Here's the words you still can't say on network television:

"Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, CockSucker, MotherFucker, and Tits"

Well, you can say "piss" sometimes. In context. And only if it's a "hard-hitting, gritty cop show".

George Carlin mourned as counterculture hero

LOS ANGELES, Associated Press - Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television. Some People Are Stupid. Stuff. People I Can Do Without.

George Carlin, who died of heart failure Sunday at 71, leaves behind not only a series of memorable routines, but a legal legacy: His most celebrated monologue, a frantic, informed riff on those infamous seven words, led to a Supreme Court decision on broadcasting offensive language.

The counterculture hero's jokes also targeted things such as misplaced shame, religious hypocrisy and linguistic quirks ? why, he once asked, do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?

Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon complaining of chest pain and died later that evening, said his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He had performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.

"He was a genius and I will miss him dearly," Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, told The Associated Press.

The actor Ben Stiller called Carlin "a hugely influential force in stand-up comedy. He had an amazing mind, and his humor was brave, and always challenging us to look at ourselves and question our belief systems, while being incredibly entertaining. He was one of the greats."

Carlin constantly breached the accepted boundaries of comedy and language, particularly with his routine on the "Seven Words" ? all of which are taboo on broadcast TV to this day.

When he uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested on charges of disturbing the peace, freed on $150 bail and exonerated when a Wisconsin judge dismissed the case, saying it was indecent but citing free speech and the lack of any disturbance.

When the words were later played on a New York radio station, they resulted in a 1978 Supreme Court ruling upholding the government's authority to sanction stations for broadcasting offensive language during hours when children might be listening.

"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," he told The Associated Press earlier this year.

Despite his reputation as unapologetically irreverent, Carlin was a television staple through the decades, serving as host of the "Saturday Night Live" debut in 1975 ? noting on his Web site that he was "loaded on cocaine all week long" ? and appearing some 130 times on "The Tonight Show."

He produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a few TV shows and appeared in several movies, from his own comedy specials to "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" in 1989 ? a testament to his range from cerebral satire and cultural commentary to downright silliness (sometimes hitting all points in one stroke).

"Why do they lock gas station bathrooms?" he once mused. "Are they afraid someone will clean them?"

In one of his most famous routines, Carlin railed against euphemisms he said have become so widespread that no one can simply "die."

"'Older' sounds a little better than 'old,' doesn't it?," he said. "Sounds like it might even last a little longer. ... I'm getting old. And it's OK. Because thanks to our fear of death in this country I won't have to die ? I'll 'pass away.' Or I'll 'expire,' like a magazine subscription. If it happens in the hospital they'll call it a 'terminal episode.' The insurance company will refer to it as 'negative patient care outcome.' And if it's the result of malpractice they'll say it was a 'therapeutic misadventure.'"

Carlin won four Grammy Awards for best spoken comedy album and was nominated for five Emmys. On Tuesday, it was announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, which will be presented Nov. 10 in Washington and broadcast on PBS.

"Nobody was funnier than George Carlin," said Judd Apatow, director of recent hit comedies such as "Knocked Up" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin." "I spent half my childhood in my room listening to his records experiencing pure joy. And he was as kind as he was funny."

Carlin started his career on the traditional nightclub circuit in a coat and tie, pairing with Burns to spoof TV game shows, news and movies. Perhaps in spite of the outlaw soul, "George was fairly conservative when I met him," said Burns, describing himself as the more left-leaning of the two. It was a degree of separation that would reverse when they came upon Lenny Bruce, the original shock comic, in the early '60s.

"We were working in Chicago, and we went to see Lenny, and we were both blown away," Burns said, recalling the moment as the beginning of the end for their collaboration (though not their close friendship). "It was an epiphany for George. The comedy we were doing at the time wasn't exactly groundbreaking, and George knew then that he wanted to go in a different direction."

That direction would make Carlin as much a social commentator and philosopher as comedian, a position he would relish through the years.

"The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things ? bad language and whatever ? it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition," Carlin told the AP in a 2004 interview. "There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. ... It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have."

Carlin was born on May 12, 1937, and grew up in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, raised by a single mother. After dropping out of school in the ninth grade, he joined the Air Force in 1954. He received three court-martials and numerous disciplinary punishments, according to his official Web site.

While in the Air Force he started working as an off-base disc jockey at a radio station in Shreveport, La., and after receiving a general discharge in 1957, took an announcing job at WEZE in Boston.

"Fired after three months for driving mobile news van to New York to buy pot," his Web site says.

From there he went on to a job on the night shift as a deejay at a radio station in Fort Worth, Texas. Carlin also worked variety of temporary jobs, including carnival organist and marketing director for a peanut brittle.

In 1960, he left with $300 and Burns, a Texas radio buddy, for Hollywood to pursue a nightclub career as comedy team Burns & Carlin. His first break came just months later when the duo appeared on Jack Paar's "Tonight Show."

Carlin said he hoped to emulate his childhood hero, Danny Kaye, the kindly, rubber-faced comedian who ruled over the decade Carlin grew up in ? the 1950s ? with a clever but gentle humor reflective of the times.

It didn't work for him, and the pair broke up by 1962.

"I was doing superficial comedy entertaining people who didn't really care: Businessmen, people in nightclubs, conservative people. And I had been doing that for the better part of 10 years when it finally dawned on me that I was in the wrong place doing the wrong things for the wrong people," Carlin reflected recently as he prepared for his 14th HBO special, "It's Bad For Ya."

Eventually Carlin ditched the buttoned-up look for his trademark beard, ponytail and all-black attire.

But even with his decidedly adult-comedy bent, Carlin never lost his childlike sense of mischief, even voicing kid-friendly projects like episodes of the TV show "Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends" and the spacey Volkswagen bus Fillmore in the 2006 Pixar hit "Cars."

Carlin's first wife, Brenda, died in 1997. He is survived by wife Sally Wade; daughter Kelly Carlin McCall; son-in-law Bob McCall; brother Patrick Carlin; and sister-in-law Marlene Carlin.

Why do I feel like saying, "Well, duh."?

Everything seemingly is spinning out of control

By ALAN FRAM and EILEEN PUTMAN, Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON - Is everything spinning out of control?

Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.

Horatio Alger, twist in your grave.

The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country's sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance.

The sense of helplessness is even reflected in this year's presidential election. Each contender offers a sense of order — and hope. Republican John McCain promises an experienced hand in a frightening time. Democrat Barack Obama promises bright and shiny change, and his large crowds believe his exhortation, "Yes, we can."

Even so, a battered public seems discouraged by the onslaught of dispiriting things. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll says a barrel-scraping 17 percent of people surveyed believe the country is moving in the right direction. That is the lowest reading since the survey began in 2003.

An ABC News-Washington Post survey put that figure at 14 percent, tying the low in more than three decades of taking soundings on the national mood.

"It is pretty scary," said Charles Truxal, 64, a retired corporate manager in Rochester, Minn. "People are thinking things are going to get better, and they haven't been. And then you go hide in your basement because tornadoes are coming through. If you think about things, you have very little power to make it change."

Recent natural disasters around the world dwarf anything afflicting the U.S. Consider that more than 69,000 people died in the China earthquake, and that 78,000 were killed and 56,000 missing from the Myanmar cyclone.

Americans need do no more than check the weather, look in their wallets or turn on the news for their daily reality check on a world gone haywire.

Floods engulf Midwestern river towns. Is it global warming, the gradual degradation of a planet's weather that man seems powerless to stop or just a freakish late-spring deluge?

It hardly matters to those in the path. Just ask the people of New Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina. They are living in a city where, 1,000 days after the storm, entire neighborhoods remain abandoned, a national embarrassment that evokes disbelief from visitors.

Food is becoming scarcer and more expensive on a worldwide scale, due to increased consumption in growing countries such as China and India and rising fuel costs. That can-do solution to energy needs — turning corn into fuel — is sapping fields of plenty once devoted to crops that people need to eat. Shortages have sparked riots. In the U.S., rice prices tripled and some stores rationed the staple.

Residents of the nation's capital and its suburbs repeatedly lose power for extended periods as mere thunderstorms rumble through. In California, leaders warn people to use less water in the unrelenting drought.

Want to get away from it all? The weak U.S. dollar makes travel abroad forbiddingly expensive. To add insult to injury, some airlines now charge to check luggage.

Want to escape on the couch? A writers' strike halted favorite TV shows for half a season. The newspaper on the table may soon be a relic of the Internet age. Just as video stores are falling by the wayside as people get their movies online or in the mail.

But there's always sports, right?

The moorings seem to be coming loose here, too.

Baseball stars Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens stand accused of enhancing their heroics with drugs. Basketball referees are suspected of cheating.

Stay tuned for less than pristine tales from the drug-addled Tour de France and who knows what from the Summer Olympics.

It's not the first time Americans have felt a loss of control.

Alger, the dime-novel author whose heroes overcame adversity to gain riches and fame, played to similar anxieties when the U.S. was becoming an industrial society in the late 1800s.

American University historian Allan J. Lichtman notes that the U.S. has endured comparable periods and worse, including the economic stagflation (stagnant growth combined with inflation) and Iran hostage crisis of 1980; the dawn of the Cold War, the Korean War and the hysterical hunts for domestic Communists in the late 1940s and early 1950s; and the Depression of the 1930s.

"All those periods were followed by much more optimistic periods in which the American people had their confidence restored," he said. "Of course, that doesn't mean it will happen again."

Each period also was followed by a change in the party controlling the White House.

This period has seen intense interest in the presidential primaries, especially the Democrats' five-month duel between Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Records were shattered by voters showing up at polling places, yearning for a voice in who will next guide the country as it confronts the uncontrollable.

Never mind that their views of their current leaders are near rock bottom, reflecting a frustration with Washington's inability to solve anything. President Bush barely gets the approval of three in 10 people, and it's even worse for the Democratic-led Congress.

Why the vulnerability? After all, this is the 21st century, not a more primitive past when little in life was assured. Surely people know how to fix problems now.

Now seriously, what kind of mindless busybody bullshit is this? The dad, with full custody, is not allowed to keep the kid from going off on some dumbass fieldtrip? Is the judge gonna come over and do the kid's chores, too?

Court overturns father's grounding of 12-year-old

OTTAWA (AFP) - A Canadian court has lifted a 12-year-old girl's grounding, overturning her father's punishment for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet, his lawyer said Wednesday.

The girl had taken her father to Quebec Superior Court after he refused to allow her to go on a school trip for chatting on websites he tried to block, and then posting "inappropriate" pictures of herself online using a friend's computer.

The father's lawyer Kim Beaudoin said the disciplinary measures were for the girl's "own protection" and is appealing the ruling.

"She's a child," Beaudoin told AFP. "At her age, children test their limits and it's up to their parents to set boundaries."

"I started an appeal of the decision today to reestablish parental authority, and to ensure that this case doesn't set a precedent," she said. Otherwise, said Beaudoin, "parents are going to be walking on egg shells from now on."

"I think most children respect their parents and would never go so far as to take them to court, but it's clear that some would and we have to ask ourselves how far this will go."

According to court documents, the girl's Internet transgression was just the latest in a string of broken house rules. Even so, Justice Suzanne Tessier found her punishment too severe.

CARTOON LAWS AND THE ECONOMY

by Paul Petillo, Managing Editor, BlueCollarDollar.com

Cartoon Law I.

“Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation.” If the economy steps off a cliff even as we spend countless hours listening to educated bankers and economists tell us that the near future looks fine, you can expect the following to happen. The President takes the microphone and declares, while loitering midair, offering such tidbits of wisdom about the beneficial effects his stimulus package this or his tax cut that, until he chances to look down. And you know what happens next.

Cartoon Law II.

“Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter intervenes suddenly.” Our banks and financial institutions have experienced this law firsthand, Lehman Brothers Holdings among the latest. Hitting the cartoon telephone pole at full speed is, as this Law II suggests, the only way to stop forward motion with any success. There is the comic slide down the pool immediately following the impact which can only mean two things: financial institutions will see stars whirling around their collective heads for the near future and, the pole is now ready for the next hapless character to crash into it.

Cartoon Law III.

“Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation conforming to its perimeter.” Each time oil prices spike, they leave major corporations running for the exits, creating their own cookie-cutter holes as they try to get ahead of the problem that no one is sure is a problem. So instead of leaving by the door, they exit through a wall, evidently not a solid enough surface to allow Cartoon Law II to come into play because the easy solutions have long since been kicked to the curb. Now we are at the mercy of speculators who apparently have little regard for laws of supply and demand.

Cartoon Law IV.

“The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken.” This is my favorite axiom of all. Who among us has not seen the Federal Reserve do this with each rate cut? And now as Fed chairman Ben Bernanke wonders if inflation is worth controlling even if there is no wage-price spiral evident (an inflationary benchmark that suggests the worker will have the ability to demand higher pay because things cost more and the employer, reluctantly will give this wage to the worker creating a spiral downward dragging the whole of the economy with it) as he races down the stairs. Only Cartoon Law IV is a waste of time. The priceless nature of the economy, the object hurtling through space in this instance, falls victim to the inevitable comic result: the attempt to catch it is unsuccessful.

Cartoon Law V.

“All principles of gravity are negated by fear.” I offer last week’s trading as proof that investors can spin their feet so quickly that they do not touch the ground while any news good or bad propels most of them straight up a flag pole. These days many traders are left scratching their heads as they realize that just the sound of the unknown can change the direction of the market dramatically.

Cartoon Law VI.

“As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once.” You know this one as the cloud of dust and debris brawl, to be witnessed as the candidates begin their battle for the White House. With the economy hanging in the balance, the next five months should provide numerous occasions of spinning and throttling as neither candidate can pinpoint where the nation is right now and offer a plan of where we should be.

Cartoon Law VII.

“Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel entrances; others cannot. This trompe l'oeil inconsistency” has played itself out to great effect in housing. Instead of the imaginary tunnel, the economy has painted a door and allowed millions of Americans to pass through but when it attempted to follow, the surface was once again solid. This trick surface has left many wondering why so few pockets of economic malaise can have effected so many. Many neighborhoods have been devastated but far more are hanging on, albeit with some difficulty and still more are doing just fine. But the problem we face relies on the ability to balance savings and spending, neither of which evidently can occur at the same time.

Cartoon Law VIII.

“Cartoon cats have more than the traditional nine lives.” They become like water snapping back to whatever they were prior to their mishap, even assuming the shape of the container if they happen to find themselves in one. Henry Paulson believes this to be true and no matter how many times the economy can be “decimated, spliced, splayed, accordion-pleated, spindled, or disassembled, it cannot be destroyed.” Mr. Paulson knows what the economy needs: more self-regulation and perhaps a little agency consolidation. Then, after regaining its shape, the economy can shake off these minor set-backs (weak dollar, global slowdowns, and commodity speculation) and it is back to business as usual.

Cartoon Law IX.

“Necessity plus Will provokes spontaneous generation.” Look in the mail. First, you receive the notice of when the stimulus check will arrive – giving you an opportunity to plan how and where or even if you will spend it. This opens the door to the “controversial pocket theory” which, “suggests these objects are drawn from unseen recesses of a character's costume, or from a storehouse immediately off-screen” or borrowed directly from what you will owe at some point in the future, taxes that will need to repaid. And then, as if by magic, the check shows up that “merely defers the question of how any absolutely apt object is instantaneously available”.

Cartoon Law X

“For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite re-vengeance. This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also applies to the physical world at large. For that reason, we need the relief of watching it happen to a duck instead.” Only now, so many more people are affected by the unbridled capitalism of the few that when revenge is eventually enacted, it often comes too late to matter.

These laws were borrowed liberally from “Elementary Education” by Mark O'Donnell (Knopf (1985) in the hope that when you encounter these situations, you may fall on the right side of cartoon law.

Like 90% of Americans, I'll be holding my nose and pulling a lever come November...

Plummeting sales of high-end RV's have consistently and reliably led hard economic times. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing - do we really need any more of these on the highways?:

Winnebago profit skids 73 pct in 3Q

DES MOINES, Iowa, Associated Press - Winnebago Industries Inc. said Friday its third quarter profit skidded 73 percent as high gas prices, tighter credit and a soft economy drive motor homes sales lower industrywide.

Damned straight. I want to see all these geniuses with their fuzzy math and their "marked to model" pull-it-outta-yer-ass "notional valuation" shell games, well, frankly, getting ass-raped in the slammer.

[Hedge fund manager Matthew Tannin contemplating what his prison bitch name will be]

Charges at Bear Stearns linked to subprime debacle

NEW YORK, Associated Press - Two former Bear Stearns managers were arrested Thursday on securities fraud and other charges linked to the collapse of a hedge fund that bet heavily on subprime mortgages before the market collapsed, federal authorities said.

Matthew Tannin was taken into custody outside his New Jersey home on Thursday morning and Ralph Cioffi was arrested at his New York City home, the FBI said. They became the first executives to be charged criminally in the wake of the subprime market debacle.

Yet the fall out is beginning to spread.

The FBI announced Thursday that it had arrested about 300 real estate industry players since March — including dozens over the last two days — in its crackdown on incidents of mortgage fraud that have contributed to the country's housing crisis.

You just gotta wonder how many knuckledragging supremacists are going to use this to justify eugenics...

What the Gay Brain Looks Like

Time Magazine - What makes people gay? Biologists may never get a complete answer to that question, but researchers in Sweden have found one more sign that the answer lies in the structure of the brain.

Scientists at the Karolinska Institute studied brain scans of 90 gay and straight men and women, and found that the size of the two symmetrical halves of the brains of gay men more closely resembled those of straight women than they did straight men. In heterosexual women, the two halves of the brain are more or less the same size. In heterosexual men, the right hemisphere is slightly larger. Scans of the brains of gay men in the study, however, showed that their hemispheres were relatively symmetrical, like those of straight women, while the brains of homosexual women were asymmetrical like those of straight men. The number of nerves connecting the two sides of the brains of gay men were also more like the number in heterosexual women than in straight men.

Just what these brain differences mean is still not clear. Ever since 1991, when Simon LeVay first documented differences in the hypothalamus of gay and straight men, researchers have been struggling to understand what causes these differences to occur. Until now, the brain regions that scientists have come to believe play a role in sexual orientation have been related to either reproduction or sexuality. The Swedish study, however, is the first to find differences in parts of the brain not normally involved in reproduction - the denser network of nerve connections, for example, was found in the amygdala, known as the emotional center of the brain. "The big question has always been, if the brains of gay men are different, or feminized, as earlier research suggests," says Dr. Eric Vilain, professor of human genetics at University of California Los Angeles, "then is it just limited to sexual preference or are there other regions that are gender atypical in gay males? For the first time, in this study it looks like there are regions of the brain not directly involved in sexuality that seem to be feminized in gay males."

Vilain, who studies the genetic factors behind sexuality and sexual orientation, notes that it may turn out that the brains of gay men possess only some 'feminized' structures, while retaining some masculine ones, and this is reflected in how they act on their sexuality. "We know from studies that men, regardless of their sexual orientation, retain masculine characteristics when it comes to their sexual behavior," he says. Both gay and straight men, for example, tend to prefer younger partners, in contrast to women, who gravitate toward older partners. Most men are also more likely than women to engage in casual sex, and to be aroused by visual stimuli. "So I expect that some regions of the brain will remain masculine even in gay men," says Vilain. For something as complex as sexual orientation, it's no surprise that everything from genes to gender to environment may play a role in ultimately determining your perfect partner. View this article on Time.com

[Artist rendering of Super Earths]

Astronomers find 'super Earths' circling a star

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - European astronomers have found a trio of "super-Earths" closely circling a star that astronomers once figured had nothing orbiting it, demonstrating that planets keep popping up in unexpected places.

Monday's announcement is the first time three planets close to Earth's size were found orbiting a single star, said Swiss astronomer Didier Queloz. He was part of the Swiss-French team using the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in the desert in Chile.

The mass of the smallest of these super-Earths is about four times the size of Earth. That may seem like a lot, but they are quite a bit closer in size and likely composition to Earth than our solar system's giants — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. They are much too hot to support life, Queloz said.

Scientists are more interested in the broader implications of the finding: The universe is teeming with far more planets than thought.

Using a new tool to study more than 100 stars once thought to be devoid of planets, the Swiss-French team found that about one-third had planets that are only slightly bigger than Earth.

That's how the star with three super-Earths, 42 light-years away, was spotted. The European team took a second look with a relatively new instrument that measures tiny changes in light wave lengths and is so sensitive that it is precisely positioned and locked in a special room below the observatory in Chile. And the key is kept in Switzerland, scientists say.

The discovery is "really making the case that we live in a crowded universe," said Carnegie Institution of Washington astronomer Alan Boss, who wasn't part of the discovery team. "Planets are out there. They're all over the place."

That means it is easier to make the case for life elsewhere in the universe, both Boss and Queloz said.

___

On the Net:

The European Southern Observatory: http://www.eso.org/public/

[Spitzer Telescope image of actual proto solar system]

We may all be space aliens: study

PARIS (AFP) - Genetic material from outer space found in a meteorite in Australia may well have played a key role in the origin of life on Earth, according to a study to be published Sunday.

European and US scientists have proved for the first time that two bits of genetic coding, called nucleobases, contained in the meteor fragment, are truly extraterrestrial.

Previous studies had suggested that the space rocks, which hit Earth some 40 years ago, might have been contaminated upon impact.

Both of the molecules identified, uracil and xanthine, "are present in our DNA and RNA," said lead author Zita Martins, a researcher at Imperial College London.

RNA, or ribonucleic acid, is another key part of the genetic coding that makes up our bodies.

These molecules would also have been essential to the still-mysterious alchemy that somehow gave rise, some four billion years ago, to life itself.

"We know that meteorites very similar to the Murchison meteorite, which is the one we analysed, were delivering the building blocks of life to Earth 3.8 to 4.5 billion years ago," Martins told AFP in an interview.

Competing theories suggest that nucleobases were synthesised closer to home, but Martins counters that the atmospheric conditions of early Earth would have rendered that process difficult or impossible.

Check out this guy. He's lost some weight, but he got his stomach stapled or something and he's gone from 1,235 lbs (!!) to a mere 700 lbs. But he's still crabbing that he's fat. Which he is. And his enablers are still at it, apparently.

Newsflash, tubby - the pictures tell you exactly what the problem is! A whole freaking cake instead of a slice, a full BBQ goat instead of a couple of ribs. Not brain surgery. Although that might be what's actually required.

One of the most graceful women in cinematic history, She of the Never-ending Legs is gone.

Actress-dancer Cyd Charisse dies in L.A. at 86

LOS ANGELES, Associated Press - Cyd Charisse, the long-legged Texas beauty who danced with the Ballet Russe as a teenager and starred in MGM musicals with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, died Tuesday. She was 86.

Charisse was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Monday after suffering an apparent heart attack, said her publicist, Gene Schwam.

She appeared in dramatic films, but her fame came from the Technicolor musicals of the 1940s and '50s.

Classically trained, she could dance anything, from a pas de deux in 1946's "Ziegfeld Follies" to the lowdown Mickey Spillane satire of 1956's "The Band Wagon" (with Astaire).

She also forged a popular song-and-dance partnership on television and in nightclub appearances with her husband, singer Tony Bennett.

Her height was 5 feet, 6 inches, but in high heels and full-length stockings, she seemed serenely tall, and she moved with extraordinary grace. Her flawless beauty and jet-black hair contributed to an aura of perfection that Astaire described in his 1959 memoir, "Steps in Time," as "beautiful dynamite."

NAFTA Superhighway and North American Union a Scary Reality

Published 06/10/08 by Jeff Bennett

The NAFTA Superhighway is not a myth, but instead represents a road leading to a troubled future. In an attempt to facilitate and create a North American trade bloc, quickly transporting cheap imported goods from China to America’s many Wal-Marts – our leaders are creating a North American Union and a massive highway – four football fields wide – running from Mexico to Canada. The highway promises to import a surplus of goods, destroy any country-side in its path and ease a process of outsourcing American jobs south-of-the-border to cheaper rates of pay and lower environmental standards.

Source Right Side News:

While most other major national newscasters have blindly accepted the government’s line that the “NAFTA Superhighway” is a “myth,” Lou Dobbs has refused to be fooled. In search of the truth, Mr. Dobbs sent investigative reporter Bill Tucker to Texas to see for himself.

So much for all the pious "it's a lifestyle choice" nimrods...

Gay men, straight women share brain detail: report

LONDON (Reuters) - Gay men and straight women share some characteristics in the area of the brain responsible for emotion, mood and anxiety, researchers said on Monday in a study highlighting the potential biological underpinning of sexuality.

Brain scans also showed the same symmetry among lesbians and straight men, the researchers wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The observations cannot be easily attributed to perception or behavior," the researchers from Sweden's Karolinska Institute wrote. "Whether they may relate to processes laid down during the fetal or postnatal development is an open question."

A number of studies have looked at the roles genetic, biological and environmental factors play in sexual orientation but little evidence exists that any plays an all-important role. Many scientists believe both nature and nurture play a part.

Brain scans of 90 volunteers showed that the brains of heterosexual men and homosexual women were slightly asymmetric with the right hemisphere slightly larger than the left, Ivanka Savic and Pers Lindstrom wrote. The brains of gay men and heterosexual women were not.

Then they measured blood flow to the amygdala -- the area key for the "fight-or-flight" response -- and found it was wired in a similar fashion in gay men and heterosexual women as well as lesbians and heterosexual men.

The researchers added that the study cannot say whether the differences in brain shape are inherited or due to exposure to hormones such as testosterone in the womb and if they are responsible for sexual orientation.

But this is something they plan to look at in a further study of newborn babies to see if it can help predict future sexual orientation.

[Futurama's Fry meets his dreamgirl, a freshly formatted Lucy Liubot]

In 2050, your lover may be a ... robot

MAASTRICHT, Netherlands (AFP) - Romantic human-robot relationships are no longer the stuff of science fiction -- researchers expect them to become reality within four decades.

And they do not mean simply, mechanical sex.

"I am talking about loving relationships about 40 years from now," David Levy, author of the book "Love + sex with robots", told AFP at an international conference held last week at the University of Maastricht in the south-east of the country.

"... when there are robots that have also emotions, personality, consciousness. They can talk to you, they can make you laugh. They can ... say they love you just like a human would say 'I love you', and say it as though they mean it ..."

Robots as sex toys should already be on the market within five years, predicted Levy, "a sort of an upgrade of the sex dolls on sale now".

These would have electronic speech and sensors that make them utter "nice sounds" when a human caresses their "erogenous zones".

But to build robots as real partners would take a bit longer, with conversation skills being the main obstacle for developers.

Scientists were working on artificial personality, emotion and consciousness, said Levy, and some robots already appear lifelike.

"But for loving relationships -- that is something completely different. In loving relationships there are many more things that are important. And the most difficult of all is conversation.

"You want your robot to be able to talk to you about what is interesting to you. You want a partner who has some similar interest to you, who talks to you in a manner that pleases you, who has a similar sense of humour to you."

The field of human-computer conversation is crucial to building robots with whom humans could fall in love, but is lagging behind other areas of development, said the author.

"I am sure it will (happen.) In 40 years ... perhaps sooner. You will find robots, conversation partners, that will talk to you and you will get as much pleasure from it as talking to another human. I am sure of it."

Levy's bombshell thesis, whose publication has had a ripple-effect way beyond the scientific community, gives rise to a number of complicated ethical and relationship questions.

British scholar Dylan Evans pointed out the paradox inherent to any relationship with a robot.

"What is absolutely crucial to the sentiment of love, is the belief that the love is neither unconditional nor eternal.

"Robots cannot choose you, they cannot reject you. That could become very boring, and one can imagine the human becoming cruel against his defenseless partner", said Evans.

A robot could conceivably be programmed with a will of its own and the ability to reject his human partner, he said, "but that would be a very difficult robot to sell".

Some warn against being overhasty.

"Let us not exaggerate the possibilities!" said Dutch researcher Vincent Wiegel of the Technological University of the eastern town of Delft.

"Today, the artificial intelligence we are able to create is that of a child of one year of age."

But Levy is unyielding. He is convinced it will happen, and predicts many societal benefits.

"There are many millions of people in the world who have nobody. They might be shy or they might have some psychological hang-ups or psycho-sexual hang-ups, they might have personality problems, they might be ugly ...

"There will always be many millions of people who cannot make normal satisfactory relationships with humans, and for them the choice is not: 'would I prefer a relationship with a human or would I prefer a relationship with a robot?' -- the choice is no relationship at all or a relationship with a robot."

They might even become human-to-human relationship savers, he predicted.

"Certainly there will be some existing human-human relationships where one partner might say to the other partner: 'if you have sex with a robot I'm leaving you'.

Like the poor bastards don't have enough problems with oil already, what with emissions melting their habitat and all...

Companies get OK to annoy polar bears

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - Less than a month after declaring polar bears a threatened species because of global warming, the Bush administration is giving oil companies permission to annoy and potentially harm them in the pursuit of oil and natural gas.

The Fish and Wildlife Service issued regulations this week providing legal protection to seven oil companies planning to search for oil and gas in the Chukchi Sea off the northwestern coast of Alaska if "small numbers" of polar bears or Pacific walruses are incidentally harmed by their activities over the next five years.

Environmentalists said the new regulations give oil companies a blank check to harass the polar bear.

About 2,000 of the 25,000 polar bears in the Arctic live in and around the Chukchi Sea, where the government in February auctioned off oil leases to ConocoPhillips Co., Shell Oil Co. and five other companies for $2.6 billion. Over objections from environmentalists and members of Congress, the sale occurred before the bear was classified as threatened in May.

Polar bears are naturally curious creatures and sensitive to changes in their environment. Vibrations, noises, unusual scents and the presence of industrial equipment can disrupt their quest for prey and their efforts to raise their young in snow dens.

"big oil producers were glad to go along with under-reporting of proven reserves to help maintain oil's high price". I'll buy that. Makes it easier to spook folks into voting for ANWAR drilling and oilrigs off the Everglades.

Oil shortage a myth, says industry insider

The Independent, UK - There is more than twice as much oil in the ground as major producers say, according to a former industry adviser who claims there is widespread misunderstanding of the way proven reserves are calculated.

Although it is widely assumed that the world has reached a point where oil production has peaked and proven reserves have sunk to roughly half of original amounts, this idea is based on flawed thinking, said Richard Pike, a former oil industry man who is now chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Current estimates suggest there are 1,200 billion barrels of proven global reserves, but the industry's internal figures suggest this amounts to less than half of what actually exists.

The misconception has helped boost oil prices to an all-time high, sending jitters through the market and prompting calls for oil-producing nations to increase supply to push down costs.

Flying into Japan for a summit two days after prices reached a record $139 a barrel, energy ministers from the G8 countries yesterday discussed an action plan to ease the crisis.

"Core inflation, however, which excludes energy and food, edged up a more moderate 0.2 percent in May. That increase was right in line with expectations and should help relieve worries that the big increases in food and energy could be breaking through to more widespread inflation."

So, everything is fine, if you don't factor in the fact that everyone needs to eat, the trucks that take everything everywhere need gas to move. Don't count that and everything is peachy! Yeah, that certainly relieves MY worries as I sit in the parking lot deciding whether to spend my whole paycheck on groceries for my kid or gas so I can get to work! As long as I'm subsidizing Big Oil or Big Agra or Big Pharma, things are cool, right?

Inflation rate jumps by biggest amount in 6 months

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - The inflation rate shot up in May at the fastest pace in six months, pushed higher by soaring costs for gasoline and other types of energy.

The Labor Department reported Friday that consumer prices rose by 0.6 percent last month, the biggest one-month increase since last November, as gasoline costs surged by 5.7 percent. Food prices, which have also been rising sharply, were up 0.3 percent as the cost of beef and bakery products showed big gains.

Core inflation, however, which excludes energy and food, edged up a more moderate 0.2 percent in May. That increase was right in line with expectations and should help relieve worries that the big increases in food and energy could be breaking through to more widespread inflation.

Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, said that the moderate gain in core prices showed price pressures are remaining contained despite fears at the Federal Reserve.

The Fed, which from September through April was aggressively cutting interest rates to fight a mounting economic slowdown, is now indicating that its biggest concern has changed from the threat of a recession to worries about inflation.

In a speech Monday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said that the Fed will "strongly resist an erosion of longer-term inflation expectations." Those comments have raised expectations that the Fed's next move later this year will be to start raising interest rates.

[Note: "strongly resist an erosion of longer-term inflation expectations." WTF does that mean? Ben will stick his fingers in his ears when anyone talks about inflation going up? Hey Ben! Prices going up! Dollar going down! Whatcha gonna do? Ben: "lalalalala, can't hear you!". Fucking retard.]

Terrorist Fist Jab! Screams Faux News Spokesbimbo:

Deconstructing the Bump

New York Times - The affectionate fist bump between Senator Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, before his victory speech last week in St. Paul became an instant source of fascination among commentators in the news media, who for days have tried to decipher the meaning behind this supposedly odd gesture.

But perhaps none went as far afield as E. D. Hill of the Fox News Channel, who, teasing to a segment last Friday on the Obamas’ moment, said: “A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently.” Media Matters, a liberal group, called attention to her comments that day and demanded an apology on Monday.

Also facing anger from the Fox News executive suite, Ms. Hill offered up an apology on Tuesday, saying: “I mentioned various ways the Obamas’ fist-bump in St. Paul had been characterized in the media. I apologize because unfortunately some thought I, personally, had characterized it inappropriately. I regret that. It was not my intention. I certainly didn’t mean to associate the word ‘terrorist’ in any way with Senator Obama and his wife.” That came two weeks after a Fox News Channel analyst, Liz Trotta, apologized for joking about assassinating Mr. Obama.

Ms. Hill did not say where she saw the “terrorist fist jab” reference, but a comment on an article on HumanEvents.com used similar language. (On Tuesday, Fox News executives announced the cancellation of Ms. Hill’s program, “America’s Pulse,” but they said that the move had been planned weeks ago and that Ms. Hill would stay with the network.)

The Fox News segment was part of a fist-bump-related media dorkathon that continues, even a full week after the Obamas’ onstage moment.

Um, people: This is a common gesture, and its use is not limited to Democrats with unusual names. In 2001 it was used by Carleton S. Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive — now advising Senator John McCain — and Michael D. Capellas, then the Compaq chief executive, to salute the completion of their merger. And in 2006, former President George Bush shared a fist bump with Anna Kournikova at a celebrity tennis event — and he was 82 at the time.

Paul van Eeden: "Other than now, the period of highest inflation was July 1971 when M3 increased by 16.12% year-over-year. It took 15% interest rates to quell the fire of 11% average annual inflation rates. Today we have a 17% inflation rate and a 10-year interest rate of only 3.6%."

Posted On: Monday, June 09, 2008, 11:11:00 PM EST

Total Notional Value Of Derivatives Outstanding Surpasses One Quadrillion

Author: Jim Sinclair

Dear CIGAs,

The notional value of all outstanding derivatives now totals approximately $1.144 QUADRILLION.

This appears to be Bank of International Settlement Spin to announce the largest gain in derivatives outstanding since they started to report. As of the last report it appeared that both listed and OTC derivatives was under $600 trillion. Now listed credit derivatives alone stood at $548 Trillion. The OTC derivatives are shown as $596 billion notional value, as of December 2007. One can only imagine what number they are at now.

Well we hit a QUADRILLION. We have more than $1000 trillion dollars in all derivatives outstanding. That is simply NUTS because notional value becomes real value when either counterparty to the OTC derivative goes bankrupt. $548 trillion plus $596 trillion means $1.144 quadrillion.

It would be an interesting piece of research to see what the breakdown is of listed derivatives according to exchange to see if it adds up to the reported number. Spin is now everywhere.

This means that no OTC derivative house can be allowed to go broke. This means that whatever funds are required to rescue failing international investment banks, banks and financial entities will be provided.

Keep this economic law in mind. Monetary inflation proceeds price inflation and is its primary cause in economic history from Rome to present.

Nothing can stop the juggernaut of price inflation heading towards every nation like a runaway freight train down a mountain.

Gold is going to at least $1650. I am probably way too low with that estimate.

The US dollar will trade down to at least .5200 as measured by the USDX.

Gold is the easiest market to trade for the aggressive investor. Sell 1/3 when the market looks like a Rhino Horn which you will see with your French Curves at the point of the rollover.

Buy 1/3 back when the price of gold looks like a fishing line hanging off a fishing rod. Your maximum power down trend line will give you this.

California and the southeast are emergency drought conditions. The midwest is planting corn for ethanol to put in our SUVs. Best hope we don't get another Katrina any time soon.

AAM Concerned with CCC Inventories

WASHINGTON, TriState Observer - Larry Matlack, President of the American Agriculture Movement (AAM), has raised concerns over the issue of U.S. grain reserves after it was announced that the sale of 18.37 million bushels of wheat from USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust.

“According to the May 1, 2008 CCC inventory report there are only 24.1 million bushels of wheat in inventory, so after this sale there will be only 2.7 million bushels of wheat left the entire CCC inventory,” warned Matlack. “Our concern is not that we are using the remainder of our strategic grain reserves for humanitarian relief. AAM fully supports the action and all humanitarian food relief. Our concern is that the U.S. has nothing else in our emergency food pantry. There is no cheese, no butter, no dry milk powder, no grains or anything else left in reserve. The only thing left in the entire CCC inventory will be 2.7 million bushels of wheat which is about enough wheat to make ½ of a loaf of bread for each of the 300 million people in America.”

The CCC is a federal government-owned and operated entity that was created to stabilize, support, and protect farm income and prices. CCC is also supposed to maintain balanced and adequate supplies of agricultural commodities and aids in their orderly distribution.

“This lack of emergency preparedness is the fault of the 1996 farm bill which eliminated the government’s grain reserves as well as the Farmer Owned Reserve (FOR),” explained Matlack. “We had hoped to reinstate the FOR and a Strategic Energy Grain Reserve in the new farm bill, but the politics of food defeated our efforts. As farmers it is our calling and purpose in life to feed our families, our communities, our nation and a good part of the world, but we need better planning and coordination if we are to meet that purpose. AAM pledges to continue our work for better farm policy which includes an FOR and a Strategic Energy Grain Reserve.”

AAM’s support for the FOR program, which allows the grain to be stored o­n farms, is a key component to a safe grain reserve in that the supplies will be decentralized in the event of some unforeseen calamity which might befall the large grain storage terminals.

A Strategic Energy Grain Reserve is as crucial for the nation’s domestic energy needs as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. AAM also supports full funding for the replenishment and expansion of Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust.

The May 1, 2008 CCC Inventory report may be reviewed here: http://www.fsa.usda.gov/Internet/FSA_File/wid2a.pdf.

Gaaah! from Bellaciao.com:

January Saturday 21 2006 (01h49) :

Collapse of U.S. Economy Imminent

In its attempt to establish a world empire dominating every nation on the planet, the U.S. has exhausted its ability to finance the expansion and the country now faces imminent financial collapse. From all indications, it looks like 2006 will spell the end for America.

Consider these five important points:

- Point #1 The U.S., Great Britain and Israel are preparing to attack Iran. As it appears the main reason for invading Iraq was to stop it from selling oil in Euros, likewise Iran has plans to dump the dollar come March 2006.

- Point #2 U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow issued a warning recently that the U.S. Government is on the verge of collapse - as the statutory debt limit imposed by Congress of $8.184 trillion dollars would be reached in mid-February - the government would then be unable to continue its normal operations. Considering the current total U.S. debt stands at $8.162 trillion dollars, once the official debt ceiling ($8.184 trillion) is reached, the U.S. government’s credit abroad (its borrowing power) is gone. Those countries (mainly China) who presently keep America afloat by holding U.S. Treasury Notes, will most likely no longer continue doing so.

- Point #3 Bank Of America and Compass Bank managers (probably all other U.S. banks too) have been instructing their employees in the last few weeks on how to respond to customer demands in the event of a collapse of the U.S. economy - specifically telling the employees that only agents from the Department Of Homeland Security will have authority to decide what belongings customers may have from their safe deposit boxes - and that precious metals and other valuables will not be released to U.S. citizens. The bank employees have been strictly prohibited from revealing the banks’ new "guidelines" to anyone. (however, employees have been talking to friends and family)

The next time you visit your bank, ask them about it - then ask yourself, why is this information being kept secret from customers and the public - what’s really going on?

- Point #4 FEMA has activated and is currently staffing its vast network of empty internment camps with armed military personnel - unknown to most Americans, these large federal facilities are strategically positioned across the U.S. landscape to "manage" the population in the event of a "terrorist" attack, a civilian uprising, large-scale dissent ,or an insurrection against the government. Some of these razor-wired facilities have the capacity of detaining a million people.

- Point #5 The Patriot Act and the US Senate’s vote to ban habeas corpus (Nov 14th) - along with George W. Bush having signed executive orders giving him sole authority to impose martial law, suspend habeas corpus and ignore the Posse Comitatus Act, have together pretty much destroyed any notions of freedom and justice for Americans.

- Summary: The U.S. economy is broken, the United States is bankrupt - the unchecked spending by this administration, the illegally waged wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, the cost of unprecedented weapons and military build-up - have all contributed to an irreversible emergency which is threatening our nation’s existence and our very lives.

Hospitals are closing, major corporations are declaring bankruptcy and/or moving their companies overseas, the monopolized news media spews nothing but lies, and our fearless leaders have turned out to be only ruthless criminals hell-bent on destabilizing our country and robbing us all.

Be aware - we stand at the threshold of total ruin - the international bankers and war profiteers care little for our lives and families - these demons worship money and all things vile and evil - they have very much to gain from war, misery, disease, famine, chaos and death (our deaths).

We are right on the edge - the Treasury is already overextended - the U.S. government cannot (and will not) care for its own citizens’ needs, nor secure our borders against illegal aliens - plus, the whole "terrorist" thing is a cruel hoax perpetrated against a trusting citizenry - and only designed to instill fear and garner support for the genocide taking place in Iraq.

Should America (along with British & Israeli forces) launch a war against Iran, or another country, without yet paying for, or even recovering from the current losses in Iraq and elsewhere - the costs of such of an invasion will overwhelm an already crippled economy and push the U.S. over the edge into oblivion.

- Question: Considering the U.S. Treasury Notes that China currently holds (which keeps the U.S. economy going)...

Do you think China will continue to support a country’s economy (the U.S.) whose military launches a nuclear strike against its neighbor (Iran) - thus delivering a blanket of radioactive fallout over western Chinese provinces - killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions of its citizens?

I think not.

Factoring in the aforementioned points of "preparation" engineered by U.S. authorities, I’d say there’s a stinking rat in the woodpile ...can you smell it too?

The headline itself is bad enough:

" Unemployment rate jumps to 5.5 percent in May"

But when you work in the fact that the figure is based on the completely bogus BLS "birth/death model", you know actual unemployment is running a lot closer to 10%.

Here's the bogus BLS data:

From Mish: "With housing falling like a rock and commercial real estate now following suit, the BLS is assuming that 42,000 new jobs were added in construction. With lenders blowing up and countless self employed real estate professional exiting the business the BLS is assuming 9,000 new jobs were added in financial activities and 23,000 jobs from professional and business services. The total number of jobs added in May by these absurd assumptions was 217,000 jobs."

[Job seekers lined up in NYC]

Gag on the official spin:

Unemployment rate jumps to 5.5 percent in May

WASHINGTON, Associated Press - The nation's unemployment rate jumped to 5.5 percent in May — the biggest monthly rise since 1986 — as nervous employers cut 49,000 jobs.

The latest snapshot of business conditions showed a deeply troubled economy, with dwindling job opportunities in a time of continuing hardship in the housing, credit and financial sectors.

"It was ugly," said Richard Yamarone, economist at Argus Research.

With employers worried about a sharp slowdown and their own prospects, they clamped down on hiring in May, said Friday's report from the Labor Department. The unemployment rate soared from 5 percent in April to 5.5 percent in May. That was the biggest one-month jump in the rate since February 1986. The increase left the jobless rate at its highest since October 2004.

On Wall Street, stocks slid. The Dow Jones industrials tumbled more than 200 points in morning trading.

The big jump in the unemployment rate surprised economists who were forecasting a tick-up to 5.1 percent. Payroll losses, however, weren't as deep as the 60,000 that analysts were bracing for. Still, job losses in both March and April turned out to be larger than the government previously reported. Employers now have cut payrolls for five straight months.

The White House expressed disappointment, too.

"Certainly this isn't a report that we wanted to see today," White House deputy press secretary Scott Stanzel said. He acknowledged that the increase was higher than experts expected. "It is a number that is too high in our view but it is lower than the average of the last three decades."

The 5.5 percent rate is relatively moderate judged by historical standards. Yet, there was no question that employers last month sharply cut jobs in manufacturing, construction, retailing and professional and businesses services. Those losses swamped gains elsewhere, including in the education and health fields, government, and leisure and hospitality.

The government said the number of unemployed people grew by 861,000 in May — rising to 8.5 million. The over-the-month jump in unemployment reflected more workers losing their jobs as well as an increase in those coming into the job market — especially younger people — to look for work, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said.

A year ago, the number of unemployed stood at 6.9 million and the jobless rate was 4.5 percent.

A trio of crises — housing, credit and financial — have rocked the economy. That's caused economic growth to slow to a crawl as businesses and consumers have tightened their belts. Spiraling energy costs are another negative force.

The "Art Market" has seen a jaw-dropping runup in prices in the last six months, particularly in 'unconventional works'. Clearly, as throughout history, money cannot buy you brains or good taste.

Art Basel - world's largest art fair - opens in Switzerland

BASEL, Switzerland, Associated Press - The largest international contemporary art fair opened Wednesday in Basel, Switzerland, closely watched for trends in the world market at a time of financial turbulence.

About 60,000 artists, collectors, galleries and art enthusiasts are expected to attend the annual four-day Art Basel fair, with the moneyed set coming to Basel in private jets.

Record prices at recent auctions indicate the market is still resilient despite the credit crunch stemming from the subprime crisis.

More than 300 of the world's leading galleries are presenting works from over 2,000 artists from all five continents, stressing that globalization has also now extended to art - a work by Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare shows a woman dancing on the globe.

Prices range from millions of dollars for works of established artists to thousands of dollars for newcomers to the art market.

On view are all forms of artistic expression, ranging from paintings, drawings and sculptures to installations, performances and video art. Big names include several who fetched new record prices at a Sotheby's auction in New York last month, when a triptych by Francis Bacon sold for $86.3 million, becoming the most expensive work of contemporary art ever auctioned.

[Note: good luck getting your 86 million back on that piece, buddy! Here's something only stupid rich DICK HEADS would buy, which is apparently a requisite for being put on display at London's Royal Academy (yes, those are pink rubber dildos):]

Record prices were also registered there for various other artists on display at Art Basel, including Japan's star Murakami Takashi, Robert Rauschenberg and Tom Wesselman.

Works by Cai Guo-Qiang, the Chinese favorite of Western collectors, are also on view. His series of gun powder drawings was bought for $8.5 million at Christie's in Hong Kong late last year.

Even as the fair opened, the Allianz Suisse insurance company said the demand for coverage to protect private collections has grown 30 percent since the February robbery of four impressionist paintings worth $163 million from a Zurich museum.

"Despite the financial market crisis and high energy prices, the art market is still booming - as is the market for private art insurance," the company said.

The company's art expert, Oliver Class, said Allianz had already reached its sales goal for the full year. Allianz Suisse also said it now is insuring collections for more than $624 million, up from about $240 million three years ago, and that it expects its business to double in the next three years.

Two of the paintings taken in the robbery, by Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh, were recovered a few days after the robbery. The other two_ by Paul Cezanne and Edgar Degas - remain missing.

A parallel "Art Unlimited" exhibition features works by 60 artists from 23 countries. It spotlights completely unconventional art, some works created especially for the occasion, such as a dollar-covered wallpaper installation by American artist Tony Oursler.

The Art Basel newspaper reported that when he crossed the nearby German-Swiss border, German customs officers discovered more than 1,000 dollar bills stuffed in his bag. The daily said the officers counted every note to make sure that the booty did not exceed Germany's legal export limit of $10,000.

Take a look at this bad boy, right from the St. Louis Federal Reserve website (click for larger image):

This chart shows all the borrowing from the Federal Reserve that's been done by the financial sector from about 1920 through today. You think Ben Bernanke isn't cranking the printing presses and lying his ass off? You think Hank Paulson isn't full of shit when he calls for a "strong dollar"? You really believe the talking heads on teevee when they tell you "the credit crisis is over"?

Dude, the treasury is being openly looted by this administration, and the currency is being debased at a mind-boggling rate. We WILL experience a staggering economic depression, quite probably with some hyperinflationary aspects that will cause the goobermint to scrap the dollar altogether.

These aren't short little loans that will be promptly repaid with interest - these are perma-rollover loans to insolvent entities who will never pay back a dime. Not only that, these same deadbeats are using the money to bet on oil futures at 16x leverage, driving prices to the moon. Get it? Stealing taxpayer money and betting it on a self-fixing horserace. The losers are We The People, through deficits, devaluation, and inflation. The wealth is being funnelled directly from our pockets and into the pockets of the lying greedy bastards that created and are perpetuating the mess. And all of it facilitated by their good buddies at the Fed and the Treasury..

We are SCREWED, amigos. It really is the Decline and Fall of the American Empire. Thank you, Ronald Fucking Reagan, and your "deficits don't matter" and your "trickle-down theory". It worked, and we're all getting pissed on by your banker fatcat pals as planned. Thanks, Ronnie, thanks Daddy Bush and Slick Willie and Dubya. You're all richer than god and we are FUCKED.

Trading their taxpayer-funded reserves (one crime right there) for Wall Street's 'marked to model' derivative garbage (another crime), resulting in no reserves at the Reserve. Take a look at the chart below, and think about today in relationship to the Great Depression, and the Minor Inconveniences our economy experienced in the 70's and 80's.

From Yoda Sinclair: "The Fed announced another $75 billion of so called auction give away money for the Begging Bowl loan facility. As problems worsen and assuming that these Fed donations need to be made weekly, we are speaking of a yearly rate of $3,900 billion. That sounds like $3.9 trillion dollars of economic injection and liquidity. Think about the CONSEQUENCES."

I am, Jim, I am. The fatcat bankers are fine, but We The People are so amazingly fucked:

From a really really smart guy, Mike Whitney:

The Great Oil Price Swindle- Market Manipulation or Fraud?

The Commodity Futures and Trading Commission (CFTC) is investigating trading in oil futures to determine whether the surge in prices to record levels is the result of manipulation or fraud. They might want to take a look at wheat, rice and corn futures while they're at it. The whole thing is a hoax cooked up by the investment banks and hedge funds who are trying to dig their way out of the trillion dollar mortgage-backed securities (MBS) mess that they created by turning garbage loans into securities. That scam blew up in their face last August and left them scrounging for handouts from the Federal Reserve. Now the billions of dollars they're getting from the Fed is being diverted into commodities which is destabilizing the world economy; driving gas prices to the moon and triggering food riots across the planet.

For months we've been told that the soaring price of oil has been the result of Peak Oil, fighting in Iraq, attacks on oil facilities in Nigeria, labor problems in Norway, and (the all-time favorite)growth in China. It's all baloney. Just like Goldman Sachs prediction of $200 per barrel oil is baloney. If oil is about to skyrocket then why has G-Sax kept a neutral rating on some of its oil holdings like Exxon Mobile? Could it be that they know that oil is just another mega-inflated equity bubble---like housing, corporate bonds and dot.com stocks—that is about to crash to earth as soon as the big players grab a parachute?

There are three things that are driving up the price of oil: the falling dollar, speculation and buying on margin.

The dollar is tanking because of the Federal Reserve's low interest monetary policies have kept interest rates below the rate of inflation for most of the last decade. Add that to the $700 billion current account deficit and a National Debt that has increased from $5.8 trillion when Bush first took office to over $9 trillion today and it's a wonder the dollar hasn't gone “Poof” already.

According to a January 4 editorial in the Wall Street Journal: “If the dollar had remained 'as good as gold' since 2001, oil today would be selling at about $30 per barrel, not $99. (today $126 per barrel) The decline of the dollar against gold and oil suggests a US monetary that is supplying too many dollars.” Wall Street Journal 1-4-08

The price of oil has more than quadrupled since 2001, from roughly $30 per barrel to $126, WITHOUT ANY DISRUPTIONS TO SUPPLY. There's no shortage; it's just gibberish.

As far as “buying on margin” consider this summary from author William Engdahl:

“A conservative calculation is that at least 60% of today's $128 per barrel price of crude oil comes from unregulated futures speculation by hedge funds, banks and financial groups using the London ICE Futures and New York NYMEX futures exchanges and uncontrolled inter-bank or Over-The-Counter trading to avoid scrutiny. US margin rules of the government's Commodity Futures Trading Commission allow speculators to buy a crude oil futures contract on the Nymex, by having to pay only 6% of the value of the contract. At today's price of $128 per barrel, that means a futures trader only has to put up about $8 for every barrel. He borrows the other $120. This extreme “leverage” of 16 to 1 helps drive prices to wildly unrealistic levels and offset bank losses in sub-prime and other disasters at the expense of the overall population.”

So the investment banks and their trading partners at the hedge funds can game the system for a mere 8 bucks per barrel or 16 to 1 leverage. Not bad, eh?

Is it possible that gambling on oil futures might be a temptation for banks that are already underwater from a trillion dollars worth of mortgage-related deals that have “gone south” leaving the banking system essentially bankrupt?

And if the banks and hedgies are not playing this game, then where is the money coming from? I have compiled charts and graphs that show that nearly two-thirds of the big investment banks' revenue came from the securitization of commercial and residential real estate loans. That market is frozen. Besides, this is not just a matter of “loan delinquencies” or MBS that have to be written off. The banks are "revenue starved". How are they filling the coffers? They're either neck-deep in interest rate swaps, derivatives trading, or gaming the futures market. Which is it?

Of course, there is one other possibility, but if that possibility turned out to be right than it would cast doubt on the legitimacy of the entire financial system. In fact, it would prove that the system is being rigged from the top-down by our friends at the Banking Politburo, the Federal Reserve. Here goes:

What if the investment banks are trading their worthless MBS and CDOs at the Fed's auction facilities and using the money ($400 billion) to drive up the price of raw materials like rice, corn, wheat, and oil?

Could it be? Could the Fed really be looking the other way so it can bail out its banking buddies while they drive prices skyward?

If it is true; (and I suspect it is) it hasn't done much good. As the Associated Press reported yesterday:

“The Federal Reserve announced Thursday that it will make a fresh batch of short-term cash loans available to squeezed banks as part of an ongoing effort to ease stressed credit markets. The Fed said it will conduct three auctions in June, with each one making $75 billion available in short-term cash loans. Banks can bid for a slice of the available funds. It would mark the latest round in a program that the Fed launched in December to help banks overcome credit problems so they will keep lending to customers.”

Another $225 billion for the bankers and not a dime for the struggling homeowner! The Fed is bankrupting the country with their permanent rotating loans to keep reckless speculators from going under. So much for moral hazard.

As far as speculation, there is ample evidence that the system is being manipulated. According to MarketWatch:

“Speculative activity in commodity markets has grown "enormously" over the past several years, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said in a news release. It pointed out that in five years, from 2003 to 2008, investment in the index funds tied to commodities has grown by 20-fold -- to $260 billion from $13 billion.”

And here's a revealing clip from the testimony of Michael W. Masters of Masters Capital Management, LLC, who addressed the issue of “Commodities Speculation” before the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs this week:

“Today, Index Speculators are pouring billions of dollars into the commodities futures markets, speculating that commodity prices will increase. ...In the popular press the explanation given most often for rising oil prices is the increased demand for oil from China. According to the DOE, annual Chinese demand for petroleum has increased over the last five years from 1.88 billion barrels to 2.8 billion barrels, an increase of 920 million barrels.8 Over the same five-year period, Index Speculators? demand for petroleum futures has increased by 848 million barrels.

THE INCREASE IN DEMAND FROM INDEX SPECULATORS IS ALMOST EQUAL TO THE INCREASE IN DEMAND FROM CHINA.

Index Speculators have now stockpiled, via the futures market, the equivalent of 1.1 billion barrels of petroleum, effectively adding eight times as much oil to their own stockpile as the United States has added to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the last five years.

Today, in many commodities futures markets, they are the single largest force.15 The huge growth in their demand has gone virtually undetected by classically-trained economists who almost never analyze demand in futures markets.

As money pours into the markets, two things happen concurrently: the markets expand and prices rise. One particularly troubling aspect of Index Speculator demand is that it actually increases the more prices increase. This explains the accelerating rate at which commodity futures prices (and actual commodity prices) are increasing. The CFTC has taken deliberate steps to allow CERTAIN SPECULATORS VIRTUALLY UNLIMITED ACCESS TO THE COMMODITIES FUTURES MARKETS.

The CFTC has granted Wall Street banks an exemption from speculative position limits when these banks hedge over-the-counter swaps transactions. This has effectively opened a loophole for unlimited speculation. When Index Speculators enter into commodity index swaps, which 85-90% of them do, they face no speculative position limits.... The result is a gross distortion in data that effectively hides the full impact of Index Speculation.” (Thanks to Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis; the one “indispensable” financial blog on the Internet)

Masters adds that the CFTC is pressing to make “Index Speculators exempt from all position limits” so they can make “unlimited” bets on the futures which are wreaking havoc on the global economy and pushing millions towards starvation. Of course, these things pale in comparison to the higher priority of fatting the bottom line of the parasitic investor class.

Brimming oil tankers are presently sitting off the coasts of Iran and Louisiana. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has been filled. Demand is flat. The world's biggest consumer of energy (guess who?) is cutting back . As CNN reports:

“At a time when gas prices are at an all-time high, Americans have curtailed their driving at a historic rate. The Department of Transportation said figures from March show the steepest decrease in driving ever recorded. Compared with March a year earlier, Americans drove an estimated 4.3 percent less -- that's 11 billion fewer miles, the DOT's Federal Highway Administration said Monday, calling it "the sharpest yearly drop for any month in FHWA history." (CNN)

The great oil crunch is another fabricated crisis; another "smoke and mirrors" fiasco; another Enron-type shell-game engineered by banksters and hedge fund managers. Once again, the bloody footprints can be traced right back to the front door of the Federal Reserve. Don't expect help from the regulators either; they've all been replaced with business reps like Harvey Pitt or Hank Paulson. The only time anyone in the Bush administration finds their conscience is when they're offered a multi-million dollar “tell all” book deal.

Can you hear me, Scotty?

By Mike Whitney

Email: fergiewhitney@msn.com