There are reports in the Middle East that the U.S. is going, cap-in-hand, to Middle Eastern Gulf States, asking for $300 Billion to prevent the US economy from worsening. I’m skeptical as to whether or not this report is true - I mean, Americans are saving $365.25 Billion Dollars per year, now that gasoline and oil prices have come off-peak. However, with oil prices experiencing downward pressure, many of the Gulf nations may be more concerned with avoiding their own bankruptcies. An older article from Bloomberg reports:
Saudi Arabia needs oil prices of less than $30 a barrel to balance its government budget, according to Merrill Lynch & Co. estimates. The United Arab Emirates requires $40 a barrel and Qatar $55.
Iran, with double the population of Saudi Arabia, has a breakeven point of about $100 a barrel, according to Edward Morse, managing director and chief economist at Louis Capital Markets LP in New York. In Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez’s government is spending oil revenue on social programs, the figure is about $120, he said.
If Iran has a $100/bbl break-even point, then the following price forecast is outrageously low:
The Iranian government will base its budget for the next calendar year on oil prices of over $37 a barrel, reveals an Iranian minister. LINK
Where else on earth have we seen other democratically-challenged governments low-balling their oil forecast figures in order to yield an eternal, magical surplus? Oh, right.
I’ve been offline for a few days due to an unfortunate turn of events involving a VISA renewal and a poorly timed billing query by my hosting provider to said VISA account. It sucks to get billed by a company when you’re in VISA limbo. I thought this blog was as good as dead, thinking that the internet gods would send this heap of text into the memory hole of the internet.
Thank you, 1 & 1 internet, for not killing my blog over a simple billing issue.
I’ve been posting stuff over at jfei.org during this Grandinite blackout, as well as on facebook, too.
Here’s some of the awesome stuff I’ve been trawling up from the bowels of the WWW.
Nukes.
What’s a safe place to live in the event that Calgary is hit with a 1.4 megaton nuke, like the one in Dr. Strangelove? Check out the applet from Carlos Labs.
Your Brain.
Why do I have a secret death wish for this city? It might have something to do with Chinooks. Or maybe Calgary just hurts people’s brains, like most cities do. Jonah Lehrer writes about it.
Economics.
I read an amazing piece on the New Age of Anxiety. Tim Adams, writing for The Guardian, discusses the relatively new trend of anxiety, and how the underlying emotional and psychological processes manifest in daily life and the markets.
There was an extraordinary questionnaire carried out last July for the World Social Survey, one which future analysts of the great downturn of 2008 may find instructive. The survey proposed the idea that urban life was shaped by fear and addressed the question of what people in the 10 major cities of the world - from Cairo to Beijing - were most worried about. Londoners, it turned out in the ancient history of July 2008, were the least anxious people, but it was what they were actually anxious about that was most telling. Whereas in New York, where the new sub-prime reality had already taken hold, three of the top five worries listed were “not being able to maintain the same standard of living in the future” (17 per cent of respondents), “becoming jobless” (10 per cent), “fear that my children’s lives will be worse than mine” (10 per cent), in London, these worries did not even register anywhere in the top eight. They were not only eclipsed by the biggest anxiety (”losing loved ones”: 12 per cent), they also were felt less keenly than “being the victim of a natural disaster, tsunami, earthquake etc” (2.5 per cent), “being the victim of mass epidemic or food poisoning” (2.2 per cent) and “remaining alone” (1.8 per cent). Can there have been any other time in modern history when we had been so blithely unconcerned about our financial security than last July?
If you’re in Washington D.C. on January 20th, you can head on down to the William R. Singleton-Hope-Lebanon Lodge for the 1st ever Masonic Inaugural Ball. Unfortunately, Barack Obama won’t be attending.
The Sound of Silence is a military-intelligence code word for certain psychotronic weapons of mass mind-control tested in the mid-1950s, perfected during the 70s, and used extensively by the “modern” US military in the early 90s, despite the opposition and warnings issued by men such as Dwight David Eisenhower.
This mind-altering covert weapon is based on something called subliminal carrier technology, or the Silent Sound Spread Spectrum (SSSS) (also nicknamed S-Quad or “Squad” in military jargon). It was developed for military use by Dr. Oliver Lowery of Norcross, Georgia, and is described in US Patent #5,159,703 — “Silent Subliminal Presentation System” for commercial use in 1992. The patent abstract reads:
“A silent communications system in which nonaural carriers, in the very low (ELF) or very high audio-frequency (VHF) range or in the adjacent ultrasonic frequency spectrum, are amplitude- or frequency-modulated with the desired intelligence and propagated acoustically or vibrationally, for inducement into the brain, typically through the use of loudspeakers, earphones, or piezoelectric transducers. The modulated carriers may be transmitted directly in real time or may be conveniently recorded and stored on mechanical, magnetic, or optical media for delayed or repeated transmission to the listener.”
In layman’s terms, this device, this “Sound of Silence”simply allows for the unwarranted implantation of specific thoughts, emotions, and even prescribed physical actions into unsuspecting human beings. In short, it has the very real ability to turn human beings into mere puppets in the hands of certain “controllers,” or puppet-masters.
San Francisco: The US economy has a 50 per cent chance of falling into a depression during the next three years, said Roger Farmer, a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s economic fluctuations and growth programme.
“There’s a significant probability things will get worse,” Farmer, 53, said during a phone interview Friday. “We’re certainly not at the end of the recession and things are getting worse.”
Here’s some headlines about which countries are sending naval units to the Gulf of Aden in order to protect ships from Somali pirates. For the Canadian connection, go HERE.
I am all for uses of technology that have tremendous marginal impacts on human welfare. For example - what improves the lot of humanity more - the iPod or a cheap fresh water filter?
Even better - self-adjustable liquid-filled eyeglasses that allow people to adjust their own prescription, thereby eliminating the need for an optician.
http://www.guardian.co.uk: Inventor’s 2020 vision: to help 1bn of the world’s poorest see better
Professor pioneers DIY adjustable glasses that do not need an optician.
That’s a pretty obtuse question to ask, but it’s an important one right now, as the global financial house of cards implodes. Who is Hjalmar Schacht, and why am I asking when his doppelganger will appear?
Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht first attracted the attention of the world when he was given credit for ending the German hyperinflation of 1923, after which the economy of the Weimar Republic performed remarkably well until the 1929 recession which eventually developed into the Great Depression plaguing the advanced capitalist system in the 1930s.When the World War I reparations payments were subject to a general moratorium in 1931, Schacht played a major role in the creation of the Bank for International Settlements that was responsible for the servicing of the loans made under the Dawes and Young Plans.to Germany. . . MORE
Now, I normally don’t read Larouche Publications, but there’s always something interesting to be had. Particularly this article: Brutish Empire Calls for A New Hjalmar Schacht. That article is from November 21st, a full month ago. It warns that the global financial collapse will be the modus operandi for effectively re-booting the system and implementing a new global system of power.
A full month later, the Archbishop of Canterbury comes out and warns that the UK is sliding towards a fascist economy.
Dr Rowan Williams risks causing a new controversy by inviting a comparison between Gordon Brown’s response to the economic downturn and the Third Reich.
In an article for The Daily Telegraph, he claims Germany in the 1930s pursued a “principle” that worked consistently but only on the basis that “quite a lot of people that you might have thought mattered as human beings actually didn’t”.
Dr Williams, the most senior cleric in the Church of England, then appears to draw a parallel between the Nazis and the UK Government’s policies for tackling the downturn, which he says fails to take account of the “particular human costs” to the most vulnerable in society.
If there were a pattern for filtering world events in 2009 - this is the overarching theme - rebooting the system to bring about change. 2009 is the perfect year to have another manufactured crisis so we can restart the engine of economic growth and expanding governmental powers. Change won’t be nearly as rosy as an Obama youth choir singing the praises of their great leader. I think that in 2009, the parallels to fascism will be even more apparent to the astute observer, whereas they will be lost on the majority of people who take reality for granted, as handed down to them. The Good Germans of 1940 didn’t know they were bad, did they?
Calgary is a freakin’ gong show as soon as snow falls. The city boasts the highest light rail ridership in the world - that’s because the roads are an absolute mess.
