Category: Uncategorized

Gasoline Prices Are Not Rising, the Dollar Is Falling

Louis Woodhill

Forbes, 22 February 2012

Panic is in the air as gasoline prices move above $4.00 per gallon. Politicians and pundits are rounding up the usual suspects, looking for someone or something to blame for this latest outrage to middle class family budgets. In a rare display of bipartisanship, President Obama and Speaker of the House John Boehner are both wringing their hands over the prospect of seeing their newly extended Social Security tax cut gobbled up by rising gasoline costs.

Unfortunately, the talking heads that are trying to explain the reasons for high oil prices are missing one tiny detail. Oil prices aren’t high right now. In fact, they are unusually low. Gasoline prices would have to rise by another $0.65 to $0.75 per gallon from where they are now just to be “normal”. And, because gasoline prices are low right now, it is very likely that they are going to go up more—perhaps a lot more.

What the politicians, analysts, and pundits are missing is that prices are ratios. Gasoline prices reflect crude oil prices, so let’s use West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil to illustrate this crucial point.

Read full article.

Dear friends,

Rebecca Solnit has written a great article on Occupy, relationships, differences, violence, and a lot more.  A potent, passionate framing for our times, worth a full, reflective read.  Note that the original is full of juicy links.

Coheartedly,
Tom

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Mad, Passionate Love — and Violence: Occupy Heads into the Spring

by Rebecca Solnit

Common Dreams, 24 February 2012

When you fall in love, it’s all about what you have in common, and you can hardly imagine that there are differences, let alone that you will quarrel over them, or weep about them, or be torn apart by them — or if all goes well, struggle, learn, and bond more strongly because of, rather than despite, them. The Occupy movement had its glorious honeymoon when old and young, liberal and radical, comfortable and desperate, homeless and tenured all found that what they had in common was so compelling the differences hardly seemed to matter.

Until they did.

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: Rebecca Solnit on Mad, Passionate Love — and Violence — Occupy Heads into the Spring”

The Death of MERS*

Mike Harris

VeteransToday, 22 February 2012

At long last, it appears that the USA is still a country of laws and not a country of big banks and corporations.

A New York Federal Bankruptcy Judge named Grossman has finally ruled that the illegal scheme called MERS, that has defrauded both homeowners and large investors is nothing more than a scheme developed by bankers and mortgage brokers to also bilk the county recorders out of the fees due at title transfer.

MERS is the method the bankers preferred to quickly and illegally to evict millions of homeowners from their homes. In the process MERS allowed the Banks to separate the note from the security. This allowed the securitization and bundling of millions of home loans into trade able securities. The only problem is that the MERS process destroyed the chain of title. Now 50% of the real estate in the USA does not have a clear title to determine who actually owns the real estate and who owns the note. The net result is the notes for the home loans are worthless paper.

The Banks no longer have legal standing to evict any one from their home. That is the good news, the bad news is that no one now can prove they have a clear title. So who owns these homes and other real estate?? That is still unclear.

Read full article.  Complete copy of Court finding at end.

*MERS – Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems

The Consequences Of War On The US Economy

Joshua Brown, The Reformed Broker

Business Insider,23 February 2012

Psst…wanna learn something today?

The Institute for Economics and Peace is out with a monumental piece of research on how wars affect the US economy…

Using data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, figure one shows the composition of U.S. GDP in consumption, investment, government spending and net exports and imports in per-capita terms. It can be seen the war years of 1941 to 1945 saw one of the most significant short term increases in economic growth in the history of the U.S. economy. The top line in blue is GDP, and the increase around World War II is very visible. This was driven by government spending denominated in purple.

(Headline is flawed, this is not an OWS endorsed event)

OWS PR working group statement on the 99% Declaration:
The 99% Declaration and its call for a “national general assembly” in Philadelphia in July is not affiliated with or endorsed by Occupy Wall Street, and the organizers’ plans blatantly contradict OWS’ stated principles.

“Occupy Wall Street” to Hold July Convention, Elect Delegates

The conference will be funded through donations.

Patrick Walters

NBC New York, 22 February 2012

A group of protesters affiliated with the

Occupy Wall Street movement

plans to elect 876 “delegates” from around the country and hold a national “general assembly” in Philadelphia over the Fourth of July as part of ongoing protests over corporate excess and economic inequality.

The group, dubbed the 99% Declaration Working Group, said Wednesday delegates would be selected during a secure online election in early June from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.

In a nod to their First Amendment rights, delegates will meet in Philadelphia to draft and ratify a “petition for a redress of grievances,” convening during the week of July 2 and holding a news conference in front of Independence Hall on the Fourth of July.

Read full article.

Does anyone have knowledge of technical developments on this being made publically available? It seems that there is little information on technical progress on this, indicating that the whole field may have been “put under lock and key” – perhaps it is too disruptive to a certain energy monopoly that is still controlling how we make energy…

Magnetohydrodynamics – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) (magneto fluid dynamics or hydromagnetics) is an academic discipline which studies the dynamics of electrically conducting fluids. Examples of such fluids include plasmas, liquid metals, and salt water or electrolytes. The word magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) is derived from magneto- meaning magnetic field, and hydro- meaning liquid, and -dynamics meaning movement. The field of MHD was initiated by Hannes Alfvén,[1] for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1970.

The fundamental concept behind MHD is that magnetic fields can induce currents in a moving conductive fluid, which in turn creates forces on the fluid and also changes the magnetic field itself.

Phi Beta Iota:  A government with integrity would apply intelligence and counterintelligence to eliminate the possibility of knowledge being “locked up.”  It is clear that this is precisely what has happened over the past century.  In addition to externalizing true costs and optimizing very poisonous / toxic legacy systems, the industrial and financial powers have actively worked against the public interest (suicidal seeds from Monsanto, obesity additions, vaccines that kill, etcetera.  We know the answer to the question, “who governs?”  We also know the answer to the question “For whom do they govern?”  What we do not know is the answer to the most important question: “How shall we establish governance that is absolutely in the interest of the public and committed to the common good?”

Huh?

Iceland shows eurozone how to fight crisis

Russia Today TV, 20 February 2012

Before Greece and Portugal, it was Iceland that chilled investors. Now the country’s finances are recovering and its bonds are turning into a lucrative investment.

­Fitch has upgraded Iceland’s sovereign credit rating from BB+ to BBB- with a stable outlook. The rating agency lifted “the junk bond status” saying the country’s “unorthodox crisis policy response has succeeded.”

In 2008 Iceland faced the worst financial crisis in its history as three leading banks defaulted under the weight of huge foreign debt. As it became clear the default were inevitable Iceland’s government nationalized the banks, while foreign creditors were left holding the bag.

“A Major part of Iceland’s debt has been written off. That means the country has more chances to pay its debts. So Iceland’s bonds are more attractive to investors than those of Greece or Portugal”, commented Tamerlan  Khassimikov, the head of BST Capital Management.

The country also received a $2.2 billion bailout from the IMF and carried out structural reforms which enabled Iceland to reduce its fiscal deficit.  The devaluation of the Icelandic krona contributed to the country’s exports.

“The Icelandic krona unlike the euro is supported by the country’s production. Now the fishing industry creates 46% of Iceland’s GDP and exports are growing”, said Mr. Khassimikov.

But it wasn’t only effective crisis management that helped Iceland stay afloat, according to the expert. “Iceland is a disciplined country, it used not to spend much more than it has”, Mr Khassimikov said. “The fiscal deficit was formed during the crisis, because Iceland’s banks are a part of global banking. As for Greece, it became a victim of its own careless approach to finance”.

Analysts agree Iceland’s crisis approach is hardly applicable to the euro-zone countries as they can’t devalue the currency by themselves. But Iceland definitely shows a textbook example of a thrifty financial policy.

Phi Beta Iota:  Western media — with the exception now of Russia Today Television — is self-censoring on Iceland at a time when Spain and others in difficulty need to be as focused on intelligence with integrity in the public service as possible.  From where we sit, the German government is corrupt, in the pockets of the German banksters who have much more to do with the over-all global financial collapse than most people realize.