A Healthy Dose of Economic Reality

Just in case you have a friend who still believes that anyone elected in the 2008 election is going to wave a magic wand and make things all better in four years, here is a little something that you can send them that just might smack them back to reality.

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported:

"An Abu Dhabi sovereign-wealth fund has purchased a majority stake in the Chrysler Building, an iconic New York City skyscraper."

photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Reuters is reporting:

" Home foreclosure filings jumped 53 percent in June from a year earlier, although they were down 3 percent from May, and foreclosures are expected to rise further, real estate data firm RealtyTrac said on Thursday.

Foreclosure filings rose on an annual basis in 39 states to a total of 252,363 properties during the month, with Nevada, California, Arizona and Florida posting the highest foreclosure rates.

One out of every 501 U.S. households received a notice of default, auction sale or bank repossession in June, RealtyTrac said.

'June was the second straight month with more than a quarter million properties nationwide receiving foreclosure filings," said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. "We have not yet reached the top of this foreclosure cycle.'"

U.S. News & World Report is reporting:

"As if the U.S. economic slump, the housing crisis, surging oil and food prices, and a general sense that things are not going all that well weren't enough, a new study forecasts that China will become the 'pre-eminent world commercial influence' by 2035, when it surpasses the U.S. economy. The study released today is by Albert Keidel, who specializes in China economic issues at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It is clear that China's economic juggernaut will have far-reaching implications for economic, diplomatic, and military matters in coming years--the subject of Keidel's study titled 'China's Economic Rise--Fact and Fiction.' "

Just one day before the Nation's birthday celebration, NPR reported:

"62,000 jobs were cut from company payrolls in June, and the number of laid-off workers seeking benefits also rose sharply last week in further signs of a slowing U.S. economy.

The separate Labor Department reports Thursday seemed to underscore that the economy is in a substantial downturn, if not a recession.

The cuts in June marked the sixth straight month that employers have trimmed payrolls. Gains in education, health services, leisure and hospitality, and government were not enough to offset heavy losses in construction, manufacturing, business services and retailing."

And yesterday the CEO of 12 US Airlines sent the following open letter to their customers:

Our country is facing a possible sharp economic downturn because of skyrocketing oil and fuel prices, but by pulling together, we can all do something to help now.

For airlines, ultra-expensive fuel means thousands of lost jobs and severe reductions in air service to both large and small communities. To the broader economy, oil prices mean slower activity and widespread economic pain. This pain can be alleviated, and that is why we are taking the extraordinary step of writing this joint letter to our customers.

Since high oil prices are partly a response to normal market forces, the nation needs to focus on increased energy supplies and conservation. However, there is another side to this story because normal market forces are being dangerously amplified by poorly regulated market speculation.

Twenty years ago, 21 percent of oil contracts were purchased by speculators who trade oil on paper with no intention of ever taking delivery. Today, oil speculators purchase 66 percent of all oil futures contracts, and that reflects just the transactions that are known. Speculators buy up large amounts of oil and then sell it to each other again and again. A barrel of oil may trade 20-plus times before it is delivered and used; the price goes up with each trade and consumers pick up the final tab. Some market experts estimate that current prices reflect as much as $30 to $60 per barrel in unnecessary speculative costs.

Over seventy years ago, Congress established regulations to control excessive, largely unchecked market speculation and manipulation. However, over the past two decades, these regulatory limits have been weakened or removed. We believe that restoring and enforcing these limits, along with several other modest measures, will provide more disclosure, transparency and sound market oversight. Together, these reforms will help cool the over-heated oil market and permit the economy to prosper.

The nation needs to pull together to reform the oil markets and solve this growing problem.

We need your help. Get more information and contact Congress by visiting www.StopOilSpeculationNow.com.

Richard Anderson CEO Delta Air Lines, Inc.		Gerard J. Arpey Chairman, President and CEO American Airlines, Inc.
Bill Ayer Chairman, President and CEO Alaska Airlines, Inc.		Dave Barger CEO JetBlue Airways Corporation
Mark B. Dunkerley President and CEO Hawaiian Airlines, Inc.		Robert Fornaro Chairman, President and CEO AirTran Airways
Timothy E. Hoeksema Chairman, President and CEO Midwest Airlines		Lawrence W. Kellner Chairman and CEO Continental Airlines, Inc.
Gary Kelly Chairman and CEO Southwest Airlines Co.		Douglas Parker Chairman and CEO US Airways Group, Inc.
Douglas M. Steenland President and CEO Northwest Airlines, Inc.		Glenn F. Tilton Chairman, President and CEO United Airlines, Inc.

Friends, the preceding is not an obituary but a strong cautionary warning.

The world has changed and America will either lead in the change or be left to pick up the scraps that fall from the table. So, now is not the time for fear mongering, rash actions, petty divisiveness, empty promises or pining for the good old days.

Regardless of the outcome of the US election in November, the problems we face won't disappear overnight. However, the next President and Congress will set this nation's course for the next generation. So don't let politicians, the media or partisan PACs lead you around like sheep. Before you fall for the rhetoric and the hype, gets the facts. Then get involved and stay involved.

And most importantly, before you get involved decide where you stand on the issues. Know your own mind.

This is what I would suggest to anyone who needs to decide on which candidate to support:

-- First Step

Make a chart (on paper or computer) which includes:

• a column for listing the issues (economy, war, education, health, climate change, crime, food safety, trade, immigration, etc. ) Try to keep the list to no more than 8-10 issues or this process may get overwhelming.
• a column for ranking each issue in order of importance to you and your community
• a column in which you will list your current position on the issue
• allow a column for each candidate that you are considering supporting. In these columns you can note whether the candidate agrees or disagrees with your position
  

It will be easier to do this on the computer because you may need to revise your lists several times.

-- Second Step

List your issues and your current position on each. Don't rush this process. It doesn't have to be done in one day or one week.

-- Third Step

Rate your list of issues in terms of importance to you and your community.

-- Fourth (and most important) Step

Do your research. Get as much unbiased information on your issues as possible.

Great sources of information are:

• OpenCongress.org
• GovTrack.us
• Project Vote Smart

If you normally listen to only conservative news sources try also listening to opposing views from time to time. Conversely, if you only get your information from liberal media outlets and blogs try listening to the opposing view occassionally. To my knowledge no one has died yet from listening to the other side's opinions.


-- Lastly, review your results and rate the candidates.

I know that what I've outlined sounds like a lot of work but your future is worth it.

It's Time to Get Very Serious About Water

There's an old saying that "it's too late to close the barn door when the horse is gone". And another saying that reminds us that "you don't miss the water until the well is dry".

Well the world's usable water supply is running mighty low and it's seems that, as in the gasoline and food crises, the barn door has been left wide open.

With summer (in the Northern Hemisphere) approaching and weather temperatures rising it's time for everyone to get very serious about water and water management. While Congress is busy debating approaches for addressing the impact of skyrocketing gasoline prices, meteorologists, environmentalists and farmers are already talking about how high temperatures and the lack of rainfall will impact the southeastern US.

The states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee are in an on-going dispute over water resources and land boundaries. The Michigan and Ohio State Legislatures are still trying to decide on participating in the Great Lakes Water Compact. Some states seem to have their head in the sand. Washington politicians seem to have their head stuck somewhere else. And, questions about water supply and US infrastructure were MIA during the US presidential primary debates.

I, for one, am pricing rain barrels for gathering rain water.

In the following video Mike Hightower of Sandia National Laboratories discusses the world water shortage with a reporter for KRQE in New Mexico

excerpt from:
How the World Is Realizing That Water Is "Blue Gold"
by Mark Clayton,

Public fountains are dry in Barcelona, Spain, a city so parched there's a €9,000 ($13,000) fine if you're caught watering your flowers. A tanker ship docked there this month carrying 5 million gallons of precious fresh water -- and officials are scrambling to line up more such shipments to slake public thirst.

Barcelona is not alone. Cyprus will ferry water from Greece this summer. Australian cities are buying water from that nation's farmers and building desalination plants. Thirsty China plans to divert Himalayan water. And 18 million southern Californians are bracing for their first water-rationing in years.

Water, Dow Chemical Chairman Andrew Liveris told the World Economic Forum in February, "is the oil of this century." Developed nations have taken cheap, abundant fresh water largely for granted. Now global population growth, pollution, and climate change are shaping a new view of water as "blue gold."

"We're at a transition point where fundamental decisions need to be made by societies about how this basic human need -- water -- is going to be provided," says Christopher Kilian, clean-water program director for the Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation. "The profit motive and basic human need [for water] are just inherently in conflict."

Will "peak water" displace "peak oil" as the central resource question? Some see such a scenario rising.

"What's different now is that it's increasingly obvious that we're running up against limits to new [fresh water] supplies," says Peter Gleick, a water expert and president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, a nonpartisan think tank in Oakland, Calif. "It's no longer cheap and easy to drill another well or dam another river."

"We have ignored demand for decades, just assuming supplies of water would be there," Dr. Gleick says. "Now we have to learn to manage water demand and -- on top of that -- deal with climate change, too."

In the following video Patrick Barta discusses how Perth, Australia is addressing its growing water shortage.

Related articles:

Michigan House Passes More of Its Water Management Plan

Ohio Agreement to Join Great Lakes Water Plan Stalls Again

Florida Lawmakers Mad About Water

Poaching Water Isn't The Solution



Related posts:

Much Talk About Oil But Little About Water

Falling Bridges and No Water

Georgia Water Crisis: Sorting Out Priorities

US Sales of Municipal Water Systems to Multinational Interests

Cracked Dam Poses New Threat to Earthquake Ravaged China

Al Jazeera's Melissa Chan is in Bei-chuan, one of the areas hardest hit by the quake.





South Korean News agency donga.com reports:

" The hardest-hit city of Mianyang in Sichuan Province, China, was seen dotted with makeshift shelters housing the victims of the earthquake that shook China three days ago.

The strongest quake in 32 years has wreaked havoc on the lives of Sichuan Province residents, who have been fighting fear and chilly temperatures in makeshift tents while searching for their displaced family members.

A 40-year-old woman hunkered down in a corner of a tent was still trembling in fear, saying, “I still feel the shaking. I can’t get into my house.”

Most shops in the city were closed for fear of aftershocks, except some grocery stores selling living commodities. Dong-A special correspondents visited a gym that reportedly houses the largest number of victims.

A temporary home to 12,000 victims, the gym was packed to capacity with people. Tents were mushrooming outside the gym, swarmed with people searching for their missing family members. In total, 50,000 people were moving in and out of the gym.

Despite police shutdown of the roads a kilometer ahead of the facility, roads moving pass it were almost like parking lots crowded with vehicles and people.

A farmer from a rural prefecture was peeping into tents, holding a board with the names of his three sisters written on it. He lamented, “I can’t find my three sisters.”

A 27-year-old mother, eyes swollen from crying, grabbed every one she bumped into, searching for her husband and 7-year-old son."

Tim Johnson of McClatchy Newspapers reports on how this natural disaster has encouraged the Chinese government to momentarily relax its control over the media:

" BEIJING — Amid a national outpouring of grief over Monday's huge earthquake, China has relaxed its grip — perhaps only briefly — on the Internet and some media outlets.

Chinese witnesses to the devastation in Sichuan province have flooded Web sites with homemade videos, filled chat rooms with commentary and let text messages fly from their mobile phones.

The disaster has provided an opportunity for "citizen journalists" to disseminate tidbits of information at a furious pace rarely seen before, experts said.

China's conventional media, initially lagging behind bloggers and users of instant messaging services, also have found greater freedoms, showing often-distressing images of quake-ruined areas without the sanitizing that censors usually demand.

"This is pretty special in terms of letting a lot of reporting happen," said Andrew Lih, a technology author living in Beijing and former scholar of new media at Columbia University.

The death toll from the earthquake, which registered a calamitous 7.9 magnitude, reached 14,866 people Wednesday. As many as 25,000 others may still be buried under the rubble of devastated towns in rugged Sichuan province.

"You just can't hide it. It's a gigantic event. You've got citizens with cell phones with cameras and video filing stuff," Lih said.

China leads the world for mobile phone and Internet users. Some 574 million Chinese have mobile phones, and 221 million regularly use the Internet, slightly more than in the United States. Also hugely popular are an array of instant-messaging services accessed either by computer or by mobile phone.

Wary of citizen efforts to access sensitive information or conspire against the government, China's one-party state normally employs a vast array of human and electronic means to keep the digital arena sterile, including maintaining barriers to foreign Web sites through what has been dubbed the Great Firewall of China.

But unlike a series of crises earlier this year — such as weeks of snowstorms that paralyzed central China in January and February, or violent unrest among Tibetans in March — the earthquake united the nation in mourning and action. "

China Recalls Arms Shipment Bound for Zimbabwe

Alzazeera English reports:

A Chinese ship carrying 77 tonnes of weapons bound for Zimbabwe has been recalled, China's foreign ministry has said.

The decision comes after South African port workers refused to unload the vessel, the An Yue Jiang, reported to be carrying thousands of rounds of ammunition rockets and mortar bombs among its cargo.

Zambia, which chairs the Southern African Development Community grouping, had urged other regional states to also bar the ship from entering their waters, saying the arms could deepen Zimbabwe's election crisis and be used in a crackdown on the opposition.
Earlier this week the US state department expressed concerns that the arms "could be used against individuals who are merely trying to freely express their political will".

Commenting on the shipment at a regular foreign ministry press briefing in Beijing, spokeswoman Jiang Yu said the decision had been taken by the Chinese company involved to recall the vessel.

She said the shipment was completely legal and fell within the established norms of international trade.

China has been under pressure to use its close relations with Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president, to help mediate in the election crisis.

However William Hess, country manager for China with the consultancy company, Global Insight, said such pressure runs against a key pillar of Chinese foreign policy - not to interfere in domestic political issues of other countries.

Officials from Mugabe's Zanu-PF have said Zimbabwe has a sovereign right to defend itself and buy weapons from "any legitimate source worldwide".

"I don't understand all this hullabaloo about a lone ship," Patrick Chinamasa, the country's justice minister, said in Harare this week.

"We don't need clearance from anyone."

In a related story:

US says Tsvangirai won in Zimbabwe

Why Are We Really Talking About Iran Anyway?

As former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan might say, "it's largely about the oil"

And I might add securing US dominance in the oil industry -- a dominance that oil industry executives see slipping away.

According to an article in Sunday's International Herald Tribune:

HONG KONG: When the state oil and natural gas company PetroChina makes its debut Monday on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, China's booming stock markets will be on the verge of another milestone. Soon after the Shanghai listing, analysts expect PetroChina to surpass the U.S. energy behemoth Exxon Mobil as the world's largest company by market value.

PetroChina shares, already traded in New York and Hong Kong, are expected to be seized on by a market awash with cash and investors eager for new opportunities. At the close of markets Friday, PetroChina was valued at $460 billion, making it the world's second-most-valuable company, worth about $26 billion less than Exxon Mobil.

The article does point out that PetroChina is much less profitable than Exxon. However that doesn't seem to bother investors in the Chinese market. After all, since when does a company have to be profitable to be considered valuable. Just look at Amazon.com

What matters is that everyday the US dollar loses value and the debt to China increases.

Canadian & Iraqi Taken Hostage During Attack on Chinese Run Oil Field

This will definitely get the world's attention


an excerpt from:
BBC NEWS | Africa | Sudan rebels 'hold China oil men'

A Darfur rebel group has claimed it has attacked a Sudanese oilfield in the Kordofan region, taking a Canadian and an Iraqi oil worker hostage.

The group, the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem), said it attacked the facility, run by a Chinese-led consortium in the Defra oilfield.

Jem said its action was a message to China to stop helping the Sudanese government with their war in Darfur.

China is a major investor in the energy industry in Africa.

But it has faced some criticism for maintaining close links with the Sudanese government in Khartoum as international concern over the situation in Darfur has continued to rise.

The Canadians and the Iraqi both worked on the oilfield run by the Chinese-led consortium, the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company in Sudan's Defra oilfield.

China's Role In Ending the Conflict in Myanmar (Burma)

In the following video freelance journalist and former BBC reporter discusses China's influence in Myanmar ( Burma )