Changefest '09 - Obama's Inaugural Speech

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Changefest '09 - Obama's Inaugural Speech

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
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Jason Jones maintains Obama's inaugural address was a new message, and in no way like any of Bush's speeches.

The Economics of the Great Despression by Eric Carbonnel

Most people think that the United States is borrowing most of the world’s savings to fund the deficit. Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, who is presiding over ever higher inflation rates, even made a speech in 2005 called “The Global Savings Glut and the U.S. Current Account Deficit.”

The speech makes it sound as if the rest of the world has way too much savings, so much so that they don’t know what to do with it except loan it to the United States.

People think that the excess dollars that go overseas due to the U.S. trade deficit are being loaned back to us. This is not entirely true. To be sure, there is a lot of real foreign investment happening in the United States, but it’s not nearly to the extend reported.

So where does all that extra currency that purchases all those U.S. Treasury Bills to fund a large part of the deficit come from?

The countries that are the U.S.’s major trading partners create it.

China is the best example. When someone in the U.S. buys something in the U.S. that was made in China, that U.S. vendor bought that product from a Chinese businessman and paid in U.S. dollars.

The Chinese businessman then deposits those dollars into his checking account at his local Chinese bank. The bank then converts those dollars to yuan, the official Chinese currency. Now, the local bank has a glut of dollars and a shortage of yuan, so it sells the extra dollars to the People’s Bank of China and buys more yuan.

As long as the trade between the two countries is in equilibrium there is no problem with this. But when one country is running continuous trade deficits and the other continuous surpluses, as the United States and China currently are, a problem arises.

In the case of China, because there is more currency flowing into China than out, the People’s Bank of China ends up with a huge glut of U.S. dollars. Under the rules of the game of international trade and currency exchange they are supposed to sell those excess dollars on the Forex (foreign exchange market) and buy yuan.

But that would mean that there would be a glut of dollars and a shortage of yuan, which would cause the dollar to fall in value and the yuan to rise.

This means Chinese goods would then become very expensive in the U.S., slowing China’s exports, and that’s the last thing China wants.

So to get around the international trade and currency exchange game, China bends the rules. The People’s Bank of China takes the extra dollars and neutralizes them by buying a dollar-denomenated asset, most often some sort of interest-bearing investment instrument, like U.S. Treasuries.

This keeps the yuan from rising and the dollar from falling.

This is known as “neutralizing” or “sterilizing” excess currency inflows. The funny thing is that the U.S. was doing the same thing by sterilizing excess gold inflows all through the 1920s to keep the dollar artificially low and exports up, and it was one of the major factors that contributed to the Great Depression.

So if the People’s Bank of China used excess dollars to buy U.S. Treasuries, and didn’t buy the yuan on the Forex to sell to the businessman’s local bank, where did the People’s Bank of China get the yuan?

Answer: China creates it!

During recent years, the U.S.’s current account deficit has been financed primarily by money created by the central banks of other countries, in particular China.

Therefore, it is not a matter of the United States using up all the rest of the world’s savings to fund its deficit. It is a matter of the deficit being financed by the central banks of the United States’ trading partners, and, for their part, Asian central banks in particular have consistently demonstrated their ability and willingness to create money in order to finance the U.S.’s current account deficit.

So China is now sterilizing excess currently inflows just like the United States did in the 1920s. But why hasn’t China fallen into a depression like the U.S. did when it played the sterilization game?

Because China has added a little twist.

In the 1920s, Europe paid for U.S. imports with gold, and the Federal Reserve would cheat gold by locking it away instead of expanding the currency supply to match, thereby preventing the commensurate inflation it would have caused, keeping the price of U.S. goods low, and insuring a continuing trade surplus.

This was hugely deflationary.

As the rest of the world bought cheap American goods, gold would just disappear into the black hole of the Federal Reserve and the world money supply would contract.

And when currency contracts, deflation ensues.

When China sterilizes excess currency inflows, however, it’s extremely inflationary. For every excess dollar that China neutralizes by buying U.S. Treasuries, the People’s Bank of China has to conjure up a commensurate amount of yuan out of thin air.

...

As a result of all the currency games being played by China (and other countries), the total U.S. deficit has grown to over $7 trillion since the dollar was taken off the gold standard by President Nixon in 1971. These deficits are sustained by fiat currency from other central banks around the world.

All the while, these foreign banks are hoarding ever increasing amounts of U.S. debt (in the form of Treasuries) and artificially propping up the value of the dollar.

Much of our debt cannot be repaid, and if our trade partners begin to dump U.S. Treasuries on the world markets, the whole credit bubble will implode, resulting in a worldwide depression.

The longer governments and central banks try to cheat the free markets, the greater the pain will be when the correction occurs. Remember, in the end, fixed markets lose, and free markets always win.

I believe that inflation has slowed in China due to fears about deflation. When those fears fade, inflation picks up again and China will sell dollars to save its currency. This hyperinflation in China combined with the crashing value of the dollar will cause most fiat currencies to lose all value and will spell the end of the world's paper based currency system.

Source: http://www.marketskeptics.com/2009/01/economics-of-great-depression.html

As if Things Weren't Bad Enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S. by Andrew Osborn, Wall St. Journal

In Moscow, Igor Panarin's Forecasts Are All the Rage; America 'Disintegrates' in 2010

From sea to shining sea

Meaning
From one coast to another.

Origin
Taken from a line in 'America the Beautiful', the patriotic song written by Katharine Lee Bates in 1893. She wrote other versions later, in 1904 and 1913.

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

She wrote the song following an inspirational visit to Pikes Peak, Colorado, USA, which she later described thus:

"One day some of the other teachers and I decided to go on a trip to 14,000-foot Pikes Peak. We hired a prairie wagon. Near the top we had to leave the wagon and go the rest of the way on mules. I was very tired. But when I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse."

The phrase is also frequently associated with Canada. The Canadian national motto - "A mari usque ad mare", translates as "From sea to sea". This has biblical origin:

"He shall have dominion from sea to sea and from the river unto the ends of the earth." (Psalm 72:8)

Source: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/from%20sea%20to%20shining%20sea.html

Pay It Forward

Flixster Plot: Eugene Simonet, an emotionally and physically scarred social studies teacher, challenges his young students to devise some type of philanthropic plan and put it into effect. A young boy, whose own life is far from rosy, takes the assignment to heart and invents the "pay-it-forward" philosophy, which encourages paying back favors in advance. The whole town embraces the boy's concept, and random acts of kindness become a community pastime. Though celebrated by acquaintances and the media, the boy struggles at home with his alcoholic mother, and the only one who recognizes his lonely fight is Eugene Simonet.
My take: A simplistic tearjerker, but inspiring nonetheless. Great performance from the cast all-around.

Obama wins!

What a magnificent orator! It's a wonder his speeches are not prepared by Lincoln himself.

Axolotl

Not content with being a Scrabble buff's get-out-of-jail card when he has an 'X', the axolotl is perhaps the most naturally photogenic animal on Planet Earth. I mean, it doesn't even have to try! It just has this goofy smile plastered across its face.
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The axolotl (aːʃoːloːtɬ), Ambystoma mexicanum, is the best-known of the Mexican neotenic mole salamanders belonging to the Tiger Salamander complex. Larvae of this species fail to undergo metamorphosis, so the adults remain aquatic and gilled. The species originates from the lake underlying Mexico City and are also called ajolote (which is also the common name for Mexican Mole Lizards). Axolotls are used extensively in scientific research due to their ability to regenerate most body parts, ease of breeding, and large embryos. They are commonly kept as pets in the United States, Great Britain (under the spelling axlotl), Australia, Japan (sold under the name wooper rooper (ウーパールーパー, Ūpā Rūpā?)) and other countries.

Axolotls should not be confused with waterdogs, the larval stage of the closely related Tiger Salamanders (Ambystoma tigrinum and Ambystoma mavortium), which is widespread in much of North America which also occasionally become neotenic, nor with mudpuppies (Necturus spp.), fully-aquatic salamanders which are unrelated to the axolotl but which bear a superficial resemblance.

As of 2008, axolotls are near extinction, due to urbanization in Mexico City, and polluted waters. Nonnative fish have also recently been introduced to the waters. These new fish have been eating the axolotls' babies, as well as its primary source of food. The axolotl is currently on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's annual Red List of threatened species.
Source: Wikipedia

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Mexico City's 'water monster' nears extinction
By DAVID KOOP, Associated Press Writer David Koop, Associated Press Writer – Sun Nov 2, 1:14 pm ET

MEXICO CITY – Beneath the tourist gondolas in the remains of a great Aztec lake lives a creature that resembles a monster — and a Muppet — with its slimy tail, plumage-like gills and mouth that curls into an odd smile.

The axolotl, also known as the "water monster" and the "Mexican walking fish," was a key part of Aztec legend and diet. Against all odds, it survived until now amid Mexico City's urban sprawl in the polluted canals of Lake Xochimilco, now a Venice-style destination for revelers poled along by Mexican gondoliers, or trajineros, in brightly painted party boats.

But scientists are racing to save the foot-long salamander from extinction, a victim of the draining of its lake habitat and deteriorating water quality. In what may be the final blow, nonnative fish introduced into the canals are eating its lunch — and its babies.

The long-standing International Union for Conservation of Nature includes the axolotl on its annual Red List of threatened species, while researchers say it could disappear in just five years. Some are pushing for a series of axolotl sanctuaries in canals cleared of invasive species, while others are considering repopulating Xochimilco with axolotls bred in captivity.

"If the axolotl disappears, it would not only be a great loss to biodiversity but to Mexican culture, and would reflect the degeneration of a once-great lake system," says Luis Zambrano, a biologist at the Autonomous University of Mexico, or UNAM.

The number of axolotls (pronounced ACK-suh-LAH-tuhl) in the wild is not known. But the population has dropped from roughly 1,500 per square mile in 1998 to a mere 25 per square mile this year, according to a survey by Zambrano's scientists using casting nets.

It has been a steep fall from grace for the salamander with a feathery mane of gills and a visage reminiscent of a 1970s Smiley Face that inspired American poet Ogden Nash to pen the witticism: "I've never met an axolotl, But Harvard has one in a bottle."

Millions once lived in the giant lakes of Xochimilco and Chalco on which Mexico City was built. Using four stubby legs to drag themselves along lake bottoms or their thick tails to swim like mini-alligators, they hunted plentiful aquatic insects, small fish and crustaceans.

Legend has it that Xolotl — the dog-headed Aztec god of death, lightning and monstrosities — feared he was about to be banished or killed by other gods and changed into an axolotl to flee into Lake Xochimilco.

The axolotl's decline began when Spanish conquerors started draining the lakes, which were further emptied over time to slake the thirst of one of the world's largest and fastest-growing cities. In the 1970s, Lake Chalco was completely drained to prevent flooding. In the 1980s, Mexico City began pumping its wastewater into the few canals and lagoons that remained of Xochimilco.

About 20 years ago, African tilapia were introduced into Xochimilco in a misguided effort to create fisheries. They joined with Asian carp to dominate the ecosystem and eat the axolotl's eggs and compete with it for food. The axolotl is also threatened by agrochemical runoff from nearby farms and treated wastewater from a Mexico City sewage plant, researchers say.

Local fisherman Roberto Altamira, 32, recalls when he was a boy, and the axolotl was still part of the local diet.

"I used to love axolotl tamales," he says, rubbing his stomach and laughing.

But he says people no longer eat axolotls, mainly because fishermen almost never find them.

"The last one I caught was about six months ago," says Altamira, a wiry gondolier with rope-like muscles from years of poling through Xochimilco's narrow waterways.

Meanwhile, the axolotl population is burgeoning in laboratories, where scientists study its amazing traits, including the ability to completely re-grow lost limbs. Axolotls have played key roles in research on regeneration, embryology, fertilization and evolution.

The salamander has the rare trait of retaining its larval features throughout its adult life, a phenomenon called neoteny. It lives all its life in the water but can breathe both under water with gills or by taking gulps of air from the surface.

On a 9-foot-wide canal covered by a green carpet of "lentejilla" — an aquatic plant that resembles green lentils — Zambrano's researchers test water quality and search for axolotls. The air smells of sulfur and sewage.

A team member suddenly points to the trademark water ripple of an axolotl, and the crew hurls its net. But they only come up with two tilapia in a sopping-wet mass of lentejilla.

So far, scientists disagree on how to save the creature. But a pilot sanctuary is expected to open in the next three to six months in the waters around Island of the Dolls, so-called because the owner hangs dolls he finds in the canals to ward off evil spirits.

Zambrano proposes up to 15 axolotl sanctuaries in Xochimilco's canals, where scientists would insert some kind of barrier and clear the area of nonnative species.

Without carp, the water would clear, and plants the axolotl needs to breed could flourish again, said Bob Johnson, the curator of amphibians and reptiles at the Toronto Zoo.

"If you take the insults away, the lake has an amazing latent potential to heal itself," he said.

Veterinarian Erika Servin, who runs the Mexico City government's axolotl program at Chapultepec Zoo, is studying the possibility of introducing axolotls from the lab into the canals. But more study is needed to make sure the process doesn't lead to diseases and genetic problems from inbreeding.

Xochimilco residents could be another source of resistance.

Hundreds of people make a living pulling tilapia from canals or growing flowers, lettuce and vegetables on nearby land. Efforts to remove the fish or shut down polluting farms could face stiff opposition.

But while the debate goes on, time is running out.

Given its role in research alone, Johnson says, "We owe it to the axolotl to help it survive."

Botak Jones

Ha! Finally went with Jasmine, Shannon & Ailsa. Was told to lower my expectations and it seriously wasn't too bad at all, and the price was quite reasonable. Service was excellent for a kopitiam, so no complaints there. They've a few branches islandwide so will try again sometime this year.

Giuseppe Rossi

Saturday Night Live - Sarah Palin vs Katie Couric

This Saturday Night Live version of the Palin interview is funny. The real thing was frightening...

AIG - Almost Incompetently Gazumped

They had us worried there. AIG's near collapse had my heart in my mouth when I thought about the jersey I have with AIG (Aaron is Great) plastered across the front. The 56.5m pounds Manchester United stand to receive in the next few years was suddenly at stake. Thankfully, the US government bailed AIG out with US$85b in return for virtual executive control. Oh well, as long as we get our money, though we can always negotiate a better deal given our triumphs last season.

Barack Obama's speech

What's the fuss?

E-cow-nomics

SOCIALISM: You have 2 cows, so you give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM: You have 2 cows. The State takes both and shoots you.

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

MALAYSIAN BUMIPUTRAISM: You have two cows, the State takes one and gives it to your bumiputra neighbour. From the milk you sell from the remaining cow you buy a bull and mulitply your herd. The State takes 30 per cent of your herd as it grows and give them to your bumiputra neigbour. Your bumiputra neighbour has a kenduri each time they receive a cow.

UMNOPUTRAISM: The State takes 30 per cent of your herd and parks them in Switzerland in the name of some UMNO official or close relatives, friends and sons-in-law.

MALAYSIAN GOVERNMENT-LINKED OR BUMIPUTRA CORPORATION: You have two cows.
You employ mainly bumiputras to milk them. But both cows have been sent to the kenduri, so the State gives you more cows and write off the losses of the first two. After several kenduris later, you invite an American or German Corporation to turn around the losses. The Japanese have however already taken their two original cows back home to Japan.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.

A FRENCH CORPORATION: You have two cows. You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'Cowkimon' and market it worldwide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You decide to have lunch.

A SWISS CORPORATION : You have 5,000 cows. None of them belong to you. You charge the owners for storing them.

A CHINA CORPORATION: You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You worship them.

A BRITISH CORPORATION: You have two cows. Both are mad.

A MALAYSIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You signed a 40-year contract to supply milk at RM0.06 per litre. Then midway through, you raised the price to RM0.60 or you cut the supply. When the buyer agrees to the new price, you change your mind again and now want RM1.20.
The buyer decided you can keep the milk, who rather go look for milk that comes from recycled cows or the cow urine instead. At the end your two cows retire together with the Prime Minister.

A SINGAPOREAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. Whenever prices of GST, ERP, PUB and kopi-si go up; one cow-peh and the other cow-bu.

Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More by Dennis Overbye of The New York Times

More fighting in Iraq. Somalia in chaos. People in this country can’t afford their mortgages and in some places now they can’t even afford rice.

None of this nor the rest of the grimness on the front page today will matter a bit, though, if two men pursuing a lawsuit in federal court in Hawaii turn out to be right. They think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole or something else that will spell the end of the Earth — and maybe the universe.

Scientists say that is very unlikely — though they have done some checking just to make sure.

The world’s physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature.

But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Although it sounds bizarre, the case touches on a serious issue that has bothered scholars and scientists in recent years — namely how to estimate the risk of new groundbreaking experiments and who gets to decide whether or not to go ahead.

Continued here.

Cops: 3rd-Graders Aimed to Hurt Teacher

A group of third-graders plotted to attack their teacher, bringing a broken steak knife, handcuffs, duct tape and other items for the job and assigning children tasks including covering the windows and cleaning up afterward, police said Tuesday.

The plot by as many as nine boys and girls at Center Elementary School in south Georgia was a serious threat, Waycross Police Chief Tony Tanner said.

"We did not hear anybody say they intended to kill her, but could they have accidentally killed her? Absolutely," Tanner said. "We feel like if they weren't interrupted, there would have been an attempt. Would they have been successful? We don't know."

The children, ages 8 and 9, were apparently mad at the teacher because she had scolded one of them for standing on a chair, Tanner said. A prosecutor said they are too young to be charged with a crime under Georgia law.

School officials alerted police Friday after a pupil tipped off a teacher that a girl had brought a weapon to school, Tanner said.

Police seized a broken steak knife, handcuffs, duct tape, electrical and transparent tape, ribbons and a crystal paperweight from the students, who apparently intended to use them against the teacher, Tanner said.

Full story here.