Category: Politics

CERN

Is CERN investing in fundamental science or wasting money?

Frankly, any rational assessment of CERN must conclude that it is the most humungous and nonsensical waste of money at a time when millions or even billions of people are threatened by a) starvation and/or death from lack of water and/or b) flooding, burning or freezing caused by Global warming not to mention the wars that are inevitable as CERN LHCpeople (probably mostly in the Middle East, Asia or Africa) start to fight over scarce resources.

The billions spent on this rather esoteric and ridiculous research would be better spent on practical steps to save people and the planet. And, “yes”, I do know that basic research can lead to useful “products”, and I have nothing against research into, for example fusion power. But why we really have to know what happened in the universe one millisecond after it blew up is beyond me, especially given the cost.

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Greenspan being quite remarkable!

Fingers crossed this becomes a key political statement.

I am indebted to Baseline Scenario for drawing my attention to a recent article in Bloomberg.  Greenspan is voicing what many regard as so obvious we wonder why the present US Government haven’t been pushing for this for some time. (And if you want the answer to that question, read this)

Anyway, in the Bloomberg story Greenspan says:

“If they’re too big to fail, they’re too big,” Greenspan said today. “In 1911 we broke up Standard Oil — so what happened? The individual parts became more valuable than the whole. Maybe that’s what we need to do.”

Breathtaking!

And Greenspan goes on to say:

“Failure is an integral part, a necessary part of a market system,” he said. “If you start focusing on those greenspanwho should be shrinking, it undermines growing standards of living and can even bring them down.”

Amen to that!

By Paul Handover

Insulting us?

Is this, in the end, how our Governments are treating us?

Yves Smith runs the incredibly successful Blog, Naked Capitalism.  Frankly, I have no idea where she finds the time to put together her Posts, many of which are constructed on the back of in-depth research.

On Friday, 16th October there was a Post which has huge implications.  It is all about Access Journalism.  It needs to be read.  Here’s an extract.

Let us start with the cheerleading in the media over Wall Street, and in particular, Goldman earnings. Matt Taibbi, in “Good News on Wall Street Means… What Exactly?,” tells us why this is so distorted:

It’s literally amazing to me that our press corps hasn’t yet managed to draw a distinction between good news on Wall Street for companies like Goldman, and good news in reality.

I watched carefully the reporting of the Dow breaking 10,000 the other day and not anywhere did I see a major news organization include a paragraph of the “On the other hand, so fucking what?” sort, one that might point out that unemployment is still at a staggering high, foreclosures are racing along at a terrifying clip, and real people are struggling more than ever. In fact the dichotomy between the economic health of ordinary people and the traditional “market indicators” is not merely a non-story, it is a sort of taboo — unmentionable in major news coverage.

The press has been on a downslope for at least a decade, as a result of strained budgets and vastly more effective government and business spin control (and it was already pretty good at that, see the BBC series, The Century of the Self, via Google video, for a real eye-opener). I met a reporter who had been overseas for six years, opening an important foreign office for the Wall Street Journal. He was stunned when he came back in 1999 to see how much reporting had changed in his absence. He said it was impossible to get to the bottom of most stories in a normal news cycle because companies had become very sophisticated in controlling their message and access.

As I said, please read the Post in full.  Oh, and I see Baseline Scenario picked up on this as well.

By Paul Handover

Insulting us, postscript

Just a few figures that underline reality.

US rent indexes declined in September. Last time this happened was 1992.

US Consumer Price Index fell 1.3%, year on year, in September 2009. Note that it bottomed at -2.1% y/y in July 2009, making it the largest annual contraction since 1949.

September’s US food prices fell (-0.2%) in September, the first annual decline in over 40 years.

US industrial production, as of August, was down (-10.7%) compared to August 2008.

Just a US problem?

Japanese industrial production, as of August, was down (-22.7%) compared to August 2008.

Britain’s industrial production, as of August, was down (-9.3%) compared to August 2008.

Eurozone area industrial production, as of August, was down (-15.9%) compared to August 2008.

Meanwhile the banks steam ahead reporting huge profits ……

Crazy world!

By Paul Handover

The loss of a dear friend?

More than a grain of truth in a ’round robin’.

The Internet has produced many changes to the way we all behave.  One of them is the ease by which all sorts of material may be circulated rapidly.  Much of it is tittle-tattle but a recent one caught my eye.  I was in two minds to publish it but having seen ahead of time Paul’s forthcoming Post about Access Journalism (visible from the 19th onwards) convinced me I should.  Make of it what you will.

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Climate warming?

What’s the truth about climate warming, e’rr change?

I will put my hand up to subscribing to the notion of humans having such an effect on Earth’s atmosphere that climate warming was likely, inevitable and could be the destruction of life, as we know it.  It seemed to fit the idea of mankind being disconnected from the planet and completely out of touch with the reality that our Earth is a fragile place, our atmosphere a (relatively) very thin ‘skin’ around our planet and few of us spare a second thought for protecting the environment for the generations to come.

earth-moon

But gradually the faint sounds of opposition to the ‘simple’ argument that man is screwing up the Planet have become clearer.  The latest is a very clear cry.

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Dolphins – will you help them?

One man’s mission to stop the killing and capture of dolphins.

A dolphin is one of the most beautiful creatures on this planet.

dolphin

I was going to write a very long Post setting out the reasons why everyone who cares for these creatures needs to get involved. But, in the end, a few links and extracts achieve that much more effectively than several hundred words from me.

Read more about saving and protecting Dolphins

Cash for Clunkers program a failure

The law of unintended consequences

It should come as no surprise to anyone that U.S. car companies are slumping once again.  The Cash for Clunkers program was a wasteful, inefficient publicity stunt or, worse, an actual attempt by the US Federal Government to stimulate the economy.  The worse part is that the program cost the economy jobs: many healthy, profitable dealerships had their company taken away from them by government edict under this program, never to return.  It’s almost criminal.

By Sherry Jarrell

A tax is a tax is a ….COST !

The role of taxes.

We’ve talked a lot about taxes as revenue to the Government and the inefficiency of government spending on this Learning from Dogs, but a far more important issue is the impact of taxes on the costs and output of businesses.

Any imposed cost to business is a “tax,” whether it’s called that or not.  And any tax is an additional cost to that business, which lowers its output, reduces employment, and raises prices of goods and services to you and me.

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The truth about this crisis – and it isn’t pretty!

The coincidence of events

Today started like most days in that after a breakfast with Jean it was time to switch on the PC and review the news that had come in over night and think about what material might be appropriate for the Blog.  But that’s as far as it went for a normal day.

Because a number of items came together in a way that left me reeling.  Not because it was necessarily new information but because together they represent the most compelling evidence as to why this economic crisis happened and, more importantly, the terrible likelihood that our leaders aren’t go to fix it and that the future will bring an even worse calamity.

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