The Refrain in Spain: "hagamos como islandia"

"Do as Iceland"!

Just say . . .

 

North Korean Camp 14 Escapee Hooked in Stomach, Hung Over Fire

From the London Evening Standard, here, which details some of the experiences of the only known person to escape the hell-hole known as North Korea, to which Jimmy Carter recently sent condolences on the death of the little monster responsible for the crime:

Shin’s conception had been arranged by the guards. They chose his mother and father, Shin Gyung Sub, as prizes for each other in a “reward” marriage. The couple were allowed to sleep together for five nights and then Shin’s father was allowed to visit his family only a few times a year. Their eldest son, Shin He Geun, was born in 1974, Shin arrived eight years later.

Park Yong Chul was a well-travelled North Korean who’d enjoyed a life of relative luxury before arriving at Camp 14 in 2004. Shin was instructed to befriend Park — and extract a confession. Through him, Shin learned about the existence of other countries, televisions, computers but mostly, he learned about food. Park described chicken, pork and beef, leading Shin to make his first free decision: he chose not to snitch on Park, instead hatching a plan for them to escape together. “Hearing about the food he’d eaten in the outside world was the main trigger,” recalls Shin. “I wanted to eat that kind of food — things unimaginable within the camp.”

Park was electrocuted during the escape as he squeezed through the electric fence. Shin suffered only burns, a small price after years of torture. His body bears many scars — his finger was chopped off by guards who also stuck a hook through his stomach and suspended him over a fire.

The Triumph of Newspeak in the EU: Spending is Austerity

The only voice which doesn't whine in the language of Newspeak appears to be Angela Merkel's in Germany. For the rest, the plain record of increased spending on the failed EU welfare state experiment gets called austerity.

Investors.com puts it best, here:

Austerity? Spending has boomed in the EU over the last decade. During the 2000s, EU member nations collectively boosted government outlays by 62%. Average government spending by EU nations today stands at about 49.2% of GDP — vs. 44.8% in 2000.

On its own website, the EU itself ridicules the notion of government austerity as a "myth."

"National budgets are NOT decreasing their spending, they are increasing it," the EU says, noting that in 2011, 23 of the 27 nations in the EU increased spending. This year, 24 of 27 will do so.

Did that decade-long spending increase boost GDP growth? No. During the 2000s, average annual GDP growth in the EU fell to 1.2% from 2.2% in the 1990s.

So the idea that Europeans are "tired" of austerity is false. You can't be tired of something you haven't tried. This is why an exasperated German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday she'll continue to demand that other countries make real cuts in spending.

Election 2012: Obama Hits The Rubber Puppy Circuit

Greater Europe Has 8 of 10 Highest Taxed Incomes

Showing highest marginal income tax rate and income level at which it begins:

10. Ireland, 48.0 percent + social security 4 percent, $43,900

09. Finland, 49.2 percent, $91,000

08. England, 50.0 percent + social security 12 percent, $231,000

07. Japan, 40.0 percent + 10 percent municipal + 5 percent social security, $217,000

06. Belgium, 50.0 percent + social security 13 percent + municipal 11 percent, $46,900

05. Austria, 50.0 percent + social security 18 percent, $80,000

04. Netherlands, 52.0 percent, $74,500

03. Denmark, 55.4 percent, $76,000

02. Sweden, 56.6 percent + social security 7 percent, $81,000

01. Aruba (Netherlands), 58.95 percent, $165,000 

The slideshow and commentary at CNBC.com is viewable here.

China Dries and Pulverizes Abortions For Stamina Pills

Barbarism is alive and well in the world.

So-called advanced societies like the United States abort over a million children a year, where its president views babies as a punishment. In China it's more like 13 million a year, and many of those end up in a dried and pulverized form in pills which are sold on the lucrative stamina market.

Nowhere do I read in the gruesome stories here and here that this amounts to cannibalism, but that's what it is, pure and simple, and America and the world relies on this barbaric country for most of its cheap manufactures.

Forward!

Progress!

Aging American Leftist: Social Security is Unaffordable

One Janet Daley, formerly of Berkeley, California, purportedly also a former leftist, in the UK Telegraph here:

Relying on the free market to support a vast system of entitlements (whichever of the two you choose to make your first priority) is not sustainable. The market economy simply cannot afford the enormous cost of the social security programmes that are now regarded as politically untouchable in Europe and in the US – as both of their political elites are painfully discovering.

Mark Steyn: Elizabeth Fauxcahontas Crockagawea Warren

Elizabeth Talking Bull

Here:

Alas, the actual original marriage license does not list Great-Great-Great-Gran’ma as Cherokee, but let’s cut Elizabeth Fauxcahontas Crockagawea Warren some slack here. She couldn’t be black. She would if she could, but she couldn’t. But she could be 1/32nd Cherokee, and maybe get invited to a luncheon with others of her kind — “people who are like I am,” 31/32nds white, and they can all sit around celebrating their diversity together. She is a testament to America’s melting pot, composite pot, composting pot, whatever.

That's why they pay him the big bucks.

(image source)

PM Cameron Talks Up Sodomy While UK Takes On Water

Cameron, looking the wrong direction

In the words of the UK Telegraph here, after Cameron's so-called conservatism took a drubbing in the recent elections:

Mr Cameron is a charismatic leader who has refreshed his party, and made it far more comfortable with the modern world. But his political strategy and positioning are failing to deliver. By making a totem of issues such as overseas aid and gay marriage, he has alienated core voters without winning new ones. The result of adhering to a Westminster definition of the centre ground, and trying to be all things to all people, is that the Conservative Party now appears to lack the message, the focus, and the strategy to win a majority. ...

What [the voters] care about – and what Mr Cameron must preoccupy himself with – are earthier issues: fixing the economy, cutting the cost of living, getting tough on crime and welfare dependency, restricting immigration, standing up to Europe on human rights.

Such a strategy is being dismissed as a “lurch to the Right”. But what it actually represents is a lurch towards the public, a fresh offering that appeals to hard-pressed families and striving workers – to those looking for a reason to vote Tory and thus far failing to find one.

Shills for ObamaCare Adopt Orwell's Newspeak: Mandates are Liberty!

An astute commenter on "Yes, the Health-Care Mandate Is About Liberty" by Jonathan Cohn and David A. Strauss at Blooomberg.com here captured the Orwellian Newspeak with this pithy formulation:

Mandatory Arbitration: Big Business' Latest Weapon Against The People

And they don't hoodwink you into it, either. You sign up for it.

Susan Antilla has all the details for Bloomberg, here:

The McMahon decision was damaging enough for the impact it had on individual brokerage customers, who tell their stories about fraud, misrepresentation and churning behind closed doors where the public -- including reporters -- isn’t welcome. ...

“It means that all sorts of scams against individuals, however large, are very unlikely to come to the attention of the media and the public,” says F. Paul Bland Jr., a senior attorney at the public-interest law firm Public Justice in Washington.

Wall Street may have been first to catch on to the benefits of mandatory arbitration, but Bland worries that the closed-door trials are spreading to industries from retailing to homebuilding. “The silence and secrecy that surrounds arbitration is extremely harmful to the country,” he says.

These days, employers -- Manpower Inc. and Nordstrom Inc. among them -- require new hires to give up their rights to court before a fresh-faced recruit can check in for orientation. And consumers can forget about opening a Netflix account, signing a mobile-phone contract, or putting a loved one into most big-name nursing homes unless they are willing to give up their rights to go to court. Buying a Starbucks gift card? You are agreeing to mandatory arbitration of any fraud or misrepresentation by the company. ...

In April 2011, the court dealt a new blow to consumers and employees in a case known as AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion. AT&T had pitched a deal to woo new mobile-phone customers by offering free phones, but it turned out the freebie came with a $30.22 bill for “taxes.” Vincent and Liza Concepcion tried to bring a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all the other consumers who took AT&T’s deal. But the court said that when the couple signed the customer agreement, they gave up their right not only to sue, but also to a class action even in arbitration.

In the year since the Concepcion decision, lower courts have trashed dozens of cases in which consumers or employees were trying to sue as a group. The National Labor Relations Board pushed back against the impact the Concepcion decision might have on employment class actions, ruling in January that it’s a violation of federal labor law to make workers give up the right to pursue group claims. That decision probably will be challenged in court.

About 25 percent of U.S. employees are covered by mandatory-arbitration clauses, says Alexander J.S. Colvin, an associate professor of labor relations and conflict resolution at Cornell University. He figures the number will grow as a result of the Concepcion case.

UK Guardian None Too Happy Sarkozy Played Muslim Card

In an editorial, here, about the one and only debate between Sarkozy and Hollande:

At one point Mr Sarkozy plumbed new depths in a campaign which had already turned xenophobic to recapture ground from Marine Le Pen. This was where he explained that he was not bothered about Canadian or Norwegian immigrants getting the vote, but Algerian, Malian and Nigerian ones – the Muslim ones of course: "Community tensions come from whom and they come from where?" This was the Sarkozy of old, the former interior minister of raw political ambition who earned the loathing of his colleagues by calling delinquents rabble, and promising to cleanse minority suburbs with a Kärcher high-pressure water hose.

What's 1/16 Cherokee + 1/32 Cherokee?

Two complete nuts:

Ward LeRoy Churchill

Elizabeth Warren

Michigan Public Libraries Prefer Liberal Bill Press to Conservative Deneen Borelli

ranks 6637 at amazon

available from 8 libraries

ranks 1994 at amazon

available from 2 libraries

Irrational Exuberance in French Real Estate, as in USA, Began in Late 1990s

And a long, steady slide back down is in the cards.

So Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the UK Telegraph, here:

The price-income ratio was stable from the 1960s to the late 1990s, before exploding over the past 12 years as a perfect storm of demographics, state sweetners and cheap credit led to a 12-year blow-off.

There are parallels with Spain and America but Mr Sabatier said the French twist is a replay of the early 1930s when investors fled stocks after 1929 and rotated into "safe" property. Hence the paradox of rising prices during the Depression. The strange boom did not end until premier Pierre Laval cut rent ceilings in 1935, triggering a long slide.

"Laval's policy change was the catalyst. The same could happen now as austerity forces brutal measures," he said. An array of market props are eroding, including tax relief on some mortages and certain capital gains. ...

A housing slump would hammer the economy just as long-delayed austerity begins in earnest. Property makes up 65pc of French household wealth, compared with 57pc in Germany, 39pc in Japan and 27pc in the US.

Under Obama 5.4 Million New Americans Take SSDI, Doubling Total to 10.8 Million

For the full story by John Merline and all the data, go here at Investors.com.

Nothing is said about the cost of this exodus to dependency, which other stories have said is $200 billion annually, but Merline does mention that the funds designated for the purpose of disability benefits will run out in 2018, six years from now.

80 Percent of Unemployment Rate Decline Due to Persons Leaving Labor Force

So says Peter Morici, quoted here by Elizabeth MacDonald at Fox Business:

“Some 80% of the reduction” in the unemployment rate from 10% hit in October 2009 to today’s 8.2% “has been from adults quitting the labor force,” says economist Peter Morici.

  

Morici adds the unemployment rate “rises to 14.5% if you factor back in those who’ve stopped looking for work but would re-enter if there were jobs, as well as part-time workers who would prefer full-time positions.” ...

The U.S. economy is creating jobs, but it is struggling, adding jobs at a rate of just 131,000 a month in 2011, which is not enough to reduce the unemployment rate.

Morici says the U.S. economy “must add 13 million jobs over the next three years -- 362,000 each month -- to bring unemployment down to 6%. GDP would have to increase at a 4% to 5% pace.”

So there you have it.

Since when does a nation’s labor force shrink during a recovery? It should not shrink, it should grow in a recovery.

Unemployment Falls to 8.1 Percent, 115K New Jobs

Consensus estimates had new jobs at 170K. Gee, they were off by only 55K this time.

Obama has been president for 39 full months, all of them with unemployment above 8 percent.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the anemic results for April 2012 here:

Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 115,000 in April, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 8.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in professional and business services, retail trade, and health care, but declined in transportation and warehousing.

Unemployment in the US in the post-war period seems to get progressively worse only since America jettisoned strong dollar policy under Richard Nixon in 1971, as this graphic from The Wall Street Journal plainly illustrates.

And Obama wants us to go FORWARD with that, which means unemployment will only get worse over the long haul with the likes of him at the helm.

If only forward meant the past, like 1948-1968.

The Euro Area is Walking into Depression

So says The Economist, here:

"The euro area is walking, eyes wide open, into depression. Led by its periphery, which is already there."

How's Your Health Insurance? Mine's Up 25 Percent Since ObamaCare Passed

ObamaCare passed in March 2010, and since then my costs for health insurance for my family have gone up, and up again.

My first increase was effective in May of 2011, a 6.7 percent increase in the premium.

The second increase was effective just a few days ago on May 1, 2012, a whopping 17.2 percent rise in the cost.

Overall, my rates are up 25.1 percent for a plan that discounted a recent doctor-ordered 4 hour emergency room visit and follow-up care less than 23 percent.

Owie!

Between October 2006 and October 2011, US Real Estate is Down $7 Trillion

See here for the data.

The decline measured by the Federal Reserve's Z.1 Flow of Funds Release, B.100, shows the peak value of US real estate in October 2006 at $25 trillion. As of October 2011 the metric has fallen to $18.1 trillion.

Note the dramatic new uptrend in valuation which began in the late 1990s coincident with tax law changes permitting tax-free capital gains up to $500K in some circumstances to owners who occupied their homes for two years. Prior to that the gains were tax-free only once in a lifetime.

Call it housing commoditization.

Can you imagine returning to the trend line status quo ante? Hell to pay: at least another $2 trillion in declines coming.

Total Private Employment Today is at April 2000 Level

For the data, go here.

Peak private employment in America was reached in January 2008 under George W. Bush at 115.65 million. As of March 2012 the level is 4.85 million fewer, at 110.8 million.

Two Million German Women Violated By Stalin's Animals in 1945

An appalling story of human evil.

Here and here.

Norway is Anti-Semitic Because it Singles Out Israel for Opprobrium

So says Michael Sharnoff here, where he provides numerous examples dating from 2006 to the present:

Oslo’s recent behavior reveals a proclivity toward singling out Israel among all other nations for international opprobrium.

Norwegian leaders and officials attempt to justify their anti-Israel actions based on the narrative that Israel occupies Palestinian land. They typically avoid specifically targeting Jews, for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic, but their actions nonetheless exhibit traits of “genteel anti-Semitism.” ...

I would like to remind the Norwegian government and corporate CEOs of the European Union’s examples of the ways in which anti-Semitism manifests itself: “Claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor, applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded by any other democratic nation; and drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

Sarkozy v. Hollande: Their Only Difference (Small) Is Height

UMPS!

As observed by a supporter of Le Pen, quoted here in The Christian Science Monitor:

In a fiery speech to thousands of supporters waving French flags, Le Pen slammed Sarkozy's rhetoric on the need to strengthen borders and maintain a clear national identity as pure theatrics and labelled him and Hollande as lackeys of the European Central Bank, IMF and European Commission.

"The French have started their emancipation," she said, scorning the mainstream parties, the UMP and PS, or Socialists, as an indistinguishable "UMPS" bloc.

"The UMPS will not succeed," she said. "All of their efforts cannot stop us growing and cannot block our path to power."

Mockery of the two remaining candidates was a common theme among Le Pen's supporters:

"Sarkozy and Hollande, they are exactly the same," said an 18-year-old who gave her name as Justine. "If there is a difference between the two it's their height."

Another Geezer Eruption From Climate Alarmist James Lovelock: 'Put Democracy On Hold For A While'

This one in, where else?, the UK Guardian in 2010, which I missed, but many others noticed:

We need a more authoritative world. We've become a sort of cheeky, egalitarian world where everyone can have their say. It's all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can't do that. You've got to have a few people with authority who you trust who are running it. And they should be very accountable too, of course.

But it can't happen in a modern democracy. This is one of the problems. What's the alternative to democracy? There isn't one. But even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.

James should have been more honest. What he really meant to say was, "We need a more authoritarian world."

Remind you of anyone?

Obama Was Dismissive Of The Financial Panic In March 2009

"I have more than enough to do without having to worry [about] the financial system."

-- Barack Obama, here, the day before the March 2009 stock market bottom 

Flashback March 2009: It Really Bugged Obama to be Called 'Socialist'

So much so, the new president called back to The New York Times after he was interviewed on Air Force One.

From Joe Curl, here:

President Obama was so concerned that he had appeared to dismiss a question from New York Times reporters about whether he was a socialist that he called the newspaper from the Oval Office to clarify his policies.

"It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question," he told reporters, who had interviewed the president aboard Air Force One on Friday.

Presidents don't call newspapers. Newspapers call the president.

Old Communist Slogan Adopted By Obama 2012 Campaign

Birds of a feather, flock together:

George Orwell's Black Vision of Total Surveillance Realized With Drones

So says Peter Popham for the UK Independent, here:

The use of drones for the surveillance purposes sketched by Gitlin takes us back to their original function. The critical weakness of the Nazi doodlebug was the lack of control: its only use was as a mechanical kamikaze. Once you had control of the thing, everything changed. George Orwell was the first to describe the possibilities, in his novel 1984. "In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and dashed away again with a curving flight," he wrote in the novel's first chapter. "It was the police patrol, snooping into people's windows...". ...

It is the snooping function foreseen by Orwell that is the most significant next step for drones in our societies: with our cities and public buildings already saturated with surveillance cameras, we may fondly suppose that the state's monitoring of our daily lives has gone as far as it can go. But we ain't seen nothing yet. ...

Orwell's black vision of total surveillance – "It was even conceivable," he wrote in 1984, "that [the Thought Police] watched everybody all the time" – is finally achieving its technological apotheosis. In a few weeks, the US Army is expected to deploy in Afghanistan its latest helicopter-style drone, the A160 Hummingbird, equipped with 1.8 gigapixel colour cameras. Able to hover, unlike current drones, it will have "unprecedented capability to track and monitor activity on the ground", the Army says. Able to track people and vehicles from above 20,000ft, and with a 65sq-mile field of view, it will have 65 steerable "windows" able to follow separate targets. More modest surveillance drones may be used to enhance police monitoring of London's Olympics.

We Lack Sustainable Streams of Real Income from Productive Activity

So says Jeffrey Snider, here:

Central banks can proclaim that banks and the economy are one and the same, but that does not make it true. Again, there was no real danger of deflation in the real economy as currency, as in the usage of money to transact, was never in short supply. What has been in short supply, and remains in short supply, are sustainable streams of real income due to productive activities - the kinds of activities that have a hard time flourishing under continuously dysfunctional monetary regimes.

Today's Gold to Oil Price Ratio is About 15.86

In other words, 15.86 barrels of oil buys one ounce of gold.

Oil could rise to about $111 per barrel from today's $104.93 to achieve the perfect balance of 15:1.

Or gold could descend to about $1,575 the ounce to achieve the same thing.

The dollar has been trading in a fairly steady range of 3 percent for much of 2012 to date.

World's Most Disastrous Oil Spills, Updated

(see here and here)

Buy and Hold Investors Since October 2007 are Down Over 2 Percent

(source)

Justice Stephen Breyer, Secular Humanist: We'll Decide What's Enduring

Man the measure of all things:

“Why would people want to live under the ‘dead hand’ of an eighteenth-century constitution that preserved not enduring values but specific eighteenth-century thoughts about how those values then applied?”

-- Justice Stephen Breyer, Bill "Depends on what the meaning of is is" Clinton appointee, quoted here

He might as well have said:

“Why would people want to live under the ‘dead hand’ of an eighteenth-century constitution archaic Hebrew narrative that preserved not enduring values but specific second millennium BC thoughts about how those values then applied?”

Hmm. Why would they?

TARP Will Cost Taxpayers $60 Billion, Says Special Inspector General

Here:

"After 3 1⁄2 years, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (“TARP”) continues to be an active and significant part of the Government’s response to the financial crisis. It is a widely held misconception that TARP will make a profit. The most recent cost estimate for TARP is a loss of $60 billion. Taxpayers are still owed $118.5 billion (including $14 billion written off or otherwise lost). But the analysis should not be focused alone on money in and money out. TARP’s costs and legacies involve far more than just dollars and cents. Using a microscope to narrowly focus on the profit or loss of TARP risks losing sight of the bigger picture of whether TARP has been successful in meeting its goals and whether lessons learned from the financial crisis have been adequately implemented so that Treasury, banking regulators, and Congress do not find themselves in the position of rushing out another massive bailout of the financial industry, i.e., TARP 2.0.

"While TARP and other Government responses to the financial crisis may have prevented the immediate collapse of our financial and auto manufacturing industries, and improved stability since 2008, the tradeoff is not without profound long-term consequences. A significant legacy of TARP is increased moral hazard and potentially disastrous consequences associated with institutions deemed “too big to fail.” TARP’s legacy also includes the impact on consumers and homeowners from the large banks’ failure to lend TARP funds. TARP continues to be subject to criticism that TARP helped large banks but not homeowners. In addition, after 3 1⁄2 years, community banks have an uphill battle to exit TARP because they cannot find new capital to replace TARP funds. Finally, TARP’s legacy includes white-collar crime that SIGTARP is uncovering and stopping."

-- Christy L. Romero, Quarterly Report to Congress, April 25, 2012

Moochelle's Spanish Vacation in 2010 Cost Taxpayers At Least $467K

As reported here:

The five day trip cost at least $467,585, according to Judicial Watch.

The total cost of flying Michelle Obama from Camp Andrews to Malaga and then to Mallorca and back to the United States was $199,323.75.

That tab is based on just 17 hours and 15 minutes of total flying time. ...

The 15-member flight crew stayed at Tryp Guadalmar, a nearby motel where group's lodging cost was $10,290.60 and car rental costs were $2,633.50.

In addition, their food cost was $876.30, which included an American indulgence of $57.68 for four bottles of maple syrup and a package of pancake mix.

Secret Service records, meanwhile, show that the costs to the agency for the vacation were $254,461.20.

This total includes $26,670.61 for a chauffeur tour of Costa del Sol and $50,078.78 for a travel planning company SET P&V, S.L.

Q1 2012 GDP Reported at 2.2 Percent, Q4 2011 at 3.0

I am the chief obstacle to growth.

From the Bureau of Economic Analysis, here:

Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 2.2 percent in the first quarter of 2012 (that is, from the fourth quarter to the first quarter), according to the "advance" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter of 2011, real GDP increased 3.0 percent.

Compared to Q1 2011 at 0.4, today's report at 2.2 looks pretty good, until you remember that Q1 2010 roared at 3.9 percent, Obama's best quarter so far but hardly what one would expect from an economy truly in recovery from the depths to which it sank in its little depression of 2008-2009. The post-war period in the United States saw average growth of 3.5 percent, so one lousy imprint of 3.9 does not a recovery make.

America is clearly not growing like it should, nor like it can. And the chief obstacle to that is spelled "Obama".

Here is the most recent statement of historical GDP from the release for the period 1996-2011:

A Little Thursday Night Dog Humor

h/t Sheik Yer Mami

Global Warming Alarmist James Lovelock, Now a Geezer of 92, Backs Off Predictions

Not that he wasn't a geezer already in 2006 when he was still thumping his global warming tub:

In 2006, in an article in the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, he wrote that “before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.” ...

Six years on he's singing a slightly different tune:

“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.

“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.

“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising -- carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.

He pointed to Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” as other examples of “alarmist” forecasts of the future.


More here.

The Depression in Peripheral Europe

In order of severity: Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain, and then even the 17 country Euro area itself, all with four years of sub-standard GDP relative to the 2008 peak.

(source)

Top 10 US States With Low State and Local Debt Burdens

(source)

US States are in a Heap of Debt Trouble: $8 Trillion Worth

In a less than $2 trillion budget world at the state level.

Because of promises to pay for pensions and healthcare for retired public employees out of future tax revenues, the big squeeze is on, according to Steven Malanga, here:

From 2008 through 2010 (the latest year data are available), state spending rose to $1.9 trillion, from $1.7 trillion. ... 

Several years ago, for instance, the treasurer of Cook County, Ill., Maria Pappas, demanded that all of Cook's municipalities report their debt to her. It wasn't easy. They began with bonded debt, then totaled up pension liabilities, then found they had lots more they'd promised to workers for health care. ...

We couldn't get a handle on just how much debt states and their municipalities have accumulated unless every county treasurer does what Pappas did. But just what we can estimate in bonded debt and unfunded pension and health care promises for retirees now totals about $8 trillion. That's a lot of future state and municipal tax revenues already accounted for.

What's that familiar refrain we keep hearing at the federal level, that a present Congress can't bind a future one?

So how can present municipal and county governments bind the taxpayers to pay in future for unfunded promises in the present, huh?

The UK is in a Depression, Not a Double-Dip Recession

The fact is, UK GDP has not recovered since the onset of troubles in 2008, despite the happy talk of "recovery" in Newspeak which must not call things what they really are, for example, here, at CNBC.com:

"Britain's economy contracted by 7.1 percent during its 2008-2009 recession and recovery since has been slow, with headwinds from the euro zone debt crisis, government spending cuts, high inflation and a damaged banking sector.

"Wednesday's data showed that output was still 4.3 percent below its peak in the first quarter of 2008, and the economy has only grown by 0.4 percent since the government came to power in the second quarter of 2010."

For the chart, the dark blue line in which shows the current decline in the UK since 2008 still 4 percent down more than three years on, see the UK Guardian here.

It's not a paler shade of gray, dammit. It's a faker form of black . . . on the Firth of effing Forth.