undervalued assets?

Dr. HousingBubble | The Modern Banking System is Like a Broken Dam: At 8% Annual Compounded Growth it would take us 11 years to reach the Peak of the S&P 500. Old Ideas and Prophets Falling Hard. The poorly planned Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) of 2008 has been a complete boondoggle. How have things gone in the stock market since the TARP came about? Well let us take a look:

Since TARP version 1.0 was signed into law on October 3rd, 2008 the S&P 500 is down approximately 38%. Think about this for a bit. We are talking about 5 months ago and the market has shed nearly 40% of its value. From the 2007 peak, we are now off by a mind boggling 56.4% putting us back to levels not seen since 1996.

People are now claiming that stocks are a bargain. These people were cheering the market on Wednesday only to get reamed on Thursday after Citigroup went into the penny stock territory and the survivability of GM is now in question. If you haven’t figured it out yet, the mainstream financial pundits really have very little knowledge regarding economics. What they are good at is hyperventilating like a hypochrondiac entering a hospital when the market is up or down.



I’ve constructed a chart showing some of the biggest TARP recipients. I’ve also included their stock price as of the day when the TARP was signed into law:

What a sigh of relief! If it weren’t for that wonderfully planned TARP, we might actually need 3 shiny quarters to buy one share of Citigroup but thanks to trillions of taxpayer bailouts, we can with a smile buy one share for one whole dollar! Just take a look at the above chart carefully. We have absolutely flushed money away into the broken dam known as our banking system and the plan isn’t to reform the system and root out the corrupt crony capitalist; no, instead our plan is to give these same institutions more money and believe that they will do well. What an absurdidty! We are giving banks money so they can then, not give it back to us!

I ran a quick calculation to see how long it would take the S&P 500 to reach its high of 1,576 from its current 682.55. Assuming a nice rate of 8% each year (heck, this is close to the Bernard Madoff rate) it would take us 11 years before we see those 2007 highs again! Do you really see 8% yearly gains for 11 straight years after the trillions we have dumped into bailing out failing banks and poorly managed institutions? Forget about a lost decade, we are now getting close to having two lost decades. Now tell me, what will you be doing in 2027?

california bread lines....,

Many say a depression doesn't have to be great, that the economy can sink into a milder depression. The Salvation Army says it's happening now, and in San Diego County, people are standing in line outside a Salvation Army waiting for donated bread.

Salvation Army director of communications Suzi Woodruff Lacey said they are seeing people from all walks of life: "white collar, blue collar, people who have lost their jobs, people who are in danger of losing their homes."

Bread lines were regularly seen in the 1930s during the Great Depression, when unemployment peaked at more than 25 percent and the stock market lost 90 percent of its value. Today, California's unemployment rate hit 8.4 percent.

faux news peddles the bubba effect

Why on earth is faux news, primarily through the auspices of The Glenn Beck Program, peddling (TEOTWAWKI) and Bubba micro-insurgency? How did Glenn Beck come up out of "left field" quite suddenly and assume the number two spot in right-wing radio and teevee?

emerging cognitive neuroscience and related technologies

National Academies Press | The intelligence community (IC) faces the challenging task of analyzing extremely large amounts of information on cognitive neuroscience and neurotechnology, deciding which of that information has national security implications, and then assigning priorities for decision makers. It is also challenged to keep pace with rapid scientific advances that can only be understood through close and continuing collaboration with experts from the scientific community, from the corporate world, and from academia. The situation will become more complex as the volume of information continues to grow. The Committee on Military and Intelligence Methodology for Emergent Neurophysiological and Cognitive/Neural Science Research in the Next Two Decades was tasked by the Technology Warning Division of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA’s) Defense Warning Office to identify areas of cognitive neuroscience and related technologies that will develop over the next two decades and that could have military applications that might also be of interest to the IC. Specifically, the DIA asked the National Research Council (NRC) to perform the following tasks:

• Review the current state of today's work in neurophysiology and cognitive/neural science, select the manners in which this work could be of interest to national security professionals, and trends for future warfighting applications that may warrant continued analysis and tracking by the intelligence community,

• Use the technology warning methodology developed in the 2005 National Research Council report Avoiding Surprise in an Era of Global Technology Advances (NRC, 2005) to assess the health, rate of development, and degree of innovation in the neurophysiology and cognitive/neural science research areas of interest, and

• Amplify the technology warning methodology to illustrate the ways in which neurophysiological and cognitive/neural research conducted in selected countries may affect committee assessments.

The label “cognitive” in the title and elsewhere in this report is used in a broad sense, unless specifically noted otherwise in the report itself, to refer to psychological and physiological processes underlying human information processing, emotion, motivation, social influence, and development. Hence, it includes contributions from behavioral and social science disciplines as well as contributing disciplines such as philosophy, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics. The label “neuroscience” is also used in a broad sense (unless specified otherwise) and includes the study of the central nervous system (e.g., brain) and somatic, autonomic, and neuroendocrine processes.

This summary includes the committee’s key findings and recommendations, numbered to facilitate access to related text in Chapters 2-5, which also include additional findings.

using energy sources wisely

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists | For nostalgia purposes, I recommend reading President Jimmy Carter's 1977 speech on energy policy. It's spot-on, and Carter's subsequent energy policies managed--among other things--to decrease U.S. oil imports by 50 percent between 1977 and 1982.

One of several ways he did this was by removing oil from the country's electricity production. Since petroleum products such as gasoline and diesel work so well as transportation fuels, Carter believed that oil should be exclusively for them.

Using logic similar to Carter's thinking, Pickens reasons that if we get natural gas out of the electricity production business, we can replace about 25 percent of imported oil with domestic natural gas. This might just work because about 20 percent of imported oil is used to haul goods in 18-wheelers. Those trucks, which often have 650-horsepower engines, will not be made to run on batteries for decades--if ever. But they can be powered by relatively efficient compressed natural gas engines.

The "Pickens Plan" is fundamentally based on the principle that not all energy sources are created equal. As I've argued previously, the physical limits of energy density favor hydrocarbons such as oil and natural gas over virtually all alternatives for energy storage mediums. These physical realities should guide our energy policy--as they did for President Carter.

The biggest obstacle that I see for the Pickens Plan is that tens of billions of dollars already have been invested in natural gas electricity infrastructure over the last 15 years. Obviously, the companies and individuals who made those investments will not be thrilled about natural gas being removed from electricity production.

collapse crimes' county concentration

USA Today | More than half of the nation's foreclosures last year took place in 35 counties, a sign that the financial crisis devastating the national economy may have begun with collapsing home loans in only a few corners of the country.

Those counties, spread over a dozen states, accounted for more than 1.5 million foreclosure actions last year, a USA TODAY analysis of figures compiled by the real estate listing firm RealtyTrac shows — more than were recorded in the entire United States just two years earlier. They were the epicenter of a wave of foreclosures that have left leading banks teetering and magnified the nation's economic problems.

"This crisis was triggered by foreclosures, and a lot of those were in a very small number of areas," says William Lucy, a University of Virginia professor who has studied the link between lenders and faltering home loans. Banks spread the risk and "it became like a car with no reverse gear. Once it starts to go over the cliff, it's gone."

In other parts of the country, the foreclosure wave was barely a ripple — at least until it started swamping major banks that had invested heavily in mortgages. Banking giant Wachovia Corp., for example, was hammered after California and Florida customers of one mortgage firm it bought began defaulting at high rates. The risks of such lending were spread so broadly among financial institutions that, when the loans went bad, it drove the national credit crisis, says Christopher Mayer, who studies real estate at Columbia Business School.

A few of the 35 counties leading the foreclosure boom are in already-distressed areas around Detroit and Cleveland. But most are clustered in places such as Southern California, Las Vegas, Phoenix, South Florida and Washington, where home values shot up dramatically in the first half of the decade, then began to crumble.

nyc rally...not-riot....not-yet.......,

Tens of thousands of New Yorkers marched on City Hall, rallying to stop proposed funding cuts.

The rally cries of labor unions, community groups and families outside City Hall could be heard throughout lower Manhattan. Desperation for an economic lifeline brought out more than 50,000 people along several blocks of Broadway in a self-described "Rally For New York."

Their message for Gov. David Paterson came in the form of booming chants:

"No more cuts! No more cuts!"

the mirage of conscious evolution

Humans are the most adventitious of creatures—a result of blind evolutionary drift. Yet, with the power of genetic engineering we need no longer be ruled by chance. Humankind—so we are told—can shape its own future. According to E.O. Wilson, conscious control of human evolution is not only possible but inevitable:

... genetic evolution is about to become conscious and volitional, and usher in a new epoch in the history of life. ...The prospect of this 'volitional evolution'—a species deciding what to do about its own heredity—will present the most profound intellectual and ethical choices humanity has ever faced ... humanity will be positioned godlike to take control of its own ultimate fate. It can, if it chooses, alter not just the anatomy and intelligence of the species but also the emotions and creative drive that compose the very core of human nature.

The author of this passage is the greatest contemporary Darwinian. He has been attacked by biologists and social scientists who believe that the human species is not governed by the same laws as other animals. In that war Wilson is undoubtedly on the side of truth. Yet the prospect of conscious human evolution he invokes is a mirage. The idea of humanity taking charge of its destiny makes sense only if we ascribe consciousness and purpose to the species; but Darwin's discovery was that species are only currents in the drift of genes. The idea that humanity can shape its future assumes that it is exempt from this truth.

It seems feasible that over the coming century human nature will be scientifically remodelled. If so, it will be done haphazardly, as an upshot of struggles in the murky realm where big business, organised crime, and the hidden parts of government vie for control. If the human species is re-engineered it will not be the result of humanity assuming a godlike control of its destiny. It will be another twist in man's fate. John Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

the bottleneck

Humanity did not descend as angelic beings into this world. Nor are we aliens who colonized Earth. We evolved here, one among many species, across millions of years, and exist as one organic miracle linked to others. The natural environment we treat with such unnecessary ignorance and recklessness was our cradle and nursery, our school, and remains our one and only home. To its special conditions we are intimately adapted in every one of the bodily fibers and biochemical transactions that gives us life.

That is the essence of environmentalism. It is the guiding principle of those devoted to the health of the planet. But it is not yet a general worldview, evidently not yet compelling enough to distract many people away from the primal diversions of sport, politics, religion, and private wealth.

The relative indifference to the environment springs, I believe, from deep within human nature. The human brain evidently evolved to commit itself emotionally only to a small piece of geography, a limited band of kinsmen, and two or three generations into the future. To look neither far ahead nor far afield is elemental in a Darwinian sense. We are innately inclined to ignore any distant possibility not yet requiring examination. It is, people say, just good common sense. Why do they think in this shortsighted way? The reason is simple: it is a hardwired part of our Paleolithic heritage. For hundreds of millennia, those who worked for short-term gain within a small circle of relatives and friends lived longer and left more offspring —even when their collective striving caused their chiefdoms and empires to crumble around them.

The long view that might have saved their distant descendants required a vision and extended altruism instinctively difficult to marshal.

The great dilemma of environmental reasoning stems from this conflict between short-term and long-term values. To select values for the near future of one's own tribe or country is relatively easy. To select values for the distant future of the whole planet also is relatively easy--in theory, at least. To combine the two visions to create a universal environmental ethic is, on the other hand, very difficult. But combine them we must, because a universal environmental ethic is the only guide by which humanity and the rest of life can be safely conducted through the bottleneck into which our species has foolishly blundered.

Book excerpt originally published in Scientific American, February 2002.
Wilson, Edward O. 2002. The Future of Life

new humanitarian device approval

fda.gov | What is it? A totally implanted brain stimulator intended to suppress symptoms associated with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) that are not adequately controlled with medications and/or other therapies.

How does it work? An implanted pulse generator (IPG) is connected with a lead extension, to a lead with four electrodes. The electrodes contact the patient at a specific anatomical structure within the brain. The IPG is implanted under the skin of either the abdomen or under the clavicle, and sends programmable electrical stimulation pulses to a selected combination of output electrodes within the brain. Two of these device systems may be implanted to stimulate both sides of the brain in order to relieve symptoms or one device with two lead outputs.

When is it used? This device is indicated to be used in conjunction with medications for the treatment of chronic, treatment resistant adult OCD patients to aid in the management of the symptoms.

What will it accomplish? The Reclaim™ system may improve some of the symptoms associated with OCD; however, individual results vary and the specific benefit for an individual patient cannot be predicted.

When should it not be used? In patients who will be exposed to diathermy, in patients who will be exposed to MRI using a full body radio-frequency coil or a head transmit coil that extends over the chest, in patients for whom test stimulation is unsuccessful, and in patients who are unable to properly operate the brain stimulator.

noologie

Noologie | The current progress in neurological research gives rise to the expectation that within the next generation, there will be an understanding of the neuronal loci and functions that form the infrastructure of sign processes and of language. Of the many works pointing into this direction, William Calvin's: "The Cerebral Code", and Spitzer's: "Geist im Netz" are quoted as examples. The present contribution aims at sketching a (so far hypothetical) working model based on Calvin's neuronal resonance fields for a heterodox interpretation of the ancient Greek Aoide language used in the Epics of Homer and other Aoidoi. While this is orthodoxically treated in the linguistic framework of the Saussurean "Signe Arbitraire" doctrine (e.g. Parry, Lord, and followers), it is proposed here that at least part of that material (perhaps of Pelasgian origin), was formed on another principle, to which Platon hints at in Kratylos: "That the sounds must be similar to the thing also". If this thing is interpreted not as the objective outer world (Popper-World 1) thing, but as neuronal subfunction of the "Weltbildapparat" (Riedl, Lorenz), then it is easy to see that the sign cannot be totally arbitrary, and that the sounds must correspond to an extremely fine-tuned neuronal and muscular resonance circuit that can produce and perceive them. As we can see in all spoken languages, only a very small subset of all the possible phonemic combinatorics is utilized in each language, and that combination is by no means arbitrary. The hypothesis presented will advance arguments that the ancient Aoide language can be interpreted, obviously not as prosa communication system (and no adaptation thereof), but as a (specially designed) fine-tuned neuronal-sound-imagination device designed for evoking neuronal resonance states of a kind that we presently associate with trance. Platon's description of Homer as "daemiourgon onomaton" (craftsman of words) is taken as hint in this direction. Selected examples will be presented of a morphemic combinatoric system underlying the Aoide language.

Neuronal Resonance Fields, Aoidoi, and Sign Processes

bushco's gestapo

Washington Post | IMAGINE A PLACE where soldiers are entitled to burst through doors without warrants and citizens can be locked away without trial. Imagine that the leader of this place has the power to silence dissenters and the press and has the right to keep duly elected legislators from having a voice in these matters. Imagine further that he can unilaterally rip up and disregard any treaty he dislikes and that he has been told he is on solid legal ground by a hand-picked circle of advisers.

This is not some lawless Third World country or dusty fictional outback from a sci-fi movie but the United States of America, as described in a series of newly released Justice Department memos from the early years of the Bush administration.

Some of the ideas in these memos, authored by lawyers in the Justice Department's elite Office of Legal Counsel, have been known for some time, and later iterations of the Bush Justice Department repudiated many of the principles the memos espouse. What their public disclosure this week makes clear is how intellectually dishonest Bush-era lawyers were in coming to these preposterous conclusions.

Many of the memos conflate and distort existing statutes and case law to give Mr. Bush the answers he wants. For example, a Sept. 25, 2001, memo concludes that law enforcement officers need not obtain search warrants to conduct intelligence operations inside the country. The legal reasoning: Foreign intelligence constitutes "national self-defense." In other contexts, courts have ruled that the use of deadly force in self-defense is justifiable under the Fourth Amendment. Therefore, the memo concludes, "if the government's heightened interest in self-defense justifies the use of deadly force, then it also certainly would justify warrantless searches." Never mind that Congress specifically passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in the 1970s to forbid such warrantless searches.

mcveighism on the radar

Washington Post | At least four tons of fertilizer was stolen over the weekend in Frederick, city police said. No motive had been determined.

A ton of urea and three tons of other fertilizer were taken from the Southern States store on South Street between Saturday night and Sunday morning, police said.

According to police, the fertilizer was contained for the most part in white 50-pound bags with a company logo.

Fertilizer thefts have attracted increased attention from law enforcement officials in recent years because some types of fertilizer can be used in making explosives. It was not immediately clear whether the materials taken could be used for such a purpose.

Lt. Clark Pennington said police have notified the FBI. As a matter of routine, a report of the theft was sent to a state coordinating center, which is to notify all interested federal agencies. He said detectives would work closely with those agencies in the inquiry, which was in its early stages.

A boxcar full of it was stolen in Kansas City on monday but the thief crashed it into a field and I believe was apprehended. This is a collapse crime that folks need to be on the lookout for...,

moral typhoid mary in her own words...,

engineered die-off?

Comes now Big Don with a particularly nasty data point unlikely to break the radar of mainstream media.

Canadian Press | Officials investigate how bird flu viruses were sent to unsuspecting labs

Officials are trying to get to the bottom of how vaccine manufacturer Baxter International Inc. made "experimental virus material" based on a human flu strain but contaminated with the H5N1 avian flu virus and then distributed it to an Austrian company.

That company, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then disseminated the supposed H3N2 virus product to subcontractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany. Authorities in the four European countries are looking into the incident, and their efforts are being closely watched by the World Health Organization and the European Centre for Disease Control.

Though it appears none of the 36 or 37 people who were exposed to the contaminated product became infected, the incident is being described as "a serious error" on the part of Baxter, which is on the brink of securing a European licence for an H5N1 vaccine. That vaccine is made at a different facility, in the Czech Republic.

"For this particular incident ... the horse did not get out (of the barn)," Dr. Angus Nicoll of the ECDC said from Stockholm.

"But that doesn't mean that we and WHO and the European Commission and the others aren't taking it as seriously as you would any laboratory accident with dangerous pathogens - which you have here."

Accidental release of a mixture of live H5N1 and H3N2 viruses - if that indeed happened - could have resulted in dire consequences. Nicoll said officials still aren't 100 per cent sure the mixture contained live H5N1 viruses. But given that ferrets exposed to the mixture died, it likely did.

H5N1 doesn't easily infect people, but H3N2 viruses do. They are one of two types of influenza A viruses that infect people each flu season.

If someone exposed to the mixture had been co-infected with H5N1 and H3N2, the person could have served as an incubator for a hybrid virus able to transmit easily to and among people. That mixing process, called reassortment, is one of two ways pandemic viruses are created.

Research published last summer by scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control found that in the laboratory, H5N1 and H3N2 viruses mated readily. While less virulent than H5N1, a number of the offspring viruses appeared to retain at least a portion of the killing power of their dangerous parent.

Baxter International, which is based in Deerfield, Ill., said the contamination was the result of an error in its research facility in Orth-Donau, Austria.

The facility had been contracted by Avir Green Hills to make what Baxter refers to as "experimental virus material" based on human H3N2 viruses.

worldwide economic protests and riots

This fellow has compiled a small collection of videos and links regarding economic related riots around the world. This list will surely grow in 2009 as the effects of the banking collapse, credit crunch and ensuing economic depression propagate throughout communities in the world.

Ireland



Connecticut



Bulgaria



You get the gist...., quite a few more videos available in his collection.

clinton bearish on iran

Washington Post | Clinton "said she is doubtful that Iran will respond to any kind of engagement and opening the hand out and reaching out to them," said a senior State Department official, who requested anonymity because he was describing a closed-door conversation.

Clinton made the remarks in a meeting with Sheik Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan, the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, during an international donors' conference for Gaza at this Red Sea resort.

Nahayan told Clinton he was worried the administration would cut a deal with Iran without properly consulting with Persian Gulf allies, the U.S. official said. "We will be consulting with regional leaders and listening," the official quoted Clinton as saying in response. "She said we are under no illusions about Iran and our eyes are wide open.

Clinton last week named veteran diplomat Dennis Ross as her special adviser for the Gulf and Southwest Asia -- largely a euphemism for Iran. Ross has written that if an overture to Iran were not reciprocated, it would strengthen the United States' efforts to stiffen international sanctions intended to pressure Iran to end its nuclear program. Iran says it is developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, but the United States, Israel and other countries are worried that the country seeks to build nuclear weapons.
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Persian Gulf allies have become increasingly alarmed by Tehran's growing regional power during the Bush years, helped by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, its one-time rival, and the growing strength of Iranian-backed movements such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank.

h.n.(NOT)i.c.

hat tip to brotherbrown

the world is a business

You have meddled with the primary forces of nature, Mr Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear?

You think you merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tide and gravity. It is ecological balance.

You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no Third Worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems. One vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-varied, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rands, rubles, pounds and shekels.

It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, and sub-atomic and galactic structure of things today.

And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature. And you will atone.

Am I getting through to you, Mr Beale?

You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

What do you think the Russians talk about in their Councils of State? Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, mini-max solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.

We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bye-laws of of business. The world is a business, Mr Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime.

And our children will live, Mr Beale, to see that ... perfect ... world in which there is no war nor famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company for whom all men will work to serve a common profit. In which all men will hold a share of stock.

All necessities provided. All anxieties tranquilized. All boredom amused.

obama's ear on iran

The National | A week is a long time in Washington, especially for the influential Israel lobby. Last Monday it had cause to celebrate the appointment of one of its favourite sons, Dennis Ross, as the State Department’s point-man on Iran. But on Friday came the announcement that Charles Freeman is to be President Obama’s National Intelligence Council chairman – the superspook who distils the gleanings of America’s 16 different intelligence agencies into the authoritative National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) that guide US policy.

NIEs were key to the Bush administration’s case for war with Iraq, and the Iran NIE has become a fierce battleground between the traditional intelligence establishment and the neoconservatives and Israel lobby, who were furious when the 2007 NIE suggested that Iran was not currently engaged in nuclear weapons work. Israel and its supporters peddle alarmist views of Iran’s nuclear activities, not bothering to distinguish between developments that would give Iran the means to pursue nuclear weapons and the actual pursuit of such weapons (the international and US intelligence consensus is that Iran has not yet taken a decision to build nuclear weapons; the concern is its nuclear energy infrastructure puts such weapons within reach).

If Israel and its backers are to persuade the Obama administration to accept their views on Iran, it is a less than helpful for the NIE be the province of a sceptical, independent thinker who believes that Israel’s interests are not necessarily those of the US. Renowned as a brilliant diplomat and analyst, even-handed in his assessments of the Middle East and not bound by the Israel-first consensus that the Israel lobby has fought so hard to establish in US Middle East policy, Mr Freeman was denounced by Steve Rosen, a former top American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) official, as “a profoundly disturbing appointment”.

Last October Mr Freeman castigated President Bush for “writing blank cheques to Israel, which harms it by depriving Israelis of any immediate incentive to make the hard choices they must make to achieve long-term security for themselves and their state… it benefits no one for the United States to continue to underwrite the injustices, indignities, and humiliations of the occupation”.

His appointment was all the more remarkable given such statements, and the ire they provoked among Israel’s traditionally influential backers.