daviddissadent

Nov. 21st, 2009

10:08 pm - T Bills turn negative, is this as bad as it looks?

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/post-lehman-deja-vu-t-bill-yields-turn-negative

Oct. 20th, 2009

03:15 pm - Recent warming unprecedented in pace

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26234683-401,00.html

New 200 000 year study in Baffin Island in Canda suggests recent warming unprecedented.

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03:14 pm - Second warmest September recorded.

The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for September 2009 was 0.62°C (1.12°F) above the 20^th Century average of 15.0°C (59.0°F). This was the second warmest September on record, behind 2005, and the 33^rd consecutive September with a global temperature above the 20^th Century average. The last below-average September occurred in 1976.
The global land surface temperature for September 2009 was 0.97°C (1.75°F) above the 20^th Century average of 12.0°C (53.6°F), and ranked as the second warmest September on record, also behind 2005.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2009&month=9&submitted=Get+Report

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Oct. 19th, 2009

05:00 pm - South Africa seeks return of Apartheid police law.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/19/south-africa-police-shootings-toll

The president has backed the demands of the new national police commissioner, Bheki Cele, for a return to apartheid-era legislation making it easier for officers to open fire on suspects without fearing the consequences.

And the old Appartheid era rank structures to return

Cele has announced plans to rebrand the police as a force instead of a service, with a military-style command structure of generals and lieutenants.

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Oct. 11th, 2009

01:01 pm - Latvia set for extended depression

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/6263039/Banks-brace-for-Latvias-collapse.html

Sweden may get sucked into the vortex too.

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Oct. 4th, 2009

07:28 pm - Patient zero in the global financial catastrophy.

Link

“You’ve got a company, AIG, which used to be just a regular old insurance company,” Obama explained during a recent TV appearance. “Then they decided — some smart person decided — let’s put a hedge fund on top of the insurance comp-any, and let’s sell these derivative products to banks all around the world.” Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, adds: “This was a hedge fund, basically, that was attached to a large and stable insurance company.”

Cassano, who ran AIG’s financial-products division in London, “almost single-handedly is responsible for bringing AIG down and by reference the economy of this country”

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One regulator tried to act on Bowsher’s warning, but she was silenced. Brooksley Born, who monitored the futures markets, tried to extend her remit to unregulated derivatives. Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin, the then Treasury secretary, persuaded Congress to freeze her already limited power, forcing her departure. Rubin had come into government from Goldman Sachs; when he left he went back to banking, and pushed for Citigroup to step up its trading of risky, mortgage-related investments. For his advice, he earned over $126m (£84m) and then, as Citigroup collapsed, became an adviser to Barack Obama. After

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We had gotten down to just one person at the SEC responsible for identifying the risk at all the institutions.” The $596-trillion market in unregulated derivatives, including $58 trillion in credit-default swaps, was being watched by one person. That’s when he wasn’t looking at the rest of the corporate world, of course.

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As evidence of dishonesty, Whalen points to AIG’s occasional habit of using secret agreements to falsify financial statements — either its own or those of other companies. In 2005, a former senior executive at the insurer General Re pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to misstate AIG’s finances, after General Re paid $500m in premiums for AIG to reinsure a nonexistent $500m risk. The transaction was a sham; the only economic benefit to either party was the $5.2m fee paid by AIG for Gen Re’s help.

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Alpha males such as Cassano push at boundaries. You could say it is their evolutionary purpose. That is one reason we need governments, to protect us when male ambition reaches too far. But our governments were mesmerised by our bankers. “From 1973 to 1985,” says Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the IMF, “the financial sector never earned more than 16% of [US] corporate profits. In the 1990s, it oscillated between 21% and 30%, higher than it had ever been in the post-war period. This decade, it reached 41%.”

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