Ninety Years of Economic Progress

Truth is Kirri – I fel more hopeful than I have in years. Bush is gone, along with Howard in our neck of the woods, and an intelligent insightful man who has challenged all the cultural biases is in the leading seat. The morons like Bolt and Devine are looking more and more like ranting lunatics to the general public, and while the Perfect storm is upon us, there is also a will to change that offers us opportunities that are going to be more politically accepted than they would have ben even 6 months ago.
And Garrett got back on stage and showed his true spirit once again..
We can’t go back , so we will have to go forward – whatever that brings.

Mr Removalist – good to see you LOLling agian.
things must be looking up.
x

DG hope you watch those interviews GWV linked to.
If Cramer genuinely changes his attitude, (i guess time will tell) those clips show a classic example of how to change someones attitude by Fucking in his face more than once.
Oh and it helps if you are as clever as Jon Stewart.
Cramer IMHO was very humiliated when JS served him and it is to Stewarts’credit that he kept propping him up at the table so he could give him another serving.
If Stewart had have raised his voice really loud at him it would have been a completely different ending IMHO.
If Cramer didn’t learn anything from that then he is “stupid”

And !GB and Pius And JWH.

EC
Have you been out putting that shovel to good use.
Thought you might be beachside collecting a couple of barrels to set aside for when it goes over the Ton a barrel again.

Michigan is on the move.
The house has passed a bill which will give foreclosees 90 days to try to renegotiate a new mortgage.
Looks like the Repug controlled Senate will give it Bi-partisan support and send it through the Senate as well.
Sanity may be starting to prevail.

The Michigan State House passed a package of bills Wednesday to give homeowners facing foreclosure a 90-day reprieve to seek loan modifications with the firms that hold their mortgages.The three bills, passed by margins of more than two-thirds, represent a top priority for lawmakers because of the Michigan foreclosure crisis. The state had 145,000 foreclosures last year–seventh most in the nation–and 11,000 more of them in January alone.The bills now go to the Republican-led Senate, which approved foreclosure relief measures that filed to win legislative approval late last year.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Michigan-State-House-Passe-by-peter-collins-090311-593.html

It’s all in Angels and Demons.

Jon Stewart makes the front page of the NY Times:

The much-hyped showdown between Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer, the mercurial host of “Mad Money” on CNBC, felt like a Senate subcommittee hearing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/arts/television/14watc.html?hp

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE WITHDRAWS “ENEMY COMBATANT” DEFINITION FOR GUANTANAMO DETAINEES

The government’s new standard relies on the international laws of war to inform the scope of the president’s authority under this statute, and makes clear that the government does not claim authority to hold persons based on insignificant or insubstantial support of al Qaeda or the Taliban.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/13/justice-department-ends-e_n_174806.html

Long overdue justice for some (and that’s great!), identity crisis for others.

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Getta load o’ this…….former GWB ass-wipe, David Brooks, is all aflutter because PrezO’s “too busy” doing all the wrong stuff:

“I think the president should spend 50 percent of his time on the banking crisis, 25 percent of his time on getting our allies to coordinate with a global stimulus package and 25 percent of his time beginning work on a second round of stimulus. He’s taking his eye off the ball if he spends hours every day working on health care, education and energy. Worse, he adds uncertainty into the market.” (huffpo)

Brook’s journey from former Project for a New American Century (PNAC) super-shill, to touting via Op-Ed pieces his impressive credentials for an unadvertised position as Personal Coach to POTUS, underlines David’s “philosophical flexibility” and innate sensitivity to the requirements of the powerful.

My…. how that man could manage the time of others! What is that?

A natural sense of organization born right in ‘em, I guess.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/pressclips/archive/images/bush-clearing-brush-thumb.jpg
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G’day megan. Don’t think Wazza Big B is crackers either, certainly no more so than our very own Gerry Harvey who said on 4 Corners a bit back that; “at least I had one and a half $Billion to lose”. Both are unabashed Mammonists; the pair of ’em jumpin’ up and down like hyper-caffeinated greeters at a beltway Shriner Convention urging unquestioning continuance of the global consumerfest.

Megan, the other day there was a piece somewhere about the spreads the banks are making with the Fed rate in Japanese territory (virtually nothing) and how profitable their business is now.

Of course that relies on a couple things, one of which is just how willing they are to actually lend and how many wish to borrow. On the first, they’ve got balance sheets so laden with dodgy paper that no one knows how insolvent they really are (and insolvent they certainly are), and even the billions they’ve been ‘lent’ by that nice Uncle Sam (a kind old uncle with his own printing press is the next family I want to be reincarnated into! LOL) are being squirreled away into Fed accounts to earn a few shekels and held for the next downpour. (Remembering as we all now MUST, the definition of a banker: someone who lends you an umbrella but demands it back as soon as it rains!). Upshot? They are VERY reluctant to lend because they are so very wobbly.

Second thing, as the economy shrinks there are fewer people borrowing, despite rates being low. Asset prices sink so people will not risk buying homes, business is not making such big profits and will not borrow to expand and the whole mess is a vicious circle.

So yes, they are making huge spreads, but ONLY if and when they actually lend money, and right now, that’s NOT happening like it used to.

Can they fill the holes in their balance sheets? Well now they are taking Uncle Sam’s shekels but still no one knows how many more they’ll need, particularly if mortgage paper keeps turning rotten.

Buffet mad? I doubt it, but he is pointing out that banks will have good trading terms (compared to input costs) for quite a while.

Speaking of banks:

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The world’s largest financial institutions urged the G20 financial leaders on Friday to endorse the “bad bank” approach to dealing with the credit crisis, an expensive model one expert likened to another ransom note.
The request came in a letter to U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown from the Institute of International Finance, a trade group of the world’s largest global banks. The IIF wants Brown and his G20 colleagues to push the Obama administration in the direction of setting up a bad bank.
Under this approach, governments would buy toxic assets from banks at a price higher than the prevailing market rates. For the time being, private investors simply won’t buy the assets at the prices that the banks want. As a result, banks have huge holes in their balance sheets.
Last month, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner seemed headed in the direction of establishing a bad bank, but veered off at the last minute.
Instead, Geithner has proposed a public-private fund to get toxic assets off banks’ books. Details of the plan remain murky; Geithner’s apparent change of heart also was greeted with a sharp sell-off in the stock market.

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So stick the punters with all our dross at our price, and we get on with making huge profits unencumbered with this shit.

Yep, that makes perfect sense…for them! LOL

Gittins says it bluntly:

…if the scientists are right – and the signs so far are that they’ve understated rather than overstated the size of the problem and the speed at which we’re approaching the point of no return – then the ultimate loss of economic growth will far outweigh the loss the economists imagined they were trying to avoid.

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In other words, the whining from industry is just a political game and we should tell them to take a flying leap.

I doubt the rest of the world will ignore the evidence entirely either, and there will be convergence on this much quicker than we previously thought possible. The next meeting in Copenhagen should shake out the doubters en masse.

1937 Haunts Democrats During Spending Debate.
When President Obama ventured to Capitol Hill to meet with House Republicans shortly after Inauguration, he was met by a barrage of questions about the deficit and out of control spending.

Obama’s response reached back to the Great Depression. According to several Republicans in the room, Obama raised the specter of 1937, the year President Franklin Roosevelt succumbed to conservative pressure and cut spending, leading, economists insist, to a renewal of the economic collapse that has been dubbed the “recession within the Depression.”

Democratic leaders in both chambers of Congress also take the long view, sharing Obama’s concern that pressure from the GOP to cut spending could reverse any economic gains made.

read the whole article on The Huffington Post.

816 Catrina That women should get a medal. I suspect everyone including the law will be falling over themselves to let her know she has done the right thing. Even though she will have to go through a court case.

The whole question of Norm’s abuse of credit-card info is poised to distort — and possibly greatly shorten — this timetable. Hamline University law professor David Schultz informed TPM’s Eric Kleefeld that, since under state law the losing party of an election contest pays all court costs, Franken’s team can demand that Coleman’s people show them the money upfront — that is, they can demand that Coleman’s team put in escrow cash equal to the amount for which they’re going to be liable. If Coleman doesn’t have the cash — and it’s very likely that he doesn’t — then the appeal can’t go forward, and Al Franken gets his election certificate signed the moment the Election Contest Court rules in his favor, which could happen as soon as the end of next week. (Of course, then the wingnut chorus of “we wuz robbed!” gets even louder, but that’s the breaks, kids.) When asked if Franken’s team was considering this option, Franken attorney Marc Elias said that while he hadn’t really spent any time looking at it, now that the trial is nearly done he will be taking a look at that option. (By the way, you can still donate to Norm, but not through the website and not with a credit card.)

more of this article is on Fire Dog Lake.

I wonder if Devine foams at the mouth in real life too?

Spiffing detective work there, Inspector Demanagements.
Probably best if we do her slowly, as Bankstown Paulie used to say before he began bower-birding “top end” Frog tick-tocks.

Err, g’day….I’m Paul, and I’m a Watchman.

Holy opus dei, Rorschach! Randi is regurgitating Big Carbon & Allied sponsored propaganda without the common human courtesy of reaching for a bucket first. One would’ve thought that at the very least Frankie-pops would have taught his kid some manners. I mean, really! Frankie has woefully failed his duty of care in providing a decent literary, let alone journalistic education for Randi, his singularly unimaginative, yet quite clever in other ways, offspring. Why bother encouraging progeny into journalism if they are twice encumbered; bereft of wit and dialectically deficient.
Thank goodness Randi’s think tank trickle down is adequate enough to subsidise her column income.

“In 2001, (Randi) Devine turned down the Telegraph’s offer of more money and took up an offer to write for its main rival The Sydney Morning Herald. Devine is a personal friend of fellow conservative columnist Tim Blair, who said of her: “She’s got good antennae. She can read people which is why she accurately predicts election results.” (wiki)

Coulteris Regurgitatus (and friend)
http://www.entomon.net/frame-large/08613-walking-stick-insect-.jpg

It’s raining in Melbourne, which is not good for the Rock Concert for the fire victims. But it is good for greening the bush fire areas. Taking away the scarred land.

no way Kirri -they’d just get it on in an orgy of mutual self-aggrandisement.
Better to lock her up with GWB so she spend eternity contemplating how mind-numbingly stupid neoconservatives are. Actually, forget etrnity : 30 seconds should do it. And then she can move on to Jeanette Howard for eternal fashion tips.

Where is the War Against Everything when you need it. Bring back The Glasshouse.

Pelosi is golden in state poll.
The Field survey released today shows Pelosi’s approval rocketing to 48 percent (tied for her best ever) with a 35 percent disapproval rate.

It makes it very hard to run a scare campaign against someone who is popular. Socialist bogey man theory is not working here. 😈
read more here on Politico

Biden Stays Put for Amtrak.
Joseph R. Biden Jr. made 7,000 round-trips by train between Capitol Hill and his home in Delaware as a senator, but had to take up residence in Washington as vice president to get a sizable rail subsidy for Amtrak.

Standing on a train platform at Union Station today, Biden ticked off a list of rail projects to be funded from stimulus dollars, including $97.5 million for Delaware.

The money will cover the $21 million cost of remodeling the Wilmington Station that Biden famously frequented during his 36 years in Congress.

The vice president was joined by other rail enthusiasts. Among them, Sens. Arlen Specter , R-Pa., John Kerry , D-Mass., Frank R. Lautenberg , D-N.J., John D. Rockefeller IV , D-W.Va., Bill Nelson , D-Fla., and Ted Kaufman , D-Del.

“I’m tired of apologizing for helping Amtrak,” Biden told his old colleagues.

more on CQ Politics

Week in review in pictures. The first one is really significant. The signing of the Stem Cell bill. This gives you a little bit of an idea as to how busy they are.
see the slideshow on CQ Politics

Forget Britney; Media Outrage Hits Big Spenders.
It could be called “To Catch a Rich Guy.”
The celebrity Web site TMZ and TV shows like “Extra” and “Inside Edition” are expanding their coverage of starlets and Hollywood break-ups to include billion-dollar business scandals and the economic collapse.

A camera crew for “Extra,” the syndicated entertainment show, huddled alongside the BBC and The Associated Press outside the courtroom as Bernard L. Madoff pleaded guilty on Thursday. That night, the show started by calling him “the most hated man in America.” The previous evening, “Inside Edition” profiled one of Mr. Madoff’s victims who testified in court, a 60-year-old woman who lost millions and had to go to work as a maid.

more in the New York Times

Let’s hope (and pray) that even more of them get ‘promoted’:

Mar 13th, 2009 | MARYVILLE, Ill. — The widow of a pastor killed in mid-sermon urged mourners to reject hate and to take comfort in their faith at his funeral Friday, in the church where he was gunned down five days earlier.

“On Sunday, my husband didn’t die. He simply got a promotion,” Cindy Winters said. She raised a hand to the sky as the “Movin’ on Up” theme from “The Jeffersons” blared from the loudspeakers and the standing-room-only crowd rose to its feet at First Baptist Church in this St. Louis suburb.

__________________________

Hallelujah brother, I’s seen the glory, and it comes out of a handgun, and takes you to heaven…Amen!

Yep, they ARE loopy.

Jeez Kirri
Those Pharmaceuticals you were popping must have well and truly worn off.
You have really been on fire the last few days.
Move over “Pundit”!

Yeah Gaffy, I’ve descended to drinking alcohol instead! You can’t shoot as straight, but it’s MUCH more fun! LOL

Good site that Gaffy, but where’s the entry that says: “The climate is changing because Miranda Devine is a cunt?”

Eh????

It is pretty hard to argue with the science when one is not a scientist.
At this stage and rate i should not have to leave home to catch a barra. I will be able to catch one over the front fence.

Scientists See Even More Dangers From Rising Sea Levels. Another Notch in the Bush Legacy!

A report issued by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 predicted that sea level would rise by 7 to 23 inches by the end of the century. Researchers meeting at the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change are pushing that number significantly higher…………………………………………..
The biggest reason for the increase is that the 2007 UN report deliberately excluded melting of the ice caps from its calculations. Well, the new numbers are in and it is not looking good. A worst case scenario puts the projected rise in seal levels at as much as 6 feet. The best all-around guesstimate is 3 feet……………………………………………………………………..This may well be the most enduring legacy of the Bush years, a momentous opportunity squandered. The sound you hear as they were leaving was not the door closing but the window of opportunity snapping shut.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Scientists-see-even-more-d-by-G-J-Lau-090312-61.html

Plonk and curry now, eh? No wonder Madame K and the kids have you safely celled-away with you new toy! 🙂
That’s a remarkable constitution you’ve got there, Kirri. Well healed is wonderful news!
———————
The first clip frames enough of the story
so that in the second
when sky, hand and band blend
powdered blue with azure;
the aching beauty,
the emotional oomph of the moment
is captured in progression sublime
as ferramata……..
yields to percussion, orchestra then voice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKn-xImD17c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkgpJzvRACE

Kirri Baby -well do i remember the day when you could no longer drink coffee, and alcohol was the very last thing on your mind.
You barely LOL’d at all, and now you are spouting all over the place , so to speak. Welcome home Compadre. And guess what? They are still a cunning bunch over the fence.
LOL indeed.

Can anyone see the Soundrelief concert on TV anywhere? (no sound on the puter). So want to see Pete be a lightning rod.

Gaffy here’s some practical stuff.
One of the things I really like about Peter Pedals is how enthusing about his ideas aggravates the hell out of doctrinaire denialists. I like to quietly wind-up the gym poseurs amongst them at barbies by first enquiring how much monthly money it costs them to belong to a gym (which they under-utilise) then ever so jollily inform them how much money they can actually “MAKE” while they pedal themselves to the same level of fitness while doing the right thing by OUR biosphere.
“Money grows on quads and hamies these days mate! Consider the possibility….. get fit AND make money.
Always like to make sure plenty of their materially competive mates tune into the good humoured, biospherically friendly schtick. Michael Moore would never have had the impact he has if he had schlepped a copy of Emily Post around for the last twenty years.

And Gaffy, this line is useful if CC denialists have taken their nippers to see Wall-E:

“How do you reckon planet Earth got to be like it’s depicted in the movie?”
——————
“Hunt up the link for the Rainbow Power Company in Nimbin and buy the book by Peter Pedals as a reference for practical solar. Buy from the news stands the magazine Renew, which has lots of adds, articles and info. Buy from Dick Smiths a power meter that you use to plug into a power socket, then plug a device into it, this will tell you how much power an item draws.

Heating hot water, space heating and cooking use the most power. Usually these use too much power and are not run off solar. Use gas for cooking and solar water panels or gas for hot water.

Air conditioners chew a heap of power, once again you cannot run these off a solar setup. Try and design your house to not need air conditioners.

Fridges are the next big power user. To successfully run a fridge off solar, you are going to need a decent sized system. An efficient fridge is going to cost a lot on top of a suitably sized system.

Most people forget about water pressure. Pumps are a high power useage appliance.

A small solar system is fine for a small tv, cfl for lighting and for laptops.

To install a 12V system needs a fair bit of specialised knowledge. Yes, you can install it yourself, but you need the correct switches (standard 240V switches fail) plus correct sized wiring. Batteries need to be sited correctly to allow for charging, ventilation, access and correctly connected. The photovoltaic panels need to be installed correctly. You need a regulator too. Everything needs to be fused.

Most solar systems use an inverter to step the DC power to 240V AC which allows more appliances to be run. You cannot do the 240V side yourself.

To access any of the government rebates, the system needs to be correctly sized and then designed and installed by accredited solar companies.

If your house hasn’t been built yet, try and design it with solar in mind. It needs to be sited so that the roof points north. Also you will want the roof at the correct pitch. There must be zero shading throughout the day and throughout the year on the roof where the panels go. Try and keep the wire run fairly short from the panles to the battery system. Keep the wire run length as short as possible (less than a metre) from the batteries to the inverter.”

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/1003908.html

868
EC
I have been doing lots of homework on all that stuff and will do something positive in the near future. I started out trying to get enough people interested so that we could import container loads from China. Batteries, solar panels, wind generators, and inverters.
Everything necessary plus lots of spares.
It then becomes a very economical way of doing it.
The hard yards will be getting the numbers to warrant the containers. Lots of stalling at the moment while everyone is unsure about employment. I will just plug away at it locally and see how we go.

Alan Kolher had an ANZ economist on this morning and her comment was the ETS would be close to jobs neutral ie it shifts activity, not reduces it.

The other piece was a much longer interview with an analyst from Deutsche Bank (Mark Wells if you want to pull up the clip) who compared the Australian government’s proposed scheme with that of Europe, and he talked a lot of detail and a LOT of sense.

Essentially: Rudd has about got it right, and remember that with emissions now 15% over 2000 levels, a 5% reduction by 2020 would entail a drop of 20% on current levels. Secondly, Europe had the wind at its back with the shutting down of so much dirty East European industry in the nineties (their base year is 1990), and thirdly, Rudd’s system is based on the variable industrial output, and the cap is NOT an arbitrary number. Europe has been blindsided by the recession where dropping levels of production has given producers lots of spare permits with which they’ve gained some spare cash by selling and of course dropping the price of carbon dioxide to around $10/tonne. Rudd’s system would not let this happen.

I’d have to say that Kohler is doing an excellent job in getting the knowledgeable and articulate to counter the Chicken Little crap coming from some industry bodies and the Opposition.

Many big Greenie Points to him (they used to be Brownie Points but Bob Brown probably isn’t giving them out to anyone who isn’t demanding we cut all emissions and live in caves! LOL)

877
That’s it in a nutshell Chris

Frank Rich ALWAYS hit the spot. Here’s just a sample:

When Barack Obama ended the Bush stem-cell policy last week, there were no such overheated theatrics. No oversold prime-time address. No hysteria from politicians, the news media or the public. The family-values dinosaurs that once stalked the earth — Falwell, Robertson, Dobson and Reed — are now either dead, retired or disgraced. Their less-famous successors pumped out their pro forma e-mail blasts, but to little avail. The Republican National Committee said nothing whatsoever about Obama’s reversal of Bush stem-cell policy. That’s quite a contrast to 2006, when the party’s wild and crazy (and perhaps transitory) new chairman, Michael Steele, likened embryonic stem-cell research to Nazi medical experiments during his failed Senate campaign.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/opinion/15rich.html

…so now it’s Nazi Hip Hop, and off the hook jivin’ for the GOP? LOL

These creeps need more than a comb-over.

883

And the voice of Christ declared:

“GET UP! GET UP! FER GAWD’S SAKE GET YER ARSE OFF ME YA FAT FUCK!!”

Thus sayeth the Lord. Amen

and this:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/7691

How ingenious is this. The secret is out!
You can now pay an extra fee and have your telstra calls answered in , YEEEEEEEEEEEEES australian.
Wonder who the clever joe hunt was that thunk that one up.

TELSTRA is secretly offering customers a messaging service that charges them extra if they want to speak to “an Australian” instead of being diverted overseas.

The move follows a growing public backlash over the use of foreign call centres in countries like India and the Philippines by major companies.

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,,25189122-5005941,00.html

I believe Ecky that it’s a slope and not a wog in this instance.

According, that is, to Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino.

Or at least that was one of his many options

NOT for the faint hearted, but compelling:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/opinion/15danner.html

US soldiers, casualties returning home- & how the army ruthlessly takes over once the bodies are returned home. So clinical,impersonal . How distressed I would be as a parent.
And for those injured, life seems to get even worse despite all the reporting to date.

http://www.truthout.org/031409Z

Jen
All good things must come to an end.
So sad!

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/gallery/0,26637,5033701-20581-1,00.html