The Cap and Trade system (or taxes) will not eliminate CO2. What is needed (if CO2 is an issue) is to protect and promote the planet’s carbon sinks—the systems that suck carbon back out of the air and bury it. What is it? Keep reading.... from City Journal:The government will have to sell $2.4 trillion in new bills, notes and bonds in fiscal 2009, according to an recent estimate by UBS. How does this compare with past Treasury sales? From October through December, the Treasury sold a record $569 billion, up a whopping 693% from the $82 billion it sold during the same period a year earlier, and auctioned another $493 billion in the last quarter up from $156 billion the year before according to Bloomberg, as the government increasingly finds itself squeezed between rocketing expenditures and collapsing tax revenues
Obama plan to raise tax revenues 40% by 2013 and the impact it will have on taxes and the economy. Unless the economy experiences a miraculous recovery, increasing the tax burden amid a declining economy is not only an extremely bad idea, it turns Treasury’s gargantuan task of financing the rapidly rising debt burden as spending soars into Mission Impossible.What does this mean for traders and investors? First, this is inflationary because if history is any guide, the government will print more money and employ more helicopters from which to throw it into the economy, a methodology euphemistically labeled “quantitative easing.” The next all-too predictable development will be strong upward pressure on interest rates as U.S. Treasury investors demand higher returns to offset their losses due to increasing inflation.
In this increasing hostile investment environment, any investment strategy will need to take rising interest rates and increasing inflation into account.
From MoneyNews.com April 23, 2009
Pershing Square Capital Management fund manager Bill Ackman is betting that the share prices of big banks will decline.
He’s also hoping to give them a little push.
Ackman argues that banks like Citigroup and Bank of America are effectively insolvent, a view some economists share, but one the banks vigorously deny.
“The problem when you are CEO of a business is that you get used to being able to do anything you want, and you get a little bit too full of yourself,” Ackman told The New York Times.
Ackman is planning a media blitz urging banks' bondholders to exchange their debt for equity in order to shore up the institutions, a move that could well sink bank shares but boost Ackman's profits.
Ackman’s fund controls 25 percent of General Growth, the mall properties company that filed bankruptcy last week, and the firm will play a crucial role in restructuring the company, making it possible that Ackman and his investors could walk with hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.
Rumors ran rampant on the Web this week that bank-stress tests devised by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner show that 16 of the 19 big banks tested are "technically insolvent."
Geithner’s office released a statement saying that the results from the stress tests weren’t completed, yet damage to the stocks was already done. Since then, Geithner has testified that bank capital is “adequate.”
From ClusterStockThe BBC is reporting that UK chancellor Alistair Darling is proposing to hike taxes all the way up to 50% for anyone earning more than £150,000. That tops the 45% rate Darling indicated in a pre-Budget report last year. The UK is struggling with falling tax receipts due to the economic slow down while spending to combat recession and its effect increases.
One question: which economic theory tells you to announce a giant tax hike in the midst of a recession?
.jpg)
Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.
That appears to be the Obama Administration’s latest tactic to achieve greater government control over liberty, the economy, and mankind’s ability to tread water. And again, it’s with phony science. Anxieties were raised last week to the highest levels yet about islands sinking into the sea, the elimination of entire nations, and even the reduction of coastlines to certain U.S. states if, of course, carbon emissions are not immediately reduced.
According to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the earth's temperature is rising so fast that a “very, very scary” scenario will unfold. Island nations, especially those in the Caribbean, may disappear. Portions of Louisiana and Florida will go underwater, reducing the size of those states. New Orleans will be flooded. Said the Secretary, “I think the Caribbean countries face rising oceans and they face increase in the severity of hurricanes. This is something that is very, very scary to all of us. The island states in the world represent—I remember this number—one-half of 1 percent of the carbon emissions in the world. And they will—some of them will disappear.”
Fortunately for the American people, the fragile economy, and beachgoers everywhere, Mr. Chu’s alarming prediction is based upon a faulty hypothesis: Melting ice caps would cause sea levels to rise. They would not. This is scientifically falsifiable claim. It is, in fact, provably false.
As a matter of fact, ice displaces more water than does its liquid counterpart. According to Chemistry.About.com, “Ice floats because it is about 9% less dense than liquid water. In other words, ice takes up about 9% more space than water…” Therefore, ice—which expands when it freezes—takes up less space when it melts, and could not result in sea levels rising.One could even prove it. If Mr. Chu’s hypothesis is correct, then one should be able to fill up a glass of water, add some ice, place it in the sun, and then watch as the glass overflows. But it does not. In fact, the volume decreases. Therefore, Mr. Chu’s claim is falsified by a simple experiment. He would not even pass a 7th grade earth science exam.
The only way for the sea levels to rise is if enough water melted off of land masses. To make matters worse for the Hot Earthers, some 97.5 percent of the water is already in the seas and oceans. And for the remaining 2.5 percent to find its way to the oceans is actually impossible, since much of that will always be water vapor trapped in the atmosphere. Also, topography plays a role: Given the presence of lakes, it is clear that not all water has an outlet to the sea. Another obstacle is plate tectonics: How far will mountain ranges be raised by rising plates, thus trapping more water in the form of snow and ice on mountain peaks?
These are all factors that make sea levels rising at an alarming pace impossible. There is no cause for governmental policies to turn back the tides. King Canute could not do it, and neither can Uncle Sam.
More on this from GetLiberty.Org
As goes housing, so goes the rest of the economy. So where do things stand? After two years of precipitous declines that have taken prices down almost 30% from the peak, house prices are finally approaching fair value (which is perhaps 10% below today's level).
That doesn't mean that house prices will only fall another 10%, however. On the contrary, given the tendency for prices to overshoot, it would be startling if house prices stopped at fair value. More likely, they'll drop at least 10% below fair value before they finally trough. Although the rate of decline is likely to ease over the coming months and years, therefore, prices will likely keep falling through at least 2011. And there's at least 20% downside left.
House prices will eventually stop falling, probably in about two years. But will they ever recover to the levels we saw during the heights of boom? In some areas, prices might climb that high again. But for most markets, such a recovery will probably never happen, and would take decades it were to occur. In an essay published today, Charles Hugh Smith explains that the bubble vaulations are probably never coming back.
The American President's call "to free the world of the menace of a nuclear nightmare" was hot air, Mr Sarkozy's diplomatic staff told him in a report. "It was rhetoric – not a speech on American security policy but an export model aimed at improving the image of the United States," they said.
"President Obama has said that the science of global warming is 'beyond dispute,' and therefore settled. This is the justification for the imposition of a carbon cap-and-trade system that will cost $2 trillion. But Obama does not understand science. 'Settled science' is an oxymoron, and anyone who characterizes science as 'settled' or 'indisputable' is ignorant not only of science, but also history and philosophy.
Aristotle, who lived and wrote in the fourth century B.C., was one of the greatest geniuses the world has ever known. He invented the discipline of logic, and founded the sciences of ecology and biology. Aristotle's physics were accepted as correct for nearly two thousand years. ... Aristotle taught that heavy objects fall faster than light ones. Over the centuries, a few unreasonable persons expressed skeptical concerns. But the consensus was that the physics of motion were described by Aristotle's dicta. The science was settled.
Around the year 1591, an irascible young instructor at the University of Pisa demonstrated that Aristotle was wrong. He climbed to the top of the tower of Pisa and dropped cannonballs of unequal weight that hit the ground simultaneously. Aristotelean professors on the faculty were embarrassed. The university administration responded by not renewing Galileo's contract, thus ridding themselves of a troublemaker who challenged the accepted consensus. ...
President Obama, a lawyer and politician, would now have us believe that the process of history has stopped. For the first time, scientific knowledge is not provisional and subject to revision, but final and settled. Skepticism, which has been the spur to all innovation and human progress, is unacceptable and must be condemned. But in fact, it is our awareness of what we do not know that determines our scientific level. ... Knowledge begins with skepticism and ends with conceit." --University of Oklahoma geologist David Deming
“When we look at the systematic financial system we’re in, and it affects every country in the world including Canada, I think staying bearish is the route to go,” Economist Nouriel Roubini.
So where is Soros -- one of the world’s most successful investors -- putting his billions? “I think Brazil actually,” says the thickly bespectacled one, “together with China, will be among the recovering countries. The outlook for Brazil is better than for most other countries.”
