Well so anyway, got a few minutes to kill here. Thought I'd bring all 4 of you reading this up to date on all the whacky shit I've been seeing lately in the papers.
On a personal note of the apocalypse, I had an effette bank teller offer me a guaranteed loan of 4,600 pounds. Guaranteed as in I'd get it, but to speak nothing of guaranteeing I'd pay it.
Something seems to be winding up. Let's see if we can read the pulp and mulch tea leaves...
This is just Frightening
Read in Rupe's titty-free rag (article unavailable) that the RIAA has successfully garnered royalties for all the quality music they play to soothe the inmates at Guantanamo. Sometimes, stupidity and insanity leap out and envelope your head like an elk's fart. And there's nothing more to be said.
I always thought sub-machine guns were a bit over-kill in crowed areas anyhow...
Sure, and it's AMERICANS that don't have a grasp of dangers of firearms...UNITED KINGDOM - Cops at Gatwick Airport had to buy colleagues doughnuts as a forfeit whenever they left GUNS unattended, a tribunal heard. One left his sub-machine gun in the canteen and allegedly had to buy the whole team a CAKE — the penalty for more serious rule breaches. The sliding scale of unofficial “fines” — echoing [...]
And in a sure sign hell's freezin' over, the militant earth worshippers at the Methole actually published a front page article questioning... dare I say it aloud... our democratically elected public servants' motives in taxation
Mystery surrounding eco-taxes
Billions of pounds are being raised in green taxes with little or no reward for environmentally friendly consumers, according to two new studies.
Each British family is paying £400 more in green taxes than it would cost to cover its carbon footprint, one study claims – a total of £10billion nationwide.
While green taxes raised £21.9billion in 2005, the social cost of that year's carbon emissions was just £11.7billion, says the report from the TaxPayers' Alliance.
Matthew Elliott of the group said: 'We need more honesty about the costs of extra green taxes when British taxpayers already pay some of the highest pollution charges in the world.'
Only a fifth of people think politicians are genuinely trying to change behaviour using the tax system, a survey carried out by YouGov for the group found.
In contrast, 63 per cent believe Government is using the issue as an excuse to pull in more cash.
Nearly four-fifths oppose the so-called 'pay as you throw' schemes floated by the Government to encourage recycling – despite previous surveys indicating a majority backed the idea.
Mystery indeed!
News from Jackson Hole: Saddle up ma, it’s a shadow banking run
*From Feudal Serf To Spender, This Wonderful World of Purchase Power*
Haha, having lived once upon a time round them parts, I find a peculiar irony in meeting there. Jackson Hole is the closest place you can go to make a keg run or just buy full-strength beer that's already chilled. I rather imagine there's a lot of heavy drinking going on 'round them parts recently.Perhaps it’s true what George Bernard Shaw said - that if you laid down every economist in a line, they still wouldn’t reach a conclusion. Things are decidedly inconclusive at Jackson Hole in Wyoming, where central bankers are meeting for their annual symposium.
Powerful voices in the Fed are angling for a rate cut to help house prices and buoy markets, but they’re being met by those who see cuts as a dangerous moral hazard in a classic bank-run.
According to Axel Weber, the German Bundesbank chief, the current financial crisis bears all the hallmarks of a bank-run. You know the kind of thing - frustrated savers scrambling to cash in their flimflam paper at the Western Union for its value in gold. Something like that anyway. Weber told an audience at Jackson Hole:
What we are seeing is basically what we see underlying all banking crises
In his analysis, markets, just as in the 19th century, are currently prey to a spiralling liquidity crisis created as investor confidence drops and everyone rushes to get their chips off the table.
The difference is that this time, it’s not a run on the banks. Instead, noted Weber, the current liquidity storm is being weathered by unregulated financial institutions - hedge funds, banking conduits, SIVs and such like. It is what Paul McCulley, managing director of Pimco, has termed a “run on the shadow banking system”.
Even more ominous than perhaps accountants figuring out how to spin dross into gold is our super-dooper ally China has been pulling a Mongolian Horde on the military's Great Firewall,
Chinese military hack into Pentagon
The Chinese military hacked into a Pentagon computer network in June in the most successful cyber attack on the US defence department, say American officials.
The Pentagon acknowledged shutting down part of a computer system serving the office of Robert Gates, defence secretary, but declined to say who it believed was behind the attack.
Current and former officials have told the Financial Times an internal investigation has revealed that the incursion came from the People’s Liberation Army.
One senior US official said the Pentagon had pinpointed the exact origins of the attack. Another person familiar with the event said there was a “very high level of confidence...trending towards total certainty” that the PLA was responsible. The defence ministry in Beijing declined to comment on Monday.
While the Chinese are at least kind enough to keep the border skirmishes a matter of Spies Like Us satellite blasting lasers and sending our AWACS back in boxes, Mother Russia is wont to be a bit more prosaic about things
*Red Heat Rising*
The UK's Royal Air Force has launched fighter jets to intercept eight Russian military planes flying in airspace patrolled by Nato, UK officials say. Four RAF F3 Tornado aircraft were scrambled in response to the Russian action, the UK's defence ministry said. The Russian planes - long-range bombers - had earlier been followed by Norwegian F16 jets. Russia recently revived a Cold War-era practice of flying bombers on long-range patrols. In a statement the MoD said the eight Russian Tupolev Tu-95 Bear aircraft, flying in loose formation of four pairs, were initially intercepted by the Norwegian air force.
In poking around for some links to that story, I read that the Tu-95 is actually turbo-prop propeller powered. More interestingly, Vox Day's favorite intellectual punching bag and Neal Boortz's little on-air girlfriend, Michelle Malkin, took note of it on her blog. Fortunately for her, she gave no analysis. Vox might getting bored now that he's between books.
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posted by Abe at 8:08 AM
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