Edmonton Journal: Surging loonie hurts Alberta deficit fight: As Canadian dollar climbs in value, provincial revenues drop, premier says

The rising loonie is bad news for Alberta’s efforts to reduce a projected $4.7-billion deficit, Premier Ed Stelmach said Wednesday.

Every one-cent annualized increase in the Canadian dollar costs the province about $215 million in lost revenue, Stelmach said.

The loonie reached 99.31 cents US in trading Wednesday, before easing to close at 98.98, up .36 for the day.

A strong dollar hurts Alberta’s three major export industries — energy, agriculture and forestry, Stelmach said.

“The concern is it does have an impact on the Alberta budget,” he said. “My concern obviously is with those industries that are exporting. They’ve had the advantage of a lower dollar.”

It’s a convenient excuse and a neccessary diversion away from the fact that the same government’s re-jiggering of the oil royalty framework will have a negative short term impact on its efforts to balance Alberta’s budget. When the Stelmachistanis released their 2010 provincial budget, they forecasted that Alberta’s budget would balance by 2012-13, right around the time of the next provincial election.

However, the re-jiggered Royalty Framework for conventional oil will mean foregone revenues (in the short term). So how will Alberta’s government balance its books? Ted Morton’s view is quite different from Stelmach’s:

Calgary Herald: Deficit plan on schedule, says Morton: Wildrose leader skeptical of Tory projection

Finance Minister Ted Morton says that even though millions of dollars will be chopped from provincial coffers because of the revamped royalty framework, Alberta is still on track to climb out of deficit in three years — a claim met with skepticism from the political party running almost neck-and-neck with the governing Tories in public support.

The government announced a modified royalty framework last week, sacrificing hundreds of millions of dollars in energy income to try to trigger oilpatch activity. The move came just weeks after the province projected a record $4.7-billion budget shortfall in 2010-11.

According to government figures, however, Alberta will be back in the black in 2012-13. Factoring in the royalty changes, the $500 million expected surplus will be trimmed to closer to $140 million in three years, Morton said.

“The Stelmach government has made a commitment for a balanced budget — back in the black — by 2012-13. Does the reduction in royalty rates threaten that political goal? The answer is ‘No,’ ” Morton said in an interview Saturday.

I see some political hedging here. Morton has to put on the air of absolute confidence that he will be able to make this work, just as Stelmach throws out the exchange rate issue as a possible roadblock. Just in case Morton can’t make it work, the PC party will be able to blame “unforeseen” shifts in exchange rates as the cause of falling short of their goal. The Wild Rose Alliance is skeptical (because as an opposing political force, they pretty much have to be ): the PC party, according to their view, has yet to show it can reign in spending.

As I have shown here in this blog, Alberta has a revenue problem, not a spending problem. It all depends on which measure of spending you use. In absolute terms, Alberta does spend more than any other province. Relative to its GDP, however, Alberta has the lowest government expenditures in all of Confederation. However, this won’t stop people from distorting the facts and examining them using whichever methodology advances their political agenda.

Alberta’s budget and the Royalty structure sit on the ‘fulcrum of power” in this province. The PC party could solidify their hold on a decades-long political dynasty, or they could fall precipitously into the province’s political abyss. As Kevin Morrison found in his analysis of resource revenue (oil, mostly) and regime stability around the world, dictatorships fall because they spend too little on the poor, whereas democracies fall because they take too much from the rich.

While his paper found that oil revenues are stabilizing for dictatorships, but had no destabilizing effect on democracies, the analysis was at the national, and not the sub-national level. Alberta, not Canada’s Federal Government, has jurisdiction over energy resources in the province, and its oil extraction is unlike much of the world’s oil in that it is processed by private, not state-owned companies. Thus, it’s difficult to extend Morrison’s analysis to the Province of Alberta.

But . . it is possible to hypothesize that significant oil revenues create authoritarian tendencies in democracies, as governments, while they depend on the electorate for votes, do not depend on them so much for revenues. Alberta’s abysmal voter turnout in the order of 40% in that election, meant that roughly 20% of Alberta’s eligible voters were responsible for voting the Stelmach government into the Legislature, which is hardly what one would call a seriously legitimate hold on power.

In the runup to the 2008 election, Stelmach, a Northern Alberta farmboy, found his base amongst Northern Alberta Farmers, and not Uncle Ralphie’s Calgary Oilmen. Farmers, flying high on a commodity bubble that extended beyond oil, were financially flush, and it was probably easy to think that they could finally wean themselves off Alberta’s version of a safe injection site: oil money. With oil prices experiencing a black swan event, the “New Normal” created the perception that a high price environment was here to stay. Albertans adjusted their perceptions towards the temporarily steep end of the oil supply curve, and concluded they were not getting their “fair share” of the boom. All across the province, in both the unconventional and conventional sectors, communities were experiencing the downside of the boom. Drug use, shadow populations, crime and prostitution all conspired to erode their quality of life.

As Patrycjya Romanowska chronicled for Alberta Oil Magazine last year, Steady Eddie’s rise coincided with a 41% drop in corporate donations to the PC party. While Romanowska did not include the Wildrose Alliance in her analysis, it doesn’t take a geologist to realize where all the money went.

The Wildrose Alliance has been quite good at associating Alberta’s prosperity with the conventional oil and gas sector. It’s actually a myth that Alberta’s future lies in hitching its wagon to this dying horse, but that won’t stop Danielle Smith from hitting on the same oilpatch nostalgia that characterized her speech to the Wildrose Annual General Meeting.

Contrary to the myth propagated by the Wildrose Alliance, unconventional oil is where Alberta’s energy future lies. Conventional oil and gas is following a permanent, secular decline in this province (barring any huge technolgical breakthrough). In terms of connecting concepts to symbols that Albertans identify with, though, it might make sense for the Wildrose Alliance to connect prosperity with pumpjacks. Everyone in Alberta knows what an oil pump looks like; they are dotted all over the province, often in serene, quiant pastoral landscapes, surrounded by haybales, wild rose bushes and baby calves with magnificent mountain vistas peeking over the horizon. It’s enough to bring a tear to anyone’s eye. But bitumen is all located in the hinterland, as far away as Mordor, and very few Albertans ever actually get to see any photos that do not include moonscapes, dying ducks or tailings pipes spewing toxins into the environment. Even though bitumen will drive provincial revenues in decades to come, it’s probably a tough battle to associate prosperity and tar.

Ted Morton and Ed Stelmach have taken a huge gamble with their party’s future, but, as they say here in Calgary “no risk, no reward”. If the new royalty framework doesn’t exacerbate the government’s deficit and it remains on its budgetary track, the Wildrose Alliance will be starved for political fodder and will have no choice but to harp on about spending. If it doesn’t work for Morton and Stelmach, they can always trot out a series of unforseen events, such as currency exchange rates, and hope to hell Albertans buy it.

Some societies have used shells, beaver pelts, or huge stones sitting on the ocean floor as money. In Greece, according to Aristotle in his Nichomachean Ethics, they used the “Knife of Delphi” as money. It was something like an ancient version of a leatherman – a tool that could serve many purposes, but whose metal content was worth something.

In the field of economics, we are told that a “thing” must serve three functions if it is to become “money”. First, it must serve as a store of value. I should be able to hold onto it for some time before it begins to lose value. This is why hyperinflation is so damaging to money, because if it does not store value, then its second property is compromised: the nature of its general acceptance. The second property of money holds that it is a medium of exchange. For something to serve as money, I must have assurance that I will be able to take the money I receive when exchanging goods, and give that money to someone else. If they are to accept it, they must have faith that others will accept money, and so on down the line. For something to serve as money, everyone (or a critical mass of people) must agree on its general acceptance. They must share some sort of social contract or at least a collective suspension of disbelief. And finally, for a thing to serve as money, it must be able to quantify worth – to represent value in a numerical sense. It must serve as a unit of account.

Money is media, hence “medium of exchange”. When you think about it, all money is merely a piece of paper with the image of the queen on it. It’s ink, cotton and wood pulp, which makes it a form of media. Many people don’t see money as a form of media, but it is. Cash is print media. It has images and symbols on it that have meaning in a society. Canada has its loonie, images of hockey, birds, the Queen of England, and dead white men. As does the USA (ex the Queen of course). Birds and dead white men. What does this say about us?

If the “Medium is the Message”, what message does money convey to us? Mcluhanites would point out that the medium itself affects how the message is perceived. When you pay with a debit card, you are exchanging data. Money has been abstracted away from the Queen, birds and dead white guys. None of those zeros or ones contain messages about the Queen, dead white men, or birds. You are exchanging dollars in pure digital form, free of any imagery.

In one sense, it feels less secure to exchange digital money. You can have your credit/debit card skimmed, someone can figure out your PIN number and steal funds from you, and a debit card can be lost or stolen. But compare this with cash. Sure, cash might feel more secure, because you have the actual bill in your hand. But if you lose your cash, it is most likely gone forever, and there is no pin number stopping the finder from spending your money.

In his book, Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan claimed that the medium itself affects one’s understanding of the message. We understand digital money differently than we do cash. McLuhan would muse about the effects of digital money (debit cards, credit cards, direct deposit, and even cheques) versus analog money (currency and coin).

Digital money allows you to have your tax return or paycheck appear instantaneously in your bank account, and bypasses the need for you to go down to your bank branch and physically deposit the cheque into your account. In this sense, it alters one’s relationship with their banker or bank teller. Thus, digital money has a higher velocity in the economy; that is to say its nature allows it to move through the economy with fewer delays.

Digital money also has traceability that it not inherent in cash. Whenever digital money moves, it leaves behind itself a record somewhere. It is the lens of the Panopticonomy – the Panoptic Economy. Cash is a different story: it is more private, and moving large sums of it will arouse suspicions of wrongdoing.

Something in the order of 90% of all business transactions in Canada take place as either debit or credit card purchases. This transition to digital money has profound implications for how we interrelate economically. In the 1980’s, the twilight of the cheque era in Canada, one would have to employ the post office several times each month when paying bills by mail. This would also involve using the telephone quite often to verify bill payments or learn about balances.

In the era of digital money, though, we still use the phone to talk to a customer service agent, but the post office is more likely to deliver the product to our door than it is to deliver our payment to the vendor. In a sense, it becomes apparent how technological change in one media affects our use of other forms of media (the phone, the post). One could even say that digital money has introduced a new equilibrium with respect to all other forms of media in our complex system of communication.

The form of a thing, not what it is made of, matters. Money’s “form” is the previously mentioned three-fold criteria generally agreed upon by economists. This form allows us to abstract value and worth into numerical concepts that make quantitative analysis far easier.

But digital money compromises our ability to actually do anything with those numbers. In Chaos and the Meaning of Electric Culture, Zingrone argued that electronic media suppresses the brain’s ability to react to chaotic disequilibrium, which is essential for making sense of complex systems. Watching television actually induces an altered state of consciousness, because the lightwaves coming from the tv actually impact one’s brain state, making us more passive and far less active in our critical faculties. The same cannot be said of print media.

Essentially, electronic media makes us passive when it comes to perceiving the effects of the subtle change between analog and digital money forms. Don’t have enough cash? Who cares! Put it on the VISA! This is why it is far easier to get into debt now than it was a decade ago: to purchase something online, one only needs to enter data (which can be saved to expedite future purchases), rather than getting on the phone to do it, or mailing a cheque, or, God forbid – driving to the bank to take out cash, then driving to the vendor, counting out the bills and then doing the exchange.

This is why so many Money Gurus suggest moving to a cash-only budget as a means of getting out of debt – having that credit card handy makes it far too easy to leak cash. That’s all for now.

On a related note, while poking around for information, I came across the “Alberta Refederation Party”, which seeks to re-federate Alberta. Since their website is under construction, they point readers to their sister organization’s website, REFEDBC.

The AB Refederation website suggests radical and outrageous facts about the Canadian system of political control. However, all of AB Refederation’s research is backed by the government’s own documents – it is in fact, factual and not opinion. Before we get to unlearning, here are some facts uncovered by AB Refederation:

Canada has no constitution.
Politicians use a statute to control people and call it a constitution. They passed that statute themselves. So they have voted themselves into power.
The central Canadian government is unlawfully constituted.
That is, according to the World Bank’s definition of a lawful government.
The Canadian Supreme Court is therefore also unlawfully constituted.
An unlawful government has no power to create a lawful court system.
The provinces have never confederated.
No confederating document can be produced that is signed by the provinces and approved by the people. The inherent right of the people of Canada to choose their form of government has never been allowed.
AB has no constitution.
An AB statute is used as a constitution. The AB politicians voted the people out of power when they passed it.
The people do not govern themselves – they are ruled.
The only definition of a constitution that produces democracy is “A Charter of government deriving its whole authority from the governed” [Black's Law Dictionary, 6th Ed]. This whole country is unlawfully governed. However, the problem can be fixed – the task is not impossible.
Now, these facts appear outlandish if your mind has been taught from birth to believe that the Canadian system is democratic. These facts shock your entire belief system. They stun. They can’t be true? And so before your mind can accept such facts as true, your mind must question its own belief system. What if some of our beliefs really do need to be unlearned?

Happy reading . . . .

Part 2:

Notes:

* Search: “Canada”.
* Towns and cities are corporations -w hat’s the difference? They’re open about it – it says so on the town.
* In order for the town to levy taxes, they need to incorporate. They cannot levy taxes on a human being. In order to deliver services, this is what they must do.
* Caller: If we are all incorporated at birth, what is our remedy?
* Force: Lookup Eldon Warman at detaxcanada.org
* Warman explains how you can distinguish yourself from the ALLCAPS legal identity.
* Not just the birth cerificate or SS#, but bank accounts, driver’s licenses, marriage licences, etc. Any time you file an income tax return, you renew the contract. You have volunteered to become a slave.
* [break]
* What was that weird coalition government about, back in the days when Stephane Dion was heading up the Liberal Party?
* In Montecello, Quebec, the founding documents of the North American Union were signed. Stephane Dion wanted to get the prize. It was all a power struggle to be the boy who gets the prize.
* Syrett: what difference does it make?
* Force: It’s just like infigting at a corporate director’s meeting. “The fight for power” (king of the castle).
* Syrett: Who owns the Corporation of Canada?
* Force: held behind a wall named “The Bank of Canada”.
* Shares are not common trading shares, but preferential shares. Monarchy of England owns trading shares.
* Not simply “The Crown”, but many crowns of Europe.

Bloomberg: UK, USA move a step closer to losing their AAA ratings: Moody’s

Telegraph: Within a month, the US must rule whether or not China is a currency manipulator, which calls for sanctions under US law.

James Laxer: The Great Economic Debate Canada Needs and Is Failing to Conduct – why is Canada hitching its fortunes to an ever-declining US?

Paul Krugman: Taking on China

for comparison

Abrupt Climate Change Could be Brought About by Leaking Methane

Significant amounts of methane found to be leaking from permafrost in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf could push the world closer to the tipping points for abrupt climate changes. According to a study published in Science journal this week, about 7-8 million tonnes of methane are being released from the Shelf each year – about the same amount that the entire world’s oceans release annually. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas considered to be one of the largest contributors to climate change.
The fear is that should these leaks turn out to be new, due to rising temperatures, it’s possible that considerably larger pockets of methane will be released from thawing permafrost. Further studies will be necessary to determine whether the methane leaks are due to global warming.

WIKI

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Part 12:

Steyn, in the Washington Times :

What’s happening in the developed world today isn’t so very hard to understand: The 20th century Bismarckian welfare state has run out of people to stick it to. In America, the feckless insatiable boobs in Washington, Sacramento, Albany and elsewhere are screwing over our kids and grandkids. In Europe, they’ve reached the next stage in social democratic evolution: There are no kids or grandkids to screw over.

Web of Debt: What Fiscal Responsibility Really Means

All of this puts “fiscal responsibility” in a different light. Rather than saving the future for our grandchildren, as the President himself seems to think it means, it appears to be a code word for delivering public monies into private hands and raising taxes on the already-squeezed middle class. In the parlance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), these are called “austerity measures,” and they are the sorts of things that people are taking to the streets in Greece, Iceland and Latvia to protest. Americans are not taking to the streets only because nobody has told us that is what is being planned.

Graduation address given by Mr Joseph Skrzynski to the Business School graduates of Sydney U, in 2006:

But when I reflect on these times, I realise that things have changed enormously on campus. And that leads me to the apology, or “sorry” statement in my address to you. I do feel that my generation owes yours some sort of apology. And this is why:

In the ‘60s and ‘70s, education was effectively free. Commonwealth scholarships were easy to come by, and then under the Whitlam government it was actually free. We had the time to get involved in student activities – sporting or otherwise. We had the time to take full advantage of what ought to be a glorious period between school and work.

That is far from the case today. Many of you will have worked 2 to 4 days a week in order to provide for yourself and for your education. Some of you may have had your HECS paid, but more of you will leave here with a debt on your shoulders. A user pays system that WE didn’t have to face. And that will come on top of an economic landscape that we Baby Boomers in Australia, and indeed in most OECD countries, shaped to our benefit.

We twisted the tax laws to make it very attractive to own property, and hence drove up its price. The first modest housing that a student graduate would purchase in my day, was about 4 times of a reasonable starting salary. Today it’s 8 times. Combined with a HECS debt, it creates a vastly different starting point for you, as opposed to my generation.

I personally am aghast at this. I think it is an unproductive misallocation of resources in Australia that real estate has absorbed so much investment. And I am aghast that we don’t invest in our best and brightest through tertiary education, but rather slavishly implement user pays. The irony is John Howard was Treasurer when I was a student, and Prime Minister during your time. I suspect he won’t say sorry on this one either, so you will have to do with just my sorry.

TRANSCRIPT:

ENGDAHL: The European Union finance ministers, end of last week, called on Greece to impose very severe austerity measures, clean up its pension obligations, meaning cutting back on pensions to retired Greeks and so forth, and other measures, not unlike what the IMF does to developing countries.

JAY: And this at a time when Greece has elected a left-of-center government that actually in theory would be against such things.

ENGDAHL: Yeah, the Papandreou government. But I think they realize that they’re in a no-win situation. If they don’t do something very convincing, the interest rate that they’re going to have to pay on their debt—and they have to refinance something on the order of $17 billion euros this year—that they just won’t be able to refinance it. No secondary market will exist for Greek sovereign debt. So they’ve got to do something. However, the Greek populace and the trade unions in Greece have a very militant tradition, a very strong tradition of trade union activism and social protest. So people are going out in the streets and having rolling strikes across Greece to protest these austerity measures that they’re being asked to do. So it’s really kind of a Mexican standoff at this point as to what will happen. And as long as it is a Mexican standoff, the dollar miraculously is going to be strong, despite the weakness of the US economy and the fundamentals of the US economy, and the euro will be the weak man of the major economies.

JAY: And perhaps this might be the most important piece of this story is that in the next year, two, three years, not just in Greece, the fight’s going to be who’s going to pay for the bailout of the economy. It was interesting on Fareed Zakaria’s show on Sunday on American television, ABC, Fareed was giving his own prescription of what’s necessary in the coming years, and it was all about cuts to health care, cuts to Social Security benefits, pensions. And we know that when President Obama was elected, within days of his election, he met with conservative columnists, some of the best-known conservative columnists in the United States, and it was all about them saying to him, when the time comes, are you going to be willing to put entitlement programs on the table, and he assured them that he would. And this really is—what we’re seeing in Greece is perhaps the storm to come right across Europe and North America.

Investment Outlook Bill Gross | March 2010

This metaphor doesn’t really answer the critical question of whether a debt crisis can be cured by issuing more debt. The answer remains: It depends – on initial debt levels and whether or not private economies can be reinvigorated. But it does suggest the likely direction of sovereign yields IF global policymakers are successful with their rescue efforts: Sovereign yields will narrow in spreads compared to other high-quality alternatives. In other words, sovereign yields will become more credit like. When sovereign issues become more credit-like, as evidenced in Greece, Spain, Portugal, and a host of others, they move closer in yield to the corporate and Agency debt that supposedly rank lower in the hierarchy. That process of course can be accomplished in two ways: high-quality non-sovereigns move down to lower levels or governments move up. The answer to which one depends significantly on future inflation, the aftermath of quantitative easing programs, and the vigor of the private economy going forward. But the contamination of sovereign credit space with past and future bailouts is a leveler, a homogenizer, a negative for those sovereigns that fail to exert necessary discipline. Only if global economies stumble and revisit the recessionary depths of a year ago should the process reverse direction and place Treasuries, Gilts, et al. back in the driver’s seat.

Dr. Doom: It’s time to buy farmland & gold

Warren Buffett’s business partner: “Basically, It’s Over” for the American Dream.

Joe Stack’s Creepy connections to military and intel contractors

Karl Denninger will squash any hopes you may have of an economic recovery.

ZeroHedge: There appears to be a silent run on the banks in Greece

BusinessInsider: Citibank warns customers it may place limits on or refuse cash withdrawals

Harvard’s Rogoff sees nothing but defaults ahead for sovereigns. You might want to listen to him, as he wrote the book on the subject.

Vigilant Citizen: The Transhumanist and Police State Agenda in Pop music.

Propagandamatrix: Leaked Agenda: Bilderberg Group Plans Economic Depression

On the eve of the 2009 Bilderberg Group conference, which is due to be held May 14-17 at the 5 star Nafsika Astir Palace Hotel in Vouliagmeni, Greece, investigative reporter Daniel Estulin has uncovered shocking details of what the elitists plan to do with the economy over the course of the next year.

The Bilderberg Group meeting is an annual confab of around 150 of the world’s most influential powerbrokers in government, industry, banking, media, academia and the military-industrial complex. The secretive group operates under “Chatham House rules,” meaning that no details of what is discussed can ever be leaked to the media, despite editors of the world’s biggest newspapers, the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Financial Times, being present at the meeting.

According to Estulin’s sources, which have been proven highly accurate in the past, Bilderberg is divided on whether to put into motion, “Either a prolonged, agonizing depression that dooms the world to decades of stagnation, decline and poverty … or an intense-but-shorter depression that paves the way for a new sustainable economic world order, with less sovereignty but more efficiency.”

The information takes on added weight when one considers the fact that Estulin’s previous economic forecasts, which were based on leaks from the same sources, have proven deadly accurate. Estulin correctly predicted the housing crash and the 2008 financial meltdown as a result of what his sources inside Bilderberg told him the elite were planning based on what was said at their 2006 meeting in Canada and the 2007 conference in Turkey.

Details of the economic agenda were contained in a pre-meeting booklet being handed out to Bilderberg members. On a more specific note, Estulin warns that Bilderberg are fostering a false picture of economic recovery, suckering investors into ploughing their money back into the stock market again only to later unleash another massive downturn which will create “massive losses and searing financial pain in the months ahead,” according to a Canada Free Press report.

Niall Ferguson, witing for the Financial Times: A Greek crisis is coming to America

For the world’s biggest economy, the US, the day of reckoning still seems reassuringly remote. The worse things get in the eurozone, the more the US dollar rallies as nervous investors park their cash in the “safe haven” of American government debt. This effect may persist for some months, just as the dollar and Treasuries rallied in the depths of the banking panic in late 2008.

Yet even a casual look at the fiscal position of the federal government (not to mention the states) makes a nonsense of the phrase “safe haven”. US government debt is a safe haven the way Pearl Harbor was a safe haven in 1941.

Reuters: Greek FinMin unveils tax reform, wage policy

“From 1. Jan. 2011, every transaction above 1,500 euros between natural persons and businesses, or between businesses, will not be considered legal if it is done in cash. Transactions will have to be done through debit or credit cards”

Eric Margolis: Wars sending U.S. into ruin

Washington’s Blog: More Empires Have Fallen Because of Reckless Finances than Invasion

API: Iran anniversary ‘punch’ will stun West: Khamenei

Max Keiser, on the FSB Media outlet, RT:

The paper discusses: “four possible explanations for Alberta to have significantly higher program spending than other provinces. First, it adds local government expenditures to the mix as some provinces push down their spending to the municipal level. Second, it takes a look at relative levels of capital spending, acknowledging that Alberta has higher pressures on the capital side on account of the net inflow of population. Third, it asks whether demographic differences might explain Alberta’s higher spending. Finally, it asks whether relative costs in Alberta justify the province’s higher expenditures. In short, two of these arguments help justify Alberta’s higher spending, one is neutral and the other suggests that the per capita Financial Management System data from Statistics Canada understates the level of provincial overspending. While there is some validity to each of these arguments, the paper concludes that, together, these possible explanations are not enough to close the gap between spending in Alberta and in other Canadian provinces.

In short, it is reasonable to conclude that if Alberta wanted to have per capita spending in line
with the other nine provinces, it would have to reduce its spending by $5 billion dollars.

To sum it up, the paper examines four reasons for Alberta’s high levels of program spending per citizen, taking into consideration four possible distortions or drivers:

1. The possibility that governments have offloaded government program delivery to municipalities.
2. Differences in capital spending requirements (because the half of Newfoundland that has moved here forgot to bring their roads, schools and hospitals with them).
3. Demographic differences (older people cost more than younger people, but Alberta’s population is younger, so we would expect this not to apply).
4. The fact that construction costs are so high in Alberta, as the province has to compete for construction trades with the oilsands developers.

But here is what the report did not include (click on graphs to enlarge):

1. Canada’s highest spending provinces are also resource rich oil provinces with very high levels of output per person.

When all the provinces are ranked according to their total levels of program expenditure (increasing from left to right), we can see that Alberta is in the middle of the pack in terms of overall total program expenditures, yet first in terms of output. If Alberta were a person, she would be the millionaire on the corner who still lives in the same house she grew up in, and drives a Chevy Caprice instead of a BMW. ( I am using total expenditures, which do include interest costs on debt, but I will get to this later).

The point is that Alberta can afford its high levels of expenditures, given its income. Not only can it afford the spending, it is in better shape than any province in Confederation. This is a point I have been trying to inject into the public debate for the past year, but it always falls on deaf ears, especially amongst the economically illiterate media types, whose misrepresentations are repeated by Henry, Martha and their representatives in government.

Let me be clear: Sure, Alberta has high levels of spending, but measured in terms of affordability, this province can definitely afford it because of our high levels of output. When you look at spending in the context of provincial output, the actual burden the government places on its taxpayers is small.

The above graph shows each province’s expenditures (both the total amount (in blue), and the amount net of interest costs that actually goes towards program delivery (purple)) as a percent of GDP.

2. Alberta’s Total Expenditures are more effective, because hardly any of that money is going towards servicing the interest cost on the provincial debt.

If you take total program expenditures, and subtract the amount that actually makes it to program delivery, the amount leftover goes to the banks and institutional holders of provincial debt. This is a province’s “debt servicing cost”. Because Alberta has such low debt (I know, I know – the capital bonds, right?), the difference between the two amounts is small.

I find this one a little crazy. The government of Quebec must spend almost ten times as much per person on just paying interest on its provincial debt compared with Alberta. Where, oh where to get those extra funds? It’s a good thing Alberta has all that money, isn’t it? Come to think of it, the both Boessenkool’s and my analysis don’t take those nasty equalization transfers into consideration.

3. Total Spending levels per capita are not an accurate way to measure “fiscal conservatism”.

In the Calgary Herald coverage of this report, Boessenkool is quoted as saying: “(Ontario Premier) Dalton McGuinty is 40 per cent more conservative than Ed Stelmach”.

I’m excersising my own normative judgement when I say this, but to me, fiscal conservatism implies a measure of affordability. This point requires us to examine a previous graph again:

Alberta’s government progam expenditures per person count for 12.9% of its GDP per person. Ontario, on the other hand, spends 16% of its per capita GDP. Examined in this context, Ontario is 24% less fiscally conservative than Alberta.

The logic that Alberta must somehow get its spending in line with other less affluent provinces is quite absurd to me. If my neighbour gets a promotion at his job or a bonus for his hard work, why does it follow that he must maintain his same level of monthly expenditures, or bring them more in line with everyone in the neighbourhood? Anyone who did this to their neighbour would get a swift kick, a punch in the face or laughed off as some communitarian looney tune who needs to mind their own business. Yet this is what Boesenkool suggests – that even though its expenditures relative to its income are the most fiscally conservative in the nation, Alberta ought to reduce its spending because in absolute terms, it makes the neighbours envious.

Even more astounding to me . . . why is this coming from one of Harper’s own Economic Hitmen? It’s totally unexpected and out of line with the “Hands off Alberta” approach characteristic of the Harperite U of Calgary economics crowd. It almost seems like this sort of “made for politics” fact-spinning study was meant to re-enforce the meme that Albertans are flying too high, that the Tories are drunken sailors, and only a Wild Rose Alliance type can solve the mess, when really it’s a complete strawman, a dead duck and a non-issue all in one.

Where might I agree with Boessenkool? I don’t agree with the road he takes to make his point, but I certainly agree that Alberta needs to find more resource revenue stability from other sources. I even agree with what I perceive as Boessenkool’s intent behind writing this paper – that Alberta can’t leave its fiscal fate so dependent upon these sources, because they aren’t here to stay, and we had better get our ducks lined up before that day arrives (faster than most think). Natural gas is on the decline in this province, and for years it’s been our financial bread and butter. Conventional oil is fading, and the high cost of bitumen production leaves little room for government taxation. Were it not for these resources, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and British Columbia would look like the rest of Canada. Come to think of it, if we were to subtract the fiscal effects of resource revenues from these provinces, Boessenkool’s arguement might even hold some water. But to do so would reveal a revenue problem that’s far worse than our so-called spending problem.

PressTV.ir: ‘Iran will deliver telling blow to global powers on Feb. 11′

CNSnews.com: Iran’s Leader: Feb. 11 To Be ‘Demise’ of ‘Capitalist System’

Daily Star (Lebanon): Iran’s countdown to February 11

PressTV.ir: US starts large war game in Pacific

The US launches its largest military exercise in the Pacific in cooperation with Thailand, Japan, Indonesia and Singapore with South Korea also joining in.

The “Cobra Gold” exercise is to run until February 11 and will see soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen from the six countries taking part in operations across Thailand.

NewsRealBlog: Countdown With Ahmadinejad: Is Anyone Else Worried About Dying In Ten Days?

And, of course, the sideshow wildcard.

SENATE BURGLARY: CIA DOMESTIC BLACK-OP TEAM ARRESTED

Mysterious Bush-Bush-Obama meeting at the Oval Office this morning

Secret CIA-Mossad meeting, preparation for new war?

Now before you call me crazy or say I’m a “conspiracy kook,” remember this is the same U.S. military that dropped two atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, two non-military targets, when they had no idea how much damage they would cause! This is the same military that dropped tons of lethal chemicals, defoliants and herbicides in Vietnam – sometimes on U.S. forces (friendly fire?).

This is the same military that uses depleted uranium in Iraq and unmanned drones to kill innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan today. The U.S. is waging proxy and low grade resource wars all around the planet. You get my drift? The U.S. military is capable of unspeakable atrocities.

Let’s not forget the U.S. government’s genocidal policies: giving smallpox laced blankets to the Native Americans, the infamous Tusgekee syphilis experiment. Don’t forget about slavery and the U.S. government standing idly by as thousands of Blacks were lynched and terrorized during the 19th and 20th centuries.

MORE:

(Response to above) National Black Newspaper Insinuates US Caused Haiti Devastation

Haiti and the seismic weapon by Thierry Meyssan*

Digital Journal – Russian Report: U.S. weapon against Iran caused Haiti earthquake

PressTV (Iran): Report: US weapon test aimed at Iran caused Haiti quake

BoingBoing: Haiti, HAARP, and conspiracy theorists

Anchorage Daily News: Earthquakes, HAARP and conspiracy theories

Examiner.com: HAARP: Secret weapon for weather modification, electromagnetic warfare?

Grandinite: UBS Watch: $54bn Colon Cleanse , UBS About to Fall?

Well, today this is on the news:

Swiss warn UBS bank could collapse

Switzerland’s justice minister warned in an interview on Sunday that top bank UBS could collapse if sensitive talks with the United States over a high-profile tax fraud investigation fall through.

“The actions of UBS in the United States are very problematic. Not just because they are punishable but also because they threaten all of the bank’s activities,” Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf told Le Matin Dimanche newspaper.

“The Swiss economy and the job market would suffer on a major scale if UBS fails as a result of its licence being revoked in the United States,” she said.

Switzerland and the United States have negotiated an agreement under which UBS would hand over information on some 4,500 account holders to US tax police.

But a Swiss court ruling earlier this month put the deal in doubt.

Many in Switzerland, where banking secrecy is a source of pride and a key part of the economy, have accused the government of failing to protect UBS.

“We have nothing to blame ourselves for. I don’t think anyone could prove that we acted badly,” Widmer-Schlumpf said in the interview.

I’m sure this little headline doesn’t help much, either:

Ahmadinejad: Regime Will Deliver Harsh Blow to Global Arrogance on Feb. 11

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the nation will deliver a harsh blow to the “global arrogance” on this year’s anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.

“The Islamic Revolution opened a window to liberty for the human race, which was trapped in the dead ends of materialism,” Ahmadinejad said during a cabinet meeting on Sunday.

“If the Islamic Revolution had not occurred, liberalism and Marxism would have crushed all human dignity in their power-seeking and money-grubbing claws. Nothing would have remained of human and spiritual principles,” he added.

Ahmadinejad said that in the three decades of its history, the Islamic Revolution had inspired some great developments in the world.

The Iranian president made the remarks as the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution approaches.

What’s Yabbadabbadinejehad got up his sleeve?

1. AP: China suspends military exchanges with US

BEIJING (AP) — China suspended military exchanges with the United States, threatened unprecedented sanctions against American defense companies and warned Saturday that cooperation would suffer after Washington announced $6.4 billion in planned arms sales to Taiwan.

The response to Friday’s U.S. announcement, while not entirely unexpected, was swift and indicated that China plans to put up a greater challenge than usual as it deals with the most sensitive topic in U.S.-China relations.

“This is the strongest reaction we’ve seen so far in recent years,” said Stephanie T. Kleine-Ahlbrandt, northeast Asia project director for the International Crisis Group. “China is really looking to see what kind of reaction it’s going to receive from Obama on this.”

2. Bank of America Web site goes down Friday

Bank of America was investigating an outage on Friday that affected an unknown number of customers but had ruled out a cyberattack, a representative said.

3. ZeroHedge: Huge Volume In ES on Close

4. Bloomberg (via BusinessWeek): Paulson Says Russia Urged China to Dump Fannie, Freddie Bonds

Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) — Russia urged China to dump its Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds in 2008 in a bid to force a bailout of the largest U.S. mortgage-finance companies, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said.

Paulson learned of the “disruptive scheme” while attending the Beijing Summer Olympics, according to his new memoir, “On The Brink.”

The Russians made a “top-level approach” to the Chinese “that together they might sell big chunks of their GSE holdings to force the U.S. to use its emergency authorities to prop up these companies,” Paulson said, referring to the acronym for government sponsored entities. The Chinese declined, he said.

Russia’s five-day war with U.S. ally Georgia started on Aug. 8, the same day as the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Games. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told U.S. President George W. Bush during those ceremonies that “war has started,” according to Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman.

“The report was deeply troubling — heavy selling could create a sudden loss of confidence in the GSEs and shake the capital markets,” Paulson wrote. “I waited till I was back home and in a secure environment to inform the president.”

Russia never approached China about dumping U.S. bonds, Peskov said today. “This is not the case,” he said by phone.

5. China Investor: China stocks fell in Asia to the lowest in 2010

6. Daily Mail: Nobel Peace Prize-winner Barack Obama ups spending on nuclear weapons to even more than George Bush’

7. NYTimes/Yahoo!: Contrarian Investor Sees Economic Crash in China

James S. Chanos built one of the largest fortunes on Wall Street by foreseeing the collapse of Enron and other highflying companies whose stories were too good to be true.

Now Mr. Chanos, a wealthy hedge fund investor, is working to bust the myth of the biggest conglomerate of all: China Inc.

As most of the world bets on China to help lift the global economy out of recession, Mr. Chanos is warning that China’s hyperstimulated economy is headed for a crash, rather than the sustained boom that most economists predict. Its surging real estate sector, buoyed by a flood of speculative capital, looks like “Dubai times 1,000 — or worse,” he frets. He even suspects that Beijing is cooking its books, faking, among other things, its eye-popping growth rates of more than 8 percent.

8. Business Insider/ Clustersock: Another Warning Sign: China-Based, Singapore-Listed Firms Rapidly Collapsing Amidst Debt And Fraud

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Island

Share International:

Maitreya steps forward
The way prepared by His Herald the ‘star’, Maitreya, the World Teacher, has given His first interview on American television. Millions have heard Him speak both on TV and the internet.
His open mission has begun.

He was introduced not as Maitreya, the World Teacher and Head of our Spiritual Hierarchy, but simply as a man, one of us. In this way He “ensures that men follow and support Him for the truth and sanity of His ideas rather than for His status”.

He spoke earnestly of the need for peace, achievable only through the creation of justice and the sharing of the world’s resources.

This is the first of many such interviews which will be given in the USA, Japan, Europe and elsewhere, bringing His message of hope to the world.

| Benjamin Creme, 14 January 2010 |

(PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti) — A powerful new earthquake struck Haiti on Wednesday, shaking buildings and sending screaming people running into the streets only eight days after the country’s capital was devastated by an apocalyptic quake.

The magnitude-6.1 temblor was the largest aftershock yet to the Jan. 12 quake. It was not immediately clear if it caused additional injuries or damage to weakened buildings.
(See more about the Haiti earthquake.)

Wails of terror rose from frightened survivors as the earth shuddered at 6:03 a.m. The U.S. Geologic Survey said the quake was centered about 35 miles (56 kilometers) northwest of Port-au-Prince and was 13.7 miles (22 kilometers) below the surface.

Spaceweather.com:

SOLAR FLARES: On Jan. 19th at 1340 UT, Earth-orbiting satellites detected the strongest solar flare in almost two years. The M2-class eruption came from old sunspot 1039 behind the sun’s eastern limb. NASA’s STEREO-B spacecraft recorded this extreme ultraviolet movie of the blast: LINK

Considering the fact that the sunspot was not even visible from Earth at the time, the flare was probably much stronger than its M2 classification would suggest. This active region has produced at least four significant eruptions since Jan. 17th (including this notable flare) and it is showing no signs of cooling off.

Today, for the first time since the fireworks began, the active region is visible from Earth. It is emerging over the sun’s southeastern limb as shown here. Readers with solar telescopes are encouraged to monitor developments.

IONOSPHERIC DISTURBANCE: Yesterday’s M2-class solar flare bathed Earth’s upper atmosphere in X-rays and caused a wave of ionization to sweep over Europe. This actually improved the propagation of low-frequency radio signals, which use the ionosphere as a reflector to skip over the horizon. A SID monitor operated by Rudolf Slosiar in Bojnice, Slovakia, recorded the surge in signal strength:

Related:

http://www.electricquakes.com/

Relationship between global seismicity and solar activities

Solar activity and global seismicity of the earth

Solar activity as a triggering mechanism for earthquakes

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• At 10:52 pm on Tuesday 12th January 2010 it was reported to us that the consequences of non-compliance with completion and closure of the Settlements payments by the end of this week may be dramatic. We have been advised what the consequences may be but we choose at this juncture to refrain from revealing what we have been told. It’s too sensitive.

• At 1:05 am UK time on Wednesday 13th January 2010, it was reported to us that at 6:37 pm EST, the NBC Brian Williams Show had reported an earthquake measuring 7:0 on the Richter Scale at Port-au-Prince, Haiti. This location serves as a main junction box to undersea transmission cables from the United States mainly to Latin America and African destinations, although some cables go through Port-au-Prince to Europe, we understand.

This was an operation put together under criminal President Clinton, after CIA-instigated instability had resulted in the departure of the Haitian ruler du jour, enabling ‘peacemaker’ Jimmy Carter to be parachuted in to ‘patch things up’ – under cover of which operation the transmission cables and junction box system was installed for Latin American money transfers. It has long been reported to us, and we have publicised this information in our journal The Latin American Times, that Haiti is a key staging point for drug shipments, and represents an operation ‘handled’ by Al Gore.

I have a hard time grasping the broad view of Christopher Story’s narratives. The broader context fits in with the saga of Leo Wanta, and some ‘payments’ amongst the political underworld. His stories are either the rantings of a lunatic, or descriptions of how the world really works. For the sake of this analysis, I’ll assume that truth is often stranger than fiction, and that the world operates along much darker lines than we like to assume.

Christopher Story is basically stating the following:

1. The Haitian Earthquake is collateral damage done by warring parties of the deep political state over a bunch of fiat pieces of paper.
2. Port Au-Prince is a main junction box for undersea transmission cables in Latin America and the Carribean.

So, my question is: Is this even remotely possible? Is it possible to actually ‘trigger’ an earthquake, and, if so, why Haiti and not somewhere like Iran? What is the geostrategic importance of Haiti?

I believe this question has merit, and I want to explore it.

1. : Scientists have known for years that Haiti was due for an Earthquake.

CNN: Experts warned of Haiti earthquake risk

(CNN) — Scientists have warned for years that the island of Hispaniola, which Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic, was at risk for a major earthquake.

Five scientists presented a paper during the 18th Caribbean Geological Conference in March 2008 in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, stating that a fault zone on the south side of the island posed “a major seismic hazard.”

Tuesday’s potentially disastrous 7.0 earthquake occurred in Haiti along the same fault line, known as the Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault zone.

“We were concerned about it,” said one of the paper’s authors, Paul Mann, a senior research scientist at the University of Texas’ Institute for Geophysics.

“The problem with these kinds of strikes is that they can remain quiescent — dormant — for hundreds of years,” he said Tuesday evening. “So it’s hard to predict when they’ll occur.”

So if scientists have known for some time that Haiti was ripe for an Earthquake, might it be possible to push the seismic activity over the edge and trigger one?

That’s where the next bit of information comes in . . .

2. Glimpses of America’s Man-Made Disasters by Trowbridge H. Ford (16 parts). This is some interesting reading on top-secret weaponry. Part 3 has this little tidbit:

Right at this time, the Navy was finally putting together its visionary concepts in preventive war-fighting, thanks to the scientific community developing equipment which was capable of determining where the most likely, serious seismic activity was apt to occur, machinery which could trigger earthquakes of any strength, and how it could be employed in the new Seawolf-class submarine. The first was accomplished by OBS light-weight machines which could plumb the bottom to the oceans to determine where the most fragile junctions of the earth’s plates existed below all the sediment. The second was achieved primarily through air guns – machines which could fire increasing cominbations of compressed air into the water to determine just where the fissures in the earth existed through small earthquakes. And the new Seawolf stealth sub is the USS Jimmy Carter - what the specially honored ex-President would never suspect was being used for such purposes.

3. What about Story’s story about the cables? What’s the big deal about cables? Apparently, they are ideal for secure communications, as the signal must first be tapped into by a physical connection, which is difficult to do on the ocean floor. What evidence do we have of undersea cables in Haiti?

From: http://www.trans-caribbeancable.com/page2.html: Press Release 11/23/2005 – Haiti License Awarded to TCCN Consortium (pdf).

The first phase of TCCN involves the construction of new undersea fiber optic cable segments between Miami, Haiti, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Aruba, Venezuela, and Colombia. Additional connectivity to Puerto Rico and Curacao will be included in the first phase by the use of existing consortium cables, including ANTILLAS-1 and ALONSO DE OJEDA. The first phase configuration is shown below:

The TCCN project is based upon an open investment model that TCCC has named as the “Virtual Consortium™ Model” (VCM). Unlike private or ‘club’ cables, this model encourages the participation of all interested players and insures nondiscriminatory access to the network where required with the involvement of TCCC as a carrier-neutral management entity. Ultimately, the network itself will be owned by the TCCN consortium and not by one private entity, in a similar way that multiple homeowners own their homes in a large real estate development. This open consortium model provides each owner with the ability to use, lease, or resell its portion of the network according to its own desires.

Further to this, Chavez recently announced the construction of an undersea cable from Venezuela to Cuba, which is probably a different project altogether.

So, we have cables, and we have a submarine, the USS Carter, that allegedly carries some top-secret weaponry capable of triggering earthquakes. What other evidence is there that the USS Carter may have been in the region at the time?

For one, Guantanamo Bay is in a direct line across the ocean to Port au Prince:

SOURCE

Secondly, if indeed the USS Carter carries some EQ weaponry, we do know that it was initially designed to tap undersea cables as part of intel operations:

From: http://defensetech.org/2005/02/21/jimmy-carter-super-spy/

JIMMY CARTER: SUPER SPY?
The rumors are that the Navy’s newest nuclear sub, the USS Jimmy Carter, has been designed for spywork, with a “special capability… to tap undersea cables and eavesdrop on the communications passing through them,” according to the AP.

The rumors are right, Military.com’s undersea warfare experts believe. Here’s what retired Rear Admiral Hank McKinney, the former commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet’s submarine force, had to say:

The Navy has for years carried out special surviellance missions with nuclear submarines. Most of these missions utlilized attack submarines that were not extensively modified. Specialized communications intercept equipments were installed in existing spaces on board these submarines. A few have been modified for special oceanographic missions and capabilities. In the past, these included USS HALIBUT, USS SEAWOLF, USS RICHARD B. RUSSELL, and USS PARCHE. Each of these submarines was modified to accomodate these new missions. In the case of USS JIMMY CARTER, all of the modifications were made before the submarine was delivered to the Navy. This submarine will be utilized to conduct many specialized missions, some of which will be routine unclassified oceanographic research operations which will advance our knowledge of the ocean. Some of the missions will be highly classified missions which I am unable to comment on. (emphasis mine)

Undersea thriller author, submarine authority, and Military​.com columnist Joe Buff notes that a 2001 Wall Street Journal article unveiled the NSA’s desire to tap undersea cables. “It is reasonable to presume that [the ability] to do this underwater, by properly trained Navy divers, is now achievable,” Buff writes.

Ironically, an earlier nuclear sub named USS Seawolf, commissioned in the 1950s, was secretly modified with a hull section that allowed saturation divers to work on the seafloor at considerable depths. (Saturation divers spend a long period living and resting in a shirtsleeves environment with a mixed-​​gas atmosphere pressurized to equal the depth of their job site. After days or even weeks of daily work shifts, they then undergo a long period of hyperbaric decompression to be able to return to sea-​​level air. France claimed several years ago to have had men in “soft” scuba outfits — not hard exoskeleton suits — perform useful manual tasks on the bottom at 3,000 feet.)
In my opinion USS Jimmy Carter is highly likely to include such facilities, essentially a modern-​​era Sea Lab built into the submarine itself.

So here’s what we have thus far, to test the plausibility of Christopher Story’s claims:

1. There are cables worth tapping in the Haiti region.
2. A submarine alleged to carry some EQ weaponry was originally designed to tap undersea cables.
3. Guantanamo Bay is in a direct line of fire.
4. Scientists have known for some time that an earthquake was going to happen, but not when.

I’m not ruling out the claim that the earthquake could have been triggered by a weapon, as sufficient evidence exists to show that it is at least plausible.

The Galloping Beaver, writing about the USS Carter in 2008 stated:

If I were conducting an intercept operation requiring an undersea fiber-optic cable splice which I knew the cable operator would detect, I need a way to prevent that operator from detecting it. Create a diversion.

By disabling the cable, either by severing it underwater or creating a problem ashore, it gives me time to do my splice undetected in a location far away from the diversionary problem. When the cable operator says it will be days before a repair ship can get to it, that gives me plenty of time to get the job done and get out of the area.

Is it possible the Haitian earthquake was triggered as a diversionary tactic so the USS Carter could complete its undersea tap of a cable that links Venezuela to Cuba via Haiti? Perhaps a diversionary tactic gone awry? And furthermore, why wouldn’t the USA vis-a-vis the NSA be interested in data communications between Venezuela and Cuba?

Or it could be the oil, amongst other riches.

UPDATE#1

Things are starting to add up, and Christopher Story’s claims of a cable being disrupteed appear to be true.

Twitter.com/BreakingNews reports:

Undersea cable linking #Haiti to Caribbean phone, TV services was cut in quake – Radio Metropole

From http://www.telegeography.com

Haiti’s only direct submarine cable disrupted, but most ISPs operational

Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC), the operator of the only international submarine cable system directly connecting to Haiti, told TeleGeography yesterday (Thursday 14 January) that ‘service into Haiti via the extension of the Bahamas Domestic Submarine Network (BDSNi) was disrupted’ as a result of the catastrophic earthquake that struck the Port-au-Prince area on 12 January, causing mass destruction and loss of life.

PHOTOS OF USS JIMMY CARTER

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US (9/11)
UK (7/7)
Spain (3/11)

. . .have closed their embassies in Yemen:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk

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“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst”.

Holy Wars

Bargaining

METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR CREATING AN ARTIFICIAL ELECTRON CYCLOTRON HEATING REGION OF PLASMA

ENDGAME

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Telegraph:

There’ll be nowhere to run from the new world government
‘Global’ thinking won’t necessarily solve the world’s problems, says Janet Daley

Telegraph:

Copenhagen climate summit: Ban Ki-moon hails deal as ‘essential beginning’ (of world governance)

Washington Post:

Copenhagen climate deal shows new world order may be led by U.S., China

Timesonline:

Gordon Brown calls for new group to police global environment issues

FoxNews:

Czech President Klaus: Global Warming Not Science, but a ‘New Religion’

Michael Hudson responds to Paul Krugman, asking “When did Economics become a PR tool of the rentier class?” LINK

Business Insider’s 10 Countries That Will Survive The Sovereign Credit Meltdown Of 2010

Washington’s Blog: Economists are trained to ignore the real world

FDIC All your shit are belong to us – FDIC repo booty includes a tour bus that reeks of THC: Bloomberg

John Galt on the latest Wall St. spin johngaltfla.com The yield curve is steepening, and that’s not necessarily a sign of recovery.

ZeroHedge: The clowns at the BEA circus are now waterboarding GDP data to get it to say what the Obama Administration wants. Or at least that’s the underlying theory here. LINK

Why is 50% of the US land mass under snow? Have a read of this: NASA Shows Quiet Sun Means Cooling of Earth’s Upper Atmosphere

According to a White House Press release, INTERPOL is expanding operations inside the US.

Why did Silvio Berlusconi get popped in the kisser? This article might explain it: LINK

While You Were Sleeping… The Economy Collapsed – neithercorp.us

If scientists are hiding climate change knowledge, what else can be hidden?

Wiki

Evidence is an 8 minute 35mm film authored by Godfrey Reggio, during his term as director of Fabrica – a new school founded by Benetton – and a student collaborator, Angela Melitopulos. the film was shot in Rome during March 1995 and edited by Miroslav Janek, a collaborator of Fabrica, with music by composer Philip Glass.

Evidence looks into the eyes of children watching television – in this case Walt Disney’s “Dumbo”. Though engaged in a daily routine, they appear drugged, retarded, like the patients of a mental hospital. Evidence is about the behavior of children watching television – an activity whose physiological aspects have been overlooked in the current controversy surrounding television.

MORE

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China:

Russia:

Norway:

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Obama’s Nobel speech is tomorrow. nobelprize.org

Conspiracy Theory: Obama will use the Nobel platform to make a startling announcement. examiner.com

Obama Cancels lunch with Norway’s King UPI

Svalbard’s Doomsday Seed Vault globalresearch.ca

Strange lights over Norway. Daily Mail

Hours prior, the LHC broke a record. theregister

LHC creates light phenomena in Norway? najs.no

Norway wormhole is First Contact, claim UFO watchers new.com.au

Norway spiral appeared hours after Large hadron collider experiment FTO

Just a test of Project Blue Beam? LINK
Alien Bases in northern Norway some guy

WaPo: US Military planned to fake some signs in the sky with holographic technology # #

But why? I wonder if this has something to do with Obama’s travels to Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

Source: Spaceweather.com

WHAT’S UP OVER NORWAY? This morning in Norway, people saw a strange and still-unexplained phenomenon. Eye-witness Nick Banbury of Harstad reports: “We are used to seeing lots of auroras here in Arctic Norway, but on my way to work this morning I saw something completely unexpected. Between 7:50 and 8:00 a.m. local time, there was a strange light in the sky,” shown here in a photo taken by Jan Peter:

“It consisted initially of a green beam of light similar in colour to the aurora with a mysterious rotating spiral at one end,” continues Banbury. “This spiral then got bigger and bigger until it turned into a huge halo in the sky with the green beam extending down to the earth. According to the press, this could be seen all over northern norway and must therefore have been very high up in the atmosphere to be seen hundreds of km apart.”

“[A popular] suggestion at the moment is that it was a rocket shot up by a Russian submarine in the white sea, but the Russians deny this apparently. A big mystery indeed!”

Press reports:
#1
#2
#3 < -- several photos

Stay tuned for updates.

VIDEO < - notice that it's not a static phenomenon.

From Wikipedia:

RELATED: UK astronomers to broadcast adverts to aliens

Mystery as spiral blue light display hovers above Norway

Daily Mail: LINK to videos, photos

Global warming unproven, Wildrose leader says

Climate Change is real. In the event of a discrepancy between empiricism and prior assumptions, data must conform to dogma, especially if one wishes to remain employed in the groupthink academic structures of this world. All Warmth Deniers are heretics. They have commited the Mortal Sin and ought to be locked out in the cold, far away from the hearth of the Holy Mother Church of Global Warmth. Being a Climate Change Denier ranks right up there with being a holocaust denier. Either you love Global Warming or you don’t – there is no room for lukewarm believers in The Holy Church.

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Colby Cosh responds to Preston Manning’s “Explosive Regime Change Hypothesis” – Maclean’s

Kevin Morrison, Duke University: “Oil, Non-Tax Revenue, and Regime Stability: The Political Resource Curse Reexamined (pdf)” – LINK

Paula Simons: Funny business with Alberta Health Services – Edmonton Journal

Former Goldman Sachs manager says ‘too big to fail’ banks are the new Enrons – Washington’s Blog

Cleveland Fed asks: “Why Didn’t Canada’s Housing Market Go Bust?” – Cleveland Fed

Jeff Rubin: High energy prices caused the Fed Funds rate to increase five-fold, which pushed US mortgagees to the brink. My comment: as a resource nation, Canada was well-hedged against energy price shocks, which is what shored up its housing market. – Globe & Mail

Pentagon e-mails suggest distrust over ally Canada – MyWay

Bloomberg: Senior Executives at Goldman Sachs are snapping up gun permits to protect themselves from an angry public. LINK Or are they scared of Russian Billionaires?

Related: FBI deputizes businesses through Infraguard. In the event of martial law, armed business owners will have a license to kill:

Market Oracle: Run on the U.S. Dollar ….Soon – Currency speculators figured out how to accurately predict when a country would default. Two well-known economists – Alan Greenspan and Pablo Guidotti – published the secret formula in a 1999 academic paper. The formula is called the Greenspan-Guidotti rule. LINK

Alternet: 15 Signs US Society is Coming Apart at the Seams. LINK

MarketWatch: Obama’s ‘predictably irrational’ economic policies – 14 reasons Obama’s love of Wall Street will trigger the Great Depression 2 LINK

Only two Alberta projects will meet tougher tailings rules: groups

EDMONTON — Only two oilsands projects – both now owned by Suncor Energy – will be able to meet the new ERCB directive for tailings, say two environmental groups who published their review Tuesday.

All firms submitted their plans on Sept. 30 to the Energy Resource Conservation board, which made the lengthy submissions public. The ERCB has yet to make public its conclusions, but the Pembina Institute and Water Matters groups embarked on their own detailed review.

Only two mine projects – Suncor’s Millennium and North Steepbank sites and the proposed Petro-Canada Fort Hills project that is now largely owned by Suncor – have proposed plans to start cleaning up the legacy of toxic tailings on the landscape,” said Pembina’s Simon Dyer.

Versus what you find with a little internet digging:

Can Pew’s Charity be Trusted?
US foundations give millions to Canadian environmental groups

Since major foundations in the US began funding environmental groups in the late 1980s, many grassroots environmental activists have sounded the alarm about the rise of the “Big Greens.” Featuring six-figure salaries and foundation funding, critics say the large environmental NGOs coopt grassroots movements and excercise control over what issues are brought up.

Recently, some activists are warning of a similar shift in Canada. In 2006, land-use planner Petr Cizek wrote an article for Canadian Dimension, calling attention to millions of dollars from US foundations being given to Canadian environmental groups.

The money comes from the Pew Charitable Trusts, which is endowed by the fortune of Joseph Pew and his heirs, as well as more recent donors. Joseph Pew founded Sun Oil, now Sunoco, a US oil company with revenues of $36 billion in 2006. Under Pew, Sun Oil also founded Suncor, a Canadian counterpart to Sun Oil and currently one of the two largest operations in Alberta’s tar sands. Suncor has been independent since 1995.

Sunoco’s US refineries process synthetic crude oil from the tar sands. According to a 2004 Philadelphia Inquirer report, a Sunoco-run Ohio refinery processes 100,000 barrels of synthetic crude per day.

The Pew foundation’s original mission reflects on “the evils of bureaucracy, the paralyzing effects of government controls on the lives and activities of people, and the values of the free market.” Pew money has funded many right-wing Christian groups and conservative think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation, the John Birch Society, and the American Enterprise Institute.

In the early 1990s, the Pew Trusts began funding environmental groups.

Since 2003, Pew has spent about $41 million on programs on the Canadian boreal forest. Much of this money went environmental and aboriginal groups, and came into Canada via through the Canadian Boreal Initiative (CBI). CBI is technically a project of Ducks Unlimited, a conservation group operating in the US and Canada, though this relationship is not stated in materials on CBI’s web site. CBI has no board of directors, and no official status as an organization other than its affiliation with Ducks Unlimited. Critics point out that there that this leaves no mechanism for holding CBI accountable for how it uses its money.

Lets look at who’s on the Canadian Boreal Initiative Leadership Council:

Boreal Leadership Council
Council Members
Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc. (Al-Pac)
Bâtirente
Calvert
Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS)
Dehcho First Nations
Domini Social Investments LLC
Domtar Inc.
Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC)
The Ethical Funds Company
ForestEthics
Innu Nation
Kaska Nation
The Nature Conservancy
Nexen Inc.
The Pembina Institute
Poplar River First Nation
Suncor Energy Inc.
Tembec Inc.
Treaty 8 First Nations of Alberta
World Wildlife Fund (Canada)

Most global banks are still unsafe, warns S&P

IMF warns second bailout would ‘threaten democracy’

St. Louis Fed Says Fed Should Keep Asset Program Past March

Société Générale tells clients how to prepare for potential ‘global collapse’

Bloomberg

Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) — Tiger Woods is in good condition after a car crash in front of his Florida home that left the world’s No. 1-ranked golfer with cuts on his face.

Woods, 33, was hospitalized after the crash yesterday, according to a news release from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. The crash is under investigation, the Highway Safety agency said. Alcohol was not a factor.

Bloomberg:

Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) — Dubai World, with $59 billion of liabilities, is seeking to delay debt payments, sending contracts to protect the emirate against default surging by the most since they began trading in January.

The state-controlled company will ask creditors for a “standstill” agreement as it negotiates to extend maturities, including $3.52 billion of Islamic bonds due Dec. 14 from its property unit Nakheel PJSC, Dubai’s Department of Finance said in an e-mailed statement. Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s cut the ratings on several state companies, saying they may consider the plan a default.

Kansascity.com:

Woods and Dubai crash the same day

By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel

In America economists stared at the sales numbers. In Florida, Tiger Woods is injured in a one car crash. And in Dubai news that Dubai World cannot pay on its $59 (some say up to 80) billion of loans. They may get a six month reprieve on interest payments. Woods is heavily invested in Dubai, at least in name.

The Tiger Woods Dubai Golf Course and Community is owned by Tatweer LLC part of a new conglomerate of oil production companies, not doing very well right now. How much money has Tiger lost in the desert? Are these crashes linked in any way? Lots of speculation out there, financially and about Tiger’s early morning mishap. Any link? A call from a broker? Are both Woods and Dubai too big to fail?

Hopefully an empty link but the links in Dubai remain quiet with plenty of available tee times.

Related:

Tiger Woods’ golf course design deal in Dubai is put on hold – head for the hills

Tiger Woods Tees off From the Top of the World

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Bonus: What would Jesus Buy?

Double Bonus: As Americans Rack Up Billions More On Their Credit Cards The U.S. Economy Is Coming Apart Like A 20 Dollar Suit

themostimportantvideoyoumayeverwatchreally from prettydamnnotbad on Vimeo.

A brief survey of this reading material suggests a financial hub must have some of the following features:

- Proximity to other industries to finance (in this case, energy). Financing requires face-to-face time. Some aspects of finance (trading in securities) can be done over the phone, but financing a company does require some face-to face time. Which leads to the next requirement:
- The financial hub must also be an airline hub. Calgary has this feature, but it ought to link more flights to other financial hubs around the world. Companies need to fly people between financial centers, and the more direct routes Calgary has to ther financial and energy hubs, the better.
- High-end amenities, dining especially. Calgary has quite a bit of this. But it’s not necessarily world-class. If you’re flying bankers to Calgary in January, they need a reason to be excited to come here.
- World-class telecom and IT infrastructure. In September, the London Stock Exchange ground to a halt due to a .Net failure, and I see it’s happened again today (there could be more to the story, though). Lost connectivity equates with lost economic activity – how many more ‘technical glitches’ will people tolerate before looking eslewhere? It’s imperative that Calgary secures a competitive advantage in terms of connectivity and IT security. Calgary’s energy industry requires a huge amount of computing power to run models for energy resource exploration. World-class IT infrastructure is a necessary condition in the age of High Frequency Trading. But no matter how fast a computer’s connection is, proximity to markets still matters. The timeframes of high-frequency traders are so short, some firms need to set up right next to the New York Stock Exchange in order to get a leg up on competitors. Which leads us to . .
- Moving the market here. We can’t just move the TSX to Calgary from Toronto, and Montreal already has a carbon trading exchange. So why not try to secure a brand new market?

Happy reading:

1. Special issue of the Industrial Geographer on the geography of financial industries. An earlier edition has an especially salient paper on New York and Toronto’s roles as nationally dominant financial hubs.

2. The Geography of Finance Corporate Governance in the Global Marketplace #

3. The Atlantic, March 2009. Richard Florida: How the Crash will re-shape America.

4. University of Cambridge, Department of Geography: The Economic Geography of Money and Finance.

5. MONEY FLOWS LIKE MERCURY: THE GEOGRAPHY OF GLOBAL FINANCE.

6. The Oxford handbook of economic geography: Chapter 12, Finance and Localities

7. The Location of Financial Activities: The Impact of New Technologies and the Financial Crisis (ppt presentation) via

8. Cities and the Geography of Financial Centres

Pay Extra Close Attention to the Dollar – Seeking Alpha

Thar’s no more gold in them hills!! – Miners say we’re running out of Gold. RawStory

Why the US is broke – EconomPicData

Jeff Rubin – Why the US and China are about to get divorced – G & M

The SEC is changing its reserve disclosure rules for oil and gas companies – AAPG Mayer Brown VE Law SPEE (ppt)

Alberta’s survival as major global player depends on significant productivity improvements, especially in the energy sector, the Edmonton Economic Development Corp. annual economic outlook luncheon heard Tuesday.

The province has gone from a low-cost jurisdiction to the highest in North America, and that has to change, a high-profile panel from the economics, business and political fields agreed.

“This is likely to be the first recovery led, not by North America or Europe, but by Asia, and it will be driven by energy and materials,” said Leo de Bever, CEO of Alberta Investment Management Corp. (AIMCo).

“Alberta will be right in the middle of it, but we have to do something about productivity.”

The bumper stickers after the last boom that read “please God, give me another boom . . . ” were ignored, he said. “We got our boom, but we didn’t do any better than the last time. We are really a high-cost jurisdiction, particularly in the energy sector.”

However, de Bever said a doubling of productivity in the oil and gas sector in the next 10 years is not out of the question, “and it has to happen.”

He said it’s possible there will be an unprecedented technological revolution similar to the turn of the 20th century which transformed the whole economy.

Is the implication here that Alberta’s oil patch workers earn too much money? It couldn’t be because we’re down to the dregs of oil reserves, and more and more wells (coalbed methane, especially) are found closer to population centers, whereas BC, Sask and Manitoba have near-virgin territory with nary a person for miles around. I don’t have the data with me, but I am willing to bet that if one were to map conventional energy resources and population for BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan, one would find that this energy content of the land coincides with a much lower population density in BC and SK. This inherently makes oilfield development easier in these jurisdictions than it is in Alberta.

I wonder if these bright minds will miss this glaring detail. I’m going to bet they will fall back on their old tried-and-true stump speech – it has to be labour’s fault. . . . It has to be labour’s fault. . . . it has to be labour’s fault. Albertans must make sacrifices to remain “competitive”, accept more rollbacks to wages and social services, blah blah blah. I’ve heard that one before. For the past 20 YEARS.

Let’s not forget that measures of Alberta’s oilfield productivity are flawed. For one, non-conventional sources such as oilsands require huge up-front capital costs that have long time frames of recovery. If one is measuring productivity in terms of the amount of inputs required to achieve a given level of output, productivity will be grossly under-estimated in the initial stages of development.

Futher to this, productivity must be measured on a regional basis rather than an Alberta-centric basis. While most of the drilling may be taking place in Sask or BC, or even in the US, the head offices of many drilling companies are still in Calgary. It is still the energy hub of Canada, it’s where the geologists, engineers, financiers and CEOs are. This begs the question – how do you measure the productivity of an oil company based in Cowtown, that has most of its operations in Saskatchewan?

Alberta’s conventional oil supplies are dwindling, and that leaves us with the dregs (aka non-conventional oilsands, shale gas), which are inherently high-cost. The Canadian Centre for Living Standards recently completed its study on the productivity of Alberta’s oil and gas sector, entitled:

“A Detailed Analysis of the Productivity Performance of Oil and Gas Extraction in Canada”

Here’s the gem:

There are a number of possible explanations for the observed declines in all three measures of productivity (labour, capital, and total factor) in oil and gas extraction in Canada: declining capital intensity; higher output prices; lagging innovation and technological progress; deterioration of the average quality of the workforce; greater environmental regulation; deterioration of the average quality of resources exploited independent of price effects; labour relations; and taxation.

Upon examining various hypotheses put forward to explain falling productivity in oil and gas extraction, the strongest seems to be the effect of higher prices on both capital intensity and TFP. When the price of a natural resource increases it becomes profitable to increase extraction rates at existing deposits and to extract from marginal deposits that were previously unprofitable due to high costs of extraction. In the short term, because labour is less rigid than capital, we can expect this adjustment process to translate into a falling capital-labour ratio.

Another seemingly robust explanation is that profitability trumps productivity as an objective for firms. While the objectives of productivity and profitability normally coincide, they diverge when commodity prices are extremely high. As a result, the productivity growth of an industry, measured in constant prices, may suffer due to greater inefficiency in operations. This would be reflected in a fall in TFP growth. Data on TFP and capital intensity suggest that falling capital intensity growth rates can explain a large part of the productivity slowdown in oil and gas extraction between the 1996-2000 and 2000-2006 periods. Yet, it also suggests that the decline in labour productivity in oil and gas extraction is also due to sustained declines in TFP. These findings reinforce the idea that higher prices were the main driver of both the post-2000 labour productivity slowdown and the negative productivity growth in oil and gas extraction.

Since productivity growth is the key driver of increases in living standards, the deceleration in labour productivity growth in Canada after 2000 implies a slower rate of increase in living standards. But improving terms of trade are also a source of real income increases. The higher commodity prices that Canada has enjoyed in recent years, in addition to the negative effect on oil and gas extraction productivity, have boosted the real income of Canadians.

Go back and read it again. The sources of Alberta’s low productivity are multiple:

1. declining capital intensity;
2. higher output prices;
3. lagging innovation and technological progress;
4. deterioration of the average quality of the workforce;
5. greater environmental regulation;
6. deterioration of the average quality of resources exploited independent of price effects;
7. labour relations;
8. taxation.

(If I were to add anything to this list, it would be natural constraints related to population densities near oil fields. As oilfield development abuts population centers, the industry experiences more resistance and objections, which drives up costs of mitigation.)

It’s not just the Royalty regime and environmental regs, as small-time drillers like to claim. The strongest explanatory variable in this analysis is that high energy prices actually decrease the measure of productivity. As an example, when oil is $55/bbl, an oil company will want to produce, say 1000 bbls/day, and will use 10 workers to do it. When oil is $150, an oil company will have to throw proportionally more workers into the mix, because it will now go after more difficult deposits. This causes productivity to decline in the short term, but it also sows the seeds for productivity increases in the long term.

When the price of oil spikes, it gives companies a chance to use more expensive technologies that were not previously profitable. As they gain experience using these technologies, they learn how to adapt them, and bring down costs in the long run, so the technology and experience can be used to go after even more difficult deposits. The price spike causes productivity to decline in the short term, but it improves over the long term.

Getting back to the article, specifically Leo de Bever’s comments that it’s “possible there will be an unprecedented technological revolution similar to the turn of the 20th century which transformed the whole economy”, indeed it is possible, but where might it come from? Which technological innovation would be enough to unlock Alberta’s full energy potential, while still maintaining the integrity of the environment?

The first graph is the number of deaths per million population. This is by no means a measure of the rate of infection, but a means of benchmarking the number of deaths from H1N1 in relation to the size of the population. Click to enlarge.

The second graph takes the one-week increase in H1N1 infections in relation to the previous cumulative total. It might illustrate which provinces are experiencing the fastest rate of infection from November 19-24. But then again, this is deaths data, not infection rate data. It does suggest H1N1 has peaked in Ontario. Click to enlarge.

The notable standout is New Brunswick, where the pre-November 19th number of deaths (2) has doubled in the past week. PEI and Nunavut had no deaths Over the Nov19-24 period.

Some recent research on MS might prove a Canadian “quack” doctor right about one thing: That many diseases are merely symptoms of ministrokes, possibly caused by over-vaccination. In the case of MS research, one Italian doctor is finding that build-up of iron and “other unwanted cell” in blood vessels leads to restricted blood flow in the brain. This idea has the same mechanism in common with one Canadian (ex) doctor who sees it from the perspective of a different trigger. In his case, vaccines are the trigger instead of iron.

G&M: Researcher’s labour of love leads to MS breakthrough

It was 1995 and her husband, Paolo Zamboni, a professor of medicine at the University of Ferrara in Italy, set out to help. He was determined to solve the mystery of MS – an illness that strikes people in the prime of their lives but whose causes are unknown and whose effective treatments are few.

What he learned in his medical detective work, scouring dusty old books and using ultra-modern imaging techniques, could well turn what we know about MS on its head: Dr. Zamboni’s research suggests that MS is not, as widely believed, an autoimmune condition, but a vascular disease.

< snip >

Dr. Zamboni looked for answers in the medical literature. He found repeated references, dating back a century, to excess iron as a possible cause of MS. The heavy metal can cause inflammation and cell death, hallmarks of the disease. The vascular surgeon was intrigued – coincidentally, he had been researching how iron buildup damages blood vessels in the legs, and wondered if there could be a similar problem in the blood vessels of the brain.

Using ultrasound to examine the vessels leading in and out of the brain, Dr. Zamboni made a startling find: In more than 90 per cent of people with multiple sclerosis, including his spouse, the veins draining blood from the brain were malformed or blocked. In people without MS, they were not.

He hypothesized that iron was damaging the blood vessels and allowing the heavy metal, along with other unwelcome cells, to cross the crucial brain-blood barrier. (The barrier keeps blood and cerebrospinal fluid separate. In MS, immune cells cross the blood-brain barrier, where they destroy myelin, a crucial sheathing on nerves.)

Relate this to:

Dr. Andrew Moulden (Interview): What You Were Never Told About Vaccines

What is the basic information underlying your claims and what is the foundation of your beliefs?

Germs simply are not the only root cause of death, disease, and disorder. I have now conclusively shown that ALL vaccines, from infancy to geriatric, are causing the exact same brain damages irrespective of what disease or disorder comes out. The damages are specific to end vascular “mini strokes” that are beneath the resolution of our neuroimaging, but measurable in a before/after vaccination protocol. They are also directly measurable in real time – however, this involves techniques and technology I have not disclosed to the public as yet.

Remarkably, wild polio, pre-natal German measles, measles, tetanus, “Spanish flu”, etc.. all caused the exact same damages in the pre-vaccine era. We simply did not appreciate that a generic response in the human body was causing the paralysis and respiratory failure and more in from a non-specific immune response and instability of microscopic blood flow hemodynamics.

We have weakened viruses and bacteria, injected them into all of us and caused chronic illness and disease in an attenuated form, this is how these pathogens have always caused harm. It is the bodies response to foreign things entering it, especially under hypersensitivity states, that is causing neurodevelopment disorders and chronic illness and much more.

VIDEO

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Entitled, Gold Can Make You Poor, the piece in the Financial Post shows that editors sometimes value counterintuitive contrarianism more than sound economic argument. The article is an attempt to refute Rolfe Winkler’s recent blog entry about gold possibly going to $6,300. That blog entry, in turn, has its roots with Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s article on a SocGen report which intended to show clients how to prepare for an economic collapse. In one of its scenarios, gold goes to $6,300.

First, the blog entry purports to deconstruct Winkler’s logic, but it isn’t even his. He’s merely reporting what SogGen had to say about gold going to $6,300.

Secondly, the FinPo article fails on sound economic reasoning:

“Let’s imagine that you had bought gold at its peak in 1980, when it was trading near US$850 an ounce. You would have lost most of your money as gold prices slid back to around US$350 and stayed at depressed levels for the next two decades. Twenty years after the 1980 peak your investment would be worth less than half of what you paid.

So, with all due respect to Winkler, gold can make you poor.”

Holy FN Economic shitballs. If you buy anything at its peak, you are doomed for failure. The old investor’s dictums: “Buy low, sell high” and “what goes up, must come down” are completely thrown out the window on this one, and we are led to believe that gold is a bad investment simply because one follows idiotic investment advice. If any investment deviates substantially from its long-term growth path, it will eventually return to its long term trend, and one alter their investment strategy to short the hell out of gold on its descent.

The logic here is so out to lunch, I can’t believe it’s in an economic news journal.

Nouriel Roubini, in the Globe and Mail, has a tale of two Americas – one headed for recovery, the other headed for a Depression.

Goldman Sachs says Roubini’s dollar carry-trade theory is flat out wrong.

Charles Hugh Smith wonders when markets will clue in to their apparent disconnect with the ‘real’ economy.

In this paper on SSRN, Ruben Cohen of Citi Financial explains the difference between GDP and equity indices.

Jeff Cox at CNBC highlights the heady debate between the Bulls and the Bears, with Nobel Prize winners on both sides.

Rolfe Winkler, of Reuters, highlights a recent report from Society General in France, claiming gold could go to $6,300.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has a few things to say about the SocGen report.

Meredith Whitney explains why she has suddenly turned bearish – it’s because of the disconnect between Wall St. and Main St.

1. November 11th
2. November 16th
3. November 17th

Canadian Banker’s Association:

Canada is moving to more secure technology

Security measures are constantly being enhanced and technology is being upgraded to prevent fraud. Banks, the Interac Association and the major credit card associations have begun to introduce chip technology, sometimes called smart card technology, for debit and credit cards. In addition to the magnetic stripe on the back, the cards will be embedded with a microchip — really a small computer — that will process transactions. The microchip is state-of-the-art in payment card technology and is extremely difficult to duplicate. In fact, chips cards have reduced fraud in a number of other countries where they are currently used. The implementation of chip-based technology has already begun and it’s expected that the conversion to chip will be widespread by 2010.

The Interac Association, Visa Canada and MasterCard Canada are bringing chip card technology to Canada on behalf of the banks and other payment card partners. To learn more about chip technology, visit their websites at:

* www.interacchip.ca
* www.visa.ca/chip
* www.mastercard.com/ca/personal/en/technolog ies/chip/

From Interac.ca:

The chip transition timeline

Every Acquirer (or payment service provider) has its own timetable in place for providing chip terminals. In order to ensure a smooth transition, Interac Association has implemented final conversion deadlines that work within merchants’ normal business cycles, so that merchants will be able to transition to chip within the set timeline and with minimum impact.

* Interac chip cards and terminals are already being rolled out across Canada.
* Complete migration to chip technology will take several years and the timetable for the introduction of chip will vary from one financial institution, and one service provider to another.
* All Automated Banking Machines (ABM), point-of-sale (POS) terminals and banking cards across Canada will be upgraded.
* Magnetic stripe debit card transactions will no longer be accepted at ABMs after December 31, 2012.
* Magnetic stripe transactions will no longer be accepted at POS after December 31, 2015.
* Chip cards will continue to carry the magnetic stripe, not only to facilitate the chip transition period, but also to allow cardholders to use their debit cards in other countries that do not use chip technology.

This week I received a call from PC Financial regarding my account, and didn’t think anything of it until I went to pay for some groceries, whereupon my debit card was “declined” due to a network error ( I had to pay by VISA.). It was payday, and I was absolutely certain I had more than enough cash inthe account. When I came home and checked online, there was nothing unusual. Just last night, I went to the bowling lanes and tried to take out cash from one of those non-bank ATMs, and my debit card was declined again. Trish tried hers – same thing. We went to an ESSO station and tried a Royal Bank machine, and it delivered a “network error”. Trish tried hers – same thing again.

So I decided to return the call to PC financial. They told me “authorities” had alerted them to my account, and they had frozen it for cash withdrawals, but not debit (which doesn’t explain my experience buying groceries). They explained they would issue me a new password, and I would have 2 hours to make it to a bank machine to change it to one of my own liking. I didn’t have time to do it last night, but will have to do that today. Bear with me here, it gets stranger.

So my friend Andrew said he would spot me some cash, and we went to an RBC branch down the way. He tried to take out cash and received a PIN error, telling him his PIN was wrong, which he was sure it wasn’t. He tried getting on the phone to talk to RBC, but we didn’t have time to wait around.

I was online looking for clues about this, and found something that piqued my interest:

Reader: “CANADIAN BANK TO BE ON NEW SYSTEM ABOUT NOVEMBER 13…?”

Posted By: hobie
Date: Saturday, 7-Nov-2009 00:12:20
In Response To: C.STORY for NOV 7th: “BARACK OBAMA FACES VETERANS’ DAY DEADLINE TO COMPLY OR CHINA CAN EXERCISE ITS WORLD COURT LIEN…” (hobie)

Hi, Folks -

Christopher Story mentions November 11 as a particular deadline date for something.

Meanwhile, Reader B. (thanks, B. reports:

******************************************************************

I just talked to a very close friend of mine who lives in Canada.

My friend told me that her bank just told them that there were some things they would not be able do with their banking until later in the month…. because the bank is in the middle of major changes…. and by/around November 13th, (Friday the 13th) this bank will be on a new banking system. Which will include issuing all new pass codes to each of their customer’s accounts…. in which they the customer… can change to their own liking… once they get the new temporary pass code numbers from the bank.

–B

******************************************************************

Is anyone else experiencing weirdness with their banks?

But there’s something I’ve noticed about the H1N1 vaccination debate, and it’s that people in both the for and against camps seem to believe their interpretation of “the truth” is “the truth” when, in many respects, both are right and both are wrong. You will probably not die from H1N1 any more than you will fail to develop some nasty side effects if you choose to get the vaccine.

I am not going to try to convince anyone not to get their H1N1 shot, but rather explain why I’m not getting mine.

1. Limited Clinical Data.

Health Canada admits there’s not much clinical data on the adjuvant in our vaccine: “There is currently limited clinical experience with Arepanrix™ H1N1, and limited clinical experience with an investigational formulation of another AS03-adjuvanted vaccine containing the same or a slightly higher amount of antigen derived from A/California/7/2009 (H1N1) (see section Pharmacodynamics) in healthy adults aged 18-60 years and no clinical experience yet in the elderly, in children or in adolescents. ”

Reading the Dosage & Administration section of Health Canada’s fact sheet, we find the following clinical data available (my translation/interpretation is in italics). It’s not encouraging.

Adults aged 18-60:

“preliminary immunogenicity data obtained at three weeks after administration of an investigational formulation of another AS03-adjuvanted H1N1 vaccine ”

Translation: Data were obtained in a 3-week follow-up using the same adjuvant, but with a different strain of influenza

Elderly (>60 years):
“No clinical data are available for Arepanrix™ H1N1 in this age group.”

Translation: none needed

Children and adolescents aged 10-17 years:
“No clinical data are available for any influenza vaccines with AS03 in this age group. Consideration may be given to dosing in accordance with recommendations for adults.”

Translation: We have no clinical data, but we think it’s the same as adults (we won’t find much three weeks after vaccination).

Children aged 3-9 years:
Based on limited clinical data available for AS03-adjuvanted H5N1 vaccine containing 3.75 µg HA derived from A/Vietnam/1194/2004 in this age group, 0.25mL of vaccine (i.e. half of the adult dose) at an elected date and a second dose administered at least three weeks later may be considered sufficient. See section Pharmacodynamics.

Translation: If you give a child half a dose, and after three weeks she or he has some response, there’s no need to give the second dose. But it’s best to do a follow-up.

Children aged from 6-35 months:
No clinical data are available for influenza vaccines with AS03 in this age group. Consideration may be given to dosing in accordance with the recommendation in children aged 3-9 years.

Translation: We don’t really know, so just experiment with the dosage you gave to the older kids because we’re guessing the two groups are the same.

Children aged less than 6 months:

Vaccination is not currently recommended in this age group.

Mother’s breast milk is probably good enough, and kids this young aren’t usually vaccinated anyhow.

All told, the Canadian government admits the clinical data are lacking, but because it perceives the risk to population health to be so large, it is going full steam ahead, which brings me to my next reason.

2. H1N1 is no more fatal than the regular flu.
This is what astonishes me. If the odds of dying from H1N1 are so low, then why would the Canadian government fast track a vaccine on the basis of limited clinical data? The WHO changed the definition of a level six pandemic to a weaker criteria that eliminates necessary conditions of mortality factors. That’s like changing the definition of GDP to exclude one of its components: Consumption, Investment, Gov’t Spending, and Net Exports. Take one of those away, and you don’t have GDP any more. The WHO has weakened its criteria to exclude the mortality aspect. So the virus just has to infect a large number of people in greater than two countries simultaneously.

All mortality data on H1N1 is going to be suspect. We will only have data on hospitalization rates and deaths confirmed by lab tests, and no way of knowing the true infection rate, because H1N1 can’t be confirmed without lab testing. It is likely that most people who contract H1N1 will experience it as a “flu they’ve never felt before”, and odds are, they’ll survive. They won’t go to their doctor. If you call your general practitioner with “flu like symptoms”, you will most likely be diagnosed with H1N1 as a safety precaution. Because we can only estimate the population infection rate, it’s likely that the mortality rate of H1N1 will be over-estimated.

3. AS03 is not MF59.

When debating the adjuvants in the squalene-containing AS03 “adjuvant system”, people conflate the data on MF59 and AS03 on the basis that both contain squalene. For example, a person will object to Canada’s H1N1 vaccine on the basis that it contains squalene, and invariably, someone will cite the fact that 45 million people have been vaccinated in the EU with Focetria, a vaccine containing squalene, and the world hasn’t ended because of it. It seems that I’m being nitpicky here, because both contain squalene, but squalene shouldn’t be the point of debate. The debate should be about the difference between the MF59 adjuvant and the AS03 “adjuvant system. The former contains squalene, but has a substantial track record, whereas the latter, while it also has squalene, constitutes an “adjuvant system” with a much shorter history of 39,000 subjects.

The EMEA had this to say about the difference between MF59 (in this case, Focetria), and AS03 (in this case, Pandemrix/Arepanrix):

“The vaccines recommended for authorisation, Focetria and Pandemrix, contain ‘adjuvants’ (substances that enhance the immune response so that less viral material can be used in each dose of vaccine). They are widely used in vaccine manufacture and have a good safety record. The adjuvant in Focetria has been used in another flu vaccine since 1997 in more than 45 million doses. The adjuvant in Pandemrix has been tested in clinical trials involving several thousand subjects.
As with all medicines, rare adverse reactions may only be detected once the vaccines are used in large numbers of people. The Agency has requested that vaccine manufacturers implement plans to actively investigate and monitor the safety of vaccines as soon as they are used across the EU, so that action can be taken as early as possible if a safety issue emerges. As part of this, the manufacturers have committed to carry out post-authorisation safety studies in about 9,000 subjects for each vaccine.

This point alone tells me that while both MF59 and AS03 contain squalene, MF59 has a track record that’s a thousand times longer than AS03. I’m not convinced Health Canada has done its due diligence, which brings me to my final pont:

4. The Interim Order

In order to get GlaxoSmithKline’s AS03-adjuvated vaccine to market, Canada had to do the following:

1. Sign a contract 10 years ago (one that the Canadian people aren’t allowed to see).
2. Exempt GSK from all liability, and place the liability onto the taxpayer.
3. Issue an Interim Order that does the following:

i. Changes the definition of new drugs from:

Division 8
New Drugs
C.08.001. For the purposes of the Act and this Division, “new drug” means
(a) a drug that contains or consists of a substance, whether as an active or inactive ingredient, carrier, coating, excipient, menstruum or other component, that has not been sold as a drug in Canada for sufficient time and in sufficient quantity to establish in Canada the safety and effectiveness of that substance for use as a drug;
(b) a drug that is a combination of two or more drugs, with or without other ingredients, and that has not been sold in that combination or in the proportion in which those drugs are combined in that drug, for sufficient time and in sufficient quantity to establish in Canada the safety and effectiveness of that combination and proportion for use as a drug; or
(c) a drug, with respect to which the manufacturer prescribes, recommends, proposes or claims a use as a drug, or a condition of use as a drug, including dosage, route of administration, or duration of action and that has not been sold for that use or condition of use in Canada, for sufficient time and in sufficient quantity to establish in Canada the safety and effectiveness of that use or condition of use of that drug.

To:

Prohibition
C.05.003. Despite sections C.01.014, C.08.002 and C.08.003, no person shall sell or import a drug for the purposes of a clinical trial unless
(a) the person is authorized under this Division;
(b) the person complies with this Division and sections C.01.015, C.01.036, C.01.037 to C.01.040, C.01.040.2, C.01.064 to C.01.067, C.01.070, C.01.131, C.01.133 to C.01.136, and C.01.435; and
(c) if the drug is to be imported, the person has a representative in Canada who is responsible for the sale of the drug. (link to various sections of the act)

This is outlined in the Interim Order as follows:

3. (1) For the application of the Regulations with respect to the sale of the vaccine,

1. a reference to the prohibitions under section C.08.002 of the Regulations shall be read as a reference to the prohibitions under section 5;

What does all this language mean? Basically, that the vaccine (adjuvant) does not have an established track record, and may be allowed into Canada for the purpose of clinical trials if it meets the various subsections of the act. These acts pertain to:

C.01.015 – Tablet Disintegration Times
C.01.036 – Misc. (Nasal sprays, salts, etc)
C.01.037 – Salicylic acids
C.01.040 – chloroform and arsenic
C.01.040.2 – Colouring agents
C.01.064 – Preservatives (in this case Thimerosal)
C.01.067 – presence of pyrogens
C.01.070 – Dissolvability of tablets
C.01.131 – Aminopyrine and Dipyrone
C.01.133 – Exemptions regarding the above, specific to vets and pharmacists
C.01.136 – Tablets containing potassium salts
C.01.435 – Chloramphenicol

The only regulation that really applies is C.01.064. It seems to me that the AS03 vaccine was exempted from regulations pertaining to its track record as an “Adjuvant system” and is instead being allowed on a clinical basis, primarily because one of the ingredients in said adjuvant system (Thimerosal) are at a safe level. By that logic, I could drink a glassful of gasoline on the basis it has levels of lead deemed to be safe.

It’s right there in front of you: The AS03 adjuvant is allowed into Canada on the basis of being a clinical trial. The reason this had to be done? Because the so-called studies of the AS03 adjuvant do not establish a long enough track record. I won’t even get into how GSK is heavily involved in the writing and interpretation of the results of these studies. I’ll save that for another day. To re-state, these previous studies on AS03 were a trial run, and the real experiment has just begun. We are all swine flu guinea pigs.

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Glenn Beck Hospitalized With Appendicitis, Has Surgery

BELL TOLLING for the Swine Flu (CAMPANAS por la gripe A) subtitled from ALISH on Vimeo.

The particular brand of vaccine being used in Canada (Arepanrix™) is made by GlaxoSmithKline, and it uses an “Adjuvant system” called AS03. The adjuvant system includes the controversial adjuvant, squalene. This “adjuvant system” is fairly new, and while there have been no clinical trials with this particular system, it has been in use in Europe for several years without much fuss.

My concerns with this are threefold. First, there seems to be some resistance to the AS03 adjuvant system in Germany. Its government recently made the adjuvant-free version (Made by Baxter in the US) available to government employees, while leaving the Pandemrix (squalene) version for the rest of the population. Of course a government is going to make up some official rationale, but their actions suggest the government may believe the adjuvant-free version will result in fewer side effects. So, regardless of the fact that vaccines containing AS03 have been in use in Europe for years, doesn’t it seem a bit odd that there’s some backlash? Am I supposed to believe that, just because a bunch of euros took it, then it must be safe? Perhaps the EU has lower standards when it comes to adjuvants, and people are starting to become aware of the risks. This puts a dent in the oft-cited excuse that the vaccines have been in use for years in Europe, and are therefore safe. Only a lemming would buy that argument.

Secondly, adjuvants containing squalene are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Why does the FDA not approve it, while other jurisdictions do, and the WHO even attests to its safety?
according to some quotes I’ve been able to pull of the internet. A recent article in Wired magazine quotes Patricia El-Hinnawy, a spokesperson for the US Food and Drug Administration: “There is no squalene in any FDA-approved vaccine in the US. There is no squalene in any kind of seasonal flu vaccine or in the H1N1 vaccine.” While the US FDA recently did approve Cervarix, a vaccine containing adjuvants, it was the AS04 adjuvant, which contains alum instead. Nevertheless, the WHO has attested to the safety of squalene. My main questions here are whether or not the Americans know something the Europeans and the WHO don’t know. It’s possible the FDA keeps well away from squalene for political reasons, due to the recent furor over its alleged role in Gulf War Syndrome. That’s a whole other can of worms, and I’m going to side with the FDA: squalene was not present in high enough concentrations to cause side effects.

I guess I’m trying to figure out if the AS03 adjuvant system is the same squalene that has been given to 22 million people in Europe “without incident”, as the WHO claims.

Third, there is a problem with self-reported data. Many people other than myself ought to be suspicious of industry-based science, because there is a possibility that “you get the science you pay for”. Economic incentives can drive the outcomes and interpretation of data. Having vaccine-makers assess the effectiveness of their vaccines could be akin to cigarette manufacturers assessing the health benefits of tobacco. While I certainly hope pharmaceutical companies rely on maintaining their reputations through honest science, that element of distrust remains.

So what do we know about any clinical data available on the H1N1 vaccine? It appears most of the data relies on the Pandemrix vaccine for H5N1, a different strain of influenza:

From: Health Canada’s website:

A number of clinical studies are currently underway in Europe and North America to evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of a two-dose schedule of the Arepanrix™ H1N1 vaccine as well as the Pandemrix™ vaccine. Results from these studies will be assessed by Health Canada as soon as they become available. The preliminary results of two studies with Pandemrix™ have been submitted to Health Canada for review. The first study, D-Pan-H1N1-021, is a Phase II, multicentre, observer-blind, randomized study, while the second study, D-Pan-H1N1-007, is a Phase III, single-centre, observer-blind, randomized study.

Preliminary results from both studies indicate that at Day 21, following one dose of vaccine, both the adjuvanted and non-adjuvanted vaccines met the internationally accepted immunogenicity criteria. A strong immune response was observed, for both formulations, after one single vaccine dose. Given the short amount of time that has elapsed since the initiation of these studies, the persistence of this response cannot be determined at this time, nor is it possible to determine if a second dose or a booster dose will be required at a later date.

In Study D-Pan-H1N1-007, general systemic reactions were more common in the adjuvanted-vaccine group but were considered generally mild. The most common reactions were fatigue, headache, and pain at the injection site (in both the adjuvant and the non-adjuvant groups), and muscle ache (in the adjuvanted-vaccine group). A small percentage (~2%) of Grade 3 (severe) reactions was reported for headache and muscle ache in the adjuvanted-vaccine group and fatigue and shivering in the non-adjuvanted vaccine group. Fever was not reported in either vaccine group.

Clinical data for the use of the Arepanrix™ H1N1 vaccine or the AS03-adjuvant component in pregnant women are not available at the time of publication of this Notice of Decision. In addition, no data are available in breast-feeding women or in children under the age of 3 years.

That doesn’t encourage me.

Immunity from Liability.

If you exempt a car-maker from liability regarding the safety of its product, does it have any incentive to make the product as safe as it possibly can? Would it make sense to exempt car makers from liability altogether, and have taxpayers pay for any injuries sustained by drivers whose cars spontaneously combust or drive off the road? Some measure of liability is necessary, and I believe zero liability is too low. So why has the government of Canada granted GlaxoSmithKline a special immunity from liability when it comes to their vaccine?

Let’s go back a couple of decades to 1984, when vaccine makers found the business too cost-prohibitive, because the levels of liability created too many expensive lawsuits coming from the tiny fraction of people who are adversely affected by any vaccine. It’s clear that placing too much liability on vaccine makers would result in fewer vaccines being made, fewer entrants to the market, and higher prices paid for less innovative products.

Katzenjammer: What we need is a vaccine against pseudo-science

Colby Cosh: Swine flu and the new “weird-ists”

Christie Blatchford Flu-shot skeptics weave a Web of lies

It’s like some sort of Public Health McCarthyism is emerging. One can’t have questions and doubts without being conflated with the loony tunes? Hey, Journos need to eat, too, and I guess stereotyping and sowing strife sell more copy.

I’m not against vaccines; I just have reservations about the H1N1 vaccine and the hype surrounding it. I think a lot of Canadians do, too.

“GSK is discussing issues relating to potential liability exposure ass