Hello and happy Thursday to everyone! Hope you are having better weather where you are. We are getting some much needed rain and cooler temps today and the garden couldn't be happier!
Sorry about the missed posts, our internet was out for 2 days but it's back on now and I'm glad about it! I sure did miss the news!
Much thanks to RJ at the Global Glass Onion and the Ozarker at Conflicted Doomer , and to Doug at 3Es News and David at ETF Daily
Peak Oil and Energy News
GlobeAndMail: BP abandons plan to develop Alaska field - BP PLC has decided not to proceed with a groundbreaking $1.5-billion (U.S.) offshore oil project in Alaska after concluding it would be too expensive.
Reuters: UPDATE 1-U.S. ethanol output drops to lowest in nearly two years
SeattleTimes: Electric rates not falling along with fuel costs - A plunge in the price of natural gas has made it cheaper for utilities to produce electricity. But the savings aren't translating to lower rates for customers. Instead, U.S. electricity prices are going up.
UPI: EIA: U.S. oil production increasing
CNBC: Why Energy Grids Are So Susceptible to Cyberattack
GlobeAndMail: OPEC sees 2013 oil demand growth slowing
UPI: Iran's oil production slumps, EIA says
Reuters: UPDATE 1-Saudi oil output bounces back in June
OilDrum: Ruthless Extrapolation
ASPO2012: The Impending World Oil Shortage: Learning from the Past (pdf) Prediction: World oil production will go into decline at some future date. Anticipation: World oil production will go into decline in the next 1-4 years. Suggestion: Public reactions to the decline may be similar to 1973-1974.
Global Conflict
Reuters: Defector lashes Assad, troops raid Damascus suburb
Guardian: Mutiny fear in Israeli army as religious Zionists gain influence
SeattlePI: Iran foreign minister plays down Hormuz blockade
VancouverSun: Top U.S. admiral questions need for stealth technology like that used in F-35
MSNBC: Floating base gives US new footing in Persian Gulf
An old transport ship is reborn to counter the Iranian threat
VOA: China Ready to Join South China Sea Talks
SeattleTimes: Palestinians in crisis, pledged aid not received - The Palestinian finance minister says his self-rule government is facing its worst financial crisis in years because donor countries have paid only $466 million of $1.2 billion promised this year.
WorldCrunch: Reports Of Other Syrian Diplomats Set To Defect, Pressure Growing On Regime
Reuters: Defector lashes Assad but Russia blocks UN action
Guardian: Hungry and hunted: the students on the front line in northern Syria
Guardian: Syria vows to punish defecting ambassador Nawaf al-Fares
WSJ: Troops Called In to Plug Olympic Security Gap
Bloomberg: Asean Fails to Reach Accord on South China Sea Disputes
WSJ: Gunmen Kill Nine Pakistani Police
Wired: U.S. Has No Idea Who's a Taliban 'Leader,' Still Boasts About Killing Them
VOA: Sierra Leone TV Show Offers Legal Advice for Women
VOA: US Condemns Destruction of Mali Shrines
Hacker News
InformationWeek: Yahoo Hack Leaks 453000 Voice Passwords
Domestic Financial News
MarketDay: A scandal over rate-fixing is about to hit the US
FT: GOP Senators May Raise Taxes to Avert Defense Cuts
Zerohedge: Goldman Cuts US Q2 GDP Two Times In Two Hours
Reuters: June import prices tumble on plunge in oil costs
from RJ's other blog Marketwatch666:... posted this a couple days ago: inside job (full length movie - HD)
this
is the classic expose by charles ferguson that played in theaters last
year....runs over an hour & a half...i've got it posted as long as
it lasts...
(so, if you haven't seen it, go now and watch! It's well worth it and thanks RJ, for posting it. )
also from RJ,
TheWeek: Why is Wall Street full of psychopaths? - What are the
symptoms of Wall Street psychopaths? They "generally lack empathy and interest
in what other people feel or think," writes DeCovny, who bases her report on
interviews with several trade psychologists. Financial psychopaths are capable
of displaying "an abundance of charm, charisma, [and] intelligence," but also
possess an "unparalleled capacity for lying, fabrication, and manipulation."
IBTimes: PFG's Russell Wasendorf's $200m 'Boy Scout' Act - Russell R Wasendorf Sr, founder of PFG, attempted suicide early this week after he was charged with running a $200m futures fraud.
NYT: Unions Fight Scranton Mayor After He Cuts Pay to Minimum Wage
Fed Watch: FOMC Minutes Not a Smoking Gun
Reuters: Jobless claims fall as plants put off retooling
WSJ: Hundreds of Millions in Client Funds Go Missing At Another Commodities Firm - One would have thought that after $1.6 billion of customer funds went missing at MF Global, the large commodities firm run by former U.S. Senator and Governor from New Jersey, Jon Corzine, that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission would have verified bank balances at every futures merchant it regulates. It didn’t.
Fortune: Wall Street's latest sucker: Your hometown
USAToday: Fed officials warn of looming crisis for economy
AJC: Senate defeat likely of business tax cut bills
Economix: The Market Has Spoken, and It Is Rigged - Simon Johnson - In the aftermath of the Barclays rate-fixing scandal, the most surprising reaction has been from people in the financial sector who fully understand the awfulness of what has happened. Rather than seeing this as an issue of law and order, some well-informed people have been drawn toward arguments that excuse or justify the behavior of the Barclays employees. This is a big mistake, in terms of the economics at stake and the likely political impact. The behavior at Barclays has all the hallmarks of fraud – intentional deception for personal gain, causing significant damage to others.
Reuters: U.S. states look to enter Libor manipulation case
Forbes: What Deleveraging? Financial Relativism and the U.S. Economy
HuffingtonPost: As Evidence Mounts, DC Insiders Worry About Holder's Inaction on Wall Street Crime
CNBC: Rate Scandal Stirs Scramble for Damages
LAT: Rising costs push California cities to fiscal brink
Throughout the state, local governments are slashing services to avoid bankruptcy. For some, it's too late.
Alternet: Big Trouble for U.S.? Europe's Banking Crisis Moves Closer to a Lehman Brothers Moment
The recent euro summit did nothing to alleviate the problems that created the crisis in the first place. TimeBusiness: How Barclays Loaded the LIBOR Dice
LibertyStreet: The Puzzling Pre-FOMC Announcement “Drift” - NY Fed - For many years, economists have struggled to explain the “equity premium puzzle”—the fact that the average return on stocks is larger than what would be expected to compensate for their riskiness. In this post, which draws on our recent New York Fed staff report, we deepen the puzzle further. We show that since 1994, more than 80 percent of the equity premium on U.S. stocks has been earned over the twenty-four hours preceding scheduled Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announcements (which occur only eight times a year)—a phenomenon we call the pre-FOMC announcement “drift.”
Slate: Small Business tax myths: Most firms are not affected by Obama tax proposals.
Time: More U.S. Homes Facing Foreclosure Risk in June — Banks are increasingly placing homes with unpaid mortgages on a countdown that could deliver a swell of new foreclosed properties onto the market by early next year, potentially weighing further on home values.
DSNews: May Foreclosure Starts Nearly Triple Sales: - In May, foreclosure starts outnumbered foreclosure sales by a near 3-1 ratio, according to a report from Lender Processing Services (LPS).
PoliticalCalculations: Worst. Recession. Jobs. Recovery. Ever. Updated. -- Today's post is an update of a chart we originally featured back on 5 January 2011. It speaks for itself: In the chart, we're measuring the strength of all the post World War II recession recoveries as measured from the very bottom of payroll jobs lost. The last time we featured it, the recovery from the 2007 recession was just barely the worst ever. And today, it is definitively the worst recession jobs recovery ever.
Krugman: Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You - Ask how you can avoid paying for it. As David Firestone notes, that seems to be the new GOP definition of patriotism:Republicans aren’t just in favor of lowering taxes; now they’re applauding wildly complex efforts by the wealthiest Americans to avoid paying billions in taxes by shipping capital to other countries.“It’s really American to avoid paying taxes, legally,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, on Tuesday. He was defending Mitt Romney, who, as this morning’s editorial in The Times notes, appears to have the most elaborate history of tax avoidance – offshore tax havens, disputed sheltering mechanisms, complex trusts – of any major presidential candidate in history.Invest in the Cayman Islands, Mr. Graham seems to be saying. It’s the patriotic thing to do.
CalculatedRisk: Sacramento: Percentage of Distressed House Sales lowest in years in June
CNBC: Warren Buffett: US Economic Growth Slowing, Europe Slipping 'Pretty Fast'
WSJ: About 2.7 Million Jobs for Youth Are Missing - More than two and a half million jobs for young people aged 16 to 24 are currently missing from the American economy, according to a new report that paints a depressing picture of the economic outlook for that age group.
Global Financial News
Guardian: Eurozone crisis live: Clashes in Madrid, after Spain announces €65bn austerity plan - as it happened
Zerohedge: Swiss Bank Crackdown Accelerates As Credit Suisse, UBS Clients Raided In Germany, France
CNBC: Spain Deepens Austerity Under European Pressure
SeattleTimes: France's PSA Peugeot-Citroen slashing 8,000 jobs - Struggling French carmaker PSA Peugeot-Citroen announced Thursday a drastic cost-cutting plan to slash 8,000 jobs in France and close a factory north of Paris, as it faces diving sales in crisis-hit southern Europe.
DailyFinance: China Slams the Brakes on GM's Accelerating Car Sales
Reuters: Italy stats office threatens to stop issuing data
Zerohedge: Syntagma Riotcam Resumes Broadcasting From Madrid Where Cops Use Rubber Bullets On Protesters -- First thing this morning when discussing the upcoming festivities in Europe in the aftermath of Spain's decision to hike sales tax from 18% to 21%, while making sure it is the common people who get hurt in the upcoming bank nationalization in which sub notes and hybrid debt is impaired, largely held by retail investors as the FT showed yesterday, we said that "Spain promised to crush its middle class even more by impairing retail held sub debt and hybrids, while forcing them to pay more taxes, a move which will lead to some spectacular Syntagma Square riotcam moments." Three hours later and the riotcam is now live.
SoberLook: Eurozone's electorate becoming increasingly polarized
Time: Germany Investigates Morgan Stanley Executive
WSJ: China Hits EU Over Trade Spat
ABCNews: Lawmakers Furious Over China-Made Olympic Uniform
Hosted: Spain's austerity 'may extend recession to 2014'
Reuters: Finland finmin:oppose boosting bailout funds -Finnish TV
Commodities/Metals
Zerohedge: Today Is Best Day to Buy Gold - Thackray's 2012 Investor's Guide
WSJ: China Plans Rare-Earth Trading Platform
Environmental
USGS
M 4.5, 142km SE of Shizunai, Japan
MSNBC: Flash floods in Japan leave trail of destruction - An unprecedented 20 inches of rain descended on the town of Aso in southwestern Japan, inundating homes and rice paddies and killing at least 6 people. 20 people are still reportedly missing.
Guardian: Scientists attribute extreme weather to man-made climate change - Researchers have for the first time attributed recent floods, droughts and heatwaves, to human-induced climate change
UPI: API weighs in on Michigan oil spill
FinancialPost: Enbridge handled 2010 Michigan oil spill like ‘Keystone Cops,’ says U.S. regulator
WSJ: Nigeria Fuel Tanker Explosion Kills 95
Reuters: Insight: Environment or profit - palm oil firm tests Indonesia
MSNBC: China offers bounty for piranhas, dead or alive - Fishermen flock to Chinese city for bounty in 'people's war against the piranha'
Statesman: Texas judge rules atmosphere, air is public trust
WashingtonPost: Texas judge rules atmosphere, air to be protected like water, may aid climate change lawsuits
ENENews: Japanese Doctor’s Fukushima Warning: I am worried because I received calls complaining of health problems much earlier than expected
America in Decline
Truthout: EXCLUSIVE: DoD Report Reveals Some Detainees Interrogated While Drugged, Others "Chemically Restrained"
Detainees in custody of the US military were interrogated while drugged with powerful antipsychotic and other medications that "could impair an individual's ability to provide accurate information," according to a declassified Department of Defense (DoD) inspector general's report that probed the alleged use of "mind altering drugs" during interrogations.10News: California Bankruptcies Are Only The Beginning
In addition, detainees were subjected to "chemical restraints," hydrated with intravenous (IV) fluids while they were being interrogated and, in what appears to be a form of psychological manipulation, the inspector general's probe confirmed at least one detainee - convicted "dirty bomb" plotter Jose Padilla - was the subject of a "deliberate ruse" in which his interrogator led him to believe he was given an injection of "truth serum."
Food and Water
SeattleTimes: Crop technology helps limit corn losses in drought - For months, Illinois farmer David Kellerman held out hope for rain, even as the worst drought in nearly 25 years spread across the country.
SoberLook: Farmers "thinking of chopping their corn up and feeding it to cows" -- The drought conditions in the US are continuing to create havoc for crops. Corn in particular has been hit hard.
PopSci: Strategies for a Changing Planet: Water
Privacy News
ProPublica: How Many Millions of Cellphones Are Police Watching?
In response to a congressional inquiry, mobile phone companies on Monday finally disclosed just how many times they’ve handed over users’ cellphone data to the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. By the New York Times’ count, cellphone companies responded to 1.3 million demands for subscribers’ information last year from law enforcement. Many of the records, such as location data, don’t require search warrants or much court oversight.
Gizmodo: Hidden Government Scanners Will Instantly Know Everything About You From 164 Feet Away
Within the next year or two, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will instantly know everything about your body, clothes, and luggage with a new laser-based molecular scanner fired from 164 feet (50 meters) away. From traces of drugs or gun powder on your clothes to what you had for breakfast to the adrenaline level in your body—agents will be able to get any information they want without even touching you.
And without you knowing it.
The technology is so incredibly effective that, in November 2011, its inventors were subcontracted by In-Q-Tel to work with the US Department of Homeland Security. In-Q-Tel is a company founded "in February 1999 by a group of private citizens at the request of the Director of the CIA and with the support of the U.S. Congress." According to In-Q-Tel, they are the bridge between the Agency and new technology companies.
BigThink: Mind-Reading Helmet Aims to Detect Thought Crimes - What's the Latest Development?
A private company named Veritas is developing applied neuroscience technology that it hopes will allow the military to tell friend from foe on the battlefield.
Science and Technology
SeattleTimes: Ancient quake and tsunami in Puget Sound shake researchers - The last time the Seattle fault ripped, it jolted shorelines and unleashed a tsunami. Now a new study suggests that quake might have rocked an even bigger area than anyone thought.NYT: Earliest Americans Arrived in Waves, DNA Study Finds - North and South America were first populated by three waves of migrants from Siberia rather than just a single migration, say researchers who have studied the whole genomes of Native Americans in South America and Canada.
Lightyears: NASA's Hubble telescope finds Pluto's fifth moon
PopSci: Video: The Dream of a Thorium-Fueled Future
Wired: If Scientists Designed Lamps, They'd Look Like This
Medical and Health
CJR: The Palm Beach Post exposes a hidden menace - A powerful expose by Stacey Singer, the health reporter for The Palm Beach Post, has revealed a serious outbreak of TB in Jacksonville—the worst the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has investigated in 20 years.
TheScientist: Scorpion Venom Kills MRSA
CNNMoney: 6 reasons health care costs keep going up
SeattleTimes: Gov't auditors doubt legality of Medicare bonuses - Government auditors Wednesday questioned the legality of a costly Medicare bonus program, escalating a running skirmish in the broader battle over President Barack Obama's health care law and its consequences for seniors.
NYT: In Dieting, Magic Isn’t a Substitute for Science
TechReview: An Alzheimer's Warning 25 Years Before Symptoms Show
TheChart: Less sitting may lead to longer life
MSNBC: Cambodian mystery illness tied to common childhood disease
A virulent strain of hand, foot and mouth disease is to blame, officials say
OpedNews: USA Presbyterian Church Takes Step Toward Divestment From For-Profit Health Insurance Companies
MSNBC: Cash-for-kidneys trader gets 2-1/2 years in prison - An Israeli man who pleaded guilty to illegally brokering kidney transplants for profit in the United States, the first such conviction under federal law, was sentenced on Wednesday to two-and-a-half years in prison, prosecutors said.
Doomsteading, Gardening, Urban Farming
GlobeAndMail: 10 gardening videos for your greenest season yet
Other News
NYT: Philanthropist Couple’s Drug Downfall Ends in Death and Arrest
USAToday: Report slams Penn State 'disregard' in Sandusky case
ChicagoTribune: Penn State concealed sex abuse to save reputation- report
LAT: Sandusky report: Freeh says Penn State sports culture shares blame
USNews: Prosecutors set to release another round of Zimmerman evidence
Newsday: Mary Kennedy's body dug up on RFK Jr.'s orders: report
SFGate: Overall crime reported in NC lowest since 1977
WorldCrunch: The Mothers Who Sold Their Newborns: A Tale Of Child Trafficking In China
Guardian: Maldives tourism campaign backfires as Twitter shows darker side of island life
WashingtonPost: Congress approves faster job licensing for veterans
GlobeAndMail: Olympic torch reaches Stonehenge
Politics
NYT: Obama Trails Romney Again in Battle for Campaign Cash
CBSNews: Why Romney welcomes the NAACP boos
Politico: Pelosi: Romney wanted to be booed by NAACP
NYT: Judge Maintains Injunction Against Mississippi Law on Abortion Clinics
Atlantic: Jesse Jackson Jr. Located: Rehab
BBC: Romney jeered over healthcare in NAACP speech
TPM: Romney: I Didn’t Even Know About That Bermuda Company!
Forums
TinfoilPalace: The shifting timeline and strange events thread
TinfoilPalace: The Keshe Foundation - Release of Alien (Space) Energy Technologies (!)
TheOilAge: ahimsa
TheOilAge: A human being should be able to...
HubbertsArms: Oakland Ca gets it! If LIBOR is rigged, so are the swaps deals Goldman sold them
HubbertsArms: Be not anxious
SilentCountry: Religion, assassins, and general insanity.
SilentCountry: Roubini: Perfect financial storm happening
DestinyCalls: Positive Lightning Strikes Intensify As Cosmic Rays Increase
DestinyCalls: Anthology on strange things in the simpson's cartoon
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