Let's start out today with a bit of Clusterfucknation!
the Kunstlers are very very good today!
Is there a Baby Boomer so dim in this land of rackets and swindles who thinks that he or she will escape the wrath of the Millennials rising? The developing story is so obvious that only an academic economist could fail to notice. Here's how it will go: some months from now, as the financial unwind worsens, and the mirage of gainful employment shimmers away to nothing, and the technocrats of Europe meet nervously by some Swiss lakeside (and are seen glumly shaking their heads), and Romney and Obama try to out-do each other peddling miracle cures for the tanking national self-esteem - a dangerous meme will go forth across the internet, and this meme will say: Millennials, renounce your college loans and set yourselves free!Sincere 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, for their help with stories today!
And then something truly marvelous will happen. They will at once disempower the swindling generation of their fathers, teachers, loan officers, and overlords and quite possibly bring on, at long last, the epochal collision of pervasive American control fraud with the hard hand of reality.
Peak Oil and Energy News
Reuters: U.S. crude ends lower on jobs data, Iran talks
ScientificAmerican: First Dedicated Biorefinery Could Wean Hawaii Off Imported Oil
Reuters: Hong Kong ship insurers unable to fill void in Iran oil cover - Hong Kong maritime insurers will not provide full cover to tankers carrying Iranian oil after EU sanctions take effect from July, a senior industry official told Reuters, another blow to Chinese importers struggling to find ways around the measures. As more insurers confirm they will soon halt or sharply reduce coverage to tankers operating in Iran, China's government may need to step in and take the risk to get contracted crude supplies from Tehran, said Arthur Bowring, managing director of the Hong Kong Shipowners Association. China is the top buyer of Iranian crude.
Bottomline: The reason it's called Texas Tea: Most oil-rich states
Harvard.edu: Technology transforms energy outlook
Author cites shale gas, ‘tight oil’ in providing U.S. fuel
Triplecrisis: Can a low-carbon economy thrive in a resource-constrained world? - There’s a growing momentum around the world to build a ‘green’ economy – with a special focus on energy – as a key strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent dangerous climate change while also increasing energy security.But resource constraints could hinder this endeavour.Author cites shale gas, ‘tight oil’ in providing U.S. fuel
MarketWatch: Forget gasoline, diesel topped $4 a month ago - As prices for gasoline at the pump inch closer to $4 a gallon, consumers should be even more worried about the threat from rising diesel prices, which topped that level over a month ago.
High diesel prices are “even worse for an economic recovery than high gasoline prices,” said Denton Cinquegrana, senior markets editor at the Oil Price Information Service (OPIS). “Most Americans pay attention to the price of gasoline, but we totally neglect the impact high diesel prices have on goods and services.”
OilVoice: Baron Energy, Inc. enters into participation agreement for major reactivation project in the Texas Panhandle
FT: Energy: Refined out of existence - Sunoco petrol stations are a fixture of the US eastern seaboard, but after July, none of the petrol they sell will actually be made by Sunoco. The 126-year-old company’s decision to quit the refining business is the latest sign of the tumult in downstream fuel markets that is accompanying a global shift in oil use.
Reuters: Analysis: Troubled euro zone states most at risk from high oil - Oil prices at record levels in euro terms are threatening to rock the euro zone's economy more than might be expected, with those countries least capable of riding out a shock being the worst hit.
MNN: Proposed satellite would beam solar power to Earth
PeakOil: French economy grinds to a halt - Hit by the closure of the Petit-Couronne plant, owned by insolvent oil refiner Petroplus, refining activity plunged by 13 percent in February.
Fuelfix: Drivers to pay 6 pct more for gas this summer
Global Conflict
BBC: Syria 'failing to abide by truce' - There
is no sign of Syria abiding by a peace plan to bring fighting to an end
hours before a UN deadline, the US says, as violence intensifies.
CNN: Hopes for peace dashed as deadline for Syrian withdrawal passes
Independent: Court rejects claims that extraditing Abu Hamza to the US would breach his human rights
SeattleTimes: US 'outraged' by Syrian attack on refugees - The Obama administration is expressing outrage that Syrian troops fired into a refugee camp in neighboring Turkey. It says the cross-border attack coupled with incidents elsewhere bodes ill for a U.N.-brokered plan to end the violence.
UPI: Turkey issues stern warning to Syria
TheNation: Thinking the Unthinkable on Iran - The question of what to do about Iran’s nuclear program is a policy riddle of the first order for the United States and the world. It also signals a turning point in the nuclear story, requiring fresh thinking about the recent evolution of nuclear danger, about the strategies appropriate for dealing with it and even about the very origin and nature of the entire dilemma posed by nuclear weapons.
CBSNews: Continued shelling reported as withdrawal deadline arrives; Syria claims pullback
McClatchy: Fighting reported in half of Syria's provinces as ceasefire deadline nears
Mish: Romney "Surrounded by Neocons, Playing Around with Matches" on Iran - Mitt Romney has been talking tough on Iran lately. In an op-ed last month in the Washington Post, the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee wrote:
I will buttress my diplomacy with a military option that will persuade the ayatollahs to abandon their nuclear ambitions. Only when they understand that at the end of that road lies not nuclear weapons but ruin will there be a real chance for a peaceful resolution.VOA: Egypt Court Suspends Constitutional Assembly
NYT: Multiple Bombings Strike Afghanistan
UPI: N. Korea's rocket technology upgraded
ExtinctionProtocol: Apocalyptic chess pieces: World’s powers being slowly drawn to the Middle East
BusinessInsider: Russia massing troops near northern Iranian border?
OWS
Alternet: "Occupy Wall Street" Assist Blacks, Latinos in Foreclosure Fight
Hacker News
Reuters: Fallout grows from hacking of Utah health database
MSNBC: Utah breach affects 25,000 Social Security numbers
Clients whose numbers were taken will be first alerted Utah health officials said Friday that hackers who broke into state computers last weekend stole far more medical records than originally thought, and the data likely includes Social Security numbers of children who have received public assistance.
Wired: Forever-Day threats
Domestic Financial News
CNNMoney: Bush wishes his name wasn't attached to tax cuts
CreditWritedowns: The Silver Anniversary of the “Keating Five” Meeting — Citizens United’s Precursor
Zerohedge: Exhibit A: The Market Has Become A Centrally-Planned, Liquidity-Addicted, Temperamental AbortionSeattleTimes: 5 reasons the US job market might be weakening - Economists mostly shrugged off news that U.S. hiring slowed in March as a one-month aberration warped by warm weather.
BottomLine: Here's where your tax dollars are going
BBC: Fed chief Ben Bernanke says recovery not complete - US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has said the US economy is yet to fully recover from the impact of the global financial crisis.
FinancialPost: Welcome to the new Great Depression
We’re already in the new Great Depression, says Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, and it could be a long time before we come out the other end.
“My view is we are actually in a depression,” Krugman told Reuters in a recent video interview.
So what’s the same this time round? A persistently depressed economy, interest rates near 0% and in the United States a 9% jobless rate.
“It’s not the total misery of the 1930s, but it’s not good,” he said.
VancouverSun: Recession weighs heavily on young workers
CNNMoney: For-profit and undeterred - Despite recent scandals, the for-profit education sector is doing just fine and is likely to keep surging.
McClatchy: Consumer watchdog proposes crackdown on mortgage companies
CNNMoney: Best Buy CEO steps down
CreditSlips: Usury Takes a Bite Out of the Poor
FDL: Warm Winter Economic Boost May Limit Spring Jobs Picture - I was waiting for some enterprising conservative to make the argument that global warming improved the jobs landscape, because it turned certain industries like construction into more year-round pursuits. Of course, to make that argument, they’d have to acknowledge the existence of global warming.
Econospeak: The Bush Institute Hosts Tax Policies for 4% Growth?
Rollingstone: Why Obama’s JOBS Act Couldn’t Suck Worse -The "Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act" (in addition to everything else, the Act has an annoying, redundant title) will very nearly legalize fraud in the stock market
ETFDaily: Gerald Celente: Housing To Take Another Nosedive
HBR: The (Postponed) End of the Dollar Era
CuriousCapitalist: Goldman Sachs: Best Way to Survive the “Fiscal Cliff” is Sending Obama, Republicans Back to Washington - Market-observers are worrying about a new obstacle in the path of economic recovery: America’s impending “fiscal cliff.”
Guardian: Instagram founders turn two years of work into $1bn – only in Silicon Valley
Zerohedge: VIX Nears 21% With Term Structure Flattest In 4 Months
CNNMoney: Are landlines doomed?
ETFDaily: Economy: The Shocking Truth About Unemployment In America - The mainstream media is not telling you the truth about unemployment in the United States. The percentage of working age Americans that are employed is not increasing. In March 2010, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans had a job. In March 2012, 58.5 percent of all working age Americans had a job. So if the employment rate is exactly the same as it was two years ago, then how in the world can the Obama administration claim that things have gotten significantly better since then?
NewsAndInsight: Moody's cuts Detroit water and sewer debt ratings
McClatchy: White House report backs Obama push for tax on millionaires
Global Financial News
BBC: Osborne 'shock' at rich tax ploys
Telegraph: Unemployment to rise as 100,000 lose jobs before summer - An extra 100,000 people will lose their jobs before the end of the summer and unemployment will not fall for another year and a half, according to a grim report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).
Time: China’s Gravity-defying Economy: How Hard Will It Fall?BusinessInsider: Awful News from SwedenReuters: Sony sees record $6.4 billion loss on tax hit - Japan's Sony Corp flagged a record $6.4 billion annual net loss, double an earlier forecast and a fourth straight year of red ink, as it writes off deferred tax credits, heaping more pressure on its new CEO to turn around the electronics giant.
Mish: Inconsistencies in Spain's Budget Suggest Deficit will be 7% not 5.3%; Andalucia Regional Government Will Not Agree to Deficit Targets; Only 26% Trust Prime Minister to Overcome Crisis - Courtesy of Google translate, please consider The inconsistencies of the State Budget for 2012 Much is written these days about the budget submitted by the Government for 2012, which proposes that the deficit be lowered to 5.3% of GDP. In this article we focus not on a comprehensive analysis of these items but in both revenue and expenditure forecasts which seem less realistic. The first of these items is to transfer the SPEE (State Employment Service, former INEM). The government budgeted a reduction of 15.6% (2,464,000), arguing that many are unemployed benefits are ending.
NYT: In Surprise, China Posts Trade Surplus— China ran an unexpected $5.35 billion trade surplus last month, government figures released on Tuesday showed, indicating the country remains a strong exporter despite weak demand in Europe in recent months.
Mish: Spanish 10-Year Bond Yield Hits 5.99% as Official Denials in Spain Escalate; "Bailout" on the Way
HispanicallySpeakingNews: 21 Percent Increase in Number of Spanish Businesses Filing for Bankruptcy - More than 1,600 Spanish firms declared insolvency in the first quarter, a rise of 21 percent over the same period in 2011, PricewaterhouseCoopers said Monday in a report based on official data.
ETFDaily: Europe: Why Germany’s Dominance Will Destroy The Euro Currency
Alternet: Spanish village plans to rent land to grow cannabis
Commodities/Metals
SybilStar: The Future for Gold - In an article I wrote recently for Seeking Alpha, I tried to give a casual analysis of the future of the gold "price." This is not easy. Crystal balls have a way of clouding up just when you think you've seen something.
DealBreaker: Chinese Rogue Trader Sentenced To Death (But Not Really) - A Chinese rogue trader who ‘cheated’ investors on her way to losing £10m in gold trading has been sentenced to death today. The 30-year-old Wang Caipang was handed the sentence by a court in Wenzhou in east China after she borrowed the cash between January and October 2010. Caiping, who must first serve two years in prison, borrowed huge sums of money promising to buy equipment, invest in property and open credit guarantee firms, but instead used the cash to speculate in futures and gold trading along with her elder brother, Wang Guanglin, who is still at large…In China, a sentence of jail time then death usually means the punishment will be reduced to life in prison.
Mineweb: Stock markets glitter more than gold in Q1
Zerohedge: Silver Smoke Screen
Environmental
USGS
M 2.9, northern AlaskaDesdemonaDespair: Will climate refugees get promised aid?
SilentCountry: Apalling indictment on us all - 615 dead dolphins due to testing for oil?
ScientificAmerican: Rising Ocean Temperatures Prime Amazon Rainforest for Fire
IBTimes: New EPA Results: Fracking Has Not Contaminated Water In Pennsylvania
A Dimock, Pa., resident who did not want to be identified pours a glass of water taken from his well after the start of natural gas drilling in 2009.
MSNBC: US sees record for warmest March -- and first three months of a year - The temperature analysis released by the U.S. government each month usually isn't all that riveting, but the one that came out Monday is a doozy -- and not just for weather wonks. Highlights for the contiguous U.S. (excluding Alaska and Hawaii) include:
I love the following story! thanks Ozarker!
Treehugger: Indian Man Single-Handedly Plants a 1,360 Acre Forest
WBIR: Partially Africanized bees discovered in East Tennessee
DesdemonaDespair: Bluefin tuna: What’s to be done?
And from our very own Bill Hicks at the Downward Spiral...
DownwardSpiral: The East Coast Is Burning
LegitGov: Total gas leak: Fish tests to reveal full extent of gas leak toxins
ThinkProgress: Natural Gas Is A Bridge To Nowhere Absent A Carbon Price AND Strong Standards To Reduce Methane Leakage
350.org: Connecting the Dots, in the Aftermath - Among many other disasters, a warmer climate will move the start of tornado season earlier and earlier every year, meaning that North America will see more powerful Winter and early Spring stormsScienceDaily: Has the Dead Sea used up its nine lives? Dead Sea almost dried up over 100,000 years ago - Rapidly dropping water levels of the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth's surface heralded for its medicinal properties, has been a source of ecological concern for years. Now a drilling project led by researchers from Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University reveals that water levels have risen and fallen by hundreds of meters over the last 200,000 years.
ScientificAmerican: EPA Cancels Grant Applications for $20 Million Green Chemistry Program
America in Decline
McClatchy: First Amendment lawyer joins journalists at Guantanamo - A First Amendment attorney joined journalists bound for Guantánamo Tuesday in an orchestrated U.S. media bid to open up the first ever war court testimony by a captive about CIA interrogations that the government contends are secret.
RawStory: Video shows man beaten, stripped and robbed by Baltimore crowd
eXiled: The Brutal Life Of One L. Goh & The Making Of A “Going Postal” Rampage Murderer
These “going postal” rampage killings like the one that just took place at the Oikos University campus so often and with such relentless rhythm, a lot of people might easily assume that these mass-shootings at American schools and workplaces have always been with us.CNN: Former teacher wanted for child porn makes FBI list - A former private school teacher and camp counselor facing child pornography charges was added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list Tuesday.
It’s not true, of course — as I wrote in my book Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion — it’s an exclusively American phenomenon specific to our time. The first post office rampage killing took place in Edmond, Oklahoma, in the mid-1980s, at the height of the Reagan Revolution’s war on the American worker.
LAT: 10 Most Wanted Fugitives: FBI adds alleged child pornographer
Alternet: Hired Guns on Astroturf: How to Buy and Sell School Reform - The private funders and non-profit groups behind ed reform are getting political like never before -- using big money to pressure politicians to do their bidding for them.
Food and Water
Reuters: World food prices rise further, raising fears of unrest - Global food prices rose in March for a third straight month with more hikes to come, the UN's food agency said on Thursday, adding to fears of hunger and a new wave of social unrest in poor countries.
ThinkProgress: Frackers Outbid Farmers For Water In Colorado Drought
TheChart: Arsenic in chicken, or just feathers?
Truthout: Using Community Gardens to Grow Low-Income Communities Out of Food Deserts
TransitionVoice: Beef 101: A guide to what 25% of Americans eat every day
Chinese grain imports hit record high - China’s grain imports hit a record high in March, as the world’s most populous country increasingly turns to overseas markets to meet its agricultural needs. Customs data from Beijing revealed that grain imports reached 1.64m tonnes in March, up sixfold from a year earlier and up 50 per cent from the previous month. China has to feed a fifth of the world’s population with only 8 per cent of the world’s arable land, and does not grow genetically modified grains. As rising incomes and more meat-heavy diets boost grain demand, China’s reliance on imports has slowly increased. Big corn purchases likely contributed to the jump in March grain imports, said traders.
e360.yale.edu: The Folly of Big Agriculture: Why Nature Always Wins
Internet and Online Privacy News
UPI: Man on the lam still posts to Facebook - PORT ANGELES, Wash., April 10 (UPI) -- A Port Angeles, Wash., man may be avoiding police but he isn't avoiding his Facebook friends, including alerting them that he is no longer in a relationship.
TechReview: Mobile-Ad Firms Seek New Ways to Track You
Science and Technology
SingularityHub: Talking With the Founders of Vergence Labs: First Steps Towards Merging Man and Machine
Time: The Google of China: The Secret of Baidu's Runaway Search-Engine Success
PopSci: How It Works: Building a Kilometer-Long Pipe Deep Under the Sea
TechReview: How Dark Matter Interacts with the Human Body - Dark matter must collide with human tissue, and physicists have now calculated how often. The answer? More often than you might expect.
ArsTechnica: SpaceX considering a new 'Commercial Cape Canaveral' in Texas
The launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9.
Alternet: Report Says Everybody is Watching Internet Porn, A LotCosmicLog: Could legal 'loophole' lead to land claims on other worlds?USAToday: Instagram Android downloads hit 5 million
PopSci: Genetic Bar Code Search Can Use RNA to Pick Out Individuals From Huge Gene Pools
MSNBC: Multitouch floor may someday detect your heart attack
USAToday: Are mobile Internet users the next gold mine?
Medical and Health
ScienceDaily: Consumerism and its antisocial effects can be turned on -- or off - Money doesn't buy happiness. Neither does materialism: Research shows that people who place a high value on wealth, status, and stuff are more depressed and anxious and less sociable than those who do not. Now new research shows that materialism is not just a personal problem. It's also environmental. "We found that irrespective of personality, in situations that activate a consumer mindset, people show the same sorts of problematic patterns in wellbeing, including negative affect and social disengagement," says Northwestern University psychologist Galen V. Bodenhausen.
LAT: A fog of drugs and war - More than 110,000 active-duty Army troops last year took antidepressants, sedatives and other prescription medications. Some see a link to aberrant behavior.
TheChart: Brain tumors linked to dental X-rays - A study published this week in the journal Cancer shows that people who have had dental X-rays are more likely to develop a type of brain tumor called meningioma than those who have not. This does not prove that X-rays cause tumors, but supports previous research about the connection. Dental X-rays have also been implicated in thyroid cancer.ScienceDaily: Born nice: Peoples' niceness may reside in their genes, study finds
Doomsteading, Gardening, Urban Farming
WaldenEffect: Finding non-medicated chicken feed
PreppingToSurvive: There’s More to Prepping Than Buying
CityFarmer: Edible “Garden City” Project Singapore
UrbanFarm: Urban Orchard
Other News
ThinkProgress: Number Of Undocumented Immigrants From Mexico Who Are Entering and Leaving U.S. Hits Net Zero - According to Mexican census data, 1 million undocumented immigrants returned to Mexico from the U.S. between 2005 and 2010 — more than three times the number who said they had returned from 2000 to 2004.
RawStory: Woman’s toxic suicide results in hazmat scare, evacuation
WSJ: Teen Shooting Case Won't Go to Grand Jury
IBTimes: Mysterious UFO Spotted Over South Korea, Real or Hoax? [VIDEO]
WSJ: Teen Shooting Case Won't Go to Grand Jury
IBTimes: Mysterious UFO Spotted Over South Korea, Real or Hoax? [VIDEO]
NYDaily: Seventh graders save school bus after driver collapses
MSNBC: Prosecutors detain Calif. girl, 17, to shore up rape case - Prosecutors have taken the unusual step of detaining an alleged teenage rape victim who has a history of running away, saying she is a key witness against a man prosecutors say is a career criminal and serial rapist.
MSNBC: George Zimmerman takes to Web to raise money for legal costs, lawyers confirmCNN: School teachers become secret millionaires with Mega Millions win
BBC: Norway killer Breivik found sane
MSNBC: Prosecutors detain Calif. girl, 17, to shore up rape case - Prosecutors have taken the unusual step of detaining an alleged teenage rape victim who has a history of running away, saying she is a key witness against a man prosecutors say is a career criminal and serial rapist.
MSNBC: George Zimmerman takes to Web to raise money for legal costs, lawyers confirmCNN: School teachers become secret millionaires with Mega Millions win
BBC: Norway killer Breivik found sane
Politics
NBCPolitics: Obama healthcare law could sharply worsen deficits: study
ChicagoTribune: Rick Santorum suspends presidential campaign, is 'not done fighting'
Forums
TinfoilPalace: Investigators suggest Whitney Houston murdered
TinfoilPalace: Japanese Mayor Issues SOS (GLP Video)
TheOilAge: This is totally addicting
TheOilAge: US had warmest March and first quarter EVER
HubbertsArms: Gunther Grass / Israel poem = he's the second coming of Hitler (!!!???)
HubbertsArms: How are your facebook privacy settings? Locked down? Feeling safe?
SilentCountry: False Flag Aircraft Carrier Now In Place
SilentCountry: Solar Kill Shot
DestinyCalls: Strange Earth Noises (article from 1984, "Unexplained" magazine)
DestinyCalls: Long hair and its properties
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