Bernard Hickey details the key news over the weekend in 90 seconds at 9 am in association with Bank of New Zealand, including talk this morning in Washington that Congressional leaders are 'very, very close' to a deal to lift America's debt ceiling.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told reporters negotiators were 'very very close' to a deal to cut US budget deficits by over US$3 trillion over a decade. But the deal would only involve spending cuts and include no tax increases.
Democrats have previously vetoed or blocked any deal that does not include tax increases or the removal of tax loopholes. See more here at Reuters.
A deal must be done and America's debt ceiling must be lifted by Wednesday morning New Zealand time or America risks defaulting on its debt.
Commentators said the deal under discussion may not be enough to keep America from losing its AAA credit rating.
Legislators are scrambling to get a deal done before Asian markets open. British and Japanese officials warned of financial disaster over the weekend if a deal could not be done.
American troops in Afghanistan have even been warned they may not be paid later this week, given interest payments and social security payments are thought to be prioritised.
The New Zealand dollar remains strong this morning up around record highs of 88 USc and 75 on the Trade Weighted Index.
Fears about the US dollar's status as the safest currency in the world are seeing investors go elsewhere for safe havens, including New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Switzerland.
See John Key's comments here on New Zealand's relative attractivness.
No chart with that title exists.
25 Comments
Ive just read "The rage against god' by Peter Hitchens. Id recommend it as a darn good read. Ive been to the Eastern block just after the USSR collapsed, I saw whereCeaușescu was freshly executed, i didnt stand on outside decks as so many collapsed , no one talked to me, when I entered shops, I was followed by people wanting to see what i would buy.Society had collapsed and basic dignity was stripped. I looked at farms on the black sea, huge collectives that had completely failed and were now just a handfull of families living in squalor on 3000 acres.In the Ukraine i saw where harvesters had broken down and the rest of the crop just left, a reminder of the huge amount of waste, while many went hungry, up to %30 of food rotted on railway wagons. I went with fisherman for two days on the Danube delta, where the average life expectancy was 50, i shared their breakfast, Vodka, cheese and bread, mostly Vodka. I saw macedonian pots pulled up in their nets and I walked alone amoungst Roman ruins centuries old. I had a bodyguard with me always, he even slept in my room sometimes.All the people dank themselves to sleep at night, starting at lunch time. Societies can collapse, we shouldn't take our way of life for granted, bad things can happen to good people.
Wiki
>>>>
A notorious experiment in this period took place in the Piteşti prison, where a group of political opponents were put into a program of reeducation through torture. Historical records show hundreds of thousands of abuses, deaths and incidents of torture against a wide range of people, from political opponents to ordinary citizens.[80] Nevertheless, Romanian armed opposition to communist rule was one of the longest-lasting in the Eastern Bloc.[81]
I was in Romania very shortly after the fall of Ceausescu and it was beyond reason. It still effects me emotionally when I remember being there. It was a form of socialism that went very very very wrong and as much as BH likes the idea of some form of socialism, it is the wrong time here and now. Maybe one day, but I think we will need to fall first
...and until centralised control of abortions came in, not much really changed under capitalism did it?
http://www.albertmohler.com/2005/08/26/more-abortions-than-births-in-ru…
Perhaps a social, rather that a political, phenomenon...
Is it the particular 'ism' that fails - or the systems of checks and balances that they devise and then don't understand/ monitor etc. Seems to me that most 'isms' can be made to work if you have populations that understand... and people prepared to 'make it work'.
The various shades seem very old fashioned these days.
FYI the Democrats appear to be edging closer to a deal. Will the Democrats capitulate to a deal with no tax hikes?
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid will support the tentative debt-ceiling deal as long as other Democrats back it as well, a spokesman said on Sunday.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/31/us-usa-debt-reid-support-idUSTRE76U29X20110731
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/07/america_time_to_start_over.html
In short, we have been living a "hundred of trillions" lifestyle on "tens of trillions" in actual wealth. The difference between the two sums is money that would have belonged to the future: future kids would have used it to pay for their education, future inventors to invest in their ideas, future couples to buy their first home. It is money they will now never have; we have plucked it from their pockets and purses before they were even born. It's easy, after all, to rob someone who doesn't yet exist. So that we could pretend to be richer than we are, we have ensured that our children will be poorer than they deserve to be.
Matt Patterson was talking about the Debt of the USA. Some of what he says has relation to where we find ourselves.
Im in the country watching change thinking 'what the hell are we doing'. An example is a friend who got robbed had a game camera that took some good snaps of the crims, the trouble is he is having trouble getting the police to press charges, which the locals around here are getting angry about.
>>>>>
Of course, the thing about democracies is they usually get the political class they deserve. The American voting public proved its utter unworthiness to govern itself when in 2008 it elected an attractive but empty suit to the most consequential office in the world. He shouted hope. What for? We didn't ask. He promised change. What kind? We didn't care. He looked good on TV, which is really, when you get right down to it, all that matters these days.
>>
I read oftwominds and the weekend and followed the link to this article, interested me because my wife tells me Im depressing sometimes.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240531119048003045764744511027616…
As for Churchill, during his severely depressed years in the political wilderness, he saw the Nazi menace long before others did. His exhortations to increase military spending were rejected by Prime Minister Baldwin and his second-in-command, Chamberlain. When Chamberlain returned from signing the Munich agreement with Hitler in 1938, only Churchill and a small coterie refused to stand and cheer in parliament, eliciting boos and hisses from other honorable members.
At dinner that night, Churchill brooded: How could men of such honor do such a dishonorable thing? The depressive leader saw the events of his day with a clarity and realism lacking in saner, more stable men.
Yes very intresting and curous time...
Two sides to every coin though....
I used to think in the flow of what you have posted but, consider who financed the ex army intelligence officer and eventual leader of the NAZI party?
The problem, there are so many levels to the game.
The stuff thats here that comments on our present day woes is surface stuff very light and on the whole it is presented as seperate things where in if you go deeper its all connected....
Gonzo - you'll be used to being 'not too sure', presumably.
FYI - we have a free-ranging and frank exchange of views here, and I for one come to continue learning. AJ and I would be miles apart in lifestyle and background, but I am richer for the stuff he has put up over the years.
Those who 'think they know everything', or worse, those who are paid to look like they know everything, probably won't gain from being here.
"FYI - we have a free-ranging and frank exchange of views here,"
Yeah I agree so I will carry on posting some Inconvenient Truths like the one below so punters can stay informed
Arctic scientist who exposed climate threat to polar bear is suspendedUS government conducts 'integrity inquiry' on federal biologist amid lobbying by oil firms for Arctic
Please ref source.
Always check whether source is credible, or peer-reviewed.
Both those headings are ambiguous - suspended for what? Bonking a lab assistant? Integrity in which direction - being bought-off by the oil companies? Get it together, Gonzo. Some of us have reasonable IQ's here. Don't start what you can't finish.
Spin 101 - always hog the words which may make you look stupid. "Inconvenient Truth".
Bill Engish did it recently, stealing ' resilient'.
You guys got the same spin-teacher?
- Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
- guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 July 2011
You can find this on the net.
Obama Administration Suspends Scientist Who Warned of Threat to Polar Bears
Sunday, July 31, 2011
ERIC MAY: Okay. And did these observations all get recorded or –?
CHARLES MONNETT: No. Um, well, I think the, um – they got recorded, but I can’t remember whether we punched them in the program. We were recording them in our book, because that’s one of the anomalies I was talking about that we really didn’t have any way to signify a dead polar bear. And so rather than have that in the database when really what we wanted to analyze were live polar bears – remember, the stuff is all automated.
ERIC MAY: Right.
CHARLES MONNETT: And so somebody has got to go through and delete it, um, or do something, um, and I, I don’t remember whether it’s – we recorded the location in the database or just wrote it down. I’m guessing we recorded the location, uh, but it would have been shown as a live bear.
CHARLES MONNETT: So the, the, the drowning part, the dead bear part is in our books. It’s not in the database. I, I, I think – and I don’t remember whether the bears are in the database or not at this point.
So a “live bear” in the database becomes a dead bear in his paper?
ERIC MAY: Okay. Well, your manuscript, so when you put this together, was it peer-reviewed?
CHARLES MONNETT: Oh, yeah.
ERIC MAY: By whom?
CHARLES MONNETT: Uh, well, it was, it was reviewed here. Um, Lisa Rotterman, my wife, who is a, you know, Ph.D. ecologist, um, reviewed it and, and, you know, she took the first cut. Cleve Cowles, um, gave it a thorough read. I think Paul Stang did, who’s a manager, and I wouldn’t call that a peer review. That’s a, that’s a political correctness review.
Hahah! My” wife looked at it, and someone else made sure it was politically acceptible”… yeah, really stringent! :)
HAHA - Three Little Piggies in a row. All somehow denying the fact that we're burning how many tons of carbon folks?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissi…
The science is carbon dioxide, and the albedo effect.
The science is Hadley Cells, the ITC, the migrating desert bands, and extreme weather events.
Whether somebody I've never heard of, has or hasn't been sloppy in a species count, doesn't alter that, one jot.
Which is what I was on about. You three - vested interests all - have to jump on that, in an effort to besmear climate science? Is that the level you're at?
What is the message, exactiy? There's more Polar Bears, so therefore there isn't a climate issue? I guess it goes with the kind of thinking that more people will make us richer.
As I said, the joke is that climate change (and the funding for the rebuttals comes fron the carbon-producers, let's face it) won't be the first cab off the rank - sheer depletion, cherry-picked EROEI's, and desperate contention, will play out first. Which will snuff the fiscal system as we know it. About then, the climate will start it's feed-back loops.
Of course, the three little piggies will be unemployed at that point, and perhaps none too popular.
Interesting, from the BBC, an interview about Iceland.
Starts at about minute 13
I saw this comment on an AEP article, makes one think about the states
poldark 07/31/2011 11:43 PM Recommended by
11 people Buddy can you spare a dime?
I saw a food giveaway happen yesterday morning at 7:00am. 30,000 men,
women and children lined up in heat that reached 97 degrees by noon.
They stood in lines for over 2 hours apiece to get a box with crackers,
mac-n-cheese, mustard, juice, ramen noodles, cocktail sauce, cookies and
a package of breaded chicken patties.
This is in a county with
approximately 150,000 people. 1 in 5 people needed to stand there to
get free food. Nothing particularly good, or even healthy, but they
were obviously hungry. Not dirty, not gross, just hungry. About 1/3
were elderly. I saw several older people with oxygen tanks in carts,
trying to breathe in the humid heat, and yes, they had to stand in line
for two hours like the rest.
...
/>I wish I could make our
congresswomen and men all stand in that line. They wouldn't have to
take the food. Just stand there and talk to the people who were willing
to put up with those conditions, just to get some noodles and
condiments. But they keep not-voting
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/86735…
We welcome your comments below. If you are not already registered, please register to comment.
Remember we welcome robust, respectful and insightful debate. We don't welcome abusive or defamatory comments and will de-register those repeatedly making such comments. Our current comment policy is here.