Financial crisis is not over

Feeling scared yet?
I am. Remember that movie with Sandra Bullock driving that bus that would blow up if she slowed down?
It feels sort of like that.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is one of the few journalists who says it like it is:

Judging by the latest Merrill Lynch survey of fund managers, investors have a touching faith that China is going to rescue us all and re-ignite the commodity boom. How can this be? Taiwan's exports to China fell 55pc in January, Japan's fell 45pc. These exports are links in the supply chain for China's industry. Manufacturing output in the Shanghai region fell 12pc in January.

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The property bubble is bursting. Developers have built more offices in Beijing since 2006 than the entire stock in Manhattan. There is a 14-year supply glut. We have seen this movie before.

Factory output is collapsing at the fastest pace everywhere. The figures for the most recent month available are, year-on-year: Taiwan (-43pc), Ukraine (-34pc), Japan (-30pc), Singapore (-29pc), Hungary (-23pc), Sweden (-20pc), Korea (-19pc), Turkey (-18pc), Russia (-16pc), Spain (-15pc), Poland (-15pc), Brazil (-15pc), Italy (-14pc), Germany (-12pc), France (-11pc), US (-10pc) and Britain (-9pc). Norway sails blissfully on (+4pc). What do they drink up there?

This terrifying fall has been concentrated in the last five months. The job slaughter has barely begun. Social mayhem comes with a 12-month lag. By comparison, industrial output in core-Europe fell 2.8pc in 1930, 5.1pc in 1931 and 3.9pc in 1932, according to RBS.

source

This is the financial avalanche that's about to hit us.

Meanwhile, the climate avalanche is also gathering speed:

CHICAGO, Feb. 14 -- The pace of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions, because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased more quickly than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems, scientists said Saturday.

"We are basically looking now at a future climate that's beyond anything we've considered seriously in climate model simulations," Christopher Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
source

As for the third shockwave, the end of the era of cheap energy, well, just read this.



We are in for a world of hurt.
There is no way for a person to prepare for this. Our governments should be pulling out all the stops but they are not.

Actually, scared does not even begin to describe it.

The triple whammy is coming together

... over the next five to ten years.

1. Economic crisis - it's only started, really.

2. Climate change - I think we are past the point where we could still change this stampede to a walk. We do take the availibility of food for granted, don't we.

3. Peaking oil production, because... well, there simply is no more to pump up. This might be masked somewhat by the economic crisis, but at some point it will become glaringly obvious.


This spoilt, complacent ME generation won't know what hit it.

I have been watching this train wreck develop over the last twenty years.
Ever since I read the Club of Rome report, and started to read up on it all.
It's a bitter thing, to see. Very frustrating too, I have become intimately acquainted with the term "alarmist" and finally learned to shut up.

We are so very fucked.

I agree with Johann Hari:

"All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don't respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don't respect the idea that we should follow a "Prophet" who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him. I don't respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don't respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice. When you demand "respect", you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for
you as a human being to engage in that charade."

It's a shame he is pilloried for saying this.

This financial crisis

... it's only starting.
We are on the beach and watching the water recede.
Hardly anyone realises how much it collects and builds,
but soon it will rush back and crash over us all.

There is a world of pain heading our way.
We are only at the beginning of a really dark time.
Mark my words.

May you never...

He died today.
Too soon, too soon.
This is the saddest news.

John Martyn.
Thank you for the music.

The BBC leaves me stunned

Simply gobsmacked!

The BBC has refused to broadcast a national humanitarian appeal for Gaza, leaving aid agencies with a potential shortfall of millions of pounds in donations.

The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), an umbrella organisation for 13 aid charities, launched its appealtoday saying the devastation in Gaza was "so huge that British aid agencies were compelled to act".

But the BBC made a rare breach of an agreement dating back to 1963 when it announced it would not give free airtime to the appeal. Other broadcasters then followed suit. Previously, broadcasters have agreed on the video and script to be used with the DEC, with each station choosing a presenter to front the appeal, shown after primetime news bulletins.

The BBC said it was not the first time broadcasters had refused to show a DEC appeal.

The corporation said it had been concerned about the difficulties of getting aid through to victims in a volatile situation. The BBC, which has faced criticism in the past over alleged bias in its coverage of the Middle East, said it did not want to risk public confidence in its impartiality.

source

What on earth does this have to do with impartiality??!!
Gaza has been devatstated. Many are homeless, without shelter, without medical care, without electricity, without food, without. They need.

Impartiality
Wha.... huh..... ???
(insert sound of jaw hitting the ground)

It must be the most discriminatory, racist thing I have seen in many years.

European freedom of speech

Yesterday, the Netherlands made headlines with the Amsterdam court verdict that Geert Wilders, a rightwing Dutch MP, has to face trial for hate speech.

This is the truth - we do not have real freedom of speech in Europe, in many countries there are hate speech laws. Considering our recent collective past however, that is not so surprising. I consider this a useful tool that should be very sparingly and judiciously used. In this instance, it would have been better to engage in spirited public debate instead of prosecution in a court of law. In my opinion, this does not warrant prosecution.

Today my attention was caught by a blog cataloguing a far more grievous freedom of speech issues, in one of our new EU countries, Latvia, in November 2008 (I expect it's ongoing still).

I find it shocking. Shocking that this is one of the EU and NATO member countries (since 2004), one who also has a voice in how the rest of Europe is governed.
(In my opinion, in a mad dash to expand, far too many countries were granted admission far too quickly. This only serves to strengthen my opinion. )

This is also a freedom of speech issue but while the first -which I hesitantly approve of- is intended to prevent hate crimes, the second seems to be designed mainly for repression.

I could go through the EU countries one at a time and find similar issues.
The right of free speech is still a far too rare jewel in Europe, no matter what treaties we sign. Looking at the actions of the EU towards Ireland, France and the Netherlands of late (the latter two with enthusiastic co-operation of their leaders) regarding the European Constitution Treaty, I would say we are moving back towards more repressive times, and not enlightenment, prosperity and freedom.