By Bina Venkataraman Tuesday, July 15, 2008 Source What if "eating local" in Shanghai or New York meant getting your fresh produce from five blocks away? And what if skyscrapers grew off the grid, as verdant, self-sustaining towers where city slickers cultivated their own food? Dr. Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, hopes to make these zuccby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too lby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"The European and the Mediterranean dreams are inseparable. Everyone is going to have to make an effort, as the Europeans did, to put an end to the deadly spiral of war and violence, that, century after century, periodically brought barbarity to the heart of civilization." -- Sarkozy</blockquote> Bold Mediterranean summit opens diplomatic doors By Stevenby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"...learn to love each other." -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy</blockquote> Mediterranean region needs love: Sarkozy The Sydney Morning Herald July 13, 2008 Source The new union between Europe and its Mediterranean neighbours will help countries in the region "learn to love each other", French President Nicolas Sarkozy said. Sarkozyby ProjectC - Project C
By Yves Smith July 12, 2008 Source Nouriel Roubini has consistently been accurate in predicting the course of our snowballing credit crisis, and has also made some important intellectual contributions to the discussion. such as how the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system has lessons for the future of our Bretton Woods 2 currency program. But in my view, Roubini's post today is hisby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"The Federal Reserve stopped paying much attention to the data a long time ago. It has abolished M3 altogether. The US economic consensus is New-Keynesian (dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model). Delving into the money entrails is derided as little better than soothsaying. That attitude, retort monetarists, is the root cause of the credit bubble. The money supplby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"At the end of the day, however, my sneaking suspicion is that randomness all too often parades as design and serendipity belies control. The behavior of states, even great powers, seems to be a messy affair. It is shaped not only by a mesmerizing mix of complex factors within the “black box” of decision-making, but also by behavior that often reflects a lack of careful preby ProjectC - Project C
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 08/07/2008 Source Bridgewater Associates has issued an apocalyptic warning to clients that bank losses from the worldwide credit crisis may reach $1,600bn (£800bn), four times official estimates and enough to pose a grave risk to the financial system. The giant US hedge fund said that it doubted whether lenders would be able to shoulder the full losses, disguiseby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"It is the great merit of the proponents of Austrian theory to have uncovered and shown that the borrowing and spending excesses driving a boom may, with or without inflation, exert harmful economic and financial effects other than just a rising inflation rate - actually, more harmful effects." -- Dr Kurt Richebächer, The Great Depression of today, Wed 01 Mar, 2006 &lby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"I find it rather incredible that U.S. and European policymakers are increasingly pointing blame and calling upon their emerging economy cohorts to aggressively combat inflation. With the U.S. today stuck with intractable $700bn Current Account Deficits and European Credit systems still churning out double-digit Credit growth, the Periphery is not the root cause of today’sby ProjectC - Project C
By Masego Madzwamuse 17 June 2008 Source International development policies are undermining the long term survival of some of the globe's poorest communities, argues Masego Madzwamuse. In this week's Green Room, she says the skills and knowledge needed to survive in the world's harsh drylands are being sacrificed in the name of progress. The world's poorest of the poorby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"In the real world, an artificial boost in demand that is not supported by production leads to the dilution of the pool of real savings and, contrary to the Keynesian view, to a shrinking in the flow of real wealth. The result is economic impoverishment."</blockquote> Is Something Out of Nothing Possible? By Frank Shostak 2/22/2008 Source In his tesby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"Our debt problems today are of a magnitude so extreme that astronomers would be hard pressed to calculate them. By any rational measure our society is comprehensively bankrupt. From the federal treasury down to the suburban cul-de-sacs so much loaned money is either not being paid back, or is at risk of never being paid back, that the suckage of presumed wealth has passedby ProjectC - Project C
By Bill Moyers & Michael Winship June 27, 2008 Source Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn't a war about oil. That's cynical and simplistic, they said. It's about terror and al Qaeda and toppling a dictator and spreading democracy and protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. But one by one, these concocted rationales went up in smoke, fire, and ashes. And now the bby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"The experience of the 20th century should have taught us that, regardless of where the Berlin Wall once stood and where the borders of the Schengen Zone run today, there is just one single European history, bound together deep in its heart by a funeral courtege of which we are often quite unaware (and which takes us by surprise when parts of it suddenly surface). Just as tby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"Because the Russians feel duped. And because NATO refuses to ratify the "modified" CSE Treaty because Moscow has not yet emptied a storage facility of obsolete weapons in the small Republic of Moldova. Almost 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, weapons in the new NATO member states are still counted toward the upper limits the CSE Treaty imposed on the noby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"So he presented this problem as an international problem. But it wasn’t picked up by the Western press as such, in fact it wasn’t picked up by the State Department as such. It was just immediately responded to as Russia tries to push down the independent movement," and so forth. And I have to say that I myself, definitely not a defender of either Putin or military acby ProjectC - Project C
By Jim Kunstler June 23, 2008 Source The telling moment last week was Robert Hirsch's appearance on the CNBC morning "Squawkbox" financial show in which he proposed the probability of $500-a-barrel oil within "a three-to-five-year time-frame." Squawkhead Becky Quick was clearly nonplussed by the stolid Mr. Hirsch, author of a (then)-startling 2005 US Dept of Eneby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"As should be obvious by now, the current hyper-inflation in energy and food prices risks global chaos. There is today such a robust inflationary bias in globally priced necessities that spectacular (NASDAQ1999) price moves have become the norm rather than the exception. As such, U.S. monetary policy that accommodates $700bn Current Account Deficits and massive speculativby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"...But for Smith the division of labour took on swollen and gigantic importance, putting into the shade such crucial matters as capital accumulation and the growth of technological knowledge. As Schumpeter has pointed out, never for any economist before or since did the division of labour assume such a position of commanding importance." -- Murray N. Rothbard, The Cby ProjectC - Project C
(Part I & Part II) The theory of money We have seen that David Hume's famous elucidation of the price-specie-flow mechanism in international monetary relations, though attractively written, was itself a deterioration from the pioneering and highly sophisticated analysis of Richard Cantillon. It was, however, better than nothing. Yet, as Jacob Viner put it, 'One of the mysterieby ProjectC - Project C
(Part I) The theory of value Adam Smith's doctrine on value was an unmitigated disaster, and it deepens the mystery in explaining Smith. For in this case, not only was Smith's theory of value a degeneration from his teacher Hutcheson and indeed from centuries of developed economic thought, but it was also a similar degeneration from Smith's own previous unpublished lectures.by ProjectC - Project C
The Celebrated Adam Smith By Murray N. Rothbard Source (Originally published as chapter 16 in An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Vol. I, Edward Elgar Press, 1995; Mises Institute, 2006. Sources on this chapter.) The mystery of Adam Smith Adam Smith (1723-90) is a mystery in a puzzle wrapped in an enigma. The mystery is the enormous and unprecedented gap betweenby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"The credit default swap was invented a few years ago by a young Cambridge University mathematics graduate, Blythe Masters, hired by JP Morgan Chase Bank in New York and who, fresh from university, convinced her new bosses to develop the revolutionary new risk product. ... The Fed bailout of Bear Stearns on March 17 this year was motivated, in part, by a desire toby ProjectC - Project C
By Stephen Lendman June 16, 2008 Source ( First read ) Information for this article comes from long-time business, finance and political writer and analyst Bob Chapman who publishes the bi-weekly International Forecaster. It's power-packed with key information and a valued source for this writer. He obtained voluminous material directly from its source. People need to know it. Readby ProjectC - Project C
By Julian Delasantellis Jun 5, 2008 Source Most men, it is generally agreed, will do anything to survive. In my favorite World War II/Holocaust movie, Lina Wertmuller's 1975 Seven Beauties, a harmless little nebbish of an Italian petty thief, Pasqualino (Giancarlo Giannini), finds himself in a horrible, hellish Nazi concentration camp; the camp setting is some sort of huge, enclosed, iby ProjectC - Project C
Stage Two of the Mortgage Collapse: $500 Billion in Pay Option ARMs Meet the Piper in 2008 with 60 Percent Being in California. By Dr. Housing Bubble June 14th, 2008 Source The next stage of the mortgage debacle is only starting to rear its ugly head and all early signs tell us that this is going to be even worse than the subprime mortgage collapse. We need to remember that the subprime mby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"I have argued that the Fed’s latest reflation would prove problematic. On the one hand, reflationary forces would bypass burst Bubbles in Wall Street finance and U.S. real estate markets. On the other, an over abundance of cheap U.S. and global liquidity would further destabilize heightened inflationary pressures globally and stoke Acute Monetary Disorder. As has becomeby ProjectC - Project C
By DAVID BROOKS Published: June 10, 2008 Source The people who created this country built a moral structure around money. The Puritan legacy inhibited luxury and self-indulgence. Benjamin Franklin spread a practical gospel that emphasized hard work, temperance and frugality. Millions of parents, preachers, newspaper editors and teachers expounded the message. The result was quite remarkable.by ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"Mises’ contribution was very simple, yet at the same time extremely profound. He pointed out that the whole economy is the result of what individuals do. Individuals act, choose, cooperate, compete, and trade with one another. In this way Mises explained how complex market phenomena develop. Mises did not simply describe economic phenomena — prices, wages, interest rates,by ProjectC - Project C