Mimicking Earth's magnetic field in a giant thermos bottle David Chandler, MIT News Office March 19, 2008 Source An MIT and Columbia University team has successfully tested a novel reactor that could chart a new path toward nuclear fusion, which could become a safe, reliable and nearly limitless source of energy. Begun in 1998, the Levitated Dipole Experiment, or LDX, uses a uniquby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"There were important developments this week that seemed to indicate an important inflection point may have been reached. Energy price instability took a decided turn for the worst; global inflationary concerns ratcheted higher; dollar vulnerability reemerged; financial stocks were crushed; and, importantly, the U.S. Credit system demonstrated its greatest instability in aby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>'``Banking in a fractional reserve, fiat money world is inherently a non-market exercise in legalized deceit,'' says Corrigan at Diapason. ``The unfettered finance which it allows is all too prone to wreak a devil-take-the-hindmost havoc once it becomes unanchored from reality and succumbs instead to the intense, positive feedbacks which operate within it on bothby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"It is only natural to cast about for a solution—any solution—to avoid the fiscal pain we know is necessary because we succumbed to complacency and put off dealing with this looming fiscal disaster. Throughout history, many nations, when confronted by sizable debts they were unable or unwilling to repay, have seized upon an apparently painless solution to this dilemma: moneby ProjectC - Project C
By Bryan Appleyard June 1, 2008 Source A noisy cafe in Newport Beach, California. Nassim Nicholas Taleb is eating three successive salads, carefully picking out anything with a high carbohydrate content. He is telling me how to live. “The only way you can say ‘F*** you’ to fate is by saying it’s not going to affect how I live. So if somebody puts you to death, make sure you shave.” Afby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"Because al-Qa'ida is a way of thinking, not an army. It feeds on pain and fear and cruelty – our cruelty and oppression – and as long as we continue to dominate the Muslim world with our Apache helicopters and our tanks and our Humvees and our artillery and bombs and our "friendly" dictators, so will al-Qa'ida continue. Must we live this madness thby ProjectC - Project C
By Joschka Fischer Friday, May 30, 2008 Source (First read) As a result of misguided American policy, the threat of another military confrontation hangs like a dark cloud over the Middle East. The United States' enemies have been strengthened, and Iran - despite being branded as a member of the so-called "axis of evil" - has been catapulted into regional hegemony. Iran couldby ProjectC - Project C
By Philip Aldrick 01/06/2008 Source As banks look to shore up their balance sheets in the wake of the credit squeeze, Philip Aldrick asks whether it is all short-term trickery 'We are in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s," warns the eminent financier George Soros in his latest book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets. It's a rather extreme view, buby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"John P. Doherty and Richard F. Hans, law partners at Thacher Proffitt & Wood, argue that the UBS-Paramax case is only the beginning of lawsuits relating to credit default swaps."</blockquote> First Comes the Swap. Then It’s the Knives. By GRETCHEN MORGENSON June 1, 2008 Source INVESTORS don’t often get a peek inside the vast, opaque and unregulaby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"The current focus is on reforming the financial system. This is like discussing lifestyle changes with a patient admitted to ER in full cardiac arrest. What is needed is the defibrillator paddles!"</blockquote> The End of the Beginning – Developments in the Credit Crisis By Satyajit Das May 27, 2008 Source Satyajit Das is a risk consultant and authoby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"...to sustain a higher standard of living, the production structure—the capital structure—must be permanently “lengthened.” As more and more capital is added and maintained in civilized economies, more and more funds must be used just to maintain and replace the larger structure. This means higher gross savings, savings that must be sustained and invested in each higher stby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"Many of our present-day problems arise when a group seeks to impose its vision, believing there is only one solution, and that solution is, of course: its solution. This is fundamentalism. There are many kinds and degrees of fundamentalism, some more destructive than others, but the fundamentalism I am referring to is that which is convinced that our ideas are the only reaby ProjectC - Project C
IEA Official Says Supplies May Plateau Below Expected Demand By NEIL KING JR. and PETER FRITSCH May 22, 2008; Page A1 Source The world's premier energy monitor is preparing a sharp downward revision of its oil-supply forecast, a shift that reflects deepening pessimism over whether oil companies can keep abreast of booming demand. The Paris-based International Energy Agency is in tby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>“The proposals are extraordinary. This is Alice-in-Wonderland accounting.” -- A Goldman official</blockquote> Alice-in-Wonderland Accounting By Mike "Mish" Shedlock May 26, 2008 Source Banks and brokers have been scrambling like mad to raise capital in the wake of declining asset prices. In response, some top banks would prefer to pretend that problby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"For a long time men failed to realize that the transition from the classical theory of value to the subjective theory of value was much more than the substitution of a more satisfactory theory of market exchange for a less satisfactory one. The general theory of choice and preference goes far beyond the horizon which encompassed the scope of economic problems as circumscriby ProjectC - Project C
By Erik Kirschbaum; editing by James Jukwey May 24, 2008 By REUTERS Source BERLIN (Reuters) - The United States is already in a recession and it will be longer as well as deeper than many people expect, U.S. investor Warren Buffett said in an interview published in German magazine Der Spiegel on Saturday. He said the United States was "already in recession" and added: "Perby ProjectC - Project C
By Mike "Mish" Shedlock May 24, 2008 Source The price of oil has been soaring and nut case solutions are coming out of the woodwork in response. I have talked about this twice recently in Congress Threatens Oil Producers and Congressional Insanity: Sue OPEC over Oil Prices. But as silly as those actions are, it is nothing compared to the stark raving lunacy proposed by Martin Huby ProjectC - Project C
The XO2 looks and acts like an electronic book BBC News 21 May 2008 Source The wraps have been taken off the new version of the XO laptop designed for schoolchildren in developing countries. The revamped machine created by the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project looks like an e-book and has had its price slashed to $75 per device. OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte gave a glimpse oby ProjectC - Project C
"Backshall and his clients aren't the only ones spooked by the prospect of a CDS catastrophe. Billionaire investor George Soros says a chain reaction of failures in the swaps market could trigger the next global financial crisis. ... The Fed was worried about the biggest players in the CDS market, Mason says. ``It was a JPMorgan bailout, not a bailout of Bear,'' he says.by ProjectC - Project C
"In the US after 2000, the solution was to expand the money supply still further, overriding the market’s natural deflationary corrective mechanisms by forcing real interest rates down to well below zero. That, allied to the “creativity” of the housing finance sector produced a boom in housing that was unprecedented in the United States. When that in turn led to disaster, the Fed over-expandby ProjectC - Project C
By Jonathan Fildes Science and technology reporter, BBC News 19 May 2008 Source The world's most powerful laser has heated matter to 10 million Celsius, hotter than the surface of the Sun. The Vulcan laser concentrated energy equivalent to 100 times the world's electricity production into a spot just a few millionths of a metre across. Writing in the New Journal of Physics,by ProjectC - Project C
"I’ll posit this evening that the entire issue of “central bankers vs. asset Bubbles” has become little more than A Red Herring. While it is as of yet too early in the unfolding financial and economic crisis for “consensus opinion” to have reached a similar conclusion, in reality contemporary monetary management can already be proclaimed an unmitigated failure. Cloaked in ideology and a flby ProjectC - Project C
George Soros retired as a multibillionaire. But now he's back, hedging his wealth against what he calls the worst economic crisis in 75 years. Interview by Eric Schurenberg, Money Magazine managing editor May 14, 2008 Source (Money Magazine) -- Broke and friendless in postwar London, having just spent his last penny on food, 22-year-old George Soros made the first of a lifetime of prby ProjectC - Project C
William Pentland 05.14.08 Source In 2001, a water shortage in America's Pacific Northwest wiped out nearly a third of the U.S. aluminum industry. Low precipitation levels in the Cascade Mountains during the preceding winter robbed local reservoirs of the water needed to turn the massive turbines inside the region's main hydroelectric power plant, the Bonneville Power Administratioby ProjectC - Project C
By Jonathan Amos Science reporter, BBC News 13 May 2008 Source A plan for a manned spacecraft has been announced by the European firm EADS. Its Astrium division has designed a variant of its space station freighter that could also transport astronauts. Limited details were released in Bremen, Germany, on Tuesday; further information and a mock-up are expected at the Berlin Air Show thby ProjectC - Project C
"Woodruff: You write, "We are at the end of an era." When this current credit crisis ends, will the US still be, no doubt about it, the world superpower when it comes to the economy? Soros: Not at all. This is now in question. And you now have entered a period of really considerable uncertainty and turmoil because of the general flight from currencies, which manifests itself inby ProjectC - Project C
By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: May 12, 2008 Source “The Oil Bubble: Set to Burst?” That was the headline of an October 2004 article in National Review, which argued that oil prices, then $50 a barrel, would soon collapse. Ten months later, oil was selling for $70 a barrel. “It’s a huge bubble,” declared Steve Forbes, the publisher, who warned that the coming crash in oil prices would make theby ProjectC - Project C
"Galvez proposed creation of "an integrated multi-stakeholder forum, council, or a committee on financing for development." It would include national government representatives who sit on the policy organs of the UN, IMF, World Bank, and WTO, plus representatives of UN agencies, members of civil society, and private sector organizations. Its objective would be to undertake an integby ProjectC - Project C
"And it is not only government policymakers grappling with today’s new reality: the extreme uncertainty with regard to future pricing and availability of critical resources. Industries throughout the U.S. and global economies now confront a fundamentally altered environment, where the pricing and availability of key inputs can no longer be taken for granted. For many, the whole idea of “jby ProjectC - Project C
By LOREN STEFFY May 8, 2008 Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle Source The fear in Wednesday's stock decline was palpable. Wall Street was responding to the specter of transparency the way it always does — with alarm. Big brokerage firms, led by Merrill Lynch and Lehman Bros., plunged after the nation's top securities cop called for more disclosure of Wall Street's financby ProjectC - Project C