<blockquote>'Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at Public Citizen, a Washington-based consumer group, doesn't care when the peak will come. "We should be planning as though we're there," he said, "because from a national interest standpoint, from an economic standpoint and from an environmental standpoint, our dependence on oil, whether it comesby ProjectC - Project C
A SEARCH FOR EUROPE'S FUTURE And the Wheels Stopped Turning By Jürgen Habermas 06/18/2008 Source European governments are at their wits' end. It is time for them to admit it -- and let the public decide about the future of the European Union. …and everything comes to a grinding halt. The farmers are upset about falling global prices and the new regulations constantly coby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"In JPMorgan Chase’s and Citigroup’s earnings conference calls, both major lenders this week noted deterioration in prime mortgages. This provides additional confirmation that the mortgage crisis is now reaching the bedrock of our nation’s mortgage Credit system. ...a tightening in “conventional” mortgages will now significantly exacerbate the mortgage/housing/financial/eby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>“We the people are enjoined to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, and to promote the general welfare and to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. So it’s up to each of us to summon our unique genius, our own power and our own personal magic to restore these values in today’s imbalanced society.” -- John C. Boby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"Also, Alexander Rahr supported the idea of Central Asian States representatives, namely Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, to take part in the work of Yalta European Strategy summits in future. "These countries shall have a great importance for Ukraine", he stressed."</blockquote> In 2020 it will be easier for Ukraine to enter the EU YESby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"If by "we," Mr. Poole meant his employer, he was off the mark, for the Fed has burnished Wall Street's hide more than skinned it. The shareholders of Bear Stearns were ruined, it's true, but Wall Street called the loss a bargain in view of the risks that an insolvent Bear would have presented to the derivatives-laced financial system. To facilitate theby ProjectC - Project C
By JANET RAE-DUPREE July 6, 2008 Source WHY do some people reach their creative potential in business while other equally talented peers don’t? After three decades of painstaking research, the Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck believes that the answer to the puzzle lies in how people think about intelligence and talent. Those who believe they were born with all the smarts and gifts they’rby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"The discovery of the inescapable interdependence of market phenomena overthrew this opinion. Bewildered, people had to face a new view of society. They learned with stupefaction that there is another aspect from which human action might be viewed than that of good and bad, of fair and unfair, of just and unjust. In the course of social events there prevails a regularity ofby ProjectC - Project C
<blockquote>"Since 9/11, Westerners have tried two approaches to fight terrorism in Pakistan, President Bush’s and Greg Mortenson’s. Mr. Bush has focused on military force... Mr. Mortenson, a frumpy, genial man from Montana, takes a diametrically opposite approach, and he has spent less than one-ten-thousandth as much as the Bush administration. He builds schools in isolated paby ProjectC - Project C
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