By Jim Kunstler November 26, 2007 Source¨ The great debate among those of us on the Economy Deathwatch seems to be whether the debacle we observe around us will resolve as a crash or a slow-motion financial train wreck. It seems to me that at every layer of the system, we're susceptible to both -- in tradable paper, institutional legitimacy, individual solvency, productive activity, reaby ProjectC - Project C
Mandriva has been selected as 'Product of the Year 2007' in the Linux category at the Softool exhibition in Moscow. Mandriva.com 2007 Source The 'Product of the Year 2007' competition was held by the department of information technologies and computing systems of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Federal Agency of Information Technologies, the publishing house SK Prby ProjectC - Project C
"...I wish to add that I am not a "gold bug". I would much prefer to live in a world in which central banks' top priority was to safeguard paper money's purchasing power and its function as a "store of value". I would also much rather live in a world in which the US dollar was a strong currency, and where America was as free as it was in the 1960s, and the econoby ProjectC - Project C
"Exclusive of the stockmarket and the protection of business from any contagious slump, three factors entered into the making of this tax cut plan: 1) Budget estimates which tentatively fixed next year's expenditures at $3,830,000,000, a reduction of $111,000,000 below this year's amount, indicative of a surplus at least equal to the size of the reduction in revenue; 2) A secret reby ProjectC - Project C
"When government cannot be eliminated, structures should be established that make resource allocation and regulation as automatic as possible, so that politics and lobbying can play little role. ... One could imagine a system, technically democratic, that worked somewhat like the Catholic Church, in which only the President/Pope was elected, for a life term, and election was by a Colleby ProjectC - Project C
By Jim Kunstler November 12, 2007 Source The multi-dimensional meltdown underway in the finance sector illustrates perfectly how the complex systems we depend on start to wobble and fail as soon as peak oil establishes itself as a fact in the public imagination. Mainly what it shows is that we don't have to run out of oil -- or even come close to that -- before the trouble starby ProjectC - Project C
"...Blue collar workers lost bargaining power catastrophically following the peak of the 1973 cycle, and since 2000 their failure has been accompanied by a more generalized loss of bargaining power by white collar workers and all toilers below the level of top management. Employers no longer feel compelled to offer their workforce either a decent wage or the most basic of healthcare benefitsby ProjectC - Project C
By Chen Nan Yang September 29, 2007 Source 2,500 years ago, the Chinese philosopher Confucius asked Lao-tzu, the founder of Taoism, "What is Tao?" Lao-tzu opened his mouth but said nothing. Confucius left with a smile, but his students were puzzled. Confucius explained, "Lao-tzu has passed us the Tao. In his mouth, there are no teeth but only a tongue. The hard ones (teeth) diby ProjectC - Project C
Government thwarts supplier's plan to install Windows XP By Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service November 09, 2007 Source Microsoft may not have beaten French Linux vendor Mandriva in a large deal to supply Nigerian elementary schools with laptop computers and software after all. Mandriva had closed a deal in mid-August to provide a customised Linux operating system and support for 17,00by ProjectC - Project C
The saga continues. J. *** UPDATED: Lockhart to Cuomo: Unclear on the Concept By Tanta Friday, November 09, 2007 Source See end of post for update. The plot thickens on the WaMu/eAppraiseIT front. Yves at naked capitalism runs it down: James Lockhart, head of OFHEO, fires off irritated letter to Cuomo about the latter's public involvement of Fannie and Freddie in the mess wby ProjectC - Project C
(First read: Source) Questions - Lore 1, Lore 2. J. (Book of Mozilla - Wikipedia) "Don't exploit the poor, because he is poor; And don't crush the needy in court." -- Proverbs 22:22 "For Yahweh will plead their case, And plunder the life of those who plunder them." -- Proverbs 22:23 *** "But a footnote pointed out that the cash flow frby ProjectC - Project C
By Jim Kunstler November 5, 2007 Source One of the biggest laughs of the season came out of a New York Times business section story last Tuesday by reporter Michael Grynbaum, who wrote, "Oil is on a steady march toward toppling the inflation-adjusted high of $101.70 it set in April 1980, analysts said, though many are at a loss as to what keeps driving the price." (Italics minby ProjectC - Project C
'In fact, Cewers has actually become somewhat of a supporter of the ban, although she continues to believe that prostitution should be abolished altogether. "It's true: There are no happy whores. Most of the ones I've met here over the years were sexually abused by relatives when they were young and have serious emotional problems," she says. "Not much of this is aboby ProjectC - Project C
By Robert Jaques 8 November 2007 Source Canadian researchers have promised to squeeze "decades" of cancer research into just two years by harnessing the power of a global PC grid.. The research team is led by Dr Igor Jurisica at the Ontario Cancer Institute, and scientists at Princess Margaret Hospital and University Health Network. The scientists are the first from Canada toby ProjectC - Project C
How to heal? J. *** 'About 1m Russians have served in Chechnya over the past decade. Babchenko says that they returned from the ordeal consumed with hatred for authority, indeed for the world. He describes the cripples, their bodies wrecked in the war, who haunt the Moscow subway, singing as they beg: “They sing terribly, but that doesn’t bother them. They hate the people they aby ProjectC - Project C
"Thus the valuation of a complex financial engineered product (i) may not be generally agreed among market participants, (ii) may quite simply be wrong (iii) may be proved hopelessly flawed by new discoveries about the underlying asset class or (iv) may be affected by distorted incentives so that the owners of the product, the banks concerned, receive different rewards from the agents controby ProjectC - Project C
"A friend of mine who knows nearly all the widely used languages uses Python for most of his projects. He says the main reason is that he likes the way source code looks. That may seem a frivolous reason to choose one language over another. But it is not so frivolous as it sounds: when you program, you spend more time reading code than writing it. You push blobs of source code around the wayby ProjectC - Project C
By Dave Dubyne (Language Matters) October 21, 2007 Source As energy jitters continue to rattle the global economy, regional alliances are being solidified to ensure that China will remain a viable and growing economy as oil depletion becomes a permanent fixture of our daily lives. As cheap trans-oceanic shipping of non-essential goods goes the way of the dinosaurs, these new partnershipsby ProjectC - Project C
"Granted, these dynamics have been evolving for some time now. What has changed is the speed and breadth of financial crisis enveloping the U.S. financial system. When I read of mounting energy and food shortages and witness the unfolding run on the U.S. financial sector, as an analyst I must contemplate the likelihood we have entered a uniquely unstable monetary environment. In short, the bby ProjectC - Project C
By Logan Ward Video by Virtual Beauty Video Produced by Allyson Torrisi Photograph by Gregg Segal Published in the November 2007 issue. Source Hod Lipson didn’t set out to revolutionize manufacturing. He just wanted to design a really cool robot, one that could “evolve” by reprogramming itself and would also produce its own hardware—a software brain, if you will, with the ability to creatby ProjectC - Project C
What is the meaning of to be alive? J. *** "In America's darkest hour, Franklin Delano Roosevelt urged the nation not to succumb to "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." ... Just to be clear, Al Qaeda is a real threat, and so is the Iranian nuclear program. But neither of these threats frightens me as much as fear itself -- the unreasoning fear that has taken oby ProjectC - Project C
By Stephen S. Roach 10/22/2007 Source After nearly five fat years, the global economy is headed for trouble. This will come as a surprise to policy makers and investors, alike-most of who were counting on boom times to continue. At work is yet another post-bubble adjustment in the world's largest economy - this time, the bursting of America's massive property bubble. The subprimby ProjectC - Project C
By Alastair Otter & James Archibald 24 October, 2007 Source Open Document format (ODF) yesterday became an official standard for South African government communications. The ODF standard is included in the government's Mininimum Interoperability Standards for Information Systems in government (MIOS) released yesterday. In the foreword to the document, department of public servby ProjectC - Project C
By Tom Sanders 24 October 2007 Source Redmond forced to provide free, irrevocable patent pledge to non-commercial open source.. Microsoft's compliance with the 2004 EU anti-trust ruling offering some good news to open source developers and users. The agreement will make it much easier for commercial and especially open source providers to create products that work with Microsoft pby ProjectC - Project C
'The report presents a bleak view of the future unless a radically different approach is adopted. It quotes the British energy economist David Fleming as saying: "Anticipated supply shortages could lead easily to disturbing scenes of mass unrest as witnessed in Burma this month. For government, industry and the wider public, just muddling through is not an option any more as this situatby ProjectC - Project C
Energy Watch Group, press release via YubaNet 23 October 2007 Source According to a newly published global oil supply report to be presented by the Energy Watch Group at the Foreign Press Association in London, world oil production peaked in 2006. Production will start to decline at a rate of several percent per year. By 2020, and even more by 2030, global oil supply will be dramatically lowby ProjectC - Project C
Global Peak Oil Period 2005 - 2010. J. *** ( The Oil Drum ) Report: 'World at peak oil output' CNN Oct 24, 2007 Source LONDON, England (CNN) -- The world has reached the point of maximum oil output and production levels will halve by 2030 -- a situation that will eventually lead to war and disaster, a report claims. The German-based Energy Watch Group released aby ProjectC - Project C
"Finance is the lifeblood of commerce; to expect the general economy to prosper if the internal malfunctions of the finance sector are rendering it unable to fulfill its traditional function as an intermediary between lender and borrower is about as realistic as assuming a body can survive without a circulatory system. In contrast, using the prosperity of America's overpriced, gold-platby ProjectC - Project C
The First Crisis of Financial Globalization and Securitization. And the Coming Generalized Credit Crunch Nouriel Roubini Oct 22, 2007 Source Project Syndicate has recently published a comment of mine on the "First Crisis of Financial Globalization and Securitization". And I presented similar views at a seminar at the recent annual meetings of the IMF. A more extensive version oby ProjectC - Project C
"You learn in college through journalistic writing that every good story should have a compelling protagonist. It makes the story personal. So we will hear about Joe or Michelle in relation to an article. It is a template many journalist follow." Blame it on the Ritz: Market Psychology. Blame the Downturn on Homebuilders and Banks. By Dr. Housing Bubble October 16th, 2007 Sourby ProjectC - Project C