Comments on: Green Shoots and White Lies

By: Bob

Bob — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:02:32 +0000

Lila:
Somebody once said “copper has a Phd in economics”. The price of copper is double what it was in January. Want to know what is happening? Watch the price trend for copper.
Have a great week!
Bob

By: David Brat

David Brat — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:35:03 +0000

Very nice critique of “green shoots.” Never bought it myself. But do you have any ratios or proxies related to debt, foreclosures, commercial real estate etc.. which “will” bring an end to false dawn?

By: Mulga Mumblebrain

Mulga Mumblebrain — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:16:50 +0000

mary, the brain dead ‘Austrayan’ mainstream will awake, possibly, at one minute to midnight, realise that they are stuffed and start looking for scape-goats. Stupidity, ignorance and risible arrogance are the absolute prerequisites for life in this sad little country. Anthropogenic climate change denialism is growing rapidly here, impelled by ferocious Rightwing propaganda headed by the Murdoch apparatus. The denialist industry realised that by presenting climate change as a Left versus Right issue, with the despised ‘greenies’ on the side of the science, that they would win the instant and fanatic allegiance of Rightwing bigots brainwashed from birth in hatred, for the Left, other races, unionists, people smarter than themselves-you name it. So, as the evidence mounts, it is all dismissed by imbeciles with no idea concerning the science, but as certain as can be concerning what they hate. The recent tactic has been to exaggerate the economic costs, and appealing to rank greed never fails in this country. If you expected any good example coming from Australia, forget it! Indeed in recent days it has become apparent that the Victorian ‘Labor’ Government, about as moronic and arrogant a rabble as our politics has produced for a long while, intends to open an export drive in brown coal sales, the dirtiest greenhouse pollutant of all. But only to countries with ‘Carbon Capture and Storage’, which, alas, does not exist, probably never will exist, and certainly won’t exist for twenty years. Never fear-they’ll just lie, as they all lie, all the time. Our political caste shows every day that they are either in full denial, or that they are simply too thick to contemplate our fate or (my belief) that they simply could not give a toss what happens after they die.

By: Synic3

Synic3 — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:53:21 +0000

An excellent article that explained and illuminated many points.

By: Don Hawkins

Don Hawkins — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 12:01:15 +0000

California and Australia have lately been making the headlines for drought problems. But Mexico is facing the worst drought it has seen in the last 69 years. That on top of the already existing water crisis, precipitated by terrible water management, is beginning to push things over the edge. Corn, wheat and other crops are faring badly, and officials are actually hoping to see a hurricane hit soon just so a looming food crisis might be averted.
After months of drought, spring crops are failing and food may need to be imported, causing costs to rise. According to the article in the Los Angeles Times, “The need for rain is so dire that water officials have been rooting openly for a hurricane or two to provide a good drenching. “We really are in a difficult situation,” said Felipe Arreguin Cortes, deputy technical director for Mexico’s National Water Commission.”
Officals are saying that El Niño is at least in part to blame, the cyclical warming pattern that causes weather changes, including taking rains elsewhere. We can consider that this, combined with global warming’s role in drought and water shortages in the first place have all added up to to the reported more than $1 billion in losses from spring crops, a loss both in food and income that officials say will be felt into next year.
What is a kernel of positivity in this issue is that a strong realization that water management techniques must be revamped in order to avoid this problem in the future. Regardless of cyclical weather patterns or larger scale changes in rainfall globally, new ways of managing water are going to be needed to avoid this kind of crisis in the future. It’s something the entire globe, not just Mexico, is slowly having to come to terms with. Mexico City was once a lake, but now, thanks to over-pumping water reserves and poor management, desertification could be in its future – as is the case with many other areas. Returning to techniques that fall more in sync with natural systems (as the article notes) in the area could help, but it’s a matter of implementing much needed changes in an area already hurting. That may mean any changes will be slow to come. SF,Calif

Again just think ahead 5 then 10 years and here in the States let’s watch our so called leaders the next few months and there great wisdom.

By: mary

mary — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:34:44 +0000

I think the word is ‘unsustainable’ Mulga. When are your fellow citizens going to wake up? Not many in the UK are wideawake yet.

By: Mulga Mumblebrain

Mulga Mumblebrain — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 08:21:04 +0000

Well, Don, there are bad fires in New South Wales already. Rainfall is below average everywhere, but particularly in Victoria. The water shortage is so critical in Melbourne that the incompetent and moronic state ‘Labor’ Government is stealing more water from the Thompson River, thereby sentencing the magnificent Gippsland lakes to death by algal eutrophication. If an El Nino type summer develops, which, on the balance of probabilities, means even hotter and drier weather than last summer, then Victoria is in deep shit. Melbourne having spread like topsy, as the free market growth obsessed political and business cretins so desired, its outer suburbs of massive ‘McMansions’ built with virtually no gardens, little distance between houses, even, in a move typical of the rank imbecility of life ‘down under’, no eaves, are a disaster waiting to happen. If a fire gets loose in those suburbs, on a day like Black Saturday this February, with the fire intensity index, never before seen higher than 100, hitting 192, and reportedly, in places, in the 300s, then there will be hell to pay.
The eaves business is so indicative of how we have reached this impasse. We used to build houses with wide verandahs, a fine introduction from India, that cooled the interior of the house on the hottest days. However, as with everything here, greed is paramount, so housing estates are packed shoulder to shoulder, with no verandahs, not even any eaves. These huge homes, growing ever bigger as family size falls, with huge glass windows, often without curtains, so one can admire the plasma TVs within heating up the interior, are heat-traps. To cool them, one must have air-conditioning. Often enough this is left on all day in the summer, or started by remote control before the inmates return home after work. The amount of energy involved in air-conditioning is driving energy consumption in this country. Needless to say, energy efficiency is a subject not often aired, as it threatens profits. In Victoria the irony is even more bitter, as the electricity to drive these air-con plants comes from power stations burning brown coal, the worst CO2 polluter of all.
As temperatures rise, August records being broken across the country (in Alice Springs, in the centre, on three consecutive days!)as the drought deepens, as estuarine environments like the Coorong at the mouth of the Murray, die, as perennial crops like vines and citrus, die and are pulled from the ground and burned, as the river red-gums, which often live for 500 years, die across their range in unprecedented numbers,so too does anthropogenic climate change denialism thrive. A real cretins’ crusade this, a Rightwing obsession as unpleasant to behold as your town-hall meetings shennanigans of the obese, obscene and obtuse, it is pushed relentlessly by the same moral, intellectual and spiritual poison as is behind the anti-Obama hysteria-Murdochism. Where you have FoxNews spreading the Murdochian malaise, here we have News Ltd newspapers, the hideous The Australian to the fore. The Australian is the type of propaganda rag that has the gall to call itself a newspaper, while presenting, in its editorials, opinion pages and even in its features, absolutely one-sided Rightwing diatribes equal to anything you see on FoxNews. Anthropogenic climate change denialism, coverage 99% one-sided, is their speciality.To add ghastly hypocrisy to injury, NewsLtd boasts that it will be ‘carbon-free’ by some date in the near future.
So, Don, Australia (it rhymes with failure) is heading straight for climate change perdition, at accelerating pace, happily oblivious, smugly self-satisfied as ever, unequipped to think rationally after years of relentless brainwashing and with its citizens’ synapses clogged with saturated fat. By 2030, they say, a huge proportion of Australians over 65 will be demented. Methinks that they will be the lucky ones.

By: Don Hawkins

Don Hawkins — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 01:39:38 +0000

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/images/glbPrecSeaNorm.gif

Just look at this chart and the next months bad enough then think ahead just a little. 5 years then 10 we don’t need Nostradamus on this now we have satellites that if nothing else shows us what’s coming. That chart is precep forecasts and the chart for ocean temperatures tells the story. .

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/images/glbSSTSeaNorm.gif

By: Don Hawkins

Don Hawkins — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:27:35 +0000

The lie on many different levels is about to show itself. Many people I talk to just regular folk know something is up. Consume to survive now that’s change you can believe in. Not going to happen it has already started. Google Detroit and just read. How’s the summer shaping up in Australia Mulga? Any plans in place or being put in place for any of this even one. No just more foolishness and stupidity on a grade scale. Keep the system going at full speed and do the same thing over again oh that’s right with regulations. Just the next five months this I got to see.

By: Mulga Mumblebrain

Mulga Mumblebrain — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 23:47:29 +0000

One is put in mind of the injunction that one should repeat a lie, over and over again, until, by sheer weight of repetition it becomes accepted as the truth. As with the economics charade so too with everything else. America’s famous ‘morality’ and dedication to ‘human rights’, or Israel’s ‘moral purity’, or perhaps anthropogenic climate change denialism all evidence not just the repeated lie becomes truth proposition, but its close comrade-in-arms, the Big Lie. This was the brainchild of the febrile imagination of Mr Hitler, who recommended audacity and ambition in lying. The bigger the lie, the more naked its untruth, the more likely that the average man, unused to lying so freely and still, being basically psychically normal, capable of being afflicted by guilt and shame and remorse, would swallow it, unable to believe or unprepared to accept that such blatant lies could be peddled. The bigger the better.
The Big Lie culture suits the psychopath down to the ground. Thus the increasingly pathological aspects of late market capitalist society further the competitive advantage of the psychopath, as they lack conscience and will lie, and lie well, to advance themselves and harm others. This is true, and always has been, in business (if you want a friend on Wall Street, buy yourself a dog [or a politician])and politics. Obama seems the highest expression of this trend, so far. He clearly lied about almost all his policy priorities and ambitions. He has betrayed those gullible patsies who voted for him, over and over. He has ruled for those who paid for his political career from the beginning, the Zionists and the finance industry. And he has done everything in his power to resuscitate the Wall Street financial gravy-train.
Just what the psychopaths hope to achieve by re-inflating the stock-market bubble while the real economy falters, is difficult to discern. Perhaps they really believe they can get the Greenspan Bubble Machine going again, for another era of hyper-greed, billion dollar bonuses and conspicuous excess. After all the economics on which the ‘efficient markets’ and ‘rational expectations’ and all the other mumbo-jumbo of this debased pseudo-science and propaganda system is based, is the greatest intellectual con since eugenics or phrenology.
The Big Lie, endlessly repeated by the debased propaganda system we call the Free Press, that the global financial crisis was unexpected, is meant for the patsies who get their brainwashing from the mainstream media only. One could list a dozen, at least, who were shrieking alarm for years. One or two of the more malleable ones have been publicised, but the more radical ones have, as ever, been ignored. The mainstream economics cabal, meanwhile, continues producing propaganda for the parasite class masquerading as ‘research’, always justifying and rationalising greed, inequality, endless cancerous growth and elite privilege. Of course, for the time being, talk of ‘trickle-down’ and ‘rising tides lifting all boats’ has been dropped, some lies being just too big even for a thoroughly brainwashed public. But they are still inventive in their region of the Big Lie universe. My current favourite, from a Swedish Bank Prize (the so-called ‘Nobel’ prize for economics)winner no less, is the theory that the Great Depression of the 1930s was caused by workers refusing to take up the available jobs, for unknown reasons, but perhaps because they had better things to do. I’m sure Lewis Carroll would be envious of such talent at confecting dreamscapes posing as reality.

By: Max Shields

Max Shields — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 23:02:25 +0000

Lila Rajiva
Superb analysis. The US is not simply run by corporations, IT IS A CORPORATION. The happy talk is identical to what goes on in large corporations who have been bleeding, while corporate CEOs continue to gain huge bonuses.

The US has lived in a “dodge the bullet” mode since the 1930s. What is called “capitalism’s resilence” is really a “slight of hand” as you put it. The economy contracts, the numbers and talking points are fudged, the poor get relatively poorer and increase in total numbers. The concentration of wealth is demonstrated by the number of billionaires. None of whom earned a damn cent. What is it that gets Bill Gates his billions?

But the jig has been going on for so long it’s hard to think of it being played any other way. First, there’s the recession, then the new administration claims that it’s worse than they thought before they took over, and then they make the rest up figuring this is just another roller coaster ride.

But it aint.

By: David

David — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 16:35:54 +0000

Ms. Rajiva:

You are getting close to what is meant by the term, “jobless recovery.”

The game of wealth acquisition is now being played solely for the benefit of the one percent of the wealthiest people in the US.

The rest of us have been written off as casualties of unfortunate circumstances or those undeserving of success because we failed to understand the system or god is punishing us because we didn’t pray hard enough. Take your pick.

But stay tuned to Oprah for more good news or to Jerry Springer to make yourselves feel better.