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    Exclamation Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    i sense they (the government) already has this implemented and in place


    Obama Eyeing Internet ID for Americans


    STANFORD, Calif. - President Obama is planning to hand the U.S. Commerce Department authority over a forthcoming cybersecurity effort to create an Internet ID for Americans, a White House official said here today.

    It's "the absolute perfect spot in the U.S. government" to centralize efforts toward creating an "identity ecosystem" for the Internet, White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt said.

    That news, first reported by CNET, effectively pushes the department to the forefront of the issue, beating out other potential candidates including the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. The move also is likely to please privacy and civil liberties groups that have raised concerns in the past over the dual roles of police and intelligence agencies.

    The announcement came at an event today at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, where U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and Schmidt spoke.

    The Obama administration is currently drafting what it's calling the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, which Locke said will be released by the president in the next few months. (An early version was publicly released last summer.)

    "We are not talking about a national ID card," Locke said at the Stanford event. "We are not talking about a government-controlled system. What we are talking about is enhancing online security and privacy and reducing and perhaps even eliminating the need to memorize a dozen passwords, through creation and use of more trusted digital identities."

    The Commerce Department will be setting up a national program office to work on this project, Locke said.

    Details about the "trusted identity" project are unusually scarce. Last year's announcement referenced a possible forthcoming smart card or digital certificate that would prove that online users are who they say they are. These digital IDs would be offered to consumers by online vendors for financial transactions.

    Schmidt stressed today that anonymity and pseudonymity will remain possible on the Internet. "I don't have to get a credential if I don't want to," he said. There's no chance that "a centralized database will emerge," and "we need the private sector to lead the implementation of this," he said.

    Inter-agency rivalries to claim authority over cybersecurity have exited ever since many responsibilities were centralized in the Department of Homeland Security as part of its creation nine years ago. Three years ago, proposals were were circulating in Washington to transfer authority to the secretive NSA, which is part of the U.S. Defense Department.

    In March 2009, Rod Beckstrom, director of Homeland Security's National Cybersecurity Center, resigned through a letter that gave a rare public glimpse into the competition for budgetary dollars and cybersecurity authority. Beckstrom said at the time that the NSA "effectively controls DHS cyber efforts through detailees, technology insertions," and has proposed moving some functions to the agency's Fort Meade, Md., headquarters.

    Source;
    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_1...37-501465.html

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    Exclamation Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    This is a major crisis with planet-wide implications and it rates little notice. I will predict that this problem is going to turn out to be the creature of some kind of herbicide or soil preparation widely used in commercial agriculture.



    Researchers discover a shocking 96 percent decline in four major bumblebee species

    Friday, January 07, 2011 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

    NaturalNews) New research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found that another vitally important pollinator, the bumblebee, is in serious decline. According to the figures, there has been a shocking 96 percent decline in four major species of the bumblebee, and an up to 87 percent decrease in their overall geographic coverage.

    "We provide incontrovertible evidence that multiple Bombus species have experienced sharp population declines at the national level," explained researchers in their report. And in a phone interview with Reuters, study author Sydney Cameron from the University of Illinois, Urbana, explained that these bumblebee species are "one of the most important pollinators of native plants."

    Over the course of three years, the research team evaluated 382 different sites in 40 states, and mulled data from over 73,000 museum records. They determined that bumblebees are needed to pollinate various fruits and vegetables, and that they accomplish this task in a very unique way.

    "The 50 species (of bumblebees) in the United States are traditionally associated with prairies and with high alpine vegetations," said Cameron. "Just as important -- they land on a flower and they have this behavior called buzz pollination that enables them to cause pollen to fly off the flower."

    In other words, without bumblebees and the special way in which they pollinate, entire segments of agriculture are threatened with extinction. Like honeybees (http://www.naturalnews.com/028899_h...) and bats (http://www.naturalnews.com/027971_p...), bumblebees are vital in order to grow food. Without them, humanity will starve to death.

    Misleadingly, many experts largely blame various pathogens, fungi and viruses for the die-offs of these pollinators, while giving only a brief mention -- if any at all -- to the toxic pesticides and herbicides that are increasingly being linked to things like colony collapse disorder (CCD), the name given to the mass bee die-off phenomenon. A recently leaked report, for instance, has revealed that a popular Bayer herbicide is responsible for killing off bees

    Source;
    http://www.naturalnews.com/030944_bu...s_decline.html

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    Default Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    Bees dying, chemtrails poisoning us, GMO terminator seeds starving us, global governance tyrannizing us, world wide security tyrannizing us, full spectrum dominant military killing us, false flag attacks terrorizing us, global media lying to us, schools, fluoride in our water and vaccines dumbing us down, ...

    The Dark Side seems Darker than a Black Hole.

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    giovonni (11th January 2011)

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    Question Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    Yes ~ PythonicCow
    It does seems like there is a pattern going on here

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    Lightbulb Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    Here is proof there is another way, in an economy much like the U.S. -- Canada. Then ask yourself why this isn't being implemented.


    Few foreclosures, no bank failures: Canada offers lessons


    January 11, 2011 04:31:22 PM

    TORONTO — Maybe Canada has something to teach the U.S. about housing finance.

    One in 4 U.S. homes is thought to be worth less that the mortgage being paid on it. One in every 492 U.S. homes received a foreclosure notice in November. For the fourth year running, analysts are speculating on where the bottom is for U.S. real estate.

    No such worries up here in Canada — yet its system of mortgage finance gets little attention in the U.S.

    Not a single Canadian bank failed during the Great Depression, and not a single one failed during the recent U.S. crisis now dubbed the Great Recession. Fewer than 1 percent of all Canadian mortgages are in arrears.

    That's notable given that the recent U.S. economic turmoil was triggered by a meltdown in mortgage finance, forcing an unprecedented government rescue of Wall Street investment banks and the collapse of more than 300 smaller banks as the housing sector went bust.

    How'd Canada avoid all that?

    "This sounds very simple, but one of our CEOs has said we are in the business of making loans to people who will pay them back," said Terry Campbell, vice president of policy for the Canadian Bankers Association in Ottawa.

    There's a certain amount of apples to oranges when comparing the two systems of mortgage finance. Canada's population last year was estimated at 34.3 million, while the U.S. population now exceeds 307 million. The U.S. economy is the world's biggest; Canada ranks ninth.

    Canadian banks were recently named the best in the world by the World Economic Forum, but they're a much smaller universe of lenders — 71 that are federally regulated, compared with more than 8,000-plus U.S. lenders insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

    Even so, there's plenty to learn from Canada's conservative — yes, conservative — regulatory regime. It requires more rigorous loan underwriting standards and much bigger set-asides by banks for potential losses during market downturns.

    Canada also lacks a big tax write-off for the interest that borrowers pay on their mortgages. They get a capital gains tax exemption on any profits on the sale of their primary residence, and that's it. Yet the rate of home ownership in Canada is equal to, or greater than the U.S. rate, and the lack of mortgage-interest deductions leads Canadians to swiftly pay down their mortgage debt.

    "I'm not aware of any disparagement of the Canadian model or dismissal of the Canadian model. There are some interesting features to it," said Stuart Gabriel, a finance professor in the Anderson School of Management at the University of California-Los Angeles. "They've insisted all along on the more rigorous mortgage underwriting, and because of that never found themselves originating subprime and no-doc mortgages . . . some very basic items such as stringency of underwriting seem to go a long way."

    Canada doesn't have an equivalent to Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which purchase mortgages from banks and pool them into bonds. The argument for Fannie and Freddie is that they take loans off of a bank's books, freeing them to lend more.

    Canada has no such secondary market for mortgages, yet it hasn't hurt the ability of its banks to lend or significantly raised the cost for borrowers.

    Canadian mortgages aren't non-recourse loans, meaning homeowners can't simply walk away from their mortgages. Even if they lose their home, they still owe their mortgage debt.

    "You mail your keys into the bank here and guess what, you are not off the hook," said Gregory Klump, the chief economist in Ottawa for the Canadian Real Estate Association.

    Lessons from Canada could prove useful. In the next few weeks, the Obama administration must, by law, outline its vision for what to do with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They've been in government conservatorship since the summer of 2008. The administration must unveil its roadmap for how and when they're to be changed and moved out of government control.

    By July, the administration must establish the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, whose chief functions will include policing mortgage lending and defining suitable mortgages.

    The issue of mortgage-interest deductions probably will come up this year when Congress debates deficit reduction. A blue-ribbon National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform late last year recommended a serious scaling back of the U.S. mortgage-interest deduction as a means of raising more revenue and lowering deficits and debt.

    Defenders of the popular U.S. mortgage-interest deduction call it a big driver of U.S. home ownership, which peaked in 2005 at 69.1 percent. (It fell to 66.9 percent late last year.)

    But even without a mortgage-interest deduction, Canada's percentage of home ownership_ at 68.4 percent, according to the most recent Canadian census in 2006 and now thought to be higher — is comparable to U.S. home ownership rates.

    "There's an incentive for them to pay off their houses relatively quickly, but the home ownership rates in Canada and the U.S. are comparable. The fraction of people who own their houses free and clear in Canada is much bigger," said William Strange, a professor of real estate at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.

    Added Klump: "The sooner you can get out of debt, the faster you can amass retirement savings."

    Canadian banks generally provide 25-year mortgages, with 20 percent down payment. The first five years of the loan is a fixed rate, after which it adjusts to current market rates in five-year increments until the loan is paid off.

    Should a borrower opt not to put down 20 percent on a home purchase, they must purchase mortgage insurance to cover the debt in the case of default.

    U.S. borrowers are accustomed to fixed-rate loans of 15 years or 30 years, and U.S. mortgage bankers warn that the Canadian model of adjusting interest rates every five years may soon be less attractive.

    "There is a lot of interest-rate risk that is being put on Canadian buyers. That has worked over the past couple of decades. Now that we're looking at increased borrowing demands by national governments, everyone is projecting interest rates going back up," said Jay Brinkmann, the chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association. "As these Canadian mortgages reset, (borrowers) might start looking longingly at a U.S. system" that provides longer fixed interest rates on mortgages.

    In some ways, the U.S. is already adopting big parts of the Canadian model.

    "I think the U.S. system may be eliminating certain types of loans . . . I think we're seeing greater emphasis on down payments," said Brinkmann, who's careful to call it a return to past practices and not the Canadian model.

    Lenders, he said, are shying away from second mortgages. And there are greater demands for private mortgage insurance, even on refinanced mortgages.

    Source;
    http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/1...-failures.html

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    Smile Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    i sense this is no big surprise to many here...

    How listening to good music is like having sex

    Health and Science
    posted on January 11, 2011, at 7:00 AM

    It turns out that sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll can all affect you in the same way: By flooding your brain with the pleasure chemical dopamine


    For some people, listening to music can release as much dopamine into the brain as cocaine.

    A new study shows that a favorite piece of music can make your brain release dopamine, just like having sex, using drugs, or eating good food. Researchers at Canada's McGill University say their findings, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, will help us understand both our minds and our evolution better. Here's a look at what sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll have in common:

    What exactly did the McGill team study?
    Valorie Salimpoor and her team had eight participants from a pool of 217 volunteers listen to a piece of instrumental music that consistently gave them "chills," and scanned their brains over the course of three listening sessions. They also measured the "chills" themselves, through changes in the subjects' temperature, skin conductance, heart rate, and breathing. The other 209 contenders were eliminated because they didn't reliably get goosebumps, or because they brought music with lyrics, which the McGill team avoided to keep the study focused on music.

    So what did the participants want to hear?
    The most popular piece was Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings," both the orchestral version and a techno dance remix. Other hits included Claude Debussy's "Claire de Lune" and the second movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. But participants didn't just pick classical: Punk, jazz, rock, and even bagpipe music made appearances, too.

    How much happier does music make us?
    The participants' dopamine levels rose by up to 9 percent when they were listening to music they enjoyed, and "one person experienced a 21 percent increase," says Salimpoor. "That demonstrates that, for some people, it can be really intensely pleasurable." People who don't get chills also experience the rise in dopamine, says study co-author Robert Zatorre, as did the eight subjects when they listened to other participants' selections, but the rush wasn't as strong.

    How does music compare to other pleasures?
    Studies involving psychoactive drugs like cocaine registered relative dopamine spikes of 22 percent and higher, Salimpoor says, and pleasurable foods can send dopamine levels up 6 percent.

    What does this study say about music, and us?
    "Art in general has survived since the dawn of human existence and is found in all human societies," says Zatorre. "There must be some strong value associated with it." The study does show that music is important to humans, but not why, says Vicky Williamson at University of London. It's a starting-off point to explore "why music can be effectively used in rituals, marketing, or film to manipulate hedonistic states," says Salimpoor. We now know that dopamine can make you "like a crackhead for those sweet, sweet tunes you like," says Jeff Neumann in Gawker. Isn't that enough?

    Source;http://theweek.com/article/index/210...ike-having-sex
    Sources: AP/Yahoo, BBC News, Guardian, Gawker, TheScientist

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    Question Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    Wow!

    US banks to close foreign diplomatic mission accounts


    JP Morgan Chase is one of several banks that will be closing diplomatic accounts

    The diplomats of several countries said they were actively searching for new banks but were having little success.

    Federal officials heard the concerns of roughly 150 envoys during a closed-door briefing on Thursday at the United Nations in New York City.

    Some diplomats said the UN budget could be affected by the account closures.

    The Wall Street Journal newspaper suggested in November that the banks' decisions were prompted by difficulties in adhering to federal money-laundering regulations affecting international transfers.

    Regulations have been tightened since 9/11 in an effort to stop the flow of illegal foreign funds for crimes like financing terrorist acts.

    'Big concern'

    Speaking after the briefing, state department official Patrick Kennedy told reporters the missions had been given advice on "alternative approaches" they could take to obtain banking services.

    He stressed that the banks' decisions were based on commercial reasons and "not because the bank is saying that the embassy of Xanadu or the mission of Shangri-La is engaged in some nefarious activity".

    The US would continue its work with both diplomats and the banking industry, he added.

    JP Morgan Chase, which handles many diplomatic accounts, did not specify a reason for terminating the services.

    But reports suggest it may be because monitoring the accounts has become too costly.

    In a letter dated 30 September, the bank told its diplomatic clients it had "made the decision to close its division that serves diplomatic and foreign government entities" and that its decision was not a reflection on how the envoys handled their accounts.

    The closures at JP Morgan are scheduled to come into effect on 31 March and will affect mission accounts but not those of individual diplomats.

    The BBC's Barbara Plett at the United Nations says this is a big concern for diplomats, with at least six telling reporters they had not yet been able to find another bank for their mission, even though they have been shopping around.

    If they fail to do so by the end-of-March deadline, they will have trouble paying their employees and bills, our correspondent adds.

    Source;
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12188368
    Last edited by giovonni; 14th January 2011 at 07:58.

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    Exclamation Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    This is the latest useful piece i have read on this trend which is coming towards us like that Denzel Washington movie about the speeding train out of control!

    The Great Food Crisis of 2011
    It's real, and it's not going away anytime soon.





    BY LESTER BROWN | JANUARY 10, 2011

    As the new year begins, the price of wheat is setting an all-time high in the United Kingdom. Food riots are spreading across Algeria. Russia is importing grain to sustain its cattle herds until spring grazing begins. India is wrestling with an 18-percent annual food inflation rate, sparking protests. China is looking abroad for potentially massive quantities of wheat and corn. The Mexican government is buying corn futures to avoid unmanageable tortilla price rises. And on January 5, the U.N. Food and Agricultural organization announced that its food price index for December hit an all-time high.

    But whereas in years past, it's been weather that has caused a spike in commodities prices, now it's trends on both sides of the food supply/demand equation that are driving up prices. On the demand side, the culprits are population growth, rising affluence, and the use of grain to fuel cars. On the supply side: soil erosion, aquifer depletion, the loss of cropland to nonfarm uses, the diversion of irrigation water to cities, the plateauing of crop yields in agriculturally advanced countries, and -- due to climate change -- crop-withering heat waves and melting mountain glaciers and ice sheets. These climate-related trends seem destined to take a far greater toll in the future.

    There's at least a glimmer of good news on the demand side: World population growth, which peaked at 2 percent per year around 1970, dropped below 1.2 percent per year in 2010. But because the world population has nearly doubled since 1970, we are still adding 80 million people each year. Tonight, there will be 219,000 additional mouths to feed at the dinner table, and many of them will be greeted with empty plates. Another 219,000 will join us tomorrow night. At some point, this relentless growth begins to tax both the skills of farmers and the limits of the earth's land and water resources.

    Beyond population growth, there are now some 3 billion people moving up the food chain, eating greater quantities of grain-intensive livestock and poultry products. The rise in meat, milk, and egg consumption in fast-growing developing countries has no precedent. Total meat consumption in China today is already nearly double that in the United States.

    The third major source of demand growth is the use of crops to produce fuel for cars. In the United States, which harvested 416 million tons of grain in 2009, 119 million tons went to ethanol distilleries to produce fuel for cars. That's enough to feed 350 million people for a year. The massive U.S. investment in ethanol distilleries sets the stage for direct competition between cars and people for the world grain harvest. In Europe, where much of the auto fleet runs on diesel fuel, there is growing demand for plant-based diesel oil, principally from rapeseed and palm oil. This demand for oil-bearing crops is not only reducing the land available to produce food crops in Europe, it is also driving the clearing of rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia for palm oil plantations.

    The combined effect of these three growing demands is stunning: a doubling in the annual growth in world grain consumption from an average of 21 million tons per year in 1990-2005 to 41 million tons per year in 2005-2010. Most of this huge jump is attributable to the orgy of investment in ethanol distilleries in the United States in 2006-2008.

    While the annual demand growth for grain was doubling, new constraints were emerging on the supply side, even as longstanding ones such as soil erosion intensified. An estimated one third of the world's cropland is losing topsoil faster than new soil is forming through natural processes -- and thus is losing its inherent productivity. Two huge dust bowls are forming, one across northwest China, western Mongolia, and central Asia; the other in central Africa. Each of these dwarfs the U.S. dust bowl of the 1930s.

    Satellite images show a steady flow of dust storms leaving these regions, each one typically carrying millions of tons of precious topsoil. In North China, some 24,000 rural villages have been abandoned or partly depopulated as grasslands have been destroyed by overgrazing and as croplands have been inundated by migrating sand dunes.

    In countries with severe soil erosion, such as Mongolia and Lesotho, grain harvests are shrinking as erosion lowers yields and eventually leads to cropland abandonment. The result is spreading hunger and growing dependence on imports. Haiti and North Korea, two countries with severely eroded soils, are chronically dependent on food aid from abroad.

    Meanwhile aquifer depletion is fast shrinking the amount of irrigated area in many parts of the world; this relatively recent phenomenon is driven by the large-scale use of mechanical pumps to exploit underground water. Today, half the world's people live in countries where water tables are falling as overpumping depletes aquifers. Once an aquifer is depleted, pumping is necessarily reduced to the rate of recharge unless it is a fossil (nonreplenishable) aquifer, in which case pumping ends altogether. But sooner or later, falling water tables translate into rising food prices.

    Irrigated area is shrinking in the Middle East, notably in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, and possibly Yemen. In Saudi Arabia, which was totally dependent on a now-depleted fossil aquifer for its wheat self-sufficiency, production is in a freefall. From 2007 to 2010, Saudi wheat production fell by more than two thirds. By 2012, wheat production will likely end entirely, leaving the country totally dependent on imported grain.

    The Arab Middle East is the first geographic region where spreading water shortages are shrinking the grain harvest. But the really big water deficits are in India, where the World Bank numbers indicate that 175 million people are being fed with grain that is produced by overpumping. In China, overpumping provides food for some 130 million people. In the United States, the world's other leading grain producer, irrigated area is shrinking in key agricultural states such as California and Texas.

    The last decade has witnessed the emergence of yet another constraint on growth in global agricultural productivity: the shrinking backlog of untapped technologies. In some agriculturally advanced countries, farmers are using all available technologies to raise yields. In Japan, the first country to see a sustained rise in grain yield per acre, rice yields have been flat now for 14 years. Rice yields in South Korea and China are now approaching those in Japan. Assuming that farmers in these two countries will face the same constraints as those in Japan, more than a third of the world rice harvest will soon be produced in countries with little potential for further raising rice yields.

    A similar situation is emerging with wheat yields in Europe. In France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, wheat yields are no longer rising at all. These three countries together account for roughly one-eighth of the world wheat harvest. Another trend slowing the growth in the world grain harvest is the conversion of cropland to nonfarm uses. Suburban sprawl, industrial construction, and the paving of land for roads, highways, and parking lots are claiming cropland in the Central Valley of California, the Nile River basin in Egypt, and in densely populated countries that are rapidly industrializing, such as China and India. In 2011, new car sales in China are projected to reach 20 million -- a record for any country. The U.S. rule of thumb is that for every 5 million cars added to a country's fleet, roughly 1 million acres must be paved to accommodate them. And cropland is often the loser.

    Fast-growing cities are also competing with farmers for irrigation water. In areas where all water is being spoken for, such as most countries in the Middle East, northern China, the southwestern United States, and most of India, diverting water to cities means less irrigation water available for food production. California has lost perhaps a million acres of irrigated land in recent years as farmers have sold huge amounts of water to the thirsty millions in Los Angeles and San Diego.

    The rising temperature is also making it more difficult to expand the world grain harvest fast enough to keep up with the record pace of demand. Crop ecologists have their own rule of thumb: For each 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature above the optimum during the growing season, we can expect a 10 percent decline in grain yields. This temperature effect on yields was all too visible in western Russia during the summer of 2010 as the harvest was decimated when temperatures soared far above the norm.

    Another emerging trend that threatens food security is the melting of mountain glaciers. This is of particular concern in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan plateau, where the ice melt from glaciers helps sustain not only the major rivers of Asia during the dry season, such as the Indus, Ganges, Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers, but also the irrigation systems dependent on these rivers. Without this ice melt, the grain harvest would drop precipitously and prices would rise accordingly.

    And finally, over the longer term, melting ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica, combined with thermal expansion of the oceans, threaten to raise the sea level by up to six feet during this century. Even a three-foot rise would inundate half of the riceland in Bangladesh. It would also put under water much of the Mekong Delta that produces half the rice in Vietnam, the world's number two rice exporter. Altogether there are some 19 other rice-growing river deltas in Asia where harvests would be substantially reduced by a rising sea level.

    The current surge in world grain and soybean prices, and in food prices more broadly, is not a temporary phenomenon. We can no longer expect that things will soon return to normal, because in a world with a rapidly changing climate system there is no norm to return to.

    The unrest of these past few weeks is just the beginning. It is no longer conflict between heavily armed superpowers, but rather spreading food shortages and rising food prices -- and the political turmoil this would lead to -- that threatens our global future. Unless governments quickly redefine security and shift expenditures from military uses to investing in climate change mitigation, water efficiency, soil conservation, and population stabilization, the world will in all likelihood be facing a future with both more climate instability and food price volatility. If business as usual continues, food prices will only trend upward.

    Source;
    http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01

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    Exclamation Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    You're a bee on the wall. How do you think it went in the boardroom? "A third of the bees have disappeared. Without them agriculture is not possible. But, hey, we could make say a billion in the short term if we can co-opt Beekeepers Association, and get them to endorse our new pesticides.

    "There is a long term down side, sure, but we'll have gotten out with our millions before that, so it's not on our watch. Can we do it? You bet, their Executive Director can't wait to be corrupted."


    Beekeepers fume at association's endorsement of fatal insecticides


    By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
    Wednesday, 12 January 2011



    The British Beekeepers' Association sold its logo to four chemical firms for use on insecticide packaging despite the products being fatal to bees

    ritain's beekeepers are at war over their association's endorsement for money of four insecticides, all of them fatal to bees, made by major chemical companies.

    The British Beekeepers' Association has been selling its logo to four European pesticide producers and is believed to have received about £175,000 in return.

    The active ingredient chemicals in the four pesticides the beekeepers endorsed are synthetic pyrethroids, which are among the most powerful of modern insect-killers.

    The deal was struck in secret by the beekeepers' association executive without the knowledge of the overwhelming majority of its members.

    After news of the deal emerged, some members expressed outrage and others resigned.

    The beekeepers have now said they will end their pesticide endorsements – but have left the door open to future deals with agrochemical companies.

    The battling beekeepers will have a showdown this weekend at the National Beekeeping Centre at Stoneleigh in Warwickshire.

    An open letter signed by prominent figures in the world of the environment and agriculture condemns the British Beekeepers' Association for its commercial relationship with the German chemicals giants Bayer and BASF, the Swiss-based Syngenta and the Belgian firm Belchim – and demands that it permanently sever commercial links with agrochemical companies.

    "A charity that claims to have the interests of bees and beekeeping at heart should never put itself in a position where it is under the influence of corporations whose purpose is to sell insecticides which are able to kill bees," said Philip Chandler, a Devon beekeeper and one of the organisers of the open letter, which has been signed by the botanist David Bellamy, the author and television wildlife presenter Chris Packham and Lord Melchett, policy director of the Soil Association, the organic farming body. "It is the equivalent of a cancer research charity being controlled by a tobacco company," Mr Chandler added.

    The beekeepers' executive, which effectively controls all the association's affairs, has thus far fended off attempts by its membership at getting the policy reversed.

    The beekeepers' association's deal with the chemical companies had been running since 2001, and it received £17,500 a year for endorsing four pesticides: Bayer's Decis, BASF's Contest (also known as Fastac), Syngenta's Hallmark and Belchim's Fury.

    The British Beekeepers' Association referred to the pesticides on several occasions in the newsletter BBKA News as "bee friendly" or "bee safe". Yet a 2003 study in the Bulletin of Insectology on modelling the acute toxicity of pesticides to honey bees found that cypermethrin, the active ingredient of Fury and Contest, and deltamethrin, the active ingredient of Decis, were in the top four most toxic to bees of all the 100 substances evaluated. Cypermethrin was second most toxic, and deltamethrin was fourth. (The active ingredient of Hallmark, lambda-cyhalothrin, was not included in the test.) Other studies confirm these conclusions.

    Protests have mounted as the revelations came out. Such has been the anger of grass-roots beekeepers that the executive announced a strategic review of its links with "the plant protection industry", which concluded that endorsement and "related product specific payments" would cease "as soon as practically possible".

    Yesterday the British Beekeepers' Association president, Martin Smith, confirmed the pesticide endorsements had finished, although he said there might still be some pesticide packaging in circulation bearing the BBKA logo. "We would expect that to be withdrawn within three months," he said.

    Mr Smith said that the deals had been originally done as a means of developing good practice in relation to bees with the pesticides when they had been introduced, but that this aim had been achieved – so they were no longer necessary.

    His announcement left the door open to future deals by insisting that "the trustees do not preclude accepting funds in the future from either the crop protection industry... or individual companies". Some beekeepers feel this is insufficient and want all links to be broken.

    At this weekend's meeting a motion put down by the Twickenham and Thames Valley Beekeeping Association stipulates that "the BBKA cease any commercial relationships with agrochemical or associated companies, including all endorsement of pesticides".

    One of the drafters of the motion, Kate Canning, said last night: "They're leaving the door open for future agro-chemical relationships. Our bees deserve better than this. It's time for a clean, green break."

    The beekeepers executive is trying to head off the move by inserting its own motion ahead of the Twickenham and Thames Valley one, which asks delegates to support them in the way in which it "should manage its intellectual property". It goes on: "This includes the use of its logo and maximises the benefits which can be gained from these assets and its reputation."

    Mr Smith said the logo would not be used on pesticides in the future.

    Source;
    http://www.independent.co.uk/environ...s-2182243.html

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    Lightbulb Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    Source: Jeffrey I. Rose "New Light on Human Prehistory in the Arabo-Persian Gulf Oasis."

    Lost civilization under Persian Gulf?

    A once fertile landmass now submerged beneath the Persian Gulf may have been home to some of the earliest human populations outside Africa, according to an article published today in Current Anthropology.

    Jeffrey Rose, an archaeologist and researcher with the University of Birmingham in the U.K., says that the area in and around this "Persian Gulf Oasis" may have been host to humans for over 100,000 years before it was swallowed up by the Indian Ocean around 8,000 years ago. Rose's hypothesis introduces a "new and substantial cast of characters" to the human history of the Near East, and suggests that humans may have established permanent settlements in the region thousands of years before current migration models suppose.

    In recent years, archaeologists have turned up evidence of a wave of human settlements along the shores of the Gulf dating to about 7,500 years ago. "Where before there had been but a handful of scattered hunting camps, suddenly, over 60 new archaeological sites appear virtually overnight," Rose said. "These settlements boast well-built, permanent stone houses, long-distance trade networks, elaborately decorated pottery, domesticated animals, and even evidence for one of the oldest boats in the world."

    But how could such highly developed settlements pop up so quickly, with no precursor populations to be found in the archaeological record? Rose believes that evidence of those preceding populations is missing because it's under the Gulf.

    "Perhaps it is no coincidence that the founding of such remarkably well developed communities along the shoreline corresponds with the flooding of the Persian Gulf basin around 8,000 years ago," Rose said. "These new colonists may have come from the heart of the Gulf, displaced by rising water levels that plunged the once fertile landscape beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean."

    Historical sea level data show that, prior to the flood, the Gulf basin would have been above water beginning about 75,000 years ago. And it would have been an ideal refuge from the harsh deserts surrounding it, with fresh water supplied by the Tigris, Euphrates, Karun, and Wadi Baton Rivers, as well as by underground springs. When conditions were at their driest in the surrounding hinterlands, the Gulf Oasis would have been at its largest in terms of exposed land area. At its peak, the exposed basin would have been about the size of Great Britain, Rose says.

    Evidence is also emerging that modern humans could have been in the region even before the oasis was above water. Recently discovered archaeological sites in Yemen and Oman have yielded a stone tool style that is distinct from the East African tradition. That raises the possibility that humans were established on the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula beginning as far back as 100,000 years ago or more, Rose says. That is far earlier than the estimates generated by several recent migration models, which place the first successful migration into Arabia between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago.

    The Gulf Oasis would have been available to these early migrants, and would have provided "a sanctuary throughout the Ice Ages when much of the region was rendered uninhabitable due to hyperaridity," Rose said. "The presence of human groups in the oasis fundamentally alters our understanding of human emergence and cultural evolution in the ancient Near East."

    It also hints that vital pieces of the human evolutionary puzzle may be hidden in the depths of the Persian Gulf.

    Source;
    http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-lcu120810.php

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    Lightbulb Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    Because I have said many harsh things about corporate manipulations I am always on the lookout for positive counter examples. Here's one.

    ***********

    Unilever chief warns over global crisis in food output

    As world business and political leaders prepare to gather in Davos, Unilever CEO Paul Polman tells Kamal Ahmed about the latest threat to the global economy

    Unilever's Polman on how long term business can save the planet


    By Kamal Ahmed 10:37PM GMT 15 Jan 2011

    In a speech on Tuesday, Paul Polman, the chief executive of Unilever, will say that market distortions created by European Union subsidies work against the needs of the developing world.

    He will also demand fewer subsidies for harmful first-generation bio-fuels and say that climate change must be tackled by companies changing to sustainable models of agriculture.

    In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph Mr Polman said that short-term speculators were also driving up prices. "One of the main things in food inflation is that it has attracted speculators for short-term profit at the expense of people living a dignified life," Mr Polman said. "It is difficult to understand if you want to work for the long-term interests of society." He revealed he had spoken to the European Commission's commissioner for internal markets, Michel Barnier, about the issue. Mr Polman says speculators should be forced to disclose their positions.

    Unilever buys 12pc of the world's tea to make brands such as PG Tips and Liptons. It also purchases 6pc of the world's tomato supply for its leading brands such as Knorr soup and Pot Noodle.

    In the speech, Mr Polman will say that such is his concern about climate change and water scarcity, Unilever is reviewing whether it can sustain tomato cultivation in southern Europe.

    "We are becoming concerned about whether Greece and Spain will have adequate water in the coming decade to guarantee us a tomato harvest that our business needs.

    ***********

    Davos 2011: Unilever's Paul Polman believes we need to think long term

    Paul Polman, the chief executive of Unilever (150m customers a day, products available in 170 countries), likes to quote Viktor Frankl, the famous psychiatrist and survivor of the Holocaust. In Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning, he says of the development of the West: "I recommend that the Statue of Liberty [on the east coast] be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast."

    Mr Polman, formerly of Procter & Gamble and Nestlι, is a man on something of a mission. Sitting in an open-necked shirt in his office overlooking the Thames in London, the Unilever chief executive ranges widely – from criticisms of short-term speculators in the commodity markets, to the need to tackle rampant food inflation; from proposing that climate change is one of the major challenges facing global businesses to revealing that he wouldn't mind being a cow on the Ben and Jerry's "caring dairy" programme.

    "Those animals have massage and scrubbing machines," he says. "Man, I wish I was a cow." Unilever owns Ben and Jerry's.

    At its most basic, he argues, consumer-facing businesses need to rip up their business models and start again – working in partnership with local producers, NGOs and governments in ways that are sustainable. Growth and environmental degradation need to be "de-coupled", he says, explaining that Unilever wants to double its turnover at the same time as reducing its environmental impact. He admits that such targets, launched as part of Unilever's Sustainable Living Plan, have been described as "courageous". "Scary" is how he would put it.

    In two weeks' time, world leaders from business and politics gather for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Among the Alpine peaks and snow 2 ft deep, Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JP Morgan, will talk global finance alongside Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo; Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook and therefore one of the most powerful people in technology, will tramp in her snow boots along with Prince Andrew, George Osborne and Bob Diamond, the new chief executive of Barclays who last week said it was time to end the period of remorse for bankers and "move on".

    For those touched with a fleck of cynicism, Davos's broad, thematic discussions on future business trends, such as "responding to the new reality" and "building a risk response network", could be seen as so much hot air. A chance for chief executives to say some warm words in public while at the same time engaging in the deal-making and financing behind the scenes that make capitalism tick.

    But Mr Polman has a different take. As one of the key leaders who will be travelling to Switzerland, he says that his generation of business leaders (those who grew up in the 1960s and are now at the top of the corporate ladder) are made of different stuff. He mentions Nike, TNT and Levis as companies which have built sustainability into their business. Those leaders who are not moving in that direction will be losers.

    As part of this "new capitalism", Polman will argue this week in a major speech in London that the world economy has to take a new approach to agricultural production. He will say that, based on United Nations figures, the global population will be 9.6bn by 2050 and that the extra 3bn mouths to feed will need an increase in production of 70pc.

    "According to the WWF, the world currently lives off 1.3 worlds in terms of use of resources," Polman said. "When you add 3bn people and increased standard of living, that figure rises to three Earths if you live like the US or the UK. That is just not going to work. We need to change things."

    Ever increasing food inflation is causing another stress in the system as supply fails to keep up with demand. Polman will say in the speech that the world is moving into "dangerous territory".

    Last week, the US department of agriculture said that the ratio of global stocks to demand would fall to "levels unseen since the mid-1970s".

    "One of the main things in food inflation is that it has attracted the speculators for short-term profit at the expense of people living a dignified life," Polman says. "It is difficult to understand that if you really want to work for the long-term interests of society." He revealed that he has spoken to the European Commission's commissioner for internal markets, Michel Barnier, about the issue. Polman says that speculators should be forced to disclose their positions.

    Polman suggests four practical proposals for change in agriculture – the development of more sustainable farming models to produce more food, a dramatic boost in investment to hit the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation's target of $83bn (£52bn) a year to meet increasing demand, the ending of "market-distorting" subsidies which promote, for example, the production of unsustainable first-generation biofuels and the freeing up of trade and the end of European Union subsidies that discriminate against poorer nations.

    A distaste for short-termism in the City has been a leitmotif for Polson. Last year at Davos, he sparked one of the most intense debates when he said that short-term City speculators were damaging the long-term needs of business to change the way they operate. Referring to hedge funds that were short-term holders of stock, he says: "They would sell their grandmother if they could make money. They are not people who are there in the long-term interests of the company."

    Since Polman took charge of Unilever in 2009, the company has stopped providing earnings guidance and quarterly profit updates to investors, a move that caused the share price to drop by 8pc as worried investors pulled out their money.

    One year on, does he believe that investors have understood the need for new approaches? "I say to a lot of people you have to measure success in terms of progress, not in terms of end state," he says.

    "There is still too much pressure on short-termism in terms of the drivers of success. It is interesting, because the same consumer who is demanding change is encouraging that behaviour because it is their money and their pension funds that are chasing that shorter-term return. The average holding of a Unilever share in 1960 was 12 years; 15 years ago it was about five years, now it is less than a year, sometimes half a year. Our stock is not an exception."

    Polman wants that figure to move in the opposite direction, a project for which he feels he is getting some traction.

    "We definitely feel – and to some extent we are leading the pack – that we are moving our business model to the longer term. I tell our investors, if you don't like that, to be honest, then I fully respect you but look at other alternatives that might be better suited to your needs.

    "I don't criticise hedge funds, they undoubtedly have a role to play otherwise they wouldn't be there, but they might not have a role to play with companies like ours. The world is big enough. I have seen a move in our shareholder base, I have seen that we have more investors supporting the strategy that we are doing.

    "That can only be supported if you have the results, and fortunately we are having the results in the company and I hope that will continue. The worse thing would be to do what is probably right for the long-term benefit of society and being forced out of that because you don't get the short-term results. That is where the biggest pressures are, there is no doubt about it.

    "I want people to focus on cash flow, which is a much longer-term measure than short-term profit, which doesn't take cost of capital into account, doesn't take capital investment into account."

    Many analysts believe, as Polman does himself, that Unilever is an undervalued stock, with growth potential particularly in its skincare ranges and in the emerging markets.

    Its full-year results later this year are expected to be some of the best that have been seen in 25 years as the global giant pulls out of recession. It may be the age of austerity but consumer appetite for their products – Knorr, PG tips, Persil, Marmite, Vaseline, Domestos, Walls, Dove, Hellmann's to name but a few – appears undimmed.

    As with many global companies, up to 80pc of Unilever's growth will be in the emerging markets, which Polman says are now operating on a different economic cycle to the West. That of course puts a question mark against why globally-focused companies need to be headquartered in London, particularly if any of the major global banks make good on thinly-veiled threats to move operations to Hong Kong or Singapore.

    "If you look at the changing forces in the world it is very clear that already now 75pc to 80pc of our growth is in the emerging markets," Polman says.

    "A lot of that is about market development, it is about growing the pie. It is very difficult to see that change. From where we are as a company, in 10 years' time I will have 70pc of my business in the emerging markets.

    "That, of course, requires you to think about your operating framework, your talent base, it requires you to think about the culture that you have to succeed and to attract and retain talent.

    "Four of the world's top 10 banks are Chinese banks which many people in this part of the world can't even pronounce. Our investors in the US ask us, say, about the private label initiative of Wal-Mart in Arkansas but they don't know what's going on in Indonesia."

    Last year, for the first time, Unilever hosted one of their major investor meetings in Singapore.

    "We wanted people to understand the value creation opportunity in emerging markets so that they are able to fully value companies like ours. I believe that we are undervalued because too many of the capital discussions are made by people – with due respect – who do not truly understand the forces right now in value creation."

    Polman says that the headquartering of a global company like Unilever is almost irrelevant.

    "Where you are headquartered or what currency you consolidate in is frankly something of a theoretical discussion given the way we run our business," he says.

    "Does that mean we'll leave the UK? I honestly think that is not important. We have great research here, but at the same time we have opened a research centre in China, opened a training centre in Singapore."

    He has praise for David Cameron and George Osborne, saying that their decisions on cuts to balance the economy were right. In the short term, though, it does mean the private sector has to expand more rapidly and the economy could have a bumpier ride.

    "The UK has taken a tremendous decision, which is the right decision long term, which is to significantly cut the deficit. But as the OECD estimates, any 1pc cut in deficit reduction results also in a 1pc cut in growth in the short term.

    "There is tremendous need for the private sector to fill that vacuum and for businesses to pick up the slack. That is not immediately happening."

    He is cautious about the global recovery – pointing out that £57 trillion was taken out of the system by the credit crunch and that consumers in the developed world, facing stagnant house prices, are still nervous. "We are not in for any quick fix," he says.

    Whichever way the economy progresses, it must be done sustainably, Polman says. "People always think that to do the right thing costs you more. That is not true at all.

    "It can actually ignite innovation and lower your costs. The alternative of not having sustainable sourcing, of having to deal with the effects of climate change, is a much higher cost on business.

    "It is time to change, that is why I am here. I want to live in a better world."

    ***********

    From The Telegraph Finance Section~ Tuesday 18 January 2011

    Source pages;

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/f...od-output.html

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/f...long-term.html
    Last edited by giovonni; 18th January 2011 at 01:11.

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    Lightbulb Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    Note:
    Richard Florida is the author of The Creative Class and founder of the Creative Class Group. Click through to see the charts and graphs that illustrate this article.

    The Geography of Gun Deaths

    Jan 13 2011, 10:38 AM ET

    Terrible tragedies like last week's mass shootings in Tucson cause us to search for deeper answers. Many were quick to blame America's divisive and vitriolic political culture for the violence; others portray the shooter as an unhinged, clinically deranged person with his own unfathomable agenda. Arizona has been ground zero for the battle over immigration. Were the state's political and economic travails a contributing factor? There has been some talk about guns, too. Might tighter gun control laws have made a difference?



    The map above charts firearm deaths for the 50 states plus the District of Columbia. Note that these figures include accidental shootings, suicides, even acts of self-defense, as well as crimes. As of 2007, 10.2 out of every 100,000 people were killed by firearms across the United States, but that rate varies dramatically from state to state. In Hawaii, at the low end, it was 2.6 per 100,000; in New York and New Jersey it was 5.0 and 5.2 respectively. At the high end, 21.7 out of every 100,000 residents of the District of Columbia were killed by guns, 20.2 in Louisiana, 18.5 in Mississippi, and 17.8 in Alaska. Arizona ranked eighth nationally, with 15.1 deaths per 100,000.

    With these data in hand, I decided to look at the factors associated with gun deaths at the state level. With the help of my colleague Charlotta Mellander, we charted the statistical correlations between firearm deaths and a variety of psychological, economic, social, and political characteristics of states. As usual, I point out that correlation does not imply causation, but simply points to associations between variables.



    Let's start by looking at factors that are sometimes assumed to be associated with gun violence but statistically are not.

    It is commonly assumed that mental illness or stress levels trigger gun violence. But that's not borne out at the state level. We found no statistical association between gun deaths and mental illness or stress levels. We also found no association between gun violence and the proportion of neurotic personalities.

    Images of drug-crazed gunmen are a commonplace: Guns and drug abuse are presumed to go together. But, again, that was not the case in our state-level analysis. We found no association between illegal drug use and death from gun violence at the state level.

    Some might think gun violence would be higher in states with higher levels of unemployment and higher levels of inequality. But, again, we found no evidence of any such association with either of these variables.

    So what are the factors that are associated with firearm deaths at the state level?

    Poverty is one. The correlation between death by gun and poverty at the state level is .59.

    An economy dominated by working class jobs is another. Having a high percentage of working class jobs is closely associated with firearm deaths (.55).

    And, not surprisingly, firearm-related deaths are positively correlated with the rates of high school students that carry weapons on school property (.54).

    What about politics? It's hard to quantify political rhetoric, but we can distinguish blue from red states. Taking the voting patterns from the 2008 presidential election, we found a striking pattern: Firearm-related deaths were positively associated with states that voted for McCain (.66) and negatively associated with states that voted for Obama (-.66). Though this association is likely to infuriate many people, the statistics are unmistakable. Partisan affiliations alone cannot explain them; most likely they stem from two broader, underlying factors - the economic and employment makeup of the states and their policies toward guns and gun ownership.

    Firearm deaths were far less likely to occur in states with higher levels of college graduates (-.64) and more creative class jobs (-.52).

    Gun deaths were also less likely in states with higher levels of economic development (with a correlation of -.32 to economic output) and higher levels of happiness and well-being (-.41).

    And for all the terrifying talk about violence-prone immigrants, states with more immigrants have lower levels of gun-related deaths (the correlation between the two being -.34).



    And what about gun control? As of July 29 of last year, Arizona became one of only three states that allows its citizens to carry concealed weapons without a permit. Might tighter gun control laws make a difference? Our analysis suggests that they do.

    The map overlays the map of firearm deaths above with gun control restrictions by state. It highlights states which have one of three gun control restrictions in place - assault weapons' bans, trigger locks, or safe storage requirements.

    Firearm deaths are significantly lower in states with stricter gun control legislation. Though the sample sizes are small, we find substantial negative correlations between firearm deaths and states that ban assault weapons (-.45), require trigger locks (-.42), and mandate safe storage requirements for guns (-.48).

    While the causes of individual acts of mass violence always differ, our analysis shows fatal gun violence is less likely to occur in richer states with more post-industrial knowledge economies, higher levels of college graduates, and tighter gun laws. Factors like drug use, stress levels, and mental illness are much less significant than might be assumed.

    Source;
    http://www.theatlantic.com/national/...-deaths/69354/

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    Unhappy Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    When Benjamin Franklin-the only founder who drafted and signed all three of the documents

    that brought the United States to life, the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris (September 3, 1783), and the Constitution-dreamed of the America he would like to see develop, the imagery that came to his mind was of a middle-class, largely urban culture made up of immigrants who were technologically sophisticated, family oriented, joyful, and upwardly mobile. And when he thought about how they might happen to become that society, it wasn't just the people he thought about. He also understood the importance of infrastructure as a factor in creating a middle class. He felt so strongly about this that he used his will to continue to support his plan for America beyond his death. He left specific bequests for public works and created the microlending model that has proven such a powerful transformative force, leaving what today would be several hundred thousand dollars each to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia.1

    The infrastructure money was to be used specifically to build such an infrastructure and nurture such a middle class. He explained his intent was to create that 'Which may be judged of most general utility to the Inhabitants, such as Fortifications, Bridges, Aqueducts, Public Buildings, Baths, Pavements or whatever may make living in the Town more convenient to its People and render it more agreeable to Strangers, resorting thither for Health or a temporary residence.”2

    This is classic Franklin. He defines a goal, and a process for achieving it, but leaves any personal cherished outcomes as to how this should happen unstated. Franklin put his money on creating civic amenities-the kinds of things now seen as the prime targets for budget reductions-because he knew they are essential for a healthy city. His genius allowed him to conceive of the impact over time that parks, sanitation, and hospitals would have on the lives of all the city's people. He knew that each interaction with clean water, or decent medical care in an emergency, or a place to go for a picnic improves the quality of life and lifts morale. People think in larger terms, attempt more. Are more optimistic. The interaction each individual in the city has with these amenities might seem small and not terribly important, but in aggregate, over time, they are a powerful force in shaping a city's character through their impact on the lives of citizens and visitors alike.

    How different that view is from the policies that seem to govern so many municipalities, states, and even the federal government today. Ultraconservative Grover Norquist voices this worldview: 'I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”3 What he does not say, and what is not acknowledged, is that such a vision of governance can only be attempted through the radical reduction of the social safety net Franklin recognized as so important, because philosophically this worldview sees no role for government in doing such things.

    So do these anti-Franklinian ideas really work?

    A large percentage of politicians apparently think so and, through their voting, have attempted to create this Ayn Rand world, with the Bush tax reduction for the rich as one of its crown jewels. Just about this time last year, I wrote an essay 'The Vanishing Middle Class,” which dealt with what was happening in 2009 as a result of pursuing those kinds of policies.4 I talked about Franklin's view and the truth of what was happening, noting:

    University of California, Berkeley, economist Emanuel Saez had reported that, in 2007, the disparity between the richest and the poorest reached a level never before seen, going all the way back to 1917 when modern tax data began to be collected. According to Saez's study, the top 10% of earners in America received 49.7% of all the income earned in the United States. To give this context as recently as the 1970s, the top 10% earned around 33% of all the income earned in the United States-a 17% shift. This contrast becomes even starker when only the super rich are considered. According to Saez, ‘The top 0.01 percent of earners in the US are now taking home six percent of all the income, higher than the 1920s peak of five percent, and a whopping six-fold increase since the start of the Reagan administration, when the top 0.01 percent earned one percent of all the income.'4

    Or, put another way, as of 2007 the top upper-class 1% of households owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers).

    A year later, these trends have continued, and every one of my markers has become more distorted in favor of the top at a cost to the middle class and the poor. There are a hundred ways to show this breakdown. Here are seven, by which I hope you will see that I am not selectively picking my data to make a polemic case, but describing the actuality of American society just when it transits the midterm elections. Perhaps it will provide some guidance for the choices we now must make.

    Tax Cuts

    Just as they did in 2000, the Republicans are running, as I write this, on an economic platform centered on tax cuts, and proposing that the Bush cuts be made permanent for the richest Americans. The 2008 income tax data are now in, so we can assess what their economic theory is worth, and how it fulfilled its promise that tax cuts would produce widespread prosperity, by looking at all the years of the George W. Bush presidency. This is what David Cay Johnston, on the faculty of Syracuse University College of Law and Whitman School of Management, and Pulitzer Prize"winning tax analyst, concluded, based on the IRS data:

    Total income was $2.74 trillion less during the eight Bush years than if incomes had stayed at 2000 levels (all figures are in 2008 dollars). In only two years was total income up, but even when those years are combined they exceed the declines in only one of the other six years.

    Even if we limit the analysis by starting in 2003, when the dividend and capital gains tax cuts began, through the peak year of 2007, the result is still less income than at the 2000 level. Total income was down $951 billion during those four years.

    Average incomes fell. Average taxpayer income was down $3,512, or 5.7 percent, in 2008 compared with 2000, President Bush's own benchmark year for his promises of prosperity through tax cuts. Had incomes stayed at 2000 levels, the average taxpayer would have earned almost $21,000 more over those eight years. That's almost $50 per week. Just measuring the second through seventh years we find that total income was still nearly $2 trillion lower than if 2000 level income continued.5

    Povertry Rate

    That same US Census data also described what has happened to the nation's standard of living, comparing just the latest time period-2008 data with that of 2009. Here are some of the highlights:

    Some 43.6 million people were living in poverty last year-the highest number since 1959, five years before President Lyndon Johnson declared his War on Poverty. The poverty rate was 14.3 percent, up from 13.2 percent in 2008 and the highest level since 1994. Hispanic households took the hardest hit: Their poverty rate rose 2.1 percent from 2008's level, compared with a 1.1 percent jump in the rate for blacks and whites. (The US government considers an annual income of $21,756 to be the poverty line for a family of four.)

    A record number of Americans, 50.7 million, were not covered by health-care insurance in 2009. At the same time the survey was being taken, Congress passed President Obama's contentious health-care reform law.6

    Moving In

    From the 50s until about five years ago, one of the strongest American familial trends was for children to grow up and move away. It was a central part of the nuclear family ethos. That is now reversing thanks to the grinding down of the middle class through unemployment, job loss, and reduction in income even when a person is employed.

    From 2005 to 2009, family households added about 3.8 million extended family members, from adult siblings and in-laws to cousins and nephews. Extended family members now make up 8.2% of family households, up from 6.9% in 2005, according to Census data released in September 2010.

    'Clearly, a big part of that is the economic recession and housing costs,” says Stephanie Coontz, cochair of the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonprofit research association. 'We're seeing a shift away from the 1950s and 1960s mentality against extended families, when ‘modern' women did not take in aging parents for fear of hurting their marriage.”7

    And this shift involves far more than blood relations. 'For the first time in more than a century, more than half of people aged 25 to 34 have never been married. The number of people in non-family households-those whose members are not related-grew 4.4% from 2005 to 2009, faster than the 3.4% growth for family households.”7

    Prison Population

    According to the Pew Research Center's Economic Mobility Project, the US prison population has more than quadrupled since 1980, from 500,000 to 2.3 million.8 The American Gulag is now larger than the 35 largest European countries combined. The incarceration rate in the United States-753 inmates per 100,000-is five times that of the United Kingdom-itself an anomaly at 151 prisoners per 100,000. France, which is next, stands at 96, with Germany at 88. This means more than one in 100 Americans is in prison, and one in every 28 children in the United States has a parent behind bars-up from one in 125 just 25 years ago.7

    It probably won't surprise you to learn that a family with a parent in prison on average earns 22% less the year after the incarceration than it did the year before. After all, who wants to hire an ex-con in a tight labor market? And children with parents in prison are significantly likelier to be expelled from school than others; 23% of students with jailed parents are expelled, compared with 4% for the general population.

    'Both education and parental income are strong indicators of children's future economic mobility,” the survey notes. 'With millions of prison and jail inmates a year returning to their communities, it is important to identify policies that address the impact of incarceration on the economic mobility of former inmates and their children.”7

    In all, 2.7 million US children have parents behind bars, and 'two-thirds of these children's parents were incarcerated for non-violent offenses,” the study notes.7

    And when you break the statistics down by race, it just gets nastier. There are large disparities. Among black children, fully one in nine, or 11.4%, have a parent in jail. For Hispanics, the number is one in 28, and for white children it's one in 57.

    I hope marijuana law reform passed in California, because this alone could help reverse these trends, simply by reducing the 858,000 arrests in the United States in 2010 for marijuana. That's marginally down from the 2007 peak of 872,000. It is notable that more than 50% of these arrests are nonviolent violations involving marijuana.9

    The cost to states of this human warehousing now exceeds $50 billion per year, or one in every 15 state dollars expended.7 What is worse is that a growing number of small towns and cities now look to the gulag for their economic well-being. Like something from an Orwell novel, it is a complete cycle: one group of Americans lives on the incarceration of another group of Americans. And although it would appear illogical, it goes on even though it is well-known that the children of incarcerated parents face a much harder struggle in life. The gulag that incarcerates their parents, in the process, also often condemns the next generation to a life in jail.

    Why would any society do this? Well, from the point of view of those who live on keeping them, and who mostly live in low-crime areas, isn't this exactly what is wanted? Thus, we have created a lobby whose rice bowl is dependent on the gulag. It is a truly Dickensian reality that few talk about for fear of being labeled 'soft on crime.” It is a form of willful ignorance on the part of politicians and citizens alike.

    Physical Health

    In 1950, before the inception of the present illness profit industry, the United States, compared with the world's other leading industrial nations, was fifth with respect to female life expectancy at birth, surpassed only by Sweden, Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands.10 In 2010, the United States position concerning female life expectancy had fallen to 46th.11 And when both men and women were combined, it went to 49th.12, 13 Americans live 5.7 fewer years of 'perfect health”-a measure adjusted for time spent ill-than, for instance, the Japanese.14

    Is this the result of lack of spending on the part of the United States? Most emphatically it is not.

    Health policy expert Uwe E. Reinhardt, the James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University, headed a team that specifically considered this. They found, 'per capita health spending in the United States increased at nearly twice the rate in other wealthy nations between 1970 and 2002.”15 As a result, the United States now spends well over twice the median expenditure of industrialized nations on healthcare, and far more than any other country as a percentage of its gross domestic product.15

    Peter A. Muennig, assistant professor of health policy and management at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, in New York City, and Sherry A. Glied, professor of health policy and management at the Mailman School of Public Health and currently on leave as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services, analyzed Reinhardt's and many other studies in a groundbreaking exegetic survey of healthcare.16 They concluded:

    We found that none of the prevailing excuses for the poor performance of the US health care system are likely to be valid. On the spending side, we found that the unusually high medical spending is associated with worsening, rather than improving, 15-year survival in two groups for whom medical care is probably important.

    We speculate that the nature of our health care system specifically, its reliance on unregulated fee-for-service and specialty care may explain both the increased spending and the relative deterioration in survival that we observed. If so, meaningful reform may not only save money over the long term, it may also save lives.16

    Hunger

    It doesn't get much more basic that not having enough to eat. It is hard to think of America as a place where large numbers of people are facing hunger as a daily reality for themselves and, even worse, for their children. That happens in Africa, or maybe Asia, but surely not here. You think not? Millions of our fellow citizens routinely are forced to make life decisions based on whether they or their children will eat or go without to pay for housing or medical bills. And even the slender pipeline of assistance that does exist is problematic; 70% of emergency food centers face threats to their survival.

    According to a study from the nation's largest food bank operator, the number of Americans in need of food aid has jumped 46% in three years, including a 50% jump in the number of children needing food assistance and a 64% increase in hunger in senior citizens' homes.

    According to the largest study of domestic hunger ever done, Hunger in America 2010, a study based on more than 61,000 interviews with clients and surveys of 37,000 feeding agencies, 'hunger is increasing at an alarming rate in the United States”17:

    1.Feeding America is annually providing food to 37 million Americans, including 14 million children. This is an increase of 46% over 2006, when we were feeding 25 million Americans, including nine million children, each year.

    2.That means one in eight Americans now rely on Feeding America for food and groceries.

    3.Feeding America's nationwide network of food banks is feeding one million more Americans each week than we did in 2006.

    4.Thirty-six percent of the households we serve have at least one person working.

    5.More than one third of client households report having to choose between food and other basic necessities, such as rent, utilities, and medical care.

    6.The number of children the Feeding America network serves has increased by 50% since 2006.17

    'Clearly, the economic recession, resulting in dramatically increasing unemployment nationwide, has driven unprecedented, sharp increases in the need for emergency food assistance and enrollment in federal nutrition programs,” said Vicki Escarra, president and CEO of Feeding America, which operates some 200 food banks across the country.

    'It is morally reprehensible that we live in the wealthiest nation in the world where one in six people are struggling to make choices between food and other basic necessities,” Escarra said in a statement.

    She added that 'these are choices that no one should have to make, but particularly households with children. Insufficient nutrition has adverse effects on the physical, behavioral and mental health, and academic performance of children.”18

    Feeding America's report is far from alone in reporting this food catastrophe.

    'The Food Research and Action Center found that nearly one in five in the US-18.5 percent - report having gone hungry in the past year, up from 16.3 percent at the start of 2008. Households with children were even likelier to experience hunger, with nearly a quarter reporting hunger in the past year.

    'Perhaps worst of all, the Feeding America study finds that 70 percent of emergency food centers are reporting 'one or more problems that threaten their ability to continue operating.”18

    Justice

    I have placed this last because I hope you will agree with me that where there is not justice, there is not civil society. It has always been my safe port that no matter what else happened in America, I always saw the justice system as fair. Perhaps you feel the same way, and will be as appalled as I was when I read the World of Justice Project (WJP) report, Rule of Law Index 2010.19

    To understand why I think this report is such a big deal, perhaps it will help to say who funded it: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Neukom Family Foundation, the GE Foundation, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and LexisNexis. I list them to make the point that this is the pinnacle of nonpartisan philanthropy, not some political think tank with an agenda. We can trust the data.

    The project, involving 900 researchers from 35 countries, who have polled 35,000 individuals, in addition to searching each nation's records, presents itself in this very Franklinian way:

    'Establishing the rule of law is fundamental to achieving communities of opportunity and equity-communities that offer sustainable economic development, accountable government, and respect for fundamental rights… . The rule of law is the cornerstone to improving public health, safeguarding participation, ensuring security, and fighting poverty.”

    When the WJP talks about the rule of law, they spell out very carefully what they mean. They refer to 'a rules-based system in which the following four universal principles are upheld:

    •the government and its officials and agents are accountable under the law;

    •the laws are clear, publicized, stable, and fair, and protect fundamental rights, including the security of persons and property;

    •the process by which the laws are enacted, administered, and enforced is accessible, fair, and efficient;

    •access to justice is provided by competent, independent, and ethical adjudicators, attorneys or representatives, and judicial officers who are of sufficient number, have adequate resources, and reflect the makeup of the communities they serve.

    With this as the basis for its analysis, the Rule of Law Index 2010 then lists what it calls the 10 'factors,” which break down further into 49 'subfactors.” These descriptors are the basis upon which the Rule of Law Index 2010 evaluates a nation's justice under the rule of law. The outcome of this exercise is a quite extraordinary assessment 'of the extent to which countries adhere to the rule of law-not in theory but in practice [emphasis added].”19 Here are the 10 factors; they all sound very 'American”:

    •factor one: limited government powers

    •factor two: absence of corruption

    •factor three: clear, publicized, and stable laws

    •factor four: order and security

    •factor five: fundamental rights

    •factor six: open government

    •factor seven: regulatory enforcement

    •factor eight: access to civil justice

    •factor nine: effective criminal justice

    •factor 10: informal justice19

    As I started reading the report, I assumed that whatever other self-inflicted wounds we have brought to ourselves as a nation, our justice system was still solid, and that the United States would rank at the top of the world's list. Surprise. The WJP groups countries by regions as well as such considerations as income level, then evaluates them, dropping factor 10-'informal justice”-because it is does not involve law. Not surprisingly, the United States is grouped with North America and Western Europe, and there are seven nations in our bloc: Austria, Canada, France, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and USA (Table 1). These are the nations where the survey was carried out for the 2010 report, with other countries to follow in later reports.
    Table 1.

    Nine-Factors Ranking Analysis

    Countries are ranked from one to seven.

    Nations

    Austria 3 3 4 1 1 6 3 3 1
    Canada 4 4 3 3 4 4 4 5 6
    France 6 5 5 4 6 5 6 6 4
    Netherlands 2 2 2 5 3 2 2 2 3
    Spain 5 6 7 7 5 7 7 4 7
    Sweden 1 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 2
    USA 7 7 6 6 7 3 5 7 5


    For the United States, it is a death's head portrait of the reality that lies beneath the smug rhetoric we use to hector others about justice and the rule of law. I am embarrassed. We all should be. This has haunted me since I read the report. If America is not a leader in justice, what are we? I could pick a dozen other trends, from closing libraries, to depaving streets, to decline in educational performance, but do we need to go further? If America were a patient, what would you tell him about his lifestyle and habits? What would you see as his prognosis?

    On the basis of data, it is impossible to say America's societal health is good. On the basis of that same data, we can also conclude policies based on cutting taxes, without recognizing that it is in the societal interest to assure a decent quality of life for all, are destructive. We know enough to see that democracy cannot function properly without a healthy and vibrant middle class, and to prove to ourselves that we are killing ours. We need to change course-not on the basis of political ideology-but on facts. Facts about what does and does not work.

    It is the middle class that holds the key, just as Franklin saw all those years ago. The middle class has enough money to dream, but rarely enough to do it alone. Success requires working together, finding compromises. And that's what most of us say we want. According to research by Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University, 92% of Americans would choose to live in a society with far less income disparity than the United States, choosing Sweden's model over that of the United States.20 The America Benjamin Franklin imagined while sitting beneath his mulberry tree in the courtyard of his house in Philadelphia over two centuries ago.

    Source;
    http://www.explorejournal.com/articl...236-3/fulltext
    Last edited by giovonni; 23rd January 2011 at 21:52.

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    Lightbulb Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    i've decided instead of starting another "thread"
    i will continue posting here, but now these post will generally reflect items that are of a more immediate notation and concern to all here...
    Thanks again to all who follow this thread.


    Here is my first new item ~ a breif video story from CBS News...

    New Congress Forms ‘The Slumber Party’; One-Fifth of House Freshmen Sleep in Offices




    http://www.breitbart.tv/new-congress...slumber-party/
    Last edited by giovonni; 23rd January 2011 at 22:15.

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    Exclamation Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    And...so it begins...

    China Bank Moves to Buy U.S. Branches

    ICBC Signs a Deal for Bank of East Asia's Retail Outlets



    China's Hu Jintao visited a Chicago school Friday.

    By LINGLING WEI

    CHICAGO—China's biggest bank signed an agreement that would make it the first Beijing-controlled financial institution to acquire retail bank branches in the U.S., though regulators could still block the deal.

    Under the deal, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., by some measures the world's largest bank, agreed to acquire a majority stake in Bank of East Asia Ltd.'s U.S. subsidiary. ICBC will pay $140 million for an 80% stake. Bank of East Asia, which is a publicly traded company based in Hong Kong, has a total of 13 branches in New York and California. ICBC and Bank of East Asia have talked to U.S. regulators about the deal, these people said.

    The move represents what could be the start of big expansions by Chinese financial institutions in the U.S.

    Signed in Chicago on the last day of Chinese President Hu Jintao's state visit to the U.S., the move, comes as both Beijing and Washington are calling for greater commercial ties between the two countries.

    Both Beijing and Washington are eager to showcase their willingness to strengthen the business ties between the two countries, despite the many issues that will continue to hinder the relations. China is prodding the U.S. to ease its export controls, especially those involving high-technology products, aimed at its biggest economic rival. The U.S. is asking for more Chinese purchases of made-in-America goods and services.

    The transaction is expected to be carefully scrutinized by U.S. regulators, including the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., known as CFIUS, because of the state-controlled nature of the Chinese bank. A previous deal by a Chinese bank to acquire a bank in the U.S. was rejected by regulators. "It is going to be a long process," a person familiar with the matter said.

    If ICBC's deal to acquire Bank of East Asia's U.S. subsidiary goes through, Americans could walk into the retail branches, open check and savings accounts and, most significantly for many investors, open yuan accounts to trade the currency.

    ICBC, as the bank is known, is based in Beijing and is 70% owned by the Chinese government. It has become increasingly comfortable venturing outside its home markets, which still account for the bulk of its profit. Last year, ICBC got into the broker-dealer business in the U.S. with a symbolic $1 purchase of the U.S. brokerage unit of Fortis Securities, controlled by France's BNP Paribas SA. That deal didn't subject ICBC to tight U.S. regulatory restrictions on foreign purchases of retail-banking operations.

    U.S. regulators often demand that foreign banks prove they are adequately supervised in their home markets and have proper antimoney-laundering procedures in place before allowing them to set up retail operations, legal experts say.

    The agreement was signed at the Hilton Chicago as part of a slew of pacts announced by roughly 60 U.S. and Chinese companies at a giant "signing ceremony" organized on Friday by China's Commerce Ministry and its U.S. counterpart.

    Both Beijing and Washington are eager to showcase their willingness to strengthen the business ties between the two countries, despite the many issues that will continue to hinder the relations. China is prodding the U.S. to ease its export controls, especially those involving high-technology products, aimed at its biggest economic rival while the U.S. is asking for more Chinese purchases of made-in-America goods and services. The contract-signing event in Chicago was hailed as "the most important event" in conjunction with President Hu's visit, according to officials in the Chinese delegation.

    The move by ICBC underscores the desire by Chinese banking executives to transform their strength into a greater presence globally, as Chinese banks have emerged from the global financial crisis largely unscathed. Their hope is to better support Chinese companies and guard against losing customers to U.S. and European banks that already have networks world-wide. Meantime, Beijing has encouraged Chinese companies to expand overseas in recent years. In light of the huge foreign-exchange reserves China has, Beijing has encouraged its banks to invest more overseas.

    In a speech at the event Friday, Chen Deming, China's Commerce Minister, said one of the priorities for the Commerce Ministry is to "encourage our companies to go out." He pointed to the vast foreign-exchange reserves held by China, saying that "we should turn those reserves into capital and assets." Otherwise, the reserves could decline in value because of inflation, Mr. Chen said.

    While China's resource and construction companies have moved aggressively into new markets, its financial institutions generally have been slow to follow.

    Bank of East Asia is led by prominent Asian banker Sir David Li. Mr. Li drew unwanted attention to himself in the U.S. and Hong Kong in 2007 when the former board member of Dow Jones became the target of an insider-trading case involving News Corp.'s buyout bid for Dow Jones. Mr. Li later agreed to pay $8.1 million to settle the civil charges. Mr. Li couldn't be reached for comment.

    So far, most Chinese investments in the U.S. financial sector have involved the Chinese taking passive, minority stakes in firms such as Blackstone Group LP and Morgan Stanley. Taking a majority stake in Bank of East Asia is a change of tactic for ICBC

    At the same time, Bank of East Asia is no stranger to ICBC. It sold a 70% stake in its Canadian operations to ICBC last year and all of its six branches in Canada have since been rebranded ICBC Canada. Bank of East Asia has 13 branches in the U.S., concentrating in New York and California—two states that boast the largest numbers of Chinese immigrants. The bank formed its U.S. banking subsidiary in 2001 through the acquisition of Grand National Bank, of Alhambra, Calif.

    The deal, if approved by U.S. regulators, would allow ICBC to gain relatively quick access to American depositors. Right now, ICBC has one branch in New York, but it isn't involved in the retail-banking business. Bank of China Ltd. is the only mainland Chinese bank that has a retail license in the U.S. market. The bank, also state owned, has two branches in New York and one in Los Angeles. It recently has started allowing American customers to buy and sell the Chinese currency through its U.S. branches.

    The decision by Bank of China is the latest move by China to allow the yuan, whose value is still tightly controlled by the government, to become an international currency that can be used for trade and investment.

    Chinese banks have encountered uphill battles to gain access to the U.S. market in the past. For instance, it took almost two years for ICBC to get the approval from the Federal Reserve to open its New York branch, which has so far focused on commercial lending. That green light was given shortly before President George W. Bush's trip to Beijing for the Summer Olympics in 2008.

    Some Chinese banks' bids to acquire U.S. counterparts have been rejected. A case in point is China Minsheng Banking Corp. In 2008, Minsheng, China's first private bank and a midsize lender, agreed to take a 9.9% stake in San Francisco lender UCBH Holdings Inc., the holding company for United Commercial Bank. When the bank ran into trouble during the financial crisis over bad loans and accounting errors, Minsheng tried to buy it. U.S. regulators rejected the move because of restrictions on foreign investment in U.S. banks, according to people familiar with the matter. Regulators in late 2009 shut down United Commercial Bank and Minsheng had to write off its $130 million investment


    Note there is a video from WGN news on this source page
    discussing this story;
    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...NewsCollection
    Last edited by giovonni; 24th January 2011 at 05:14.

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    Lightbulb Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    This could be...Big...It ain't over, 'til it's over.


    Italian scientists claim to have demonstrated cold fusion

    Few areas of science are more controversial than cold fusion, the hypothetical near-room-temperature reaction in which two smaller nuclei join together to form a single larger nucleus while releasing large amounts of energy. In the 1980s, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishmann claimed to have demonstrated cold fusion - which could potentially provide the world with a cheap, clean energy source - but their experiment could not be reproduced. Since then, all other claims of cold fusion have been illegitimate, and studies have shown that cold fusion is theoretically implausible, causing mainstream science to become highly speculative of the field in general.



    This image from the video below shows the reactor at last Friday's demonstration in Bologna. Image credit: Rossi and Focardi.

    January 20, 2011 by Lisa Zyga

    Despite the intense skepticism, a small community of scientists is still investigating near-room-temperature fusion reactions. The latest news occurred last week, when Italian scientists Andrea Rossi and Sergio Focardi of the University of Bologna announced that they developed a cold fusion device capable of producing 12,400 W of heat power with an input of just 400 W. Last Friday, the scientists held a private invitation press conference in Bologna, attended by about 50 people, where they demonstrated what they claim is a nickel-hydrogen fusion reactor. Further, the scientists say that the reactor is well beyond the research phase; they plan to start shipping commercial devices within the next three months and start mass production by the end of 2011.

    The claim

    Rossi and Focardi say that, when the atomic nuclei of nickel and hydrogen are fused in their reactor, the reaction produces copper and a large amount of energy. The reactor uses less than 1 gram of hydrogen and starts with about 1,000 W of electricity, which is reduced to 400 W after a few minutes. Every minute, the reaction can convert 292 grams of 20°C water into dry steam at about 101°C. Since raising the temperature of water by 80°C and converting it to steam requires about 12,400 W of power, the experiment provides a power gain of 12,400/400 = 31. As for costs, the scientists estimate that electricity can be generated at a cost of less than 1 cent/kWh, which is significantly less than coal or natural gas plants.

    “The magnitude of this result suggests that there is a viable energy technology that uses commonly available materials, that does not produce carbon dioxide, and that does not produce radioactive waste and will be economical to build,” according to this description of the demonstration.

    Rossi and Focardi explain that the reaction produces radiation, providing evidence that the reaction is indeed a nuclear reaction and does not work by some other method. They note that no radiation escapes due to lead shielding, and no radioactivity is left in the cell after it is turned off, so there is no nuclear waste.

    Story here- note video is in italian;
    http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-01-...ion-video.html

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    Default Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    Quote Posted by giovonni (here)
    This could be...Big...It ain't over, 'til it's over.


    Italian scientists claim to have demonstrated cold fusion
    This was posted earlier, I believe, by irishspirit at Cold Fusion getting hot with 10kw heater prepping for market .

    There was also a more careful scientific analysis of this claim over on iTulip.com, at (iTulip members only link) Forget peak oil we now have cold fusion - I am ready plug me in . The conclusion of that analysis is that this is probably not cold fusion, but some sort of fuel cell A fuel cell is good for storing energy, but does not convert mass to energy, so is not a source of energy.

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    Lightbulb Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    i believe this World is on the brink of the releasing (by the white hats), a vast cache of technology that has been secretive away from the masses... i sense the old physics is out... The new future is closing in upon us ~ fast!

    Note my post are from Stephan A. Schwartz the futurist here at http://www.schwartzreport.net/ ...Generally this thread follows his vision of future trends...

    thank you though... for your comments

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    Lightbulb Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    This should be a heads-up to all here ~ by all means (if possible), to get off all pharmaceuticals ASAP!
    Note- if you are under a care of a physicians care - please (first) consult with them on this: Then please try and find a more natural way to heal oneself.


    ***********

    There is no click through to this report. Its facts have been verified by: http://www.snopes.com/medical/drugs/generic.asp

    Thanks to Terrence Glassman

    SHARON L. DAVIS, Budget Analyst - U.S. Department of Commerce

    Did you ever wonder how much it costs a drug company for the active ingredient in prescription medications? Some people think it must cost a lot, since many drugs sell for more than $2.00 per tablet. We did a search of offshore chemical synthesizers that supply the active ingredients found in drugs approved by the FDA. As we have revealed in past issues of Life Extension a significant percentage of drugs sold in the United States contain active ingredients made in other countries. In our independent investigation of how much profit drug companies really make, we obtained the actual price of active ingredients used in some of the most popular drugs sold in America .

    Celebrex:100 mg
    Consumer price (100 tablets): $130.27
    Cost of general active ingre dients: $0.60
    Percent markup: 21,712%


    Claritin:10 mg
    Consumer Price (100 tablets): $215.17
    Cost of general active ingredients: $0.71
    Percent markup: 30,306%


    Keflex:250 mg
    Consumer Price (100 tablets): $157.39
    Cost of general active ingredients: $1.88
    Percent markup: 8,372%


    Lipitor:20 mg
    Consumer Price (100 tablets): $272.37
    Cost of general active ingredients: $5.80
    Percent markup: 4,696%


    Norvasc:10 mg
    Consumer price (100 tablets): $188.29
    Cost of general active ingredients: $0.14
    Percent markup: 134,493%


    Paxil:20 mg
    Consumer price (100 tablets): $220.27
    Cost of general active ingredients: $7.60
    Percent markup: 2,898%


    Prevacid:30 mg
    Consumer price (100 tablets): $44.77
    Cost of general active ingredients: $1.01
    Percent markup: 34,136%


    Prilosec: 20 mg
    Consumer price (100 tablets): $360.97
    Cost of general active ingredients $0.52
    Percent markup: 69,417%


    Prozac:20 mg
    Consumer price (100 tablets) : $247.47
    Cost of gener al active ingredients: $0.11
    Percent markup: 224,973%


    Tenormin:50 mg
    Consumer price (100 tablets): $104.47
    Cost of general active ingredients: $0.13
    Percent markup: 80,362%
    .JPG" SRC="aoladp://MA24192176-0011/ATT0001011.jpg">

    Vasotec:10 mg
    Consumer price (100 tablets): $102.37
    Cost of general active ingredients: $0.20
    Percent markup: 51,185%


    Xanax:1 mg
    Consumer price (100 tablets) : $136.79
    Cost of general active ingredients: $0.024
    Percent markup: 569,958%


    Zestril:20 mg
    Consumer price (100 tablets) $89.89
    Cost of general active ingredients $3.20
    Percent markup: 2,809%


    Zithromax:600 mg
    Consumer price (100 tablets): $1,482.19
    Cost of general active ingredients: $18.78
    Percent markup: 7,892%


    Zocor:40 mg
    Consumer price (100 tablets): $350.27
    Cost of general active ingredients: $8.63
    Percent markup: 4,059%
    IZE="9126" ID="16" SRC="aoladp://MA23455901-0016/ATT0001516.jpg">
    Zoloft:50 mg
    Consumer price: $206.87
    Cost of general active ingredients: $1..75
    Percent markup: 11,821%


    Since the cost of prescription drugs is so outrageous, I thought everyone should know about this.
    It pays to shop around! This helps to solve the mystery as to why they can afford to put a Walgreen's on every corner. On Monday night, Steve Wilson, an investigative reporter for Channel 7 News in Detroit , did a story on generic drug prices gouging by pharmacies. He found in his investigation that some of these generic drugs were marked up as much as 3,000% or more. So often we blame the drug companies for the high cost of drugs, and usually rightfully so. But in this case, the fault clearly lies with the pharmacies themselves. For example if you had to buy a prescription drug, and bought the name brand, you might pay $100 for 100 pills.
    The pharmacist might tell you that if you get the generic equivalent, they would only cost $80, making you think you are saving $20. What the pharmacist is not telling you is that those 100 generic pills may have only cost him $10!

    At the end of the report, one of the anchors asked Mr. Wilson whether or not there were any pharmacies that did not adhere to this practice, and he said that Costco consistently charged little over their cost for the generic drugs.

    I went to the Costco site, where you can look up any drug, and get its online price. It says that the in-store prices are consistent with the online prices. I was appalled. Just to give you one example from my own experience I had to use the drug Compazine which helps prevent nausea in chemo patients.

    I used the generic equivalent, which cost $54.99 for 60 pills at CVS. I checked the price at Costco, and I could have bought 100 pills for $19.89. For 145 of my pain pills, I paid $72.57. I could have got 150 at Costco for $28.08.

    I would like to mention, that although Costco is a 'membership' type store, you do NOT have to be a member to buy prescriptions there as it is a federally regulated substance. You just tell them at the door that you wish to use the pharmacy, and they will let you in.

    I am asking each of you to please help me by copying this letter, and passing it into your own e-mail, and send it to everyone you know with an e-mail address.

    Sharon L. Davis
    Budget Analyst
    U.S. Department of Commerce
    Room 6839
    Office Ph: 202-482-4458
    Office Fax: 202-482-5480
    E-mail Address:sdavis@doc.gov

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    Lightbulb Re: From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

    This could be an interesting trend to watch...

    Who are Canada's 'freemen'?

    "The key is simply know who you are, stay in honour and stand your ground peacefully. I was in "court" because I parked mine or my wife's conveyance on my Sovereign land (i.e.) lawn. No ticket, straight to a court summons issued on a fictitious entity. On and for the record this file was filled with goodies and they waited until the entire case docket was done before they called a name that sounded familiar as in an account that I am administer for. Unfortunately for the court, there were over 20 people there in support of me and most of them were Sovereigns as well...Included in the room were 3 other Peace Officers from WFS and myself, a sworn to the people Peace Officer and duly witnessed and Notarized as such....Hope this is helpful...Case dismissed with cause and prejudice, note the judge bowing before he abandoned the court. This video was recorded in Common Law jurisdiction and authorized by myself as such. Copyright September 1st, 2010 Keith of the Thompson Clan, All rights reserved."




    Who are Canada's 'freemen'?
    interesting article here;
    http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Can...349/story.html

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