Marc Faber: 2009 to Be `Catastrophic' for Global Economy P1

Worse contraction since great depression. Faber.

Marc Faber: 2009 to Be `Catastrophic' for Global Economy P2

That the truth, 2009 will be the start of a great depression experience.

Craig Venter - Creating Artificial Life

Hedges on the Edge

Hedges on the Edge

Discussing how long can hedges cling onto investments before there's a major backlash, with Gregory Zuckerman, The Wall Street Journal and Henny Sender, Financial Times

President Bush Attacked By Shoes

I wondered if any capacity for a pragmatic response and actual physical nimbleness still existed in the old fighter pilot as it was never apparent in his politics. He is still looking out for incoming political ordinance and flying shoes.

How the 'Experts' Missed the Crash: Philosophical Flaws, No Sense of History

Unfortunately, Galbraith doesn't hold much hope that this crisis will change much the outlook for economists, noting they don't study history and many are "still in denial" about what's transpired.

Riz Khan - Global meltdown - Nov 19 - Part 1

Riz Khan asks top economists what needs to be done in order to turn the global economy around.

A digital library, free to the world

Mortgage fraud as art

Astounding:

Orson Benn, once a vice president at the nation’s largest subprime lender, spent three years during the height of the housing boom tutoring Florida mortgage brokers in the art of fraud.

From his office in New York, he taught them how to doctor credit reports, coached them to inflate income on loan applications, and helped them invent phantom jobs for borrowers.

While prosecutors looked at roughly $100 million in loans written by Benn and a cadre of co-workers, that represents just a portion of the loans they approved during his aggressive expansion into Florida.

The Miami Herald found that Benn’s network approved more than $550 million in home loans from Tampa to West Palm Beach to Miami, according to an analysis of court records. In Miami-Dade County alone, Benn’s office approved more than $349 million in loans on 1,913 homes — more than one in three have since fallen into foreclosure, the analysis shows.

Valdes brokered at least 100 of those loans worth $22 million — nearly all based on false and misleading financial information, the newspaper found

How did they doctor loan apps? Simple mortgage broker fraud: “non-existent employers, grossly inflated salaries and sudden, drastic increases in the borrower’s net worth.”

There apparently was an art to falsifying the documentation, and Benn taught his brokers precisely how, falsifying income and employment data:

He taught one of those brokers, Scott Almeida, a convicted cocaine trafficker, to prepare phony income statements and doctor credit reports. A few months later, Almeida introduced Benn to Tampa brokers David Tuggle and Eric Steinhauser. After Benn taught them to prepare phony documents, they began to write millions of dollars in loans.

The accompanying video is a must see, and the entire article definitely worth reading.

Nothing on predatory borrowers, though . .

video

Krugman: $10 trillion available for economic rescue

We are about half done, I guess. that money would have bought a lot of work relief doing green jobs. We are going to spend it all buying time and nothing else.

Jared Diamond: Why societies collapse

We have to double down on borrow and spend

Yes we can!

Monster Crash

satire!

Peter Schiff Was Right 2006 - 2007 (2nd Edition)

This is a set of clips of Peter Schiff from 2006 and 2007. Added labels and 2008 predictions to the first video.

The REAL Maverick: Present Economy worse than Depression

Tabeb and Mandelbroit reprise...black swans, fractals, markets.
Dooms day.

Inside Look: A Dark Cloud Over Retailers

US retail is doomed, alas.

Jim Rogers On Power Lunch 11.26.08

Worth listening too always.

Dr Doom like Gold and Agriculture

Marc Faber is the man, you should pay attention! Bounce time!

Comex Defaulting And Gold Price Doubling

Buy Gold and Silver, buy the coins, buy certificates from credible Mints like the Perth Mint. Ignore Alex Jones but, he is a nasty conspiracist, but even blockheads can be right.

Louise Yamada: We are in structural bear market for years!

for sure this is the case ` Kev.
As Managing Director and Head of Technical Research for Smith Barney, Louise Yamada was a perennial leader in the Institutional Investor poll, and was the top-ranked market technician in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004. Our technical analysis team has been together for up to 24 years and includes Senior Analyst Jonathan Lin and Analysts Lori Altenburger and Noreen Lennon.

Note: Effective June 4, 2008, former LYA analyst Ron Daino is no longer affiliated with the company

http://www.lyadvisors.com/

Real Estate Downfall

Hitlers homeloan hits problems

Jim Rogers on dollar

Link

Here Comes the Sun (Rob van Hattum, VPRO Backlight)

Alternate energy is going mainstream

Mark Thirlwell: The End of the Free Market?

The state is back as a major economic player. The current financial crisis has prompted a tsunami of government intervention in rich world financial markets: from regulatory bans on short-selling though to massive public sector bailouts, loan and deposit guarantees, and a series of increasingly dramatic nationalizations.

The severity of the crisis has undermined the reputation of Wall Street and left global financial capitalism as a badly tarnished brand.

Meanwhile, the shifting geography of international economic and financial power means that a series of state-controlled actors - including Sovereign Wealth Funds, State-Owned Banks and State-Owned Enterprises, and National Oil Companies - have become important players on the world economic stage.

Mark Thirlwell looks at the resumed battle for the Commanding Heights of the world economy, and asks whether the apparent victory for the free market secured in the 1980s and 1990s is now about to be overturned in favor of the state - The Lowy Institute for International Policy

Farming the Sun

Nice way of putting it!

Rocky and Bullwinkle - Minsode 05

Big Box Mart

Big Box Mart | Funny Jokes at JibJab

Gordon Brown calls for new world

Mr Brown will call on fellow world leaders to use the current worldwide economic downturn as an opportunity to thoroughly reform international financial institutions and create a new "truly global society" with Britain, the US and Europe providing leadership.

His call comes ahead of an emergency summit of world leaders and finance ministers from 20 major countries, the G20, in Washington next weekend.

Mr Brown will say that the Washington meeting must establish a consensus on a new Bretton Woods-style framework for the international financial system, featuring a reformed International Monetary Fund which will act as a global early-warning system for financial problems.

The original Bretton Woods agreements, signed in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire in 1944, established post-war international monetary protocols governing trade, banking and other financial relations among nations, including fixed exchange rates and the IMF.

Mr Brown's plan for strengthening the global economy 60 years later involves recapitalisation of banks to permit the resumption of normal lending to households and businesses, better international co-ordination of fiscal and monetary policy and a new IMF fund to help struggling economies and stop financial problems spreading between nations.

He also wants agreement on a world trade deal and reform of the international financial system based on principles of "transparency, integrity, responsibility, sound banking practice and global governance with co-ordination across borders".

As Britain moves into a painful recession Mr Brown has staked his own leadership on helping to find a way out of the global crisis.

In a speech to City financiers at the annual Lord Mayor's banquet in London he will say: "The British Government will begin to begin a new Bretton Woods with a new IMF that offers, by its surveillance of every economy, an early warning system and a crisis prevention mechanism for the whole world.

"The alliance between Britain and the US, and more broadly between Europe and the US, can and must provide leadership, not in order to make the rules ourselves, but to lead the global effort to build a stronger and more just international order.

"My message is that we must be internationalist not protectionist, interventionist not neutral, progressive not reactive and forward-looking not frozen by events. We can seize the moment and in doing so build a truly global society."

Mr Brown has already discussed IMF reforms with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel and has called on countries including China and the oil-rich Gulf states to fund the bulk of an increase in the IMF's bailout pot.

The Prime Minister wants the markets to be subjected to morality and ordinary people's interests are put first.

He believes that in electing Barack Obama, US voters have showed their belief in a "progressive" agenda of government intervention to help families and businesses through the current crisis.

He will say: "Uniquely in this global age, it is now in our power to come together so that 2008 is remembered not just for the failure of a financial crash that engulfed the world but for the resilience and optimism with which we faced the storm, endured it and prevailed."

However, the head of the IMF played down expectations of a new Bretton Woods system ahead of the G20 summit.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF's managing director, said: "Expectations should not be oversold. Things are not going to change overnight. Bretton Woods took two years to prepare. A lot of people are talking about Bretton Woods II. The words sound nice but we are not going to create a new international treaty."

The European Union has called for an overhaul of the IMF with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, saying: "We want to change the rules of the game".

The US, however, has been more lukewarm on the possibility of radical change.

US May Lose Its 'AAA' Rating

video
The United States may be on course to lose its 'AAA' rating due to the large amount of debt it has accumulated, according to Martin Hennecke, senior manager of private clients at Tyche.




"The U.S. might really have to look at a default on the bankruptcy reorganization of the present financial system" and the bankruptcy of the government is not out of the realm of possibility, Hennecke said.

"In the United States there is already a funding crisis, and they will have to sell a lot more bonds next year to fund the bailout packages that have already been signed off," Hennecke told CNBC.

In order to solve or stem the economic slowdown, Hennecke suggested the US would have to radically reduce spending across all sectors and recall all its troops from around the world.

As for a stimulus package, there is not much of an industry left to stimulate back into life, Hennecke said.

Robert Shiller: 'More tough times ahead for the US'

Shiller is bright!

How engineers learn from evolution

James Howard Kunstler: The tragedy of suburbia

Peter Schiff - Barack Obama Will Accelerate An American Economic Collapse Into A Great Depression

I don't agree with Peter, its hard to see how Obama could be more socialist that Bush and Paulson. There is a bigger problem.
Maybe the problem in America is there is no struggle about the fundamental mechanisms of American oppression and aggression: debt and threat.

American policies promote debt and force as the hammer and anvil for shaping the economy and the political dialogue. What cannot be financed into penury must be crushed into submission. The bulk of the economy is designed to prosper either the bankers or the police/prison/military/intelligence industries at everyone else’s expense. Propped up on these twin pillars of debt and threat, America remains staunchly and irrevocably American whoever wins the elections.

Has fiscal prudence been swiftly repudiated post-election in favour of more debt-financed “stimulus” and “stabilisation”. Time will tell.

President-Elect Barack Obama in Chicago

Beautifull Oratory, no question.

Ron Paul on the Bailout.

The addiction to bailouts will doom the dollar system.

Synthetic CDO that fails in subprime securitization

Synthetic CDOs are magical things. They have no reality. But they exist. They are devious creations created by some of the most devious minds on earth. The search for the Holy Grail of untraceable, finger-printless, opaque, dark pool money machine was perfected a mere 10 years ago and it was unleashed upon this earth to exploit the Japanese carry trade's funny money 0% lending! See? When we talk about all these strange unicornic creatures created by the gnomes, we must never forget the ultimate reason: to exploit this amazing, once in the last 500 years event!
So the problem was, how to shimmy this good thing into the real economic world and thus, use it as a basis for building great wealth without lifting a finger or making anything exportable.
welcome to the Outer Darkness.

Bush Endorsement

Inevitable life

Interesting take on life..

CRASH DANCE - song parody from versusplus.com on THE NATIONAL DEBT CEILING

Crash Dance is the song of the hour...

Faber on the Bear

Wall Street Rapsody

s this the real price?
Is this just fantasy?
Financial landslide
No escape from reality
Open your eyes
And look at your buys and see.
I'm now a poor boy
High-yielding casualty

Because I bought it high,
watched it blow
Rating high,
value low
Any way the Fed goes
Doesn't really matter to me, to me

Mama - just killed my fund
Quoted CDO's instead
Pulled the trigger, now it's dead
Mama - I had just begun
These CDO's have blown it all away

Mama - oooh
I still wanna buy
I sometimes wish I'd never left Goldman at all.

I see a little silhouette of a Fed
Bernanke! Bernanke! Can you save the whole market?
Monolines and munis - very very frightening me!
Oh Super senior, super senior
Super senior CDO
Magnifico

I'm long of subprime, nobody loves me
He's long of subprime CDO fantasy
Spare the margin call you monstrous PB!
Easy come easy go, will you let me go?
Peloton! No - we will not let you go -
let him go
Peloton! We will not let you go -
let him go
Peloton! We will not let you go -
let me go
Will not let you go
- let me go (never) Never let you go - let me go Never let me go - ooo

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, -
Oh mama mia, mama mia, mama mia let me go S&P had the devil put aside for me For me, for me, for me

So you think you can fund me and spit in my eye?
And then margin call me and leave me to die Oh PB - can't do this to me PB Just gotta get out - just gotta get right outta here

Ooh yeah, ooh yeah
No price really matters
No liquidity
Nothing really matters - no price really matters to me

Any way the Fed goes.....

Treasury Commerical from NBR

Sepreme satire from NBR.

10/13/2008 - Peter Schiff On Glenn Beck: Inflation Nation?

Weimar ahead?

Jurg Kiener on Gold

comex default

Wall Street (VANITY FAIR)

What is a cds.

Untangling credit default swaps

Untangling credit default swaps from Marketplace on Vimeo.

Rogers: CASH is the King.

Rogers is a bright guy.

The McCain-Palin Mob

Obama has terrorist bloodlines!

CNBC airs prediction of default in paper gold

CNBC today gave a few minutes to Swiss Asia Capital CEO Jurg Kiener to talk about gold, and he noted the disparity between the explosive physical market price and the sluggish paper market price, blamed the speculation of Wall Street banks for the latter, and predicted the failure of the paper market and the quick doubling of the gold price. You can watch the interview here:

link

Interview - Naomi Wolf -

Give Me Liberty

Navarro's China Effect -- The Sichuan Earthquake

China will still be the story.

Goldman Sachs Bribed Senate To Pass Bailout Bill

fear, haste and paranoia.

10/01 Palin Can't Name Supreme Court Case in Katie Couric Interview - Roe vs Wade Supreme Court Decision Sarah Palin Can't Name

Palin can't cut it.

Peter Schiff On The Glenn Beck Show

Sharpton / Hitchens Debate - Can Morality Exist Without God?

I assert the answer is yes but that in the context of a civilisation it may be no.

BNP Paribas Recommends Underweight Property

Commodities and financials.

Paulson's Hyperinflationary Folly! Endless Bailouts. The Current Economic System is Doomed.

conspiracy crazies have a field day.

The Dark Bailout

Where is bruce wayne when u need him.

Is this the U.S. Congress or the Board of Directors at Goldman Sachs! Dennis Kucinich

Kucinich on the bailout.

Inside Story - Financial Crisis and the Gulf States- Sept 24 - Part 1

good take here

David Letterman Reacts to John McCain Suspending Campaign

Funny!!!

Shirley Bassey - GOLDFINGER

Gold's day has arrived!

Peter Schiff on Glen Beck 9/15/08

It's all over. Peter Schiff.

Al Jolson - Brother can you spare a Dime

So asks the Investment Bankers...

Sarah Palin - Speech In Golden, Colorado 9/15/08

Palin on the bailouts. she is not a winner, imo.

Roubini on Bloomberg

Roubini on Bloomberg

J.G. Ballard - BBC Profile

excellent dude.

The War within

Gold to go - Templeton

Gold do to go - Templeton

Ross Garnaut

On Bloomberg TV.

Take A Load Off Fannie

Ain't it the truth!

Science Fiction as genre

Downfall of a Investment Bank

Ancient Rome The Rise and Fall of an Empire 1

Rome was once a largely democratic society, with regular elections. This Republic lasted for 500 years, but then came Tiberius Gracchus. He believed in the ideals of the Republic - fairness, decency and justice for everyone -but was appalled by Rome's aristocrats' treatment of the poor. So he unleashed the power of the mob upon the streets of Rome, with devastating consequences.

Brandenburg Concert No 3

excellent!

STEELY DAN - THE ROYAL SCAM

Flashback to my youth!

Steely Dan - Any Major Dude Will Tell You

Nice Song..

7/20/2008- Peter Schiff On Charles Osgood's Sunday Morning

Worth a watch.

Nov 2006 Peter Schiff Mortgage Bankers Speech Part 1 of 8

Peter had it right! Watch it!

Mr Mortgage on the Fannie/Freddie Crisis

Worth a watch

Ron Suskind On The Situation Room

Me 262

Luftwaffe ME 262 Jetfighter - Quality Footage, Lots of Close Ups - Funny videos are here

Inside USA - Al Jazeera English

Ancient Rome The Rise and Fall of an Empire 1

Rome was once a largely democratic society, with regular elections. This Republic lasted for 500 years, but then came Tiberius Gracchus. He believed in the ideals of the Republic - fairness, decency and justice for everyone -but was appalled by Rome's aristocrats' treatment of the poor. So he unleashed the power of the mob upon the streets of Rome, with devastating consequences.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: the prophet of boom and doom

link

1. Scepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be sceptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.

2. Go to parties. You can't even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.

3. It's not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.

4. Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can't control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behaviour. You will always have the last word.

5. Don't disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don't understand their logic. Don't pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific ‘evidence'.

6. Learn to fail with pride — and do so fast and cleanly. Maximise trial and error — by mastering the error part.

7. Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words ‘impossible', ‘never', ‘too difficult' too often, drop him or her from your social network. Never take ‘no' for an answer (conversely, take most ‘yeses' as ‘most probably').

8. Don't read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants... or (again) parties.

9. Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.

10. Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.

the Age of Turbulence -- The Book

Alan Greenspan- The Age of Turbulence pdf - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: Alan Greenspan- The Age of Turbulence pdf

China's rise, fact or fiction

Happy People Dancing on Planet Earth

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Above, Matt Harding traveled through many nations on Earth, started dancing, and filmed the result. The video is perhaps a dramatic example that humans from all over planet Earth feel a common bond as part of a single species. Happiness is frequently contagious -- few people are able to watch the above video without smiling.

Bush - Wall Street got drunk

There is no question, about it. Wall Street got drunk...that's one reason I asked you to turn off TV cameras...he's got drunk and now it's got a hangover, the question is, How long will it sober up and try not to do all these fancy financial instruments?" - G.W. Bush

In Search Of The Lost Chord

Next bad thing for the US: CDS

BBC

The Debt Trap

A cautionary tale. We will be hearing alot more of this kind of story.

Roubini:By far the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression

AL GORE: Green Energy by 2018 (7/17 Speech)

Green Energy by 2018, Al Gore's latest speech.

Jim Rogers Interview: Washington is Making "Mistake After Mistake."

Commodities investor and author Jim Rogers tells Moneynews Editorial Director Greg Brown that, much like the Asian crisis of a few years back, investors now should face up to an "American crisis" that will affect markets for some time to come. Rogers believes that Washington and the Federal Reserve are hurting, not helping, matters by propping up mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac while punishing the dollar.

Welcome to the blame game

George Carlin on

George Carlin on "the American Dream

Argentina's Economic Collapse - Part 1 of 12

Documentary on the events that led to the economic collapse of Argentina in 2001 which wiped out the middle class and raised the level of poverty to 57.5%. Central to the collapse was the implementation of neo-liberal policies which enabled the swindle of billions of dollars by foreign banks and corporations. Many of Argentina's assets and resources were shamefully plundered. Its financial system was even used for money laundering by Citibank, Credit Suisse, and JP Morgan.

Charlie Rose - Gretchen Morgenson and Allan Sloan

Everyone was asleep at the wheel.

US Economy Faces Hyperinflationary Recession and Depression.

This is what will happen. we will die of money.

Don't Bail Out Fannie, Freddie: Jim Rogers

Don't Bail Out Fannie, Freddie: Jim Rogers

Bush tours America to offer hope..

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency

Galveston By Jimmy Webb as he wanted it..

Great Song by a master lyricist.

Ted Koppel: The People's Republic of Capitalism

Bear Market -- be fearfull

Bloomberg

July 8 (Bloomberg) -- Michael Steinhardt, the investment pioneer whose hedge funds returned more than 20 percent a year for almost three decades, said U.S. stocks will keep falling even as ''contrarian'' buy signals abound.

Record oil prices and the credit-market slump that spurred more than $400 billion in asset writedowns and loan losses at banks worldwide will prevent the market from rallying, Steinhardt, 67, said in a Bloomberg Television interview today. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index declined 19.99 percent from its October record through yesterday, just short of the 20 percent threshold of a so-called bear market.

''There are genuine, solid, fearful reasons for a bear market,'' Steinhardt said. ''I don't think we're at a bottom.'' He added, ''I can think of only one quick fix, which is a dramatic, substantial drop in the price of oil.''

Steinhardt was 19 when he started his Wall Street career as a securities analyst after graduating in 1960 from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In 1967, he opened New York-based Steinhardt Management Co., which produced hedge-fund returns averaging 24 percent a year for the next 28 years.

He closed the firm in 1995 when it had $2.6 billion under management to pursue philanthropy. He is chairman of WisdomTree Investments Inc., a New York-based asset-management firm that offers exchange-traded funds.

'Inexplicable' Advance

Crude oil surged 88 percent in the past year and reached a record $145.85 a barrel on July 3. Some of that advance is sustainable, Steinhardt said.

''A lot of it's political, a lot of it is inexplicable, but I don't think oil at $100 a barrel is very difficult to imagine,'' he said. ''If there were a will in the key centers of power in this country to get the price of oil down, it would come down.''

The Federal Reserve, which cited rising oil prices last month after ending its most aggressive monetary easing in two decades, should raise interest rates ''a little bit'' to restrain inflation, which is on the verge of accelerating, Steinhardt said. Consumer prices in the U.S. climbed 4.2 percent in the year through May and probably rose at a 4.5 percent pace in June, according to a Bloomberg News survey of economists.

Rising bets against U.S. stocks and growing pessimism among investors, usually indicators that it's time to purchase shares, are giving a false buy signal, he said.

'This Time It's Different'

''There is rarely a moment such as this where as a contrarian, one sees so many reasons technically, stock market- wise to be bullish. I can't imagine a circumstance where a market is more available, more ripe for a rally than this one,'' Steinhardt said. Still, ''this time it's different,'' he added.

General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., airlines, banks, mortgage lenders and brokerages, ''companies and industries that heretofore had been sacrosanct,'' are in jeopardy amid higher inflation and slowing economic growth, he said. GM, the biggest U.S. automaker, retreated 72 percent for the Dow Jones Industrial Average's biggest loss since the measure's record high in October.

''It's an extraordinary phenomenon where that which was the heartland of America is now so, so sick and not easily vulnerable to improvement,'' Steinhardt added.

The End of Suburbia - 52 minute documentary on oil

All became true so quickly..

Soros on Greenspan

Jim Rogers: Why the dollar is doomed

The Bear's Back Barrons

don't catch falling knives

The Energy Question of 2008

Krugman with Olbermann on "The Energy Question of 2008"

Gas Prices Run Off the Road

A report shows that some American families simply cannot afford to drive anymore, with Jeff Rubin, CIBC World Markets chief economist and CNBC's Mark Haines.

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL | Bill Moyers on Big Oil | PBS

A Bill Moyers essay on big oil. Airs Friday, June 27, at 9p.m.

Running on Empty: Life Without Cheap Oil

It's not a question of if, but when. Futurist and author James Howard Kunstler talks about life in a world without cheap oil.

'Misleading' Fed Should Let Banks Fail The close ties between Wall Street and government mean big brokers and banks will be bailed out

'Misleading' Fed Should Let Banks Fail
The close ties between Wall Street and government mean big brokers and banks will be bailed out, but that is putting the entire financial system at risk, Marc Faber, editor of the "Gloom and Doom Report" said. Find out what he thinks investors should do

Gold the place to be

Ivest in Precious metals, gold to 5000

Gold to go to $2300

Gold to go to $2300

Use your brain power Luke!

When you put the headset on for the first time, Emotiv's software takes you through a number of routines to determine what your mind looks like when you think, say, "lift." Then, the next time you think "lift," your brain will (hopefully) produce a similar EEG wave, and the system will know what you want.

When it hits store shelves by the end of the year, Emotiv's $299 headset -- for PC games only, at least at first -- will include one game that incorporates many of these pattern-learning routines. At Emotiv's office here in San Francisco, I played a version of this intro game. In it, you play a martial-arts warrior in training. Your warrior-master guides you through techniques that help you translate your thoughts into on-screen actions.

Thinking my way through a video game was terrific fun. The warrior-master asked me to clear my mind, and then to imagine myself levitating a boulder a few feet off the ground. I concentrated, my brain working as hard as it's ever worked. [Ed's. note: You're making this too easy...]

The boulder began to levitate, but as soon as it did, my excitement that the thing was working broke my concentration, and the boulder tumbled.

I tried again, and this time the game responded within a second -- the boulder floated off the ground. As I pushed through the warrior landscape, I was asked to move more and bigger hurdles -- a mountain, a bridge I had to get across -- and by the third or fourth time, the objects seemed almost to be lifting themselves. I didn't even have to think about thinking: Simply seeing the object, comprehending that it needed to be lifted, sent it flying up. There was something very nearly magical to it.

ASPO6 - Time to React?

Peak oil has arrived. Deal with it.

They still dance !

Great clip, thx Rachel.

Opening Statement

Ezra Levant's opening statement

American Theocracy: Radical Religion Oil and Borrowed Money

Kevin Phillips examines the axis of religion, politics, and borrowed money that threatens to destroy the nation. He maintains that every world-dominating power has been brought down by a related set of causes: a lethal combination of global over-reach, militant religion, resource problems, and ballooning debt. Series: "Walter H. Capps Center Series" [1/2007] [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 12093]

Focus Fusion: Un flakey energy

Of the three approaches to achieving hydrogen-boron fusion, focus fusion, using the dense plasma focus device, has experimentally achieved conditions that are closest to those needed for net power generation. It is the only approach that can utilize the high magnetic field effect, which reduces the cooling of plasma by x-rays, helping to achieve the multi-billion-degree temperatures needed for fusion. A currently-planned three-year, $2 million experiment, if funded, can demonstrate the scientific feasibility of focus fusion.

This presentation will review the history and status of focus fusion and briefly compare it to the two competing approaches, Field Reversed Configuration (recently funded by Paul Allen) and Inertial Electrostatic Confinement, championed by Dr. Robert Bussard, a recent Google Tech Talk speaker.

Speaker: Eric Lerner
Eric J. Lerner is President of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics in West Orange, NJ and Executive Director of the Focus Fusion Society. He has been an independent researcher in plasma physics since 1979, and has become internationally known for his studies linking cosmic plasma phenomena and laboratory fusion devices, especially the dense plasma focus. He has developed original theories of quasars, large scale structure, the microwave background and the origin of light elements. He is the author of The Big Bang Never Happened, published in 1991 by Random House. In 2006 he was a Visiting Scientist at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

Robert F. Kennedy challenges Gross Domestic Product

I sense that we are in a time of great change, perhaps of the same historical magnitude as the fall of Rome and the descent of Europe into the Dark Ages, the concommitant rise of the superior power and culture of Islam, the Renaissance, and the drive to throw off the Colonial chains of Europe that swept across the Americas, from Canada to Argentina, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The end of the era of unlimited and cheap energy is certainly part of this sea change.

How the United States adapts to the new environment will determine its future and its standing in the new world order.

A new philosophical framework will be required. Our definition of "good" and "sucessful" will have to change. Over the last three thousand years the ascendent philosophies were, in chronological succession: Paganism, Islam, Christianity and Enlightenment rationality.
"We will find neither national purpose nor personal satisfaction in a mere continuation of economic progress, in an endless amassing of worldly goods. We cannot measure national spirit by the Dow Jones Average, nor national achievement by the Gross National Product. For the Gross National Product includes air pollution, and ambulances to clear our highways from carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and jails for the people who break them. The Gross National Product includes the destruction of the redwoods and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm and missles and nuclear warheads.... It includes... the broadcasting of television programs which glorify violence to sell goods to our children. "And if the Gross National Product includes all this, there is much that it does not comprehend. It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry, or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials... the Gross National Product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile, and it can tell us everything about America -- except whether we are proud to be Americans."

The New Age will require a new philosophy, and the people that is the most creative at crafting this new philophy will dominate tomorrow's world, both from a power and cultural perspective.

Imagining the Tenth Dimension

Polaroid Stop Motion -- Pure artistry...

Coming Credit Consumer Crisis Part 2

Interview with Meredith Whitney of Oppenheimer and Co.: Securitization Has Dried Up, Consumers Face Liquidity Crisis.

The Coming Consumer Credit Crisis (Part 1)

Interview with Meredith Whitney of Oppenheimer and Co.: Securitization Has Dried Up, Consumers Face Liquidity Crisis.

Peter Schwartz - The Threat of Abrupt Climate Change

It is the threat of "abrupt climate change" that converted him to support new emphasis on nuclear power, Schwartz said. Gradual global warming is clearly now under way, and there is increasing reason to believe that human activity is driving it, mostly through the burning of coal and oil. If warming is all that happens, it will be an enormous problem, but some regions of the Earth would gain (Russia, Canada) while many others would lose.

In the event of abrupt climate change, though, everyone loses. The most likely change would be a sudden (in one decade) shift to a much colder, drier, and windier world. The world's carrying capacity for humans would plummet, driving human population from the current 6.5 billion to as low as 2 billion, with most of the losses from war. It would be a civilization-threatening catastrophe. From research Schwartz has led for the Pentagon as well as from his own training in fluid dynamics, he thinks that continuation of the current warming is very likely to trigger the kind of radical climate instability that has been the norm in Earth's past, except for the last 10,000 years of uncharacteristically stable climate. Therefore everything must be done to head off the shift to climate instability.

House Of Cards - P2

A Norwegian brokerage firm said Wednesday that it would file for bankruptcy protection after losing its license because of accusations that it made four remote towns victims of subprime lending problems in the United States.

Norway's main financial regulator said the firm, Terra Securities, violated the "good code of conduct" by failing to adequately inform four towns near the Arctic Circle of possible risks related to complex investment securities that it sold them.

The four Norwegian towns — Rana, Hemnes, Hattfjelldal and Narvik — lost about 350 million kroner, or $64 million, from investments that had fallen to less than 55 percent of their original value.

The towns invested 451 million kroner in collateralized debt obligations created by Citigroup and sold by Terra Securities.

Norway's finance minister, Kristin Halvorsen, said at a news conference in Oslo that the government was unlikely to bail out the towns, Bloomberg News reported.

House Of Cards - P1

What is keeping her awake are the far-reaching ripple effects of the troubled housing market in sunny Florida, California and other parts of the United States.

Ms. Kuvaas is the mayor of Narvik, a remote seaport where the season's perpetual gloom deepened even further in recent days after news that the town -- along with three other Norwegian municipalities -- had lost about $64 million, and potentially much more, in complex securities investments that went sour.

''I think about it every minute,'' Ms. Kuvaas, 60, said in an interview, her manner polite but harried. ''Because of this, we can't focus on things that matter, like schools or care for the elderly.''

Norway's unlucky towns are the latest victims -- and perhaps the least likely ones so far -- of the credit crisis that began last summer in the American subprime mortgage market and has spread to the farthest reaches of the world, causing untold losses and sowing fears about the global economy.

Where all the bad debt ended up remains something of a mystery, but to those hit by the collateral damage, it hardly matters.

Tiny specks on the map, these Norwegian towns are links in a chain of misery that stretches from insolvent homeowners in California to the state treasury of Maine, and from regional banks in Germany to the mightiest names on Wall Street. Citigroup, among the hardest hit, created the investments bought by the towns through a Norwegian broker.

For Ms. Kuvaas, being in such company is no comfort. People here are angry and scared, fearing that the losses will hurt local services like kindergartens, nursing homes and cultural institutions. With Christmas only weeks away, Narvik has already missed a payroll for municipal workers.

Above all, the residents want to know how their close-knit community of 18,000 could have mortgaged its future -- built on the revenue from a hydroelectric plant on a nearby fjord -- by dabbling in what many view as the black arts of investment bankers in distant places.

''The people in City Hall were naïve and they were manipulated,'' said Paal Droenen, who was buying fish at a market across the street from the mayor's office. ''The fund guys were telling them tales, like, 'This could happen to you.' It's a catastrophe for a small town like this.''

Now, the towns are considering legal action against the Norwegian brokerage company, Terra Securities, that sold them the investments. They allege that they were duped by Terra's brokers, who did not warn them that these types of securities were risky and subject to being cashed out, at a loss, if their market price fell below a certain level.

''When you sell something that is not what you say it is, that is a lie,'' Ms. Kuvaas said. She disputed the suggestion that people here lacked the sophistication to understand what they were buying. ''We're not especially stupid because we live so far in the north,'' she said.

Norway's financial regulator agreed that the brokers had misled the towns, and it revoked the license of Terra Securities, prompting the company to file for bankruptcy. But the company's parent, Terra Group, which is in turn owned by 78 savings banks and remains in business, rejected calls for it to compensate the towns. A spokesman for the group said it too had taken a hit from the episode.

Norway's finance minister, Kristin Halvorsen, has ruled out the possibility of a state bailout, and Citigroup, which announced Thursday that it would shut down one of the money-losing investments Narvik bought, said it had no legal obligation to step in.

Where the economy is going... (by shadowstats.com)

Get a look at de-spinned reality!

Roubini still pessimistic over economy - P1

I discuss the outlook for the US economy, housing and mortgages; the prospects for policy action (the Frank-Dodd bill to provide debt relief to distressed mortgage borrowers) and for Fed policy; and the outlook for financial markets."

Roubini still pessimistic over economy - P2

Excellent.

Roubini still pessimistic over economy - P3

Good analysis from a master that's spin free.

Dr. Strangelov, er Petrov, screams fire

..in the crowded Credit Default Swap theatre.

In a one-hour and eight-minuter talk, Dr. Petrov discusses in fairly good depth, the basics of credit default swaps. Furthermore, he discusses how the system is corrupt and will collapse at any moment.

He also, at about the one-hour mark, mentions your own, loveable, Earthling Doug Noland as having warned the masses that this would happen. He also quotes Nouriel Roubini and Peter Schiff as sounding the alarm as well.

Finally, he states that junk bonds will cause the ultimate demise of the CDS market.

(One note: This talk was given recently, however, he is using an outdated number for the outstanding notional dollar amount of CDS at $45 trillion. The number is now $62 trillion and growing daily, according to the latest B.I.S. report.

All-in-all, an interesting, informative talk. (For those Earthlings with ADD, just fast-forward to the last eight minutes or so of the talk, where he gets into the juicy parts.)

Dyesol

Great compant great stock.

200 years of monetary history and the end of the dollar

This this one of the reason precious metals are important investments for the little guy.

Dr. Hirsch Discusses Peak Oil on CNBC

HOST: ...Dr. Hirsch is a senior energy advisor at Management Information Services and Dr. Hirsch, thank you for joining us this morning.

HIRSCH: My pleasure.

HOST: You know, we've been talking all morning long about energy prices. Watching crude oil prices touch above $127 for the first time overnight leads a lot of people to start wondering about peak oil and the peak oil theory. You've been writing about peak oil for some time, so did you see this coming?

HIRSCH: Yes we did. Not quite the way it's turned out, but this is not a surprise.

HOST: You say, "not quite the way it's turned out". What's happened that's different from what you were predicting?

HIRSCH: Well, I wasn't particularly predicting. I'm a student of this and have focused on what we do about the problem after it really hits. Peak oil--the idea is that it would hit a sharp peak and then production in the world would hit a sharp peak then drop off. And what's happened is that we hit plateau in world oil production, and that plateau has been ongoing since about the middle of 2004.

HOST: Dr. Hirsch, there are a lot of people when we talk about peak oil who say there are going to be technologies that are always developed. There will be new ways to get oil, whether it's from coal, whether it's from the oil shales, and they say that means we will never actually hit peak oil. What do you say to those people?

HIRSCH: They're incorrect, and the reason that they're incorrect is that they don't understand the magnitude of the problem and how long it's going to take to bring substitute liquid fuels on and to introduce energy efficiency on a massive scale. That's something that we analyzed and it takes decades. And the reason, simply, is that the magnitude of the problem is enormous.

[McTeer says we should drill more.]

HOST: Dr. Hirsch, what do you say to that--the idea that we should be drilling in places like ANWR and drilling offshore. Would that solve this problem of a plateau in oil production?

HIRSCH: There's no single thing that's going to solve this problem because it's as massive as one can possibly imagine. And the prices that we're paying at the pump today I think are going to be the good old days because others who watch this very closely forecast that we are going to be hitting $12 and $15 per gallon. And then, after that, when world oil production goes into decline, we're going to talk about rationing. In other words, not only are we going to be paying high prices and have considerable economic problems, in addition to that, we're not going to be able to get the fuel when we want it.

Flight of the Conchords - Ladies of the World

Nice!

TechCrunch's Demo of Microsoft TouchWall

sweet!!

An approach to buying stocks

Jurvetson: We Can Create Life

"Within the next three years, we will create artificial lifeforms from scratch." The key breakthrough that's occurred in the last few years, he says, is our ability to treat the code of life like a computer program. In the past, we could only cut and paste from biology, but the reality today is that we can write the code of life from scratch.

Anything that does not exist naturally in the environment can be generated, Jurvetson anticipates. So far, researchers have generated viruses and changed the species of one bacteria to another by swapping out its DNA. The goal of generating a new kind of organism that has never existed is "tantalizingly close."

Jurvetson noted this leads to "great capabilities, and also great responsibilities," and that a group of ethical experts and world religious leaders generally approved of such experimentation as long as it steers clear of human life. “The moment anyone talks about mammals, it’ll be a totally different proposition.”

The four horseman -- atheists at large

Nice song.

America's Sacred Oil

Wake up america.

James Kunstler interview

world man by hand

CBS News: US Prepares Iran Attack

Lies about Iran. war would mean the end of american power in the gulf.

black swans and other critters taleb

Booster Shot: Endeavour's Night Launch from SRB Cams

Excellent view angles.

bmw k1200s acceleration from 0-280

Nice bike.

Alina Kabaeva Ball Athens 2004

Putin's girlfriend. Nice.

Divided Baghdad

Bagdad divided.

The Whipsaw Song

Ed Sakota is a great man.

Like an animal!

She's very good.

Mr Mortgage - HERE COMES THE ALT-A CRISIS

Alt-A the next subsprime.

Craig Venter - Is There Life In Space?

Celebrity geneticist Craig Venter theorizes on the possibilities of life in space, and argues that the most likely source of life in near space may be human contamination.

Karen Armstrong: 2008 TED Prize wish: Charter for Compassio

Karen Armstrong talks about how the Abrahamic religions -- Islam, Judaism, Christianity -- have been diverted from the moral purpose they share to foster compassion. But Armstrong has seen a yearning to change this fact. People want to be religious, she says; we should act to help make religion a force for harmony. She asks the TED community to help her build a Charter for Compassion -- to help restore the Golden Rule as the central global religious doctrine.

Charles Leadbeater: The rise of the amateur professional

Charles Leadbeater weaves a tight argument that innovation isn't just for professionals anymore. Passionate amateurs, using new tools, are creating products and paradigms that companies can't. He describes the rising role of serious amateurs ("Pro-Ams," as he calls them) through the story of the mountain bike.

Charles Leadbeater: The rise of the amateur professional

Charles Leadbeater weaves a tight argument that innovation isn't just for professionals anymore. Passionate amateurs, using new tools, are creating products and paradigms that companies can't. He describes the rising role of serious amateurs ("Pro-Ams," as he calls them) through the story of the mountain bike.

Stiglitz: The subprime problem just beginning!

Oh Yes, we are all scrommed. no Question.

Matt Simmons on Bloomberg News (3/4/08)

Peak Oil is here.

Suzuki's Biplane - DigInfo

Nice looking concept bike.

Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells : DigInfo

background.

The Thud Experiment

American pych takes a hit.psychiatry and the rise of game theory during the Cold War and the way in which its mathematical models of human behavior filtered into economic thought.These games were internally coherent and worked correctly as long as the players obeyed the ground rules that they should behave selfishly and try to outwit their opponents, but when RAND's analysts tried the games on their own secretaries, they instead chose not to betray each other, but to cooperate every time. This did not, in the eyes of the analysts, discredit the models, but instead proved that the secretaries were unfit subjects.