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Britain faces the unsettling possibility of seeing its debt rating downgraded, after credit ratings firm Standard & Poor's said Thursday it has revised the country's outlook to negative from stable.
Though the ratings agency reaffirmed the country's long-term triple-A credit rating -- reserved for the least risky bond issuers -- it said the outlook had deteriorated because of massive borrowing to deal with the recession and the banking crisis.
The outlook revision does not trigger a formal re-evaluation of Britain's rating -- unlike being put on credit watch -- but does mean that policy makers have to be aware that a downgrade may happen if public finances do not improve.
The pound slumped by over 2 U.S. cents to just below $1.56 after the news, but recovered most of its ground to trade around $1.57.
Meanwhile the FTSE share index fell nearly 140 points, or around 2.8 percent, though like other markets around the world it was facing selling pressure after the U.S. Federal Reserve warned that the U.S. economy would shrink by more than anticipated this year.
A lower credit rating would make the government pay higher interest rates to borrow money on bond markets. An S&P study found that 37 percent of its negative outlooks were followed by a downgrade.
"Pressure on the rating will raise concerns regarding the ability to issue the record amount of gilts (British government bonds) required over the coming year to fund the deteriorating fiscal position in the U.K.," said Hans Redeker, an analyst at BNP Paribas.
This is the first time Britain has been put on the negative list since since S&P started giving its view of the outlook of the country's public finances in the early 1980s.
S&P said the downward revision reflects a more cautious view of how quickly the country's finances can be repaired and that its projections incorporate new estimates of the cost of the government's bailout of the banking sector. It now esimtates that the government's net debt burden will rise to nearly 100 percent of economic output by 2013, way more than the government is currently projecting.(
Yahoo! Finance, 21.5.2009)
It could be the ultimate in political control — but it won't be patented in Germany.
German media outlets reported last week that a Saudi inventor's application to patent a "killer chip," as the Swiss tabloids put it, had been denied.
The basic model would consist of a tiny GPS transceiver placed in a capsule and inserted under a person's skin, so that authorities could track him easily.
Model B would have an extra function — a dose of cyanide to remotely kill the wearer without muss or fuss if authorities deemed he'd become a public threat.
The inventor said the chip could be used to track terrorists, criminals, fugitives, illegal immigrants, political dissidents, domestic servants and foreigners overstaying their visas.
"The invention will probably be found to violate paragraph two of the German Patent Law — which does not allow inventions that transgress public order or good morals," German Patent and Trademark Office spokeswoman Stephanie Krüger told the English-language German-news Web site The Local.(
Fox News, 18.5.2009)
Sharks, barracuda and other large predatory fishes disappear on Caribbean coral reefs as human populations rise, endangering the region's marine food web and ultimately its reefs and fisheries, according to a sweeping study by researcher Chris Stallings of The Florida State University Coastal and Marine Laboratory.
While other scientists working in the Caribbean have observed the declines of large predators for decades, the comprehensive work by Stallings documents the ominous patterns in far more detail at a much greater geographic scale than any other research to date. His article on the study, "Fishery-Independent Data Reveal Negative Effect of Human Population Density on Caribbean Predatory Fish Communities," is published in the May 6, 2009 issue of the journal PLoS One (www.plosone.org/).
"Seeing evidence of this ecological and economic travesty played out across the entire Caribbean is truly sobering," said Associate Professor John Bruno of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who served as the PLoS One academic editor for Stallings' paper.
"I examined 20 species of predators, including sharks, groupers, snappers, jacks, trumpetfish and barracuda, from 22 Caribbean nations," said Stallings, a postdoctoral associate at the FSU Coastal and Marine Laboratory. "I found that nations with more people have reefs with far fewer large fish because as the number of people increases, so does demand for seafood. Fishermen typically go after the biggest fish first, but shift to smaller species once the bigger ones become depleted. In some areas with large human populations, my study revealed that only a few small predatory fish remain."
Stallings said that although several factors -- including loss of coral reef habitats -- contributed to the general patterns, careful examination of the data suggests overfishing as the most likely reason for the disappearance of large predatory fishes across the region. He pointed to the Nassau grouper as a prime example. Once abundant throughout the Caribbean, Nassau grouper have virtually disappeared from many Caribbean nearshore areas and are endangered throughout their range.(
EurekAlert! Public News List, 5.5.2009)
The stench of human waste is enough to tell Falah abu Hasan that his drinking water is bad. His infant daughter Fatma's continuous illnesses and his own constant nausea confirm it.
"We are the poor. No one cares if we get sick and die," he said. "But someone should do something about the water. It is dirty. It brings disease."
Everybody complains about the water in Baghdad, and few are willing to risk drinking it from the tap. Six years after the U.S. invaded Iraq, 36 percent of Baghdad's drinking water is unsafe, according to the Iraqi Environment Ministry - in a good month. In a bad month, it's 90 percent. Cholera broke out last summer, and officials fear another outbreak this year.
"Even if the water is good today, no one would trust it," grocer Hussein Jawad said. He said that about 40 percent of his business was selling bottled drinking water, crates of which he's stacked 7 feet high on the sidewalk. "We've learned to be afraid."
The irony of bad water is lost on few here. When the city was founded 1,200 years ago, it was named Baghdad al Zawhaa, "Baghdad the Garden," because water was plentiful. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers formed the boundaries of Mesopotamia and fed the fields in the cradle of civilization.(
Kansas City Star, 18.3.2009)
Human pollution is turning the seas into acid so quickly that the coming decades will recreate conditions not seen on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs, scientists will warn today.
The rapid acidification is caused by the massive amounts of carbon dioxide belched from chimneys and exhausts that dissolve in the ocean. The chemical change is placing "unprecedented" pressure on marine life such as shellfish and lobsters and could cause widespread extinctions, the experts say.
The study, by scientists at Bristol University, will be presented at a special three-day summit of climate scientists in Copenhagen, which opens today. The conference is intended to update the science of global warming and to shock politicians into taking action on carbon emissions.
The Bristol scientists cannot talk about their unpublished results until they are announced later today. But a summary of the findings seen by the Guardian predicts "dangerous" levels of ocean acidification and severe consequences for organisms called marine calcifiers, which form chalky shells.
It says: "We find the future rate of surface ocean acidification and environmental pressure on marine calcifiers very likely unprecedented in the past 65 million years." The scientists add that the situation in the deep sea is of even "greater concern".
The scientists compared the current acidification rate with a giant prehistoric release of greenhouse gas, which geologists know caused widespread extinction of deep water species.
The summary reads: "Because the rates of acidification between past and future are comparable, and [because] there was widespread extinction of benthic organisms [lowest living], one must conclude that a similar level of extinction is more likely than not in the future."
Concern about ocean acidification from carbon pollution has grown in recent years, but the issue receives much less attention than global warming — also caused by human carbon emissions.(
Guardian.co.uk, 10.3.2009)
During the Bush Administration, FEMA was given hundreds of millions of dollars to retrofit former military bases and other existing infrastructure so they can be used as "camps."
Not camps as in summer camps. Camps as in prison camps and perhaps even concentration camps.
One of the first thing the Obama Administration did was to legitimize their existence.
These camps, which can be found in every state in the union, currently sit empty and are intended to be pressed into service in the event of an "emergency."
Funny that we've made it over 200 years without needing a national network of on-demand concentration camps.
Why do we need them now?
It's been suggested they've been built to deal with a massive influx of illegal aliens.
My guess is they were built with the knowledge that the US is going to experience a severe economic dislocation that is going to:
a) require the suspension or serious reduction of social welfare payments (i.e. millions of suddenly desperate people in the streets) and
b) financially wipe out tens of millions of formerly middle class Americans who are going to realize more or less all at once that their futures have been stolen from them by the people at the top
In other words, the crooks are covering their bets.
When governments have money, they buy peace with social welfare programs.
When they run out of money, as the US is doing, the gloves come off.
Or we can hope that these camps, built by Halliburton subsidiary KBR, were just another way for Cheney to rip off the country for his friends.
Of course, nothing prevents both scenarios from being accurate. (
BrasscheckTV.com, 5.3.2009)
Gilts saw their biggest one-day jump in memory after the Bank of England signalled it was embarking on a policy of money creation for the first time.
The Bank cut interest rates by half a percentage point and committed to spending £150bn of newly created central bank money on corporate and government bonds. The news sent shockwaves through Britain's capital markets.
Although most economists had expected the rate cut, which leaves borrowing costs at an effective zero of 0.5pc, the scale and speed of the plan to pump extra cash into the economy took traders by surprise. The Bank plans to spend £50bn of the money it creates on corporate debt and the remaining sum on government bonds.
The sheer scale of the operation is illustrated by the fact that the entire corporate bond and commercial paper market in the UK is worth only £57.5bn, while the amount of gilt-edged government debt eligible for the Bank's auctions totals £250bn.
The Bank initially intends to spend £75bn on the operation, with the remaining amount likely to be committed as and when the Monetary Policy Committee judges necessary.(
Telegraph, 6.3.2009)
Trends research analyst Gerald Celente, who has risen in prominence on the back of his deadly accurate economic predictions, says that the collapse of financial markets heralds the start of “The Greatest Depression”.
In his latest Trend Alert bulletin, Celente attacks mainstream pundits who falsely predicted a market bottom and the start of a recovery, noting that conventional analysts have been proven “dead wrong” again and that, “There will be no turn around in the second quarter of 2009 or 2010 or 2011.”
“The global financial system, built on endless supplies of cheap money, rampant speculation, fraud, greed, and delusion is terminally ill and will not be coaxed into remission by stimulus packages nor restored to health by government buyouts and bailouts,” writes Celente.
The most positive prediction that Celente makes is that the Dow will not reach zero, a tongue in cheek reaction to yesterday’s record plunge which saw the Dow rolled back to 1997 levels well below 7,000.
Celente warns that the first signs of real panic are starting to set in, unrest that will cause governments to “take draconian measures to prevent total economic collapse and public panic.”
“Expect massive bank failures, runs on banks, and bank holidays,” writes Celente. “Even if deposits are FDIC insured, quick access to money is by no means assured. At minimum, have reserves on hand for emergencies,” he forecasts.
Celente cites gold as one of the few investments that will continue to rise in value, eventually reaching $2,000 an ounce and beyond.
Celente’s dire forecasts were initially scoffed at by the media but as the crisis has worsened, his credibility has soared.(
Prison Planet.com, 3.3.2009)
Indonesian villagers have trapped and killed a fourth endangered Sumatran tiger amid a spate of tiger attacks blamed on illegal logging, according to environmental group WWF.
Four tigers and six people have been killed on Sumatra island this month, it said.
"We learnt on February 24 that another Sumatran tiger had been trapped and killed by villagers after it attacked two farmers on Sunday," WWF spokeswoman Syamsidar told AFP.
"This is the fourth tiger killed this month and we are concerned because it is a protected animal and an endangered species."
The farmers from Simpang Gaung village in Riau province were seriously injured in the attack, Syamsidar said.
"The tiger in the latest killing had wandered into the village as its habitat had been destroyed by people," she added.
Indonesian Forestry Minister Malam Sambat Kaban urged the provincial police to arrest the tiger killers, Detikcom news website reported.
"I urge the police to carry out a complete investigation... the killers must be arrested quickly," he was quoted as saying.
"They can't kill these tigers as they please. Whatever their excuse, the tigers must be protected."
There are fewer than 400 Sumatran tigers left in the wild and their increasing contact with people is a result of habitat loss due to deforestation, according to the wildlife group.
It said about 12 million hectares (30 million acres) of forest on Sumatra had been cleared in the past 22 years, a loss of nearly 50 percent islandwide.
The incidents in Riau occurred in an area dotted with pulp and oil palm plantations and recently subjected to burning to clear forests.(
Yahoo! News, 27.2.2009)
A giant rat with one-inch-long teeth has been caught in the southern Chinese province of Fujian.
The rat, which weighed six pounds and had a 12-inch tail, was caught at the weekend in a residential area of Fuzhou, a city of six million people on China's south coast.
The ratcatcher, who was only named as Mr Xian, said he swooped for the rodent after seeing a big crowd of people surrounding it on the street.
He told local Chinese newspapers that he thought the rat might be a valuable specimen, or a rare species, and had to muster up his courage before grabbing its tail and picking it up by the scruff of its neck.
"I did it, I caught a rat the size of a cat!" he shouted out afterwards, according to the reports. Mr Xian is believed to still be in possession of the animal, after stuffing into a bag and departing the scene.(
Telegraph, 18.2.2009)
