Mark Herrmann's Blog

Find the suckling piglets…

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:50:11 -0500

Find the suckling piglets…

Updated 2009 Nov 24 2201 UTC Joint USAF/NOAA Report of...

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:17:44 -0500

Updated 2009 Nov 24 2201 UTC

Joint USAF/NOAA Report of Solar and Geophysical Activity

SDF Number 328 Issued at 2200Z on 24 Nov 2009

Analysis of Solar Active Regions and Activity from 23/2100Z to 24/2100Z: Solar Activity was very low. No flares occurred during the past 24 hours. The disk remains spotless.

Solar Activity Forecast: Solar activity is expected to be very low.

Geophysical Activity Summary 23/2100Z to 24/2100Z: The geomagnetic field was quiet to unsettled. The ACE spacecraft detected the arrival of a co-rotating interaction region at 24/0600Z. Solar wind speeds began to increase at 24/0800Z and reached about 450 km/sec by 24/1800Z. The elevated wind speed and fluctuating Bt/Bz caused three unsettled periods, 24/1200-2100Z.

Geophysical Activity Forecast: Geomagnetic activity on day one (25 Nov) is expected to be mostly quiet with a chance for unsettled periods due to persistence of current solar wind conditions. Conditions are expected to be quiet to unsettled again on day two (26 Nov) based on recurrence. Quiet conditions are expected to return on day three (27 Nov).

Meet the man who has exposed the great climate change con trick

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:01:16 -0500

Meet the man who has exposed the great climate change con trick

Climate Gate…where’s the media? The documents...

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:57:59 -0500

Climate Gate…where’s the media?

The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here.

New York Times’ Andrew C. Revkin of their “Dot Earth” blog

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Wed, 25 Nov 2009 06:30:43 -0500

"It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the..."

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:08:56 -0500

“It’s no use pretending that this isn’t a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging(1). I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I’m dismayed and deeply shaken by them.”

- George Monbiot, one of the fiercest media propagandists of the warming faith, on his personal blog

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Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:47:34 -0500

Video

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:55:27 -0500

"Whenever we checked in with our military and intelligence people, we said, “Is this a nuclear..."

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:45:41 -0500

“Whenever we checked in with our military and intelligence people, we said, “Is this a nuclear arsenal at risk?” The answer so far has always been, “No.””

- Former U.S. national security adviser Stephen Hadley, on the Pakistani government’s control over the country’s nuclear arsenal.

It’s going to be a bummer when they say “Yes”…

Good luck with that.

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:29:07 -0500

Good luck with that.

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Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:58:00 -0500

Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:26:56 -0500

Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government

The Coming Deficit Disaster

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:25:38 -0500

The Coming Deficit Disaster

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Sun, 22 Nov 2009 07:22:05 -0500

Bare Branches

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:52:07 -0500

Last month, a Hong Kong apartment set a record. It sold for $56.6 million, which works out to $11,350 per square foot - the highest price ever paid for a pad in China. The buyer may have just needed a roof over his head. More likely, he is bullish on China. We are too, in the sense that we expect the Middle Kingdom to mature in wealth and power in the 21st century. But here’s a better bet: that China will blow up before it grows up.

China is a country of hyperbole. There’s scarcely anything you can say about it that doesn’t end with ‘est.’ In some ways, it is the world’s oldest society. In other ways, it is its newest. It is the world’s richest - with more than $2 trillion in reserves. It is also the world’s poorest, with some 200 million people who get by on less than $5 per day. It faces the world’s biggest problems too.

Even in its calamities, China is second to none. People inside the Great Wall were about as rich as people outside it, man for man, until the 19th century. Then, China missed the industrial revolution. Nearby Japan missed it too, but quickly corrected its mistake. It kept the barbarians at arms length, but still managed to pick their pockets. The Chinese, on the other hand, played it cool. The barbarians had nothing to offer, they believed. They still think so. Said Xue Chen of the Shanghai Institute of International Studies, just last week: “The US has a lot to ask from China. On the other hand, the US has little to offer China.”

In the early 19th century, traders from Britain and America bought porcelain (china), silk and tea. Trouble was, they could find nothing to sell in exchange. The trade balance with China went negative, with China building up substantial monetary reserves (in silver). In 1830, a Chinese merchant, Hao Gua, who enjoyed a near monopoly on trade with the gweilos [foreign devils], was said to be one of the richest men in the world. Then, the English found something the Chinese would buy - opium. The fruit of the poppy was popular in many countries but, as usual, the Chinese over-did it. First, it was a favorite of the leisure classes. Then, it trickled down to ordinary workmen. Soon the coolies were neglecting their labors and China was in crisis. When the authorities tried to stop the drug trade, the English opened fire, humiliating the government and almost bankrupting it. People lost confidence in Manchu rule. By mid-century, nearly half the country was in open revolt. A Christian revolutionary had set up the “Heavenly Kingdom” in Nanjing. He raised armies and challenged the Qing Dynasty to battle. For a time, it looked like he might win.

In the north, meanwhile, infanticide of female babies had become common in Nien territory - a reaction to famine and scarcity. By mid-century, one out of four young men in the region couldn’t find a bride; “bare branches,” they were called. By 1855, these bare branches were ready to break. They armed themselves and organized. They drove out government forces and controlled a large part of the country before they were finally put down. Between natural calamities and war, some experts put the 19-century death toll at an unimaginable 200 million. And then came the 20th century! The Middle Kingdom staggered forward, from error to accident to catastrophe! From the Taiping insurrection to Mao Tsetung. Then, 30 years ago, Deng Tsaoping announced the new line: “To get rich is glorious,” he said. Suddenly, the Chinese began saving every penny. Building factories. Cutting prices. And beating the barbarians at their own game.

Again, they exaggerated. While Americans built too many shopping malls, the Chinese built too many factories. Then, in 2008-2009 came the “greatest collapse in world trade in history,” says Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman. Americans - their biggest customers - rediscovered thrift. You might think China would realize it had too much capacity and back off. Instead, it rolled more steel. It built more factories and offices…entire cities.

If stimulus spending is a measure of stupidity, the Chinese are three times as dumb as Americans. Both governments respond to correction by doing more wrong than they did before. Loans in China are rising by about 40% of GDP annually. The money supply is soaring at nearly 30% a year. “We estimate that [fixed capital formation] accounted for 70% of China’s growth in 2008 and close to 90% of China’s first half of 2009 growth,” says a report from Pivot Capital.

It is just a matter of time until this capital spending bubble blows up. But China is full of bubbles. In another example of its central planning, it made the ancient practice of infanticide state policy. One couple/one child was the rule. Missing girls was the result. Then, when the boys grew up, they discovered that their brides were missing too. The working age population of China is collapsing. There were 7 workers to every old person in 1990. Now, there are barely 4. By 2035, there will be only 2. What happened to the workers? They are the missing children of the missing girls who then became missing mothers. And by 2040, 397 billion old people - more than the total populations of France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK combined - will be missing the support of those missing workers.

Where this leads, we don’t pretend to know. But bare branches bend…and then they break.

Regards,

Bill Bonner

Unofficial Problem Bank List Increases to 513

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:41:29 -0500

Changes and comments from surferdude808:

The Unofficial Problem Bank List increased by a net six institutions to 513 while aggregate assets declined to $302.3 billion from $304 billion.

There were 12 institutions added to the list with an average asset size of $194 million. The largest among the new faces include Modern Bank, National Association, New York, NY ($601 million); Eagle National Bank, Upper Darby, PA ($284 million), and The First National Bank of Wynne, Wynne, AR ($275 million). The OCC issued a Prompt Corrective Action order on September 30, 2009 to Marshall Bank, National Association, Hallock, MN ($60 million).

Six institutions were removed this week with half being failures last Friday including Orion Bank ($2.6 billion) and Century Bank, a Federal Savings Bank ($756 million). Three other banks were removed when their enforcement action was terminated including The First National Bank of Manchester and The Morris County National Bank of Naples. The only other change to the list this week is the OCC’s change in action against First National Bank in Pawhuska ($37 million) from a Formal Agreement to a Cease & Desist Order on October 22, 2009.

The FDIC Anesthesia Is Wearing Off

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:37:26 -0500

The following article is an excerpt from Robert Prechter’s Elliott Wave Theorist:

by Robert Prechter

Perhaps the single greatest reason for the unbridled expansion of credit over the past 50 years is the existence of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, another government-sponsored enterprise created by Congress. The coming rush of bank failures is an outcome made inevitable the very day that Congress created the FDIC. The reason is that the creation of the FDIC allowed savers to believe that their deposits at banks are “insured” against loss.

But the FDIC is not really an insurance company. No enterprise, absent fraud, could possibly insure all the banking deposits in a nation. Nor does the FDIC do so, despite its claims. The FDIC is like AIG, the company that sold too many credit-default swaps. It contracted for more insurance than it could pay upon. Because depositors believe the sticker on the door of the bank, they have abdicated their responsibility to make sure that their banks’ officers handle their deposits prudently. This abdication allowed banks to lend with impunity for decades until they became saturated with unpayable debts.

Today, most banks are insolvent, and the FDIC is broke. This condition is deflationary for three reasons: (1) Banks are coming to realize that the FDIC cannot bail them out in a systemic crisis, so they have become highly conservative in their lending policies, as described above. (2) The main way that the FDIC gets its money is to dun marginally healthy banks for more “premiums” (meaning transfer payments) to bail out their disastrously run competitors. The more money the FDIC sucks out of marginally healthy banks, the less money those banks have on hand to lend, which is deflationary. (3) The banks that have to cough up all this money will become more impoverished at the margin, so banks that otherwise might have survived a credit crunch will be thrown even closer to the brink of failure. This is another deflationary risk.

A friend of mine whose family owns a bank told me that the FDIC recently raised its 6-month assessment from $17,000 to $600,000. In the FDIC’s latest announcement, it is considering requiring banks to pre-pay three years’ worth of “premiums,” i.e. triple the normal annual fee in a single year. It will be a miracle if the money lasts through 2010. When these funds are gone, the FDIC will have two more options: to issue its own bonds and pressure banks to buy them; and to tap its “credit line” of up to half a trillion dollars with the U.S. Treasury. It’s the same old solution: take on more new debt to back up failing old debt. More debt will not cure the debt crisis.

Meanwhile, the FDIC is contributing to the deflationary trend. It has “tightened rules on required capital levels,” which forces banks’ loan ratios to fall; and it has “extended its extra monitoring of new banks from the first three years of operation to seven years” (AJC, 11/19), meaning that banks will now have to wait four additional years before they can go crazy with loans.

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Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:04:56 -0500

Shocker...

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:54:05 -0500

Hacked E-Mail Is New Fodder for Climate Dispute

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Private messages hacked from a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show a climate science conspiracy

More…

"‘We Won, You Lost — Get a Life!’"

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:16:53 -0500

“‘We Won, You Lost — Get a Life!’”

- Sen. Inhofe to Sen. Boxer on global warming