( – promoted by odum)

“Let's say a son in-law wants to buy a $100,000 apartment building as income property, but he only has $3,000,” Little suggested in testimony.   

Metaphorically, Little is referring to VSAC's request to raise about $230 million of capital in the municipal bond market.  The particular market VSAC jumped into last May requires a line of credit as collateral.  In January 2008 VSAC bonds began to fail in the Auction Rate Securities market.  The ARS market as a whole failed by early May and now VSAC is stuck with $1.7 billion in failed ARS bonds.

Great piece by Tom Gjelten on NPR.  Adds another dimension to the criminal failure of financial regulators to do their job for the past 8 years.

http://www.npr.org/templates/s…

Highlights:

*  America’s intelligence community has said the global economic crisis is now the top threat to the nation’s security. The downturn could produce political instability and damage the ties that hold countries together. Countries might even be tempted to engage in financial warfare, officials say.

*  The concern now is not the gross size of countries’ economies, but how money moves between countries, and the way those movements can turn into a kind of financial warfare.  

*  The Chinese now hold about $1 trillion worth of U.S. debt, including Treasury notes and other securities. That gives them enormous power over the U.S. economy. Were they to suddenly sell those securities, the U.S. dollar would tank.

*  Another critical area is Eastern Europe. Governments from Poland to Romania are seeing their currencies plummet compared with the dollar and the euro; this means a decline in the standard of living. After the collapse of the Soviet bloc, these countries turned away from socialism and toward free markets and Western democracy. Another danger is that Russia could take advantage of the economic vulnerability of these countries and try to reassert control over them, perhaps by offering new loans – or withholding energy supplies.

*  The other big financial warfare threat involves al-Qaida. Osama bin Laden has made clear how much he would like to bring down the U.S. financial system. But he does not have the tools, expertise or capital to manipulate the U.S. financial markets the way China or other players could.

*  “If you launch a terrorist attack in a prosperous economy, we kind of bounce back,” he said. “If you launch the same attack in a weak and getting weaker economy, there could be a multiplier there that could drive markets down very quickly, very extensively.”

Add it all up, and the financial crisis means the United States finds itself today in an especially precarious situation

(This definitely sounds like something we don’t want to ignore. – promoted by JulieWaters)

Obama’s Energy Secretary Chu’s support for new nuclear power is making waves among several companies competing for DOE loans to build new nukes. Chu has said he will move quickly to get the loan guarantee program up and running this year.As we move to the green side on some items in the stimulus bill,on another front Obama follows what for all the world looks like a small part of the Cheney energy task force recommendations.

Some funds previously designated and not from the stimulus package will be used for loan guarantees to build new nuclear power plants .Major green energy-related portions of the stimulus law were largely left intact and large portions proposed for nuclear power were cut after Congressional debate,but new nuclear power plant planning and funding still grinds along.We are still propping them up.

There’s more . . .

Regarding the storage of spent fuel someone present with Secretary Chu,at a meeting concerning permitting Yucca Mountain storage facility is quoted as saying “It sounded like the expectation is (nuclear waste) will be stored at sites for a long time,” said one participant who asked not to be identified since it was a private meeting. Giving a post 9/11 nod to security concerns Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Wednesday Nuclear power plants will likely add fortifications to future atomic power stations despite the cost involved ,according to CNN. Nothing was mentioned about how this new safety concern may effect old plants still in use.

The field of U.S. companies competing for $18.5 billion in government-backed loans to build new nuclear plants has narrowed to five from about 14 last year, company sources said

Last year, developers of 14 new nuclear plants requested DOE guarantees totaling $122 billion, far exceeding the program’s budget, the agency said. Several companies dropped out of the running in December, leaving at least 10 projects seeking federal support. The DOE process will determine which new reactors get built and only two or three will be built .

Federal loan guarantees are expected to jump-start interest in building new reactors, after massive cost overruns during the last nuclear boom and the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania left utilities hesitant to build new plants.

With a cost of $5 billion to $12 billion for each new reactor, depending on size and design, the DOE program is expected to fund only a few projects, but the guarantee is seen as critical to obtaining financing.

http://www.lvrj.com/news/break…

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1112…

http://www.reuters.com/article…

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/af…

The mortgage meltdown in the U.S. and the awful wildfires that devastated parts of Australia would seem to be two very different stories.  One is the story of mortgage lending gone wild; the other is the story of arson and nature burning homes and people.  Yet, there is direct similarity.  In both countries, the devastation occurred in what Americans call exurbia and Australians call tree changing areas i.e. new communities build out beyond the edge of urban and suburban areas.  The conclusion is simple: exurbia both financially and physically is not only unsustainable, but catastrophic.   We are at the end of sprawl.  

Living, as I do, in the most rural state in the U.S., if the McMansions invade, we will fight them in the villages, we will fight them on the mountains, we will use tax rates and building codes and ACT 250, we will never surrender.

I don't have to go over the whole Ben Stein/creationist/graduation disinvitation thing do I? I didn't think so.

The latest chapter is that the creationist Discovery Institute, always with an eye open for publicity, is still trying to elbow its way onto campus at UVM. Following on the disinvitation of their buddy Ben Stein, they've written to Nicholas Gotelli, a biology proessor at Groovy UV who published an op-ed piece in the Burlington Free Press about the Stein affair, to try to get themselves invited to debate creationism and evolution.

Among skeptic and freethinking circles there is a debate about whether to debate these clowns. On the one hand, they can't go into a legitimate debate and stand up to any criticism; thus, any educated person who watches the debate will see that they have, once again, been thoroughly discredited. On the other hand, even appearing on the same stage with them enables them to claim a degree of undeserved credibility, and to maintain the fraudulent claim that there is a scientific debate in which creationism and evolution are equal competitors.

In this case, Professor Gotelli has it exactly right:

Academic debate on controversial topics is fine, but those topics need to have a basis in reality. I would not invite a creationist to a debate on campus for the same reason that I would not invite an alchemist, a flat-earther, an astrologer, a psychic, or a Holocaust revisionist. These ideas have no scientific support, and that is why they have all been discarded by credible scholars. Creationism is in the same category.

Instead of spending time on public debates, why aren't members of your institute publishing their ideas in prominent peer-reviewed journals such as Science, Nature, or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences? If you want to be taken seriously by scientists and scholars, this is where you need to publish. Academic publishing is an intellectual free market, where ideas that have credible empirical support are carefully and thoroughly explored. Nothing could possibly be more exciting and electrifying to biology than scientific disproof of evolutionary theory or scientific proof of the existence of a god. That would be Nobel Prize winning work, and it would be eagerly published by any of the prominent mainstream journals.

Follow the link for the rest of the story at Pharyngula.