DES MOINES, Iowa — Bill Clinton is finding it difficult to transfer voters’ affections for him to his wife as opponents exploit concerns that two dynasties – the Bush and Clinton families – could dominate American politics for 28 years. The former president was in the small town of Greenwood, on the fringes of western Iowa, campaigning for Hillary last week. ‘I feel like an old racehorse who is semi-retired,’ he said with self-deprecating charm. ‘Every now and then they drag me out of the barn and see if I can make it round the track one last time.’ The audience loved it but his mission in Iowa was deadly earnest. Hillary Clinton leads Barack Obama by only three points in an early voting state which advisers in both camps say will provide the key to victory or sudden death in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination on January 3. John Edwards is narrowly behind them in third place. As soon as Hillary left Iowa, Bill stepped in to fill her place. ‘If a woman is intelligent and strong enough to do the job and is credible on national security,’ he said, ‘having a woman candidate […]
Dollar weakness is neutralizing the positive effects of the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate cuts. As the dollar spirals downward, weakened by Washington’s indifference and market expectations of more rate cuts, liquidity drains from the U.S. into inflation hedges like gold and, in the case of entrepreneurship and risk-taking capital, to countries with strengthening currencies. This drain undercuts the growth impact of the Fed’s recent rate cuts, complicating the recovery from the August credit-market turbulence. Question: What’s harder to sell than a complex loan during a credit crunch? A dollar-denominated one. Foreign countries are suffering the opposite phenomenon. Global investors want to buy more in strong-currency countries, heating up those countries’ economies, land values and stock markets. If their central banks hike rates, as China has been doing and Australia did on Nov. 7, it invites even more capital inflows in search of higher yields and currency appreciation, reinforcing the upward currency spiral. Europeans, Canadians and others revel in their wealth relative to Americans. It’s their chance to grow their risking-taking capital base, set global standards, and begin to dominate geopolitical issues. But ever-strengthening currencies run risks as well, as the U.S. found in the economic boom/recession cycle of the […]
SoCal is the driest area in the United States and Texas is the wettest. That’s according to a new list from livability expert Bert Sperling that measures the drought severity for the 100 largest metro areas in the United States. Nearly 200 million people reside in these 100 metros, comprising nearly 60 percent of the U.S. population. ‘This drought is having a deep and lasting effect on the choices regarding where we will want to live in the future,’ Sperling said. ‘The crisis has been growing slowly, but it is finally getting attention in the national spotlight.’ sponsor Topping the list was Los Angeles, with its recent annual rainfall only 25 percent of normal. The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana metro area was joined in the top four spots on the list by other Southern California cities. Coming in at No. 2 was the San Diego metro area, which includes Carlsbad, Calif., and San Marcos, Calif., followed by the Oxnard-Thousand Oaks-Ventura and Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metro areas. Other top-10 driest cities include Salt Lake City, Nashville, Tenn., and Birmingham, Ala. At the other end of the list are cities suffering from too much water. Cities in […]
The U.S. government is apparently spying on all Internet traffic and voice calls goingthrough AT&T’s backbones, according to a former employee of the company who testified before the Congress. Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician, says that the National Security Agency (NSA) installed special equipment which splits communication backbones and sends an exact copy to the government. Indiscriminately, and without any warrant. The U.S. government could peek at any e-mail, Web search, phone call or data transfer sent trough AT&T which also serves more than a dozen global and regional telecom providers. Contrary to the government’s version which claims the surveillance program as aimed at overseas terrorists, Mark Klein said the large majority of the data sent by AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic. Mr. Klein saw wiring diagrams for an AT&T office in San Francisco, where he worked, which showed special optic splitters were installed to send the entire traffic to a secret room built by the NSA. ‘That was my ‘aha’ moment,’ Klein said. ‘They’re sending the entire Internet to the secret room.’ ‘This splitter was sweeping up everything, vacuum-cleaner-style,’ he said. ‘The NSA is getting everything. These are major pipes that carry not […]
Economists are notorious for being unable to reach an easy consensus on many issues, but talk to any of them about the outlook for the global economy and before long the word ‘China’ always starts to dominate the conversation. And it is true that the robustness of Chinese economic growth – around 10 per cent forecast for 2008, barely changed on recent trends – is picking up the pace being lost by faltering Western economies. Trouble is, they’re also eating the world – literally, in the case of food supplies. According to the IMF, about half of the world’s economic growth this year will be accounted for by Brazil, Russia, India and China – the BRICs. India, staggeringly, is contributing more growth to the world economy than the United States, but China is by far the most powerful engine of growth – more so than the US, the eurozone and Japan combined. So, ‘China saves the world’ – or at least helps to maintain global economic growth around the 5 per cent mark. Were it not for China and these other emerging economies, the world might well be staring a recession in the face. Yet this phenomenon is […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
