WASHINGTON — The U.S. government’s $700 billion financial bailout program has increased moral hazard in the markets by infusing capital into banks that caused the financial crisis, a watchdog for the program said on Wednesday. The special inspector general for the U.S. Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) said the plan put in place a year ago was clearly influencing market behavior, and he repeated that taxpayers may never recoup all their money. The bailout fund may have helped avert a financial system collapse but it could reinforce perceptions the government will step in to keep firms from failing, the quarterly report from inspector general Neil Barofsky said. He said there continued to be conflicts of interest around credit rating agencies that failed to warn of risks leading up to the financial crisis. The report added that the recent rebound in big bank stocks risked removing urgency of dealing with the financial system’s problems. ‘Absent meaningful regulatory reform, TARP runs the risk of merely reanimating markets that had collapsed under the weight of reckless behavior,’ the report said. ‘The firms that were ‘too big to fail’ last October are in many cases bigger still, many as […]
SRINAGAR, India - Indian Kashmir’s glaciers are melting fast because of rising temperatures, threatening the water supply of millions of people in the Himalayan region, a new study by Indian scientists says. The study by Kashmir University’s geology and geophysics department blamed the effect on climate change, and said it endangered the livelihoods of two-thirds of the region’s nearly 10 million people engaged in agriculture, horticulture, livestock rearing and forestry. The Kolahoi glacier, the biggest in the Indian portion of divided Kashmir, has shrunk to about 4.44 square miles (11.5 square kilometers) from about five square miles (13 square kilometers) in the past 40 years, the study found. Shakil Romshoo, an associate professor in the department who led to three-year study, described the rate of melting as ‘alarming.’ He said Tuesday that Kolahoi had shrunk by 18 percent, and over the same period, other glaciers in the region had shrunk by 16 percent. The Kolahoi feeds Kashmir’s lifeline Jhelum River, which is also vital for agriculture in Pakistan’s most populous province of Punjab. The study was released Monday at a workshop on the impact of shrinking glaciers held in Srinagar, the capital of Indian Kashmir. […]
Centenarians with the bodies of 50-year-olds will one day be a realistic possibility, say scientists. Half of babies now born in the UK will reach 100, thanks to higher living standards, but our bodies are wearing out at the same rate. To achieve ’50 active years after 50′, experts at Leeds University are spending ã50m over five years looking at innovative solutions. They plan to provide pensioners with own-grown tissues and durable implants. New hips, knees and heart valves are the starting points, but eventually they envisage most of the body parts that flounder with age could be upgraded. New lease of life The university’s Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering has already made a hip transplant that should last for life, rather than the 20 years maximum expected from current artificial hips. The combination of a durable cobalt-chrome metal alloy socket and a ceramic ball or ‘head’ means the joint should easily withstand the 100 million steps that a 50-year-old can be expected to take by their 100th birthday, says investigator Professor John Fisher. Meanwhile, colleague Professor Eileen Ingham and her team have developed a unique way to allow the body […]
Burning coal to generate electricity in the U.S. causes about $62 billion a year in ‘hidden costs’ for environmental damage, not including expenses related to global warming, the National Academy of Sciences said. The cost was part of $120 billion the group identified as total damages from the use of energy in 2005, according to a report the academy’s National Research Council issued today. The study was requested by Congress as part of 2005 energy legislation. The academy was asked to define and evaluate external expenses and benefits associated with production, distribution and use of energy not already reflected in market prices. The report doesn’t include specific costs for damage associated with greenhouse-gas emissions. Congress is debating legislation to limit carbon dioxide and other pollutants in the effort to curb such global warming. ‘Although large uncertainties are associated with the committee’s estimates, there is little doubt that this aggregate total substantially underestimates the damages,’ according to the report by a committee led by Jared Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Damages associated with the normal operation of nuclear power plants ‘are quite low compared with those of fossil-fuel- based power plants, the report found. […]
In an effort to pin down the costs of global climate change, one of the world’s largest insurers announced yesterday that its research network is joining with San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography to study the effect of changes in the weather and sea level. Under the arrangement, Scripps will provide climate research to the Willis Group of London and its clients in the insurance industry, which could use the data to assess their exposure to financial risks from rising sea levels or weather-related catastrophes. Stephen Bennett, director of business development at Scripps, said in a statement that the partnership showed that ‘insurers and reinsurers are leading the commercial sector when it comes to considering the impact of climate change on a global scale. No monetary details of the arrangement were disclosed, but Tony Haymet, Scripps’ director, said that partnership with corporate clients such as Willis help make up for reductions in funding from Sacramento. Scripps is an arm of the University of California San Diego, which has been hit hard by state funding cutbacks. The deal between Willis and Scripps comes as insurers scramble to comply with a rule from the National Association of Insurance […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
