TERENCE P. JEFFREY, - CNS News
Stephan: I am very surprised that this has been so sparsely covered because it suggests a tidal shift in Chinese thinking about the U.S. financial status.
China has dropped 97 percent of its holdings in U.S. Treasury bills, decreasing its ownership of the short-term U.S. government securities from a peak of $210.4 billion in May 2009 to $5.69 billion in March 2011, the most recent month reported by the U.S. Treasury.
Treasury bills are securities that mature in one year or less that are sold by the U.S. Treasury Department to fund the nation’s debt.
Mainland Chinese holdings of U.S. Treasury bills are reported in column 9 of the Treasury report linked here.
Until October, the Chinese were generally making up for their decreasing holdings in Treasury bills by increasing their holdings of longer-term U.S. Treasury securities. Thus, until October, China’s overall holdings of U.S. debt continued to increase.
Since October, however, China has also started to divest from longer-term U.S. Treasury securities. Thus, as reported by the Treasury Department, China’s ownership of the U.S. national debt has decreased in each of the last five months on record, including November, December, January, February and March.
Prior to the fall of 2008, acccording to Treasury Department data, Chinese ownership of short-term Treasury bills was modest, standing at only $19.8 billion in August of that year. But when President George W. […]
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Stephan: A number of you have written me to ask if I have anything further to add to the recent reports about cell phones, and whether I believe they are carcinogenic. Here is something, from a solidly reliable source, that may give you a deeper insight into what is going on and, yes, I think the evidence is becoming quite clear that micro-waving a small part of your brain each day is not a good idea.
It’s not easy to reach unanimous agreement on anything to do with cell phone radiation. And when it comes to cell phones and cancer, forget about it. But the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) nearly pulled it off. On Tuesday, May 31, more than two dozen scientists and doctors from 14 countries -a group IARC Director Christopher Wild called ‘the world’s leading experts’- issued a joint statement that cell phone and other types of radiofrequency (RF) and microwave radiation might cause cancer.
Near the close of the eight-day meeting, there were six holdouts, but by the end only one dissenting voice remained in the room. (The group agreed that the person’s name should remain secret.) IARC released the news: Long-term use of a cell phone might lead to two different types of tumors, glioma, a type of brain cancer, and acoustic neuroma, a tumor of the auditory nerve.
Another member of the working group would have also dissented had he not walked out of the meeting before the final vote. Microwave News has learned that Peter Inskip of the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) left early and did not return. Aleea Farrakh Khan of the NCI Office of Media Relations […]
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JOSHUA HOLLAND, - AlterNet
Stephan: Here's little truth about where your tax money goes, and what it could be used for instead. And yet about a third of the country supports these policies.
This week, the National Priorities Project (NPP) released a snapshot of U.S. ‘defense
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BERNIE BECKER, - The Hill
Stephan: This is how truly insane American policies have become. We cannot feed our children, their schools are failing, one out of six Americans has no health insurance, but the money for war and this sort of madness is always available. When you hear a politician tell you that there isn't enough money to do something, you know you are listening to either a dolt or a liar.
Foreign governments that hold billions of dollars in American debt also get substantial amounts of aid from the U.S., according to a recently released report.
The Congressional Research Service found that more than a dozen countries – including China, Brazil, Russia, Mexico and India – that hold at least $10 billion in Treasury securities also get U.S. assistance in a variety of areas, from fighting HIV or the illegal drug trade to help with the environment or general governance.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who requested the CRS examination, said the U.S. giving aid to countries it borrows from was a dangerous mix for both sides.
‘If countries can afford to buy our debt perhaps they can afford to fund assistance programs on their own,
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Stephan: Further evidence of the failure of the American public school system, and the growing ignorance of the American population. We are not going to be prepared to be successful in the 21st century when our children cannot read to grade level, and their knowledge of American history is no better than Sarah Palin's -- a notably ignorant woman, and proud of it.
According to a 2011 survey of college presidents, today’s students are not as well prepared as their collegiate counterparts of 10 years ago. A 58%-majority of college presidents say public high school students arrive at college less well prepared than students of a decade ago. Just 6% say public high schools are doing a better job at preparing students for college than a decade ago, while 36% say they are doing about the same job. Once the students are settled on campus, the outlook remains equally pessimistic. More than half of college presidents (52%) say today’s students are studying less than students did a decade ago. Only 7% say students are studying more, and 40% say students are doing about the same amount of studying as college students did 10 years ago.
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