Monsanto et al are laughing all the way to the bank having legally stolen tax payers’ money. The consequences are more monoculture and ecocide. How much more of this can people take? The corruption goes right to the heart of the political system. | Higher prices for commodities mean that farmers here in the US and around the world will want to grow more. In those parts of the world where its cheaper to increase production by bringing new land into cultivation than increasing yields on existing lands, that’s going to lead to land-use change. Not surprisingly, EPA’s analysis, which uses the FAPRI model, finds that the emissions from this land-use change is one of the largest sources of emissions associated with corn ethanol. |
Discretionary spending is further threatened.
The recession may be officially over, but more than a quarter of home owners
risk losing their homes after admitting they are still living on a
“financial precipice”.
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Latest research suggested 26 per cent of borrowers aged between 35 and 44
would be unable to meet their mortgage repayments if they saw a £300 drop in
their monthly income.
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And one in eight adults in this age range has deliberately over-inflated their
income to secure a larger loan, according to the YouGov research,
commissioned credit reference agency Callcredit.
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Graham Lund, managing director of Callcredit, said: “These statistics are
extremely alarming. A significant proportion of these people, many with
families to support, are living on a financial precipice where just one
negative event, such as a reduction in paid overtime or an unexpected
expense, could have disastrous financial consequences.”
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The need to burn more gas, oil and coal because of the exceptionally cold winter was a major contributor to the record growth in industrial output. Not only is the result more greenhouse gas emissions, but it also means that the consumers have had to spend money keeping warm which will reduce the money available for other goods and services. | Industrial production in the eurozone grew at its fastest rate for more than 20 years in January, amid signs of a far more sustained recovery than had been seen previously. |
The revision means that industrial output in the 16-country currency bloc is higher than the year-earlier figure for the first time since April 2008, though it remains about 15 percentage points lower than the peak before tje global financial crisis, and even below long-term trends. |
Part of the upswing can be put down to rising energy production amid unusually cold winter weather. |
The FTSE All-World index rose 0.4 per cent, commodities jumped and the dollar slid as hopes for global growth convinced traders to bolster riskier bets. |
Investors started the global session cheered by the ability of New York’s benchmark, the S&P 500, to finally reach a new closing high for the cycle above the 1,150 level. Many analysts had suggested that once that mark was breached it would send a signal of the market’s fortitude, and thereby reinvigorate traders and help push stocks onwards to higher ground. Risk appetite would increase. |
The signs of economic improvement in Europe, coupled with an easing of fears surrounding the region’s fiscal problems, added to this optimistic mood. |
Essentially “outsourced” production and the required shipping produces ‘troubling’ global CO2 emissions. This obvious point is all too often overshadowed by the hype of hybrid/electric cars. | one-quarter of the emissions in China are actually the result of its exports to its trading partners such as the United States. |
| It is troubling to think that nations can simply “outsource” their emissions, which in the case of the USA is 11%, and tiny Switzerland, a staggering 50%; and then, point to China as the culprit. |
| So if trade is the cause of such a large proportion of global emissions, why not address the problem at its source? |
| Emerging markets like Brazil are in danger of overheating, potentially leaving millions of investors’ savings at risk, experts are warning. |
Emerging markets like Brazil are in danger of overheating, potentially leaving millions of investors’ savings at risk, experts are warning.
Top financial advisers are concerned that a rash of fund launches in the BRIC economies - Brazil, Russia, India and China - might be attracting investors unused to risky funds.
And they also question whether these volatile markets are heading for a fall. |
a key measure of value for investors (and a measure of over-exuberance) known as the price-earnings ratio is huge.
The higher the PE, the more a company must increase its earnings to justify its share price.
Based on one way of measuring, the average PE on the Chinese stock market is about 50. In comparison, in Britain it’s about 14. Read more at www.dailymail.co.uk |
| At the end of this month, the US Federal Reserve is due to freeze its programme to purchase Fannie and Freddie agency MBS that it implemented in the wake of the financial crisis. Logic might suggest that could potentially deliver a jolt to the market. |
| he degree of assistance that the Fed has provided has been eye-poppingly large: right now it is holding some $1,200bn of MBS |
| in the past couple of years, the Fed (and others) have poured so much money into the system, that this has made it painfully hard for mainstream fixed income investors to get returns, without taking very wild risks. |
| During the past two years, the full impact of the collapse of the securitisation market has been largely concealed from most investors – let alone American politicians – because of the sheer scale of government assistance on offer. |
| investors have been lulled into something of a false sense of security |
Of course! The new EU commissioner for climate change is the Danish Minister who “masterminded” the failure of Copenhagen. | Connie Hedegaard, the Danish minister who masterminded the summit of world leaders on global warming last year and is now the European commissioner for climate change, told the Financial Times negotiations were not progressing fast enough for a treaty to be signed soon. |
| A bus running on diesel emits a cloud of pollution: governments had been hoping to forge a deal on emissions cuts at December’s conference in Mexico |
She also gave warning that pushing too hard for a treaty this year could be counterproductive. |
Governments had been hoping to forge a final treaty at a global conference this December in Mexico, after failing to do so in Copenhagen. |
However, Ms Hedegaard said this was more likely to happen at a follow-up meeting next year in South Africa.
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| That would still allow governments to meet their self-imposed deadline of forging a new agreement before the end of 2012, Read more at www.ft.com |
Vast amounts of methane are bubbling up from the East Siberian sea, raising fears of a massive hike in global warming. |
Permafrost in the seabed has been previously assumed to act as an effective cap for the enormous amount of methane in the area. |
“The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world’s oceans,” said Shakhova, a researcher at UAF’s International Arctic Research Center. “Subsea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap.” |
It’s not known how long the methane release has been going on. But models suggest that if just one percent of the methane contained in the region were released, it would cause rapid warming. |
“Our concern is that the subsea permafrost has been showing signs of destabilization already,” she said. “If it further destabilizes, the methane emissions may not be teragrams, it would be significantly larger.” Read more at www.tgdaily.com |
“Addressing homelessness (in all its forms) should be the number one priority of any compassionate society.”
– EdmundBurke | Although people 50 and older are traditionally a small part of the homeless population, their numbers have grown as the economy has stagnated. |
A snapshot of the Sacramento area’s graying homeless population shows a group that came to the streets as a result of midlife job loss and health problems, not chronic addiction and mental health issues. |
And at the Gathering Inn, which feeds and shelters Placer County’s homeless, 27 percent of people seeking services each night are age 50 to 62 – up from 10 percent in 2004. |
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Big-farm profits - Study Shows Taxpayers Subsidizing Ethanol At $4.18 Per Gallon
