From Jenna Orkin
Headlines
Jobless checks could stop
Britain's broke and broken - the Tory campaign is fixable
Falklands offer to split oil profits
Report says oil supplies in Fla. waters negligible
US
Lending Falls at Epic Pace - WSJ.com
Coal-Fired Power on the Way Out?
Recovery? Who are you trying to kid?
Senator Predicts US Meltdown - from Rice Farmer
Duck! More falling home prices
60% interest rates still legal
Off Florida, massive oil tanks menace U.S. refiners
Math Is Hard
Madoff whistle-blower.
"Donaldson was too tough on Wall Street, so he got the ax. Then you had Christopher Cox, because he wasn’t going to do his job. That’s why he got the job."
AIG posts $8.9 billion loss on loan repay, reserves
AIG's derivatives go back decades
Airline alliances becoming the new "mergers"
California riskier than Greece
California Delays Payments, Ponders IOUs Again, Demands 80% of Income Tax Paid Before It's Even Earned
City nixes trash cans, streetlights
China
China insider sees revolution brewing from Rice Farmer
China faces rising crime rates, increased social unrest from Rice Farmer
Why China's Rumored IMF Gold Purchase, If True, Would Be Of Huge Significance from Rice Farmer
UK
Pounds slides on scale of UK recession
Apparent improvement in UK growth hid fall in official estimate of output.
Hospitals feel the axe as Treasury saves billions
BBC faces revolt over cuts plan
Unions confirm scope of losses
Cutbacks to television, radio and online output
Islamic radicals 'infiltrate' the Labour Party
Women flee to Spain to stop babies being taken
Intelligence
Son of Hamas founder 'saved Israeli president'
Credit cards implicate Mossad in Dubai hit
Spy cameras won't make us safer
Environment
Senators to propose abandoning cap-and-trade
Dozens of UK flood warnings
UK flooding alert as storm threatens chaos
Worming all over the world
Lesson one in biodiversity: there are 28,000 species of wiggling nematodes.
Chile earthquake: death toll passes 200
Chile earthquake: tsunami hits New Zealand
Strong earthquake injures 2 in south Japan
Wild bears back in Britain?
Bears, lynx, wolves and elk considered for reintroduction.
And...
Promiscuous females 'could save the species'
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Aramco to inject CO2 into biggest oilfield by 2012 ( a year ahead of previous plans)
Saudi Arabia Says Peak Demand for Oil Is an ‘Alarm’ (Update2)
Again, praise for Rice Farmer's excellent contributions should precede my comments.
There's a lot of enthusiasm these days for debunking the thoroughly healthy image of the Chinese economy, presented by Beijing itself as everyone else heaves over the railing. And this skepticism is perhaps healthier than the long-term future prospects of an economy based on delivering unnecessary items to people far away, who increasingly cannot afford them.
But the notion that Beijing is "losing its grip" seems farfetched to me. In one of the Farmer's articles, an "insider" declares that Beijing cannot continue ruling with an iron hand. However, Yu Jianrong is not a communist party official, but an activist who has made his career protesting the maltreatment of farmers and local communities. In fact, he works at Harvard now, where intellectuals are busy trying to further the interests of Wall Street vis a vis the machine in Beijing. I wouldn't be so cynical as to call Yu's bold speech "propaganda", but I feel he may be optimistic.
The second China article in that gaggle announced:
“A new report from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said criminal prosecutions were up 10 per cent and public security cases up nearly 20 per cent in 2009 and it predicted the rise would continue even as the economy improved in 2010.”
The fact that a major worldwide economic slump has affected China’s workforce, combined with the Olympics and two major independence revolts, predictably produced more “disorder”, in a country which thrives on order. However, this does not necessarily mean that Beijing is losing its grip. I would say, just the opposite.
Its response in Tibet and Xinjiang was brutally efficient, and should keep “unrest” to a dull roar in 2010. The prosecution of “gangsters” (competitors for the cash of its citizens) in Sichuan and elsewhere also produced a stronger position for the central authority. By reporting that cases have risen, the country is both bragging about its successful handling of these cases and warning that it may have to be even more aggressive in the year to come. A word to the wise, I suspect.
All empires -- including the Anglo-North American one -- will be challenged to control diverse and widely scattered territories in times to come. But expecting China's authoritarian government to collapse into a more just and liberal constitution strikes me as counter to actual trends. Authoritarianism seems, on the whole, to be both successful and increasingly empowered in China.
Quebec among the most highly indebted industrialized economies: ministry
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100227/national/que_debt
Sat Feb 27, 9:59 PM
By The Canadian Press
MONTREAL - An analysis by the Quebec Ministry of Finance suggests the province has one of the most heavily indebted economies in the industrialized world.
The 44-page document calculates the province's total debt as 94 per cent of GDP, employing methods used by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The government report, available on the ministry's website, compares the total provincial public debt to that of other Canadian provinces and to major industrialized nations.
Quebec ranks only below Japan, Italy, Greece and Iceland in terms of public debt as a percentage of GDP.
The report calculates public debt across Canada as 69.7 per cent of the country's GDP.
The report puts Quebec's total public debt at $285.6 billion.
http://www.finances.gouv.qc.ca/documents/Autres/en/AUTEN_DebtFeb10_gouvQC.pdf
One of the Japanese academic societies of which I'm a member has recently been hosting a flurry of messages from members who are seriously speculating that Japan, Inc. will go belly-up. It's a private forum where people can speak freely, so the tenor of the discussion is completely different from the everything's-gonna-be-OK propaganda spilling from the government and media. The recent tsunami was nothing compared to what's coming financially.
Has anyone heard anything about the film "Dirty Oil"
http://www.dirtyoilfilm.com/
I have just seen its on at my very small local cinema here in Wales in a few days. I hope "collapse" comes to the UK as fast as possible, I keep seeing torrents for it everywhere and the urge to watch it is growing. Please try to get it out in other countries as soon as possible, I would imagine that is where many of the illegal downloaders are watching from anyway.
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