Daily Digest
Daily Digest 10/31 - Bill Black Occupies Wall Street, How The Big Players Fare During The Crisis, How 10 Billion Will Live
by Daily Digest
Monday, October 31, 2011, 10:49 AM
- Cheat Sheet: What’s Happened to the Big Players in the Financial Crisis
- Keep Wall Street Occupied
- Bill Black Goes To Occupy Wall Street
- Europhoria
- Berlusconi Defiant as EU’s Focus Shifts to Italy
- USA Export land model analysis for food energy production and consumption
- The Disappearing Island
- How 10 Billion Will Live
Our 'What Should I Do?' guide has steps to cook, see & stay warm in times of power outage
Economy
Cheat Sheet: What’s Happened to the Big Players in the Financial Crisis (jdargis)
Mortgage lenders contributed to the financial crisis by issuing or underwriting loans to people who would have a difficult time paying them back, inflating a housing bubble that was bound to pop. Lax regulation allowed banks to stretch their mortgage lending standards and use aggressive tactics to rope borrowers into complex mortgages that were more expensive than they first appeared. Evidence has also surfaced that lenders were filing fraudulent documents to push some of these mortgages through, and, in some cases, had been doing so as early as the 1990s. A 2005 Los Angeles Times investigation of Ameriquest – then the nation’s largest subprime lender – found that “they forged documents, hyped customers' creditworthiness and ‘juiced’ mortgages with hidden rates and fees.” This behavior was reportedly typical for the subprime mortgage industry. A similar culture existed at Washington Mutual, which went under in 2008 in the biggest bank collapse in U.S. history.
Keep Wall Street Occupied (June C.)
Everyone can do this. I get at least 10 credit card solicitations per week. This is going to be fun.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2JlxbKtBkGM
Bill Black Goes To Occupy Wall Street (June C.)
Let me guess.... he's a Marxist?
Europhoria (Ilene)
One obvious problem is the political and financial fallout from the “voluntary” 50% haircuts being agreed to by Greek bondholders. Now that Greek bondholders have been shorn, what will keep Italy, Spain and Portugal from asking for the same deal to help them out of their debt obligations? German Chancellor Merkel is already warning against this. She declared, “In Europe, it must be prevented that others come seeking a haircut.” It is possible that the finance ministers of the eurozone have accomplished nothing more than to prevent fiscal contagion by exchanging it for a pandemic of debt forgiveness, as nation after nation lines up to ask their creditors to similarly accept 50% haircuts or perhaps even more.
Berlusconi Defiant as EU’s Focus Shifts to Italy (jdargis)
The European Union’s latest package of measures failed to staunch a rise in Italian borrowing costs, with an Oct. 28 bond sale sending yields to a euro-era record and damping the euphoria unleashed after the summit that ended the day before. Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker insisted that Italy should deliver “substantial structural reform.”
Energy
USA Export land model analysis for food energy production and consumption: Part 1
The relative contribution from soyabean and soyabean oil to total production has risen from 9 to 19 percent of total net food energy production, while the relative contribution from maize(corn) has risen from 38 to 45 percent. In other words just soyabean and corn production accounted for 64% of total net food energy production in the USA. Add in wheat and you are at 74%. Just amazing.
This nicely illustrates the consequence of America's industrial food complex: great efficiency in production (i.e., a 2.4 times increase in net production from 1961 to 2007) at the cost of high dependency on just three food types: corn, soyabean, and wheat for almost three-quarters of production.
Environment
The Disappearing Island (jdargis)
Tangier Island lies in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay and is 92 miles (148km) southeast of Washington, DC. This small piece of land is barely above sea level and its 500 residents are fighting for its survival.
How 10 Billion Will Live (jdargis)
At present, the prospects are not bright. While most of the world’s capital, managerial experience, and engineering expertise is concentrated in the high-income and emerging economies of Europe, China, North America, Japan, and the Asian Tigers, none of those countries will be significant contributors to future population growth. Even China, which we think of as a population juggernaut, is now reaping the results of its one-child policy and is projected to suffer a decline in population of 400 million by 2100.
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