Daily Digest 6/22 - The Scam Wall St. Learned From The Mafia, The Poison Beneath Us, What To Do When Rock Phosphate Runs Out?

• Exclusive: Euro zone discussed capital controls if Greek exits euro: sources
• The Chinese Economy And Political Attack
• Businessman stopped on Swiss border with £1.6m worth of gold in his car
• The Scam Wall Street Learned From The Mafia
• As Rock Phosphate Runs Out, What is More Important - Food Crops or Fuel Crops?
• Jeff Kennedy, Chief Commodity Analyst at Elliott Wave: Major Crude Oil Crash Is Coming!
• Injection Wells: The Poison Beneath Us

Economy

Exclusive: Euro zone discussed capital controls if Greek exits euro: sources (jdargis)

"Contingency planning is underway for a scenario under which Greece leaves," one of the sources, who has been involved in the conference calls, said. "Limited cash withdrawals from ATMs and limited movement of capital have been considered and analyzed."

The Chinese Economy And Political Attack (Walter S.)

In recent years, the Chinese government has repeatedly stated its intention to try and slow the economy down here. It knows the country has relied too much on exports which have come from cheap labour that is becoming less and less cheap as workers want a better standard of living. So the big shift that policymakers are trying to put in place is a drive to more domestic demand and also into areas of more high-tech production which will require a better trained workforce.

Businessman stopped on Swiss border with £1.6m worth of gold in his car (adam)

The incident underlines a growing trend of Italians who are seeking to move wealth to Switzerland - funds that Italy is trying to have the Swiss authorities tax retroactively. Exports to Switzerland from the financially stricken country rose 35% year-on-year in February, with the Italian statistics office admitting it was mostly due to “sales of non-monetary gold”.

The Scam Wall Street Learned From The Mafia (Thomas C.)

This was no trial scene from popular lore, no Inherit the Wind or State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson. No gallery packed with rapt spectators, no ceiling fans set whirring to beat back the tension and the heat, no defense counsel's resting a sympathetic hand on the defendant's shoulder as opening statements commence. No, the setting for USA v. Carollo reflected the bizarre alternate universe that exists on Wall Street. Like so many court cases involving big banks, the proceeding looked more like a roomful of expensive lawyers negotiating a major corporate merger than a public search for justice.

As Rock Phosphate Runs Out, What is More Important - Food Crops or Fuel Crops? (OPA)

It is salutary that there remains a competition between growing crops (algae) for fuel and those for food, even if not directly in terms of land, for the fertilizers that both depend upon. This illustrates for me the complex and interconnected nature of, indeed Nature, and which like any stressed chain, will ultimately converge its forces onto the weakest link in the “it takes energy to extract energy” sequence. It seems quite clear that with food production already stressed, the production of (algal) biofuels will never be accomplished on a scale anywhere close to matching current world petroleum fuel use (>20 billion barrels/annum). Thus, the days of a society based around personalized transport run on liquid fuels are numbered. We must reconsider too our methods of farming, to reduce inputs of fertilisers, pesticides and fuel. Freshwater supplies are also at issue, in the complex transition to a more localised age that uses its resources much more efficiently.

Jeff Kennedy, Chief Commodity Analyst at Elliott Wave: Major Crude Oil Crash Is Coming! (David B.)

The investment objective of USO is for the daily changes in percentage terms of its units’ net asset value (“NAV”) to reflect the daily changes in percentage terms of the spot price of light, sweet crude oil delivered to Cushing, Oklahoma, as measured by the changes in the price of the futures contract for light, sweet crude oil traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange (the “NYMEX”) that is the near month contract to expire, except when the near month contract is within two weeks of expiration, in which case it will be measured by the futures contract that is the next month contract to expire (the “Benchmark Oil Futures Contract”), less USO’s expenses.

Injection Wells: The Poison Beneath Us (Ben Johnson)

The boom in oil and natural gas drilling is deepening the uncertainties, geologists acknowledge. Drilling produces copious amounts of waste, burdening regulators and demanding hundreds of additional disposal wells. Those wells — more holes punched in the ground — are changing the earth's geology, adding man-made fractures that allow water and waste to flow more freely.

"There is no certainty at all in any of this, and whoever tells you the opposite is not telling you the truth,' said Stefan Finsterle, a leading hydrogeologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who specializes in understanding the properties of rock layers and modeling how fluid flows through them. "You have changed the system with pressure and temperature and fracturing, so you don't know how it will behave."

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