"Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others. . .they send forth a ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."Robert F. Kennedy
Using grade school physics of both Newtonian and Nuclear models, does anyone foresee counter currents of sufficient size to minimize/change direction of the huge 'Tsunami' roaring down on us, taking away not only our Freedom, but our Lives? Regardless if our salaries are dependant on us not knowing the inconvenient truths of reality (global warming, corporate rule, stagnant energy science) portrayed by the rare articles in the news media? I know only one - a free science, our window to Reality - that easily resolves the Foundational Problem of Quantum Physics and takes E=MC2 out of Kindergarten

Full Text Individual Post Reading

Sunday, October 26, 2008

The Bet That Blew Up Wall Street


Freedumb, Freedumb, Read All About It! "A Free Trade, Free Market, Free Corporate, Unregulated Economy run like Al Capone's Casino Joint, and Policed by Al Capone". Is this the best University MBA/PHD Masters and Government Regulators can provide?

PEOPLES LIVES DEPEND UPON THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM. The economic system is not singularly a tool for profit, and the hell with Life. "We now have to pay for the greed and recklessness of those who should have known better.” It is time, Mr. Schumer said, for the American economy to be revived as the “engine of prosperity,” rather than as a “casino” for high-rollers in the realm of finance.


How, in a world of exploding human population, with unparalleled needs, wants and desires, can the economy keep falling, with more and more working people around the world, poorer, lacking basic needs and going hungry... this can only be termed Freakohnomics: The new 21st Century Supply & Demand Economics - absolute greed, absolute power brings on absolute madness - Turns into Freakohnomics gone berserk. Or mafia economics by deliberate Design - the greater the need, the higher the price for all commodities required to sustain Life. The Outcome, economic strangulation and workaholic enslavement of a people was not designed by the lord thy God, nor (for the non-believer) is it a Natural or Nature's Law, nor a Scientific Law

What factors changed Market Supply & Demand Fundamentals to Freakohnomics gone berserk? From cheaper goods and services available to all through continual advances in science, technology and mass production, to 'Whatever The Market Will Bear' depending on how great the need for sustaining Life?


The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil

Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when lacking a Bill of Rights for Human Life

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down along with their retirement savings in equity & stocks, while their taxes, gas, energy and food costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms and many continue to lose their homes and go hungry; as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans).

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.
































































The Bet That Blew Up Wall Street
Oct. 26, 2008
(CBS) The world's financial system teetered on the edge again last week, and anyone with more than a passing interest in their shrinking 401(k) knows it's because of a global credit crisis. It began with the collapse of the U.S. housing market and has been magnified worldwide by what Warren Buffet once called "financial weapons of mass destruction." They are called credit derivatives or credit default swaps, and 60 Minutes did a story on the multi-trillion dollar market three weeks ago. But there's a lot more to tell. As Steve Kroft reports, essentially they are side bets on the performance of the U.S. mortgage markets and the solvency on some of the biggest financial institutions in the world. It's a form of legalized gambling that allows you to wager on financial outcomes without ever having to actually buy the stocks and bonds and mortgages. It would have been illegal during most of the 20th century, but eight years ago Congress gave Wall Street an exemption and it has turned out to be a very bad idea.
While Congress and the rest of the country scratched their heads trying to figure out how we got into this mess, 60 Minutes decided to go to Frank Partnoy, a law professor at the University of San Diego, who has written a couple of books on the subject. Ask to explain what a derivative is, Partnoy says, "A derivative is a financial instrument whose value is based on something else. It's basically a side bet." Think of it for a moment as a football game. Every week, the New York Giants take the field with hopes of getting back to the Super Bowl. If they do, they will get more money and glory for the team and its owners. They have a direct investment in the game. But the people in the stands may also have a financial stake in the ouctome, in the form of a bet with a friend or a bookie. "We could call that a derivative. It's a side bet. We don't own the teams. But we have a bet based on the outcome. And a lot of derivatives are bets based on the outcome of games of a sort. Not football games, but games in the markets," Partnoy explains. Partnoy says the bet was whether interest rates were going to go up or down. "And the new bet that arose over the last several years is a bet based on whether people will default on their mortgages." And that was the bet that blew up Wall Street. The TNT was the collapse of the housing market and the failure of complicated mortgage securities that the big investment houses created and sold around the world. But the rocket fuel was the trillions of dollars in side bets on those mortgage securities, called "credit default swaps." They were essentially private insurance contracts that paid off if the investment went bad, but you didn't have to actually own the investment to collect on the insurance. "If I thought certain mortgage securities were gonna fail, I could go out and buy insurance on them without actually owning them?" Kroft asks Eric Dinallo, the insurance superintendent for the state of New York. "Yeah," Dinallo says. "The irony is, though, you're not really buying insurance at that point. You're just placing the bet." Dinallo says credit default swaps were totally unregulated and that the big banks and investment houses that sold them didn't have to set aside any money to cover their potential losses and pay off their bets. "As the market began to seize up and as the market for the underlying obligations began to perform poorly, everybody wanted to get paid, had a right to get paid on those credit default swaps. And there was no 'there' there. There was no money behind the commitments. And people came up short. And so that's to a large extent what happened to Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, and the holding company of AIG," he explains. In other words, three of the nation's largest financial institutions had made more bad bets than they could afford to pay off. Bear Stearns was sold to J.P. Morgan for pennies on the dollar, Lehman Brothers was allowed to go belly up, and AIG, considered too big to let fail, is on life support to thanks to a $123 billion investment by U.S. taxpayers. "It's legalized gambling. It was illegal gambling. And we made it legal gambling…with absolutely no regulatory controls. Zero, as far as I can tell," Dinallo says. "I mean it sounds a little like a bookie operation," Kroft comments. "Yes, and it used to be illegal. It was very illegal 100 years ago," Dinallo says. In the early part of the 20th century, the streets of New York and other large cities were lined with gaming establishments called "bucket shops," where people could place wagers on whether the price of stocks would go up or down without actually buying them. This unfettered speculation contributed to the panic and stock market crash of 1907, and state laws all over the country were enacted to ban them. "Big headlines, huge type. This is the front page of the New York Times," Dinallo explains, holding up a headline that reads "No bucket shops for new law to hit.” "So they'd already closed up 'cause the law was coming. Here's a picture of one of them. And they were like parlors. See," Dinallo says. "Betting parlors. It was a felony. Well, it was a felony when a law came into effect because it had brought down the market in 1907. And they said, 'We're not gonna let this happen again.' And then 100 years later in 2000, we rolled them all back." The vehicle for doing this was an obscure but critical piece of federal legislation called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. And the bill was a big favorite of the financial industry it would eventually help destroy. It not only removed derivatives and credit default swaps from the purview of federal oversight, on page 262 of the legislation, Congress pre-empted the states from enforcing existing gambling and bucket shop laws against Wall Street. "It makes it sound like they knew it was illegal," Kroft remarks. "I would agree," Dinallo says. "They did know it was illegal. Or at least prosecutable." In retrospect, giving Wall Street immunity from state gambling laws and legalizing activity that had been banned for most of the 20th century should have given lawmakers pause, but on the last day and the last vote of the lame duck 106th Congress, Wall Street got what it wanted when the Senate passed the bill unanimously. "There was an awful lot of, 'Trust us. Leave it alone. We can do it better than government,' without any realistic understanding of the dangers involved," says Harvey Goldschmid, a Columbia University law professor and a former commissioner and general counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission. He says the bill was passed at the height of Wall Street and Washington's love affair with deregulation, an infatuation that was endorsed by President Clinton at the White House and encouraged by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. "That was the wildest and silliest period in many ways. Now, again, that's with hindsight because the argument at the time was these are grownups. They're institutions with a great deal of money. Government will only get in the way. Fears it will be taken overseas. Leave it alone. But it was a wrong-headed argument. And turned out to be, of course, extraordinarily unwise," Goldschmid says. Asked what role Greenspan played in all of this, Professor Goldschmid says, "Well, he made clear in his public speeches and book that a Libertarian drive was part of the way he looked at the world. He's a very talented man. But that didn't take us where we had to be." "Alan was the most powerful man in Washington in a real sense. Certainly a rival to the president and had enormous influence on Capitol Hill," Goldschmid says, "And he was at the height of his power," Kroft adds. Within eight years, unregulated derivatives and swaps helped produce the largest financial services economy the United States has ever had. Estimates of the market for credit default swaps grew from $100 billion to more than $50 trillion, and you could bet on anything from the solvency of communities to the fate of General Motors. It also produced a huge transfer of private wealth to Wall Street traders and investment bankers, who collected billions of dollars in bonuses. A lot of the money was made financing what seemed to be a never-ending housing boom, selling mortgage securities they thought were safe and credit default swaps that would never have to be paid off. "The credit default swaps was the key of what went wrong and what's created these enormous losses," Goldschmid says. "Is it your impression that people at the big Wall Street investment houses knew what was going on and knew the kind of risks that they were exposed to?" Kroft asks. "No. My impression is to the contrary, that even at senior levels they only vaguely understood the risks. They only vaguely followed what was going on," Goldschmid says. "And when it tumbled, there was some genuine surprise not only at the board level where there wasn't enough oversight but at senior management level." They didn't know what was going on in part because credit default swaps were totally unregulated. No one knew how many there were or who owned them. There was no central exchange or clearing house to keep track of all the bets and to hold the money to make sure they got paid off. Eventually, savvy investors figured out that the cheapest, most effective way to bet against the entire housing market was to buy credit defaults swaps, in effect taking out inexpensive insurance policies that would pay off big when other people’s mortgage investments went south. "I know people personally who have taken away more than $1 billion from having been on the right side of these transactions," says Jim Grant, publisher of Grant's Interest Rate Observer and one of the country’s foremost experts on credit markets. "If you can and you could lay down cents on the dollar to place a bet on the solvency of Wall Street, for example, as some did, when Wall Street became evidently insolvent, that cents on the dollar bet went up 30, 40, and 50 fold. Not everyone who did that wants to get his name in the paper. But there are some spectacularly rich people who came out of this," Grant says. "Who got richer," Kroft remarks. "Who got richer, who became, you know, fantastically richer," Grant says. A lot of them were hedge fund managers. John Paulson's Credit Opportunities Fund returned almost 600 percent last year, with Paulson pocketing a reported $3.7 billion. Bill Ackman, of Pershing Square Capital Management, said he plans to make hundreds of millions. Both declined 60 Minutes' request for an interview. Congress now seems shocked and outraged by the consequences of its decision eight years ago to effectively deregulate swaps and derivatives. Various members of the House and Senate have hauled in the usual suspects to accept or share the blame. "Were you wrong?" Rep. Henry Waxman asked former Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan. "Credit default swaps, I think, have some serious problems with them," Greenspan replied. It appears to be the first step in a long process of restoring at least some of the regulations and safeguards that might have prevented, or at least mitigated this disaster after the damage has already been done. Where do we go from here? "We need the most dramatic rethinking of the regulatory scheme for financial markets since the New Deal. If anything has demonstrated that imperative, it's the economy right now and the tragic circumstances we're in," Goldschmid says. Asked how much danger he thinks is still out there, Goldschmid says, "We don't know. Part of the problem of the lack of transparency in these - in these markets has been we don't really know."
Produced by L. Franklin Devine and Jennifer MacDonald

Thursday, October 23, 2008

U.S. Blew It" On Global Food

Freedumb, Freedumb, Read All About It! "A Free Trade, Free Market, Free Corporate, Unregulated Economy run like Al Capone's Casino Joint, and Policed by Al Capone". Is this the best University MBA/PHD Masters and Government Regulators can provide?
"by treating food crops as commodities instead of as a vital right of the world's poorAfrica's food self-sufficiency subsequently declined and food imports rose. Now skyrocketing prices in the international grain trade - on average more than doubling between 2006 and early 2008 - have pushed many in poor countries deeper into poverty." .......the same with medical, medicine"

PEOPLES LIVES DEPEND UPON THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM. The economic system is not singularly a tool for profit, and the hell with Life. "We now have to pay for the greed and recklessness of those who should have known better.” It is time, Mr. Schumer said, for the American economy to be revived as the “engine of prosperity,” rather than as a “casino” for high-rollers in the realm of finance.

How, in a world of exploding human population, with unparalleled needs, wants and desires, can the economy keep falling, with more and more working people around the world, poorer, lacking basic needs and going hungry... this can only be termed Freakohnomics: The new 21st Century Supply & Demand Economics - absolute greed, absolute power brings on absolute madness - Turns into Freakohnomics gone berserk. Or mafia economics by deliberate Design - the greater the need, the higher the price for all commodities required to sustain Life. The Outcome, economic strangulation and workaholic enslavement of a people was not designed by the lord thy God, nor (for the non-believer) is it a Natural or Nature's Law, nor a Scientific Law

What factors changed Market Supply & Demand Fundamentals to Freakohnomics gone berserk? From cheaper goods and services available to all through continual advances in science, technology and mass production, to 'Whatever The Market Will Bear' depending on how great the need for sustaining Life?

The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil

Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when lacking a Bill of Rights for Human Life

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down along with their retirement savings in equity & stocks, while their taxes, gas, energy and food costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms and many continue to lose their homes and go hungry; as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans).

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.











































Bill Clinton: "We Blew It" On Global Food
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 23, 2008
(AP) Today's global food crisis shows "we all blew it, including me when I was president," by treating food crops as commodities instead of as a vital right of the world's poor, Bill Clinton told a U.N. gathering on Thursday. The former president, addressing a high-level event marking Oct. 16's World Food Day, also saluted U.S. President George W. Bush - "one thing he got right" - for pushing for a change in U.S. food-aid policy. He chided the bipartisan coalition in the U.S. Congress that killed the idea. Clinton took aim at decades of international policymaking by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and others, encouraged by the U.S., that pressured Africans in particular into dropping government subsidies for fertilizer, improved seed and other farm inputs, in economic "structural adjustments" required to win northern aid. Africa's food self-sufficiency subsequently declined and food imports rose. Now skyrocketing prices in the international grain trade - on average more than doubling between 2006 and early 2008 - have pushed many in poor countries deeper into poverty. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the U.N. gathering that prices on some food items are "500 percent higher than normal" in Haiti and Ethiopia, for example. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates the number of undernourished people worldwide rose to 923 million last year. "Food is not a commodity like others," Clinton said. "We should go back to a policy of maximum food self-sufficiency. It is crazy for us to think we can develop countries around the world without increasing their ability to feed themselves." He noted that northern food aid could itself be a tool for boosting African agriculture. Canada, for example, requires that 50 percent of its aid go as cash - not as Canadian grain - to buy crops locally in Africa or other recipient countries. But U.S. law requires that almost all U.S. aid be American-grown food commodities, benefiting U.S. farmers. Bush proposed earlier this year that 25 percent of future aid be cash. "A bipartisan coalition (in Congress) defeated him," the Democratic ex-president said of his Republican successor. "He was right, and both parties that defeated him were wrong." Clinton also criticized the heavy U.S. reliance on a food crop, corn, to produce ethanol for fuel, which helped drive up grain prices worldwide. "If we're going to do biofuels, we ought to look at the more efficient kind," he said, referring, for example, to the jatropha shrub, a nonfood source that grows on land not suitable for grain. The U.N. General Assembly president, Nicaragua's Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, agreed, speaking of the "madness of converting crops into fuel." D'Escoto expressed disappointment that of $22 billion pledged by richer nations to help poorer nations' agriculture in this year of food crisis, only $2.2 billion has been made available. Opening the hour-long meeting, U.N. chief Ban expressed dismay at the potential impact of the global financial crisis on world hunger. "While the international community is focused on turmoil in the global economy, I am extremely concerned that not enough is being done to help those who are suffering most: the poorest of the poor," he said.

Friday, October 10, 2008

The Next Banking Bomb?


Freedumb, Freedumb, Read All About It! "A Free Trade, Free Market, Free Corporate, Unregulated Economy run like Al Capone's Casino Joint, and Policed by Al Capone". Is this the best University MBA/PHD Masters and Government Regulators can provide?

PEOPLES LIVES DEPEND UPON THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM. The economic system is not singularly a tool for profit, and the hell with Life. "We now have to pay for the greed and recklessness of those who should have known better.” It is time, Mr. Schumer said, for the American economy to be revived as the “engine of prosperity,” rather than as a “casino” for high-rollers in the realm of finance.

How, in a world of exploding human population, with unparalleled needs, wants and desires, can the economy keep falling, with more and more working people around the world, poorer, lacking basic needs and going hungry... this can only be termed Freakohnomics: The new 21st Century Supply & Demand Economics - absolute greed, absolute power brings on absolute madness - Turns into Freakohnomics gone berserk. Or mafia economics by deliberate Design - the greater the need, the higher the price for all commodities required to sustain Life. The Outcome, economic strangulation and workaholic enslavement of a people was not designed by the lord thy God, nor (for the non-believer) is it a Natural or Nature's Law, nor a Scientific Law

What factors changed Market Supply & Demand Fundamentals to Freakohnomics gone berserk? From cheaper goods and services available to all through continual advances in science, technology and mass production, to 'Whatever The Market Will Bear' depending on how great the need for sustaining Life?

The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil

Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when lacking a Bill of Rights for Human Life

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down along with their retirement savings in equity & stocks, while their taxes, gas, energy and food costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms and many continue to lose their homes and go hungry; as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans).

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.











































The Next Banking Bomb?
October 10, 2008
(CBS) CBS News Investigative Unit’s Kim Lengle wrote this story for CBSNews.com.
“This bill will, in my judgment, raise the likelihood of future massive taxpayer bailouts. …if you want to gamble, go to Las Vegas. If you want to trade in derivatives, God bless you.” That was North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan’s statement on the floor of the Senate - not this week or last, or even during the last six months as Wall Street collapsed - but back in 1999. Four years later in a letter to shareholders, billionaire investor Warren Buffett followed with his own warning, calling derivatives “weapons of financial mass destruction” controlled by “madmen.” While financial experts were concerned with the housing bubble and mortgage-backed securities, Dorgan and Buffett were focused on what many now believe may be the next big shoe to drop - the credit derivatives market, better known as credit default swaps. What worries financial insiders most is the $54.6 trillion of risky credit derivatives concentrated among the few banks left standing. Credit default swaps (CDS) are the cornerstone of the credit derivatives market accounting for more than 98 percent of all credit derivatives. They are difficult to understand, ignored by regulators and poorly reported on balance sheets. In simplest terms, CDS are insurance policies on things like bonds, loans and corporate debt. But there are two big differences: the seller of a CDS doesn’t need to have the money to cover losses if the security defaults, and the buyer doesn’t need to own the asset it wants to protect. It’s as if hundreds of people could buy insurance policies on houses they didn’t own yet still collect the full value if it burns down. The danger comes when the company defaults and the seller - because he’s not required to - doesn’t have the money to pay out on the default. Investment firms that traded various derivatives, such as CDS, collected an average of $2 billion in fees each quarter over the past two years. And traders who spoke to CBS News said these transactions were the largest cash cows on Wall Street, even more profitable than mortgages. The newfangled transactions were seen as easy money and many traders had the attitude that when it blows up, it’s someone else’s problem. Today, the same commercial banking heavyweights thought to be the most safe, JPMorgan, Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America, hold 92 percent of all the disclosed credit derivative contracts, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. But that number is merely an estimate because the overwhelming majority of these contracts are unregulated - private, mostly undisclosed and difficult to measure. “There is no question we are at the edge of the cliff and someone is going to fall off,” said Weil, Gotshal & Manges Senior Partner Harvey Miller who is currently overseeing the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. Back in 1999 when the legislation was being debated Senator Dorgan opposed the consolidation of commercial and investment banks. In fact, he sponsored two amendments to prohibit these new mega-banks from …investing in derivatives. Today, Dorgan apparently feels the same way. He was one of 25 senators who voted no on the recent $700 billion bailout. “No one knows where [the credit derivatives] are, whose balance sheets they may threaten, or how much additional risk they pose to financial firms. Yet, I was told this plan could not require regulation and transparency of these financial markets because there was opposition in Congress and the White House,” Dorgan said in a statement explaining why he didn’t vote for the bailout. With banks already suffering losses from the subprime fiasco, many now believe they face chain reaction failures from the credit derivatives market. “If the market keeps going in the direction it’s been going, you’re going to have lots of defaults which are dangerous things,” said Miller. Some economic analysts predict even more panic over next few months. As more corporations default and banks find out they can’t make good on their contracts, a new round of losses for funds and financial firms could result and make the recent losses in mortgage-backed securities seem miniscule by comparison.
By Kim Lengle© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

How Free Should a Free Market Be? How much can we gamble on other people's lives?


Freedumb, Freedumb, Read All About It! "A Free Trade, Free Market, Free Corporate, Unregulated Economy run like Al Capone's Casino Joint, and Policed by Al Capone". Is this the best University MBA/PHD Masters and Government Regulators can provide?

PEOPLES LIVES DEPEND UPON THE ECONOMIC SYSTEM. The economic system is not singularly a tool for profit, and the hell with Life. "We now have to pay for the greed and recklessness of those who should have known better.” It is time, Mr. Schumer said, for the American economy to be revived as the “engine of prosperity,” rather than as a “casino” for high-rollers in the realm of finance.

How, in a world of exploding human population, with unparalleled needs, wants and desires, can the economy keep falling, with more and more working people around the world, poorer, lacking basic needs and going hungry... this can only be termed Freakohnomics: The new 21st Century Supply & Demand Economics - absolute greed, absolute power brings on absolute madness - Turns into Freakohnomics gone berserk. Or mafia economics by deliberate Design - the greater the need, the higher the price for all commodities required to sustain Life. The Outcome, economic strangulation and workaholic enslavement of a people was not designed by the lord thy God, nor (for the non-believer) is it a Natural or Nature's Law, nor a Scientific Law

What factors changed Market Supply & Demand Fundamentals to Freakohnomics gone berserk? From cheaper goods and services available to all through continual advances in science, technology and mass production, to 'Whatever The Market Will Bear' depending on how great the need for sustaining Life?


The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil

Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when lacking a Bill of Rights for Human Life

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down along with their retirement savings in equity & stocks, while their taxes, gas, energy and food costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms and many continue to lose their homes and go hungry; as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans).

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.




































October 5, 2008
Power Plays

How Free Should a Free Market Be?

How much can we gamble on other people's lives?
By ALEX BERENSON
Is this the end of hypercapitalism?
For nearly a generation, the United States has driven growth by deregulating markets, lowering tax rates and promoting trade. Across wide swaths of the economy — from airlines to banks to energy to telecommunications — Washington stood aside, believing less regulation would produce broad prosperity, even at the cost of greater income inequality.
Now, with Washington setting aside $700 billion to bail out financial companies, the economy weakening daily and the Democrats likely to enlarge their majorities in Congress, it may seem that the United States is shifting away from faith in markets and distrust of government.
In Europe, some political leaders, including conservatives like President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, have declared the death of laissez-faire economics. “A certain idea of globalization is drawing to a close with the end of a financial capitalism that imposed its logic on the whole economy,” Mr. Sarkozy said last month. “The idea that the markets are always right was a crazy idea.”
What about America? In one sense, the present crisis would seem likely to continue the retreat from the free-market ideas associated with Ronald Reagan and President Bush suggested by the passage of the Medicare drug benefit plan in 2003 and the failure of Mr. Bush’s proposal to privatize Social Security in 2005, the centerpiece of his vision of an “ownership society.” Then, in 2006, Democrats took Congress for the first time in 12 years.
Whoever becomes president in January, lawmakers will be under pressure to strengthen financial regulation and give more resources to agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, which have appeared overwhelmed in recent years. Some critics of the bailout legislation complain, for instance, that at the same time that it empowers the Treasury Department to buy hundreds of billions in troubled debt from financial firms, it fails to fortify oversight of the nation’s financial system.
But Americans are fundamentally suspicious of government in a way that Europeans are not, a cultural and political difference that stretches back centuries. Anyone expecting a major expansion of Washington’s powers after November — whether under a Barack Obama or John McCain administration — may be disappointed.
Americans are certainly weary of Mr. Bush, whose approval rating fell to 22 percent in the most recent poll by CBS News, the lowest rating for any president since Harry S. Truman in 1952. But this poll, and others, also show that whatever their anger at Mr. Bush and Wall Street, Americans are not necessarily ready to embrace liberal ideals such as stronger unions, significantly higher and more progressive taxes, and new trade barriers.
A deep, long-lasting recession could change that dynamic, just as the inflation and severe recessions of the 1970s fueled the last major ideological shift in American politics with the election in 1980 of Mr. Reagan, a fervent apostle of lower taxes, free markets and deregulation.
But for now, the United States economy is far stronger than it was in the 1970s. The credit crunch, swooning stock market and rising unemployment are frightening, but economists are still predicting a relatively mild recession. The unemployment rate, for example, has risen from 4.4 percent in March 2007 to 6.1 percent at the end of September, but it is far below the post-World War II peak of 10.8 percent in November 1982. And while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index of big stocks has fallen by nearly 30 percent since its peak in 2007, it had dropped nearly 50 percent between 2000 and 2002.
The relatively mild recessions of 1990 and 2001 did not shake Americans’ faith in free-market principles, said Robert D. Reischauer, president of the non-partisan Urban Institute. Mr. Reischauer directed the Congressional Budget Office between 1989 and 1994, when Democrats controlled Congress. Similarly, this recession will probably not produce a major shift, unless it turns out to be much longer and more severe than economists expect, Mr. Reischauer said.
“We’re basically a conservative country,” he said. “And one would expect that to be the case when one has as much stuff as we have to conserve.”
Doug Schoen, a Democratic strategist and pollster who worked for President Bill Clinton for six years, said that should Mr. Obama win next month, he should not mistake his election for a mandate for sharply higher taxes on the wealthy or major government expansion. “The polling I’ve done shows that people are anti-Republican, not pro-left, not pro-redistribution,” he said. “They’re ever more skeptical of Washington.”
For example, in the poll by CBS News released earlier this week, 44 percent of Americans said businesses now faced “too much” or “the right amount” of regulation, compared to 43 percent who said they faced too little. In a New York Times/CBS News Poll in September, 42 percent said Mr. Bush’s tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, should be made permanent, while 36 percent said they should be allowed to expire over the next several years.
Most strikingly, 34 percent described themselves as conservative, compared to only 20 percent as liberal. Those figures have hardly changed since September 2000, when 32 percent described themselves as conservative and 20 percent as liberal.
Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House, said the financial crisis has benefited Mr. Obama and Democratic Congressional candidates. But Mr. Gingrich added that if Mr. Obama is elected and presses too hard for liberal policies, Democrats may be repudiated by voters in 2010, just as they were in 1994, two years after Mr. Clinton was elected president and offered proposals for national health insurance and higher energy taxes that failed in Congress.
“You have to convince a country that watched Katrina, that watched Baghdad, that watched Fannie and Freddie, now the answer’s going to be to pile more junk on top of the junk we already have,” Mr. Gingrich said of new government programs.
Some Democrats think that Americans are ready for at least a moderate turn to a more activist government.
Lawrence Summers, who was secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton, said that even before the financial crisis, Americans were concerned about income inequality and the cost of health care, and increasingly aware that those problems cannot be addressed by market solutions alone. Indeed, in a poll in August by the Pew Research Center, 63 percent of Americans said they favored government-guaranteed health insurance, even at the cost of higher taxes, while only 34 percent opposed it.
“There has been a substantial change in the intellectual climate,” he said. “It’s a change that antedates the financial crisis, and I think it will only be reinforced by the financial crisis.”
Jeffrey Garten, a professor at the Yale School of Management who was an undersecretary of commerce in the Clinton administration, said lawmakers are likely to impose stricter regulatory oversight on several industries — especially financial companies and markets. Having established itself, at great expense, as the financier of last resort, the government will no longer blithely accept banks’ assurances that they are safe, Mr. Garten said. Instead, Congress will give the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve new powers to oversee financial institutions, Mr. Garten said.
“The government’s going to be inside them,” he said. Mr. Garten also said he expected the F.D.A and Consumer Product Safety Commission to receive increased funding and stronger oversight powers. “The whole issue of food and product safety — it’s a total mess,” he said. “We are headed for an extensive regulatory re-think.”
David Ruder, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and now a professor emeritus at the Northwestern University School of Law, said he also thought that much stricter financial regulation was necessary, both in the United States and internationally. “The events, even as they’re unfolding today, are revealing the need for much closer cooperation among financial regulators,” he said.
But, in a sign of the opposition that Democrats will face as they try to strengthen regulation, Mr. Ruder said that he did not think regulatory reform would be easy to implement, even in the financial sector. Even after receiving massive government aid this year, banks may fight stronger government oversight next year, he said.
The banking and finance industries are major political donors and powerful lobbying forces in Washington. Lawmakers who voted for the bailout received substantially more in contributions over their careers from the finance, insurance and real estate industries than those who voted against it, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that tracks political contributions.
“I’m scared about the next year but I’m very optimistic we’ll come out of this in good shape,” he said. “We very well may come out of this horrible situation with a better version of American capitalism — it’ll be a little tamer; it’ll be a little more regulated.”
“But this country is built on an appetite for risk,” he added. “We don’t want to be France.”

Thursday, October 2, 2008

China warns against US arms sale to Taiwan










Every living soul armed to the teeth & we will have PEACE PEACE PEACE. Marching in sync to fulfill Nostradamus's prophesies - resource wars and control and protection of the oil regions, wherever they may be, at all costs..... “This is not about being gunrunners,” said Bruce S. Lemkin, the Air Force deputy under secretary who is helping to coordinate many of the biggest sales. “This is about building a more secure world.” This is what was said in Rome. This is what "repeat the repeater', the mouthpiece for greed and power madness, has said throughout all history. Today, with the science of energy stagnated and petrified, stunting education and wisdom, it is no wonder the masses are 'flag freaking' toward their own self destruction, rather than flag waving toward an unlimited, unbounded, prosperous future for all.

"In a primitive tooth and claw society you have survival of the fittest. But as technology progresses it makes the killer instinct so destructive that you eventually have survival of nobody at all, except maybe a few cave men. Either evolution weeds out the killer instinct or everybody ends up dead. Either moral evolution goes hand in hand with technological evolution and connects with scientific survival requirements for evolving, living systems, or we're doomed."

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. The new scientific comprehension would eliminate the caveman 'club/stick' conflict resolution methods still used in the 21st century. Besides, caveman club/stick methods do not work well with nuclear toys, as they threaten all of humanity

Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.

The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when devoid of a Bill of Rights for Human Life, devoid of scientific parameters necessary for Life's evolution, sustainability, and survival.

China warns against US arms sale to Taiwan
China News.NetSaturday 4th October, 2008 (IANS)
Beijing, Oct 5 (Xinhua) China Saturday criticised the US government's decision to sell arms, including Patriot III anti-missile system, Apache helicopters and other equipments worth $6.5 billion, to Taiwan.The Chinese government firmly opposes this action, which seriously damaged China's interests and the Sino-US relations, foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said.Despite China's repeated opposition to the move, the US government Friday notified the Congress about its plan to sell arms to Taiwan.Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei has summoned the charge d'affaires of the US Embassy to China to raise strong protest against the US move, Liu said.The arms sale to Taiwan violated the principles set in the three joint communiques between China and the US, the spokesman said, adding that it mainly violated the Aug 17, 1982 pact.The US decision also endangered the Chinese national security and disturbed the peaceful cross-Strait relations, he said.'We firmly warn the US that there is only one China in the world and that Taiwan is a part of China,' Liu said.He said China has urged the US to recognise that it is destructive to sell arms to Taiwan, noting that the US should honour its commitment to stick to one-China policy.Liu said the US government should immediately take actions to correct its mistakes, cancel the proposed arms sale and stop military links with Taiwan.China reserved the right for taking further measures, he noted.The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, and the National Committee of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the country's top advisory body, Saturday condemned the US arms sale plan.
China cancels visit over U.S. arms sales to Taiwan
Beijing also shelves other military and diplomatic contacts with Washington to protest an announced $6.5-billion sale of defensive weapons to Taiwan, Pentagon and State Department officials say.
By Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer October 7, 2008
BEIJING -- China has canceled a senior military visit to Washington and shelved other military and diplomatic contacts to protest an announced $6.5-billion U.S. arms sale to Taiwan, Pentagon and State Department officials said Monday. "The Chinese reaction is unfortunate and results in missed opportunities," said Marine Corps Maj. Stewart Upton, a Defense Department spokesman, in a statement. "The bilateral events affected involve senior level visits and humanitarian assistance-disaster relief exchanges that were scheduled to occur between now and the end of November."
In addition to the cancellation of a senior general's visit to the U.S., China will reportedly halt port calls by U.S. naval vessels, postpone "indefinitely" meetings on stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction and pull out of a Sino-U.S. humanitarian assistance and disaster relief dialogue set for late November.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Russia Flexes Muscles in Oil Deal With Chávez





















Every living soul armed to the teeth & we will have PEACE PEACE PEACE. Marching in sync to fulfill Nostradamus's prophesies - resource wars and control and protection of the oil regions, wherever they may be, at all costs..... “This is not about being gunrunners,” said Bruce S. Lemkin, the Air Force deputy under secretary who is helping to coordinate many of the biggest sales. “This is about building a more secure world.” This is what was said in Rome. This is what "repeat the repeater', the mouthpiece for greed and power madness, has said throughout all history. Today, with the science of energy stagnated and petrified, stunting education and wisdom, it is no wonder the masses are 'flag freaking' toward their own self destruction, rather than flag waving toward an unlimited, unbounded, prosperous future for all.
"In a primitive tooth and claw society you have survival of the fittest. But as technology progresses it makes the killer instinct so destructive that you eventually have survival of nobody at all, except maybe a few cave men. Either evolution weeds out the killer instinct or everybody ends up dead. Either moral evolution goes hand in hand with technological evolution and connects with scientific survival requirements for evolving, living systems, or we're doomed."

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. The new scientific comprehension would eliminate the caveman 'club/stick' conflict resolution methods still used in the 21st century. Besides, caveman club/stick methods do not work well with nuclear toys, as they threaten all of humanity

Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence, and Unrestrained Corporate Greed prompting resource wars with nuclear finality" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall of civilization" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.

The Deadly Dangers of a Mis-informed, Dis-informed & Un-informed Population, Ultimately to Itself, History Provides Ample Evidence.

The Solution: The Promise of New Energy Systems & Beyond Oil Evaporates the Problem: The ill designed "Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization." when devoid of a Bill of Rights for Human Life, devoid of scientific parameters necessary for Life's evolution, sustainability, and survival.
NYT September 27, 2008
Russia Flexes Muscles in Oil Deal With Chávez

By ELLEN BARRY
MOSCOW — Russia continued its international muscle-flexing on Friday, strengthening its ties to Venezuela through a $1 billion military loan and a new oil consortium as it announced an upgrade of its own military focusing on nuclear deterrence and permanent combat readiness.
After a military exercise on Friday in the southern city of Orenburg, near the border with Kazakhstan, the Russian president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, declared that by 2020 Russia would construct new types of warships, including nuclear submarines carrying cruise missiles and an unspecified air and space defense system.
The moves point to continuing tension between Russia and the West after the five-day war in Georgia. Response in Washington was muted, as officials weighed whether the moves were merely a restatement of existing initiatives or should be interpreted as one early sign of a new, if slow-motion, arms race. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview with Reuters: “The balance of power in terms of nuclear deterrence is not going to be affected by those measures.”
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Pentagon news conference that his Russian counterparts had in the past made it “very clear to me that their intention was to modernize their strategic forces.” The current plans, he said, are consistent with Russian policy going “as far back as a couple of years.”
But the war in Georgia has clearly reordered priorities. With Europe and the United States united in condemnation of Russia’s military actions, Russian leaders began reaching out to countries like Venezuela, which are eager to provide a counterweight to United States power. On Thursday, Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, arrived on his second visit here.
On Friday, Mr. Medvedev said the conflict also proved “the acuteness” of Russia’s need to modernize its military. Defense spending will increase by 26 percent next year, bringing it to 1.3 trillion rubles ($50 billion), its highest level since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“Just recently we have had to rebuff an aggression by the Georgian regime and, as we found, a war can flare up suddenly and can be absolutely real,” he said. “Local, smoldering conflicts, which are sometimes even called ‘frozen conflicts,’ will turn into a real military conflagration.”
The conflict in Georgia flared on the night of Aug. 7, when Georgia ordered an attack against Russian-backed separatists in South Ossetia. In response, Russia sent troops flooding over its border and deep into Georgia. Russia has recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a second separatist enclave, as sovereign states and plans to defend their borders.
The conflict revealed serious weaknesses in Russian military readiness. Georgian air defenses shot down at least six Russian jets, pointing to poor maintenance and inadequate training. Russians took losses because they lacked air cover as they entered South Ossetia, and a Russian general, apparently operating without sufficient intelligence, was wounded when he led a column into Georgian ambush.
By 2020, Mr. Medvedev said, Russia will shore up nuclear deterrents like nuclear submarines armed with cruise missiles and a combined air-space defense system.
In the same period, he said, the Russian armed forces will be upgraded to a state of “permanent combat readiness.” He said Russia would also improve military training and research.
“We should seek superiority in the air, in carrying out precision strikes against ground and sea targets, and in the prompt redeployment of forces,” he said, according to a statement on the Kremlin’s Web site.
Aleksandr Golts, an independent Russian military analyst, said the announcement conveyed a clear message, both to Russians and foreigners: that Russia “has risen from its knees.”
“Russia wants to behave as a great power,” he said.
“I have to agree with Mr. Gates, your defense secretary, who said that the existing Russian armed forces are only a shadow of the Soviet ones,” he said.
At a meeting with Mr. Chávez, Mr. Medvedev agreed to a form a Russian-Venezuelan energy consortium that would share resources to produce and sell oil and gas. Russian companies are already at work exploring oil fields in Venezuela, but the agreement will allow them to expand their reach into more areas, including fields in Ecuador and Bolivia.
Mr. Chávez described the agreement as “a colossus being born.”
More cooperative efforts are in the works: On Thursday, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin said Russia would consider working with Venezuela to build nuclear power facilities. Mr. Chávez said he would like to see the two countries join forces to create a Russian-Venezuelan bank, and the two countries are planning joint large-scale naval exercises in late November.
Mr. Chávez reaffirmed his support for Russia’s military campaign in South Ossetia, saying Venezuelans were “well aware of the reasons behind the conflict — who attacked the people of South Ossetia and how.” He also passed on greetings from President Raúl Castro of Cuba, whom he recently met in Havana, and from the Chinese president, Hu Jintao.
Admiral Mullen, of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, played down the joint efforts. Russia and Venezuela, he said, have the right to work together “if they see fit.”
Some White House officials have privately urged a more punitive response to Russia’s invasion of Georgia, but Ms. Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates have urged a calm and deliberate response as being less likely to escalate tensions. That strategy has been adopted by the Bush administration.
In another assertion of its international role, Russia sent a warship, the Neustrashimy, from a port on the Baltic Sea to the coast of Somalia, in response to the capture by pirates of a Ukrainian vessel bound for Kenya on Thursday.
On board the vessel were 33 T-72 tanks, grenade launchers and ammunition, the Ukrainian defense minister, Yuriy Yekhanurov, said at a news briefing, according to Interfax. Mr. Yekhanurov said the arms were sold legally, and were headed for the Kenyan port of Mombasa.
Most likely the ship will not arrive in time to participate in any operation to retake the hijacked Ukrainian vessel. But a Russian Navy spokesman, Igor Dygalo, said Russia will occasionally patrol waters where piracy is a danger.
Iran Resolution Is Shaped
UNITED NATIONS — The foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the Security Council, plus that of Germany, agreed Friday on a draft resolution on Iran’s nuclear program.
The new resolution came after Russia earlier in the week rejected the need for a group meeting over Tehran’s program.
The sparse, two paragraph text called on Iran to comply with previous resolutions instructing it to suspend uranium enrichment, but it included no new sanctions.
The ministers said the measure signaled that they were united in pressing Iran to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The foreign ministers did not meet officially, but a consensus emerged during sideline discussions that Iran should not be left with the impression that squabbling over Georgia meant the six were divided on the nuclear issue.
Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said he agreed to the new resolution because it reinforced the idea that despite their differences on the method to reach an agreement with Iran, “Nobody will have any doubt that the six are united in their goal.” Russia still opposed new sanctions, he said.
The five permanent members of the Council are the United States, China, Russia, France and Britain.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that she still hoped that some officials in the Iranian government would prefer a negotiated settlement to further isolation for Iran.
Diplomats said the resolution could come to a vote in the Security Council as early as Saturday.
Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington, and Michael Schwirtz from Moscow.