Common Sense & Global Emergency: Act Now

Preamble
WHEREAS the global economic crisis; worldwide climate change; on-going wars, terrorism and nuclear brinksmanship; peaking or exhaustion of non-renewable natural resources; approaching water crisis; annual net increase in world population by approximately 80 million; increase in world poverty, homelessness and famine in absolute numbers; growing gap between wealthy and poor both within and between nations; and other interrelated macro-trends, provides growing and indisputable evidence that the world today is fundamentally unsustainable and that humanity is rapidly moving to the breakdown of currently operative societal and ecological systems.
AND WHEREAS notwithstanding the global-scale crises facing the human community, the thinking and actions of the majority of political and business leaders remain fixed - on the short-term rather than the long-term; on national rather than global priorities; on self- interest rather than community interest; on confrontation and militarization rather than cooperation and dialogue; on the values and consciousness of the 19th century rather than the 21st century; on maintaining the status quo of 'business as usual' rather than shifting to urgently needed new economic, energy and societal systems - locally, nationally and internationally.
THEREFORE in awareness of the growing global crises and the on-going lack of needed national and world leadership in the mainstream of politics and business, we hereby issue this urgent call for action, as a “State of Global Emergency Declaration", on behalf of and for the benefit of all the People of the World.

The horrors a suppressed, broken science will bring are unimaginable: For the greatest living physicist, Stephen Hawking to write (2007) “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion”, (or delusion), regarding the original, infantile interpretation of E=MC2 still believed today, spells umbrellas for the earth, a global warming solution, and corn for Energy Innovation. When the parameters of freedom and survival disappear, so do people and life. ..........repeating from blog "Traveling at Warp Speed" http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-travel-at-warp-speed.html - how could any intelligent species sit for 100 years upon such delusional concepts of: "as an object travels faster and faster, its mass increases (time slows, stops, goes backwards – approaching, at, exceeding VC)," or "As an object approaches the speed of light its mass becomes infinite." The obvious subsequent realization of such a short sighted error swiftly corrects to - the 'increasing mass' of the target is only the measure of the kinetic energy differential which exists between them http://fuel2000.net/ This concept completely overhauls the stubbornly persistent delusions, primitive definitions and stranglehold restrictions of E=MC2, opening the doors to the unified field theory.

http://www.worldshiftnetwork.org/declaration/link.html

State of Global Emergency
Declaration (Draft)
Prepared by Ervin Laszlo and David Woolfson for the Club of Budapest

It is the mission of the Club of Budapest to catalyze effective and timely change by calling attention to the dangers as well as the opportunities that confront the human community. It now issues an urgent call for action in view of the state of global emergency that arose on this planet. This is a global crisis, and it harbors both grave dangers and unique opportunities. We must recognize it and take action. A purely perceived crisis is dangerous: it triggers precipitate action in the face of a situation that does not call for it. But an unrecognized crisis is just as or even more dangerous, for it fails to catalyze effective action in a situation that does call for it. With The Declaration on the State of Global Emergency, to be adopted in the framework of a Global Emergency Consultation in 2009, The Club of Budapest calls attention to the reality of the crisis, and invites all responsible people and organizations to endorse the present draft, so a critical mass in the human community would muster the consciousness, the creativity, and the will to take action to cope with it.
Preamble
WHEREAS the global economic crisis; worldwide climate change; on-going wars, terrorism and nuclear brinksmanship; peaking or exhaustion of non-renewable natural resources; approaching water crisis; annual net increase in world population by approximately 80 million; increase in world poverty, homelessness and famine in absolute numbers; growing gap between wealthy and poor both within and between nations; and other interrelated macro-trends, provides growing and indisputable evidence that the world today is fundamentally unsustainable and that humanity is rapidly moving to the breakdown of currently operative societal and ecological systems.
AND WHEREAS notwithstanding the global-scale crises facing the human community, the thinking and actions of the majority of political and business leaders remain fixed - on the short-term rather than the long-term; on national rather than global priorities; on self- interest rather than community interest; on confrontation and militarization rather than cooperation and dialogue; on the values and consciousness of the 19th century rather than the 21st century; on maintaining the status quo of 'business as usual' rather than shifting to urgently needed new economic, energy and societal systems - locally, nationally and internationally.
THEREFORE in awareness of the growing global crises and the on-going lack of needed national and world leadership in the mainstream of politics and business, we hereby issue this urgent call for action, as a “State of Global Emergency Declaration", on behalf of and for the benefit of all the People of the World.
The Global Situation
The numerous global crises before humanity today affect every person and society. If we continue on our present unsustainable path, by mid-century the Earth may become largely uninhabitable for human and most other forms of life. Such a total systems collapse could occur much sooner, however, due to runaway global warming or other ecocatastrophes, and/or by nuclear wars triggered by religious, ethnic or geopolitical conflicts or access to diminishing natural resources.
The macro-trends driving these global threats and challenges have been apparent for decades and are now building toward a threshold of irreversibility. The scientific modeling of complex systems shows that when systems reach a state of critical instability, they either break down to their components or break through to a higher order of integral functioning. At these “points of no return” maintaining the status quo, or returning to a previous mode of organization and functioning, are not a feasible option.
Time-estimates of when the “point of no return” will be reached for the global system of humanity have shrunk from the end of the century to mid-century, then to the next twenty years, and recently to the next five to twenty years. For example, it was predicted that the Earth’s average temperarure will increase by about 3° Celsius by the year 2100, then it was said that this level of increase will come about by the middle of the century, and lately that it could possibly occur within a decade. The figure for overall warming has been increased from 3° C to 6° C or higher. Global warming of 3° C would cause serious disruptions to human activity, while a 6° C rise would be a ‘global breakdown’ making most of the planet unsuitable for human life.
Such predictions, however, take only one trend into consideration: global warming; water availability; food production; poverty; population pressure; air pollution, etc. This approach fails to consider the impacts of the interconnection of the macro-trends as well as the feedback loops within them. When one trend reaches a critical point its impact on other trends can be very significant. For example, if global warming creates prolonged drought in some areas and coastal flooding in others, starving and homeless masses will flood less hard-hit regions and create social and economic upheavals there with critical food and water shortages.
The acceleration of critical trends and cross-impacts among them indicates that the ‘window of opportunity’ for pulling out of the present global crisis and breaking through to a more peaceful and sustainable world is likely to be no more than four to five years from the end of 2008. This is close in time to the Mayan 2012 prophecy for the end of the current world.
The period around the end of 2012 is likely to be a turbulent one for this and other reasons. Predictions coming from the physical sciences foresee disturbances in the geomagnetic, electromagnetic and related fields that embed the planet causing significant damage to telecommunications and impacting many aspects of human activity and health. For the esoteric traditions the end of 2012 will be the end of the known world, although the more optimistic intepretations speak of a new world taking the place of the old.
While the majority of the world’s people have yet to recognize the possibility of a total global-scale breakdown, millions of forward-thinking groups and individuals have been actively addressing these collective threats and challenges for many years. This “waking up” is a positive sign of the vitality of the human spirit and its ability to respond to the dangers that face humanity with flexibility and creativity. This response must be furthered and facilitated in all appropriate ways as the scale and urgency of the required transformation is far greater than the scope of current efforts. It will be a case of ‘too little, too late’ unless the human community as a whole moves quickly to address the threatening macro-trends before they become irreversible.
This is now the top planetary priority. Failure to implement a worldwide shift in the window of time available to us will almost certainly lead to the breakdown of our civilization and possibly to the demise of our species. We acknowledge the real possibility that a child born today could witness the final chapter of modern man’s 200,000 year existence on this planet.
The Way Forward
If humanity is not to perish, as other species have that failed to respond to changing conditions, we must face and cope with the unintended consequences of the narrow short-term thinking that has led to today’s unsustainable global situation. No ‘quick fix’ or ‘miracle technology’ will save us from the consequences of the erroneous values and actions of the past. Only by engaging the human spirit in all its creativity and potential wisdom can we give birth to the necessary new thinking and actions.
The currently dominant mode of thinking cannot be maintained any longer. We must overcome the societal inertia generated by the powerful self-destructive remnants of bygone eras in order to prepare in each community, region and nation for systemic disruptions and possible collapses. We must radically reconsider our view of the world and re-structure its principal operative systems: energy, economics, governance, transportation, food, resource use and distribution, among others. We must act to extend the time available to us before it becomes too late to avoid breakdown on a global scale.
Every crisis harbors within it the opportunity for change and transformation. The ideas and designs for the needed new systems, structures and technologies already exist. Today we are rediscovering essential elements of the wisdom inherent in the world’s great cultural traditions and making important scientific discoveries regarding the nature of reality, our connections to each other and to nature. At the same time we are developing alternative energy sources, sustainable technologies, global communications and information flows, biotechnology, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and other technologies capable of paving the way toward global sustainability for human communities and the environment.
Our new thinking and new tools can accelerate the emergence of a sustainable world in sufficient time to avoid the ‘worst case’ scenarios - if we act now. Time is short and the task unprecedented. Effective and feasible solutions to the present global emergency must be brought to the attention of as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, to motivate urgent and effective action by all aware and responsible global citizens. Widespread communication and collaboration amongst people, nations, cultures, religions, societal sectors, professions, associations, networks, organizations, and other groups, is essential to ensure humanity’s survival on this planet.
The new Club of Budapest report WORLDSHIFT 2012: The Handbook of Timely Change advances a feasible whole-systems concept for the urgently needed epochal shift. The concept is ‘Worldshift - a worldwide shift from a path of unsustainability, conflict and confrontation to a path toward global sustainability, wellbeing and peace.’ The Report’s proposals for achieving this Worldshift, together with the proposals of the Declaration’s signatories, form an integral part of this document.
ACCORDINGLY, WE HEREBY ISSUE THIS URGENT CALL to all the People and Peoples of the World to declare their awareness of the state of global emergency and their firm commitment to join together to carry out real and meaningful change in all sectors of society (education, governance, economy, media, culture, technology) and at all levels (local, national, and global) for the common good of all people, all societies, and all life on Earth.
Key recommendations of the Worldshift 2012 report are listed in Annex 1 below.
WE HEREBY ISSUE AN URGENT CALL to all the People and Peoples of the World to declare their awareness of the state of global emergency and their firm commitment to join together to carry out real and meaningful change in all sectors of society (education, governance, economy, media, culture, technology) and at all levels (local, national, and global) for the common good of all people and all societies, and all life on Earth.
Download Declaration (56 KB)
Download extended version (1.25 MB)
Endorse Now!

The Age of Stupid

The world in which the Archivist lives is the clearly visible destination of present - 'business as usual' (BAU) - policies regarding greenhouse gas emissions. Whether we get there in 2055 or 2075, we don't need to do anything different from what we are doing today to arrive in the terrifying future shown in our film.

THE AGE OF STUPID

THE AGE OF STUPID

THE AGE OF STUPID

http://www.ageofstupid.net/the_film
The Age Of Stupid - The film

Freedom Times Priority addon:The horrors a suppressed, broken science will bring are unimaginable: For the greatest living physicist, Stephen Hawking to write (2007) “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion”, (or delusion), regarding the original, infantile interpretation of E=MC2 still believed today, spells umbrellas for the earth, a global warming solution, and corn for Energy Innovation. When the parameters of freedom and survival disappear, so do people and life. ..........repeating from blog "Traveling at Warp Speed" http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-travel-at-warp-speed.html - how could any intelligent species sit for 100 years upon such delusional concepts of: "as an object travels faster and faster, its mass increases (time slows, stops, goes backwards – approaching, at, exceeding VC)," or "As an object approaches the speed of light its mass becomes infinite." The obvious subsequent realization of such a short sighted error swiftly corrects to - the 'increasing mass' of the target is only the measure of the kinetic energy differential which exists between them http://fuel2000.net/This concept completely overhauls the stubbornly persistent delusions, primitive definitions and stranglehold restrictions of E=MC2, opening the doors to the unified field theory.

http://www.worldshiftnetwork.org/declaration/link.html

Preamble
WHEREAS the global economic crisis; worldwide climate change; on-going wars, terrorism and nuclear brinksmanship; peaking or exhaustion of non-renewable natural resources; approaching water crisis; annual net increase in world population by approximately 80 million; increase in world poverty, homelessness and famine in absolute numbers; growing gap between wealthy and poor both within and between nations; and other interrelated macro-trends, provides growing and indisputable evidence that the world today is fundamentally unsustainable and that humanity is rapidly moving to the breakdown of currently operative societal and ecological systems.
AND WHEREAS notwithstanding the global-scale crises facing the human community, the thinking and actions of the majority of political and business leaders remain fixed - on the short-term rather than the long-term; on national rather than global priorities; on self- interest rather than community interest; on confrontation and militarization rather than cooperation and dialogue; on the values and consciousness of the 19th century rather than the 21st century; on maintaining the status quo of 'business as usual' rather than shifting to urgently needed new economic, energy and societal systems - locally, nationally and internationally.
THEREFORE in awareness of the growing global crises and the on-going lack of needed national and world leadership in the mainstream of politics and business, we hereby issue this urgent call for action, as a “State of Global Emergency Declaration", on behalf of and for the benefit of all the People of the World.
Download Declaration (56 KB)
Download extended version (1.25 MB)
Endorse Now!

http://www.ageofstupid.net/the_film

The Age Of Stupid

"The climate science in The Age Of Stupid is based on that of the international climate research community including the Met Office Hadley Centre, as assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and accepted by the world's governments.
While some scenarios depicted are at the extreme end of the range of possibilities within the timeframe of the movie, they are nevertheless physically plausible and illustrate the real risks posed by unmitigated climate change.
The science of the Met Office Hadley Centre supports the view that rapid and deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions must begin within the next few years if there is to be a reasonable chance of avoiding a 2-degree rise in global temperature."
Dr Richard Betts, Head of Climate Impacts, Met Office Hadley Centre
The frightening vision of the near future depicted in The Age of Stupid is not science fiction.
The world in which the Archivist lives is the clearly visible destination of present - 'business as usual' (BAU) - policies regarding greenhouse gas emissions. Whether we get there in 2055 or 2075, we don't need to do anything different from what we are doing today to arrive in the terrifying future shown in our film.
We worked closely with respected climate expert Mark Lynas to ensure that all of the scenarios shown in Stupid represent a credible view of the future which is drawn from mainstream peer-reviewed climate science.
The following text is Mark's brief explanation of the scientific basis for the central thesis of the film. (You can download the Met Office's full response to the science of Stupid at the bottom of this page, if you want a totally objective view).
The scientific basis of "The Age of Stupid"
10th March 2009
By Mark Lynas
- Author of "High Tide" and "Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet", both published by Harper Collins and translated into more than a dozen languages
- Winner of the 2008 Royal Society Prize for Best Science Book ("Six Degrees")
- Climate change supervisor on the film's production, 2002->2008
_____________________________________________________________________
The opening text card of Spanner Films' new film, The Age of Stupid, makes the claim that the film is based on "mainstream science predictions". This is more than just a rhetorical device to make the film seem realistic: we mean it. This is not The Day After Tomorrow 2, a cinema spectacular featuring climatic events which are so unrealistic that they contravene the laws of physics. All the science in the film is based on peer-reviewed papers, together with the latest predictions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - the world's biggest-ever consortium of scientists.
The bottom line is that the mainstream scientific predictions about what will happen in the next few decades are so frightening that we didn't need to exaggerate for dramatic effect. Just this week (11 March), scientists meeting at a climate change congress in Copenhagen revealed that sea level rise is still accelerating, that a temperature rise of two degrees is now very difficult to avoid, and that the seas are already more acidic than for half a million years due to carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans. How much more warning do we need?
The film is set in 2055, a little less than half a century on from today. Pete Postlethwaite plays a man living alone in a devastated future, looking back at our world of today and asking why we didn't save ourselves when we still had time. His character is not the last survivor, as is often misquoted: groups of individuals are seen in the devastated scenes preceding Pete's introduction and the camera pans past a large, populated refugee camp. Many people are left alive, but there has clearly been a collapse in both the human population and the structures of civilization we know today.
In the world depicted in the film, the inhabitants are suffering the results of all the cumulative emissions that we have already put into the atmosphere (between the start of the industrial revolution in1850 and today, 2009), plus additional emissions which will have been added over the future decades - during which, according to the conceit of the film, humanity continued with its business-as-usual fossil fuel use and did not make dramatic emission reductions. This conceit is, again, not a work of our scriptwriters’ feverish imaginations, but is currently considered the most likely scenario: according to the International Energy Agency's standard forecast, emissions will be 45% higher than today as early as 2030[1]. (In the language of the IPCC SRES scenarios, for the policy wonks and modellers out there, we're talking about somewhere between A1FI and A2[2].)
Over the last decade or so, the rate of emissions increase has nearly tripled. We are currently on, or a little above, (depending on whose figures you use) the IPCC's worst-case emissions scenario - here, today, in the real world[3]. The film is pessimistic in the sense that it examines in imaginary hindsight from the vantage point of 2055 why humanity failed to reduce its emissions - but, more than fifteen years since the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed, we should already be asking this question. From a policy-as-usual perspective, it is a reasonable supposition that we will probably keep on failing. (This is not to suggest fatalism or denial: the film is a clear cautionary tale, and one which is already backed up by a campaigning effort aimed at inspiring its viewers to become climate activists: 'Not Stupid', www.notstupid.org)
So taking this high-emissions future trajectory, what do climate models suggest? We took a temperature estimate of just over 2°C above pre-industrial levels by 2055, well within the standard range of the IPCC models[4]. (Note that today’s temperature is already 0.8°C above the pre-industrial ‘natural’ climate[5].) The picture is complicated because we are talking about transient climate change here, not a steady state: a world experiencing more than two degrees of warming by mid-century may well be on course for four or more degrees by 2100[6].
Given that the temperature change is realistic, how realistic are the impacts portrayed resulting from it? The opening sequence may raise some eyebrows: London is flooded and silent, the Sydney Opera House is shown against a backdrop of raging flames, the Matterhorn in Switzerland is denuded of snow, and Las Vegas is buried in shifting desert sands. Surely these are all exaggerations? Sorry, they're not.
1. London flooded: As is clearly stated in the film by one of our future newsreaders (in the sequence of dates counting up from 2007 to 2055), "London is underwater again as last night's 30 foot storm surge overcame the Thames Barrier...". So we are not suggesting sea level rise of over a metre by mid-century: that would indeed be unrealistic. (The latest science suggests that anything above 2 metres by 2100 is physically implausible given the likely response times of ice sheets to additional climate forcing[7].) London has been hit by a double-whammy of a storm surge, which has overwhelmed its defences, - on top of 40cm or so of additional sea level rise. While most of the capital remains above water, the areas seen - low-lying and close to the Thames (Westminster, the City, Canary Wharf) - are indeed vulnerable.
2. Alps melted. It is certainly realistic to expect even the highest Alpine peaks to be largely denuded of snow and ice by the 2055 date[8].
3. Australia on fire. Sadly, these images are not as shocking as when we made them eight months ago, because of the terrible fires which have recently destroyed thousands of acres and killed over 200 people in south Australia. Similarly, when today’s Australia is already facing severe drought and water shortages - and where forest fires already threaten major cities in bad years - an out-of-control blaze could well be laying waste to Sydney half a century in the future[9].
4. Las Vegas abandoned. Water shortage problems will also realistically affect the arid US west, where the Colorado river (which provides much of Las Vegas's water supply) is already over-stretched, and will lose much of its seasonal flow as rising temperatures reduce snowpack in the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains[10].
5, 6. India overheated, Arctic melted. But what about the Arctic refugee camps? The vultures pecking at bodies outside the Taj Mahal? Will human civilisation really collapse so easily? Who knows. As the banking meltdown is proving, everything seems hunky-dory until it starts to go wrong - and then apparently resilient human social systems can collapse with alarming speed. The ecological impacts underlying the film's end-of-the-world scenario are really just the underlying drivers of social collapse - and how these things will really unfold is always largely unpredictable. It is much easier to predict physical planetary change than the human social response to it - which is why climate models have largely been proven right by history, whilst economic models have almost always been proven wrong.
Suffice to say that the social collapse scenario is realistic enough to be being taken seriously by the military in both America and other countries[11]. One of the reasons why Al Gore and the IPCC were awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was in acknowledgement of the fact that if efforts to reduce climate-changing emissions fail, global warming will be one of the main drivers of human conflict in decades ahead as resources dwindle and competition increases. The Age of Stupid looks at precisely this world - where efforts to reduce emissions have failed, temperatures are soaring, and humans are battling it out for the scraps of civilisation.
We should not take this analysis too far, however. The Age of Stupid is a creative, artistic work, presenting an imaginary future. It is not a filmed version of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report. We expect scientists and everyone else who watches it to have different reactions. Some may love it, and be moved by it; others may hate it and refuse to accept its lessons. All we ask is that you do not dismiss it - and thereby deny your own responsibility to act - on the basis that it is 'alarmist' or unscientific. I'm afraid that is simply not true.
(Those who are interested in a degree-by-degree exposition of climate impacts could refer to my book Six Degrees. Using hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers, the book shows that climate change above two degrees is likely to take the planet past 'tipping points' - such as the burning down of the Amazon rainforest, and the release of billions of tonnes of methane from thawing Arctic permafrost - which could drive the warming process essentially beyond human control[12].)
1. IEA, World Energy Outlook 2008, Executive Summary: http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/docs/weo2008/WEO2008_es_english.pdf
2. Nakicenovic, N. et al, 2000: IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios, Figure SPM-2
3. Raupach, M. et al, 2007: ‘Global and Regional Drivers of Accelerating CO2 Emissions’, PNAS, 104, 24, 10288-10293
4. Compare for example with the recent Institute of Mechanical Engineers report, which used the Hadley Centre models to generate 2C of warming by the 2040s for an A2 IPCC scenario: http://www.imeche.org/NR/rdonlyres/D72D38FF-FECF-480F-BBDB-6720130C1AAF/...
5. See 2008 NASA GISS data for global temperature trends: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/
6. As everyone knows, the textbook IPCC projections produce an upper limit, for the entire ‘envelope’ of emissions scenarios, of 5.8C in the 2001 Third Assessment Report, and 6.4C in the Fourth Assessment Report, issued in 2007.
7. Pfeffer, W. et al, 2008: ‘Kinematic Constraints on Glacier Contributions to 21-st Century Sea-Level Rise’, Science, 321, 1340-1343
8. One 2006 study suggested an 80% loss of glacier cover for a 3C summertime regional Alpine warming (which approximately matches a 2C global average rise). See Zemp, M. et al, 2006: ‘Alpine glaciers to disappear within decades?’, Geophysical Research Letters, 33, L13504
9. Anyone who doubts this need only refer to recent news reports of blazes in South Australia, which killed more than 200 people. Projections of summer temperatures of 4-5C higher than now in South Australia with a high emissions scenario are made in the 2007 Climate Change in Australia report pubished by CSIRO and the Australia Bureau of Meteorology.
10. The Obama Administration’s Energy Secretary Stephen Chu spoke of a “scenario where there’s no more agriculture” in February 2009, adding that “I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities going” either. For scientific backup, see for example: Hayhoe, K. et al, 2004: ‘Emissions pathways, climate change and impacts on California’, PNAS, 101, 34, 12422-12427
11. Campbell, K et al 2007: The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change, Centre for Strategic and International Studies
12. Lynas, M, 2007: Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet, Harper Perennial
Attachment Size
Attachment Size
A climate scientists view of 2055.pdf
94.44 KB
Age of Stupid science document Mark Lynas.pdf
105.65 KB

What Part of Simple Arithmetic Do You not Understand?

What Part of Simple Arithmetic, Destroying This Country and it’s People, Do You not Understand? (buyout firms profited as a company's debt soared)
An uninformed/misinformed public in energy science and economics is incapable of creating the survival parameters for a sustainable and prosperous future. Since the late 40's when advanced energy concepts for the world's fuel base and advanced understanding of human nature became available, how many billions of women and children have died of starvation, malnutrition, disease, lack of education, and poverty? (one clue: methods for obtaining exclusive licensing rights to a country's resources in return for mile long tin ovens without windows where women & children work 12 hour days producing our goods - methods using bribery, corruption, installing dictators, supplying arms .......will the real terrorists stand up?) The horrors a suppressed, broken science will bring are unimaginable: For the greatest living physicist, Stephen Hawking to write (2007) “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion”, (or delusion), regarding the original, infantile interpretation of E=MC2 still believed today, spells umbrellas for the earth, a global warming solution, and corn for Energy Innovation. When the parameters of freedom and survival disappear, so do people and life. ..........repeating from blog "Traveling at Warp Speed" http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-travel-at-warp-speed.html - how could any intelligent species sit for 100 years upon such delusional concepts of: "as an object travels faster and faster, its mass increases (time slows, stops, goes backwards – approaching, at, exceeding VC)," or "As an object approaches the speed of light its mass becomes infinite." The obvious subsequent realization of such a short sighted error swiftly corrects to - the 'increasing mass' of the target is only the measure of the kinetic energy differential which exists between them http://fuel2000.net/ This concept completely overhauls the stubbornly persistent delusions, primitive definitions and stranglehold restrictions of E=MC2, opening the doors to the unified field theory.

October 5, 2009
Buyout Firms Profited as a Company’s Debt Soared
By JULIE CRESWELL

For most of the 133 years since its founding in a small city in Wisconsin, the Simmons Bedding Company enjoyed an illustrious history.
Presidents have slumbered on its mattresses aboard Air Force One. Dignitaries have slept on them in the Lincoln Bedroom. Its advertisements have featured Henry Ford and H. G. Wells. Eleanor Roosevelt extolled the virtues of the Simmons Beautyrest mattress, and the brand was immortalized on Broadway in Cole Porter’s song “Anything Goes.”
Its recent history has been notable, too, but for a different reason.
Simmons says it will soon file for bankruptcy protection, as part of an agreement by its current owners to sell the company — the seventh time it has been sold in a little more than two decades — all after being owned for short periods by a parade of different investment groups, known as private equity firms, which try to buy undervalued companies, mostly with borrowed money.
For many of the company’s investors, the sale will be a disaster. Its bondholders alone stand to lose more than $575 million. The company’s downfall has also devastated employees like Noble Rogers, who worked for 22 years at Simmons, most of that time at a factory outside Atlanta. He is one of 1,000 employees — more than one-quarter of the work force — laid off last year.
But Thomas H. Lee Partners of Boston has not only escaped unscathed, it has made a profit. The investment firm, which bought Simmons in 2003, has pocketed around $77 million in profit, even as the company’s fortunes have declined. THL collected hundreds of millions of dollars from the company in the form of special dividends. It also paid itself millions more in fees, first for buying the company, then for helping run it. Last year, the firm even gave itself a small raise.
Wall Street investment banks also cashed in. They collected millions for helping to arrange the takeovers and for selling the bonds that made those deals possible. All told, the various private equity owners have made around $750 million in profits from Simmons over the years.
How so many people could make so much money on a company that has been driven into bankruptcy is a tale of these financial times and an example of a growing phenomenon in corporate America.
Every step along the way, the buyers put Simmons deeper into debt. The financiers borrowed more and more money to pay ever higher prices for the company, enabling each previous owner to cash out profitably.
But the load weighed down an otherwise healthy company. Today, Simmons owes $1.3 billion, compared with just $164 million in 1991, when it began to become a Wall Street version of “Flip This House.”
In many ways, what private equity firms did at Simmons, and scores of other companies like it, mimicked the subprime mortgage boom. Fueled by easy money, not only from banks but also endowments and pension funds, buyout kings like THL upended the old order on Wall Street. It was, they said, the Golden Age of private equity — nothing less than a new era of capitalism.
These private investors were able to buy companies like Simmons with borrowed money and put down relatively little of their own cash. Then, not long after, they often borrowed even more money, using the company’s assets as collateral — just like home buyers who took out home equity loans on top of their first mortgages. For the financiers, the rewards were enormous.
Twice after buying Simmons, THL borrowed more. It used $375 million of that money to pay itself a dividend, thus recouping all of the cash it put down, and then some.
A result: THL was guaranteed a profit regardless of how Simmons performed. It did not matter that the company was left owing far more than it was worth, just as many people profited from the mortgage business while many homeowners found themselves underwater.
Investors who bought that debt are getting virtually nothing in the new deal.
“From my experience, none of the private equity firms were building a brand for the future,” said Robert Hellyer, Simmons’s former president, who worked for several of the private equity buyers before being asked to leave the company in 2005. “Plus, the mind-set was, since the money was practically free, why not leverage the company to the maximum?”
Just as with the housing market, the good times ended when the economy fell into recession and the credit markets froze. Simmons is now groaning under a huge amount of debt at a time when its sales are slowing. And this time there is no escaping by finding yet another buyer willing to shoulder its entire burden.
Simmons is one of hundreds of companies swept up by private equity firms in the early part of this decade, during the greatest burst of corporate takeovers the world has ever seen. Many of these deals, cut in good times, left little or no margin for error — let alone for the Great Recession.
A disproportionate number of the companies that were acquired during that frenzy are now struggling with the enormous debts. More than half the roughly 220 companies that have defaulted on their debt in some form this year were either owned at one time or are still controlled by private equity firms, according to analysts at Standard & Poor’s. Among them are household names like Harrah’s Entertainment and Six Flags, the theme park operator.
Executives at THL counter that Simmons was the victim of hard economic times, not mismanagement or too much debt. As proof, executives point to Simmons’s 40 percent growth in sales and its 26 percent climb in operating income from 2003 through 2007 as well as its 13 consecutive quarters of market share gains against competitors through March 2009.
Simmons’s woes, said Scott A. Schoen, a co-president of the firm who sat on Simmons’s board, are entirely caused by the “unprecedented and unforeseeable” downturn that has shaken the entire bedding industry.
“We think the work we had done had positioned the company for us to reap the financial rewards that this economic cycle has taken away,” said Mr. Schoen, gazing across a conference table at THL’s headquarters overlooking Boston Harbor.
Still, he acknowledged, “We are clearly disappointed in the outcome of this investment. Make no bones about it.”
Built Over Generations
Like other emerging industrialists of the 19th century, Zalmon G. Simmons, of Kenosha, Wis., had his hand in numerous businesses — the local bank, a telegraph company, a railroad and a cheese-box factory. He was even, for a time, the mayor of Kenosha.
Around 1876, Mr. Simmons came across a new machine that could mass-produce woven wire mattresses. The Simmons bedding company was born.
From its humble beginnings on the banks of Lake Michigan, Simmons grew to become one of the country’s largest manufacturers of mattresses. Along the way, it even sprinkled a little Hollywood pixie dust on the ho-hum mattress business, hiring Dorothy Lamour and Maureen O’Hara to plug its products.
Until the 1970s, Simmons largely prospered. Then the troubles started, and the company was soon buried deep inside two enormous conglomerates, Gulf & Western and the Wickes Corporation, for a number of years.
But in the mid-1980s, Simmons caught the attention of a new type of investor. The businesses that stormed corporate America in recent years under the banner of private equity were not always called private equity firms. In the 1980s, they were known as leveraged buyout shops. Their strategy is essentially unchanged, however: they try to buy undervalued companies, using mostly borrowed money, fix them up and sell them for a fast profit.
Because they pile debt onto the companies they buy, the firms free up their own cash, allowing them to make additional investments and increase their potential profits.
Simmons’s first trip through the revolving door of private equity came in 1986. Like the latest trip, it was not a pleasant one for employees, but the buyers did just fine.
William E. Simon, a private equity pioneer and a Treasury secretary under President Richard M. Nixon, was the man with the golden touch. In 1986, his investment firm, Wesray Capital, and a handful of Simmons’s top managers acquired the company for $120 million, the bulk of which was borrowed. After selling several businesses to pay back some of the money it had borrowed, Wesray cashed out in 1989. It sold Simmons to the company’s employee stock ownership plan for $241 million — twice what it paid just three years earlier.
The deal was a fiasco for the employees. As part of the buyout, Simmons stopped contributing to its pension plan, since the stock ownership plan shares were meant to pay for the employees’ retirements. But then the bottom fell out of the housing market and Simmons, with its large debt, stumbled. Its pensions crumbled as the value of the stock plan shares plunged.
A succession of private equity buyers came and went. Merrill Lynch Capital Partners bought Simmons in 1991 for $32 million for a 60 percent stake in the company and the assumption of its debt. Merrill sold it to Investcorp, an investment group based in Bahrain, for $265 million in 1996. Two years later, Investcorp sold the company to Fenway Partners for $513 million.
During Fenway’s tenure, Simmons released one of the industry’s biggest innovations: the no-flip mattress. Profits soared. But after five years, Fenway executives decided to cash out. By the fall of 2003, Simmons was back on the block.
Teddy Bear at the Gate
A longtime figure in investment circles, Thomas H. Lee vaulted into the big leagues of private equity with what is regarded as one of the legendary deals of all time. After founding Thomas H. Lee Partners in 1974, he grabbed headlines in 1994 when he sold Snapple, the iced tea maker, for $1.7 billion to Quaker Oats. He bought the company two years earlier for around $130 million.
But while other captains of the buyout craze — like Henry Kravis of Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts — chased giant companies in hostile deals, Mr. Lee focused largely on midsize companies and steered clear of deals where he was not welcome. The research firm Hoover’s describes Thomas H. Lee Partners as “the teddy bear at the gate.”
Mr. Lee, scion of the family that founded the Shoe Corporation of America, left his namesake firm in 2006 to start another investment company. During his 30-year tenure at THL, his firm invested in a series of big names: Ghirardelli Chocolate, Petco Animal Supplies and General Nutrition Companies, among others. And by 2003, as the buyout boom began to build, his firm had Simmons in its cross hairs.
The Deal
The fall of 2003 was little more than a blur of meetings and presentations for Robert Hellyer, the former Simmons president who is among the fourth generation of his family involved in the mattress industry. In eight weeks, the company was shown to 20 private equity suitors in the corporate version of speed dating.
The list of potential buyers was quickly whittled to three and finally to THL, whose $1.1 billion bid for the company consisted of $327 million in new equity from the firm and more than $745 million in bonds and bank loans that had to be raised from investors.
“They were good guys; very smart guys,” Mr. Hellyer said. “Their thesis was to buy a good business with good management and let them get better.”
What THL wanted from the deal was a return of two to three times its initial investment.
From the get-go, the lofty price the firm paid for Simmons and the amount of debt raised red flags on Wall Street.
The “higher debt burden will limit the company’s ability to respond to unexpected negative business developments, including economic or competitive threats or internal missteps,” analysts at Moody’s Investors Service warned at the time.
But nobody, it seems, was listening. Six months after acquiring Simmons, THL set in motion plans to take the company public. And by December 2004, THL found a way to get part of its initial investment back. Simmons issued debt that required the company to pay a hefty 10 percent annual interest rate. The proceeds were used to pay THL a dividend of $137 million. With the company’s debt climbing, Simmons executives had to aim high with new products — and pray they were right.
In late 2004, Simmons unveiled the HealthSmart mattress in a blitz of marketing.
It gave away 250 beds to the audience of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” It began a $15 million advertising campaign. It put coupons for free HealthSmart beds in celebrity souvenir bags during New York’s Fashion Week.
A mattress line aimed at combating dust mites, mold and germs, the HealthSmart featured a zip-off top that could be washed or dry cleaned. But in the rush to get the product to market, Simmons did not go through its normal research and testings, Mr. Hellyer says.
HealthSmart was a flop. Consumers did not like the mattress — they thought the zip-on cover was troublesome. Sales at the company slid nearly 8 percent in the first quarter from the previous year.
“Panic ensued. Thomas H. Lee came in and pulled the national advertising right away,” said a former Simmons employee involved with HealthSmart who declined to be named because he is still involved with the mattress industry.
THL shelved its plans to take Simmons public, and the company shook up its sales division. By the third quarter of 2005, Simmons had “one of the best quarters in the company’s entire history up to that point,” a spokesman for THL said in an e-mail message. The numbers tell a slightly different story: Net sales declined 4.8 percent in that quarter from a year earlier, and operating income fell to $25.1 million, from $25.5 million in the third quarter of 2004. Later, spokesmen for THL and Simmons clarified the statement by saying that after excluding a one-time reorganization expense, an adjusted earnings figure for the quarter was the 10th best in the company’s history.
Executives at THL say they moved quickly to put Simmons back on track.
“More than a dozen THL professionals have devoted literally thousands of man-hours to Simmons, including making over 115 visits to company headquarters and site facilities around the country,” the firm said in a statement.
The results, it argued, speak for themselves. In the following years, Simmons’s sales and profits climbed, and the company introduced several new products, including the successful premium-price Beautyrest Black line of mattresses.
By early 2007, at the very top of the credit market bubble, THL took a bit more out of Simmons. It created a holding company that it used to issue $300 million more in debt, which paid an additional $238 million dividend to the private equity firm. With that, THL had recouped its entire $327 million equity investment in Simmons and booked a profit of around $48 million. (It made an additional $28.5 million in various fees over the years.)
THL was hardly alone in undertaking this sort of financial engineering, known as a dividend recapitalization. From 2003 to 2007, 188 companies controlled by private equity firms issued more than $75 billion in debt that was used to pay dividends to the buyout firms.
Asked whether the 2007 dividend was too much for Simmons, Mr. Schoen of THL defended the deal.
“That debt financing, which clearly spelled out to the market the use of the proceeds, was extremely well received. The securities were heavily oversubscribed,” Mr. Schoen said. “Not only did we think it was appropriate, but the market did as well,” he added.
As the economy soured in late 2007, so did Simmons’s sales. The company slashed costs and cut jobs throughout 2008. But last fall, unable to meet the terms of its bank loans and debt dating back to the 2003 acquisition itself, Simmons stopped making interest payments to its bondholders. THL began talking to the banks and bondholders about how to lighten Simmons’s debt load, and put the company up for sale.
The Impact on Employees
From the start, Noble Rogers loved working at Simmons.
“There were picnics, March of Dimes walks, Christmas parties, and we always had Halloween parties. It was a really family-oriented company,” Mr. Rogers, 50, recalled. “I told my wife that this was a great place for me to work. A great place for me to retire, to make a living at.”
For a long time, it was. For 22 years, Mr. Rogers worked at Simmons, the bulk of those years at a factory in Mableton, outside Atlanta. After operating the coiler machine for the company’s Beautyrest mattress, he moved into maintenance and kept all of the plant’s machinery humming.
Over the years, as Simmons passed from one private equity firm to another, and as Mr. Rogers became president of the local union at the plant, he saw little difference on the plant floor. Then, in the spring of 2008, when the slowing economy had begun to hurt sales, Simmons laid off the night shift at the Mableton plant. And on Sept. 18 that year, it gathered employees in the cafeteria to say that the plant was closing.
“So many people were hurt because they thought this was a great company to work for and they planned on spending the rest of their lives here. Their families were here. They bought houses and cars here,” Mr. Rogers recalled. “After this happened, people were really struggling.”
Between the closings and other cuts, Simmons let go of more than a quarter of its work force last year, said its chief financial officer, William S. Creekmuir.
Mr. Rogers, who received his union-negotiated severance package of two months’ pay, said he and other union representatives had tried to get a little more for workers, particularly those who would have been eligible for retirement. Simmons had a long history of giving retiring employees a bonus of $20 for each year worked and a free mattress set, Mr. Rogers said.
“They wouldn’t give us anything,” he said.
In the months after he lost his job, Mr. Rogers nearly lost his home to foreclosure and struggled to pay his family’s bills. Mr. Rogers, who eventually landed a job at an air filter company and picked up part-time work doing maintenance at an apartment complex, said Simmons bore little resemblance to the company he once loved.
“They stopped the picnics. They stopped the Christmas parties. They stopped the retirement parties,” he recalled. “That showed you the type of people I was working for. I just didn’t realize it until the hard times came like they did.”
For now, the Golden Age of private equity is over, the financiers say. In a speech to an industry gathering last spring. Mr. Schoen said that bankers and bondholders were reluctant to lend more money to the buyout kings.
“We’re in a brave new world,” he said. “We can’t go back to where we were, at least not in this investment cycle, and probably not in my career.”
But some private equity investors are searching for profits in the detritus of the buyout bust. Simmons hopes to emerge from bankruptcy in the hands of two new private equity firms. One is Ares Management, which owns the mattress giant Serta. Under the plan, Simmons’s debt would be more than halved, to $450 million, in part reflecting the losses suffered by its existing bondholders.
Simmons and its remaining employees face an uncertain future. Some in the industry predict Ares will eventually merge at least part of Simmons with Serta, jeopardizing more jobs.
“Simmons has been a cash cow. It’s made a lot of people a lot of money,” said David Perry, executive editor of Furniture/Today. “But there’s a growing question in the industry of how many more times can this be repeated. How much more juice can be squeezed out of the orange?”

So Much Food. So Much Hunger

An uninformed/misinformed public in energy science and economics is incapable of creating the survival parameters for a sustainable and prosperous future. Since the late 40's when advanced energy concepts for the world's fuel base and advanced understanding of human nature became available, how many billions of women and children have died of starvation, malnutrition, disease, lack of education, and poverty? (one clue: methods for obtaining exclusive licensing rights to a country's resources in return for mile long tin ovens without windows where women & children work 12 hour days producing our goods - methods using bribery, corruption, installing dictators, supplying arms .......will the real terrorists stand up?) The horrors a suppressed, broken science will bring are unimaginable: For the greatest living physicist, Stephen Hawking to write (2007) “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion”, (or delusion), regarding the original, infantile interpretation of E=MC2 still believed today, spells umbrellas for the earth, a global warming solution, and corn for Energy Innovation. When the parameters of freedom and survival disappear, so do people and life. ..........repeating from blog "Traveling at Warp Speed" http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-travel-at-warp-speed.html - how could any intelligent species sit for 100 years upon such delusional concepts of: "as an object travels faster and faster, its mass increases (time slows, stops, goes backwards – approaching, at, exceeding VC)," or "As an object approaches the speed of light its mass becomes infinite." The obvious subsequent realization of such a short sighted error swiftly corrects to - the 'increasing mass' of the target is only the measure of the kinetic energy differential which exists between them http://fuel2000.net/ This concept completely overhauls the stubbornly persistent delusions, primitive definitions and stranglehold restrictions of E=MC2, opening the doors to the unified field theory.

September 20, 2009 - NYT
So Much Food. So Much Hunger.
By ANDREW MARTIN
This past week the world celebrated the life and achievements of Norman Borlaug, the Iowa-born plant scientist who created high-yielding wheat varieties to stave off famine.
Dr. Borlaug, who died at age 95 on Sept. 12, led the so-called Green Revolution that created bumper crops in once impoverished countries like Mexico, India and Pakistan. In lauding Dr. Borlaug’s achievements, the United Nations’ World Food Program said he had saved more lives than any man in history.
But the eulogies for Dr. Borlaug often neglected an important and perplexing fact. Despite his accomplishments, more people are hungry today than ever and that total should exceed one billion people this year for the first time, according to the United Nations.
How can so many people be hungry when farmers produce enough food, at least in theory, to feed every person on the planet?
The answers are complex and involve everything from American farm politics and African corruption to war, poverty, climate change and drought, which is now the single most common cause of food shortages on the planet.
But David Beckmann, president of the antihunger group Bread for the World, boiled the causes down into one unifying theme — “a lack of give a damn.”
“It’s mainly neglect,” he said. “Political neglect.”
The yield gains of the last half-century, both in the developed and developing world, led to grain surpluses and low prices, creating a sense of complacency about agriculture and hunger.
“There was an attitude following the Green Revolution that the problem was solved,” said Gary H. Toenniessen of the Rockefeller Foundation.
So much grain was being produced so cheaply that Western leaders encouraged poor nations to buy grain on the world market rather than grow it themselves. Surplus was shipped to poor countries as food aid. But that aid system has often been ineffective in alleviating hunger in a timely way and in addressing broader agriculture problems facing impoverished countries. Support for agricultural research in developing countries was also cut back for other priorities. The result? While the food supply grew faster than the world’s population from 1970 to 1990, as the Green Revolution’s gains took hold, the situation has now reversed itself. Productivity gains in agriculture have slowed, and since 1990, the growth rate of food production has fallen below population growth.
The consequences have been particularly dire in sub-Saharan Africa, where the gains of the Green Revolution have been difficult to replicate. Among other problems, irrigation — which was key to the Green Revolution — is relatively scarce in Africa.
Few paid attention to these problems until last year, when a confluence of events caused food prices to spike to record levels. Riots erupted in many nations, and even American consumers felt pinched as prices soared.
Prices have come down in the United States, but the situation in Africa remains dismal due to an exploding population and now, a severe drought that threatens millions. The World Food Program says it is critically short of funds.
At a July summit meeting, President Obama and other leaders of industrialized nations pledged $20 billion for agricultural development in poor countries.
Activists say that some of the tools for success are within reach provided the financing and political will persist: those tools include seeds fine-tuned to local conditions, fertilizer and better roads and other infrastructure improvements.
The more difficult problems may lie within our borders. Farm programs are among the most entrenched entitlements in Washington. But crop subsidies and America’s habit of shipping grain to the poor tends to undermine robust markets in developing countries.
Dr. Borlaug, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, understood well the limitations of the Green Revolution’s success. After receiving the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, he noted that the “battle to ensure food security for hundreds of millions of miserably poor people is far from won.”
“World peace will not be built on empty stomachs or human misery,” he said. “It is within America’s technical and financial power to help end this human tragedy and injustice, if we set our hearts and minds to the task.”

A Year After a Cataclysm, Little Change on Wall St.

What happened to our money (bailout)? An uninformed/misinformed public in energy science and economics is incapable of creating the survival parameters for a sustainable and prosperous future. The horrors a suppressed, broken science will bring are unimaginable: For the greatest living physicist, Stephen Hawking to write (2007) “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion”, (or delusion), regarding the original, infantile interpretation of E=MC2 still believed today, spells umbrellas for the earth, a global warming solution, and corn for Energy Innovation. When the parameters of freedom and survival disappear, so do people and life. ..........repeating from blog "Traveling at Warp Speed" http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-travel-at-warp-speed.html - how could any intelligent species sit for 100 years upon such delusional concepts of: "as an object travels faster and faster, its mass increases (time slows, stops, goes backwards – approaching, at, exceeding VC)," or "As an object approaches the speed of light its mass becomes infinite." The obvious subsequent realization of such a short sighted error swiftly corrects to - the 'increasing mass' of the target is only the measure of the kinetic energy differential which exists between them http://fuel2000.net/ This concept completely overhauls the stubbornly persistent delusions, primitive definitions and stranglehold restrictions of E=MC2, opening the doors to the unified field theory.

NYT September 12, 2009
A Year After a Cataclysm, Little Change on Wall St.
By ALEX BERENSON

Wall Street lives on.
One year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the surprise is not how much has changed in the financial industry, but how little.
Backstopped by huge federal guarantees, the biggest banks have restructured only around the edges. Employment in the industry has fallen just 8 percent since last September. Only a handful of big hedge funds have closed. Pay is already returning to precrash levels, topped by the 30,000 employees of Goldman Sachs, who are on track to earn an average of $700,000 this year. Nor are major pay cuts likely, according to a report last week from J.P. Morgan Securities. Executives at most big banks have kept their jobs. Financial stocks have soared since their winter lows.
The Obama administration has proposed regulatory changes, but even their backers say they face a difficult road in Congress. For now, banks still sell and trade unregulated derivatives, despite their role in last fall’s chaos. Radical changes like pay caps or restrictions on bank size face overwhelming resistance. Even minor changes, like requiring banks to disclose more about the derivatives they own, are far from certain.
Coming on the same weekend as the 11th-hour bailout of the giant insurer American International Group, and the sale of Merrill Lynch, Lehman’s failure was the climax of a cataclysmic weekend in the financial industry. In the days that followed, nearly everyone seemed to agree that Wall Street was due for fundamental change. Its “heads I win, tails I’m bailed out” model could not continue. Its eight-figure paydays would end.
In fact, though, regulators and lawmakers have spent most of the last year trying to save the financial industry, rather than transform it. In the short run, their efforts have succeeded. Citigroup and other wounded banks have avoided bankruptcy, and the economy has sidestepped a depression. But the same investors and economists who predicted, and in some cases profited from, the collapse last fall say the rescue has come at an extraordinary cost. They warn that if the industry’s systemic risks are not addressed, they could cause an even bigger crisis — in years, not decades. Next time, they say, the credit of the United States government may be at risk.
Simon Johnson, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, said that the seeds of another collapse had already sprouted. If major banks are allowed to keep making bets that are ultimately backed by taxpayer guarantees, they will return to the practices that led them to underwrite trillions of dollars in bad loans, Professor Johnson said.
“They will run up big risks, they will fail again, they will hit us for a big check,” he predicted.
The doomsday view is far from universal.
Wall Street executives say the Lehman bankruptcy opened their eyes to the fragility of their institutions. They note that they have pulled back on risk and reduced leverage, creating a bigger cushion against losses. And they say that regulators were right to support the financial industry over the last year, rather than imposing new rules or allowing weak banks to collapse.
“There is less leverage in the entire financial system,” said David A. Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer. At Goldman, $1 in capital now supports about $14 in loans and investments, compared with $24 a year ago.
But even some senior Wall Street executives acknowledge the lack of change surprises them, given how poorly the industry performed last fall and the degree of government support necessary to keep it from collapsing.
“There was a general feeling that an enormous amount of additional regulation should be put in place to prevent what happened that weekend from happening again,” said Byron Wien, vice chairman of Blackstone Advisory Services and the former chief investment strategist for Morgan Stanley and Pequot Capital. “So far, we haven’t seen a lot of action.”
Robert J. Shiller, the Yale University economics professor who predicted the dot-com crash and the housing bust, said the window for change may be closing. “People will accept change at a time of crisis, but we haven’t managed to do much, and maybe complacency is coming back,” Professor Shiller said. “We seem to be losing momentum.”
Kenneth C. Griffin, founder and chief executive of the Citadel Investment Group, a Chicago-based hedge fund that manages $13 billion, said that regulators and lawmakers needed to impose rules so failing banks could be shut, rather than allowed to operate indefinitely with taxpayer support.
“We’ve taken a lot of steps for the worse, and not for the better, in terms of the structural underpinnings of our capital markets,” Mr. Griffin said. “We have to change the rules and correct the fundamental flaws in the financial system.”
To be sure, Wall Street is not exactly as it was before the cataclysm of last year.
Then, a dozen or so big banks formed the top tier. Now Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are clearly the strongest, with Morgan Stanley struggling to compete. Bank of America and Citigroup are the weakest big banks, heavily reliant on government guarantees to survive.
“We have more separation between the healthiest and the least healthy of the big banks,” said Darrell Duffie, a finance professor at Stanford University.
Banks have collectively raised hundreds of billions in new capital to help cushion losses on bad loans and are taking a more prudent approach to lending and underwriting. The worst excesses of 2006 and 2007, when banks lent hundreds of billions of dollars against all kinds of real estate at terms that even at the time seemed absurd, have ended.
But those changes are not unexpected. Banks typically raise lending standards during recessions. And even if they wanted to keep up underwriting, they would not find much of a market. Many pension and hedge funds have suffered huge losses on mortgage-backed bonds and are hardly rushing to buy more.
Critics of the industry argue that the pullback in risk will be only temporary without deep regulatory changes. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a statistician, trader, and author, has argued for years that financial firms chronically underestimate their risks and must be managed much more cautiously. Universa Investments, a $5 billion fund in which he is a principal, made more than 100 percent profit last year betting on the possibility of a collapse.
Mr. Taleb warns that the system has grown riskier since last fall. The extensive government support that began after Lehman collapsed will lead investors to assume that governments will always prevent major banks from collapsing, he said.
So investors will lend money to the financial industry on easy terms. In turn, financial institutions will use that cheap money to make risky loans and trades. The banks will keep the profits when their bets pay off, while taxpayers will swallow the losses when the bets go bad and threaten the system.
Economists call the phenomenon moral hazard. Bankers have a different term: I.B.G. The phrase implies that by the time a deal goes sour, “I’ll be gone,” after having received a sizable bonus.
Despite the predictions last year about pay cuts, those bonuses appear secure. Kian Abouhossein, an analyst at J.P. Morgan in London, predicted this week that eight major American and European banks would pay the 141,000 employees in their investment banking units $77 billion in 2011 — about $543,000 per worker, not far from the 2007 peak — even after minor regulatory changes are adopted.
Because the rewards are so rich, the banks will not change unless regulators and lawmakers force them, Mr. Taleb said.
“I don’t know anyone on Wall Street who goes to work every day thinking of anything but how to increase their bonus,” he said.
To prevent a replay of last year’s crisis, investors in financial institutions, especially bondholders, must believe that they will lose money if banks fail, said Sheila C. Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. “You need to send that very strong, clear signal to restore market discipline,” Ms. Bair said.
But legislation that would allow regulators to close giant institutions in an orderly fashion has been stalled for months. So too have efforts to create a systemic regulator that would focus on the broader risk that might occur from the ripple effects caused by the failure of one major bank.
Another proposed change would require banks to list and trade derivatives through a central clearinghouse, just as stocks and options are traded through exchanges, but it has yet to go anywhere.
The term derivatives encompasses a variety of financial products, including contracts whose value changes as interest rates move and insurance that pays off if a bond defaults. Derivatives drove the boom before 2008 by encouraging banks to make loans without adequate reserves. They also worsened the panic last fall because they inherently tie institutions together. Investors worried that the collapse of one bank would lead to big losses at others.
Requiring that derivatives be traded openly sounds like a relatively small change, but it could have important effects.
Exchange trading would open pricing for derivatives, so banks could not hide money-losing positions. Banks would have to put up money as positions moved against them, since the exchanges would seize and sell derivatives that were not backed by adequate margin. That move would help avoid the situation A.I.G. faced last year, after it wrote hundreds of billions of dollars of credit insurance and had no money to make good on its promises when the bonds defaulted. But critics say that even the proposed changes would not go far enough, because they would exempt some complex derivatives from exchange trading or clearing. Moreover, some banks oppose opening derivatives trading, because it would cut their profits by making pricing more visible and as a consequence competitive. For now, legislation to force derivatives trading onto exchanges has stalled, and banks are still writing contracts with limited regulatory oversight.
“The off-exchange derivatives market is still the Wild West,” Ms. Bair said.

Our Gifts to Our Children and Future Generations

Our Gifts to Our Children and Future Generations

Without a corporate bill of rights and science freedom:

1. Bill of Rights – (not government control) for Corporations and the Economic System (note, we the people have to live by a common sense bill of rights)
2. Science Freedom, specifically the energy sector.

See "Revisiting the Nature of Power" http://www.relaxspa.net/Revisiting_Power.htm

Which Possess the potential, the promise, of a future foretold a half century ago for today: Appleby's world, "a world where he never had to pay a power bill, where heating and cooling were free of energy costs, where his water was pure and veggies local and fresh, and where a four hour work day allowed him ample spare time to indulge in his writing fantasies. Outside, the air was fresh and the streets clean. Everyone had a job, and in this world-the real world-there were no clandestine powers holding back progress. All received a fair share for their efforts" An Impossible World? Excerpt from The Energy Solution Revolution by Brian O'Leary http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2009/04/impossible-world.html

Our Gifts to Our Children and Future Generations become:

Progressive Transportation










Full Retirement available at 105 years “may you enjoy your remaining hours of life, and enjoy all the things you have wanted to do after a century plus of ever more productive, cost/benefit-cutting, cubicle/labor slavery that maximized profits for our 2% golden greedy guts masters"

The horrors a suppressed, broken science will bring are unimaginable: For the greatest living physicist, Stephen Hawking to write (2007) “A Stubbornly Persistent Illusion”, (or delusion), regarding the original, infantile interpretation of E=MC2 still believed today, spells umbrellas for the earth, a global warming solution, and corn for Energy Innovation. When the parameters of freedom and survival disappear, so do people and life. ..........repeating from blog "Traveling at Warp Speed" http://freedomtimes.blogspot.com/2009/05/how-to-travel-at-warp-speed.html - how could any intelligent species sit for 100 years upon such delusional concepts of: "as an object travels faster and faster, its mass increases (time slows, stops, goes backwards – approaching, at, exceeding VC)," or "As an object approaches the speed of light its mass becomes infinite." The obvious subsequent realization of such a short sighted error swiftly corrects to - the 'increasing mass' of the target is only the measure of the kinetic energy differential which exists between them

With the “trickle down” economic principle almost dried up, and the “waterfall up” principle at 98%, never in human history, have totalitarian feudal systems been so large and powerful as in “too big to fail” corporations, what NYTimes called 2% greedy guts, owning 98% of the world’s wealth, with total direction of scientific funding, no bill of rights, and only one goal: MAXIMIZE PROFITS


Through continued M&A (mergers & acquisitions), all competition is being destroyed. From milk cartels, to oil cartels, to agribusiness, to pharmaceuticals – all which are economic necessities for Life. With competition gone, price gouging (economic strangulation) to the hilt has become an ongoing standard operating procedure.

In my discussions with countless people, who still claim “capitalism” is the best, I ask “WHERE THE HELL DO YOU SEE ANYTHING RESEMBLING CAPITALISM OR DEMOCRACY OR SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING in the major players causing worldwide economic damage? The only goal these (Ralph Nader’s Term) Frankenstein CORPORATE monsters have is maximization of profits at all costs, including human. 'Capitalist Pig and Proud' seems oblivious to how many Americans are destroyed, lose their homes, their retirement savings, lose their jobs, go hungry, - or those working, continually having to increase productivity in spite of downsizing, while sacrificing benefits, insurance, and salary, as their bridges fall down and local governments run out of money even with DOUBLE TAXATION (selling services for which we continue to pay taxes, to private firms who charge hundreds of times more for the same services). THIS USED TO BE CALLED SURFDOM IN A FEUDAL SYSTEM, NOT FAR FROM ABJECT SLAVERY.

Updates from the News (this is not about surface trivia, twiddledee winks and clothing styles of republicans or democrats all in bed with the same Masters, all pre-selected, chosen by big money, whence the public subsequently plays the extreme hyped-up and staged kindergarten "I choose" game, called Freedumbland Voting by our media controlled masters)



Sept 6, 2009 How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? By PAUL KRUGMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06Economic-t.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print
I. MISTAKING BEAUTY FOR TRUTH It’s hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves over the success of their field. Those successes — or so they believed — were both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession. On the theoretical side, they thought that they had resolved their internal disputes. Thus, in a 2008 paper titled “The State of Macro” (that is, macroeconomics, the study of big-picture issues like recessions), Olivier Blanchard of M.I.T., now the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, declared that “the state of macro is good.” The battles of yesteryear, he said, were over, and there had been a “broad convergence of vision.” And in the real world, economists believed they had things under control: the “central problem of depression-prevention has been solved,” declared Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago in his 2003 presidential address to the American Economic Association. In 2004, Ben Bernanke, a former Princeton professor who is now the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, celebrated the Great Moderation in economic performance over the previous two decades, which he attributed in part to improved economic policy making.
Last year, everything came apart.
Few economists saw our current crisis coming, but this predictive failure was the least of the field’s problems. More important was the profession’s blindness to the very possibility of catastrophic failures in a market economy.

Sept. 2, 2009 Productivity up 6.6%, Highest in 6 Years. Businesses Produce More with Fewer Workers
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/02/business/main5281537.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody AP) Worker productivity, the single biggest factor determining living standards, grew at the fastest pace in nearly six years in the spring while labor costs fell by the most in nine years, as companies slashed costs to survive the recession. But economists worry that such aggressive cuts will make it harder to mount a sustainable recovery. That's because the lack of wage growth and shortage of jobs will depress household incomes and make the prospects for a sustained rebound in consumer spending less likely. Consumer spending is critical to the recovery since it accounts for about 70 percent of total economic activity.

Sept 2,, 2009 Pfizer to Pay $2.3 Billion, Agrees to Criminal Plea By REUTERS NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/09/02/business/business-us-pfizer-settlement.html?scp=1&sq=Pfizer%20to%20Pay%20%242.3%20Billion,%20Agrees%20to%20Criminal%20Plea%20&st=cse Pfizer Inc agreed on Wednesday to plead guilty to a U.S. criminal charge relating to promotion of its now-withdrawn Bextra pain medicine and will pay a record $2.3 billion to settle allegations it improperly marketed 13 medicines.
The world's biggest drugmaker was slapped with the huge fines by the U.S. government after being deemed a repeat offender in pitching drugs to patients and doctors for unapproved uses. Pfizer pleaded guilty in 2004 to an earlier criminal charge of improper sales tactics and its practices have been under U.S. supervision since then.

August 20, 2009 Independent Farmers Feel Squeezed By Milk Cartel "We all worship at the altar of the free market — that's what we're taught as good Americans," Goodman said on the air. "But I don't know what is free about a handful of companies destroying competition, controlling the process from beginning to end." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112002639&ft=1&f=1006 Behind that pure, wholesome, nourishing glass of milk, there's an insurgency - by John Burnett "That's why we have reached, in my opinion, the point we have reached, where farm prices are so abysmal," Hardin says. "And we know the money is in the marketplace — we see what the consumer's paying for these dairy products. If the farmer would get a fair share of that, we wouldn't be having this discussion." Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose home state of Vermont has lost 32 dairy farms so far this year, has gone on the offensive. "Dean Foods controls about 90 percent of the milk supply in Michigan, 80 percent in Massachusetts, over 80 percent in Tennessee and 70 percent in northern New Jersey. That's not a free market." Sanders says.


Aug. 20, 2009—Oil Speculator: 'Capitalist Pig and Proud' Are Oil Traders to Blame for Your High Price at the Gas Pump? http://abcnews.go.com/Business/blaming-oil-speculators-high-gas-prices/story?id=8366397 By SCOTT MAYEROWITZ
John Wesley McPherson, Jr. is an oil speculator. While most Americans were suffering last summer from an economic double whammy -- $4-a-gallon gas and a plunging stock market -- McPherson was profiting. And in the fall when oil prices plunged, McPherson cashed in again. Betting on oil is a very risky business. But get it right, like McPherson did, and there's a gusher of money to be made. In 2008, McPherson and the other principals of Sequoia Financial Advisory Services turned a 32.4 percent profit, according to International. Members of Congress and the trade group representing the major U.S. airlines have blamed speculators for run-ups in the price of crude.

April 15, 2009 The big business/big government axis of evil
By Chuck Baldwin http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/baldwin/090415
Self-proclaimed "conservatives" love to tout themselves as ardent supporters of the "free enterprise" system. In the name of "capitalism," they support any and every piece of legislation or governmental decision that caters to business — especially Big Business. Favorite policies of these folks include anything and everything that calls itself "free trade." Furthermore, these same "conservatives" will support just about anything and everything that is said to advance the so-called "global economy."
Needless to say, in the name of "free trade" millions of American jobs and thousands of American manufacturing plants have been outsourced to foreign countries and interests. And leading the charge for "free trade," outsourcing, and the "global economy" is the international cabal known as Big Business. But Big Business does not play this game alone. Joining Big Business is its pernicious partner, Big Government.
Together, Big Business and Big Government form a tyrannical tandem that is squeezing the breath out of our once-great republic. In fact, people need to understand that what is passing for "capitalism" in America today is nothing more than "Corporatism."

Aug. 28, 2009 Banks 'Too Big to Fail' Grow Even Bigger
Washington Post: Behemoths Born of the Bailout Reduce Consumer Choice, Tempt Corporate Moral Hazard The pursuit of profit was put ahead of the regard for safety, soundness and human life.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/28/politics/washingtonpost/main5271210.shtml (Washingtonpost.com) This story was written by Washington Post Staff Writer David Cho.

The new 21st Century Golden Rule for Advanced Civilizations: maximize profits, delete scientific facts and understanding Sept 7, 2009 U.S. Share of Worldwide Arms Market Grows http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/world/07weapons.html?_r=1&hp
By THOM SHANKER WASHINGTON — Despite a recession that knocked down global arms sales last year, the United States expanded its role as the world’s leading weapons supplier, increasing its share to more than two-thirds of all foreign armaments deals, according to a new Congressional study.
The annual report was produced by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, a division of the Library of Congress. Regarded as the most detailed collection of unclassified global arms sales data available to the general public, it was delivered to the House and Senate on Friday in time for their return from the Labor Day recess.

August 11, 2009 FINDINGS The Earth Is Warming? Adjust the Thermostat
By JOHN TIERNEY Originally called geoengineering, this approach used to be dismissed as science fiction fantasies: cooling the planet with sun-blocking particles or shades; tinkering with clouds to make them more reflective http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/science/11tier.html?scp=1&sq=The%20Earth%20Is%20Warming?%20Adjust%20the%20Thermostat%20&st=cse

Aug 4th, 2009 (IANS) US firms look beyond India, China as offshoring surges
China News.Net - US companies are increasingly turning to offshoring their functions to achieve cost savings with small companies looking for new talent clusters beyond India, China and Eastern Europe, according to a new survey. The number of US companies with a corporate offshoring strategy in place more than doubled from 2005 to 2008, according to the fifth annual report on offshoring trends, published by Duke University in collaboration with the Conference Board, a nonprofit business research organization Monday. http://www.chinanews.net/story/527045

July 20, 2009— $23.7 Trillion to Fix Financial System? In New Report, Neil Barofsky Says It's Possible Government Could Spend $23.7 Trillion to Fix Financial System http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Politics/story?id=8127005&page=1 By MATTHEW JAFFE Sitting down? "The total potential federal government support could reach up to $23.7 trillion," says Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in a new report obtained Monday by ABC News on the government's efforts to fix the financial system.
Yes, $23.7 trillion. "The potential financial commitment the American taxpayers could be responsible for is of a size and scope that isn't even imaginable," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. "If you spent a million dollars a day going back to the birth of Christ, that wouldn't even come close to just $1 trillion -- $23.7 trillion is a staggering figure."

July 19, 2009 Why Are Banks Raising Fees? As Citigroup and Bank of America Post Huge Profits, Why Are Bank Fees Going up? By Anthony Mason http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/business/19dimon.html?_r=1&hpw

July 19, 2009 In Washington, One Bank Chief Still Holds Sway By JACKIE CALMES and LOUISE STORY http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/business/19dimon.html?scp=1&sq=In%20Washington,%20One%20Bank%20Chief%20Still%20Holds%20Sway%20&st=cse