…and blow at the same time
my tummy turns french fries into poop
Perhaps someone here can help me understand something…
Why does Japan have one of the highest suicide rates in the world?
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/12/detergent.suicide/index.html
Anyone on here can shed any light on this phenomenon?
They are also the least sexually satisfied country, and spend most time working. I think that covers the suicide bit pretty well 
i can remember but it was either china of japan that had the lowest income numbers …i think it was china i read in the newspaper there kinda on the mist or a “recession”
China’s not really on the verge of any sort of recession right now…
their economic environment has been stimulated by a number of factors, rise in foreign investments in the country, the rise in demand of technological advances, investments into primary infrastructure, and of course the olympic games.
the only thing I can see that may happen is an economic collapse due to straining/limited supply of natural resources needed to supply the rising demands. With the prices of crude oil going up, China is lining up to be the number 1 customer. So if the price of crude oil sky rockets…China can potentially be in a very bad situation…were the economic activity just grinds to a halt.
But from what I understand China is allocating extensive research into alternative fuels… but will it be available? Who knows…we’ll see
I for one, see a potential for an Electric (Nuclear) and Hydrogen as a commodity economy.
Nuclear energy (as well as Wind/Solar/Geothermal) will create carbon “free” energy that can be converted into Hydrogen which will power our vehicles (including trains, plans and automobiles).
The byproduct of buring Hydrogen is H2O… =D
Edit: The byproduct of using Hydrogen is H2O… =D
Read this:
Learn:
http://www.energybulletin.net/12125.html
article was written several years ago, post 9/11 though. You may not realise it but much of the predictions have come true.
this article is 100% necessary reading for everyone on earth.
very good article bing
Although, the only observation that I can point out is that America is not the first country to try this taxation method…
England had an imperial taxation system in place as well…(more like plundering though) through colonialism…but like the article implied, it is prone to collapsing in on itself.
The new war is fought through economics…not through physical war…those nowadays seem to be just mere formalities and the flexing of military might. The real war is through tight control of another target countries money supply, whether it’s tied through a bullion, natural resource or whatever commodity.
Not sure if I agree with bullion coming back as a standard of currency…but it’s certainly something worthwhile to look at it.
its important to note in relation to that article that the Iranian oil bourse was in fact sabotaged electronically and was therefore not able to operate on teh intended date.
In fact, i think it may still be inoperable or only slightly operable more than 2 years after its intended launch.
however, to circumvent the bourse the iranians have simply accepted other currencies in exchange for oil. More importantly, Japan as a nation began buying oil from Iran in Yen and Euro back in the summer of 2007 and China’s largest state run oil purchasing group switched away from the US dollar in the fall of 2008…
if you recall, the period in between there and shortly thereafter was when the US dollar lost 15% of it’s value.
It’s interesting…I’ve been trying to fing articles on the Iranian oil bourse…
it actually jogged something out of my memory. It was suppose to launch something the beginning of this year no? Some time around Feb or so? But the underwater cables that deliver internet service to Iran, Sri Lanka was cut. I believe it was underwater cables…anybody recall reading this?
interesting theory about sabotage Bing…
Anybody know when the expected launch date for the Iranian oil bourse?
Rise in oil prices again
This has been in the back of my head for awhile…
with the cost of oil never seemingly to stop…at what point do you think it’s going to start affecting the tuning industry? At what price does it become too expensive to run this hobby of ours that we love so much?
Just curious? I’m sure there’s a lot of people out there starting to feel the bite.
My guess is never. Even if we completely switch over to hybrids or something, we’ll still figure out a way to make them suck less using aftermarket parts.
Cars can be run on half on water
fuck underwater cables… jesus christ…
Iran has hundreds of billions of dollars and ENORMOUS strategic allies in China, India, Russia etc… there is an unofficial agreement between those nations.
You think these guys really couldnt get some software to work because it was too complicated or because of underwater ethernet cables? i also heard hot air balloons were in the area on the night of the scheduled launch… maybe it was the hot air balloons…!#$^#@!
i also have a, oh iono… 65 page article with some more incredible shit in it on the same topic… except i havent even finished a third of it.
The article doesnt transpose into and out of Word very well…
this is just a small excerpt.
"Saddam sealed his fate when he decided to switch to the euro in late 2000 (and later converted his $10 billion reserve fund at the U.N. to euros) – at that point, another manufactured Gulf War become inevitable under Bush II. Only the most extreme circumstances could possibly stop that now and I strongly doubt anything can – short of Saddam getting replaced with a pliant regime.
“Big Picture Perspective: Everything else aside from the reserve currency and the Saudi/Iran oil issues (i.e. domestic political issues and international criticism) is peripheral and of marginal consequence to this administration. Further, the dollar-euro threat is powerful enough that they will rather risk much of the economic backlash in the short-term to stave off the long-term dollar crash of an OPEC transaction standard change from dollars to euros. All of this fits into the broader Great Game that encompasses Russia, India, China.”
This information about Iraq’s oil currency is not discussed by the U.S. media or the Bush administration as the truth could potentially curtail both investor and consumer confidence, reduce consumer borrowing/spending, create political pressure to form a new energy policy that slowly weans us off Middle-Eastern oil, and of course stop our march towards a war with Iraq.
This quasi state secret' is addressed in a Radio Free Europe article that discussed Saddam's switch for his oil sales from dollars to the euros, to be effective November 6, 2000: </b> <b>"Baghdad's switch from the dollar to the euro for oil trading is intended to rebuke Washington's hard-line on sanctions and encourage Europeans to challenge it. But the political message will cost Iraq millions in lost revenue. RFE/RL correspondent Charles Recknagel looks at what Baghdad will gain and lose, and the impact of the decision to go with the European currency." [[4](http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RRiraqWar.html#fn4#fn4)]</b> <b></b> <b>At the time of the switch many analysts were surprised that Saddam was willing to give up approximately $270 million in oil revenue for what appeared to be a political statement. However, contrary to one of the main points of this November 2000 article, the steady depreciation of the dollar versus the euro since late 2001 means that Iraq has profited handsomely from the switch in their reserve and transaction currencies. Indeed, The Observer surprisingly divulged these facts in a recent article entitled:Iraq nets handsome profit by dumping dollar for euro,’ (February 16, 2003).
"A bizarre political statement by Saddam Hussein has earned Iraq a windfall of hundreds of millions of euros. In October 2000 Iraq insisted upon dumping the US Dollar – the currency of the enemy' -- for the more multilateral euro." [[5](http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RRiraqWar.html#fn5#fn5)] </b> <b></b> <b>Although Iraq's oil currency switch appears to be completely censored by the U.S. media conglomerates, this UK article illustrates that the euro has gained almost 25% against the dollar since late 2001, which also applies to the $10 billion in Iraq's U.N.oil for food’ reserve fund that was previously held in dollars has also gained that same percent value since the switch. It was reported in 2003 that Iraq’s UN reserve fund had swelled from $10 billion dollars to 26 billion euros. According to a former government analyst, the following scenario would occur if OPEC made an unlikely, but sudden (collective) switch to euros, as opposed to a gradual transition.
"Otherwise, the effect of an OPEC switch to the euro would be that oil-consuming nations would have to flush dollars out of their (central bank) reserve funds and replace these with euros. The dollar would crash anywhere from 20-40% in value and the consequences would be those one could expect from any currency collapse and massive inflation (think Argentina currency crisis, for example). You’d have foreign funds stream out of the U.S. stock markets and dollar denominated assets, there’d surely be a run on the banks much like the 1930s, the current account deficit would become unserviceable, the budget deficit would go into default, and so on. Your basic 3rd world economic crisis scenario.
—
gawd this stuff is sooo awesome.
check the timeline of events… foreign nations decided they didnt need the bourse, they would just buy oil in Euro’s anyways… the US dollar fell those 20% or so during the heaviest switches… japan, china etc.
our media is positioning and conditioning us to approve of a war in iran. it doesnt matter who the president is. It will happen. Though it will likely happen covertly.
If the US nuked Iran and didnt report on it… would we even find out? i certainly would not have known about 9/11 if it wasnt on the news.
I think there are enough privately owned media sources still today that you would find out pretty quickly about 9/11 regardless of whether the major networks covered it or not ;]
then why didnt anyone know about Saddam and the real reasons for war?
^ It was covered…it’s just that the media is such a dominant force that it overshadows any other non-traditional media coverage. Not to mention it discredits the smaller guys.
In any case, I was thinking and doing some research on this whole Iranian oil bourse issue and how it was brought upon by the issue of tying the American dollar to crude oil in the futures market. Now…when I started looking at the futures market and the CFTC (Commodities Futures Trading Commission) there has been countless influxes of money to a variety of commodities…bullion, minerals, oil, mortgages and real estate and more recently (more aggressively)in the last couple of years, food.
Although futures on food has been around for awhile, it was primarily used to hedge against volatility risks. When the CFTC deregulated the industry to allow more flexibility in the futures market there were huge inflows of cash to invest into these new complex derivatives.
The point I’m trying to make is… do you really believe the media when they point a finger at some external factor? Is it really true what the media is telling you? That it’s the ethanol production…or rise of expenditures that’s really the cause of these price increases in oil and food, or are they just conveniently just side stepping the issue that in the end.
As I do more and more research, it all comes down to the mighty dollar. The insatiable necessity to increase profitability and minimize risk. Somehow, some where along the lines we commoditized everything. Even the things that we need to live on. Take a look at the list of things that the future market has touched upon. At one point there was a lot of cash that backed these commodities because they were believed to be soft commodities…not easily influenced by market factors. But is that really true? We’ve just experienced a huge increase in oil, we all know what happened with the housing market in the states…and now food. You connect the dots.
Got the idea through an article I read today…here’s an excerpt:
for the full article check out http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080530.wcover0531/BNStory/Business/home
…
Even today, North American farmers view speculators as gamblers, exchanging pieces of paper in hopes that prices will move the way they want them to, but never getting their hands dirty with the physical product.
Yet, despite this uneasy symbiosis, most would agree that speculation performs a vital role in the markets: if farmers or food producers want to hedge against their risk by selling a futures contract — say, to deliver wheat a year from now at $8 a bushel — they need speculators who are willing to buy the contract in a bet that prices will rise by the delivery date.
The question, going back to the infancy of the markets, was one of balance: how much speculation was necessary to allow the markets to function smoothly?
After the First World War, when wheat prices plunged, the farming industry blamed the speculators, accusing them of using short-selling tactics to drive down the market. Widespread instances of market manipulation, meanwhile, incited Congress to introduce bills attempting to eliminate futures trading altogether.
Although they were narrowly defeated, problems in the market highlighted the need for improved regulation, leading first to the Grain Futures Act of 1922, and then to the Commodities Exchange Act of 1936. The latter expanded the scope of regulation to cover other commodities, including cotton, and for the first time imposed limits on speculators to prevent manipulation or distortion of the market.
In other words, non-commercial traders in the futures market could only buy a certain amount of wheat, corn, and other products covered under the act.
The measures were put in place to protect farmers, who have a couple of ways to manage their risk: they can participate directly in the futures market, or they can enter into a forward contract with a grain elevator, who promises to buy their crop at a certain price. (Canadian farmers sell most of their wheat through the wheat board, but they use a similar system for selling other crops, including canola). Directly trading in futures isn’t all that popular for farmers, owing both to the complexity of the futures market and the capital required to manage a trading position.
Most farmers, like Mr. Giessel in Kansas, choose to enter forward contracts with grain elevators. Last September, for instance, he struck an agreement with a local co-op to sell a third of his 2008 wheat crop at $5.30 a bushel: a price that looked good at the time, and that looked horrible in the spring, when wheat moved close to $13. The grain elevator, once armed with this agreement, immediately sells futures in the market at roughly the same price to minimize its risk.
But here’s the rub: every time the futures price rises, the elevator must post an equivalent amount of money in the form of margin — a kind of goodwill bond in case the farmer has a problem delivering the physical crop.
That’s fine if the price of wheat nudges up a few nickels. But when an elevator sells a futures contract at $6 a bushel, and that price doubles, it must then post an additional $6 worth of margin on every bushel. That means going to the bank for a very big loan, which is easier said than done in today’s credit environment.
“A year ago, we’re sitting here with a $7-million line of credit,” said Kim Barnes, a hulking man who works as an assistant manager with the Pawnee County Co-op. “Now it’s over $19.5-million. And our interest costs have gone from $7-million last year to $14-million this year. Last year, because we were in uncharted waters, the banks allowed you to come back to the well. But we’ve all been told this year that you’ve got to live within your means.”
Translation? Most elevators will only accept futures contracts for this year, and won’t offer contracts to farmers looking to lock-in prices for their 2009 or 2010 crop, depriving them of a common risk management tool. Some elevators are only offering contracts 60 days out, while a few unlucky ones have fallen into insolvency, unable to meet margin calls as prices accelerated to record levels.
As if this unpredictability weren’t bad enough, key input costs like fertilizer, fuel, and herbicide have soared, affecting farmers on both sides of the border. These inputs are a bit like taxes: once they go up, they stay up, regardless of whether commodity prices fall again, as they have already done in the wheat market. That can take a big bite out of profit if the commodities don’t remain at their current high levels.
For farmers, this sudden unpredictability is proof that commodities markets are no longer doing what they were supposed to do. “The commodity market was designed to provide a forward pricing tool to protect ourselves,” said Ian Wishart, a farmer in western Manitoba, “not to provide an opportunity for someone else to make profits.”
looks like it’s beginning to happen
not a lot of media coverage on it surpisingly…i had to thoroughly search for this article…