Daily Digest - July 8

Check this out.  It's a short article.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/49493

Thanks for posting dps. 

My family and I will commorate Peak Oil Day this Saturday by spending the energy inside our bodies doing outside chores.  We will replenish our energy with a diet of raw foods grown within 10 miles of our home and drink clean tap water.  We will read, have conversation, play board games, shoot hoops in the backyard until it is too dark to see and use as little electricity as possible.  Our cars will stay parked.   Who knows? We might enjoy spending the day this way so much that we choose to do it more than just once.

I cicked on the link All you really need to know about CNBC & there is nothing there LOL...pretty funny Davos

One guy I do like on CNBC is Art Cashin. At least he is not a bought & paid for MSM cheerleader IMO LOL.

Every now & then even a blind squirrel can find an acorn.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/31799792

Peter Schiff 7-7-09

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30qMDVd8z0E

Amazing comparisson of facts vs fiction. And friends still ask me if I trust the blogoshpere. Oooooookay.

698,000 jobs lost in June. We are looking at 3,000,000 NOT counting January.

I highly advocate reading this white paper. If you are pressed for time squelch the noise by starting at page 7.

The video mentioned within is here

Joe Saluzzi (Video, 3:40 Fictitious Trading, Program Trades, 8:20 the M-word, H/T David C)

Take care

 3. Monsanto loses again: GE alfalfa banned nationwide

A federal court has upheld a ban on the planting of Monsanto's genetically engineered (GE) alfalfa in the United States. The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed its previous ruling that the alfalfa, which is engineered to tolerate the herbicide Roundup, could contaminate conventional and organic alfalfa and thus cause "irreversible harm" to the farmers whose livelihoods depend on these crops and to the environment. In the original lawsuit, the Center for Food Safety, other nonprofit organizations, and two alfalfa seed producers sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for approving GE alfalfa without preparing an environmental impact statement (EIS) as required by federal law. After the district court issued its original ruling in 2008 to ban the alfalfa, Monsanto and another biotechnology company appealed the ban, but their appeal was denied in this final ruling. The ban will remain in place until the USDA completes the EIS. Read more from Reuters, or read the decision (pdf).

http://www.foodincmovie.com/

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/calls-grow-to-supplant-dollar-as-global-currency/article1207242/

Calls grow to supplant dollar as global currency

Karim Bardeesy

Jul. 07, 2009

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde challenged the dollar's supremacy “in a world that has changed because of the crisis and the growing role of emerging countries.”

<MORE>

By Margaret Chadbourn

July 7 (Bloomberg) -- Late payments on home-equity loans rose to a record in the first quarter as 18 straight months of job losses and a slumping economy left more borrowers unable to pay their debts, the American Bankers Association reported.

Delinquencies on home-equity loans climbed to 3.52 percent of all accounts from 3.03 percent in the fourth quarter, and late payments on home-equity lines of credit climbed to a record 1.89 percent, the group reported today. An index of eight types of loans rose for a fourth straight quarter, to 3.23 percent from 3.22 percent in October through December, the group said.

“The number one driver of delinquencies is job losses, which we’ve seen build and build,” James Chessen, the group’s chief economist, said in a telephone interview. “Delinquencies won’t come down without a dramatic improvement in the economy and businesses will have to start hiring again.”

The U.S. economy lost an average 691,000 jobs a month in the quarter, and more than 6.5 million positions have been shed since the recession began in December 2007. The economy this year will shrink the most since 1946, according to a Bloomberg survey of 61 economists last month. President Barack Obama predicted last month unemployment will reach 10 percent this year. The rate was at a 26-year high of 9.5 percent in June.

Delinquent bank-card accounts jumped to a record 6.60 percent of outstanding card debt in the first quarter from 5.52 percent in the previous period, a signal unemployed borrowers are relying on cards as falling prices erode the equity in their homes. More borrowers are using cards to meet daily expenses after losing their jobs, the ABA said.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – California suffered a new setback in its financial crisis on Monday when Fitch Ratings cut its rating on the state's general obligation debt to just two notches above junk status.

Fitch cut its rating on California's long-term bonds to "BBB," two notches above speculative grade, citing the state's budget and cash crisis. The state last week started issuing "IOU" promissory notes to pay for some bills in order to conserve cash.

The credit rating agency also kept the debt of the most populous U.S. state on watch for additional downgrades. California ranks as the lowest-rated state general obligation credit by Fitch, followed by Louisiana, at "A+."

Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, said the other two main credit rating agencies, Standard & Poor's and Moody's Investors Service, could soon follow Fitch's example. "I'm sure their patience is not deep," he said.

Lower ratings threaten to raise California's borrowing costs during a severe cash crunch in Sacramento, the state capital, one of Fitch's top concerns.

"The folks who are going to end up paying the price are not investors, not the governor, not the legislature, but the taxpayers," Dresslar said.

Sleeping out: More families losing homes

By Jennifer Macey for AM

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/...

The number of Australian families sleeping in cars, on couches or in motels jumped significantly in the latest Census data, but homelessness charities have warned that the figures are already out of date.

The Counting the Homeless report is published today by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

It shows a 17 per cent increase in the number of homeless families between 2001 and 2006.

But charities in western Sydney say those numbers are already out of date because of the effects of the global financial crisis.

Housing Minister Tanya Plibersek says anecdotal evidence indicates homelessness is still a growing problem.

"Certainly from what the charities are telling us, demand has increased," she said.

"We are not able to know exactly how much that demand has increased because we don't have this detailed census data available to us."

Nightime temperatures in Sydney's western suburbs are expected to drop to four degrees Celsius but Steve and Doris don't know where they and their three toddlers will be sleeping.

"Tomorrow we don't know where we're going to be. And you look at your kids and then they ask you where are we going? Where we going mum? Where we going to dad?" said Doris.

For the past week, the state's housing department has put the family up in a caravan park in western Sydney.

Steve says they have been homeless for about 10 months.

"Our house was sold from us, we were renting the house, and we moved in with family, and we couldn't stay with them, so we moved out and stayed in cars and so forth," he said.

"We were in cars sometimes three nights in a row, sometimes we were in there for longer. But there's times where, you know, through generosity of friends and so forth, they'd let us stay at their place for one night or two."

Doris says she tried to get into refuges but couldn't find anywhere that would take the whole family.

"They turned around and said to us, 'We can take you in, only you and your children, but we won't take your husband'. That was really devastating," she said.

Every day for the past few months Doris and Steve have been applying for rental properties in Sydney's western suburbs but with no luck.

Although Steve recently lost his job, he says their rental history is excellent.

"Over the last three to four months we've put in well over 60 to 80 applications, and each application comes back the same response, which is declined, and most of the times they'll just tell us that it's due to landlord picking someone else instead of us," he said.

Getting worse

The latest analysis of the 2006 Census shows a sharp rise in the number of older single people and families who are homeless.

Associate Professor David Mackenzie from Swinburne University is a co-author of the Counting the Homeless report.

He says there's been a 17 per cent increase in homeless families between 2001 and 2006.

"There's been an increase in family homelessness, and what we need in place is an intervention that will keep families in their accommodation before they become homeless," he said.

"And of course a family is not just one person; it's an adult and several children, so the effect on numbers of homeless people will be quite dramatic over a number of years."

But charities say the problem is already much worse.

Nepean Campaign Against Homelessness convenor Stephanie Brennan says there's been a huge surge in demand for services, with the global financial crisis particularly affecting families.

"We have a high degree of families that own homes who are losing their jobs or who are living very close to mortgage stress or mortgage crisis situations, who are actually losing their homes," she said.

"They have no support and they end up homeless in a matter of weeks. There's a failure in the private rental market.

"There's a failure in the housing market and these families are often in cars, in tents, couch surfing, or in other inappropriate accommodation; caravan parks etc."

Steve and Doris find out today whether they can extend their stay at the caravan park.

Steve says he never thought his family would end up in this situation.

"No we're not living under a box, no we're not without clothing or shoes or whatever, but does that make us any less homeless?" he said.

"This could happen to anybody else in Australia at any stage and people don't realise that."

This Aussie is always entertaining.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AxvZR91vUo