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alstry (35.51)

$500 bbl Oil? When the money runs out...is war the only choice???

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February 15, 2010 – Comments (1)

 You can only fool the Fools for so long before even they realize the world is broke....after all, how long can credit be the primary driver of world economies before the world figures out it is one big game of extend and pretend.....

Wall St. Helped to Mask Debt Fueling Europe’s Crisis

It appears the world is now subprime.....

COLLAPSE OF THE EURO IS 'INEVITABLE'...

Struggling towns printing their own cash

In an echo of the Great Depression, local currencies with their own special flavors are popping up all over in attempts to give commerce and communities a lift.

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Banking/BetterBanking/struggling-towns-printing-their-own-cash.aspx

Utah Considering Cutting the 12th Grade 

Kansas City and Detroit closing half the Public Schools

With practically every city, county and state broke or near broke.....choices are getting more and more limited about what to do next?

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday Iran is sliding into a military dictatorship, a new assessment suggesting a rockier road ahead for U.S.-led efforts to stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

As the first high-level Obama administration official to make such an accusation, Clinton was reflecting an ever-dimming outlook for persuading Iran to negotiate limits on its nuclear program, which it has insisted is intended only for peaceful purposes. The U.S. and others — including the two Gulf countries Clinton visited Sunday and Monday — believe Iran is headed for a nuclear bomb capability.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100215/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_clinton_mideast

If war broke out with Iran....the consquences would be massive including an extreme rise in oil prices and spill over of the conflict throughout the region.

To the casual observer, people on the streets of Beirut show no fear of war. But talk to many Lebanese today, and you'll soon find war is very much on their minds.

All the people ABC News spoke to say conflict with Israel is looming. It's just a matter of when.

Neither side wants to be guilty of starting the next war, but people in Lebanon say tension is now so high the smallest incident may provide the trigger.

And the next round of hostilities, they warn, will be much broader and more terrible than the last war when Hezbollah battled the Israeli army in 2006.

There are old scores to settle. Hezbollah wants to avenge the assassination of its military mastermind Imad Mugniyeh. Last Friday marked the second anniversary of his mysterious car bombing death in Damascus. Hezbollah also claims Israel still occupies a sliver of Lebanese territory in the south. It is ideologically opposed to Israel's very existence.

The Israelis fear Hezbollah's growing arsenal of long range rockets. They fear for their biggest cities and strategic targets. They see Hezbollah and Syria as Iran's proxies, liable to attack from the north if Israel strikes Iran's nuclear sites. Hezbollah fought the once feared Israeli Defense Force to a standstill in 2006. The Jewish state's reputation and deterrence was severely dented. The Israelis have unfinished business.

Hezbollah today has somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 missiles, many more than in 2006, and many capable of hitting targets deep inside Israel. The U.N. patrols the south near the Israeli border so Hezbollah has moved north and into the Bekaa valley. Almost the entire local male population of fighting age has been through military training. Hezbollah leaders talk of military "surprises." No one we spoke to knows what they might be.

Many people speak of Hezbollah changing tactics, even of infiltrating northern Israel. There's talk of plans to take hundreds of Israeli civilians hostage.

Harsh Israeli Response Expected

Everyone ABC News spoke to expects a brutal Israeli response if war breaks out. Hezbollah is part of the Lebanese government. So, Israel says, all of Lebanon will be responsible for a Hezbollah attack. To reassert military deterrence Israel must achieve a tangible victory.

And they believe there is substance to Syria's tough talk too. On the road between Damascus and Beirut, residents tell of unusual military activity, all night construction work, army flat bed trucks moving around with their lights switched off.

Defense analysts rtheport the retraining of the Syrian army. Out of armored brigades burdened with Soviet era tanks, and into small commando units armed with hi-tech anti tank rockets used to such deadly effect by Hezbollah fighters in 2006.

Syrian President Bashar Assadis also showing new confidence. Once thought unlikely to stay the course, he has now seen three different Israeli prime ministers. Some say he believes he can survive a war and it may even speed the recovery of his beloved Golan Heights, occupied by his enemy since 1967.

Israeli, Syrian and Lebanese leaders have all pitched in with some dangerously intemperate language. Hezbollah's leader Hasan Nasrallah keeps promising to change the face of the region. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem spoke of his country striking deep into Israeli territory. His Israeli counterpart Avigdor Liebermanpromised that Syria would lose the next war and that the ruling Assad regime would be deposed.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/lebanon-israel-headed-war/story?id=9817103

Let's look on the bright side, any massive Middle East war would accelerate the transformation from the Industrial Age to the Digital Age.......now this could truly be characterized as Global Warming.

1 Comments – Post Your Own

#1) On February 15, 2010 at 9:46 PM, alstry (35.51) wrote:

The only issue now is which happens first, war or America as we know it shuts down as the digital age transforms everything we do?

Region's shuttered stores tell a thousand stories.

An empty shell occupies 9,500 addresses across the Sacramento region – one closed business for every six still open, according to a Bee analysis of U.S. Postal Service data. That's more dormant businesses than in 17 entire states, including Utah, Arkansas and New Mexico.

You can see it on Madison Avenue in Fair Oaks, where Mike Castagnola is liquidating his party supply store, counting down the final days on a business with a 30-year run.

And it's vivid along Main Street in Woodland, where Jill Caunedo happily ran a bagel and coffee shop – until about two weeks ago. "Thirty percent of all the businesses (on Main Street) are vacant," Caunedo said, adding that she is left to sell her former cafe's equipment for a quarter on the dollar.

As of September, the number of dormant addresses in Sacramento, Yolo, Placer and El Dorado counties had jumped more than 50 percent during the recession, according to the postal service data, which logs formerly occupied commercial addresses – office and retail – where mail has not been picked up for more than 90 days.

Vacancies breed vacancies. James Dalton sees it every day at his South Lake Tahoe Antique and Thrift Company. Nearby shuttered stores depress business for those like him who are left behind. About 100 people once came into Dalton's shop daily; now, he might see a dozen.

Empty stores and offices will plague Sacramento for years, said Jeffrey Michael, director of the Business Forecasting Center at the University of the Pacific. "The region is not going to spend its way out of the recession," Michael said. "We're anticipating very slow growth."

In fact, he said, the commercial real estate market in Sacramento isn't even as healthy as the housing market, which has been ailing for years.

Caunedo, the former cafe owner, tries to remain upbeat, but she also sees little reason for optimism. This recession, she said, changed people, made them realize they could do without things like professionally prepared lox slices and mocha lattes.

 

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