Monitoring America | washingtonpost.com

A very thorough report discussing the ridiculous number of federal, state, and local agencies who are on the watch for eeeviiil. Even a nice breakdown by state.

Monitoring America | washingtonpost.com


via

China's Horns of a Dilemma... and You

I almost don’t even twitch any more when these stories come across. Forget that there were warnings by intelligent people, forget that the economists who tout the “efficiency” of offshoring and globalization are so obviously wearing their knee pads for their corp-exec overlords (i.e., conflict of interest), forget that economics isn’t even a science – and certainly isn’t a field of thought with the credentials to guide a society, simple common sense could have told us that this would happen. I think that a level of incompetence of this magnitude, when demonstrated by people in a position of leadership, which puts the nation in jeopardy as this has, is fully deserving of a public hanging – seriously. If you are going to go in to public service, you better make DEMN! sure that you are prepared to think long term and to be willing to pay for your mistakes. In America today, there are no consequence to screwing the pooch like this. People just move on to some other scheme or keep making the same mistakes.

Sigh… I almost let myself get angry again.

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China's Horns of a Dilemma... and You

By Ian Cooper | Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

Editor's Note: Just hours after penning this report, word that China screwed us crossed my desk. The Chinese are halting the very earth supply shipments we so desperately need...

According to The New York Times, the Middle Kingdom “quietly stopped shipments of so-called rare earths” to the U.S. and Europe — thanks to a U.S. investigation into whether China was violating the World Trade Organization rules by subsiding clean energy exports and limiting clean energy imports.

And there’s no word on how long the ban could last. China may even consider further reductions of up to 30% in 2011 rare earth quotas (after cutting them by 72% in July). While it’s bad news for the States and products that depend on rare earths… it couldn’t come at a better time for our Greenland rare earth trade, which remains a buy.

But this isn't the only move by China this week... They tried pulling a fast one with Bloomberg, too.

More on that — and my Greenland play — below.

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China keeps tightening that noose... and we keep buying the bull.

The Middle Kingdom's Ministry of Commerce wants us to believe that its seemingly endless supply of rare earth elements (REEs) could be exhausted in the next 15 to 20 years.

As the ministry told Bloomberg, "We cannot rule out that China may need to rely on imports sometime in the future for these minerals, instead of supplying the world.”

Chao Ning, section chief of foreign trade at the ministry, rattled off some numbers to show the world how much his country's rare earth deposits have dwindled in a little more than a decade: "Domestic rare earths deposits dropped to 27 million metric tons by the end of 2009, or just 30 percent of the world’s total known reserves, from 43 million tons, or 43 percent of the world total, in 1996..."

And people are actually buying this stuff!?

Come on... It's nothing more than an excuse for China to restrict rare earth exports even more!

And it means our reliance on the country's near-monopoly grows riskier by the day.

According to Mining News, "Lanthanum [one of the 17 rare earth metals] is a vital catalyst in oil refineries. Oil refineries produce jet fuel, and China almost has a monopoly on their rare earth metal. This means China can close down the whole U.S. Air Force and Navy within months.”

For crying out loud, that Bloomberg article looked like China's PR attempt to cover its ass — with Chao as the spokesman:

“China cannot afford to continue to carry the burden of supplying the world, from a strategic, environment and economic point of view.”

“China is not the only country that has these deposits, but it has been carrying the lion’s share of the supply in more than a decade, at the cost of quickly depleting its own resources and hurting its environment.”

Give us a break.

Sure, the depletion argument holds water. But given the country's unreliability with statistics, I'm not buying this 10-to-15-year argument...

If depletion rates were really as high as China says they are, they'd raise prices.

It seems China is telling us to either accept its rare earth monopoly, or take on the expenses of mining and producing these elements ourselves.

We made our bed

As economist Paul Krugman said in a New York Times op-ed piece:

Policy makers simply stood by as the U.S. rare earth industry shut down. In at least one case, in 2003 — a time when, if you believed the Bush administration, considerations of national security governed every aspect of U.S. policy — the Chinese literally packed up all the equipment in a U.S. production facility and shipped it to China.

For years, we've been moving backwards — allowing China to become to rare earth elements what the Middle East is to oil.

The United States used to be home to one of the top miners of rare earth...

Now, due to regulations, the future of our military intelligence, technology, economy, and everyday lifestyle could be compromised if we do not secure a rare earth resource or stock pile.

The government can talk about starting up domestic mining programs again, but that means nothing right now... It could take up to 15 years just to rebuild the supply chain.

We don't have that kind of time.

Even Krugman will tell you the U.S. was dumb enough to put itself in a position of dependence on China.

But we don't have time to play the blame game...

We need supply — and fast, as the U.S. and China's rare earth trade wars become more contentious by the day.

You can bet that the rare earth market will garner even more attention as we move forward, and you'd be dumb to stand in the way of any stock involved.

Greenland's wealth is its vast store of rare earth elements...

Without REEs, some of our most important modern technologies could never exist.

Metals such as cerium, promethium, europium, and many of the remaining 17 other REEs are essential to all modern electronic devices that use electric motors, photo optics, solar cells, magnets, and rechargeable batteries.

They've become the most sought-after metals in the world — searched for and hoarded by governments and massive corporations alike. China knows this. That's why they're throwing their weight around and exercising power plays.

Bottom line: We must have a steady supply chain of rare earth — from outside of China — or we're screwed.

[[[goes on to promote some stock]]]

The foreclosure debacle

While the ethics and moral standards of the nation as a whole aren’t what they used to be, the ethics and moral standards of this nation’s business leaders are totally corrupt. They neither deserve, nor have earned, the freedom from supervision that they claim they need – Reagan and Greenspan were both massively overoptimistic.

slg

http://finance. yahoo.com/ news/Robosigners -Mortgage- apf-382327091. html

Now I understand the destructiveness of Globalism

"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains. "

Thomas Jefferson


As Iron Man said (in the second movie) - "dead for over 200 years and still taking me to school".

I had never read this quote from Thomas Jefferson, but verily it doth indeed explain how globalism has turned into the destructive force that it has. Economists are of course the cheerleaders for globalism (i.e. "The Global Economy") because as with any profession, the more complex the landscape the more job security one has - but that's a side note. My main point is that I was confused about how our glorious captains of industry could literally sell both us and their Grandmothers down the river for a crooked Chinese penny, and this quote from one of our Founding Fathers explains it perfectly. It is inherent in the breed - "merchants" (economists and corporatists) have no motivation to sacrifice any portion of profit for motivations such as patriotism, nationalism, gratitude, etc. They ascribe to a philosophy of financial Darwinism which states that no other consideration need be taken into account when pursuing a profit, and that the pursuit of said profit is the only blessing that any action needs.

I assume that this is how defense lawyers console themselves when they successfully defend child rapists and mass murders - "if the system allowed me to prove innocence then the system takes responsibility - I have no burden of duty or guilt as long as I am operating within the system". Of course this is the same mind set that the guards at the Nazi death camps used to avoid personal responsibility.

So in essence, I am (unfairly?) expecting each and every business person to apply this litmus test to all of their actions: in addition to contributing to short term profit, will this action - if replicated by all other businesses - harm society in the long term. One quick and easy test application of this test would apply to the off shoring of American jobs. If every American company were to offshore all jobs which could possibly be relocated, in the pursuit of any profit advantage no matter how small, will this adversely impact the general American business environment and society at large. The obvious answer is "YES" - for how can there be consumers to buy your products if there are no employers who are willing to pay them.

The fundamental problem here is that we have allowed unfettered capitalism to become our social planning mechanism. I will restate a comparison to the point of boring redundancy; but capitalism is like fire - it can be a powerful tool for good if properly controlled and directed, but to say that fire is good and therefor should be released is the same kind of insanity which propelled us to completely unfetter the markets to pursue their whims without oversight. We are doomed unless we get our corporations back under control and stop using THEIR profits as the final arbitrator in decisions which impact society; and unfortunately the balance of power is on their side now, so we have to fight as under-dogs in this battle.

And if we lose this battle, then any and every evil vision of the future that you've ever seen in books or movies will come to pass. Probably the best example I can think of would be "Rollerball", James Caan.

Steven in Dallas

If ever there was evidence for the risk of relying on globalism, for exposure of the ignorant rantings of naïve ivory-tower economists who chant “let tasks be performed by the country that can do them the cheapest…it’s more e-ffi-cient ”, as well as for the vindication of strategic protectionism, this is it.

slg

> Backlash over China curb on metal exports

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> China's draconian export curbs on rare earth minerals needed by the rest of the world for frontier technologies is escalating into a serious diplomatic and trade clash with the United States and other leading powers.
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> http://www.telegrap h.co.uk/finance/ newsbysector/ industry/ mining/7970872/ Backlash- over-China- curb-on-metal- exports.html
>

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