I found this story interesting mostly because I remembered the cover of the Economist so clearly. It must of been one of their better covers.
Remember Him?
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Monthly Archives: July 2008
Take New York City if you must, but please don't hurt our computers
“Several potential adversaries have the capability to attack the United States with a high-altitude nuclear weapon-generated electromagnetic pulse, and others appear to be pursuing efforts to obtain that capability,” said Graham. “A determined adversary can achieve an EMP attack capability without having a high level of sophistication. For example, an adversary would not have to have long-range ballistic missiles to conduct an EMP attack against the United States. Such an attack could be launched from a freighter off the U.S. coast using a short- or medium-range missile to loft a nuclear warhead to high altitude. Terrorists sponsored by a rogue state could attempt to execute such an attack without revealing the identity of the perpetrators. Iran, the world’s leading sponsor of international terrorism, has practiced launching a mobile ballistic missile from a vessel in the Caspian Sea. Iran has also tested high-altitude explosions of the Shahab-III, a test mode consistent with EMP attack, and described the tests as successful. Iranian military writings explicitly discuss a nuclear EMP attack that would gravely harm the United States. While the commission does not know the intention of Iran in conducting these activities, we are disturbed by the capability that emerges when we connect the dots.”
The Few, the Rich, the Doomed
It is hard to take this article too seriously–the conclusions seem too sweeping and too simple–but it is worth the amusement of this sentence alone:
“A safer environment leads to smaller families with larger offspring, but places species at greater risk of extinction, according to research.”
If that doesn’t make you smirk, you probably have never met the barbarian horde of the Ethereal Land.
For all the artist who read this paper…
h/t Sippican Cottage
Second Biggest Bank Failure in US history
Okay, so that the tittle of this post does not take into account inflation. Still, Indy Mac was not as small as most banks that have failed recently.
From Sacramento Real Estate Statistics (a blog)….
Indymac Bank officially failed a few minutes ago. The FDIC has taken it over, and will begin liquidating assets on Monday. The failure will cost the FDIC trust fund between $4 and $8 Billion. Sadly, it looks like many depositors will lose a lot of money as well.
I don’t believe that the FDIC will only lose between $4 and $8 billion on this deal. More like 10 to 16 billion. For one thing, I think they are going to keep Indymac a float for to long in hopes of finding a buyer.
Naked Capitalism has a good overview of how this will affect FDIC.
More details from Credit Bubble Stocks.
Are you ready for the fallout?
New nuclear plants are being built in…..
And that is just the most prominent ones.
Many of these are being built in countries that are famous for their sloppy building processes and corrupt building inspectors. For that matter, with so many being built at once I wonder how even the the rich countries going to find competent builders for all of them. Not just anyone can build a nuclear plant. It is also going to be trick to find competent people to run all of them. If I was terrorist or had inclinations that way I would be brushing up my resume right now.
And last I knew, people still had not agreed on a place to store the resulting waste. Did something change while I was not looking?
FYI
Drug safety officials are calling for an urgent safety warning for Cipro and similar antibiotics.
The Food and Drug Administration is ordering the “black box” wording due to evidence the drugs may lead to tendon ruptures. They say the ruptures could result in serious injury that can leave patients incapacitated and in need of extensive surgery.
I don't understand
I don’t understand why Freddie and Fanny’s stock prices are crashing today. I don’t understand why former Fed president Richard Poole is now calling Freddie and Fanny insolvent. I don’t understand why the Wall Street Journal is now reporting on how the government is coming up with contingency plans for what to do if Freddie and Fanny fail.
Why now of all times? What has changed? (H/T Naked Capitalism here and here) (H/T Calculated Risk)(H/T Felix Salmon)
Edit: Here is a YouTube clip to news anchors reacting the drop of Freddie’s stock in real time. It is funny hearing them stammer.
The Next Bail Out
Fannie Mae holds or guarantees over $5 trillion in mortgages. A mere 1% decline would wipe them out. Is that adequately capitalized? I do not think so and neither does Minyanville’s Kevin Depew.
Nations without futures
Demography Matters on Germany….
Germany lost about 97,000 inhabitants in 2007.
And Japan…
The Japanese government reported at the end of May that the number of children (all individuals under the age of 15 years old) had fallen to approximately 17,400,000. According to Japanese government estimates, if this trend continues, Japan is on course to lose somewhere between 26% and 31% of its total population.
From Russell Shorto essay in the New York Times….
I put this to Carl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau, who monitors global fertility on a daily basis from his perch in Washington. Is it possible that these are basically “good problems,” that Europeans, having trimmed their birthrates, are actually on the right path? That all they have to do is adjust their economies, find creative ways to shrink their cities, get more young and old people into jobs, so that they can keep their pension and health-care systems functioning?
Haub wasn’t buying it. “Maybe tinkering with the retirement age and making other economic adjustments is good,” he said. “But you can’t go on forever with a total fertility rate of 1.2. If you compare the size of the 0-to-4 and 29-to-34 age groups in Spain and Italy right now, you see the younger is almost half the size of the older. You can’t keep going with a completely upside-down age distribution, with the pyramid standing on its point. You can’t have a country where everybody lives in a nursing home.”