From AFP….

According to the local state agriculture organisation, the drought had inflicted losses of more than two billion dollars by July.

“The problem is that in autumn there will be no water for next year,” said Mansour Rashidi, a provincial ministry of agriculture expert.

“The underground water table will not be replenished. We will be hit with the lowest amount of water ever because we have used up all the reserves.”

Tehran has allocated nearly five billion dollars to fight the drought nationally. Even arch-foe the United States, often referred to in Iran as the Great Satan, is helping out.

To cover demand, Iran needs to import five million tonnes of wheat to make up for this year’s drought-induced shortfall.

According to a recent US Department of Agriculture report, Tehran has bought 1.18 million tonnes of American hard wheat, commonly used in breads and pasta, since the 2008-2009 crop season began in June.

From the San Francisco Chronicle

Pension spiking (e.g., retroactive increases in pension benefits or pre-retirement promotions that qualify workers for bigger pension benefits), has been a major trend in California since our dot-com boom. It has saddled state and local governments with serious fiscal problems ever since (e.g., Orange County has a $2.7 billion pension deficit, and a 2005 review of California’s biggest government agencies found pension, health care and workers’ comp commitments more than $100 billion under-funded), even leading to bankruptcy by the city of Vallejo.

100 billion dollar short fall in one state. That is not pocket change.

From the Daily Express….

Britain is “quite simply running out of power” and blackouts are almost inevitable within the next few years.

This is the stark warning from the head of an energy think-tank who believes power cuts could be serious enough to spark civil disorder.

You might be thinking “Sure you can find a head of a think-tank who will say just about anything. But there is little more to this then hot air. From latter on in the same article….

Only last Thursday, National Grid issued an urgent call for power after a series of power station breakdowns. Suppliers were asked to bring all their available generating capacity online, including costly oil-fired stations.

In May, hundreds of thousands of people in Cleveland, Cheshire, Lincolnshire and London suffered blackouts when seven power stations were closed.

The electricity industry estimates it needs to spend £100billion on new stations to ensure supplies.

The “retirement” of a string of nuclear and coal-fired power stations will see 37 per cent of the UK’s generation disappear by 2015, partly because of EU environmental directives.

That last part is the real kicker. But it also might not happen.

I suspect that the UK government may just ignore EU directives when it comes time to take 37 percent of their power off line. Still, they are having problems without EU intervention and I suspect those problems will just get worse.

Infrastructures costs is one of those hidden bombs in modern society. We built it in the past for far cheaper then we can build it today, even accounting for inflation. And when we pay for it to be rebuilt we will also have to be dealing with all the cost associated with an aging demographic.