From Bloomberg….

More senior citizens are picking pockets and shoplifting in Japan to cope with cuts in government welfare spending and rising health-care costs in a fast-ageing society.

Criminal offences by people 65 or older doubled to 48,605 in the five years to 2008, the most since police began compiling national statistics in 1978, a Ministry of Justice report said.

I had to read that twice to make sure that elderly crime had doubled since 2003, not 1978. It would have been no surprises had it doubled since 1978 since absolute number of elderly people has probably doubled since then. But it seems as if Japan is truly seeing a crime wave of sorts from its elderly citizens. From later on in the same article….

“Some elderly, particularly men who lost their wives, even turn to crimes to be put in jail so they can be fed three times a day,” Yamada said.

The whole article is pretty depressing.

Meanwhile, On a different island nation they are dealing with a different problem. From the Telegraph….

Girls as young as 13 will be pressed to have contraceptive jabs under Government plans to “urgently” bring down teenage pregnancy rates.

Ministers have ordered council and health chief executives to increase the uptake of “long-acting” contraception in teen pregnancy “hot spots”.

The government also wants more school-based clinics to administer the jabs, which can make girls infertile for up to three months.

Teenagers can receive the injections or implants without their parents’ knowledge.

Critics warn that the controversial move will promote promiscuity and that injections and implants will not protect against the rampant spread of sexually transmitted disease. Some health experts also say that the drugs are unsuitable for girls who are still growing.

Its a wonderful world.

From the AP….

Four insurance companies on Friday asked the government to allow them to buy thrifts so they can qualify to receive federal money under the financial rescue program.

Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., Genworth Financial Inc., Lincoln National Corp. and Aegon NV, a Dutch company that owns U.S. insurer Transamerica, each asked the Office of Thrift Supervision for permission to acquire an existing savings and loan.

Calculated Risk has more on Hartford’s request.

This should not be allowed. If we are going to bail out insurance companies, let us bail out insurance companies. But let us not encourage insurance companies to buy small savings and loan operations just so that they can get billions of dollars from the Federal government.

Marginal Revolution alerts us to the fact that China’s generated 4% less electrical power in October then they did a year before. If this statistic is accurate, China is in a devastating free fall.

One should note that many of the comments on this post are garbage. For example, the idea that this change can be accounted for by the Olympics does not pass the smell test. In the first place, this was a year over year comparison. In other words it was comparing October of this year with October of last year. A lot of people talking about the effects of the Olympics are talking as if it is a drop off from the previous month. Furthermore, the idea that the Olympics can dramatically effect the energy consumption of a billion+ people is absurd. If anything, the Olympics should have cause a rebound in October as many the restrictions put into place for the Olympics were lifted.

The efficiency arguments are also a stretch. If China can grow GDP and shrink electrical usage at the same time it would be one for the history books. I don’t doubt that China is becoming more energy efficient. But historically speaking, efficiency gains only mean that that GDP growth results in a smaller increase in electrical generation. If anyone knows of a case where a developing country cut electrical usage and raised GDP at the same time they should let me know.

The real question centers around reliability of this statistic. All statistics taken by government agencies need to be taken with a grain of salt. And in China that goes double. Plus, I would have liked to know how noisy China’s electrical statistics normally are. Maybe it is common for them to bounce around a lot.

Having said that, there is lots of other anecdotal evidence to the effect that China took it hard in October.

For example, The US Censuses Bureau reports….

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for October, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $363.7 billion, a decrease of 2.8 percent (±0.5%) from the previous month and 4.1 percent (±0.7%) below October 2007. Total sales for the August through October 2008 period were down 1.3 percent (±0.5%) from the same period a year ago. The August to September 2008 percent change was revised from –1.2 percent (±0.5%) to –1.3 percent (±0.3%).

Kind of funny how the US sales drop of 4% from last October matches the drop in China’s electrical consumption huh?

From Felix Salmon….

The massive Wall Street rally this afternoon, and a statement in support of Citigroup’s chairman, didn’t help Citi, which closed down slightly on the day at $9.45 a share. Clearly the market is very worried about Citi’s future, and the fact that it’s trading in single digits — which means that a modest $1 decline in the share price means headlines about a 10% plunge — doesn’t help.

From the Washington Post….

The volume of junk e-mail sent worldwide dropped drastically today after a Web hosting firm identified by the computer security community as a major host of organizations allegedy engaged in spam activity was taken offline, according to security firms that monitor spam distribution online.

While its gleaming, state-of-the-art, 30-story office tower in downtown San Jose, Calif., hardly looks like the staging ground for what could be called a full-scale cyber crime offensive, security experts have found that a relatively small firm at that location is home to servers that serve as a gateway for a significant portion of the world’s junk e-mail.

The servers are operated by McColo Corp., which these experts say has emerged as a major U.S. hosting service for international firms and syndicates that are involved in everything from the remote management of millions of compromised computers to the sale of counterfeit pharmaceuticals and designer goods, fake security products and child pornography via email.

From latter on in the same article….

“McColo runs a service that offers its clients quite a bit more protection from takedowns than the average Web host,” Stewart said. “If they get abuse complaints they will try to appease whoever is complaining, but the end result is usually they just end up moving their Internet addresses around.”

Collectively, these botnets appear to be responsible for sending roughly 75 percent of all spam each day, according to the latest stats from Marshal, a security company in the United Kingdom that tracks botnet activity.

I find this hard to believe. But what do I know?

From the AP….

Oil prices plunged below $56 a barrel Wednesday as awful numbers from retailers and a dismal outlook from automakers lent yet more evidence that the U.S. and the rest of the globe will slash its energy use.

This will help a lot of hurting people around the world. You may have to look for a job, but at least you will not pay $3 gallon to get around.

But lest you get too excited by this news, one should keep in mind the following facts:

1: The longer the price stays at this level, the more dependent the world is going to get on Middle Eastern oil. At $56 a barrel, many sources of oil outside the Middle East are no longer profitable.

2: The longer oil stays at this price, the more likely Russia will suffer a catastrophic collapse in the next couple of years. Granted, Russia is going to suffer a catastrophic collapse no matter what. But I was hoping that it would take at least 10 years for Russia to fall apart.

3: The longer oil stays at this price, the more unstable the Middle East is going to be. For example, Iraq is going to have a lot harder time rebuilding itself.

4: Unless there is big break through in the search for alternative energy sources, it is unlikely that oil prices will stay this low unless the world continues to suffer an economic catastrophe. Indeed, by undercutting alternatives, the current low price of oil sets the stage for a huge price increase in the future.

From Felix Salmon….

UBS has a $2 trillion balance sheet; Credit Suisse has another trillion on top of that. Call it $3 trillion between the two of them, which is about ten times Switzerland’s GDP of $300 billion or so. Now that’s what I call too big to save. Oh, and did I mention? At the end of 2007, Credit Suisse was levered by more than 40 times; UBS was levered by more than 64 times. A 16% fall in UBS’s assets would wipe out not only all of its equity but 100% of Swiss GDP on top.

This could be the first make-or-break economic issue to face Barack Obama: if it came to it, would Treasury bail out UBS? I’m sure it would try to get European governments to pitch in too, and the Swiss, of course, to the extent that they can. But I’m sure I’m not the only person praying that UBS never comes close enough to the edge that we have to find out.

I wish I could think that it was ridiculous to say that the US might bail out a foreign bank. But I can’t quite muster up the necessary optimism.

From Market Watch…

“Since mid-September, rapid, seismic changes in consumer behavior have created the most difficult climate we’ve ever seen. Best Buy simply can’t adjust fast enough to maintain our earnings momentum for this year,” said Brad Anderson, vice chairman and chief executive officer of Best Buy. “We’re beginning to adjust our cost structure to restore earnings momentum and still gain market share. We firmly believe that our strategy of customer centricity is of great value in driving our performance versus the industry, and that’s the strategy we plan to pursue to continue to strengthen our position in the marketplace.”

This is the kind of double speak that drives me nuts. They are unable to speak in straight forward manner even when everyone knows the truth.

Of course they will gain market share if they can keep from going bankrupt. That is because Circuit City went bankrupt already. The big question is can they avoid Circuit City’s fate?

They lost a lot of money this quarter.

From Bloomberg…

Fannie Mae may need more than the $100 billion in funding pledged by the U.S. Treasury to stay afloat after reporting a record $29 billion loss and confronting more difficulty in issuing and refinancing debt.

“This commitment may not be sufficient to keep us in solvent condition or from being placed into receivership,” if there are further “substantial” losses or if the company is unable to sell unsecured debt, Washington-based Fannie said in a filing today with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Fannie said it has a limited ability to issue debt maturing past one year, citing market conditions, the lack of an explicit federal guarantee and competition from government-insured bank bonds. Fannie, which along with Freddie Mac was seized by regulators on Sept. 6, slashed the value of its assets by at least $21.4 billion for the third quarter and increased credit loss reserves by 75 percent to $15.6 billion. Freddie is required to file its quarterly earnings by the end of the week.

Before long, all debt will be backed by the Federal Government.