Thursday 12 July 2012
Wednesday 11 July 2012
An Old Farmer's Advice
Keep skunks and bankers at a distance.
Life is simpler when you plow around the stump.
A bumble bee is considerably faster than a John Deere tractor.
Words that soak into your ears are whispered...not yelled.
Meanness don't just happen overnight.
Forgive your enemies; it messes up their heads.
Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.
It don't take a very big person to carry a grudge.
You cannot unsay a cruel word.
Every path has a few puddles.
When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.
The best sermons are lived, not preached.
Most of the stuff people worry about, ain't never gonna happen anyway.
Don 't judge folks by their relatives.
Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
Live a good and honorable life, then when you get older and think back, you'll enjoy it a second time.
Don 't interfere with somethin' that ain't bothering you none.
Timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance.
If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'.
Sometimes you get, and sometimes you get got.
The biggest troublemaker you'll probably ever have to deal with, watches you from the mirror every mornin'.
Always drink upstream from the herd.
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.
Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than puttin' it back in.
If you get to thinkin' you're a person of some influence, try orderin' somebody else's dog around.
Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, and leave the rest to God.
Don't pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.
Friday 6 July 2012
What is LIBOR
Most of you would have heard about the ongoing LIBOR saga that has engulfed the financial landscape recently? Here is a brief explanation for those who are unsure as to what it stands for and the significance of it (cut and pasted from www.tfmetalsreport.com):
What Is LIBOR?
Submitted by OutLookingIn on July 5, 2012 - 4:04pm.
Some Know. Many do not.
LIBOR = London Inter Bank Offered Rate.
The LIBOR is the interest rate guide at which banks lend to each other. Many other interest rates are calculated using the LIBOR, such as mortgage rates, forward rate agreements, futures contracts, interest rate swaps, floating rate notes, syndicated loans, currencies, (especially the US dollar) and over-the-counter derivatives.
Every day, the British Bankers Association (BBA) surveys a panel of internationally active banks, asking them to provide the rates at which they could borrow "reasonable amounts" in a particular currency and maturity at 11:00 GMT. The BBA then eliminates the highest and lowest quartiles of the distribution and averaging the remaining quotes, to arrive at the LIBOR fix rate.
Around $350 trillion of lending and derivatives is priced of LIBOR. If misconduct by banks caused LIBOR to increase by a mere one tenth of one basis point (0.001%), this amounts to $35 billion a year in extra interest.
Barkleys, RBS and the Bof E are just the tip of the iceberg. More revelations to come.
Watch the LIBOR over this next month as it is now under the global financial microscope, as rates will invariably rise, which is not good for the fragile global economy that is showing concrete signs of slowing down.
Wednesday 4 July 2012
Human happiness and the environment – Address by Uruguayan president Jose Mujica at Rio +20 Summit
This is cut and pasted from the the wanderlife.com. Please have a read and consider what the Uruguayan president is espousing. It would be great if you could comment on what your thoughts are. The author has translated the speech that was made in Spanish.
20/06/12 Speech by José Mujica in the Rio
+20 summit
Image from pericopalotes
To all of the authorities present here,
from every latitude and organization, thank you very much. I want to thank the
people of Brazil and Mrs. President, Dilma Rousseff. Thank you all for the good
faith undoubtedly expressed by all of the speakers that preceded me.
We hereby express our innermost will as
rulers, to adhere to all the agreements our wretched humanity, may chance to
subscribe.
Notwithstanding, let us take this opportunity
to ask some questions out loud. All afternoon long, we have been talking about
sustainable development, about rescuing the masses from the claws of poverty.
What is it that flutters within our minds?
Is it the model of development and consumption, which is shaped after that of
affluent societies? I ask this question: what would happen to this planet if
the people of India had the same number of cars per family as the Germans? How
much oxygen would there be left for us to breathe? More clearly: Does the world
today have the material elements to enable 7 or 8 billion people to enjoy the
same level of consumption and squandering as the most affluent Western
societies? WIll that ever be possible? Or will we have to start a different
type of discussion one day? Because we have created this civilization in which
we live: the progeny of the market, of the competition, which has begotten
prodigious and explosive material progress. But the market economy has created
market societies. And it has given us this globalization, which means being
aware of the whole planet.
Are we ruling over globalization or is
globalization ruling over us? Is it possible to speak of solidarity and of
“being all together” in an economy based on ruthless competition? How far does
our fraternity go?
I am not saying any of to undermine the
importance of this event. On the contrary, the challenge ahead of us is of a
colossal magnitude and the great crisis is not an ecological crisis, but rather
a political one.
Today, man does not govern the forces he
has unleashed, but rather, it is these forces that govern man;and life. Because
we do not come into this planet simply to develop, just like that,
indiscriminately. We come into this planet to be happy. Because life is short
and it slips away from us. And no material belonging is worth as much as life,
and this is fundamental.But if life is going to slip through my fingers,
working and over-working in order to be able to consume more, and the consumer
society is the engine-because ultimately, if consumption is paralyzed, the
economy stops, and if you stop economy, the ghost of stagnation appears for
each one of us, but it is this hyper-consumption that is harming the planet.
And this hyper-consumption needs to be generated, making things that have a
short useful life, in order to sell a lot. Thus, a light bulb cannot last
longer than 1000 hours. But there are light bulbs that last 100,000 hours! But
these cannot be manufactured, because the problem is the market, because we
have to work and we have to sustain a civilization of “use and discard”, and
so, we are trapped in a vicious cycle. These are problems of a political
nature, which are showing us that it’s time to start fighting for a different
culture.
I’m not talking about returning to the days
of the caveman, or erecting a “monument to backwardness.” But we cannot
continue like this, indefinitely, being ruled by the market, on the contrary,
we have to rule over the market.
This is why I say, in my humble way of thinking,
that the problem we are facing is political. The old thinkers. Epicurus, Seneca
and even the Aymara put it this way, a poor person is not someone who has
little but one who needs infinitely more, and more and more.” This is a
cultural issue.
So I salute the efforts and agreements
being made. And I will adhere to them, as a ruler. I know some things I’m
saying are not easy to digest. But we must realize that the water crisis and
the aggression to the environment is not the cause. The cause is the model of
civilization that we have created. And the thing we have to re-examine is our
way of life.
I belong to a small country well endowed
with natural resources for life. In my country, there are a bit more than 3
million people. But there are about 13 million cows, some of the best in the
world. And about 8 or 10 million excellent sheep. My country is an exporter of
food, dairy, meat. It is a low-relief plain and almost 90% of the land is
fertile.
My fellow workers, fought hard for the 8
hour workday. And now they are making that 6 hours. But the person who works 6
hours, gets two jobs, therefore, he works longer than before. But why? Because
he needs to make monthly payments for: the motorcycle, the car, more and more
payments, and when he’s done with that, he realizes he is a rheumatic old man,
like me, and his life is already over.
And one asks this question: is this the
fate of human life? These things I say are very basic: development cannot go
against happiness. It has to work in favor of human happiness, of love on
Earth, human relationships, caring for children, having friends, having our
basic needs covered. Precisely because this is the most precious treasure we
have; happiness. When we fight for the environment, we must remember that the
first element of the environment is called human happiness.
The article was taken from:
Please check it out for other great posts from south america.
How gold could save the economic day..
"...Hedge fund managers Lee Quaintance and Paul Brodsky from QB Asset Management wrote a fascinating outline on the potential reintroduction of gold into the monetary system, while simultaneously implementing what one might consider a debt jubilee. I recommend reading the entire outline. Zero Hedge posted it at this link. QB explains the mechanics of how it could work in the US:
Using the US as an example, the Fed would purchase Treasury's gold at a large and specified premium to its current spot valuation. The higher the price, the more base money would be created and the more public debt would be extinguished. An eight-to-10-fold increase in the gold price via this mechanism would fully reserve all existing US dollar-denominated bank deposits (a full deleveraging of the banking system)."
Below is what the remonetization of gold would look like in chart form. The yellow line would rapidly approach the blue line. And the blue line will keep rising as we see further growth in the money supply. QB's "Shadow Gold Price" divides the US monetary base by official US gold holdings. Policymakers, who always feel the need to manage something, would appreciate that this is the same formula used during the Bretton Woods regime to peg the dollar at $35 per ounce. In other words, the Shadow Gold Price is the theoretical price of gold after the Fed inflated the supply of dollars to a level that would cover systemic bank liabilities and then re-pegged the dollar to gold. Behold the path to $10,000 gold:
This path would weaken the economy-sapping effects of debt created since President Nixon closed the gold window. It would transform a debt-based currency into an asset-backed currency. No longer would one ask the unpleasant question "What backs the dollar?" and come away with even more questions (and a headache)...."
Read the whole article here:
Also, please take the time to listen to this interesting and fairly balanced discussion on a return to the gold standard. It is rare (but becoming more commonplace) for the mainstream media to entertain this economic train of thought.
Hoping that you are having a good wednesday!
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