Ive been trying real hard to understand the causes of the current financial crisis. I even watched former president Bill Clinton explain it on the David Letterman Show, but despite Clintons efforts to simplify, my reaction was similar to Lettermans: It makes my head hurt.
For a while, it didnt seem that bad. Federal regulators running around on weekends trading and dissolving big names like Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers. But you know, down deep, that one day before long the music is going to stop and there will be a tab.
The initial tab, were told, is $700 billionreally kind of a shot in the dark because they dont know how much bad debt is out there. So I take that to mean $700 billion is more likely a down payment, a deposit, if you will, before we get the real tab.
The problem, they tell us, is that so-called toxic loans have contaminated the entire financial system. And, indeed, much of the financial system is paralyzedloans not being made, money market funds teetering on the edge, states and municipalities unable to float bonds.
Now, Im getting this same queasy feeling trying to make sense out of this Chinese dairy scandal. Regulators running around, pardon the pun, like in a Chinese fire drill, and the damn thing just gets bigger and scarier. Its not only baby formula in China and 53,000 kids who are sick, which would be horrendous enough. Now were learning its Pizza Hut cheese in Taiwan, cookies in Macao, White Rabbit Creamy Candy all around Asia, and (horror of horrors) instant coffee and tea in the U.S.all contaminated.
Just like in the financial crisis, you know we havent heard the end of the story. Even knowing germ lawyer Bill Marler has been to China (great new market, it would seem) doesnt make me feel much better.
Arent we dealing with similar problems in the financial and food crises? On the financial side, balance sheets filled with questionable loan instruments that have been packaged and re-packaged so many times no one knows where anything originatedand on the food side, products filled with questionable ingredients that have traveled so far and through so many hands no one can begin to figure out where they came from. Systems based on scale and greed rather than on basic human values. Regulators arrogant in their power, who descend on tiny dairies for producing unpasteurized milk because these dairies might muck up the real systemwhile that real system is poisoned in endless small and large ways.
The main alternative people have to survive both the financial and food crises is to seek out old-time alternatives. For financial safety, that probably means things like gold and silver. For food, it means growing your own or buying from small producers and farmers markets, where you are as close as possible to the source.
Are systemic collapses closer than we think?
Real food AKA RAW DAIRY , real money AKA GOLD and SILVER coins and no debt is looking better and better.
I am opposed to putting 700 billion dollars at the financial sector’s disposal. I believe it should be invested in new infrastructure and new energy technology. Maybe that will keep our country from going down the tubes.
The CEO’s of the financial sector need to get a real life for a while and solve their own problem. The trickle down to mainstreet will be a minor nuisance compared to the fall the CEO’s of these poor performing companies will face. Many of them should end up in jail.
As for the Chinese recalls – homegrown and raw are looking better and better . China should lose favored trading status immediately .
It is amazing how our food police are so soft on countries like China , yet so harsh here at home!
Our system is wacked big time.
Um, most big companies, including the last hospital I worked at, have their capital tied up in mutual funds. After Enron, that topheavy hospital delayed an expansion plan for about 10 years, and "laid off," numerous management positions, eliminating their jobs, and passing their paperwork on to us staff nurses. Do you have any idea what the significance of that is?
Already this week, I have heard that UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh’s large parent medical corporation) is laying off upwards of 300 employees; and another nearby hospital is considering closing their new catheterization department. Our hospital is nearly ready to open part of a new tower they built, and was going to change half the unit I work on to private beds. Guess what? That plan got ditched 2 days after it was passed on to us.
I’m sorry, but Main Street is already being affected. Your healthcare, and your waiting time in doctors offices and hospitals is going to be an issue in coming years. You think 2 hours to be seen in the ER for a migraine is long? You’ll be wishing it were still so.
For every $1 a bank has in savings, it can lend $2. Given most banks have lost their invested "money," there won’t be much to lend. I’m pretty sure there are going to be a lot of clunkers being driven around in about 5 years…maybe even some horses and bicycles. So the cars you see driving down Main Street, are going to look different.
Gwen
I didn’t read the entire presentation of the S.T.O.P. HUS conference. I read Dr. Linwood’s explanation on the Acute Phase of Verotoxin-induced HUS (which included cell membrane mechanisms); skimmed Dr. Phillip Tarr’s details of differential diagnosis, and cardiologist, Gary Cornel’s description of its attack on a girl’s heart in Canada and how he saved her. Dr. Cornel notably stated that there is a huge lack of information on how HUS attacks the heart.
Then I Googled a few things, and skimmed through Kaplan’s book on HUS.
After all this reading, a few things stood out to me. Few of my questions have been answered – namely, how do you tell whether HUS was caused by E-coli 0157:H7 or some other entity, in the absence of the pathogen?
It is clear, that even the leading scientists and doctors studying this don’t understand the causes in their entirity. They think it might have something to do with individual immune responses, and possibly genetic predisposition to be susceptible to verotoxins produced by bacteria (and other substances). Kaplan states in his book that there are over 50 serotypes of bacteria that cause human disease. E-coli 0157:H7 is easy to distinguish from other e-coli because it has a lack of sorbitol fermentation. It can also be mistaken for C-diff in common hospital lab tests, and treated as such.
The idea that estrogen in birth control increases susceptibility to developing HUS in favorable circumstances is a hypothesis with little support. Some other medications are more clearly implicated, though (Ticlid and chemotherapy agents that mess with the immune response). Susceptiblity is related to a person’s immune system, how it works in different conditions, and how it is made up in individuals.
So little is still understood about the mechanisms, that nobody on either end can say with confidence that it is one way or another. I think we need a lot more Linwoods and Kaplans out there working on it. Too bad for the rabbits and monkeys.
Gwen
Is this really happening under the auspices of a constitution designed to prevent concentrated power and preserve individual liberty?
I found this website that answers your questionThe atypical HUS website. http://atypicalhus.50megs.com/about.html
In most cases, Atypical HUS does not begin with a violent illness. Instead, the child starts off ill, fatigue, irritable, perhaps has an infection and lethargic to a point where hospitalization is needed. Supportive treatment is absolutely necessary in order to prevent further damage. (As opposed to Typical or regular HUS, which begins rather violently, with a severe bout of gastroenteritis that may be accompanied by bloody diarrhea).
Thereafter, symptoms of both typical and Atypical HUS may be similar. Atypical HUS causes clotting, and therefore results in vascular enlargement. Clotting tends to affect the kidneys, and may result in acute kidney failure, requiring dialysis or kidney transplants.
A wide variety of symptoms can occur. Life threatening intestinal problems may occur. Neurological problems such as seizures, blindness and coma could develop (though rarely do). Profound intestinal or neurological diseases are indicative of a more severe HUS, and have poor prognosis.
Atypical HUS patients are especially prone to recurrences of the disease and are much more likely to develop chronic renal failure and other complications such as chronic high blood pressure. Atypical patients can have Atypical HUS episodes set off by routine colds and infections.
It’s my impression that the banks were leveraged far more than 2 to 1, and that given the derivative market for mortgages and insurance, this "crisis" was fairly predictable. It started over a year ago.
As I said, many lucrative jobs will be lost, and there will be some trickle-down effects to other sectors. Even so, 700 billion to a trillion dollars to buttress up a house of cards isn’t money well spent, IMHO.
Prior to our current crisis some have said that in the last 8 years our dollar has lost 40% of its purchasing power. Oil in 2000 was $22 a barrel now $100, gold was $275 an oz. now $900 an oz if you can get it, silver was $4.58 an oz now $13.50 if you can get it. That is a 300% increase in US dollars above the year 2000s cost.
I think that to say the $700 billion [starting number] bailout out cost will only TRICKLE down to Main Street maybe a huge understatement, but a deluge of inflation, deflation, job losses and tax increases of epic size will be the result.
It has also been reported that now the US Home Builders Asso. has also asked for a $90 billion bailout . WHO WILL BE NEXT IN LINE?
Sylvia-Gwen, who is really Gwen
(Sylvia is someone else)
Would you email me please? I have a question to ask. Thank you
sundancr56@yahoo.com
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2008/09/27/Shipments_of_contaminated_lettuce_halted/UPI-56441222488825/
We think that we can escape the detrimental effects of conventional agribusiness by getting our food from local organic farms,but we are all living in the same hydrological cycle.
48% of the US land mass watersheds drain into the Gulf of Mexico.At the mouth of the Mississippi there is a dead zone the size of the state of New Jersey.All of the excess chemical fertilizers,herbicides and insecticides,industrial wastes etc. are deposited at the mouth of the Mississippi.The Nitrogen alone is enough to create huge algae blooms that die and sink to the floor of the Gulf and suffocate everything by using up all of the oxygen.A toxic soup of bacteria grow and then die making toxins that persist in the water after the bacteria have died off.
July and August are droughty months in the Great Lakes area so we look foreward to the fall rains that come as a result of the hurricanes that suck up tons of water out of the Gulf and within a couple of days deposit several inches of it on our dry pastures and hayfields.This is the cycle completeing itself.Everything that is disposed of in the rivers and streams and field tiles makes its way down the Mississippi and then is sucked up by these strong low pressure systems and returned to us in the rainfall.
Have you ever stopped to consider why we have a flu season?And is it just a coincidence that the Hurricane season and the flu season occur at the same time of the year?
http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/full/91/8/1194
"Results. Fifty-one percent of waterborne disease outbreaks were preceded by precipitation events above the 90th percentile (P = .002), and 68% by events above the 80th percentile (P = .001). Outbreaks due to surface water contamination showed the strongest association with extreme precipitation during the month of the outbreak; a 2-month lag applied to groundwater contamination events."
I find it interesting that this year everyone seemed to come down with the flu or a cold right after the heavy rains we got with the hurricanes. This is not from a virus that is transmitted from one person to another.The symptoms that we all had (vomiting,diarhea,cough and running noses) are all an indication that the body is working to eliminate toxins.The people we talked to in the area also told us that their cows milk was off flavored or that the milk inspector visited them because their milk had such a high bacteria count.The microcontaminants in the rainfall seem to affect the livestock somewhat too.
The dead zone in the Gulf is the largest at this time of year.Over the winter it shrinks,but each summer it sets a new record for size.This hydrological cycle is contaminating the soil as well with all of the things that we hope to avoid in our food by not applying it ourselves. As long as there are farms using chemicals we will end up with those chemicals in our soil and in our food.
As to the end result of all this; well, fiat money systems always fail; always. It is just a question of how long till it happens. But when it does happen it can go almost overnight.
In the absence of a defined verotoxin, such as E-coli 0157:H7 either in the stools of the child; or a by-product in the form of an antibody for it, or either’s presence in the cows that produced the milk the child drank, the cause remains entirely based on circumstantial assumptions. Those remain assumptions, and the cause of the illness cannot be stated as a verifiable fact.
Its sort of like all the people who get put on death row who get absolved by DNA evidence years down the road. We thought we knew whodunit, but we really didn’t.
Gwen
http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/
Some say "they" can change the weather with it.
Dream on. It’s going to affect you if you need credit, say for a car, or college, or a home; when small businesses fail – and they won’t get a bailout deal.
Barney Frank is one of the problems, as are several other members of congress who, four or so years ago, swore there was no problem with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This crisis did not begin last week. It has been brewing for years – since around the 1970’s. Some lawmakers saw it coming but Frank, Waters, and others denied there was a problem. Now they are trying to once again throw the problem at our feet. We pay – they walk away. The whole lot of them need to be ditched. They are crooks.
An example of Main Streets monetary suffering PRIOR to the bailout and I am not trying to be funny. 18 months ago a major brand of toilet paper containing 20 rolls cost nearly $11 but 3 weeks ago it cost nearly $15 and this is a basic need. One report a few days ago stated that in the prior 5 days the Fed. "injected" an average of $188 BILLION a day. Yesterday Bloomberg reported that the FED was to "inject " another $630 BILLION into the "system". So I ask will we even be able to buy toilet paper, when the latest mind numbing monetary numbers beging to "trickle" down to us?
CICERO a famous Roman that lived about 2300 years ago stated "THE ENEMY WITHIN IS MORE TO BE FEARED THAN THE ENEMY AT THE GATE" Does this characteriize our present condition?
An example of Main Streets monetary suffering PRIOR to the bailout and I am not trying to be funny. 18 months ago a major brand of toilet paper containing 20 rolls cost nearly $11 but 3 weeks ago it cost nearly $15 and this is a basic need. One report a few days ago stated that in the prior 5 days the Fed. "injected" an average of $188 BILLION a day. Yesterday Bloomberg reported that the FED was to "inject " another $630 BILLION into the "system". So I ask will we even be able to buy toilet paper, when the latest mind numbing monetary numbers beging to "trickle" down to us?
CICERO a famous Roman that lived about 2300 years ago stated "THE ENEMY WITHIN IS MORE TO BE FEARED THAN THE ENEMY AT THE GATE" Does this characteriize our present condition?
A cold glass of deliciuos raw milk.
Thats what our consumers are saying and voting with there depreciated dollars.
When Wall Street goes South… Raw Milk goes North. Food is a haven when paper money sucks. Look at Campbells foods, they held there own when others lost fortunes.
Today FOX News will be at OPDC to shoot a nationally broadcast three part series on the craze about raw milk. This is a time to take advantage of the fake reality of Wall Street confusion. Perhaps John Sheehan at the FDA will be fired and the drug companies will go ENRON. Lets stay calm and sane as others lose their minds and start jumping from buildings. Perhaps this is an opportunity for America to reinvent itself….however painful as that process may be. This is a wakeup call that sitting back and letting money work for you is not a replacement for real honest work and effort.
Stay real…local and green. Trade real things that are essential to life to real people.
There is a message in this madness. The Sun will set tonight and rise tommorrow….the cows will be milked tonight and the raw milk bottled tommorrow.
People will eat.
Mark McAfee
Question 2: How has that Shiga toxin been expressly connected to the food in question?
Gwen
But in gloomier news the end result of these bailouts is hyperinflation and when that hits everyone is affected.
Another good article: http://www.arthurmag.com/magpie/?p=3149
"The more connected you are to the real world, and the more consciously you reject the lure of the speculative ladder, the less of a willing dupe youll be in the pyramid scheme thats in the process of collapsing all around us at this moment.
Think small. Buy local. Make friends. Print money. Grow food. Teach children. Learn nutrition. And if you do have money to invest, put it into whatever lets you and your friends do those things."
or it will be signed into law
or it will not be signed and become law anyway because it was not signed.
Lots of people have done tons of work to have this monumental piece of legislation get to this point. regardless of the outcome, my deepest thanks go to Senator Dean Florez, Collette Cassidy and Ron Garthwaite ( Claravale Dairy ),Dr. Ted Beals, Dr. Ron Hull, Dr. Irons, Sally Fallon, Christine Chessen ( CREMA ) Maurice Kaehler, Walter Robb( WF Prez ), Jack Lalanne, Martin Sheen, Rusty Areias, Mike Schmidt, our raw milk retailers in CA and thousands of raw milk loving consumers in CA and across America and the world that supported this effort.
Trying to get some extra good Karma going to Arnold!!
Here is hoping for good things tonight.
If we fail….we must stand back up and fight again next year. If we fail it was becuase the oposition was inside the executive branch and got to Arnold…..abreviating and nullifying the elected democratic process. If we fail it will be essential that we fight to change this process because it means that America has been corrupted and we must change it back.
If we prevail…..it will be a fresh glass of raw milk and hugs for all !!
Mark McAfee
Now it goes back to the senate. I will be calling my rep.