http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704888404574547730924988354.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_opinion

funny link dude- much truth in that

Brendan-

who cares???????? put me to sleep already- the dust bowl wasn’t caused by global warming but by farms being established in prairies-

it all comes down to too many people really-

so – someone could jump off a bridge if that was their concern-

i like things clean- clean air, clean water, clean land- i’m all in- so let’s be honest- but global warming is nonsense-

infrastructure? are you serious????? people have been building and re-building forever- that has never been an issue and never will be-

think Dresden- think fire bombing- think Nagasaki- think atom bombs-

the earth doesn’t need us- never has- never will- think billions of years- nothing we can do can ever make a difference in that time-

so in the end- your concern is will the earth be as we know it right now-

silliness if you think about it

Galleon and the Trouble With Insider Trading
On any given day, someone will have an edge, but all investors can do well thinking long term.

By ANDY KESSLER

It happened almost every earnings season. My hedge fund would own a million shares in some company and two weeks before it was to report quarterly earnings, its stock would start dropping. There was no news to explain it. We were in the dark, even though it was my job to know. Inevitably, the company would report a disappointing quarter, missing Wall Street’s earnings expectations by a penny or two. Someone knew. A salesman’s brother-in-law heard a few deals didn’t close. Or maybe an insider was singing.

The recent arrest of Galleon Group hedge fund’s Raj Rajaratnam on insider trading charges puts a spotlight on this game. Is trading on industry knowledge widespread? Absolutely. That’s how many hedge funds and mutual funds get an edge. Is insider trading also widespread? Only the Securities and Exchange Committee’s wire-tappers know for sure.

Stock markets trade on information. Millions of people generate billions of trades every day. Each trade contains a tiny piece of information built into it. (“I think Apple is killing Nokia” or “I think GM is toast.”) Eventually we are proved right or wrong, and we make money or we don’t. In the long run, the market is always right. On any given day, your guess is as good as mine.

As long there have been markets, there have been those who have tried to get an edge. Whoever could get the first news from a battlefield, of an oil discovery, or figure out that a company’s earnings were better than anyone expected could reap almost instant profits. Edward Calahan invented the stock ticker (later improved by Thomas Edison and Alfred Vail) just so J.P. Morgan could sit in midtown and get stock quotes from the New York Stock Exchange faster than anyone else. Everyone else had to wait for the Dow Jones Customers’ Afternoon Letter with closing prices.

Now it has come to the point where firms are spending millions and putting wicked fast computer servers next to exchanges so they can have an edge and, through a system of high-speed or “flash” trading, figure out which way individual stocks or the markets are heading before anyone else.

More at……

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703363704574503150720169662.html

The impending state budget crisis is something that has been covered in depth here. Just to remind everyone just how bad it’s going to get, a picture that says a couple hundred billion dollars.

http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/1922/9808sfpf2web2.jpg

Link:

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/its-no-wonder-state-governments-cant-pay-their-bills

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/albert-edwards-calls-next-black-swan-expect-yuan-devaluation-following-deep-2010-downturn

See these two screws on the left? Think of the little screw as AIG bonuses. That big nasty long screw is AIG funneling $183 billion dollars of your money to foreign banks and to banks that already have wads of cash on hand. Those two screw jobs are not even to scale because the large screw would go past the page. Look those two screws over. Now which one do you believe Populist outrage should be focused on?

So we are all outraged over AIG bonuses. Now lets amplify that outrage to the scale of the ripoff. The bonuses are only 0.001 of the real ripoff that just happened. Your tax dollars were funneled through AIG to foreign banks and to U.S. banks for worthless assets. Your own blind rage is a smoke screen, being used by media elites so you do not see the real screw job going on.

In an Instapopulist earlier we showed the AIG payout disclosure. Now I want to amplify those payouts. In the attached file AIG lists payouts to counter parties.

More at……
http://www.economicpopulist.org/?q=content/real-screw-job-aig-used-funnel-us-taxpayer-money

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/cfapps/STEO_Query/steotables.cfm?periodType=Annual&startYear=2006&startMonth=1&endYear=2010&endMonth=12&tableNumber=3

He’s only off by a factor of about four or five. The WP does not have a very good reputation on this subject.

So this one incident, which I’ll agree with you, doesn’t LOOK very good for the climate scientists, is going to ruin climate science’s reputation. I don’t buy that. Even if there does turn out to be some scandal, it’s no worse than what the Washington Post just did Sunday, and does on a regular basis, by the way. They manipulated the data to fit their story. If this one thing matters that much, then what the Washington Post says doesn’t matter, either, since their reputation must be completely ruined, too. Unfortunately the world doesn’t work like that. Also, you’re deluding yourself if you think the only reason the American people lost faith in GWB was because of the WMD thing. I’d even argue that the administration’s handling of Katrina was a bigger hit in the grand scheme of things. But at the end of the day, it was many things. Even if you can score one for team science-deniers here, it’s not going to make up for the hundreds of instances where the deniers have been clearly wrong, including the most recent ludicrous talking point that the earth is “actually cooling.”

“….unemployment keeps rising because small businesses can’t get credit to expand …”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-22/is-this-another-bubble/?cid=hp:blogunit1

Yet the October 09 NFIB survey of small business conditions said only 4% of small business people say credit is their biggest problem.

http://www.smallbusinessadvocate.com/small-business-interviews/bill-dunkelberg-7465

And where does Charlie Gasparino get his “data?”

“…How do I know this? When I speak to CEOs and others in the executive suites of our big banks…”

Maybe he should stop yapping with Wall Street CEOs and start looking at some data.

You’d be hard pressed to find “global warming folks” who will argue that there are no long term shifts in climate. In fact, the science relies on this knowledge. The concern isn’t that some day in a few thousand years an area that was once grasslands will be a desert and vice-versa based on slowly shifting climate patterns. The concern is a repeat of the dust-bowl on a global scale (i.e. short term shifts that would be catastrophic since our complex society relies on a predictable climate). You’re basically suggesting that had the knowledge to prevent the dust-bowl been available prior to it, you wouldn’t bother to use it. This is even though the benefits have clearly outweighed the costs in the long run. You’d chose to repeat the mistake for short term profit. Silly me and my crazy global warming folks for thinking ahead and bringing things like “facts” based on “science” to the table instead of just spouting Glen Beck’s wacky populist antics!