Michigan Oil Spill Among Largest In Midwest History: Kalamazoo Spill SOAKS Wildlife (VIDEO)
As the Gulf Coast deals with the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, the Midwest is now facing an oil spill of its own.
A state of emergency has been declared in southwest Michigan's Kalamazoo County as more than 800,000 gallons of oil released into a creek began making its way downstream in the Kalamazoo River, the Kalamazoo Gazette reports.
Watch local coverage:
Oil is spewing from a damaged well north of a bay where officials have been fighting the spill from the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.
China: Oil Spill Contained in Coastal Waters
Authorities in China say one of the country's worst oil spills has been contained before any of the oil could reach international waters.
Oil Spill: Unending Saga Between Oil Firms, Vandals and Illegal Bunkerers
The cause of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico may be due equipment failure and as such could be classified as human error. But in Nigeria, oil spill occur almost on a bi-weekly basis in the Niger Delta due to corroded pipeline facilities, willful acts of illegal oil bunkering and pipeline vandalism.
Investigations have revealed that High Pour Fuel Oil (HPFO) and Low Pour Fuel Oil (LPFO) used for firing burners and heavy-duty engines in factories have both become great allures for greedy people to try to break the pipeline facilities to scoop crude oil to make quick money.
Australian Oil Spills Cause US$15 Bn Losses
15,000 fishermen and seaweed farmers living on the coasts of Rote Ndao, Kupang, Sabu Raijua, and some other regions lose their jobs in months due to lesser productions.
EPA Whistleblower Accuses Agency of Covering Up Effects of Dispersant in BP Oil Spill Cleanup
But with BP having poured nearly two million gallons of the dispersant known as Corexit into the Gulf, many lawmakers and advocacy groups say the Obama administration is not being candid about the lethal effects of dispersants.
Lisa Hamler-Fugit, Executive Director of Ohio Assoc. of Second Harvest Foodbanks:
We've have see poverty continue to increase in this state as the economy has continued to decline. This didn't just happen overnight. It certainly didn't just happen as a result of the Great Recession. It has been happening for quite some time as our high wage manufacturing based economy has just eroded away. In fact, the food bank that serves this part of the state now feeds 44 percent of the residents of the 10 counties that make up the Appalachian region. 44 percent.
Apparently what's happening in Ohio is also occurring in other parts of the country:
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But there is hope:
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$5 billion dollars per month coming into Afghanistan, per month. See how the money is being spent:
RACHEL MADDOW, HOST: Good evening. The enemy in Afghanistan now is broadly understood to be the Taliban. They, of course, were routed by the U.S. and the northern alliance at the beginning of the war, only to return in force. From afar, the Taliban are simply the bad guys. But how they affect Afghan society, how to fight them, and who should fight them are subjects worth looking at from close up -- which is one thing we try to do on our recent trip into the war zone.
1. Optimism tempered by realism in Afghanistan:
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2. Close quarters of power in Afghanistan:
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3. Counterinsurgency and its alternatives:
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4. Checking up on Afghan checkpoints:
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5. A stroll through Kabul's markets:
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6. Afghanistan reporting a group effort:
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7. Gun carpets, only in Afghanistan:
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8. U.S. Money leads to modern castles amid Afghan poverty:
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Consider the following from the October 2005 Elliott Wave Theorist:
"...we fully expect to see bankruptcies, bond defaults, the evaporation of pensions, unemployment, bank failures, economic collapse, and depression. Some still wonder, when will they come. But the trend is already underway. The U.S. is in fact already bankrupt and poverty-stricken; these facts just haven't yet become a matter of record. When they do, the public's anger and dismay will be tremendous because its current expectation of business as usual is the complete opposite of the reality that's coming."
Lets begin with some examples that relate to the first section of the aforementioned quote, to show that the deflation trend is in full force and becoming entrenched into the fabric of our lives:
Bankruptcies:
Bankruptcy filings increase: Cases up 12 percent over same period last year
Bankruptcy filings for January through June have increased 12 percent over the same time last year.
Filings at the end of last year in the U.S. Eastern District of Oklahoma were up 29 percent ahead of 2008, court records reflect.
“Now, they’re up another 12 percent, said Eastern District Chief Deputy Fred Burkes.
A steady climb began in 2006, he said.
“They will continue to go up every year,” said Gerald Miller, who is Chapter 7 bankruptcy trustee for the Eastern District of Oklahoma as well as a bankruptcy attorney.
Debtors who can't get ahead of their bills and want to avoid bankruptcy enjoy a unique alternative in Wisconsin - and they're using it in record-breaking numbers.
Petitions under the state's debt amortization law doubled in Milwaukee County from 2008 to 2009. This year, they're on pace to more than double again. Through the first six months of 2010, more than 1,400 people have filed, compared to just over 1,000 all of last year.
The onslaught has court officials scrambling to figure out whom to add to a list of approved trustees to administer the cases, which have little court oversight.
Bond Defaults:
Bond Defaults Stalk Michigan’s Wealthiest as Home Prices Crash
Michigan’s auto-industry collapse, which led to the worst home-price drop among U.S. states, has forced some of its wealthiest and fastest-growing communities to seek state aid to prevent municipal bond defaults.
Detroit, slammed by the state’s 74 percent housing-price decline, warned of bankruptcy when it borrowed in March to cover part of a $280 million deficit. Now, nearby communities in Livingston County such as Hartland Township and Howell Township may need legislation to help make bond payments.Falling property values and job losses stripped away the ability of communities to repay debt after auto-industry bankruptcies and the worst recession since the 1930s left the state with 13.6 percent unemployment, the second-highest rate in the U.S. after Nevada’s.
Munis Underperform Treasuries as Default Speculation Mounts
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, capital of the sixth most- populous U.S. state, has considered filing for bankruptcy protection in the face of $68 million in debt payments tied to an incinerator project.
Illinois, whose $13 billion deficit is about half its budget, had the cost of insuring its debt against default more than double since early April, to a record of 370 basis points, or $370,000 to protect $10 million of debt, according to CMA DataVision. A basis point is 0.01 percentage point.
Evaporation of Pensions:
In Budget Crisis, States Take Aim at Pension Costs
Many states are acknowledging this year that they have promised pensions they cannot afford and are cutting once-sacrosanct benefits, to appease taxpayers and attack budget deficits.
Illinois raised its retirement age to 67, the highest of any state, and capped public pensions at $106,800 a year. Arizona, New York, Missouri and Mississippi will make people work more years to earn pensions. Virginia is requiring employees to pay into the state pension fund for the first time. New Jersey will not give anyone pension credit unless they work at least 32 hours a week.
Ministers to slash pay-offs for civil servants
Generous “golden goodbye” payments to civil servants are to be cut drastically to make it cheaper for ministers to lay off thousands of public sector staff, The Daily Telegraph has learnt.
The changes, which will provoke a major confrontation with the unions, come as government departments are drawing up plans for budget cuts of up to 40 per cent.
With hundreds of thousands of state employees facing the sack, Civil Service managers have been told that tough new restrictions on redundancy payments will be in place within weeks.
Court sides with Schwarzenegger on minimum wage
A state appellate court on Friday sided with the Schwarzenegger administration in its attempt to temporarily impose the federal minimum wage on tens of thousands of state workers.
It was not immediately clear how the ruling would affect Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's order a day earlier to pay 200,000 state workers the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour as the state wrestles with a budget crisis.
The state controller, who cuts state paychecks, has refused to comply with the order. Friday's ruling affirms a lower-court decision in favor of the administration in a lawsuit filed two years ago after the governor's first attempt to impose the minimum wage.
The latest ruling from the California 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento concludes that state Controller John Chiang cannot ignore the minimum wage order from the state Department of Personnel Administration.
Unemployment:
A question keeps popping up in emails: "How can we lose 400,000+ jobs a week and yet have the unemployment rate stay flat and the monthly jobs report show gains?"
The answer is the economy is very dynamic. People change jobs all the time. Note that from 1975 forward, the number of claims was generally above 300,000 a week, yet some months the economy added well over 250,000 jobs.
Also note that the monthly published unemployment rate is from a household survey, not a survey of payroll data from businesses. That is why the monthly "establishment survey" (a sampling of actual payroll data) is not always in alignment with changes in the unemployment rate. At economic turns the discrepancy can be wide.
Barring short term census effects, it may be quite some time before we weekly claims drop to 300,000 or net hiring exceeds +250,000.
The Self-Inflicted Insanity of American Unemployment
There are many costs associated with high unemployment, both economic and social. They include not only daily income losses, which are catastrophic for most Americans, but also increased crime rates, family breakdown, increased incidence of mental and physical health disorders, increased alcohol and substance abuse and a generalized misery (See Bill Mitchell).
Yet despite the obvious pathologies created by long-term unemployment, bad policy continues to drive the Obama administration to perpetuate these trends. Worse, with polls indicating rising discontent with Democrat incumbents in the House and Senate, the President's political advisors appear to be recommending that the President ignore the advice of his economic team and press forward with deficit reduction ahead of job creation spending.
Bank Failures:
More Than 90 Banks Miss TARP Payments
The number of banks missing their TARP payments rose for the third straight quarter. In February, 74 banks deferred their payments; 55 deferred last November.
Record High Delinquency Rates On Commercial Loans Stress Banks
Commercial and multifamily delinquencies continued to increase in the first quarter of 2010 according to a report by the Mortgage Bankers Association.
According to Jamie Woodwell, MBA’s Vice President of Commercial Real Estate Research, “Weakness in the economy has continued to weigh on commercial properties, which in turn weighs on the mortgages they back. Economic growth, specifically in areas of jobs and consumer spending, will be key to stabilizing the commercial property and mortgage markets going forward.”
The MBA report includes loans backed by office buildings, apartment buildings, shopping centers and other income producing property. Excluded are construction and development loans which are often backed by single-family residential developments and included in many regulatory reports on commercial loan delinquencies.
Economic Collapse:
States of Crisis for 46 Governments Facing Greek-Style Deficits
Far from rebounding, the Golden State, with a $1.8 trillion economy that’s larger than Russia’s, is sinking deeper into its financial funk. And it’s not alone.
Even as the U.S. appears to be on the mend -- gross domestic product has climbed three straight quarters -- finances in Arizona, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and other states show few signs of improvement. Forty-six states face budget shortfalls that add up to $112 billion for the fiscal year ending next June, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington research institution.
Government Debt Issuers Most Likely to Default
With the recent news surrounding the troubled economies of Greece and Dubai, many have questioned the stability and safety of government debt issued by these countries.
But whose debt is really in the worst shape?
To answer this question CMA DataVision , a subsidiary of the CME Group, has put together its "Sovereign Risk Monitor", which ranks the world’s most volatile sovereign debt issuers according to percent changes in five-year credit default swaps (CDS).
Depression:
Economists' survey of the UK: is inflation or deflation a greater risk to the economy?
Deflation. Everything in a debt crisis is about the deflationary headwinds of balance sheet reconstruction (banks, households, government). On top of that we have historically high spare capacity in the economy and structurally weak labour markets (even though unemployment hasn’t so far been as bad as people feared).
The record high rate of mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures remains the banking industry’s biggest obstacle towards financial recovery. The horrific statistics for the first quarter on mortgage defaults provides little reason to believe that the housing crisis will end anytime soon.
The delinquency rate for all mortgages on one to four residential units was 10%
4.6% of all homes are in the process of foreclosure
More than one out of every eight or 15% of all American homes with a mortgage are either in default or in the foreclosure process
In May, 94,000 homeowners lost their homes to foreclosure, for an annualized rate of 1.1 million homes
The percentage of home mortgages that are 90 days or more past due or in the process of foreclosure is 9.5%
Almost 25% of homeowners owe mortgage debt exceeding the value of the home
Banks and mortgage investors are now sitting on an estimated inventory of 550,000 homes that have been repossessed through foreclosure and need to be sold into a weak market
The social mood transformation from positive to negative will continue in the direction a deflationary spiral follows: down. As the transformation gains momentum, we will see more bankruptcies, bond defaults, and pensions defaults in an environment with higher unemployment. There will also be an increase in bank failures as the economic collapse leads to a full-on depression.
A collection of a handful of articles that point the way to showing how tax dollars are being put to waste around the world:
Waste and laziness:
Of course, when I tell my friends in the private sector about my working conditions, they can scarcely believe it. As the recession bites, they consider themselves lucky to be holding on to their jobs, and are willing to work extra hours or take a pay freeze to ensure their firm's survival.
In the public sector, though, there is no competitive edge; no incentive to cuts costs or improve efficiency. Few genuinely fear for their job security, protected as they are by threats of union action every time the axe looks likely to fall.
It's the same story across the world: when a nation's public sector is allowed to expand into a bloated behemoth, it is almost impossible to cut it down to size, still less to change the culture of waste and laziness that sets in.
I don't know what the solution is. Even those, like myself, who join with the best of intentions are soon worn down and end up subscribing to the 'if you can't beat them, join them' school of thought.
Of course the real scandal is it's your money that's paying for the jollies, the prayer rooms and the never- ending workshops.
In my authority's borough, the average householder pays £1,330 a year in council tax. I'm sure they'd be thrilled to know that they're funding Jerry's internet gambling and Doreen's never-ending sick pay.
Abuse and collusion:
Now that employer, the Maywood, California Police Department, is being liquidated. In fact, the entire municipal government of Maywood, a Los Angeles suburb of roughly 40,000 people, is being dissolved on account of bankruptcy. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department will provide law enforcement coverage to Maywood, and a rump city council will coordinate delivery of services provided by neighboring Bell.
In Maywood, as case elsewhere, the economic crash has choked off the tax revenue on which the municipal government subsists. The town is currently facing a $450,000 deficit. But what finally broke the city, reports the Los Angeles Times, was the decision by the California Joint Powers Insurance Authority to terminate "general liability and workers' compensation coverage because the city posed too high a risk."
Victims of police abuse in Maywood were required to go to police headquarters to obtain official complaint forms. As the March 2006 case described above demonstrates, the police department was a hazardous place to visit unless you were part of the Brotherhood. If they were fortunate, citizens who attempted to file a protest would escape the building after suffering nothing worse than contemptuous verbal abuse from the sergeant in charge of dealing with complaints.
Eventually federal civil rights lawsuits began to pile up, as did the costs of settling them. The Maywood Police Department literally killed the city government it supposedly served.
From: Maywood, RIP: When Police Kill A City
Misinformation and misdirection:
In my article, Economic Megatrends That Will Drive Our Future, I point our seven megatrends that will impact our economy for the long term:
1. The culture of consumption is broken and won’t return to former levels. This is the key to everything.
2. Consumers will continue to increase savings to prepare for retirement.
3. Declining U.S. consumer demand will continue to negatively impact the world economy.
4. Deflation (deleveraging) will continue for some time.
5. Home ownership rates will decline to more historical levels of, say, around 66%, down from the high of 69% during the boom, which will keep a lid on home prices.
6. Government stimulus and recovery programs only delay recovery and deepen the pain for workers.
7. Massive federal deficits will double the national debt, result in higher taxes, and will act as a permanent drag on the economy.
I wrote this article in September, 2009, and it still stands. The significant things to note are No. 1 and No.2. Consumers are over-indebted and are doing their best to pay down debt.
One must ask what the private economy would do with the $62 billion already spent through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ($202 billion contracts, grants and loans awarded to date). I urge anyone who believes the spending through ARRA would stimulate the economy to check out the various contracts and grants that are being awarded. The main web site is Recovery.gov. You will see that most are repairs to federal facilities or grants for federal programs. I recommend you hold your nose while doing this. They are outrageous wastes of your tax money and they will damage the ability of the economy to recover and will place a great burden on future generations to pay them.
If government spending were the key to economic wealth then we should all be rich.
From: Will We Have Inflation, Deflation, or Hyperinflation? Part 3
Failure and collapse:
For going on three years, the developed world's economic policy has been dominated by the revival of the old idea that vast amounts of public spending could prevent deflation, cure a recession, and ignite a new era of government-led prosperity. It hasn't turned out that way.
President Obama's tragic mistake was to blow out the U.S. federal balance sheet on spending that has produced little bang for the buck. The fantastical Keynesian notion (the "multiplier") that $1 of spending produces $1.50 in growth was long ago demolished by Harvard's Robert Barro, among others. That $1 in spending has to come from somewhere, which means in taxes or borrowing from productive parts of the private economy. Given that so much of the U.S. stimulus went for transfer payments such as Medicaid and unemployment insurance, the "multiplier" has almost certainly been negative.
What the world has now reached instead is a Keynesian dead end. We are told to let Congress continue to spend and borrow until the precise moment when Mr. Summers and Mark Zandi and the other architects of our current policy say it is time to raise taxes to reduce the huge deficits and debt that their spending has produced. Meanwhile, individuals and businesses are supposed to be unaffected by the prospect of future tax increases, higher interest rates, and more government control over nearly every area of the economy. Even the CEOs of the Business Roundtable now see the damage this is doing.
From: The Keynesian Dead End
Greed and corruption:
Something has gone rotten in America. Investor Bernie Madoff made a fortune from a $65 billion Ponzi scheme that wiped out the life savings of a good chunk of his 4,800 investors. Given the power to fill a vacant U.S. Senate seat, Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich allegedly plotted to enrich himself, saying the public office "is a [expletive] valuable thing—you don't just give it away." After losing about 80 percent of its value last year, Wall Street giant Merrill Lynch paid out $209 million in bonuses to its top ten executives just ahead of its take over by Bank of America. Congress promised to crack down on earmarks, then passed a spending bill in March with nearly 9,000 of them. And just days after getting an $85 billion bailout, executives at insurance titan AIG shelled out $440,000 for a luxury retreat at a California resort; $23,000 of that went just for spa treatments. Then, after receiving even more bailout money, they attempted to award themselves $165 million worth of bonuses paid for by U.S. taxpayers.
From: Outrageous: We're Done with Greed
Insult and injury:
According to the report (PDF), the IRS made a variety of accounting errors last year that "could adversely affect the reliability of its financial statements" and result in "duplicate or erroneous refunds." Among the mistakes were a "failure to record the receipt of a taxpayer’s $3 million payment" and an $8 billion discrepancy between two accounting systems tracking how much money taxpayers owe. The audit also found a $5.1 billion "unexplained variance" between the total amount the agency took in last year and the amount its detailed tax files said it took in.
But what's a few billion here or there, right?
In truth, the shortcomings are all relatively minor infractions given the size of the IRS, and don't materially affect its performance of its duties. And you'll find similar lapses in virtually any close examination of a huge bureaucracy.
From: Irony alert: IRS fails government audit
To say that the shortcomings do not affect the performance of the IRS is wrong. On the contrary, when there is $5.1 billion difference then not only has there been performance issues in the past but also there will be performance issues in the future.
