..and we give them money why ?
Comments »Coffee Break: The Lake Under Antarctica
U.S. Constitution Losing Influence in Nation Development
FLASH: GLOBAL CDS SPREADS CONTINUE TO PLUNGE
Hmmm, I wonder why? Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they are worthless, and will never be honored due to perpetual bailouts.
Nomura Makes the Case for A Huge Drop Off of Electricity in China to Correlate With a Drop in Industrial Production
Japanese Bond Yields Approach a Triple Bottom Low of 0.94%
Cheap ECB Money May Hamper Future Bond Sales
Five Fast Food Items You Won’t Find in the U.S.
HU SHENG/EPA/CORBISIt’d be nice to think you’d never settle for fast food when traveling abroad, but anyone who has logged significant mileage outside the U.S. knows that flight delays, language barriers, a sudden lack of funds, and other hiccups have a way of sabotaging even the greatest dietary intentions.
In other words: Sometimes you gotta eat McDonald’s.
One way to allay the guilt is by ordering an item specific to the country you’re visiting, rather than one of the many homogenized foods you can buy back home. It’s still fast food, of course, but at least it’s culturally relevant fast food.
To whet your appetite, here’s a sampling of five U.S. chains’ most unique overseas offerings.
Foie Gras Rossini Burger: Wendy’s in Japan
This wallet-shocking $16 sandwich is the highlight of the recently unveiled premium menu at Wendy’s restaurants in Japan. It’s pretty much what it sounds like: a square hunk of beef piled high with all the usual fixings (lettuce, tomato, red onion), plus a slab of buttery-rich foie gras. Anti-foie crusaders can try the Truffle and Porcini Grilled Chicken Sandwich instead—priced to move at just $12.50 a pop.
Patbingsoo: Burger King in South Korea
The chain’s spin on this popular shaved-ice dessert comprises sweet azuki beans, heavy cream, soft-serve ice cream, fruit cocktail, sliced strawberries, and sugary condensed milk. It’s the perfect chaser for BK’s Bulgogi Burger, a flame-broiled beef patty smothered in garlicky Korean barbecue sauce, padded with raw onions, and served on a sesame seed bun.
Der Nürnburger: McDonald’s in Germany
Three fat bratwursts snuggled up with bacon underneath a blanket of gooey orange cheese. Mmmm… mmmm… heart attack?
Golden Fortune: Pizza Hut in Malaysia
Commercials for this loaded Malay pie show it uniting estranged family members and giving lonely widows a reason to live. And why not? It’s piled fist-thick with crispy tempura king prawns, slivers of crab meat, some kind of unidentified “fish,” juicy pineapple chunks, and lime wedges. But it’s the pizza’s calorific cheese-stuffed dough ring—a.k.a. “crowns of cheesy liquid gold”—that really steals the spotlight. All of which makes Pizza Hut’s old Russian heavyweight, the Moskva (pizza heaped with sardines, tuna, mackerel, salmon, and onions), look positively wussy by comparison.
Egg Tarts: KFC in China
Gifting your loved one a box of these two-bite custard-y pastries on Valentine’s Day has become all the rage in China, Thailand, and other Southeast Asian countries, thanks mostly to a major push by Western marketers last year. Bloggers consistently rave that these flaky desserts are “to die for.” Split some with your significant other on a romantic date, along with a duo of shrimp burgers, side order of bacon mushroom chicken rice, and steaming bowl of congee with pickles.
China Embarks on First Time Home Buying Support
Speculators are hurting the market place; so the Chinese government will help out first time home buyers with construction loans, ( like they need more construction,) and making sure lending is available.
Comments »China Forecasts a Slowdown in Industrial Output
“China’s industrial output growth is likely to slow this quarter as the world economy cools and Europe’s debt crisis worsens, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said.
“The global economy is slowing down, Europe’s sovereign debt crisis is deepening and the downside risks to the world economy are rising with international demand still slack and global commodities and financial markets continuing to be volatile,” the ministry said in a statement before a briefing in Beijing today.”
Comments »23.9% Unemployment in South Africa is the Lowest Since 2009
India Forecasts The Slowest GDP Growth Since 2009; Rate Cuts Expected
Did You Expect Greece to Reach a Deal?
Body Blow To German Global Warming Movement: Major Media Outlets Unload On “CO2 Lies”
By P Gosselin
“THE CO2 LIES … pure fear-mongering … should we blindly trust the experts?”
That’s what Germany’s leading daily Bild (see photo) wrote in its print and online editions today, on the very day that renowned publisher Hoffmann & Campe officially released a skeptic book – one written by a prominent socialist and environmental figure.
This is huge. More than I ever could have possibly imagined. And more is coming in the days ahead! The Bild piece was just the first of a series.
Mark this as the date that Germany’s global warming movement took a massive body blow.
Today, not one, but two of Germany’s most widely read news media published comprehensive skeptical climate science articles in their print and online editions, coinciding with the release of a major climate skeptical book, Die kalte Sonne (The Cold Sun).
Germany has now plunged into raucus discord on the heated topic of climate change
What has set it all off? One of the fathers of Germany’s modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, decided to author a climate science skeptical book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning. Vahrenholt’s skepticism started when he was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors. When he pointed them out, IPCC officials simply brushed them aside. Stunned, he asked himself, “Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?”
Vahrenholt decided to do some digging. His colleague Dr. Lüning also gave him a copy of Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion. He was horrified by the sloppiness and deception he found. Well-connected to Hoffmann & Campe, he and Lüning decided to write the book. Die kalte Sonne cites 800 sources and has over 80 charts and figures. It examines and summarizes the latest science.
Conclusion: climate catastrophe is called off
The science was hyped. The book started hitting the bookshops today and has already hit no. 1 on the Amazon.de list for environment books. Indications show that it will climb very high in the overall bestseller charts. It’s published by a renowned publishing house and is now sending shock waves through the German climate science establishment. The first printing will produce 20,000 copies. I expect they will sell out rather quickly.
Today Germany’s national tabloid Bild (which has a whopping circulation of 16 million) devoted half of page 2 on an article called:
THE CO2 LIE
Renowned team of scientists claim the climate catastrophe is fear-mongering by politics“
The widely read Bild will follow with the rest of the series in the days ahead. In part I today Bild presents “What the IPCC of the UN doesn’t tell you.” Bild asks “what if the IPCC is wrong? Can we really blindly trust these experts? Are they really independent?”
Bild then writes:
The phenomenal prognoses of heat from the IPCC are pure fear-mongering.”
The Bild series is sure to cause radical environmentalists to seethe and lash out. Expect an all-out assault in the days and weeks ahead. Already the reaction from activists has been swift and virulent – though they have yet to read the book.
They never wanted the debate – and now the dam has broken
And the floods of skepticism are sweeping over the country. Worse, Germany’s flagship weekly news magazine Der Spiegel today also featured a 4-page exclusive interview with Vahrenholt, where he repeated that the IPCC has ignored a large part of climate science and that IPCC scientists exaggerated the impact of CO2 on climate. Vahrenholt said that by extending the known natural cycles of the past into the future, and taking CO2′s real impact into effect, we should expect a few tenths of a degree of cooling.
At a press conference today in Berlin, Vahrenholt, Lüning and publisher Hoffmann & Campe introduced the book and answered reporters’ questions. When asked why Hoffmann & Campe decided to publish “such a book”, the spokesman simply answered that the time is right – and there’s a real audience for the book. Even the weather timing was right! Germany is now experiencing it’s worst cold snap in 26 years. That makes it hard to deny lack of warming.
It needs to be pointed out Vahrenholt and Lüning are not skeptics; they are lukewarmers who have not been able to find any evidence of a coming climate catastrophe. They believe that man should switch to renewables, but do so in a rational manner: “Work fast, but don’t hurry.”
Read the rest here.
Comments »US warns siding with Syria’s Assad “losing bet”
Read here:
Comments »Warning that it’s a “losing bet” to side with dictator Bashar al-Assad, the White House on Monday urged friends of the Syrian people to help out “before the violence puts a political solution out of reach.”
But refusing to offer a “lead from behind” strategy, the Obama administration insists that after nearly a year of violence and a disappointing weekend that saw a U.N. Security Council resolution fall apart upon Russian and Chinese objections, a military solution is not forthcoming.
On Monday, the U.S. shut down its embassy in Syria, withdrawing Ambassador Robert Ford and 17 American officials. The State Department issued a warning for U.S. citizens to leave the country and announced that Poland will serve as a “protecting power” for the United States, providing consular services to any Americans remaining in the country.
That decision followed a violent crackdown in the city of Homs over the weekend that left hundreds dead. According to the U.N., since the March 2011 anti-government protests began, more than 5,400 Syrians have been killed, mostly by Assad forces.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said the decision to leave the embassy is part of a long-term effort to draw down embassy staff in Damascus, a reflection of the weakened security situation in Syria and the need to ensure the safety of U.S. diplomats.
But while it’s too dangerous for U.S. diplomats to stay in Syria, the violence is not too much for the U.S. government to intervene.
“I think it is very important to try to resolve this without recourse to outside military intervention and I think that’s possible,” President Obama told NBC in an interview that aired Monday, explaining that the administration’s “lead from behind” strategy used to drive out Muammar al-Qaddafi from Libya, would be implemented on “a case-by-case basis based on how unified the international community was, what our capacities were.”
India Agrees to Pay Iran in Gold for Oil
Global Investors Worry Over Global Financial Rules
“The United States is coming to be seen as a global threat, acting unilaterally with aggressive new market rules that critics say will hurt U.S. firms, foreign banks, and international markets in one swoop.
The new buzzword in the financial world is “extraterritoriality”, or ET. The idea that a government can exercise its authority beyond its borders.
The fear is that after the 2007-2009 financial crisis that roiled global markets, some countries will engage in an arms race of tough financial reforms in order to be seen as the safest capital markets, and will haphazardly foist their own rules on other nations.
Despite its talk of a global level playing field, the United States is being portrayed as a rogue country, with its unmatched Volcker rule to curtail banks’ risky trades and its accelerated timetable to put in place new derivatives reforms.”
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