Britain is heading for economic depression for the first time since the 1930s, economists have warned.
Families must brace themselves for a slump of far greater severity and longevity than the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s, they warned. They said the current crisis will be of a scale to rival the biggest peace-time crisis in modern history – the Great Depression.
The warning was delivered by economists and politicians after the Office for National Statistics revealed that the economy shrank by 1.5 per cent in the final three months of 2008 alone.
The contraction follows a 0.6 per cent fall in gross domestic product (GDP) – the most comprehensive measure of Britain’s wealth generation – during the previous three months. This means Britain fulfils the criteria for a technical recession – two successive quarters of negative output.
An army of accountants is combing through the books, trying to establish just how much the toxic assets of the bailed-out banks are actually worth. At stake, says the Government, is the future of Britain’s economy.
Toxic asset: Sir Fred Goodwin of RBS has seen his reputation collapse Photo: REUTERS
Before he was unceremoniously fired as chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir Fred Goodwin often said that he had turned the 280-year-old institution into “a sausage machine”.
RBS, like other banks, was buying and selling pre-packaged parcels of debt, which started out as mortgages and loans but were put through a corporate mincer and wrapped into packages containing small pieces of hundreds, if not thousands, of loans. Rather like sausages, no one could be entirely sure what was in them – but as long as they paid a decent rate of interest and the bonuses kept flowing, no one cared.
As we all now know, those parcels had been bulked up with sub-prime loans, which became effectively worthless “toxic assets” when the US housing market crashed.
Confirmation yesterday that the bankers’ avarice has officially plunged Britain into recession added to the growing bewilderment as to exactly why we are on the hook for almost £1 trillion in bail-outs and guarantees.
No one even knows exactly how many of these toxic assets British banks are holding, and how much more it might cost the taxpayer to get out of this unholy mess – which is why an army of accountants is about to begin the daunting, if not downright impossible, task of tracking down and putting a value on all the debts of all the banks in which the taxpayer has taken a stake.
GENEVA, Jan 23 (Reuters) – Zimbabwe’s cholera epidemic is “far from under control” and could exceed 60,000 cases over the next week, the Red Cross warned on Friday.
Torrential rains are expected to spark major flooding and exacerbate the water-borne outbreak that has killed 2,773 people among 50,000 infected since August, the United Nations said.
“The outbreak in Zimbabwe is only increasing in scale, it’s claiming more lives,” Dr. Tammam Aloudat, senior health officer at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told journalists in Geneva.
The World Health Organisation (WHO), a U.N. agency, warned in December that up to 60,000 people could be infected if the country’s worst cholera epidemic spiralled out of control.
“It is difficult to predict where the outbreak will peak. It might even go beyond that nightmare scenario,” Aloudat said.
– The Fed: Life after zero (CNN Money):
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The Federal Reserve has a two-day meeting next week to discuss what to do with interest rates. That’s two days more than the central bank needs.
– McCain Now Obama’s No. 1 Senate Ally (NewsMax):
GOP Sen. John McCain is positioning himself to be one of President Barack Obama’s strongest supporters, effectively giving Democrats the votes they need to override any GOP attempt to block the new administration’s legislative agenda.
– Venture Capital Fell 33% Last Quarter to Lowest Level Since ’05 (Bloomberg):
Jan. 24 (Bloomberg) — Venture-capital investment dropped 33 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, hammered by a recession that drove software deals to their lowest levels in a decade and cut access to capital for alternative energy firms. Total investment in startup companies fell to $5.4 billion, the lowest total since early 2005,
– Schlumberger sheds 5,000 after oil price fall (Financial Times): Schlumberger, the world’s biggest oil services company, on Friday said it would reduce its staff by 5,000 worldwide as it reported a 17 per cent drop in fourth-quarter earnings following the collapse of oil prices.
– Taro Aso gives Japanese £100 each to spend way out of recession (Times Online):
The move, which he has described as “the best economic measure of all”, involves a handout of at least 12,000 yen (£100) to every citizen over the age of 18. The prospect of the windfall has unleashed a national wave of speculation about how the money might best be spent, and the eccentric world of Japanese retail is pushing hard to attract the cash. (What can you say???)
Barack Obama gave the go-ahead for his first military action yesterday, missile strikes against suspected militants in Pakistan which killed at least 18 people.
Four days after assuming the presidency, he was consulted by US commanders before they launched the two attacks. Although Obama has abandoned many of the “war on terror” policies of George Bush while he was president, he is not retreating from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders.
The US believes they are hiding in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, and made 30 strikes last year in which more than 200 people were killed. In the election, Obama hinted at increased operations in Pakistan, saying he thought Bush had made a mistake in switching to Iraq before completing the job against al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The US marine corp commander said yesterday that his 22,000 troops should be redeployed from Iraq to Afghanistan. Gen James Conway said “the time is right” to leave Iraq now the war had become largely nation-building rather than the pitched fighting in which the corps excelled; he wanted the marines in Afghanistan, especially in the south where insurgents, and the Taliban and al-Qaida, benefit from both a nearby safe haven in Pakistan and a booming trade in narcotics.
Obama has warned that he is prepared to bomb inside Pakistan if he gets relevant intelligence about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. He had also said he would act against militants along the border if the Pakistan government failed to.
The US missiles were fired by unmanned Predator drones, which hang in the sky gathering intelligence through surveillance and, when commanded and directed by remote control, to launch attacks.
So Brown is either lying or incredibly incompetent.
Everybody who does not buy into corporate media brainwashing and has only the slightest interest in economics and politics saw this crisis coming. In fact it was very difficult not to see it.
In 1994 we were taught in university that there would most probably be a crisis coming around 2008 – 2010, by 1999 I knew that there would be a ‘staged’ world economic crisis. Long before 9/11 I told people that gold is ‘the’ investment for the future and I am definitely not a prophet.
Ron Paul, Peter Schiff, Jim Rogers, Max Keiser, Paul Craig Roberts and Marc Faber have warned years ago about this crisis and told people about possible solutions to the problems we are facing right now.
The U.K. and the U.S. are broke.
Britain’s recession could be the worst since the 1930s, an expert warned today in the wake of Gordon Brown’s admission that he hadn’t seen it coming.
As the pound dropped to a new low, economics boffins confirmed that the massive downturn was already bigger than anyone had predicted.
Charles Davis of the Centre for Economics and Business Research told The Telegraph that the contraction of the economy ‘supports our view that in 2009 the economy is set for the steepest contractions in the post-war era, with a fall in the region of 3 per cent year-on-year’.
Under pressure: A bleary-eyed Gordon Brown emerging from a television studio today after admitting he had not foreseen the financial crisis
Mr Davis added: “Today’s figures are the final nail in the coffin for Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s claim to have ‘ended boom and bust.”
His sentiments were echoed by Roger Bootle, managing director of Capital Economics, I think there’s a very good chance this recession will be the worst since the 1930s. I suspect the economy could shrink by 6 per cent from last year to the end of next year – and that might not be the end.”
As the recession took a firmer grip yesterday, it emerged that the pound had closed at its lowest level in 24 years – sliding by more than three quarters against the U.S. dollar to $1.3668.
Click on the chart to enlarge (or better open it in a new tab).
(Refresh your browser to watch the movie again)
Movie shows the scale of the crisis, comparing past banking crises back to 1919 to the current crisis.
Why are the Fed’s lending facilities not working this time as in the past?
A few readers asked if the BORROW data are CPI adjusted. The answer is, no. We tried it and it just didn’t make that much difference. Our point is this crisis on a different scale than previous crises. Adjusted for CPI does not change that, and you can’t choose an inflation adjustment option to produce a chart from the Fed’s site, and we wanted to use the Fed’s own charts.
Here’s the final chart with the date adjusted for CPI inflation, for the purists
Farmer Edgardo Vazquez walks by dead cows in Stroeder, Argentina, Monday, Jan. 19, 2009. Farmers nationwide are demanding the government’s help after a year long drought that has killed nearly one million animals and destroyed crops. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
STROEDER, Argentina (AP) – Skeletons of livestock are piling up in the scorching sun of the Southern Hemisphere’s summer as the worst drought in a generation turns much of Argentina’s breadbasket into a dust bowl.
The nation’s farm sector stands to lose $5 billion this year alone – a huge blow to the economy of Argentina, a top world exporter of soy, corn, wheat and beef – as well as to the government of President Cristina Fernandez, which faces billions of dollars in debt payments this year.
Wheat fields that once supplied flour for pasta-loving Argentines now resemble deserts, and spiny thistles are all that survive on cattle ranches in southern Buenos Aires province.
Nothing edible grows, said Hilda Schneider, a 65-year-old rancher who has lost nearly 500 cows to starvation.
Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center forStrategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
“Obama’s economic team consists of the very people who brought on the debt crisis. Now they are going to make it worse.”
“However, the financial gangsters and their shills that Obama has put in charge of economic policy are thinking only of their own interests. What happens to the American people is not a concern.”
“The unexamined question is: Who is going to finance the next wave of debt?”
“The US budget deficit for fiscal year 2009 already appears to be on a path to $2 trillion, and that is before Obama’s stimulus program. What we are looking at is a $3 trillion budget deficit if Obama’s program is enacted in time to impact the economy this year.”
“…in marked contrast with the approach of the gangsters running US economic policy. The gangsters are using the crisis as an opportunity to steal from taxpayers and to finance their misdeeds and exorbitant salaries with Federal Reserve loans.”
“Their shills among economists and the financial press tell the people that the solution is to fatten up the banks with funds so they will resume lending to an over-indebted public that will then return to the shopping malls.”
By Paul Craig Roberts:
For a picture of the US real estate crisis, imagine New Orleans wrecked by Hurricane Katrina, and before the waters even begin to recede, a second Katrina hits.
The 1,120,000 lost US retail jobs in 2008 are a signal that the second stage of the real estate bust is about to hit the economy.This time it will be commercial real estate — shopping malls, strip malls, warehouses, and office buildings. As businesses close and rents decline, the ability to service the mortgages on the over-built commercial real estate disappears.
The over-building was helped along by the irresponsibly low interest rates, but the main impetus came from the slide of the US saving rate to zero and the rise in household indebtedness. The shrinkage of savings and the increase in debt raised consumer spending to 72 percent of GDP. The proliferation of malls and the warehouses that service them reflect the rise in consumer spending as a share of GDP.
Like the federal government, consumers spent more than they earned and borrowed to cover the difference. Obviously, this could not go on forever, and consumer debt has reached its limit.
Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) — Freddie Mac, the mortgage-finance company under federal control, said it will ask the U.S. Treasury Department for as much as $35 billion more in aid.
Freddie, which took $13.8 billion from Treasury in November, said in a securities filing today that its fourth- quarter operating losses will again drive its net worth below zero. The company also said it settled a dispute over Washington Mutual loans with JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Treasury officials pledged up to $100 billion apiece to keep Freddie and Fannie Mae, the other government-sponsored enterprise, solvent. Aid is needed if the value of their assets drops below the amount they owe on their obligations. Fannie, which hasn’t drawn on that financing yet, said in November that it may have to after reporting results for the fourth quarter of 2008.
Timothy Geithner, nominee for U.S. treasury secretary, testifies during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee in Washington, Jan. 21, 2009. Photographer: Jay Mallin/Bloomberg News
Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) — Treasuries fell, with 30-year bonds posting the biggest weekly loss in almost 22 years, on concern that debt sales will increase as the government boosts spending to ease the deepening economic slump.
Ten-year yields touched a six-week high amid speculation President Barack Obama’s administration will join governments around the world in selling record amounts of bonds to rescue banking systems and battle a global recession. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. yesterday raised its 2009 Treasury borrowing estimate to $2.5 trillion.
“Supply is a concern for this year,” said Michael Pond, interest-rate strategist in New York at Barclays Capital Inc., one of 17 primary dealers required to bid at U.S. debt auctions. “We are approaching the refunding period where we will get long-dated issuance, so it’s not surprising that it is weighing on investors’ minds.”
David Cameron: ‘If we continue on this path the money will run out’ (PA)
Britain risks bankruptcy and a humiliating bailout by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) because of Gordon Brown’s borrowing, David Cameron said yesterday. With official confirmation that the economy has entered recession expected today, the Tory leader delivered his strongest warning yet: “If we continue on Labour’s path of fiscal irresponsibility, at some point – and it could be very soon – the money will simply run out.”
His speech to the Demos think-tank in London raised the spectre of the 1976 bailout, when James Callaghan’s Labour government was forced to make deep public spending cuts in return for a £2.3bn loan from the IMF.
His remarks are bound to provoke Labour accusations that he is running the country down. Mr Cameron insisted he was not predicting a date by which the Government would “end up back at the IMF”. But he added: “What I am saying is that we are running the risk of those things happening and those are risks that no government should responsibly run.”
The Tory leader added: “We are borrowing, according to the Government’s current estimates, 8 per cent of our GDP in the next financial year. That is the same percentage that Denis Healey [the then chancellor] was borrowing when he went to the IMF in 1976.”
Shares in Barclays and other banks have been hit hard since the ban on short-selling was lifted. They fell 10% yesterday. Photo: Martin Godwin
One of London’s most successful hedge funds has made £12m in just four days by betting on a fall in the Barclays share price, a move that will heighten the controversy over so-called short-selling strategies.
Lansdowne Partners, which also profited from the fall in the share price of Northern Rock at the height of its problems, sold Barclays shares last Friday – when the bank lost almost a quarter of its value in frenzied trading – and bought them back again on Wednesday after they had fallen by almost £1.
– Obama Presses Lawmakers on Stimulus, Accountability (Bloomberg):
Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama pressed congressional leaders to reach a consensus on an $825 billion stimulus plan, warning the country may be facing an “unprecedented” economic crisis.
– Geithner Hints at Harder Line on China Trade (New York Times):
WASHINGTON — Timothy F. Geithner, who moved closer to confirmation as Treasury secretary on Thursday, told senators that President Obama believed China was “manipulating” its currency, suggesting a more confrontational stance toward that country than under the Bush administration. (More change!)
– Boston Scientific Founders Bash Baby on Lehman Bets (Bloomberg):
Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) — The men who built Boston Scientific Corp. into the world’s biggest seller of heart stents have dumped $484 million in shares to repay loans after other assets were frozen by the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. bankruptcy.
– Bank deposits at ECB drop sharply (Financial Times): Deposits have now fallen by €171.5bn over the past two days and are almost two-thirds down from the record €315.3bn reached less than a fortnight ago.
One family will have their home repossessed every seven minutes as the number of defaulted mortgage payments jumps dramatically this year, city regulators have warned.
The number of people losing their homes nearly doubled in the three months to the end of September last year, according to new figures released by the Financial Services Authority (FSA).
A total of 13,161 properties were repossessed around the UK during the third quarter of 2008, representing a 92% increase since the previous year.
However, a large proportion of these remained unsold, with the number of homes offloaded by lenders increasing by less than 10%.
The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) said that the situation was only likely to worsen during 2009, with up to 75,000 repossessions expected over the course of the year as hundreds of thousands of homeowners slip behind in their mortgage repayments.
Regulators recorded a 24% rise in the number of people failing to make mortgage payments in July to September, bringing the total to 340,000. The increase was 10% compared to the previous quarter, the watchdog said.
Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University, speaks during a panel discussion at the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, in Washington, Sunday, Oct. 12, 2008. Photographer: Chris Kleponis/Bloomberg News
Jan. 23 (Bloomberg) — Stocks will retreat around the world because of shrinking demand from China as growth in the third- biggest economy slows, said Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who predicted last year’s financial crisis.
Global equities will fall 20 percent from current levels as China, which contributed 19.5 percent to total growth in 2007, contends with its slowest expansion in seven years, he said. Wall Street strategists predict the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index will rise 29 percent this year from the closing level yesterday.
Roubini, an economics professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, said China already is in a “recession” despite government data showing a 6.8 percent fourth-quarter growth rate, as power output drops and manufacturing shrinks.
“Demand is falling in China, they’re over-invested in capacity and there’s a global supply glut,” Roubini, 50, said in a telephone interview. “It has very, very important implications.”
Roubini’s view is shared by Societe Generale SA global strategist Albert Edwards, who was correct in forecasting in March 2007 that a U.S. contraction would spur a bear market in equities. Edwards says the China slowdown will reduce earnings at industrial, energy and raw-materials companies, worsening a selloff in emerging and developed-market stocks that may send the S&P 500 down 40 percent to 500.
Britain’s three top lenders need another £80bn of capital to end concerns about their solvency once and for all, stabilising the financial system, according to analysts at investment bank Nomura.
The warning will fuel fears that Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking Group and Barclays may be fully nationalised, coming after a week in which share prices in all three banks have more than halved. Nomura added that the latest Government bail-out measures “do not change the key issue of the unknown and potentially unlimited losses of the banking system, and therefore whether it will ultimately require further capital injections”.
Investors in banks have been spooked by worse-than-expected losses at HBOS and RBS. Comparing the current recession with the 1990s, Nomura estimates that over four years Barclays will record credit losses of £33bn, Lloyds £56bn and RBS £61bn.
Ron Paul: “Foreign policy is dictated by individuals who control both the Republican and the Democrat party”
The same individuals – the elite – who control the government also control Wall Street and the Federal Reserve. Obama is just a puppet:
“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson. History depicts Andrew Jackson as the last truly honorable and incorruptible American president.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Gentlemen, I have had men watching you for a long time and I am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter, I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves.” – Andrew Jackson
“When the President signs this act [Federal Reserve Act of 1913], the invisible government by the money power — proven to exist by the Monetary Trust Investigation — will be legalized. The new law will create inflation whenever the trusts want inflation. From now on, depressions will be scientifically created.”
– Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr.
“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country [by signing the Federal Reserve Act of 1913]. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.” – Woodrow Wilson
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” – Henry Ford
“I believe that if the people of this nation fully understood what Congress has done to them over the last 49 years, they would move on Washington; they would not wait for an election… It adds up to a preconceived plan to destroy the economic and social independence of the United States!“
– George W. Malone
“We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks, hereinafter called the FED. They are not government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers.” – Louis McFadden
“It was not accidental [the 1929 stock-market “crash”]. It was a carefully contrived occurrence. … The international bankers sought to bring about a condition of despair here so that they might emerge as rulers of us all.” – Louis McFadden
“I am myself persuaded, on the basis of extensive study of the historical evidence, that… the severity of each of the contractions – 1920-21, 1929-33, and 1937-38 – is directly attributable to acts of commission and omission by the Reserve authorities and would not have occurred under earlier monetary and banking arrangements.” – Milton Friedman
“The high office of the president has been used to foment a plot to destroy America’s freedom, and before I leave office I must inform the citizens of this plight.” (November 12, 1963) – John F. Kennedy (Date of Kennedy Assassination : November 22, 1963)
“Capital must protect itself in every way… Debts must be collected and loans and mortgages foreclosed as soon as possible. When through a process of law the common people have lost their homes, they will be more tractable and more easily governed by the strong arm of the law applied by the central power of leading financiers. People without homes will not quarrel with their leaders. This is well known among our principle men now engaged in forming an imperialism of capitalism to govern the world. By dividing the people we can get them to expend their energies in fighting over questions of no importance to us except as teachers of the common herd.” – J. P. Morgan
“In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. … This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.” – Alan Greenspan
“By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
– John Maynard Keynes
“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws.” – Mayer Amschel Rothschild
“I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the Empire, … The man that controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire. And I control the money supply.”
– Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild
“The best time to buy is when blood is running in the street.” – Baron Nathan Mayer Rothschild
“What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.” – Adolf Hitler
“I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.”
–Major General Smedley Darlington Butler
“Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers.”
– Ron Paul
Since the government cannot easily increase taxes indefinitely to finance the deficit, it will turn to the Fed, who will turn on the printing press to buy Treasuries. This will create pure inflation and the banksters call it quantitative easing.
So Obama is really the worst case scenario for the economy and the best friend of the banksters.
This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast Jan. 21, 2009.
Former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice, who helped expose the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping in December 2005, has now come forward with even more startling allegations. Tice told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Wednesday that the programs that spied on Americans were not only much broader than previously acknowledged but specifically targeted journalists.
“The National Security Agency had access to all Americans’ communications — faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications,” Tice claimed. “It didn’t matter whether you were in Kansas, in the middle of the country, and you never made foreign communications at all. They monitored all communications.”
Tice further explained that “even for the NSA it’s impossible to literally collect all communications. … What was done was sort of an ability to look at the metadata … and ferret that information to determine what communications would ultimately be collected.”
According to Tice, in addition to this “low-tech, dragnet” approach, the NSA also had the ability to hone in on specific groups, and that was the aspect he himself was involved with. However, even within the NSA there was a cover story meant to prevent people like Tice from realizing what they were doing.
“In one of the operations that I was in, we looked at organizations, just supposedly so that we would not target them,” Tice told Olbermann. “What I was finding out, though, is that the collection on those organizations was 24/7 and 365 days a year — and it made no sense. … I started to investigate that. That’s about the time when they came after me to fire me.”
When Olbermann pressed him for specifics, Tice offered, “An organization that was collected on were US news organizations and reporters and journalists.”
“To what purpose?” Olbermann asked. “I mean, is there a file somewhere full of every email sent by all the reporters at the New York Times? Is there a recording somewhere of every conversation I had with my little nephew in upstate New York?”
Tice did not answer directly, but simply stated, “If it was involved in this specific avenue of collection, it would be everything.” He added, however, that he had no idea what was ultimately done with the information, except that he was sure it “was digitized and put on databases somewhere.”
BEIJING (AFP) – A Chinese court on Thursday sentenced two men to death and gave stiff jail terms to 19 others over a milk scandal that led to widespread poisoning of babies in China and dairy recalls around the world.
The former head of the dairy firm at the heart of the scandal, Tian Wenhua, a 66-year-old woman accused of initially covering it up, was among three people jailed for life.
One other person was given a suspended death penalty, a sentence that routinely gets commuted to life in jail, while the rest were imprisoned for terms ranging from two to 15 years, state-run CCTV news reported.
The 21 people went on trial in recent weeks for their involvement in making or selling the contaminated milk that last year killed at least six babies and left 296,000 others ill with kidney and urinary tract problems.
A swelling global population, changing diets and mankind’s expanding “water footprint” could be bringing an end to the era of cheap water.
The warnings, in an annual report by the Pacific Institute in California, come as ecologists have begun adopting the term “peak ecological water” – the point where, like the concept of “peak oil”, the world has to confront a natural limit on something once considered virtually infinite.
The world is in danger of running out of “sustainably managed water”, according to Peter Gleick, the president of the Pacific Institute and a leading authority on global freshwater resources.
– China growth slows, Bank of Japan sees deflation (Forbes):
(Reuters) – China’s economy slowed sharply in the fourth quarter and Japan’s central bank on Thursday predicted two years of deflation as Asia’s largest economies buckle under the strain of the financial crisis.
– Asian economic woe grows as China slows and Japanese exports plunge (Telegraph):
China’s economy may have ground to a halt entirely between the third and fourth quarters of last year and Japanese exports plunged 35pc in December, underlining the scale of the slowdown in Asia.
– AIG starts $20bn auction of Asian unit (Financial Times): AIG, the stricken insurance giant, on Wednesday kicked off the sale of its Asian life assurance unit – one of its most prized assets – in the hope of raising up to $20bn to help repay the $60bn US government loan that is keeping the group alive.
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