Cardboard Spaceship

Cargo Bang Bang..

As a (very) frequent flier, I was not in the slightest surprised to read that whoever had been planning to blow up aeroplanes decided that as shoes and underpants had proven to be unsuccessful as a bomb carrying medium, why not just post it instead?  Makes me so glad I spent so long going through all those endless unpleasant hours of Security Kabuki theatre, when it turns out that the Bad Men just need to pop to the local post office.

It's rather obvious that it is harder to screen cargo than passengers, as parcels would have to be opened, inspected, and then closed again.  X-rays aren't actually much use, if you don't know what you are looking at, and whether the high value electronic gadget that is being shipped should have that particular combination of wires, components, etc.   Try that with any sensible amount of airfreight, and you'll bring the whole system to a complete stop.  (Rather the terrorists aim in the first place.)

What to do?

One approach is to accept that some planes are going to get caboomed, and keep on as usual.  Not likely to be acceptable, and I sure wouldn't like it, as I am often on one.

Another is to separate all freight and passenger traffic, but the disruption would be enormous, and it is unlikely to prevent cargo planes being blown up.  So, fewer passengers die, but having a jumbo jet spiralling in bits into the middle of a major urban centre isn't likely to be much more acceptable. 

The profiling of the sender didn't help much as it turns out the putative sender was a presumably blameless computer engineering student who was a victim of identity theft.  (Which they seem to have concluded rather quickly, thank goodness for the poor woman concerned, as people have ended up in extra-judicial custody for much less.)

Other than that, there really much that can be done other than intelligence gathering, and if that worked we wouldn't be reading these headlines.

Looks like air travel just got that much more interesting.  Wonder what ineffectual crap we'll be stuck with next?

FDR Style Bank Holiday as Basel Says Bank Still Toxic?

I have this one under "tin foil hat," but I'm going to blog it because if he's right, this is news.  He in this case is Harry Schultz, of the eponymous Harry Schultz Letter.  (He really sweated on naming that one...) 

Banks going to be closed in a repeat of FDR's bank holiday. 

"In its current issue, HSL reports rumors that "Some U.S. embassies worldwide are being advised to purchase massive amounts of local currencies; enough to last them a year. Some embassies are being sent enormous amounts of U.S. cash to purchase currencies from those governments, quietly. But not pound sterling. Inside the State Dept., there is a sense of sadness and foreboding that 'something' is about to happen ... within 180 days, but could be 120-150 days."

Yes, yes, it's paranoid. But paranoids have enemies -- and the Crash of 2008 really did happen.

HSL's suspicion: "Another FDR-style 'bank holiday' of indefinite length, perhaps soon, to let the insiders sort out the bank mess, which (despite their rosy propaganda campaign) is getting more out of their control every day. Insiders want to impose new bank rules. Widespread nationalization could result, already underway. It could also lead to a formal U.S. dollar devaluation, as FDR did by revaluing gold (and then confiscating it)."

Might be just be more goldbug paranoia, but in a sign of the times, I actually thought about it for a few minutes. 

Why?  Well, this report is about as interesting as official dry document can be, coming as it does from the BIS; the central banker's central bank.  (And the cause of no small amount of tin foil nuttery and New World Order suspicions in its own right.)  If you just need the executive summary, this is a good overview from the Guardian. 

This is part of a long annual report that does a good job of analysing the crisis, even if it is a bit rich that the BIS was at least partly in the firing line for being responsible.  

"Over the past few years, this essential and complex system of finance has
been critically damaged. Evidence of serious trouble emerged when banks
became less willing to lend to each other, because they were no longer sure
how to value the assets held and the promises made – both their own and
those of potential borrowers. For a time, central bank lending was able to fill
the gap. But, as described in Chapter II, from August 2007 the stress in the
financial system increased in waves. By March 2008, Bear Stearns had to be
rescued; six months later, on 15 September, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt;
and by the end of September, the global financial system itself was on the
verge of collapse.

The financial system is based on trust, and in the wake of the Lehman
failure that trust was lost. Ordinary people had placed their confidence in those
who ran and monitored the financial system, only to discover that the system
could fail anyway. The crisis shattered lenders’ trust that a loan previously
thought to be of high quality was likely to be repaid, and it dissolved the
confidence of investors in the long-term safety of their investments. As the
difficult and time-consuming task of cleaning up institutions’ balance sheets
went on, property rights that are normally taken for granted were being
questioned; and so financial institutions – normally run, at least in part, by
traders and loan officers together with the risk managers who try to control
them – were placed in the hands of lawyers. Unfortunately, once lost, trust is
regained only slowly. And before trust can be fully regained, the financial
system will have to be rebuilt.

The modern financial system is immensely complex – possibly too complex
for any one person to really understand it. Interconnections create systemic
risks that are extraordinarily difficult to figure out. The fact that things
apparently worked so well (up until the time that they did not) gave everyone
a false sense of comfort. After all, when things are going well, why rock the
boat? But this understandable complacency, born out of booms that make
everyone better off, sows the seeds of collapse. Hence, as we attempt to
explain and fix what has failed, it is essential to keep in mind that the new
financial system must take better account of our inherently limited ability to
understand complex processes and to foresee their potential for failure."

"And before trust can be fully regained, the financial system will have to be rebuilt."

It's scrunchy scrunchy time for tin foil hat fans everywhere. 

Finally, a Coherent Explanation for Crop Circles

Crop Circles can be beautiful, and whilst I would love to think that aliens would like to spend the insane amount of energy to cross between the stars to do the equivalent of interstaller finger painting, the truth is as every so much more prosaic.

Stoned up Wallabies appear to be the true cause, so Reg Presley can now go back to singing Wild Thing in the local pub.

Japanese Nationals Caught with Squinty Gajillion in Possibly Real Bonds

Wondering how the USA is going to solve its not inconsiderable debt prolems?  How do China and Japan solve the selling down the bonds without alerting the market and causing a currency collapse? 

Alert minds on the net, (via itulip) spotted this interesting piece of news about a small cross border movement the other day. 

Update:  link above removed as it no longer worked, so I was beginning to doubt the story, but it has now reappeared on more reliable sources such as Bloomberg.

"Italy’s financial police (Guardia italiana di Finanza) has seized US bonds worth US 134.5 billion from two Japanese nationals at Chiasso (40 km from Milan) on the border between Italy and Switzerland. They include 249 US Federal Reserve bonds worth US$ 500 million each, plus ten Kennedy bonds and other US government securities worth a billion dollar each.

Italian authorities have not yet determined whether they are real or fake, but if they are real the attempt to take them into Switzerland would be the largest financial smuggling operation in history; if they are fake, the matter would be even more mind-boggling because the quality of the counterfeit work is such that the fake bonds are undistinguishable from the real ones."

1. Japan is trying to get out of the dollar, really.

2. Some private individual has has a really good day at the casino, and is trying to hide their earnings.

3. Someone in the Yakuza thinks that no-one in a Swiss bank will blink an eyelid at a few tens of billions of bearer bonds, and will take them without question. 

If this story runs, we will find out something interesting one way or another.  (Not to mention why no mainstream press interest.)

Afghanistan - Drug Den Worth Fighting For?

The war in Afghanistan is one of the great puzzles of the modern world to me.  What is it about the situation that is so important to the West that we (well, mainly the USA and a few Brits.) feel the need to try and win the unwinnable country?   Writing in the Daily Mail, Craig Murray, who has a track record of being a whistle blower on the UK government activities says:

"Afghanistan was not militarily winnable by the British Empire at the height of its supremacy. It was not winnable by Darius or Alexander, by Shah, Tsar or Great Moghul. It could not be subdued by 240,000 Soviet troops. But what, precisely, are we trying to win?"

He then goes on to point out that the main beneficiaries of the war are the warlords displaced by the Taliban, who are now growing the world's largest opium crop.  All of which takes place in an atmosphere of transparency and light, of course. 

So a good question, and not one that I have an answer to, but his article is most definitely worth a read.   

Talk Not of the Trillions, My Beamish Boy...

This one is definitely under "tin foil hat". 

The telegraph yesterday posted a story by one Bruno Waterfield which remains on the website under one of the most popular stories links, entitled, according to the link:

"European banks may need £16.3 trillion bail-out, EC dcoument warns" (sic)

Except that the story it links to no longer mentions the money, and the original linked blog post no longer exists.  Here is a link to a posting that quotes the original at length. 

Scenario One: 

Journalist has gotten hold of a document of dubious provenance, and has followed the old journalist maxim once offered to my father, who is journalist, to: 

"Make it short.  Make it snappy.  Make it up."

It has been pointed out that he talketh of the bollocks, and the offending parts have been quietly removed to spare the journalist's undoubtedly delicate soul.   Nobody demands a retraction or a clarification, because, who's going to panic about 16.3 trillion in unpaid debt?

Scenario Two:

Bank authorities, and anyone who wants to avoid a complete collapse in confidence goes:

"Christ!  Don't tell the submerging markets (In Willem Buiter's great description,) what the hell is going on, or we're finished, get onto the blokes at the Telegraph, and get them retracting soonest.  Call up whoever have to, and put the squealers on the editors." 

Meh, probably just a distorted world view from living in the basement, but it is interesting. 

Blog List Fixed

Just noticed that my blog list had been truncated, and that you could not see all the entries because of this, so if you thought I had cut you out of the massive love-fest that is the Spaceship, not so.  Bloody computers.

Government Sachs

I've posted this under "tin foil hat", because in normal times, it would be a weird conspiracy theory, but in this case, it is simply the truth, Goldman Sachs has taken over a significant role in the US government.

No more wondering where the Illuminati and the Bilderberg Group are, they have booked office space in the White House according to the NYT. 

Naomi Klein Goes TFH on US Army in USA

Naomi Klein goes Tin Foil Hat on the First Brigade being deployed in the USA.  Read it, make your own mind up, but it sure is a sign of the times that people are even suspicious of these kind of things. 

Nuclear Death 'R Us...

Very interesting piece here in the Guardian from 2003 about the Livermore research labs being worried that building an atomic bomb might be easy to do.  So, being bright, they didn't sit round debating whether it could happen, they took two Physics Phd.s that had been drafted and made them build an atomic bomb. 

And they did.

So, it looks like Inflatable Elvis (Kim Il Sung)  and the Iranians might have a good shot at it after all. 

Worrying.