A screaming alert to the wise

Bernanke is now joining Rosenberg, Ferguson and Faber, Edwards, Grice and many others in warning that the debt crisis rearing its head in Greece may spread to America, causing  U.S. interest rates to climb.

As the Washington Times wrote yesterday:

With uncharacteristic bluntness, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned Congress on Wednesday that the United States could soon face a debt crisis like the one in Greece, and declared that the central bank will not help legislators by printing money to pay for the ballooning federal debt.

Recent events in Europe, where Greece and other nations with large, unsustainable deficits like the United States are having increasing trouble selling their debt to investors, show that the U.S. is vulnerable to a sudden reversal of fortunes that would force taxpayers to pay higher interest rates on the debt, Mr. Bernanke said.

"It's not something that is 10 years away. It affects the markets currently," he told the House Financial Services Committee. "It is possible that bond markets will become worried about the sustainability [of yearly deficits over $1 trillion], and we may find ourselves facing higher interest rates even today."

I know I repeat myself, but THE SKY IS FALLING.  Some ideas, please add any:

1.  Get out of all bonds, anything that has a fixed dividend.  Just do it.

2.  The market and metals will go down when interest starts.  Eventually, metals will return to favor.

3.  Buy all the stuff you can, now.  If you are not scared, but on a fixed loan.  Even a fixed home mortgage will be an investment, as long as you can pay it.

4.  Get ready to grow food, might as well get into it.  If you can store food, buy it now.

5.  I think there is another clunker for crap program, to buy energy equipment.  If you need anything, get it now.  Get the clunker benefit, beat inflation, and lower your energy use.

Any ideas?  

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Note the Washington Times reported on this.  Where are the leftists?  What are they thinking?  We can ignore reality and make Obama look good?

 

Great White #2

First, in Canada today's Financial Post, Business Section large headline:  

U.S. DEFICIT THREAT LOOMS

Flaherty worries shortfall could 

have 'serious' impact on Canadian economy

At least someone is paying attention to the U.S. collapse.  Canada is working to survive our insanity. They seem to think there are only two things that we can do. Either alone or together:  stop spending or tax less. Jerks. There is the Obama option:  raise taxes, cost of government, borrowing, transfers to friends, and spending.  There was a piece reporting on John Hussman's crazy notion that Geithner and Bernanke are premature in their "mission accomplished" events. He is a Maryland economist with a fund.  


The paper reports that in 2012 the U.S. deficit will be more than 100 percent of the GDP.  Canada's will max out 2010 at 79%. Of course, the proposed socialist taxes on everything will kick in about that time, as well.
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I am trying to figure out when to leave Toronto, an inter-storm exit.  I see Europe is also being blanketed by snow.  From a climatological perspective, we remain in the scientifically settled Gore Effect. 


I think we were in an El Nino year, but haven't checked.  That, coupled with no sun spots this year, until recently, Florida will likely have a freeze or tow, so buy orange juice.  Or, its futures.


Rod sent in a piece from the National Post, again Canadian, from the Deniers series.  I will quote a bit.  You can hit the title to get to the full story.  This piece will go along with what I stated, as a non scientist, long ago.  Once the cat is out of the bag, those socientists who want to keep their reputations will become, if not deniers, then insipid doubters. Of course, this article is over two years old, so the cat has been wiggling out for some time.

Within the article are the links to other parts of the series.  Again, recall this is over two years old.  

Allegre's second thoughts

Claude Allegre, one of France's leading socialists and among her most celebrated scientists, was among the first to sound the alarm about the dangers of global warming.

BY NATIONAL POSTMARCH 6, 2007

Claude Allegre, one of France's leading socialists and among her most celebrated scientists, was among the first to sound the alarm about the dangers of global warming.

"By burning fossil fuels, man increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which, for example, has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Dr. Allegre, a renowned geochemist, wrote 20 years ago in Cles pour la geologie.." Fifteen years ago, Dr. Allegre was among the 1500 prominent scientists who signed "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity," a highly publicized letter stressing that global warming's "potential risks are very great" and demanding a new caring ethic that recognizes the globe's fragility in order to stave off "spirals of environmental decline, poverty, and unrest, leading to social, economic and environmental collapse."

The full Deniers series

Statistics needed -- The Deniers Part I

Warming is real -- and has benefits -- The Deniers Part II

The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science -- The Deniers Part III

Polar scientists on thin ice -- The Deniers Part IV

The original denier: into the cold -- The Deniers Part V

The sun moves climate change -- The Deniers Part VI

Will the sun cool us? -- The Deniers Part VII

The limits of predictability -- The Deniers Part VIII

Look to Mars for the truth on global warming -- The Deniers Part IX

Limited role for C02 -- the Deniers Part X

End the chill -- The Deniers Part XI

Clouded research -- The Deniers Part XII

Allegre's second thoughts -- The Deniers XIII

In the 1980s and early 1990s, when concern about global warming was in its infancy, little was known about the mechanics of how it could occur, or the consequences that could befall us. Since then, governments throughout the western world and bodies such as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have commissioned billions of dollars worth of research by thousands of scientists. With a wealth of data now in, Dr. Allegre has recanted his views. To his surprise, the many climate models and studies failed dismally in establishing a man-made cause of catastrophic global warming. Meanwhile, increasing evidence indicates that most of the warming comes of natural phenomena. Dr. Allegre now sees global warming as over-hyped and an environmental concern of second rank.

His break with what he now sees as environmental cant on climate change came in September, in an article entitled "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" in l' Express, the French weekly. His article cited evidence that Antarctica is gaining ice and that Kilimanjaro's retreating snow caps, among other global-warming concerns, come from natural causes. "The cause of this climate change is unknown," he states matter of factly. There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the "science is settled."...