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Is Apple REALLY worth more than the other 5 major players in the tech industry?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-apple-really-worth-more-sum-microsoft-dell-google-facebook-and-hp

Probably not a lot because Europeans are considerably poorer than Americans [...]

Really ?

(Though Australia probably isn't going to be up there much longer, our world-leading real estate bubble is finally starting to pop.)

On top of that, the wealth disparities in the US are huge. The averages come out OK because of the relatively large number of [super-] high-net-worth individuals in the US, but if you start looking at the wealth and income around the median level (and especially consider the class mobility, which in America is just about the worst in the OECD), the average American is poorer than the average European (assuming we're using the EU countries as "Europe").

2. Regarding Canada's federal debt. As of a year ago Canada's total Public Debt hit $1.1 Trillion, but that was only 57.9 % debt to GDP ratio. That is regarded as low and is perfectly fine. Canada can handle that just fine and still sustain robust economic growth. The US recently exceeded a ratio of 100% debt to GDP ratio. That is bad because when the debt ratio exceeds 85-90 % then economic growth is inhibited significantly.

Canada did the right thing running up the deficit during the recession so as to maintain economic growth. The U.S also had to do the same to keep the recession from expanding into a full blown depression. But Canada had good fundamentals -- a relatively low debt -- so it could run large deficits for a while without undue long term effects. It can lower spending later and bring the deficit down using expanded revenues from future GDP growth. The U.S was not in as good a shape having already run large deficits through out the Bush years. Now we are saddled with a huge debt burden that is sapping our growth dooming us to many years of low growth and high unemployment.

This is a list of the ten countries most in debt based on this percentage.

The author of the article has never tried to get social services, or he would realize that it's very stressful.

Also, the claim: "America is now a country which punishes those middle-class people who not only try to work hard, but avoid scamming the system" is funny. The market is rife with moral hazards and perverse incentives. The economy was recently crashed because "hard-working" traders told investors "invest in this AAA-rated instrument, it's okay we have $6 million in it too", not mentioning that they also had a $2 billion bet against it. And that they'd paid the rating agencies to rate it AAA.

The government should provide a basic guaranteed income (an idea proposed by Founding Father Thomas Paine in 1795's "Agrarian Justice"). Give each of us a choice whether we want to subject ourselves to the unreasonable, irrational, greedy excesses of the market, or pursue our own dreams. Why does the article's author assume that everyone getting government assistance is lazy? Encourage them to take free online classes, enter challenges, advance knowledge on their own using the unprecedented communication possibilities made possible by the internet.

Welfare has made the country stronger.

I'm kind of impressed - you're the first person I've seen on slashdot standing up for HFT with a non-AC account.

That said, it is clear at this point that HFT does nothing but act as a drag on the market. High frequency traders are parasites, injecting themselves into a transaction between an honest buyer and seller. HFTs try to extract money at every level, without adding any value.

HFT proponents will bleat (yes, like sheep) that they add liquidity. But at the same time they exit the market just when liquidity is most needed (assuming they haven't gone rogue like KCG) : "Case in point, computers regularly withdraw liquidity just before news releases. Oil is a great example. The other day, there was a status report scheduled at 10:30, and around 10:28-10:29, the buy orders on USO (United States Oil Fund, an ETF that aims to track oil) dried up. That doesn’t happen with human traders."

Here is a teeny tiny smattering of such events: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/wtf-skynet-chart-du-jour

The first story that popped up on Google: http://www.usatoday.com/money/markets/2011-05-16-mini-flash-crashes-market-worry_n.htm

And they haven't stopped: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/visualizing-todays-last-second-60000-e-mini-contract-wipe-out

If you're saying that arbitrage should be illegal, you have no idea what you're saying.

obviously you have no idea how to read, because that's not what he said.

"Just got a better offer elsewhere" "obliged to hold two short positions"
No. It's easy to write the algorithm around this. That's why only the worst of the worst (KNIGHT) lose at this game.

HFT is theft and is antagonistic towards the long term investor.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/wtf-skynet-chart-du-jour

What about this?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/wtf-skynet-chart-du-jour
This is not good for the small guy. This is not price discovery. This is theft.

Ha, right.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/wtf-skynet-chart-du-jour

It's clearly enough to push IBM around.
IBM!
IBM is not a small cap.
This is antagonistic towards long term investors. Some guys had trailing stops and were shaken lose by bending the system. Sorry, but that's stealing to the tune of (volume * range/2).
IE, a few million shares in volume * (196.50-195.00)/2
so 2,000,000 * 0.75, or $1.5m.
Stolen.

The only reason this hasn't been criminalized yet is the public has no idea what's going on, and the politicians are receiving campaign contributions from the guys benefiting from HFTs.

the profit in HFT comes from exposing those who cannot protect themselves to risk via liquidity.
Long term investors have precisely zero interest in microsecond liquidity. It means their fortune can be lost without a chance of recovery when the markets go haywire, such as on May 6th 2010: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash

Tell me, what use is this kind of behavior to the market?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/wtf-skynet-chart-du-jour
That's IBM we're talking about. This is of precisely zero value to the long term health of the market.
HFT needs to be banned, or microtransactions taxed a fraction of a cent per transaction. Not so much that it's not prohibitive to meet the market if it really needs the liquidity, but enough to protect the "little guy".

With some Facebook bots starting at $30 to $50 to build, of course people are doing that. Facebook has bigger problems than giving a crap about this company's complaints or requests. If our SEC wasn't a toothless corporate captive, the company would already have been halted for securities abuse.

Have a look at the chart . You can see the impact of technology (productivity) on wages during the mid 20th century. There's a very steady slope upwards. Then, with the big monetary change in 1971, the slope statistically flatlines.

The trick is, productivity and technology have continued their slope. Project out the trend prior to 1971 to present, and take the area between the steady-state wages and the expected wages, and that's the money that's being systematically stolen from the American people. But, since prices are staying largely the same due to the march of technology, most people don't see what's going on.

They also don't teach this kind of stuff in school, though it's easy enough to explain. At least our 'citizens' can quote 500-year-old playwrites, though, that's the important stuff.

That would be nice, but there are other factors at play, like the $1.75 trillion we spend on regulation each year, which is 10X more than we take in in corporate taxes. Just imagine the compliance costs...

And that is a problem, why? ... In both cases, it hurts the organizations and institutions more than an individual trader/buyer/seller.

Except that the institutions are the ones running the casino we refer to as the stock market. 2010 by far wasn't the only flash crash. It's just one that affected big stocks and was easily and widely noticed before it could be corrected. By "corrected", I mean that the stock exchange simply decrees that all trades that took place within a window of time that it doesn't like are cancelled.

The foolish algo-traders that should have been hoist by their own petard (and possibly go out of business entirely) receive infinite mulligans. The poor shmucks that thought they could win against the house, get, well, screwed. Say a stock trades at $100, flash crashes and you manage to buy it for $1 and sell it for $20. Later in the day the exchange kills your buy order, but leaves your sell order alone because it's not in the right time frame. Now you have to buy the stock at $100, and you take an $80 loss.

The dot com bubble was a speculative bubble in the stock markets. There was very little Clinton could do to stop it.

The real estate bubble was largely due to predatory behavior by mortgage brokers and bankers. The Fed probably could have stopped it with their existing powers just by stopping abusive mortgage and securitization practices.

The dot com bubble mostly burned investors speculating in the stock market. When you speculate in stock markets you should expect the possibility you will get burned.

The real estate bubble mostly burned working class people who thought they were doing the right thing investing in homes. There were plenty of speculators in the market, and people getting loans they should have known they couldn't afford, but the families who bought homes to live in and were given predatory loans with teaser rates and ballooning adjustable rates that were designed to fail soon after they were bundled in to securities and sold, they were just robbed. So were the pension funds that bought AAA securities that were in fact total garbage.

This UCLA commencement address by Dr. Michael Burry is a pretty good primer. Burry did the math when he was at Scion Capital, a hedge fund, and to him it was painfully obvious there was a housing bubble and he could even estimate when it would pop when the predatory loans started to blow. He made a fortune. Since then he's been hounded by the Fed, Congress and FBI trying to nail him for capitalizing on what was either stupidity or willful negligence on their part.

"Billionaire Mark Cuban talks in an interview with the Wall Street Journal about how he thinks high-frequency trading can be quite damaging to stock markets. He goes so far as to call high-frequency traders the 'ultimate hackers.'"

Not hackers, the people writing such HFT systems are more likely to be undergraduates from some School of Economics, writing the algorithms in Eclipse as that's the easiest IDE out there.

"When software programs are trying to outsmart other software programs and hack the world's trading platforms, that is a recipe for disaster. ... How many times an hour are there failures across individual equities around the world because of software running algorithms battling each other for supremacy to make a profitable trade?"

Exactly, and as the number of such platforms increases the instability increases, creating huge positive feedback loops. I see it as once there are a critical mass of such systems they will become less usefull and there has been calls to ban HFT platforms outright.

"We have no idea. It's not a question of if or when we have meltdowns, it's just a question of how big and where".

You don't have to wait, it's already happened, see the Flash Crash of 2010, and how HFT Quote Stuffing Caused The Market Crash Of May 6.

There should be a story about this on Slashdot: http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-21-21/bipartisan-congressional-bill-would-authorize-use-propaganda-americans-living?page=1

Gravity is going to hit the stock like a boulder come Monday. A huge percentage of the float was purchased by the underwriting bank to prop the stock above 38, if this would not have been underwritten it would have plunged. Now watch come Monday and next week. News of the lawsuit hits, a contingency for that outcome in a 50% settlement would be 7% in market cap alone, and a lot more if you deduct from earnings considering the insane earnings multiple this thing was priced at. Morgan Stanley going to take a big hit as the underwriter when the thing starts to tank.

Here is an interesting link: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/fadebook

And my favorite quote I saw in the media, "It is like they threw a party and nobody came".

And the irony of the whole thing is that by pricing at the very top of any conceivable valuation and increasing the size of the float in the last days, it would almost appear it was intentional, or were they smoking something?

Zynga halted trading several times yesterday, and closed over 15% down.

It's capital controls through the back door. It's unbelievably onerous - essentially the US government is a party to every transaction you make throughout the world, and every transaction any company or trust in which a US person has any interest makes anywhere in the world. But of course the Secretary of the Treasury can exempt anybody he likes.

OK, for a nice summary analysis of Fadbook, have a look here: http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/worlds-first-phenomenally-forensic-facebook-analysis-what-you-need-you-invest-pt-1

Now, for me its pretty simple:

1. 1 billion users, valued at 100 USD per user is absurd. I don't see them being able to monetize traffic better than Google does, especially international. They are locked out of China too, so forget that market growth. FB is way too faddish. You will see major attrition over time without the addition of real services that people need. Instagram is a perfect example of what to expect of the company, just see what happens to that service over the next 2 years.

2. 25X revenues is absurd. That's a PE multiple not a REVENUE multiple. ~500X PE is not just overvalued, its extremely overvalued and even comical. I don't see the plan to get the growth needed to justify this valuation.

3. Insiders selling lots of shares, and increasing the number up to IPO date. Wow, this is a pretty good clue.......

a very convenient and timely study ..

all based on external exposure and 5 weeks long .. when some of the historical and current nuclear contamination from Fukushima will last for billions of years in some cases ..

we are just now at the stage where the first round of birth defects .. mutations .. and cancer are starting to show up in Japan .. not to mention the heart disease caused by the ingestion of cesium 137 .. which is never mentioned in the mainstream media when talking about the effects of radiation exposure risk ..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aBW-5atBus/

and although you would not know it from mainstream media coverage .. the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster is far from over and will probably get much worse .. most likely when not if .. the number 4 fuel pool collapses ..

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-14-07/largest-short-term-threat-humanity-fuel-pools-fukushima/

and as an interesting counter balance .. this long term study 1950 - 2003 has also just been release .. claiming just the opposite of this study ..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VAncqK6bl0/

Yup, see How Much Would It Cost To Buy Congress Back From Special Interests? as a worked out example. I would like to see paid lobbyists wearing clown suits as their required uniform too.

Incorrect, I suspect that millions of people will die early deaths because of the Fukishima meltdowns, just like Chernobyl.

Northwest sees 35% infant mortality spike post-Fukushima
Study: Fukushima Radiation Has Already Killed 14,000 Americans"

Just because you don't see someone drop dead in front of you from additional radiation exposure, doesn't mean it isn't happening. This accident has trimmed several months, maybe a year off of lifespan off of everybody in North America. The Japanese may loose several years of average lifespan. Most of the damage won't be in the form of cancer, it will show up in hundreds of different manifestations, organ damage, genetic damage, etc.

To me, that is far too high a price to pay for so-called cheap nuclear power.

There's a large part of the world that's currently not being served by technology in part because support for their language is nonexistant. There's still 5/7ths of the world's population yet to join in the internet and to insist they learn a new language to fully participate is lunacy -- it would be much more efficient to force the existing english language speakers in the IT world in, say mandarin, after all they are on average wealthier, and have the tools availalbe to help them learn in a way those who don't speak english don't.

We are beginning to see this with the best websites for electronic components being in chinese only - those wishing for a single 'common' language should be careful what they wish for.

He's right. See here: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/race-btu-has-begun

zh

Japanese officials confronted with question wether people in Fukushima has the same rights as other people to protect themselves against radiation, and their surprising answer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rVuGwc9dlhQ [youtube.com]

VIDEO: Fukushima children forced to drink radioactive milk at school:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Aq4JG9ULVNE [youtube.com]

Fukushima secret news:

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/much-of-northern-japan-uninhabitable-due-to-nuclear-radiation [endoftheam...ndream.com]
http://www.independentaustralia.net/2011/media-2/fukushima-meltdown-caldicott-says-japan-may-become-uninhabitable-media-silent/ [independentaustralia.net]
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/06/10/japan-deal-radioactive-sewage-crisis-produce-cement-25231/ [alexanderhiggins.com]
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/remember-fukushima-its-back [zerohedge.com]

US to NOT check for radiation in imported goods and foods from Japan (made after Fukushima started melting down):
http://www.nuclear-news.net/2011/08/20/hillary-clintons-pact-with-japan-to-downplay-fukushima-radiation-risks/ [nuclear-news.net]
http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/radiating-americans-with-fukushima-rain-food-secret-clinton-pact [examiner.com]

Experts: Fukushima 'off-scale' lethal radiation level infers 100 millions dying:
http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/experts-fukushima-off-scale-lethal-radiation-level-100s-millions-deaths [examiner.com]

Independent measurements (uncalibrated, non-discriminatory - but shows no "need" for global mass-panic yet):
http://www.radiationnetwork.com/Message.htm [radiationnetwork.com]

Independent news (only ones still covering Fukushima):
http://www.fairewinds.com/ [fairewinds.com]
http://enenews.com/ [enenews.com]

Japanese government changing the "safe health standards" just moments after disaster struck. Now includes absurd amounts of radiation 20-30 times more than previously, which were already 2-10 times more than most Western countries'. The change document is of course provided, also with a "safe" limit of "plutonium and other ALPHA emitters". Plutonium! The most toxic substance known to life!

Raising the exposure limits were allegedly done to increase safety for citizens, something you'd expect in a Hitchcock movie..

"Becquerels" and Japan's changing "safety" standards for radiation in food and water
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc6FPIK1VaY [youtube.com]

"Detoxify or Die: Natural Radiation Protection Therapies for Coping With the Fallout of the Fukushima Nuclear Meltdown":

http://www.he

Investments in lobbyists and campaign donations have the highest return rate of anything companies can buy. Check out How Much Would It Cost To Buy Congress Back From Special Interests? for some numbers to consider. I also like their suggestion that the required uniform for all lobbyists should be a clown suit.

I like the clown suit idea, but I question the cost effectiveness of lobbying. During the Jack Abramof (sp?) hearings, it was disclosed that he took millions from some Indian tribes, and they got squat. Mostly people just look at the bribery "successes", because that's what gets politicians caught. How many times does a congressperson take some money and delivery nothing of any importance, or "deliver" a vote that would have gone that way anyway?
Can the ROI of lobbying really be measured.

Investments in lobbyists and campaign donations have the highest return rate of anything companies can buy. Check out How Much Would It Cost To Buy Congress Back From Special Interests? for some numbers to consider. I also like their suggestion that the required uniform for all lobbyists should be a clown suit.

All stocks are up this year, Microsoft's it just up a little more than the average. Stocks and commodities are going up because central banks the world over are printing staggering quantities of money. Central bank balance sheets are where money is created out of thin air and turned over to banks who then leverage it anywhere from 11X to 50X creating a tidal wave of inceasingly worthless dollars, euros, yuan, and pounds.

Stocks and commodities are going up to counteract the decline of the paper currencies they are denominated in. The actual valuation of the companies hasn't changed that much but their value in dollars and euros soars as the real value of these fiat currencies plunge as more and more are printed (they are not actually printed they are electronically conjured from thin air with a stroke of a key on a computer).

The DOW rally from 6,660 to 12,000 was driven almost entirely by the Federal Reserve flooding the worlds banks with dollars which they mostly plowed back in to stocks and commodities.

The huge rally in the stock market so far this year started on the day the ECB gifted European banks with 500 billion in newly created Euros in exchange for their increasingly worthless PIIGS bonds, in a program called LTRO. The ECB is scheduled to do another round of this at the end of this month that could equal that or go as high as 1 Trillion Euros. The ECB had a German President opposed to printing money in 2011, but he was replaced with an Italian who immediately opened the spigots to save Italy's bonds from collapse. It did miracles for Italy's bonds and stock markets the world over. Its also fueling a new round of inflation in oil and assorted other commodities.

Don't forget, these are raised stripes, not alternating colors. And the flag is in a box, so don't count the upper and lower thin lines.

That said, the bigger issue is the stripes are staggered, which is very uncommon for the 48 state period. That alone convinces me that the box in this photo is probably counterfeit.

I just find it interesting that there is a history of these boxes, particularly in the Philippines, dating back to at least the 1990s. In online discussions, there is a consensus that there are a lot of "fakes" out there. But, it is not clear whether or not these were copies of real originals, or just an incredibly elaborate fraud of unprecedented scale. Either way, I'd love to know the truth behind the origin of the boxes.

But, the staggered stars does not coincide with the common 48 state pattern of that time.

Based on what I've read, there are either lot of counterfeits of a real thing, or this was one incredibly engineered large scale counterfeit. These boxes have been found from all over the world recently, with highest concentrations in the Philippines, with people digging them up in the 1990s. There are quite a few stories to go with them, some more plausible than others. Yet, I cannot find any solid scientific evidence placing the origin of these boxes in history, other than when they were dug up or acquired and the condition they were in.

Given how interesting this could be even if it all the boxes are fraudulent due to its large scale and long history, I think this is worth trying to understand better.

Zerohedge highlights interesting photos: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/why-were-trillions-fake-bonds-held-chicago-fed-crates

The only way to balance the budget is through growth. And research investment is a tried and proven way to increase growth.

 
While this sounds nice, I don't think you're actually looking at the numbers.

2013 Budget Numbers

Just a tad under 15% of the federal budget is considered non-defense. The yearly deficit is projected to be roughly the size of Mexico's entire economy. Last year, the US's yearly deficit was roughly the size of Russia's entire economy.

Exactly what kind of growth are you expecting to be able to close that kind of gap?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/facebook-ipo-because-time-its-different

Channel stuffing.

(Yes, I know Zerohedge is a sensationalist site).

Thank god there is a teacher that is trying to teach. It is unfortunate that government has helped reduce the quality of education (most notably since the civil unrest in the 1960s). Other people have complained about the problems with the current state of education within the United States at a more fundamental level. There are other teachers that have written about why the current approaches are failing, while ignoring the government's motivation to reduce education quality. With more teachers that attempt to expose real concepts to students in ways that bypass government control, unencumbered by the education fees that rise quickly due to inflation, along with medical costs (no substitution of goods is possible to reduce the impact of inflation, i.e., no reduction in quality is possible, from the already poor quality present), the better society will become, removing the common ignorance and prejudice that prevents real growth.

Here's a source:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/entitlement-america-head-household-making-minimum-wage-has-more-disposable-income-family-mak

I for some reason thought it was a study. Now the numbers may be extreme but does show the point that one is able to gets lots of assistance even at burger flippin' wages.

> Wait, why is it the Fukushima Death Zone? Because of the people that died there when they drowned or were crushed by the tsunami?

Are you sure?
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/study-fukushima-radiation-has-already-killed-14000-americans

> Nobody has died from the radiation released by Fukushima, and likely no one will.

http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/01/vegetables-deformed-stress/

Seems that if vegetables look like that, people will to.

It would have been more helpful if you'd linked those blogs.

http://www.zerohedge.com/
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/ .. now to actually look more closely and read them. :) Thanks for sharing!

We generally call them notes, a fifty euro note etc, and often we just say the number, a fifty, a twenty, a tenner, a fiver. I've never heard them referred to as bills.
Hopefully the euro won't disappear any time soon, but if it does, I imagine most of the notes would be far too common to ever exceed their former face value. BTW, assuming you're from the USA, I wouldn't be bragging about the dollar either. You could argue that we're merely trying to catch up to the dollar...in a race to the bottom.
(hit the max button)yahoo finance chart usd vs a few others
random dollar decline chart I found online

Crisis in Fukushima and Japan is far from over. It's just begun. Expect to see "lost decades" due to all kinds of sicknesses due to radiation exposure. Please study the material below, also for your own knowledge and safety:

MUST SEE VIDEO: Japanese officials confronted with question wether people in Fukushima has the same rights as other people to protect themselves against radiation, and their surprising answer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rVuGwc9dlhQ

VIDEO: Fukushima children forced to drink radioactive milk at school:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Aq4JG9ULVNE

Fukushima-get up to date on repressed news:
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/much-of-northern-japan-uninhabitable-due-to-nuclear-radiation
http://www.independentaustralia.net/2011/media-2/fukushima-meltdown-caldicott-says-japan-may-become-uninhabitable-media-silent/
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/06/10/japan-deal-radioactive-sewage-crisis-produce-cement-25231/
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/remember-fukushima-its-back

Secret pacts to NOT check for radiation in imported goods and foods from Japan (made after Fukushima started melting down):
http://www.nuclear-news.net/2011/08/20/hillary-clintons-pact-with-japan-to-downplay-fukushima-radiation-risks/
http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/radiating-americans-with-fukushima-rain-food-secret-clinton-pact

Experts: Fukushima 'off-scale' lethal radiation level infers 100 millions dying:
http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/experts-fukushima-off-scale-lethal-radiation-level-100s-millions-deaths

Closer to home:
http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/article4151087.ece

Independent measurements (uncalibrated, non-discriminatory - but shows no "need" for global mass-panic yet):
http://www.radiationnetwork.com/Message.htm

Independent news (only ones still covering Fukushima):
http://www.fairewinds.com/
http://enenews.com/

Japanese government changing the "safe health standards" just moments after disaster struck. Now includes absurd amounts of radiation 20-30 times more than previously, which were already 2-10 times more than most Western countries'. The change document is of course provided, also with a "safe" limit of "plutonium and other ALPHA emitters". Plutonium! The most toxic substance known to life!

Raising the exposure limits were allegedly done to increase safety for citizens, something you'd expect in a Hitchcock movie..

"Becquerels" and Japan's changing "safety" standards for radiation in food and water
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc6FPIK1VaY

"Evacuate Children!" Rally & Demo in Koriyama City, Fukushima Pref. on Oct. 15, 2011"

MUST SEE VIDEO!!:
Japanese officials confronted with question wether people in Fukushima has the same rights as other people to protect themselves against radiation, and their surprising answer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rVuGwc9dlhQ

VIDEO: Fukushima children forced to drink radioactive milk at school:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Aq4JG9ULVNE

Fukushima-get up to date on repressed news:

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/much-of-northern-japan-uninhabitable-due-to-nuclear-radiation
http://www.independentaustralia.net/2011/media-2/fukushima-meltdown-caldicott-says-japan-may-become-uninhabitable-media-silent/
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/06/10/japan-deal-radioactive-sewage-crisis-produce-cement-25231/
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/remember-fukushima-its-back

Secret pacts to NOT check for radiation in imported goods and foods from Japan (made after Fukushima started melting down):
http://www.nuclear-news.net/2011/08/20/hillary-clintons-pact-with-japan-to-downplay-fukushima-radiation-risks/
http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/radiating-americans-with-fukushima-rain-food-secret-clinton-pact

Experts: Fukushima 'off-scale' lethal radiation level infers 100 millions dying:
http://www.examiner.com/human-rights-in-national/experts-fukushima-off-scale-lethal-radiation-level-100s-millions-deaths

Closer to home:
http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/uriks/article4151087.ece

Independent measurements (uncalibrated, non-discriminatory - but shows no "need" for global mass-panic yet):
http://www.radiationnetwork.com/Message.htm

Independent news (only ones still covering Fukushima):
http://www.fairewinds.com/
http://enenews.com/

Japanese government changing the "safe health standards" just moments after disaster struck. Now includes absurd amounts of radiation 20-30 times more than previously, which were already 2-10 times more than most Western countries'. The change document is of course provided, also with a "safe" limit of "plutonium and other ALPHA emitters". Plutonium! The most toxic substance known to life!

Raising the exposure limits were allegedly done to increase safety for citizens, something you'd expect in a Hitchcock movie..

"Becquerels" and Japan's changing "safety" standards for radiation in food and water
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc6FPIK1VaY

"Detoxify or Die: Natural Radiation Protection Therapies for Coping With the Fallout of the Fukushima Nuclear Meltdown":

http://www.health-matrix.net/2011/03/19/d

He actually said companies that have received bailouts should ban bonuses. (listen at 8:00 from the below clip.) This could be an easy thing to do, tied to the bailout money that they receive. Though he argues other places, that the banks shouldn't have been bailed out in the first place, they should have been allowed to fail. Bailing them out has rewarded those that have made mistakes, socializing the losses and privatizing the gains - this is the definition of crony capitalism. IT'S NOT CAPITALISM. This is incredibly important to understand so we can get out of this mess. Listen to him at 6 minutes in: "we're not living in capitalism, we're not living in socialism, we're living in some weird combination, with a cartel, the banks controlling more than their share". "It's a compensation scheme nothing more." "they blew up in 82-83, and they blew up now".

Unfortunately, now these liabilities have been moved from the banks balance sheet to the government balance sheet, moving lethal risk from the banks to the sovereigns, which will blow up the monetary system.
He also goes on to talk about the code of Hammurabi 1750 BC: "If a builder builds a house and the house collapses and causes the death of the owner of the house, the builder shall be put to death." "If it causes the death of the son of the owner of the house, the son of the builder shall be put to death" The Romans also implemented it, "If you were the engineer of a bridge, you had to spend a few nights under the bridge" "CAPITALISM IS ABOUT INCENTIVES, BUT IT IS ALSO ABOUT DISINCENTIVES."

Here is the clip of him on bloomberg:
Am I the only one who has a man crush on Taleb?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/nassim-taleb-occupywallstreet-and-his-updated-views-global-banking-system

You are far closer to the truth than you think. Cash transactions over 5000 Euros are now illegal in Italy. Greece also wants to make cash illegal for some transactions. Oh it's all being done in the name of preventing crime and money laundering, but it's fairly obvious that since electronic transactions are much easier to monitor, governments are salivating at the thought of forcing us all under their microscope.

First they make a law but only apply it to large transactions that people don't normally pay cash for anyway - buying a house, or a car. Then two things happen. First, they can move the goalpost closer to zero over time. Secondly (and this is the magic part), inflation will move everyone over the barrier over time anyway. In 40 years or so when a grocery bill is 5000 euros, or 100 years when a pack of chewing gum is 5000 euros, then effectively all cash transactions will be illegal without actually having to do anything at all. Governments are dangerous - the only thing they can ever do is take from you. They can never give you something you didn't already have. But people just don't care.

an economist

An economist you say?

How about Ben Jones
http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/

An how about Tyler Durden (A pseudonym, duh, but I think it would be hilarious to see the ZH response to our questions)
http://www.zerohedge.com/

Last but not least, George Ure, who is about 20% genius, 60% eh, and 20% nuts?
http://urbansurvival.com/week.htm

The US total debt is around 50 trillion
US M2 money supply around 9.5 trillion.

The 9.5 clearly cannot pay the 50. You may be able to pay the interest, and the principal of the 50 in 100 years if new larger debts are created, kicking the can down the road which means there's more credit around to pay the old debts (this is what they call growth) but current debts are not payable from the current money supply.

The US monetary system is a grow or die one. You either inflate or you collapse. Right now. No growth. Which means lots of people and businesses are going to collapse.

Ooops there goes a bank. A big one. One of the Fed primary dealers too.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/mf-global-finance-files-bankruptcy
 

AC wrote: An interesting take on the problem from zerohedge: "Student Loan Bubble To Exceed $1 Trillion: "It's Going To Create A Generation Of Wage Slavery" And Another Taxpayer Bailout"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/student-loan-bubble-exceed-1-trillion-its-going-create-generation-wage-slavery-and-another-taxp

Yes, indeed. See also my:
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-October/005379.html

Solutions on my site or: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-November/005584.html
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-November/006005.html

We don't have a global oligarchy, we have a terrible case of crony capitalism where the ones that control the world are Goldman Sachs, and the Primary Dealers (the banks that sell the Treasury's debt) have an unfair leg up. The corporatism auctioning our governments and soldiers lives to the companies that fund the pockets of politicians has to stop. It is the reason the Tea Party started and the reason that #occupy is so large at this point. However, it's important to understand exactly what the problem is and why. That's why Ron Paul is doing so well. He's the only guy that understands economics. Unfortunately, he's not a good looking shiny figure on stage that will appeal to the "Access Hollywood" obsessed populace. These 147 institutions have pushed the risk from the corporate balance sheet to the sovereign balance sheet under the guise of systemic risk. Unfortunately, unless meaningful change is brought, not partisan bullshit, it will likely bring the end of a country or two, and definitely a bunch of currency systems.

Who is to blame? Well about every president, senator and congressman over the last 30 years, with few exceptions.

Steve Wynn Epic Rant Part II - Full Audio And Transcript With Complete #OccupyWallStreet Thoughts

Watch this:Fear the Boom and Bust [econstories.tv]
then this: Fight of the Century [econstories.tv]