Finance Executive Suggests Buying A Remote Farm And Being Prepared For The Worst
Barton Biggs has some offbeat advice for the rich: Insure yourself against war and disaster by buying a remote farm or ranch and stocking it with “seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc.”
The “etc.” must mean guns.
“A few rounds over the approaching brigands’ heads would probably be a compelling persuader that there are easier farms to pillage,” he writes in his new book, “Wealth, War and Wisdom.”
Biggs is no paranoid survivalist. He was chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley before leaving in 2003 to form hedge fund Traxis Partners. He doesn’t lock and load until the last page of this smart look at how World War II warped share prices, gutted wealth and remains a warning to investors. His message: Listen to markets, learn from history and prepare for the worst.
“Wealth, War and Wisdom” fills a void. Library shelves are packed with volumes on World War II. The history of stock markets also has been ably recorded, notably in Robert Sobel’s “The Big Board.” Yet how many books track the intersection of the two?
The “wisdom” in the alliterative title refers to the spooky way markets can foreshadow the future. Biggs became fascinated with this phenomenon after discovering by chance that equity markets sensed major turning points in the war.
The British stock market bottomed out in late June 1940 and started rising again before the truly grim days of the Battle of Britain in July to October, when the Germans were splintering London with bombs and preparing to invade the U.K.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average plumbed “an epic bottom” in late April and early May of 1942, then began climbing well before the U.S. victory in the Battle of Midway in June turned the tide against the Japanese.
Berlin shares “peaked at the high-water mark of the German attack on Russia just before the advance German patrols actually saw the spires of Moscow in early December of 1941.”
“Those were the three great momentum changes of World War II — although at the time, no one except the stock markets recognized them as such.”
Biggs isn’t suggesting that Mr. Market is infallible: He can get “panicky and crazy in the heat of the moment,” he says. Over the long haul, though, markets display what James Surowiecki calls “the wisdom of crowds.”
Like giant voting machines, they aggregate the judgments of individuals acting independently into a collective assessment. Biggs stress-tests this theory against events that shook nations from the Depression through the Korean War, which he calls “the last battle of World War II.”
Biggs has read widely and thought deeply. He has a pleasing conversational style, an eye for memorable anecdotes and a weakness for Winston Churchill’s quips. His book works as a brisk refresher course.
What really packs a wallop, though, is his combination of military history, market action, maps and charts. It’s one thing to say that the London market scraped bottom before the Battle of Britain. It’s another to show it.
In May and June 1940, some 338,000 British and French troops had been evacuated from Dunkirk by a flotilla of fishing boats, tugs, barges, yachts and river steamers. The French and Belgian armies had collapsed; the Dutch had surrendered. Britain stood alone, as bombs shattered London and the Nazis prepared to invade. Yet stocks rallied.
No More Mum and Dad In UK Schools
January 31, 2008 by admin
Filed under Moral Decay
Teachers should not assume that their pupils have a “mum and dad” under guidance aimed at tackling anti-gay bullying in schools.
It says primary pupils as young as four should be familiarized with the idea of same-sex couples to help combat homophobic attitudes.
Teachers should attempt to avoid assumptions that pupils will have a conventional family background, it urges.
parent
Pupils are enlisted in the war on homophobia
It goes on to suggest the word “parents” may be more appropriate than “mum and dad”, particularly in letters and emails to the child’s home.
When discussing marriage with secondary pupils, teachers should also educate pupils about civil partnerships and gay adoption rights.
The guidance – produced for the Government by gay rights group Stonewall – will be formally launched today by Schools Secretary Ed Balls.
It states that children who call classmates “gay” should be treated the same as racists as part of a “zero tolerance” crackdown on the use of the word as an insult.
Teachers should avoid telling boys to “be a man” or accuse them of behaving like a “bunch of women”.
This sort of rebuke “leads to bullying of those who do not conform to fixed ideas about gender”, the guidance states.
At the same time, schools should encourage gay role models among staff, parents and governors. Homosexual staff should be able to discuss their private lives after the consultation with the head teacher.
India Uncovers Kidney Racket
January 31, 2008 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
Three weeks ago, Mohammad Saleem, 33, agreed to work at a construction site in this bustling city near New Delhi. A house painter with an extended family of eight, he was drawn here by the promise of an extra dollar in his daily wage. After a few days of waiting in a blue-and-white bungalow for work to begin, Saleem said, he was forcibly anesthetized by two masked men.
“When I woke up after several hours, I felt a pain in my right side,” Saleem recalled, sitting on a metal cot in a city hospital ward. “The men said, ‘We have removed your kidney, and you better not breathe a word about it.’ My life broke into pieces when I heard that.”
Saleem was the latest in a long list of poor laborers who had come to Gurgaon to work and lost their kidneys as a result. Police say they were victims of a major organ-trafficking racket based in this city for nearly a decade.
The scam was discovered last week after police, acting on a tip from a middleman, raided the bungalow where Saleem had been held. They said they found a labyrinthine kidney bazaar run by a group of men posing as doctors. Five suspects were arrested.
Since then, police from several Indian provinces have launched a massive joint investigation into the alleged traffickers, who police said robbed poor people of their kidneys and sold them to rich patients around the world.
Several people who were believed to be among the intended recipients of the organs have been detained, including four Greeks and a couple from New York who are of Indian origin. They had all come to India on tourist visas and were found staying at a guesthouse near the bungalow.
Investigators said they believe the trafficking network includes buyers from Canada, Greece, Saudi Arabia and Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Given India’s sagging medical infrastructure, cases of kidney trafficking are not unheard-of here. Hospital facilities for the storing and transporting of organs remain inadequate, and poor Indians lured by the prospect of extra money ensure the traffickers a continuous supply of fresh kidneys. According to a government estimate, more than 100,000 kidney transplants are needed in India every year, but only 5,000 are performed legally.
How One Big Earthquake Triggers Another
Every so often, one large earthquake can trigger another. These “earthquake doublets” might happen because the first quake shifts stresses around in the Earth’s crust, triggering the second temblor, scientists say.
On Nov. 15, 2006 an 8.3 magnitude quake shook the Earth near the Kuril Islands, an archipelago off the southeast coast of Russia, and to the northeast of Japan. Within minutes, smaller quakes began shaking on the seaward side of the island chain. Then on Jan. 13, 2007 an 8.1 magnitude earthquake ripped through the upper portions of the Pacific plate to the east of the Kuril Islands.
The most recent quake took scientists by surprise, and a team of earthquake researchers has tried to piece together exactly happened. Their work is detailed in the Jan. 31 issue of the journal Nature.
When a large earthquake strikes, aftershocks that gradually diminish in strength typically follow the main shock for a few weeks or even months. But the two Kuril quakes were the same order of magnitude, so seismologists knew something different was going on.
India Bird Flu Outbreak Portends Pandemic
An epidemic of avian influenza in West Bengal, India has the Indian “government in panic mode”, according to the Times of India Web site.
And with good reason: 15 million of West Bengal’s 80 million people are crammed into its capital city, Kolkata (Calcutta), which is a petri dish of poverty, pollution, political intransigence and hopeless public health. It is the city where Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity order.
If the infection reaches Kolkata’s poultry markets, there is a much greater risk of animal-to-human transmission than there has been in Indonesia or Vietnam, where infections of H5N1 influenza have already crossed species from animals to humans.
There have been many more human infections of highly-pathogenic influenza in Indonesia (120 cases, 98 deaths) and Vietnam (102 cases, 48 deaths) than in India. There were three outbreaks of avian influenza in India in 2006, but there have been no human deaths there, yet.
India To Cull 2.7 Million Chickens
India will cull as many as 2.7 million chickens by Jan. 30 to rein in bird flu, as the disease spread to 13 of 19 districts in West Bengal state.
Authorities culled 1.9 million chickens as of yesterday after the outbreak was reported earlier this month in the eastern state, federal Animal Husbandry Secretary Pradeep Kumar said in New Delhi today.
“We’re keeping our fingers crossed about containing the disease,” Kumar said. “There’s a need to convince people about the necessity of culling.”
As many as 125,283 poultry birds died in the state after the outbreak, Kumar said. The decline in the natural mortality of the birds because of avian influenza is a “good sign,” he said.
Rainfall in the state had prevented the culling of potentially infected birds, Kumar said. The government will give importance to the “mopping up and disinfection” operation once the culling is over, Kumar said.
Is Ahmadinejad Setting A Trap For Israel And The US?
Like the Jedi Knights in Star Wars, much of Israel’s safety depends on an absurdly small number of daring pilots and their jet planes. The Israel Air Force has managed to use that capacity with amazing skill and daring, as it showed last September when a dozen fighter bombers and support aircraft jammed Syria’s Russian-supplied air defenses and destroyed a secret nuclear facility on the Euphrates river — not far from Iran. The nature of that target has still not been revealed, but it must have been important enough to risk triggering a missile attack from Syria.
That means the target was believed to be very important: most likely a joint Iranian-Syrian-North Korean nuclear facility.
In a very odd move, the Syrians are now rebuilding that mysterious concrete cube in exactly the same location — even though the whole world knows about it now. Why should they spend vast amounts of money doing that, if it would only become another fat target?
One possibility is that it’s a trap for IAF jets. Surround the concrete cube with enough new Russian anti-aircraft missiles, back it up with radars based on Russian ships that just happen to be doing the biggest naval exercise in years right now in the Mediterranean, and provoke another attack by announcing another nuclear breakthrough. It could be a baited ambush.
Trash The Dress – Trashing Your Wedding Gown Fad Grows In Popularity
And you ask how far man has fallen…
Few rites of passage are as regimented as a wedding. There are the bridesmaids, the vows, and, then, of course, that white dress. A bride can spend months agonizing over the perfect pristine gown– at one time a symbol of her virginity but now simply tradition– and it’s not uncommon for the wife-to-be to drop thousands of dollars on yards and yards of snow-white chiffon, organza, or silk. Add some Swarovsky crystals, and whew!
But despite the often five- or even sometimes– gasp!– six-figure price tag, it’s a garment that will be worn only once. In the past, this meant a bride would have the dress cleaned after the ceremony, then hermetically sealed and plastic-wrapped for some yet-to-be-born descendant who might care to sport her grandmother’s duds in the year 2047. That heirloom tradition could all change, though, if a trend that’s just taken off on the West Coast makes its way east.
The trend’s name– “Trash the Dress”– adequately describes what happens, but it doesn’t explain the appeal or the reasons why any bride would willingly spend a day after her wedding wearing her gown in an unusual location for a photo shoot in which the dress will quite possibly be damaged beyond repair.
Jerome Kerviel – Single Trader Loses $7.1 Billion In Biggest Bank Scam In History
Just a week ago, when global markets from Bombay to Wall Street were tanking, few investors had ever heard the name Jérome Kerviel. Why would they? The 31-year-old from small-town Brittany in France was a low-level futures trader.
One week later, Kerviel the rogue trader who has lost Société Générale $7.1 billion) now has 347,000 hits on Google, 14 groups dedicated to him on Facebook, and a Wikipedia biography and the mounting political scandal over how he pulled off the biggest scam in banking history is only just beginning.
Churches Greatest Critics May be Their Own Followers
January 27, 2008 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
Criticism from people outside of Christianity toward the Church doesn’t surprise many. But when negative viewpoints are being expressed by believers, it raises a red flag for churches across the country.
In the latest research report by Sam S. Rainer III, who heads Rainer Research, only 39 percent of people who dropped out of the church perceived their church as “caring.” Meanwhile, 51 percent of them called their church “judgmental.”
Among other unfavorable views from those who quit their church, 41 percent of them said their church was “insincere.” Only 20 percent felt their church was “inspirational;” 30 percent said their church was “authentic;” and 36 percent said their church was “welcoming.”
The survey was conducted on 18- to 22-year-olds and is featured in Rainer’s upcoming book, Essential Church?.
“The churches that do not demonstrate these biblical qualities and rather become insincere and judgmental lose this generation,” Rainer, a young Baptist pastor, commented. “They return to the culture that claims churches are not living up to their calling.
“And, for the most part, the culture is correct.”
Part of the church’s calling is to reach those on the outside and live out what they preach, but these students who are dropping out are hearing one thing in church and seeing another thing in the lives of these churchgoers, Rainer pointed out.
Polls have shown increasing hostility and negativity toward Christianity, mainly from younger non-Christians – a majority of whom have a bad impression of Christianity, according to The Barna Group.
But more reports are indicating that young adults not just outside of the Christian faith, but those in the pews are turned off by believers.
“Yes, we need to be greatly concerned about outside perceptions,” said Rainer. “But perhaps more frightening are what our own students are saying about our churches.”
National youth leader Greg Stier of Dare 2 Share Ministries believes one of the worst enemies of Christians are Christians.
“When we are known more for what we are against than what we are for what other outcome can we expect?” he said, echoing what many church leaders have expressed.
“If we put down our picket signs and picked up a basin of water and towel to wash feet with then maybe the world would sit up and listen. Or maybe they wouldn’t. But either way we would be more like Jesus,” Stier noted in a recent interview with The Christian Post.
Young born-again Christians were nearly just as likely as non-Christians (22 vs. 23 percent) to say Christianity in today’s society no longer looks like Jesus, according to David Kinnaman of The Barna Group who wrote his findings in unChristian.
Fighter Jets Halt Russian Bombers Entering British Airspace
Fighter jets were scrambled to intercept two Russian bombers as they headed for British airspace yesterday.
Tornados and F-16 jets escorted the long-range Tu-160s bombers south towards the Bay of Biscay where Russia is staging its biggest military exercise since the Soviet era.
Their navy is currently test-firing missiles from warships there in a show of strength by President Putin before the presidential election.
The MoD said it was a “routine” response but angry Foreign Secretary David Miliband added: “Russia’s action is reminiscent of the Cold War.”
The incident reflects the rise in tension between the countries after the murder in London of ex-KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko.
Last week the Government was forced to close the British Council offices in Russia after a “campaign of intimidation” against staff.
Mexico City Introduces Women-Only Buses to Deter Groping
January 26, 2008 by admin
Filed under Moral Decay
Groping and verbal harassment is an exasperating reality for women using public transportation in this sprawling capital, where 22 million passengers cram onto subways and buses each day. Some men treat women so badly that the subway system has long had ladies-only cars during rush hour, with police segregating the sexes on the platforms.
But that hasn’t helped women forced to rely on packed buses, by far the city’s most-used form of public transportation — until this week.
Acting on complaints from women’s groups, the city rolled out “ladies only” buses, complete with pink signs in the windshields to wave off the men.
As word spreads about the buses, the women seem delighted, while some men forced to wait a few minutes longer have shown their anger. Still others have stumbled on board despite the signs, much to their embarrassment.
On Thursday, passengers on one of the female-only buses spent most of their trip down the capital’s tree-lined Reforma Avenue chatting or putting on makeup, instead of fighting off unwanted male attention.
When a man mistakenly climbed aboard, the women immediately began teasing him and shouting that he should read the “ladies only” sign.
“He’s a gentleman! He should get off,” shouted Yolanda Altamirano, a 64-year-old office janitor.
India Risks Bird Flu Disaster – Human Cases Feared
India’s worst ever outbreak of bird flu could turn into a disaster, an official warned Tuesday, as five people were reportedly quarantined with symptoms of the virus.
2000 have complained of fever.
Eight districts in the eastern state of West Bengal have been hit by the virus, and dead birds are being sold and locals said to be “feasting” on cheap chicken.
The state’s animal resources minister, Anisur Rahaman, said authorities were “determined to cull all poultry in the districts in three or four days, otherwise the state will face a disaster.”
More than 100,000 bird deaths have been reported, and teams are racing to cull two million chickens and ducks.
The Times of India reported five people in West Bengal have been quarantined with “clinical symptoms” of avian flu including fever, coughing, sore throat and muscle ache after handling affected poultry.
If the tests are positive, this will be the first case of human infection in India, home to 1.1 billion people and hit by bird flu among poultry three times since 2006.
Health officials in New Delhi said they were currently analysing blood samples from close to 150 people who have complained of fever.
On the ground, culling teams have been facing an uphill battle with villagers smuggling birds out of flu affected areas and selling them in open markets.
Thirty-year-old Sheikh Ali, a vendor in Birbhum’s Gharisa market, 340 kilometres (192 miles) from the state capital Kolkata, said the sale of poultry had doubled in the past week.
“The prices of chicken have come down from 60 rupees to 20 rupees (1.5 dollars to 50 cents) per kilogramme (2.2 pounds).
“Poor villagers are feasting on chicken. At normal times, they cannot afford to buy as prices are so high. Now they are enjoying the meat,” Ali said.
People typically catch the disease by coming into direct contact with infected poultry, but experts fear a flu pandemic if the H5N1 mutates into a form easily transmissible between humans.
Migratory birds have been largely blamed for the global spread of the disease, which has killed more than 200 people worldwide since 2003.
In Birbhum, police seized two trucks of smuggled poultry early Tuesday but culling teams were yet to arrive at the spot, an AFP correspondent said.
“Poultry owners are smuggling their birds out at night and transporting it to different places for fear of culling,” said Shubhendu Mahato, a security guard at Arambagh Hatchery, one of the biggest in West Bengal.
Chicken shops had also sprung up along the main highways overnight with people crowding them, the AFP correspondent said.
Parent Angry Over Movies Allegedly Shown At High School
January 24, 2008 by admin
Filed under Moral Decay
Justin’s son told him he had watched about 46 hours of movies in various classes since October. Several of the movies were rated R, he said.
Movies that students at Luther allegedly watched included “Saving Private Ryan,” “Dodgeball,” “Napoleon Dynamite” and “Spider Man 3.”"We went probably a month and never saw one stick of homework,” the Luther student said.When a homework checklist the Luther father sends to school with his son came back with a peculiar comment from a teacher, Justin decided to take action.
The teacher’s comment on the homework checklist reads: “Seriously! Are we going to continue doing this the rest of the year?”"I want my son to be able to do algebra. I want him to know about Oklahoma history. I want him to know about literature. These are things that he needs to be prepared for, for life,” Justin said.
He added that he has talked with Luther High School Principal Jan Scheffler, who did not have time to talk with Eyewitness News 5 on Tuesday. She said standard policy is for all movies to be approved by school authorities before being shown to students.
When asked whether she approved of movies like “Saving Private Ryan,” “Napoleon Dynamite” and “Spider Man 3,” Scheffler said she is looking into it.Officials with the Oklahoma Department of Education are also investigating the allegations, noting that by law, students should receive at least six hours of instruction per day.Any movies watched should be relevant to the course, education officials said.
Fast Moving Blood Infection Kills Student
A 22-year-old Dillard University student has died of a rare infection of the bloodstream that can spread bacteria throughout the body, New Orleans Health Department Director Kevin Stephens said Tuesday.
Citing a request for privacy from the mans family, Dillard spokeswoman Karen Celestan said she could not release the name of the student, who died Friday.
However, the state Office of Public Health is offering preventive care to the students close contacts and offering information about the illness, said Dr. Takeisha Davis, the departments regional medical director.
Although the infection is difficult to treat because it moves quickly, Stephens said vaccines are effective. The body needs about two weeks after the shot to build up enough antibodies to ward off the infection, Davis said.
Dillard will be offering free immunizations to faculty, staff and students today from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Lawless Memorial Chapel, Celestan said.
This infection, which can cause death within two days, is rare, striking one person in 500,000, Stephens said. Early warning signs are rash, fever and flu like symptoms.
At this point, “theres no need to call out the troops,” Stephens said, because this case appears to be an isolated one.
People can ward off the infection with basic hygienic practices such as frequent hand-washing and covering the mouth when coughing and sneezing, and not sharing personal items such as razors, he said.
The vaccine to be administered today is used to combat meningitis, which, Stephens said, is related to this ailment. Such infections can be common among first- and second-year college students because they are more likely to live close together in dormitories. State law requires the vaccine for incoming college students, Stephens said.
Older people are also vulnerable, he said.
