UN fears ‘irreversible’ damage to natural environment

GENEVA — The UN warned on Monday that "massive" loss in life-sustaining natural environments was likely to deepen to the point of being irreversible after global targets to cut the decline by this year were missed. As a result of the degradation, the world is moving closer to several "tipping points" beyond which some ecosystems that play a part in natural processes such as climate or the food chain may be permanently damaged, a United Nations report said.

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Was Last Week's Market Crash a Direct Attack By Financial Terrorists?

Last week, the U.S. stock market suffered the greatest sudden drop in its history, for reasons that nobody on Wall Street can seem to decipher. But of all the explanations being examined—a tech glitch, Greek debt worries and fraud have all been discussed--the most troubling is not being given sufficient attention. Coming on the very day that Congress considered two key financial reforms, the timing of the "flash crash" raises concerns that Wall Street is resorting to extreme tactics in its efforts to intimidate politicians who want to rein in the capital markets casino. Thursday's market plunge could have been an act of financial terrorism. Wall Street has both the motive and the means: Goldman Sachs, which is currently under investigation for a very different kind of fraud, has the trading power to make just such a market crash occur, and has much to lose from financial reforms moving through Congress.

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Eurozone: The Kitchen Sink Goes In – Now It’s All About Solvency

This is a whole new level of global moral hazard – the result of an alliance of convenience between troubled governments in the south of Europe and the north European banks (and implicitly, north American banks) who enabled their debt habit. The Europeans promise to unveil a mechanism this week that will “prevent abuse” by borrowing countries, but it is hard to see how this would really work in Europe today.

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After Religion Fizzles, We’re Stuck with Nietzsche

It is hard to muster much sympathy over the implosion of the Catholic Church, traditional Protestant denominations or Jewish synagogues. These institutions were passive as the Christian right, which peddles magical thinking and a Jesus-as-warrior philosophy, hijacked the language and iconography of traditional Christianity. They have busied themselves with the boutique activism of the culture wars.

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How Making a Difference Can Make You Happy

Democracy depends on the time, energy, and engagement of ordinary people. But it remains quite difficult to motivate average citizens even to vote, much less to engage in the more intensive forms of political activism needed to counteract powerful forces that work against rule by the people

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Obama's Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan Will Move the Court to the Right

President Barack Obama has chosen Elena Kagan to fill the vacancy left by Justice John Paul Stevens' retirement. Sadly, Kagan cannot fill Justice Stevens' mighty shoes.

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The Second Wave of the Financial Tsunami

The wave is gathering force and is most likely to hit the global economy between the first and second quarter of 2010. Count on it… The US economy will be spiraling out of control in the coming months and will reach a critical point by the end of the 1st quarter 2010 and implode by the 2nd quarter.

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Overdose Death Rate Surges, Legal Drugs Are Mostly to Blame

According to a little noticed January report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), drug overdoses killed more than 33,000 people in 2005, the last year for which firm data are available. That makes drug overdose the second leading cause of accidental death, behind only motor vehicle accidents (43,667) and ahead of firearms deaths (30,694).

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Why won't Israel allow Gazans to import coriander?

In its response to a freedom-of-information suit last week, the state admitted that there is specific list of goods permissible for import to Strip.

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It’s Not About Greece Any More

The Greek “rescue” package announced last weekend is dramatic, unprecedented, and far from enough to stabilize the eurozone. The Greek government and the European Union (EU) leadership, prodded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), are finally becoming realistic about the dire economic situation in Greece. They have abandoned previous rounds of optimistic forecasts and have now admitted to a profoundly worse situation. This new program calls for a total of 11% of GDP in terms of “fiscal adjustments” (i.e., reduction in the budget deficit; now meaning government spending cuts mostly) in 2010, 4.3% in 2011, and 2% in 2012 and 2013. The total debt to GDP ratio peaks at 149% in 2012-13 before starting a gentle glide path back down to sanity. This new program is honest enough to show why it is unlikely to succeed. Daniel Gros, an eminent economist on euro zone issues based in Brussels, has argued that for each 1% of GDP decline in Greek government spending, total demand in the country falls by 2.5% of GDP. If the government reduces spending by 15% of GDP – the initial shock to demand could be well over 30% of GDP. Obviously this simple rule does not work with such large numbers, but it illustrates that Greece is likely to experience a very sharp recession – and there is substantial uncertainty around how bad the economy will get. The program announced last weekend assumes Greek GDP falls by 4% this year, then by another 2.6% in 2011, before recovering to positive growth in 2012 and beyond.

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