Weekday NEWS to Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.

Thursday 01.19.2012

Premature Obituaries for the U.S. Dollar
BY ANTAL FEKETE - FinancialSense.com
It is open season for wild monetary prognostications. More premature obituaries on the dollar have been posted on the Internet. For example, see Jim Willie’s The US Dollar Paper Tiger(Financial Sense, January 11) with epitaphs like "the U.S. dollar rising to the cemetery", or "dollar death dance". Or see another article, Jeff Nielsen’s entitled Maximum Fraud in U.S. Treasuries (Gold-Eagle, January 3). It betrays maximum misunderstanding about keeping the dollar on a life-support system. It assumes that the Fed and the U.S. Treasury are fighting tooth and nail to keep the value of government debt high lest it collapse in want of support from Japan, China, and other countries.
These views hang the picture upside down. In actual fact, the Fed and the U.S. Treasury desperately want to beat down the value of the dollar. The greatest obstacle frustrating their effort is the stubbornly high and still increasing value of U.S. Treasuries. Captains of the world’s monetary system are yanking levers and twisting throttles which are no longer connected to anything. The captains are no longer in control...

World Bank to World: 'Prepare for the Worst'
By Derek Thompson - TheAtlantic.com
If the euro zone finally loses its grip on its super-slo-mo meltdown, the countries paying the highest price might not be the ones confined to the euro, according the World Bank's new morbid report on the global economy.
"Developing countries need to prepare for the worst," the Bank said, describing how the European sovereign debt crisis could spread to every corner of the globe. "In this highly uncertain environment, developing countries should evaluate their vulnerabilities and prepare contingencies to deal with both the immediate and longer-term effects of a downturn."

World Bank warns emerging nations
By Chris Giles in London - FT.com
Developing countries should take steps to plan for a global economic meltdown on a par with 2008-09 if the European sovereign debt crisis escalates, the World Bank warned on Wednesday in its latest economic forecasts.
Predicting significantly slower global growth in 2012 than it expected last summer even if the eurozone muddles through its crisis, World Bank economists said that if financial markets deny funds to eurozone economies, global growth would be about 4 percentage points lower than even these figures, with poorer economies far from immune.
Andrew Burns, head of macroeconomics at the Bank, told journalists in London: "Developing countries should hope for the best and prepare for the worst."

Hedge Funds May Sue Greece if It Tries to Force Loss
Posted: AthensWire.com
The novel approach would have the funds arguing in the European Court of Human Rights that Greece had violated bondholder rights, though that could be a multiyear project with no guarantee of a payoff. And it would not be likely to produce sympathy for these funds, which many blame for the lack of progress so far in the negotiations over restructuring Greece’s debts.
The tactic has emerged in conversations with lawyers and hedge funds as it became clear that Greece was considering passing legislation to force all private bondholders to take losses, while exempting the European Central Bank, which is the largest institutional holder of Greek bonds with 50 billion euros or so.

Greece, creditors haggle to avoid costly default
Posted: AthensWire.com
ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece began a new round of bargaining on a bond swap deal with its creditors on Wednesday, with both sides under mounting pressure to iron out differences before they push Athens to a messy default.
The two sides said little after the more than two-hour meeting other than to note they would meet again on Thursday. Greece needs a deal within days to avoid the prospect of default when bond redemptions come due in March.
"They are working hard to breach differences and they will continue tomorrow," a source close to the talks told Reuters.

World Bank fears Europe's crisis
could set off deeper global slump than Lehman collapse
The World Bank has slashed its global growth forecast and told developing nations to prepare for the worst, warning that Europe’s debt crisis could trigger an even deeper slump than the post-Lehman collapse three years ago.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
"The global economy has entered a dangerous phase. The financial system of the largest economic bloc in the world is threatened by a fiscal and financial crisis that has so far eluded policy-makers’ efforts to contain it," said the bank in its Global Economic Perspectives.
"The possibility of further escalation of the crisis in Europe cannot be ruled out. Should this happen, the ensuing global downturn is likely to be deeper and longer-lasting than the recession of 2008/2009 because countries do not have the fiscal and monetary space to stimulate the global economy. Activity is unlikely to bounce back as quickly."

Merkel won't be the one smiling
if Germany loses its AAA rating too
Poor old Sarko. Fancy resorting to "scheduling problems" to get out of this Friday's hot date with Angela "triple A" Merkel.
By Alistair Osborne - Telegraph.co.uk
Anyone would think the titchy French leader couldn't face it. She, the Teutonic powerhouse. He, just a AA+ guy – one notch above the breakdown service.
Nicolas Sarkozy may struggle with the concept. But even he must have known a downgrade was coming, with France's banks having the biggest exposure in Europe to the PIIGS – Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. Why, it's worth 24pc of GDP.

France and the death of the sovereign debt market
Investors will seek other safe havens
By Matthew Lynn
LONDON (MarketWatch) — So where was the carnage?
Late last Friday night, the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s delivered its downgrade of French debt, stripping one of the world’s biggest economies of its AAA rating.
Over the weekend, it wasn’t hard to imagine the cataclysm that would follow. After all, the news could hardly be more worrying. The French debt market is one of the largest in the world — with $1.6 trillion of debt outstanding, France is the world’s fourth-largest sovereign borrower.

Euro Climbs as IMF Studies $500 Billion Boost in Capacity;
Dollar Weakens
By Catarina Saraiva - Bloomberg.com
The euro gained for a second day versus the dollar and the yen as theInternational Monetary Fund proposed raising its lending capacity by as much as $500 billion to protect the global economy amid Europe’s debt turmoil.
The 17-nation currency rallied against most of its major peers as Greek officials resumed negotiations with bondholders. The dollar fell against the euro on reduced demand for a refuge as U.S. data showed a rebound in industrial production. Brazil’s real climbed as risk appetite improved, while the pound weakened against the euro as Britain’s unemployment rose.

Paul gives new life to an old issue: gold standard
By Will Weissert - AP - Boston.com
AUSTIN, Texas—Facing double-digit inflation in 1981, Congress created a commission to consider a role for gold in U.S. monetary policy. The 17-member panel rejected the idea of returning America to the gold standard -- except for two dissenting members.
One was a little-known congressman from Texas named Ron Paul.
Today, Paul's surprisingly strong race for the Republican presidential nomination is drawing new attention to a notion that long has been a cherished cause for a small group of conservatives but is considered a relic of history by mainstream economists and politicians.

Gingrich: U.S. should reconsider gold standard
Gingrich picks up favorite topic of rival Ron Paul and says he wants commission to examine bringing back gold standard. More
By Chris Isidore @CNNMoney
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is calling for the United States to think about returning to the gold standard.
Speaking at a foreign policy forum in South Carolina on Tuesday, Gingrich advocated a "commission on gold to look at the whole concept of how do we get back to hard money."
Gingrich, a former Speaker of the House, has spoken in favor of a "hard money" policy in the past, but these were his strongest comments to support reinstating the gold standard.

Gingrich: What about the gold standard?
Gingrich picks up favorite topic of rival Ron Paul and says he wants commission to examine bringing back gold standard.
Gingrich: U.S. should reconsider gold standard
By Chris Isidore @CNNMoney
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is calling for the United States to think about returning to the gold standard.
Speaking at a foreign policy forum in South Carolina on Tuesday, Gingrich advocated a "commission on gold to look at the whole concept of how do we get back to hard money."
Gingrich, a former Speaker of the House, has spoken in favor of a "hard money" policy in the past, but these were his strongest comments to support reinstating the gold standard.

Local currencies: 'In the U.S. we don't trust'
By Blake Ellis @CNNMoney
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- It may seem like Monopoly money to outsiders, but a growing number of communities across the U.S. are using homegrown local currencies to stimulate their economies and protect themselves from the nation's broader economic woes.
While there were only about 20 active community currencies in the United States in 2009, there has been a recent resurgence, with at least a dozen communities developing their own currencies in the past couple of years, estimates Loren Gatch, a professor of political science at the University of Central Oklahoma who researches these alternative currencies. In addition, currencies that have been around for years have seen a spike in interest, with membership doubling in some cases.

4Q profits slide 26% at Bank of New York Mellon
CEO Gerald Hassell blames the revenue decline on lower-than-normal levels of client activity caused by uncertain market conditions and the seasonality of its depositary receipts business.
CrainsNewYork.com
(AP) - Bank of New York Mellon Corp.'s fourth-quarter net income fell 26%, hurt by restructuring charges and a decline in revenue stemming from less client activity and a seasonal slowdown in one of its businesses.
The results missed Wall Street expectations, and its shares fell more than 2% in premarket trading.

Goldman Sachs' 4Q earnings tumble 58%
Yet another New York bank reported dismal net income for the final three months of 2011, although Goldman Sachs Group Inc. managed to beat analysts' estimates.
CrainsNewYork.com
(AP) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc. says its net income fell 58% in the last three months of last year because of lower investment banking fees in a quarter marked by choppy financial markets.
The investment bank said Wednesday that it made $1 billion, or $1.84 per share, from October through December. The results beat the estimate of $1.28 per share from analysts surveyed by FactSet, a provider of financial data.

Treasury dips into pension funds to avoid debt
ChicagoTribune.com
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Treasury on Tuesday started dipping into federal pension funds in order to give the Obama administration more credit to pay government bills.
"I will be unable to invest fully" the federal employees retirement system fund beginning Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a letter to Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress.

Treasury’s Thrift Savings Plan maneuver
aims to keep government under debt cap
By Eric Yoder - WashingtonPost.com
The federal government resorted to a favorite accounting maneuver Tuesday to stay under its debt limit, suspending the issuance of securities in a retirement savings program for federal and postal employees.
The Treasury Department announced the maneuver involving the Thrift Savings Plan’s government securities fund to keep the government below the $15.2 trillion debt ceiling, pending approval of a higher limit.

Big banks must submit break-up plans under new FDIC rule
AP - LATimes.com
The largest U.S. banks must soon show how they would break up their assets if they were in danger of failing.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. voted Tuesday to require banks with $50 billion or more in assets to submit so-called living wills. Seven banks with more than $250 billion in assets will have to show their plans by July. The other 30 affected by the rule have until 2013.
The FDIC also proposed a separate rule that would require banks with more than $10 billion in assets to conduct annual stress tests.

Man Said to Be Charged in Government Computer Data Theft
By Patricia Hurtado - Bloomberg.com
An employee of a U.S. government contractor was charged with stealing computer source code from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York that the Treasury Department uses to track federal collections and payments.
Bo Zhang, who worked for an unidentified technology company, was a computer programmer assigned to work on source code at the federal reserve from May 2011 until August 2011, the U.S. said in a criminal complaint unsealed today in federal court in New York. Zhang is a Chinese citizen, said a person with knowledge of the matter who didn’t want to be identified because the information wasn’t public.

Art Cashin Shows US Stock Traders Have Left The Building
Submitted by Tyler Durden ZeroHedge.com
Though it won't come as a surprise to too many who have seen us point to US equity outflows and the dreadfully declining volume on the NYSE, we leave it to UBS' Art Cashin to uncover where the real action is - and more importantly where it really is not. The experienced Cashin points to the early excitement as Asia and Europe remain active and the dramatic ebb as both of these markets head off to supper, leaving just US traders(and investors we assume) sitting on their hands, twiddling their thumbs, and generally not playing the game (aside from the general rumor-mongery that appears to be rising day by day).
Art Cashin - UBS: China Flyby And Successful European Auctions Produce Rally That Falters
For months now traders have debated whether China was headed for a soft landing or a hard landing. Yesterday, they released their GDP at 8.9%. While that was a sign of some slowing in China, it was far from a hard or even a soft landing. The wheels never hit the ground.

The Debt Supercycle Reaches Its Final Chapter
BY JAMES J PUPLAVA CFP - FinancialSense.com

"By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens." ~John Maynard Keynes

This year will mark my 32nd year in the business. I began my career in 1980 after spending several years in corporate life, which I did not find to my liking. I had too much of an independent streak and eventually came to the realization that I'd be much better off starting my own business. When I entered the financial world interest rates were beginning to peak, as the long upward climb in inflation was coming to an end under the leadership of Paul Volker at the Fed. It is hard to believe today that interest rates on treasuries were as high as 15.7%. The yields on money market funds were over 18%. Inflation rates were over 14%, with oil prices at $40 a barrel. Gold and silver would eventually peak at $850 and $50 an ounce, respectively.

Fed Officials Open to Additional Easing
as They Monitor Risks to Economy
By Craig Torres - Bloomberg.com
Federal Reserve officials are staying open to further monetary easing this year as they monitor risks that threaten to move the economy further away from their mandate for stable prices and full employment.
Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart told reporters Jan. 9 that he hadn’t closed out "the option" for more stimulus, while New York Fed President William C. Dudley said in a Jan. 6 speech that it’s "appropriate" to evaluate whether the Fed could do more to boost growth. Both are voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee.

Fed pushes for government action to help revive housing
Ideas include big roles for Freddie, Fannie
By Patrice Hill-The Washington Times
Top Federal Reserve officials are prodding theWhite House and Congress to take more aggressive action to stop the free-fall in the housing market, warning that the U.S. economy will remain sluggish and vulnerable and will not fully recover until housing returns to better health.
Having failed to revive the housing market from its deep slump by driving interest rates to record lows and taking the unprecedented step of buying up many of the country’s mortgages, Fed officials have concluded that vigorous action by the executive branch is needed to overcome legal and institutional obstacles to a recovery.

Wholesale Prices in U.S. Unexpectedly Decrease
as Inflation Remains Tame
By Shobhana Chandra - Bloomberg.com
Wholesale prices in the U.S. unexpectedly dropped in December, consistent with the Federal Reserve’s assessment that inflation remains tame.
The producer price index fell 0.1 percent, the second decrease in the past three months, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. Economists projected a 0.1 percent gain, according to themedian estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. The core measure excluding volatile food and energy rose 0.3 percent as the cost of light trucks climbed.

Few U.S. Cities Recoup Jobs in Recovery
By William Selway - Bloomberg.com
More than 90 percent of U.S. metropolitan areas have failed to recoup the jobs lost during the recession that ended in 2009, a report found, underscoring the slow pace of recovery by urban economies.
Only 26 of 363 U.S. metropolitan areas have seen employment rebound to pre-recession peaks, according to the report, prepared by forecaster IHS Global Insight and released by the U.S. Conference of Mayors today. Nearly 80 areas aren’t expected to see such a recovery for more than five years.

For a jobless, struggling South Carolina man,
reality isn’t a political debate
By Eli Saslow - WashingtonPost.com
CONWAY, S.C. — He awoke to his alarm on Monday morning at 6, just like always, even though his handwritten schedule for the day read only: "Find something to do!" Steven Murdock, 39, poured himself a cup of coffee and rummaged through the defrosted Thanksgiving leftovers in an otherwise barren refrigerator. He grabbed the phone that bill collectors were threatening to turn off and made his first call of the day.
"I need some kind of odd job to help me get by," he told a neighbor. "Know of anything?"

This Is America Today, Part I
By Gonzalo Lira
A true story: A fifty-ish woman I know was diagnosed with breast cancer. Dutifully, she and her husband contacted their insurance company to start the process of paying for her medical bills.
But lo and behold, the insurance company started dragging its feet—then tried to claim the woman’s breast cancer was a "pre-existing condition".

CBO Report:
Medicare Pilot Programs
Don't Control Health-Care Costs
By Megan McArdle - TheAtlantic,com
I was always skeptical of the projections that ObamaCare would reduce the budget. In fact, I made somecounter-predictions of my own. The cuts needed were very deep, and likely to be politically difficult; the benefits claimed in terms of actual improving health or even personal finances had been far too large.

Soros's friend in the Oval Office does him a favor
By Ed Lasky - AmericanThinker.com
The Wall Street Journal has an opinion column noting that Barack Obama has done an about face and now seems to be boosting the prospects of natural gas (especially that derived from shale gas fields). The White House has released a report that notes the important role that shale gas has played in helping to spark job and industrial growth. The White House mentions the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania as playing an especially important role:

Income Mobility
Means Some People Have to Lose Everything
By Megan McArdle - TheAtlantic.com
Like Ross Douthat, I've been following the recent blog conversation about income inequality and income mobility. I'm not going to summarize the arguments about how closely they're connected--you should read Ross's excellent post for a good overview. And I'm certainly not going to insert myself into an argument between two very smart economists who spend a lot of time studying this question. But I was struck by a very troubling thought while I was reading through these debates: only one of these problems matters, and it's the problem that we can't solve. No, strike that. I'm not sure whether the problem can be solved or not. What I am very sure of is that we do not want to solve it, and that for that reason, we are very probably not going to.

The Story Behind the SOPA Blackout
The entertainment industry usually gets its way in DC—but it was no match for Reddit, Wikipedia, and BoingBoing.
—By Siddhartha Mahanta and Nick Baumann - MotherJones.com
Only two American industries have ever had the clout in Washington to force Congress to ban Wall Street from trading futures on their products. The first was onions—futures trading in no one's favorite root vegetable was banned in the 1950s after farmers protested that Chicago speculators were manipulating prices. The other ban is more recent: In 2010, at the urging of the Motion Picture Association of America, one of Capitol Hill's most powerful lobbies, Congress banned movie futures as part of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform bill.

* * * * *

New bill readied in congress
OPEN ready to take on SOPA in Congress
Piracy legislation opponents ready alternative amid web protests
By Robert Schroeder, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Lawmakers opposed to the Internet anti-piracy legislation known as SOPA and PIPA said Wednesday they are preparing to introduce an alternative bill as as soon as possible that they say takes a more-targeted approach to combating piracy and protects free speech.
Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, and other House members were readying their Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act, a spokeswoman said, on the same day that Wikipedia and other websites are darkened in protest of SOPA, which stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act, and PIPA, the Protect Intellectual Property Act.

Internet Rejoices: SOPA Is at Death's Door
The hated anti-piracy bill may end up in the dustbin, but other threats to a free and open Internet remain live in Congress.
By Rebecca J. Rosen - TheAtlantic.com
SOPA is not dead, yet, but it's dying. On Friday, Lamar Smith of Texas agreed to remove the controversial DNS-blocking provision from the House bill, of which he is the author. Later that day, the White House released its own statement criticizing the legislation. Though the White House stopped short of saying it would veto the bill, it attacked the two bills for much of the same things that have shocked open-Internet advocates at places such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Wikipedia, BoingBoing, and Reddit. And on Saturday, Darrell Issa, one of the leading opponents of the bill and the chair of the committee where it's been in mark-up, announced that Wednesday's hearings were canceled and that he had been assured by House majority leader Eric Cantor that SOPA would be shelved for the time being. As Brad Plumer writes inThe Washington Post, "The momentum on online piracy legislation is shifting dramatically."

Supporters of SOPA, PIPA stick to their guns
Widespread online protests dismissed as political stunts
By Jaikumar Vijayan - Computerworld.com
Computerworld - Beleaguered supporters of two online antipiracy bills today downplayed widespread protests against the legislation and insisted the opposition is misguided and misinformed.
Supporters of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) labeled today's protests by Google, Wikipedia, Reddit and others as political stunts that contribute little to the debate around the pros and cons of the two bills.
One example is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has been a vocal supporter of antipiracy legislation.

Why Google and Twitter didn't join the SOPA blackout
Wikipedia, Reddit, and other sites are blacked out in protest of the SOPA anti-piracy bills. Why didn't Google and Twitter join the blackout?
By Sarah McBride and Jasmin Melvin - CSMonitor.com
SAN FRANCISCO
A blackout Wednesday to protest against proposed legislation on online piracy has failed to get the full support of the biggest Internet players.
Despite calls for sites such as Google, Facebook,Twitter and other big names to join the blackout, the biggest participants are the online encyclopediaWikipedia and the social-news website Reddit.

The SOPA Blackout Created a Big Problem
By Alexis Madrigal - TheAtlantic.com
My connections in the technology world are nearly universally opposed to SOPA. They (i.e. we) see it as a threat to the open Internet. Hollywood and the music companies say there is nothing to fear from this legislation. Yet most independent analysts and the organizations that would have to comply with the law say that it creates serious problems.
To protest SOPA, many Internet companies -- as you no doubt have seen or heard by now -- have blacked out their websites. I've seen Internet watchers go back and forth about the usefulness of the current blackout protest. Two tweets stand-in for a whole lot of others:

The Sopa blackout protest makes history
An unprecedented wave of online opposition to the Sopa and Pipa bills before Congress shows the power of a free internet
By Amy Goodman - Guardian.co.uk
Wednesday 18 January marked the largest online protest in the history of the internet. Websites from large to small "went dark" in protest of proposed legislation before the US House and Senate that could profoundly change the internet. The two bills, Sopa in the House and Pipa in the Senate, ostensibly aim to stop the piracy of copyrighted material over the internet on websites based outside the US. Critics – among them, the founders of Google, Wikipedia, the Internet Archive, Tumblr and Twitter – counter that the laws will stifle innovation and investment, hallmarks of the free, open internet. The Obama administration has offered muted criticism of the legislation, but, as many of his supporters have painfully learned, what President Barack Obama questions one day, he signs into law the next.

Supreme Court Says Congress
May Re-Copyright Public Domain Works
By David Kravets - Wired.com
Congress may take books, musical compositions and other works out of the public domain, where they can be freely used and adapted, and grant them copyright status again, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.
In a 6-2 ruling, the court said that, just because material enters the public domain, it is not "territory that works may never exit."

Warning Signs That We Should Prepare For The Worst
TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com
The warning signs are all around us. All we have to do is open up our eyes and look at them. Almost every single day there are more prominent voices in the financial world telling us that a massive economic crisis is coming and that we need to prepare for the worst. On Wednesday, it was the World Bank itself that issued a very chilling warning. In an absolutely startling report, the World Bank revised GDP growth estimates for 2012 downward very sharply, warned that Europe could be on the verge of a devastating financial crisis, and declared that the rest of the world better "prepare for the worst." You would expect to hear this kind of thing on The Economic Collapse Blog, but this is not the kind of language that you would normally expect to hear from the stuffed suits at the World Bank. Obviously things have gotten bad enough that nobody is even really trying to deny it anymore. Andrew Burns, the lead author of the report, said that if the sovereign debt crisis gets even worse we could be looking at an economic crisis that could be even worse than the last one: "An escalation of the crisis would spare no-one. Developed- and developing-country growth rates could fall by as much or more than in 2008/09." Burns also stated that the "importance of contingency planning cannot be stressed enough." In other words, Burns is saying that it is time to prepare for the worst. So are you ready?

How Will The Shocking Decline Of Christianity In America Affect The Future Of This Nation?
EndOfTheAmericanDream.com
Is Christianity in decline in America? When you examine the cold, hard numbers it is simply not possible to come to any other conclusion. Over the past few decades, the percentage of Christians in America has been steadily declining. This has especially been true among young people. As you will see later in this article, there has been a mass exodus of teens and young adults out of U.S. churches. In addition, what "Christianity" means to American Christians today is often far different from what "Christianity" meant to their parents and their grandparents. Millions upon millions of Christians in the United States simply do not believe many of the fundamental principles of the Christian faith any longer. Without a doubt, America is becoming a less "Christian" nation. This has staggering implications for the future of this country. The United States was founded primarily by Christians that were seeking to escape religious persecution. For those early settlers, the Christian faith was the very center of their lives, and it deeply affected the laws that they made and the governmental structures that they established. So what is the future of America going to look like if we totally reject the principles that this nation was founded on?

Fukushima Radiation Spreads Worldwide
George Washington's Blog
California, Finland, Canada, Australia Hit By Radiation
The University of California at Berkeley detected cesium levels in San Francisco area milk above over EPA limits … and even higher than they were 6 months ago.
Finnish public television says that cesium from Fukushima has been detected in lichens, fungi and elk and reindeer meat in Finland.
The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency confirmed a radiation cloud over the East Coast of Australia.

Islam with Chinese Characteristics
China's bold but chimerical quest
for soft power in the Islamic world
By Massoud Hayoun - TheAtlantic.com
Arriving at a Guangzhou construction site on assignment for a Chinese newspaper in the summer of 2010, I was surprised to find a ruby-red mosque that looked more like a palatial Buddhist pagoda than anything I'd seen in the Middle East. Islam has deep roots in Chinese history, and is believed to have arrived in China with Saad ibn Abi Waqqas, the Prophet Mohamed's uncle, whom locals say was entombed in 664 AD in a dimly lit, musky hut not far from the newly constructed Chinese mosque.
The local government, devoted to the secular principle of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics that guides today's China, contributed 15 million yuan ($2.4 million), roughly 90 percent of the overall building costs for the mosque, according to Muslim community figures.

China's property price slide gathers speed
Property prices are falling at an accelerating rate across China and unsold inventories have reached the highest level in recent history, raising concerns monetary tightening may have gone too far.
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - Telegraph.co.uk
Average prices fell 0.3pc in December from a month earlier, the third successive fall. The National Bureau of Statistics recorded declines in 53 of China's 70 biggest cities. Used homes in Wenzhou dropped at an annualised rate of 45pc.
"Today's report is consistent with the unambiguously deteriorating trends seen in property sales, construction, starts and investments. The data just turned from bad to worse," said Wei Yao from Société Générale.

Red lines in the Strait of Hormuz
By George Friedman - ATimes.com
The United States reportedly sent a letter to Iran via multiple intermediaries last week warning Tehran that any attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz constituted a red line for Washington.
The same week, a chemist associated with Iran's nuclear program was killed in Tehran. In Ankara, Iranian parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani met with Turkish officials and has been floating hints of flexibility in negotiations over Iran's nuclear program.

Why Regime Change Won't Work in Iran
By Robert Wright - TheAtlantic.com
One of the most popular things on the Republican campaign trail--possibly more popular than any of the candidates themselves--is regime change in Iran. Mitt Romney favors it, Rick Santorum favors it, and Newt Gingrich even has a plan for doing it: "cutting off the gasoline supply to Iran and then, frankly, sabotaging the only refinery they have."
Give these guys some credit: At least they don't suffer from the common illusion that a few days of bombing will lastingly set back Iran's nuclear program. Unfortunately, the idea that regime change would do the job isn't much more reality-based.

The myth of an "isolated' Iran
By Pepe Escobar - ATimes.com
Introduction by Tom Engelhardt
These days, with a crisis atmosphere growing in the Persian Gulf, a little history lesson about the United States and Iran might be just what the doctor ordered. Here, then, are a few high- (or low-) lights from their relationship over the last half-century-plus:
Summer 1953: The Central Intelligence Agency and British intelligence hatch a plot for a coup that overthrows a democratically elected government in Iran intent on nationalizing that country's oil industry. In its place, they put an autocrat, the young Shah of Iran, and his soon-to-be feared secret police.

Why Russia is planning Iran war games
Russia has reportedly ordered the military to plan war games to deal with potential spillover from a US-Iran conflict.
By Fred Weir - CSMonitor.com
MOSCOW - As tensions ratchet up in the Persian Gulf, the Kremlin is signaling that it will use all its diplomatic influence to oppose war and, according to a leading Moscow newspaper, has ordered the military to prepare for any possible spillover from a conflict between Iran and the US into the sensitive post-Soviet Caucasus region.
Russia will block any further sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council, a Foreign Ministry official said Tuesday, because it believes rising tensions could trigger a conflict that would destabilize the wider region. Last week Russian deputy prime minister and former ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin warned that any Western attack on Iran would constitute "a direct threat to [Russian] national security."

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