The Future — Place Your Bets

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

The Future — Place Your Bets

The seers of the Gadfly Revelry & Research gang (GRR) have routinely uncovered data and real information to predict coming events. Gadfly has frequently been ahead of the networks and the New York Times in addressing issues as diverse as war & peace, the economy, and health care. Our role models are IF Stone and Russell Baker. Scoop! Please peruse previous columns at thecatskillchronicle.wordpress.com.

Today, GRR will pass you some predictions (insightful guesses) as to the economic future. Place your bets.

War and Peace affect the economy. So do the manipulations of the financial community: the Fed, the SEC, the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, Central Banks of industrialized nations, the investment "banks" (Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and other mob members), hedge funds, private equity funds, and Bernie Madoff.

War and the military cost big bucks. Offering little more than the cost of raw materials to produce the bullets & bombs and the salaries of those who press the triggers to make them go boom, military spending is a poor stimulus to the economy. Every other economic sector — health care, education, mass transit, civilian manufacturing — produces more jobs and makes the money circulate more times than military budgetry. But, we have to save the world for democracy (capitalism?), and so we maintain seven or eight hundred military bases around the world. If only there were more than 192 nations as represented in the UN. Our latest adventure — very quietly — is in Africa. We need a place for all the troops that are being kicked out of South America: Venezuela, Bolivia, and now Ecuador where the (expletive deleted) leftist President won’t renew a contract for the US base at Manta unless we allow an Ecuadorian base in Arizona or New Mexico, the states we stole from Mexico in the 19th century. Africa will have AfriCom (Africa Command), like it or not. The Global War on Terror will continue there under its new name, Overseas Continency Operations. We have to protect the oilfields of Nigeria and the manganese mines of Gabon (from their local populations). And titanium, chromium, vanadium, molybdenum… The trouble is we can’t convince any of the African governments to headquarter AfriCom within their borders. AfriCom is still in Germany. Premier Angela Merkel would, no doubt, like EuroCom out as well. Don’t expect change too soon.

The Chinese, our largest creditors, holding a couple of trillion dollars of US Treasuries and other US agency bonds, met in June with the other members of The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The Chinese brought Zhou X, their financial wizard in addition to Premier Hu J. President Medvedev of Russia was present as were the heads of state of other members of the SCO. They invited additional nations such as India, Pakistan, Iran, and Brazil. The US tried to crash the party but was politely told no, though offered a redacted transcript. In separate replies the Chinese and Russians said the Americans had better stop wasteful spending on war. Neither did they like Americans sailing around the world in 13 aircraft carrier groups that burn fuel in barrels-per-mile, or maintaining so many hundreds of military bases around the world. The Chinese had some snide remarks as well about US domestic deregulation. But, what can you expect from a communist nation?

Just so the US would not pout too much they let Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner come to speak at Peking University where he assured the audience that Chinese investments in the US were safe. The audience laughed.

The community of unaligned nations (unaligned with the US) are arranging a reserve currency to replace the dollar. Meanwhile, China has already made deals with Argentina, Brazil, and Malasia denominated in renminbi (Chinese for “the people’s currency”). The natives are getting restless. A Brazilian credit rating agency has downgraded US Treasury Bonds to AA. Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s are threatening to do the same. Wall Street will juggle the numbers for a couple of years before doing anything drastic.

Back in North America, a few other wories have arrived.
• Unemployment is closing in on 10%. Lots of people not included in the 10% are: part time, totally discouraged, short term temps, or newly self employed. Unemployed and underemployed people don’t make things that add to (ugh) GDP. Unemployed people don’t buy things. Job confidence won’t change for a couple of years.
• Credit card spending will set a new record of less for several more months — we’re now at nine months. Auto loans and student loans will continue their shrinking ways as well. Figure at least a year.
• State and local governments, in spite of a little stimulus money for infrastructure projects, are being squeezed, not in affection. They’re spending hardly anything on unnecessaries, and they’re recategorizing necessities to un. More than three years.
• The housing market — inflated during the years of excesses in subprime mortgages, easy home equity loans, and creative derivitive packaging — will continue to fall. Two years till the bleeding slows. Then, bloody Wall Street will bubble up in Social Security or retirement funds, someplace where real money still exists.
• The stock market, now a little above 9,000 on the Dow, will not get near the previous high of 14,164 for a few years, but Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, et al will duly and diligently manipulate the numbers. The same people who blew bubbles through the first seven years of the 21st century, unencumbered by much regulation, are still in charge. These Wall Street folks made a grandiloquent amount of money during the obsenic period and need a place to park it. The closed investor funds have just started to accept new accounts, the first time in months. The same CEOs and other executives who created the mirror images of wealth called “derivitives” will find one more way to blow smoke and see through the fun house mirrors of Dow 15,000. It may take three or more years, but Lawrence Summers and Tim Geithner will still be in bed with them, and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke will blow no whistles.
• Everyone’s 401K will follow the stock market, but the 008-009 recession will remain in their brains. They won’t spend money for a couple of years. A recovery based on consumtion instead of production will be slow.
• The Fed, no longer afraid of inflation, will keep interest rates low to encourage borrowing and spending. Meanwhile the Treasury will print dollar bills and Treasury Bonds. Paper — it’s not even hand-made paper — is little better than soap bubbles. Printing paper bills and striking coins of base metal have always resulted in inflation since Roman times. Inflation will start to return in about two years, but the White House will resist increasing Social Security payments to senior citizens. The revolution will be televised.
• The war in Afghanistan will continue for a few years. It is now Obama’s war. He is willing to withdraw most of our troops from the Bush-Cheney Iraq war but not from his own. More and more money will be poured into the occupation of Afghanistan, where foreign nations have always failed — the Russians, the British, and Alexander III.

The Chinese communist-capitalists have offered us a way out of our economic woes — real solutions, not illusion. They say: Stop spending, start saving. Stop military adventurism, start diplomacy. Start regulating Wall Street. With such real changes, we will gain the standing to ask the Chinese to install solar reflectors in the Gobi desert instead of building more coal-fired power plants. After we close Guantanamo and Bagram, we can lecture them on human rights.

Love Conquers All Postscript

Love Conquers All Postscript

by Mort Malkin

Several elected government officials (Senators, Congressmen, and Governors) who have been discovered in bedrooms with women oher than their wives, have had their political careers destroyed, not to mention their marriages. They wistfully read about France and Italy where elected (male) officials have both wives and mistresses, right out in public. The names, Nicholas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi, are whispered with envy in US political chambers. Imagine, a President and a Prime Minister!

The infection of shame may be spreading from the new world to the old. A Reuters dispatch from Italy reports taped conversations (plural) between Premier Silvio Berlusconi and courtesan Patricia D’Addario. The duologues have flashed across the internet, and were printed in L’Espresso. The irony is that Silvio is a media magnate. The alleged tapes provide juicy details of a sexual liaison. Silvio does not deny that Patricia has been at his house and admits “I’m no saint,” but denies that he paid for sex.

Most recently, an additional tape has been reported, in which Berlusconi boasts of Phoenician archeological sites at his villa on Sardinia. Italian lovelies must be hard to impress. Nor is the Minister of Archeology easily impressed by Berlusconi’s position as Premier. Italian law requires all archeological sites on private property to be reported and cataloged.

Meanwhile, Berlusconi’s wife has filed for divorce. Meanwhile also, a national poll reports that Berlusconi’s approval rating has fallen below 50%. The Italians may put up with a discrete dalliance, but they don’t cotton to arrogance. Arrogance doesn’t fly on either side of the pond.

Dear John (McCain),

Gadfly
by Mort Malkin

Dear John,

When you were a navy pilot during the Vietnam War (in Vietnam they call it the American War), Robert MacNamara was in charge of the Pentagon. John F Kennedy had taken over from the French who wisely decided it was better to sip cafe au lait at the bistros in Paris than slog through the mud at Dienbienfu. Early in the war, MacNamara was gung ho to teach the Soviets not to tangle with the US, not even by proxy. As to the pleasure-minded French, they were undependable in opposing Communism.

MacNamara recently died, and so the Vietnam War is back in the news. MacNamara was one of the “best & brightest” and believed that intelligence was the same as wisdom. In the sixties, his data-based evaluation of Vietnam told him we were winning. North Vietnam had an air force of a couple of ancient MIG 21s, and their navy was nothing more than a few patrol boats. The Viet Cong in the South didn’t even have uniforms — just black pajamas. The winning of the war would be what the White House of 2002 would call a slam dunk.

Well, we all know how the war turned out. We also know that Communism didn’t take over Southeast Asia. Robert MacNamara will surely be condemned to play dominoes for all eternity in whatever place he has gone.

The Pentagon, in its geopolitical absurdity, had larger trees to fell than just South Vietnam. The Soviet Union — the Communist devils — were supplying North Vietnam with surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). We needed to know the capability of those missiles in order to develop countermeasures and to assess future missions. What better way than to send our pilots to bomb targets in Hanoi where they would have to maneuver their A4 Skyhawk fighter-bombers to avoid the heat-seeking missiles? Indeed, bombing missions over Hanoi became a routine. Wait a minute. You mean we were sending American pilots over North Vietnam to bomb bridges and power plants and be likely to be shot down, just so the Pentagon could collect data on Russian missiles?

John, you should be madder than a Lewis Carroll hatter. It is not too late, even in 2009 — you can become a born-again pacifist. Who better than a former perpetual warrior to lead the Peace Movement? Your watchword can be “Chill, baby, Chill.” You can quote that famous warrior, Dwight Eisenhower, who finally understood “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”

Chemistry—The Good News [Don't Laugh]

Salud, Salud, Gesund—As long As You’re Healthy
by Mort Malkin

Chemistry—The Good News [Don’t Laugh]

Last issue, SSG told of the journey from once proud chemistry to today’s age of the C word. Quick, what’s the first word you think of when I say chemical? Dangerous? Toxic? Today’s column will not improve the image of chemistry, but it may lighten the gloom a little. As a perq, let’s go for a bit of satire.

• The first place to seek relief from the plague of man-made chemicals is in another laboratory: Mother Nature’s own clinic. She’s been at it much longer. A recent WHO study found that people who have been drinking hard water, laced with extra calcium and magnesium, are less likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease, even if they, too, have subjected their bodies to fried and processed foods.
• Over in India, researchers found that animals fed garlic extract were protected against the effects of arsenic, a common pollutant found in ground water.
• Air pollution occurs following combustion of coal, oil, gas, or cigarettes. The chemicals produced are classified as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). It was found in a NYC study that the effects of this classical pollutant were blocked by healthy lifestyle practices: good foods and effective exercise. Nature wins another one.
• Being outdoors in the fresh air always seemed beneficial, even if your mother thought so, too. Now, we are finding the reasons. Sunlight stimulates the skin to produce Vitamin D, and the sunshine vitamin is important for strong bones. But we already knew that. New work in genetics has found that Vitamin D regulates the expression of over 100 genes, and counting. Beyond bones & calcium regulation, Vitamin D is important for the carbohydrate metabolism cycle and immune system function. Samas, the sun god, deserves more respect.

On the way to finding a few silver bullets to fire at the 22,000 devil chemicals, we discovered something more valuable — how to think about our bodies. We learned that nutrients work through our genome as well as our chemistry. Nutrigenomics, a new combo-science, recently found that folic acid converts homocysteine to methionine through the good offices of the MTHFR gene. [Don’t snicker.] Homocysteine is one of the coronary heart disease gremlins, and it’s good to know we have evolved a way to deal with it. It is only one example of the hundreds of nutrients and thousands of genes that are partners. It is why the chemical industry needs at least 22,000 agents for taking over our bodies. We, on the other hand, have many parapets to defend. Through all the Devil’s details, we have become acutely aware of the toxic soup we used to call the environment. 22,000 chemicals out there can’t be spun by the industry into something desirable by labeling
it all “diversity.” We need to think big, think small, think all in all.

Since the early ’80s we’ve been in a free-for-all age of deregulation. The chemical industry celebrated their freedom by jiggling and juggling cyclic and in-line radicals to come up with wondrous new compounds. They knew enough not to name them Agent Orange. We the People were supposed to depend on voluntary corporate compliance with “best practices,” and we were supposed to trust their honorable CEOs. Who could have known they would disappoint us. The Europeans knew. They had experience with genetically engineered foods that Monsanto refused to label as such. The Europeans never understood why the chemical giant was so ashamed of its wonderful new products.

The EU — such untrusting souls — said to Eminent Chemistry: “If you want a green card you must register with us. No undocumented chemicals are allowed.” The program is REACH — registration, evaluation, authorization, and the rules to follow. It asks nothing fancy, just: the name of the chemical & how to pronounce it, who makes it, what it is used for, whether it is hazardous and, if so, is it bioaccumulative in the human body. The first reaction of US Chemistry was to stamp its feet and spit expletives. REACH, they said, would force the chemical corporations to reveal their secret proprietary formulas to a) competitors and b) the EPA (US) who, the Supreme Court recently decided, was required to protect the environment. In the end, DOW Chemical decided to go along with the Europeans’ strange philosophy of openness and honesty. The company said cooperation would produce a “more favorable business climate for DOW and the chemical industry.”

See, there really is some good news. Now if we can only import some of these European ideas to this side of the pond. How about an expansion of free trade to include ethics?

Chemistry: Servant or Master

Salud, Salut, Gesund—As Long As You’re Healthy
by Mort Malkin

Chemistry: Servant or Master

Back in the Sixties I had a neighbor who considered himself a fellow environmentalist. Neither of us made a living from our avocation — environmental science wasn’t even offered as a liberal arts college course. Professionally, he was a chemist and proud that his work was beneficial to society. The American Chemical Council advertised: “Miracles through Modern Chemistry.” Indeed, the chemists did create wondrous solvents, emulsifiers, coatings, glues, and the next generation of antibiotics beyond penicillin.

It is now 40 years on. As with other inventions and technologies we take for granted — electricity, the auto, the airplane, television, cell phones — chemistry has not been purely beneficent. The wild excesses of chemistry have turned the servant of mankind into a malevolent master. Indeed, the very word “chemical” appears regularly in our language preceded by the adjective “toxic.” Today, 22,000 different chemicals are produced worldwide in moderate to high quantities. They grace our households in the form of cleansers, polishes, personal products, and even our foods. They pervade the planet’s earth, air and water. Our bodies have accumulated a wide assortment of the nasties — every one of us.

Various artificial chemicals have caused human harm on a scale to rival the number of miracles the industry so proudly claims. It may be worse than we know. Chemicals are tested for toxicity one at a time. Yet, in their various applications, they are usually used in combinations, and their toxic effect is often synergistic. Do we need 22,000 different chemicals, so many of which have the same purpose?

The harm caused comes in a variety of ways. Herbicides, even those not quite as toxic as Agent Orange, can cause cancer, respiratory distress, and neurodegenerative disorders. Pesticides used in the home environment during pregnancy can double the incidence of childhood leukemias. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, largely generated form fossil fuels and ubiquitous in the air we breathe, cause fetal growth restriction and increase the likelihood of pre-term birth.

Radioactive chemicals can enter the environment in a number of ways — from the mining of uranium ore to deep gas well drilling that can release other radioactive elements. The High Delaware Valley has measurable radon levels from the natural degradation of radium. Radioactive mineral levels in drinking water have been found to cause endocrine disruption leading to increases in reproductive organ cancer. Radioactivity exposure also affects fetus growth and survival. A Czech study of women pregnant at the time of the Chernobyl accident of April 1986 reported a significant decline in male births in November of that year.

The elemental metals cadmium, arsenic, and mercury are also known to disrupt endocrine function. A Taiwan study found that arsenic in well water caused erectile dysfunction and testosterone suppression.

Researchers have examined the effects of various chemical compounds on different organ systems of the body — lungs, kidneys, liver, brain, heart & vasculature, and so on. They discovered that chemicals usually affected multiple organs and organ systems. The pan-toxicity rule is evident in immune system function. The immune system is a network of several organs and tissues: bone marrow, lymphoid tissues, thymus gland, pineal gland, adrenal cortex, blood, and a couple of others we are just starting to understand. The bottom line is that the immune system in one or more parts reacts badly to chemical environments. As example, a class of chemicals commonly used in consumer products, perfluoroalkyls, depresses immune function in humans. The products often enter the environments of wildlife and fish and depresses their immune systems, leaving them at the mercy of parasites and viruses.

We have been given stewardship of the Earth and all its creatures. We have not honored that trust. Too often we have measured success and progress in terms of GNP and individual net worth. But we can hold to higher values. Clean air and pure drinking water cannot be measured in dollars — they are priceless.

In Part 2 of this mini-series, we will report on a number of hopeful signs. But, we may have to learn from and cooperate with Mother Nature. Tune in next month.