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Thursday, July 18, 2013

Russian Readiness

The U.S. Government Will Borrow Close To 4 Trillion Dollars This Year



When you add maturing debt to the new debt that the federal government is accumulating, the total is quite eye catching.  You see, the truth is that the U.S. government must not only borrow enough money to fund government spending for this year, it must also "roll over" existing debt that has reached maturity.  Of course the government never actually pays any of that debt off.  Instead, it essentially takes out new debts to cover the old ones.  
So the U.S. government is actually borrowing far more money each year than most Americans realize.  For fiscal year 2013, the U.S. budget deficit will be about $845 billion, but on top of that the government will also have to borrow about 3 trillion dollars to pay off old debt that is maturing.  Overall, the U.S. government will borrow close to 4 trillion dollars this year, and that number will likely be even higher next year.  That is not going to cause a crisis as long as interest rates stay super low, but if interest rates begin to rise substantially, the game will change dramatically.
When the government borrows money, it has to pay it back someday.  Back in the old days, the federal government used to issue lots of debt that would not mature for a very long time.  But in recent years things have been very different...
In order to fund the government, the Treasury Department periodically auctions Treasury securities with various maturities ranging from 30-day Treasury bills to 30-year Treasury bonds, with 2-3-5-7-year and 10-year Treasury notes in between. It used to be that the bulk of Treasury borrowing was done in the longer-term instruments with maturities of at least 10 years.
In more recent years, however, this trend has shifted more toward shorter-term Treasury securities. There are pros and cons to both strategies. Generally speaking, the shorter maturities are considered more risky since short-term interest rates can vary frequently. Shorter-term maturities obviously have to be rolled over much more often. That raises the risk that there might not be enough buyers when the government needs them.
At this point, the average maturity of outstanding government debt is only 65 months, and only about 10 percent of all Treasury debt matures outside of a decade.
So what does that mean?
It means that the federal government must constantly roll over massive amounts of debt.  Once again, this is not too much of a problem as long as interest rates stay super low, but as John Cochrane pointed out, if rates start rising back to "normal" levels things could get quite hairy very quickly...
Here’s the nightmare scenario: Suppose that four years from now, interest rates rise 5 percent, i.e. back to normal, and the US has $20 trillion outstanding. Interest costs alone will rise $1 trillion (5% of $20 trillion) – doubling already unsustainable deficits! This is what happened to Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Don’t think it can’t happen to us. It’s even more likely, because fear of inflation – which did not hit them, since they are on the Euro – can hit us.
Sadly, those running things appears to be quite clueless.  For example, retiring U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann recently asked Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke why the national debt has remained frozen in place for 56 straight days even though we have been borrowing lots of money.  Bernanke seemed to have no idea how to answer that question...
As Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified before the House Financial Services Committee Wednesday, Bachmann asked how there could be no increase reported in the total debt when the government is racking up about $4 billion a day in new debt.
“After nearly 10 years as the head of the Federal Reserve, Chairman Bernanke could not answer my question today in Financial Services Committee,” Bachmann told WND.
She wondered if there’s a political motive.
“I asked whether the Treasury Department was cooking the federal government’s books as it was reported that the Feds debt balance sheet remained at $16,699,396,000,000 for 56 days straight, presumably so the Treasury Department wouldn’t officially register that once again the Congress had exceeded its legal borrowing limits.”
For the moment, the federal government is able to recklessly borrow and spend money and investors are rewarding this behavior with super low interest rates.
Unfortunately, this state of affairs is completely and totally unsustainable.  At some point global financial markets will begin to behave rationally, and when that happens it is going to mean a tremendous amount of pain for the United States.
Over the past decade, the U.S. government has added more than 11 trillion dollars to the national debt at a time when the U.S. economy has been steadily declining.  Anyone that thinks that we can continue to pile up more debt like this indefinitely does not know what they are talking about.
The following are some more statistics about the U.S. national debt for you to consider...
-Back in 1980, the U.S. national debt was less than one trillion dollars.  Today, it is rapidly approaching 17 trillion dollars.
-During Obama's first term, the federal government accumulated more debt than it did under the first 42 U.S presidents combined.
-The U.S. national debt is now more than 23 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became president.
-If you started paying off just the new debt that the U.S. has accumulated during the Obama administration at the rate of one dollar per second, it would take more than 184,000 years to pay it off.
-If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.
-If you were alive when Jesus Christ was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.
-Some suggest that "taxing the rich" is the answer.  Well, if Bill Gates gave every single penny of his entire fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.
-If the federal government used GAAP accounting standards like publicly traded corporations do, the real federal budget deficit for 2011 would have been 5 trillion dollars instead of 1.3 trillion dollars.
-The United States already has more government debt per capita than Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or Spain does.
-At this point, the United States government is responsible for more than a third of all the government debt in the entire world.
-The amount of U.S. government debt held by foreigners is about 5 times larger than it was just a decade ago.
-The U.S. national debt is now more than 37 times larger than it was when Richard Nixon took us off the gold standard.
-The U.S. national debt is now more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was first created.
-Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff is warning that the U.S. government is facing a gigantic tsunami of unfunded liabilities in the coming years that we are counting on our children and our grandchildren to pay.  Kotlikoff speaks of a "fiscal gap" which he defines as "the present value difference between projected future spending and revenue".  His calculations have led him to the conclusion that the federal government is facing a fiscal gap of 222 trillion dollars in the years ahead.
For the moment everything is fine because interest rates are incredibly low and the mockers in the "deficits don't matter" fan club are having a field day.
But what is going to happen when interest rates return to rational levels?
How will the U.S. government be able to borrow the trillions of dollars that it needs to borrow every single year?
That is why it is so important to watch interest rates.  When they start skyrocketing, big trouble is ahead.
Economic Collapse

Steam Rising Again From Fukushima Reactor


As Japan's infatuation with the great nominal stock market experiment continues, the government wishes nothing more than to put the Fukushima nuclear disaster in the past, so it can restart its nuclear power plants: the critical, decisive factor if Abenomics has any chance of succeeding, as the country's economy will never recover if it has to rely on foreign sources of energy. Alas, for the time being this looks improbable and following the latest news out of Fukushima, it may be downright impossible. According to the BBC, the Fukushima nuclear power plant has been emitting steam from its destroyed reactor, confirming that while one can bury radioactive garbage under the rug, it continues to emit gamma rays and is likely to get much worse before it gets better.
Steam has been seen rising from a reactor building at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant, its operator says. It says it is investigating what is causing the steam at the damaged No 3 reactor building. The plant, crippled by the earthquake and tsunami in 2011, has seen a series of water leaks and power failures.

Water is being pumped into the reactors to cool them, but that has left Tepco with the problem of storing the contaminated waste water. A worker first noticed the steam after reviewing camera footage taken of the building, Tepco said.

The operator said in a statement there was a "steam-like gas wafting through the air near the central part of the fifth floor [equipment storage pool side]" of the No 3 reactor building.

The reactor water injection and the cooling of the spent fuel pool were "continuing stably", Tepco said. There were also no significant change in the temperature of the reactor. "We will continue to monitor the status closely," the statement added.
Tepco, naturally, despite admitting it is not sure what is going on, had a prepared "all is well" statement:
Tokyo Electric Power Company said there was no emergency situation and there were no signs of increased radiation in the area.

"We do not believe an emergency situation is breaking out although we are still investigating what caused this," a spokesman told Agence-France Presse news agency. Mayumi Yoshida, another Tepco spokesperson, told Reuters news agency: "We think it's possible that rain made its way through the reactor building and having fallen on the primary containment vessel, which is hot, evaporated creating steam."

This is the latest in a series of problems that the Fukushima power plant has faced in recent months. Last week, a sharp increase in radioactive cesium was detected in groundwater 25m (82ft) from the sea. In June, radioactive water was also found to be leaking from a storage tank.
Zero Hedge

Equals... ZERO!

In Romans 1:18-32 Almighty God tells us what happened to the world's inhabitants and their offspring after Babel and what were the end results thereof. Humanity at that time had  willingly chosen the abandonment of TRUTH and REALITY for a godless delusion and a lie, thus following once again Satan's delusion even after Almighty God's Divine judgment (Gen. 10, 11:1-9, John 8:44, Rom. 1:18-32). These offspring of Noah's sons (Gen. 10) had replaced and exchanged the RIGHTEOUSNESS of Almighty God with unrighteousness. For about the 4,200 years since the Tower of Babel dispersion, humanity has been out-working Satan's and their own godless, unrighteous,spiritual  ideologies and philosophies and have been reaping the horrific consequences ever since (Rom. 1:18-32).


 The ABSOLUTE REALITY of this life is that Almighty God sent His Son to redeem man and restore a right relationship between man and Himself.

The consequences and end results of this godless existence will conclude with the global worship of Lucifer himself and his Anti Christ (2 Thess. 2:3-12, Rev. 13)! The ETERNAL REALITY of all of this godless rebellion will be absolute vanity and ETERNAL damnation (Eccl. 1:14; Rom. 3:23, Rev. 20:11-15). The ABSOLUTE REALITY of this life is that Almighty God sent His Son (John 3:16-17; Rom. 8:3-4) to redeem man and restore a right relationship between man and Himself(John 3:3-7, 16-17, 1 John 2:2, 4:10). That is ETERNAL REALITY and not some man made "religious" statement. To EXCLUDE Divine REALITY from your earthly existence is to personally partake in Lucifer's lawless and godless rebellion and ETERNAL damnation(Matt. 25:41, Rev. 20:10-15).

For ALL that is done outside of  Almighty God's saving solution for this world - which is ONLY found in Jesus Christ - in the end will end up as absolute vanity and an ETERNAL zero in the ETERNAL light of ETERNITY!

My dear friend, try this experiment if you will. Multiply ALL of your worldly and godless delusions, aspirations, dreams and wants times the number zero and see what you come up with? For ALL that is done outside of  Almighty God's saving solution for this world - which is ONLY found in Jesus Christ - in the end will end up as absolute vanity and an ETERNAL zero in the ETERNAL light of ETERNITY (Rev. 20:11-15, 21:8, 22:11).

Almighty God's Word states;

God is a Spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24).

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no mancometh unto the Father, but by me (John 14:6).

Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth (John 17:17).

Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever (Psalm 119:160).

Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior? To know Him is to know REALITY. To know Him is to know Truth. May you be sure that your "ideology" and "REALITY" is rooted in the absolute REALITY of Almighty God and His never-changing Word. Your whole ETERNITY depends on it.

The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!

DJP I.F.


The Ignorant Fishermen blog

Google's Revenge: Attacking Free Speech

Clever Hacks Give Google Glass Many Unintended Powers



At Philz Coffee in Palo Alto, Calif., a kid who looks like he should still be in high school is sitting across from me. He's wearing Google Glass. As I stare into the device's cyborg eye, I'm waiting for its tiny screen to light up.

Then, I wait for a signal that Google Glass has recognized my face.

It isn't supposed to do that, but Stephen Balaban has hacked it.

"Essentially what I am building is an alternative operating system that runs on Glass but is not controlled by Google," he said.

Balaban wants to make it possible to do all sorts of things with Glass that Google's designers didn't have in mind.

One of the biggest fears about Google Glass is that the proliferation of these head-mounted computers equipped with intelligent cameras will fundamentally erode our privacy.

Google has tried to respond to these fears by designing Glass so it is obvious to the people around these devices when and how they are being used. For example, to take a picture with Google Glass, you need to issue a voice command or tap your temple before the screen lights up.

But hackers are proving it's possible to re-engineer Google Glass in any number of creative ways. And in the process, they've put Google in an awkward position. The company needs to embrace their creative talents if it hopes to build a software ecosystem around its new device that might one day attract millions of consumers. But at the same time, Google wants to try to rein in uses for Glass that could creep out the public or spook politicians who are already asking pointed questions about privacy.

So when Balaban first announced he had built an app that let folks use Glass for facial recognition, Google reacted harshly.

"I'd be lying if I said I was surprised," he said.

The company said it wouldn't support programs on Glass that made facial recognition possible — and changed its terms of service to ban them. But that hasn't stopped techies like Balaban from building these services anyway.

And now, there are all sorts of things developers are doing with Glass that were not built into the original design.

Michael DiGiovanni created Winky — a program that lets someone wearing Google Glass take a photo with a wink of an eye.

Marc Rogers, a principal security researcher at Lookout, realized he could hijack Glass if you could trick someone into taking a picture of a malicious QR code — a kind of square-shaped bar code that can send a computer directly to a website.

But today, Rogers has nothing but praise for how Google responded to his hack. He says less than two weeks after he disclosed the problem to Google, the company had fixed it.

"The other thing that is really good is the way they pushed Google Glass out to a community of people who are particularly good at finding vulnerabilities and improving software and fixing software — way before it is a consumer product," Rogers said. "This means that all of these vulnerabilities — or at least most of them — are going to be found long before Google Glass ever hits the market."

Google's decision to give the first few thousand pairs of Google Glass to tinkerers and hackers and geeks was intentional.

"In a case where you have [a product] that is so different from what is on the market currently, you really have to do these living laboratories where you figure out what the social and technical issues are before you release it more widely," said Thad Starner, a professor of computer science at Georgia Tech and a manager at Google Glass.

When Google released Glass to the public, it didn't sell it to just anyone. The first few thousand people who got a pair were developers, a technically sophisticated group whose first impulse was to take it apart, peer inside its code and understand how it works. These people are hackers at heart, and when they got their hands on Google Glass, they broke it on purpose, cracking it open and exploring all the ways it could be used or possibly abused.

"That's the great service our [Google Glass] explorers are doing for us," Starner said. "They are actually teaching us what these issues are and how we can address them."

But some of the issues raised by Google Glass might not be possible to address with a simple technical fix.

Ryan Calo, a law professor at the University of Washington who specializes in new technologies and privacy, has suggested that gadgets like Google Glass or civilian drones could act as "privacy catalysts" and spur conversations and legal debates about privacy in the digital age. Calo believes the conversations are long overdue.

NPR

Driving somewhere? There's a government record of that....



WASHINGTON (AP) — Chances are, your local or state police departments have photographs of your car in their files, noting where you were driving on a particular day, even if you never did anything wrong.

Using automated scanners, law enforcement agencies across the country have amassed millions of digital records on the location and movement of every vehicle with a license plate, according to a study published Wednesday by the American Civil Liberties Union. Affixed to police cars, bridges or buildings, the scanners capture images of passing or parked vehicles and note their location, uploading that information into police databases. Departments keep the records for weeks or years, sometimes indefinitely.

As the technology becomes cheaper and more ubiquitous, and federal grants focus on aiding local terrorist detection, even small police agencies are able to deploy more sophisticated surveillance systems. While the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that a judge's approval is needed to track a car with GPS, networks of plate scanners allow police effectively to track a driver's location, sometimes several times every day, with few legal restrictions. The ACLU says the scanners assemble what it calls a "single, high-resolution image of our lives."

"There's just a fundamental question of whether we're going to live in a society where these dragnet surveillance systems become routine," said Catherine Crump, a staff attorney with the ACLU. The civil rights group is proposing that police departments immediately delete any records of cars not linked to a crime.

Law enforcement officials said the scanners can be crucial to tracking suspicious cars, aiding drug busts and finding abducted children. License plate scanners also can be efficient. The state of Maryland told the ACLU that troopers could "maintain a normal patrol stance" while capturing up to 7,000 license plate images in a single eight hour shift.

"At a time of fiscal and budget constraints, we need better assistance for law enforcement," said Harvey Eisenberg, chief of the national security section and assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland.

Law enforcement officials also point out that the technology is legal in most cases, automating a practice that's been done for years. The ACLU found that only five states have laws governing license plate readers. New Hampshire, for example, bans the technology except in narrow circumstances, while Maine and Arkansas limit how long plate information can be stored.

"There's no expectation of privacy" for a vehicle driving on a public road or parked in a public place, said Lt. Bill Hedgpeth, a spokesman for the Mesquite Police Department in Texas, which has records stretching back to 2008, although the city plans next month to begin deleting files older than two years. "It's just a vehicle. It's just a license plate."

In Yonkers, N.Y., just north of the Bronx, police said retaining the information indefinitely helps detectives solve future crimes. In a statement, the department said it uses license plate readers as a "reactive investigative tool" that is only accessed if detectives are looking for a particular vehicle in connection to a crime.

"These plate readers are not intended nor used to follow the movements of members of the public," the department's statement said.

But even if law enforcement officials say they don't want a public location tracking system, the records add up quickly. In Jersey City, N.J., for example, the population is only 250,000 but the city collected more than 2 million plate images on file. Because the city keeps records for five years, the ACLU estimates that it has some 10 million on file, making it possible for police to plot the movements of most residents depending upon the number and location of the scanners, according to the ACLU.

The ACLU study, based on 26,000 pages of responses from 293 police departments and state agencies across the country, also found that license plate scanners produced a small fraction of "hits," or alerts to police that a suspicious vehicle has been found. In Maryland, for example, the state reported reading about 29 million plates between January and May of last year. Of that amount, about 60,000 — or roughly 1 in every 500 license plates — were suspicious. The No. 1 crime? A suspended or revoked registration, or a violation of the state's emissions inspection program accounted for 97 percent of all alerts.

Eisenberg, the assistant U.S. attorney, said the numbers "fail to show the real qualitative assistance to public safety and law enforcement." He points to the 132 wanted suspects the program helped track. They were a small fraction of the 29 million plates read, but he said tracking those suspects can be critical to keeping an area safe.

Also, he said, Maryland has rules in place restricting access for criminal investigations only. Most records are retained for one year in Maryland, and the state's privacy policies are reviewed by an independent board, Eisenberg noted.

At least in Maryland, "there are checks, and there are balances," he said.



Read more: http://www.myfoxny.com/Story/22863801/driving-somewhere-theres-a-government-record-of-that#ixzz2ZOwSQWZH