The Crash Of 1929

Based on eight years of continued prosperity, presidents and economists alike confidently predicted that America would soon enter a time when there would be no more poverty, no more depressions - a "New Era" when everyone could be rich. Then 1929 began - a time when the stock market epitomized the false promise of permanent prosperity... it's only when we learn the lessons of the past can we avoid the mistakes of the future - or this time it's really different.

Congress: "Is it fair to say that Wall Street has benefited more [from QE] than Main Street has?"

Bernanke: "I don't think so... I want to emphasize that we're very focused on Main Street... Our low interest rates have created a lot of ability to buy automobiles..."

"The United States is afflicted with 'New Eras'"

Zero Hedge

Giant ‘corpse flower’ with odor of rotting flesh blooms next door to US Capitol

WASHINGTON — The long wait is finally over for visitors who have been yearning for a whiff of a giant flower that smells oddly like rotting flesh.

Titan arum, a giant rainforest plant that has been dubbed the “corpse flower” for its terrible smell, finally started blooming Sunday afternoon at the U.S. Botanic Garden next to the Capitol. Experts had been anticipating its bloom for more than a week and extended the garden’s hours for visitors each night.

Garden officials expect “peak smell” to occur early Monday morning, and the flower to remain open for an estimated 24 to 48 hours. Then it will begin to collapse on itself. The last corpse flower to bloom at the U.S. Botanic Garden was in 2007.
The titan arum is native to the tropical rainforests of Sumatra, Indonesia. It was first discovered in 1878. Corpse flowers also have recently bloomed at facilities in Ohio and in Belgium.

Scientists say the flower’s strange odor serves to attract beetles or other insects that are normally drawn to rotting flesh.

“Just in the same way that a lovely smelling plant, like a rose, is attracting a bee or another kind of insect with what we would consider a very nice smell, to pollinate it, this particular plant has the strategy of using a horrible, fetid smell to attract insects,” said Ari Novy, the public programs manager at the garden. “So this plant is essentially tricking those kinds of insects into coming, having a party inside of the plant and the flower and pollinating it and then moving on.”

The Washington Post

Army Chief urges Britain to prepare for war in Syria

British efforts to stop the forces of Syria’s President Bashar Assad could drag the UK into war to prevent the regime's chemical weapons falling into the wrong hands, Britain's retiring General Sir David Richards has warned.

“The risk of terrorism is becoming more and more dominant in our strategic vision for what we might do in Syria. If that risk develops, we would almost certainly have to act to mitigate it and we are ready to do so,” the leaving Chief of the Defense Staff told the Sun.

“I think it is a very big question. If we saw chemical weapons proliferate as a result of what is happening in Syria then we would have to act,” he added.

Last week British intelligence warned of Syria's arsenal of chemical weapons potentially falling into the hands of Al-Qaeda if Assad is toppled.

The parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) said there was “serious concern” about the security of the “vast stockpiles” of chemical weapons amassed by the regime.

Sir David said no-fly zones over Syria would be “insufficient” to restrain regime forces and Western military would be forced to hit ground targets.

"If you wanted to have the material impact on the Syrian regime's calculations … you have to be able, as we did successfully in Libya, to hit ground targets, you have to establish a ground control zone. You have to take out their air defenses. You also have to make sure they can't maneuver - which means you have to take out their tanks, and their armored personnel carriers and all the other things that are actually doing the damage,” the Army Chief said.

General Richards steps down after more than 40 years in the British Army.

He served in Northern Ireland, Germany, East Timor, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan as head of the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF).

The General referred to Libya where no-fly zones were used in conjunction with ground control zones to topple the regime of Muammar Gadhafi.

The analyst argues that everything depends on the objective of an operation.

“If you get involved in a military operation – either you want the regime changed – like you want President Gaddafi and Assad out, or you want to go in there just to protect people and keep the peace. There are several reasons and you need to clear objectives. But it’s an easy boundary to cross which takes you in a situation like you have in Iraq or Afghanistan,” he said.

It’s still not clear whether it would be in Britain’s interests to intervene in Syria according to military analysts.

“Strategically I think everybody is, probably, quite scared of getting involved in another occupation of the Middle Eastern country. I don’t know whether this involvement is inevitable. In all depends whether the war is worth fighting. President Assad, a friend of Russia, a friend of Iran, maybe potentially a useful conduit to communicate with Iran or Russia. President Gadhafi was a friend of nobody actually,” the expert said.

Meanwhile, the US top military officer has told the Senate Committee that Obama Administration is deliberating whether to use military power in Syria.

Army General Martin Dempsey said during Congressional testimony that he has provided president Obama with options for the use of force in Syria.

Dempsey used the term “kinetic” strikes and added the issue was under deliberation inside the agencies of government.

Meanwhile, the US Secretary of State John Kerry recently visited refugee camps for Syrians in neighboring Jordan and expressed concern at the plight of those fleeing the bloodshed.

“And this is building into one of the greatest humanitarian crisis on the face of the planet as getting worse by the day, not better,” Kerry said.

Russia, Assad’s most powerful foreign backer, and the US, want peace talks in Geneva to try to agree the ceasefire and the makeup of a transitional government. But a British government source has told Reuters that the peace conference may not happen until next year if at all. He also said that the UK has dropped plans to arm Syrian rebels and believes that Bashar Assad might survive in office for years.


The Voice of Russia

Read more: http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_07_20/Army-Chief-urges-Britain-to-prepare-for-war-in-Syria-5880/

Moment strong New Zealand quake strikes caught on camera

Israel deploys Iron Dome near Red Sea resort of Eilat

AFP - Israel deployed its Iron Dome missile defence system near the Red Sea resort of Eilat, which is close to the border with Egypt, an army spokeswoman said.

"An Iron Dome battery was deployed this morning in Eilat," the spokeswoman told AFP.

"The batteries are deployed in several areas of the country and moved around according to changes in the (security) situation," she added without elaborating.

But Israeli media said the deployment was related to unrest in Egypt, where the army is waging a campaign to drive militants out of the Sinai Peninsula, which borders Eilat.

Ynet news website also pointed out that the deployment came at the height of the tourist season in southern Israel.

Eilat has been the target of attacks in the past. In April the town was struck by rocket fire from the Sinai and debris of a rocket that hit northern Eilat on July 4 were found days later.

Egypt's official news agency MENA on Thursday reported that 10 jihadists had been killed in the Sinai Peninsula in the past two days during the army offensive launched to curtail a surge in violence since Islamist president Mohamed Morsi was ousted on July 3 in a military-led coup.

The Iron Dome deployment also comes hours after two rockets fired from the Gaza Strip hit southern Israel late on Thursday night, causing no casualties or damage, police said.

France 24

Now That Detroit’s Gone Bust, Is Your City Next?

Detroit’s bankruptcy filing is one depressing read. Poverty, crime, blight – you name the malady and there’s plenty of data to back it up. And unfortunately, Detroit’s not alone. You may be wondering which city hits the wall next.

I’m not making predictions, but I’ve looked at one indicator that may offer some clues: population loss.

As any good Ponzi Schemer will tell you, your future looks much better when there are more people moving in than moving out. Once the population change turns negative, a vicious circle can take hold, and that’s exactly what we saw in Detroit.

In addition to spending excesses and mismanagement, the city’s financial problems stem from the challenges of downsizing infrastructure as quickly as the tax base contracts. Here are a few lowlights from the bankruptcy declaration:

• The average cost to demolish an abandoned building – of which Detroit has about 78,000, or 20% of the housing stock – is approximately $8500.
• Of about 11,000 to 12,000 fires each year, approximately 60% occur in abandoned buildings.
• The city closed 210 parks in fiscal year 2009 and recently announced that 50 of the remaining 107 parks were slated for closure.
• The city’s Public Lighting Department is able to keep only about 60% of the approximately 88,000 street lamps in operation.
• The Detroit courts’ case clearance rates have been running at only 18.6% for violent crimes and 8.7% for all crimes.
• Only 10 to 14 of the city’s 36 ambulances were in service in the first quarter of 2013.

And now for a look at other cities that are battling severe population loss. Here are the top 15, ranked by the decline from each city’s population peak, according to the decennial U.S. census:

And here are the top 15 ranked by the percentage decline (for this list, I required a population of at least 125,000 in or before 1960):

Nine cities have the dubious distinction of making both “top 15” lists. For these cities, I’ve added charts showing population histories using all of the data I could find. There’s one chart each for the Midwest, Northeast and South (and if you’re looking for St. Louis, I went with the last Missouri accent that I’ve heard – definitely a drawl):

The rate of population decline in most of these cities was at least slower from 1980 to 2010 than it was from 1950 to 1980 (Detroit was one of the exceptions). Nonetheless, they’ll need to manage the exodus more carefully than Detroit did to avoid the same fate.

Other links

Here are links to a few interesting Motor City photo galleries, from Time, Zero Hedge (via the NY Daily News) and the BBC (where I sourced the photo above).

zero Hedge

DOOMCAST