Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new…..nised.html

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.

And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.

Hmm… no suprise here.

Neither war has an end in sight, with Iraq holding at least 50,000 troops for an indefinite amount of time. The U.S. is stretching itself incredibly thin with these two wars during a time when people are suffering here at home. The cost of these wars, both in money and lives, will be devastating in the coming decade if they are not brought to a swift and immediate hault.

In an in-depth interview with the Times of London gearing up for the London Conference on Afghanistan later this week, CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus again cautioned that the war was going to “get harder before it gets easier.”

Likening the January 2007 surge in Iraq to President Obama’s December escalation, the general said he thought that the war in Afghanistan was going to take longer than the war in Iraq.

Perhaps even more troubling over eight years after the war began, Gen. Petraeus insisted he still hasn’t heard any talk of setting a timetable for the end of the war, and said any predictions would be “premature.” Several nations had hoped to use the London Conference to set out some sort of exit strategy for the seemingly endless conflict.

In fact, Petraeus suggested that the London Conference would not so much focus on setting a timetable for a transition, but on deciding “what transition actually means.” Though he provided little in the way of detail, it does suggest that officials have abandoned the pretense of starting the pullout in 2011.

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/0…..than-iraq/

In Part 1, Fractional Reserve Banking in Pictures, we saw how the banking system creates fraudulent money by creating new money on top of old. The reserve requirement limit used in the example, 10%, is the figure usually given, which means that from a $10 deposit the banking system could generate $90 of new money. Also, the FED uses Open Market Operations to create new money by writing a check upon itself.
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“The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on its favors, that there will be no opposition from that class. The great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages, will bear its burden without complaint.”

- Lord Rothschild, European central banker

The below slides are meant to explain fractional reserve banking as simply as possible using pictures.  The below demonstration assumes a reserve requirement of 10%, which is the figure typically given by the banking industry and financial experts.  However, in Part 2 I will demonstrate there there is effectively NO set reserve requirement though the banking system obviously carry some level of cash reserves.
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Great article on how the Fed and the Treasury counterfeit money.

http://mises.org/daily/4029

San Jose State economics professor Jeffrey Rogers Hummel tells all his students that the easiest way to understand the Federal Reserve is to think of it as a giant, legalized counterfeiter.

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At first glance, our present monetary system is nothing like the simple tale of a king with a printing press. For one thing, the US Treasury is a distinct entity from the Federal Reserve. When the US federal government runs a budget deficit, it can’t simply have the Fed print up enough $100 bills to cover the shortfall. No, the Treasury always covers its budget deficits by issuing debt, referred to as Treasuries. These are bonds, IOUs sold by the Treasury to outside investors who lend the Treasury money today in the hopes of being paid back in the future.

But wait, there’s more to the story. One of the main buyers of this Treasury debt is the Federal Reserve itself. This phenomenon is especially pronounced during emergencies such as major wars and the current financial crisis. Indeed, in the second quarter of 2009, the Federal Reserve was the effective buyer of some 48 percent of the new Treasury debt issued that period, as part of its “quantitative easing.” It’s true, the Fed doesn’t show up at the Treasury auctions and directly buy the new T-bills and so forth, but private dealers pay higher prices for the Treasuries knowing that the Fed is waiting in the wings to pick them up.

And of course the Fed made $46 – $52 Billion in 2009.  No, there’s no corruption here…

Money gradually evolved from societies from barter (or direct exchange) economies to economies based on indirect exchange. Under indirect exchange, Joey sells his chickens’ eggs for money and then either buys, say, a wrench from Bob or saves the money for future use. If one looks at this with an economist’s eye, Joey exchanged his commodity (eggs) for another commodity (money) and then either saved the commodity or exchanged it yet again for another commodity (Bob’s wrench). Hence money is actually a commodity just like corn, copper, or even an Ipod, if you follow the literal definition. This is a truth that few seem to recognize or fully appreciate its implications.

This system of indirect exchange, writes Murray Rothbard (see “What Has the Government Done with Our Money?“) is “at first glance… a clumsy and round-about operation. But it is actually the marvelous instrument that permits civilization to develop.” As long as Joey can find a market for his eggs, he can exchange them for money before the eggs spoil and then exchange the money later at a time of his choosing for any other good he wants. Bob does not need to barter his wrench for food, he merely has to find a market to sell his wrenches for money and wha-lah! specialization and quality are born, and Bob can feed himself. Money hence serves as a medium of exchange, and Rothbard comments its other attributes, like serving as a store of value, are merely corollaries of this.

So over time, people developed different types of money. Colonial Virginia used tobacco, ancient Greeks used cattle, Egyptians used copper, Tibetans used dried yak dung, etc. Europe’s kings for instance, used these wooden royal tally sticks as money for the better part of a millennium and well into the 20th century. It may seem a little silly, but the British Empire and Navy arose by a people using these twigs as money for over 700 years! Tally sticks were highly successful since they had a limited supply and were virtually impossible to counterfeit. It is my bet that future Americans will one day look back and break into outright laughter at today’s use of the Federal Reserve Note (see Part 2) as just plain absurd. A return to Austrian economics’ principles is starting to beckon, more on this later as the series continues.
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