After a decade of self-delusion and self-indulgence, we must stop deceiving ourselves. As Hurricane Katrina demonstrated, the “can-do” nation that won World War II in Europe and the Pacific in less than four years, that put a man on the moon in the same decade JFK said we would, is history.
We have a government that cannot balance its books, defend its borders or win its wars. And what is it now doing? Drafting another entitlement program as we are informed that the Social Security and Medicare trust funds have unfunded liabilities in the trillions.
At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the question is not whether we will preside over the creation of a New World Order, but whether America’s decline is irreversible.
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HONG KONG, Dec 31, 2009 (AFP) – Hong Kong’s roads read like pages ripped from a luxury car magazine.
Hundreds of ultra-flash motors from Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches to Aston Martins, Rolls-Royces and Bentleys, inch through traffic on the city's clogged and smoggy roads.
Even taxes of 120 percent don’t deter Hong Kong’s uber-rich from splashing out on the latest super-expensive boy’s toys — with dealers seeking to import as many supercars as they can get their hands on.
In the lead-up to Christmas, Marchy Lee’s CarPro showroom contained a Lamborghini Murcielago LP650-4. There were only 50 ever made and this was the last one on sale in Asia. Price on the road? A bank account-buckling 800,000 dollars.
Or, there’s always the cheaper option, a stunning black and gold Ferrari 430 Scuderia — a snip, at 520,000 dollars.
]]>Construction, which began in 2004, is estimated to have cost one billion dollars (694.7 million euros).
It was carried out by South Korea’s Samsung Engineering & Construction, Belgium’s BESIX group and the United Arab Emirates’ Arabtec.
The skyscraper is the centrepiece of a 20-billion-dollar new shopping district, Downtown Burj Dubai, which includes 30,000 apartments and the Dubai Mall, which says its space for 1,200 shops makes it the world’s largest indoor shopping centre.
]]>]]>…more debt and more dollars. Just how much of each can be found every Thursday evening on the Fed's own Web site. Open up form H4.1 and prepare to be amazed. Since Labor Day, the Fed’s assets have zoomed to $2.31 trillion from $905.7 billion. And what is the significance of this stunning rate of asset growth? Simply this: The Fed pays for its assets with freshly made dollars. It conjures them into existence on a computer; “printing” is a figure of speech.
via The Problem With the Federal Reserve’s Money-Printing – WSJ.com.
]]>Governments have already shot their fiscal bolts. Even without fresh spending, public debt would explode within two years to 105pc of GDP in the UK, 125pc in the US and the eurozone, and 270pc in Japan. Worldwide state debt would reach $45 trillion, up two-and-a-half times in a decade…
The underlying debt burden is greater than it was after the Second World War, when nominal levels looked similar. Aging populations will make it harder to erode debt through growth. “High public debt looks entirely unsustainable in the long run. We have almost reached a point of no return for government debt,” it said.
via Société Générale tells clients how to prepare for ‘global collapse’ – Telegraph.
]]>People living out of their cars or campers tend to be more well-off than the homeless on the street. They usually have jobs or disability checks that enable them to maintain an old camper but do not allow them to afford rent.
“For more working-class and lower-middle-class people, the car is the first stop of being homeless, and sometimes it turns out to be a long stop,” said Gary Blasi, a University of California, Los Angeles, law professor and activist on homeless issues.