The Path Less Traveled

A major study says parents harm their children’s development if they ban tree-climbing or conkers

By: Anushka Asthana

It is a scene that epitomises childhood: young siblings racing towards a heavy oak tree, hauling themselves on to the lower branches and scrambling up as high as they can get. Yet millions of children are being deprived of such pleasure because their parents are nervous about exposing them to any risks, new research has revealed.

A major study by Play England, part of the National Children’s Bureau, found that half of all children have been stopped from climbing trees, 21 per cent have been banned from playing conkers and 17 per cent have been told they cannot take part in games of tag or chase. Some parents are going to such extreme lengths to protect their children from danger that they have even said no to hide-and-seek.

‘Children are not being allowed many of the freedoms that were taken for granted when we were children,’ said Adrian Voce, director of Play England. ‘They are not enjoying the opportunities to play outside that most people would have thought of as normal when they were growing up.’

Voce argued that it was becoming a ’social norm’ for younger children to be allowed out only when accompanied by an adult. ‘Logistically that is very difficult for parents to manage because of the time pressures on normal family life,’ he said. ‘If you don’t want your children to play out alone and you have not got the time to take them out then they will spend more time on the computer.’

Voce pointed out how irrational some of these decisions were. Last year, almost three times as many children were admitted to hospital after falling out of bed as those who had fallen from a tree.

The tendency to wrap children in cotton wool has transformed how they experience childhood. According to the research, 70 per cent of adults had their biggest childhood adventures in outdoor spaces among trees, rivers and woods, compared with only 29 per cent of children today. The majority of young people questioned said that their biggest adventures took place in playgrounds.

Voce said Play England was determined to spread the message that children ought to be taking risks and that it is ‘not the end of the world if a child has an accident’. The latest study will be launched on Wednesday to coincide with Play Day, when hundreds of events will take place across the country to celebrate children’s right to play. It will show that play providers also feel the opportunities for children to ‘test and challenge themselves in play involving a level of risk’ have reduced over the past decade. They blame overcautious health and safety officers and the fear of litigation if children have accidents.

Andrea Quaintmere, who manages Toffee Park Adventure Playground in London, admitted there were fears that parents would sue if children were injured. But she said that should not stop workers ensuring children experienced lots of adventure. ‘We need to educate parents who are worried about their kids having accidents and hurting themselves,’ said Quaintmere. ‘Children can learn from small accidents. Parents do get nervous and tell us “don’t let them do that”. I try to remind them of their own childhood.’

As Quaintmere spoke, two nine-year-old girls, Chloe Bailey and Kiara Gomes, ran by. ‘My favourite games are football and “it”,’ said Chloe, before going to build a camp with her friends. ‘My mum says that climbing trees is too dangerous,’ said Kiara. ‘But my dad lets me. If I fall over and it hurts, I just get myself up and smile.’

The Play England study quotes a number of play providers who highlight the benefits to children of taking risks. ‘Risk-taking increases the resilience of children,’ said one. ‘It helps them make judgments,’ said another. Some of those interviewed blamed the ‘cotton wool’ culture for the fact that today’s children were playing it too safe, while others pointed to a lack of equipment or too much concrete in place of grass. The research also lists examples of risky play that should be encouraged including fire-building, den-making, watersports, paintballing, boxing and climbing trees.

Justine Roberts, founder of Mumsnet.com, an online forum for mothers, said that parents only wanted to protect their children. ‘It is the mums and dads that have to deal with the bruises and cuts,’ she said. ‘But broadly speaking I think that we will have to be brave and allow our children to take physical risk because, within reason, that is the way that they learn.

‘When you see your two-and-a-half year-old on a climbing frame your heart is in your mouth and that is normal but I think most parents realise that at some point their children have to take physical risks; most recognise the benefits of learning through play. We can be overprotective but it is impossible to wrap children in cotton wool.’

NOTE FROM BEN: “Conkers” is a British game not played in the US. Here’s a reference to it. Conkers

Scientists mimic essence of plants’ energy storage system

By: Anne Trafton

In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine.

Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient. With today’s announcement, MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy.

Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun. “This is the nirvana of what we’ve been talking about for years,” said MIT’s Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of a paper describing the work in the July 31 issue of Science. “Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon.”

Inspired by the photosynthesis performed by plants, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera’s lab, have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun’s energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.

The key component in Nocera and Kanan’s new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity — whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source — runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.

Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.

The new catalyst works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and it’s easy to set up, Nocera said. “That’s why I know this is going to work. It’s so easy to implement,” he said.

‘Giant leap’ for clean energy

Sunlight has the greatest potential of any power source to solve the world’s energy problems, said Nocera. In one hour, enough sunlight strikes the Earth to provide the entire planet’s energy needs for one year.

James Barber, a leader in the study of photosynthesis who was not involved in this research, called the discovery by Nocera and Kanan a “giant leap” toward generating clean, carbon-free energy on a massive scale.

“This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind,” said Barber, the Ernst Chain Professor of Biochemistry at Imperial College London. “The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem.”

‘Just the beginning’

Currently available electrolyzers, which split water with electricity and are often used industrially, are not suited for artificial photosynthesis because they are very expensive and require a highly basic (non-benign) environment that has little to do with the conditions under which photosynthesis operates.

More engineering work needs to be done to integrate the new scientific discovery into existing photovoltaic systems, but Nocera said he is confident that such systems will become a reality.

“This is just the beginning,” said Nocera, principal investigator for the Solar Revolution Project funded by the Chesonis Family Foundation and co-Director of the Eni-MIT Solar Frontiers Center. “The scientific community is really going to run with this.”

Nocera hopes that within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past.

The project is part of the MIT Energy Initiative, a program designed to help transform the global energy system to meet the needs of the future and to help build a bridge to that future by improving today’s energy systems. MITEI Director Ernest Moniz, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems, noted that “this discovery in the Nocera lab demonstrates that moving up the transformation of our energy supply system to one based on renewables will depend heavily on frontier basic science.”

The success of the Nocera lab shows the impact of a mixture of funding sources - governments, philanthropy, and industry. This project was funded by the National Science Foundation and by the Chesonis Family Foundation, which gave MIT $10 million this spring to launch the Solar Revolution Project, with a goal to make the large scale deployment of solar energy within 10 years.

by Wayne LaPierre

NRA Executive Vice President

For the Brady Campaign, Violence Policy Center, Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Schumer, U.N. gun-ban extremist Rebecca Peters and her globalist billionaire sugar-daddy George Soros, for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his horde of big-city politicians—in fact, for all those individuals and organizations who would harm or destroy our Second Amendment rights—Barack Obama’s mantra of “change” means their agenda will be harnessed to the total power of an aggressive, activist and radical federal government.

“Change” means gun owners will be under siege like never before.

Especially for NRA members who fought through the never-ending threats of the Clinton-Gore administration, the understanding of “change” must be the driving force for us to get other gun owners to the polls. This election is critically important. We cannot afford to have any friend of the Second Amendment sit it out, regardless of the reason.

We all know gun owners who are disillusioned with politics. Those influenced by talk of four years of “progressives” in power coalescing a united conservative movement must be reminded that this November, we are not just electing a president, we are electing an entire government.

With Obama’s emphasis on grassroots organizing, his administration will be a government redesigned and realigned to stay in power. It will be a government converted into a political machine. And with a so-called “progressive” majority in both houses of Congress, there will be little to stop that power shift.

When Obama talks about “change,” the gun-banners at the Violence Policy Center and the Brady Campaign know exactly what change they want—inside power. And they’ll likely get it.

Michelle Obama, in a politically charged college campaign speech in California, defined her husband’s meaning of “change”:

“Barack Obama … is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your division. That you come out of your isolation. That you move out of your comfort zones … Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual …”.

As NRA members, this statement doesn’t bode well for our future. Our “lives as usual” means the daily exercise of our freedom.

And what of “cynicism”? It is the very basis of Americans’ long history of questioning government power and its abuse. It is the basis of challenging dissembling politicians. Cynicism is the key to seeing through politicians like Obama and Hillary Clinton, who falsely wrap themselves in the Second Amendment while espousing dangerous programs for civil disarmament.

And “division”? As NRA members, our “division” from the likes of Obama means we stand together and fight every day against those who would destroy the bedrock principles that have made our country the freest in the world. Divisiveness is the basis of our democratic institutions. Division based on principle is a noble thing.

“Comfort zone”? What about the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence? That is the real “comfort zone” of all Americans. We are the only nation on earth built on the principle of “pursuit of happiness.” That means we do not serve government; it serves us.

The “change” Obama and his close allies—like George Soros’ Moveon.org —seek is a complete regime change driven by a radical political agenda. For the nation’s gun owners, “change” will take the form of many steps back to the bad old days of the Clinton-Gore years or the Jimmy Carter years, when bureaucrats in a dozen agencies were relentless in their schemes to press a hostile presidential agenda against gun ownership.

For gun owners, “change” could well mean an erosion of hard-fought reforms and hard-fought protections we have secured over the years. Those reforms represent battles won by gun owners led by NRA since the founding of the Institute for Legislative Action in 1975.

“Change” means removing the restrictions we secured against the Consumer Product Safety Commission from exercising a bureaucratic ban on firearms or ammunition based on phony “consumer hazard” criteria. This is something the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center have vainly sought for years.

Most see themselves as 31, no matter how old they are

By Douglas Coupland

A few days ago, I had a business lunch with a guy I thought was about 10 years older than I am. I’m 46, and he looked to be 55 and resembled every English teacher you’ve ever had. At the end of lunch he said, “You know, I was born the same week as you…” and went on to discuss all the same music we listened to in high school. Meanwhile, it was all I could do to compose myself while looking around for a reflective surface — a knife blade, the hologram on my Visa card — to convince myself I didn’t look 55 like this guy did. I felt as if I had progeria, that disease in which you age half a century in five years. That’s what growing older does to a guy.

We’ve all bumped into friends who look like hell. Our first thought is always divorce, booze, or one of those other wicked speed bumps on the road of life. What’s really happening, of course, is that your friend is in the middle of a progerial plunge. Time passes, and more time passes, and then you see that friend in the checkout line of a Safeway one afternoon, and you realize he’s not drinking or having troubles. He’s just aging. The kicker: So I must be too. That’s when you head to the produce department and check yourself out in the mirrors above the lettuce and celery.

I have this theory about men and aging. We have two ages: the age we really are, and the age we are in our heads. Most men are almost always about 31 or 32 in their heads — just ask them. Even Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons” is 31 in his head. One of the most universal adult male experiences is of standing before a mirror and saying, “I’m sorry, but there’s been a horrible mistake. You see, that’s not really me in the mirror there. The real me is tanned, throws Frisbees, and kayaks the Columbia River estuary without cracking a sweat.”

In myself I’ve come to notice that aging comes in spurts. I’ve asked others, and they pretty much agree. I’ll look the exact same way for a decade, and then — wham! — God hits the progeria switch and for two years the downhill plunge begins anew.

And then it stops again.

My body will plateau for another decade, until the next time it decides to collapse a bit more. Which is funny, because in a weird plot twist, I’m probably in better shape now than I was at 20. Many reasons: I quit smoking in 1988 (though I could start again right now), I stopped eating crap two years ago, and last year, I finally found a gym that doesn’t allow music: no John Cougar Mellencamp blasting at maximum volume while circus freaks in harem pants and the thong equivalent of a T-shirt make those embarrassing orgasm noises while bench-pressing the mathematical squares of their IQs. Instead, I can think and enjoy my time working out without a massive sonic brain invasion. It makes all the difference. And what do I think about in the gym? Muscle tissue breaking. And then I try to decide whether to rebuild or pack it in. My ligaments are iffy about whether they should snap or strengthen. My body tries to decide whether to age or become more powerful. And as a control freak, it bugs me so much that a lot of this stuff is beyond my control. Exercise, sure, but at the end of it, instead of looking thinner, I may merely look gaunt. Or haggard. Or — ironically — my age.

Former astronaut Neil Armstrong was once asked if he exercised, and he said, “The good Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats, and I’m damned if I’m going to use up mine running up and down a street.” What I’ve found is that even if I do get into fantastic shape and shed the spare tire and stop eating junk, the best I can hope for is to stay in the same place. That’s the main thing I’ve come to realize about aging. The elevator is never going up again. Well, okay, I think it goes up if you go the Beverly Hills-plastic-surgery route, but that’s an expensive and shadowy realm. Compare and contrast George Hamilton with Samuel Beckett.

Lately, I’ve begun to have this heretical thought that people were never supposed to live to be old enough to age in the first place. We forget that until the 1950s or 1960s, senior citizens were extraordinarily rare, and the seniors one did see were begoitered, often-limbless, shrunken-apple-head people who wheezed and cackled. A hundred years ago, if you hit 70, you deserved every shred of respect you got. These days… well, does one deserve respect for wanting to look 55 at 70? Does wanting to appear younger in any form deserve any respect at all? In the 1990s, I helped design a plausible future for the film “Minority Report.” One of the things I came up with was “young old people.” Tom Cruise’s character in the movie was actually 70 years old, even though he looked 35. Now that I think of it, maybe Tom Cruise really is 70. If that turned out to be the truth, would you be surprised? Be honest.

The way things are going now, pretty much everybody you ever graduated from high school with is easily going to make it to 70. Nobody thought of this a hundred years ago when they invented the high school reunion. The essential allure (and intrinsic unfairness) of high school reunions is that you never know who’s still riding along a plateau, and who has just gone through a progerial plunge.

My father is 80 this year and still works as a doctor, a GP. His practice is largely older, and his specialty is keeping them not only alive but also alive and chugging. He has a belief that aging can be slowed by careful monitoring of the thyroid, by keeping folic-acid levels high, and by monitoring cholesterol a certain way. All of this is good advice in any event, but I bump into his patients all the time, and man, these people are vibrating. His waiting room is like the pool scene in Cocoon. These people still attend their high school reunions. It’s the weird new circle of life.

I actually don’t mind aging. The best part of aging is that everybody you know is aging right along with you. Last week, I checked online, and James Gandolfini, Leif Garrett, Michael J. Fox, Henry Rollins, and I were all born the same year, 1961, and yeah, that’s about where I feel in my head — which feels honest and righteous. I’d be truly freaked out if I discovered that Nick Lachey was born in 1961.

It sounds obvious, but… we get old. It’s one of the first things we forget once our teens are over and we’ve stopped counting the hairs in our armpits. Freaking out about aging becomes depressing or funny or pathetic only if you make the incorrect assumption that everyone else lives inside a change-proof hyperbaric chamber.

They don’t, of course. We’re all locked inside the time machine, and we’re all going to the exact same destination. And I just checked: Tom Cruise was born in 1962.

Douglas Coupland is the author of the 1991 novel “Generation X.” He’s also written nine other novels including “Microserfs” and “Hey Nostradamus!” as well as nonfiction books. He lives in Vancouver, B.C.

By Anthony Balderrama

Before you head out to the interview, check your suit for lint, your résumé for typos, your teeth for spinach and your hands for a firm grip.

A new survey finds that all of your years of experience and the hard work you put into preparing for an interview can disappear if you extend your hand and offer a languid shake.

A dead fish handshake can be just as dooming as ripped jeans and a neck tattoo when it comes to landing a job, says the survey conducted by Greg Stewart, a business professor from the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa.

Why is a good handshake so important? Because you’re being interviewed the second you walk through the door.

Everything from your appearance to your body language sends signals to interviewers about you and your fit in the company. They’re looking for anything to distinguish you from the pack, so they will let the handshake set the tone for the rest of your meeting.

“Job seekers are trained how to act in a job interview, how to talk, how to dress, how to answer questions, so we all look and act alike to varying degrees because we’ve all been told the same things,” Stewart reminds. Your handshake is one of the few interview components that are unique to you.

“We probably don’t consciously remember a person’s handshake or whether it was good or bad. But the handshake is one of the first nonverbal clues we get about the person’s overall personality, and that impression is what we remember,” Stewart says.

For the survey, 98 students went through mock job interviews. Handshake raters, who did not reveal their purpose, were introduced to students and shook their hands.

After the interviews, the hiring managers scored how well the job seekers performed and the handshake raters graded the handshakes separately. The scores were compared and showed that those students with high scoring handshakes were the same ones the interviewers viewed most hireable.

The correlation between handshakes and favorable impressions goes beyond an interviewer’s preference for a firm grip. Interviewers perceived students with good handshakes as being more outgoing and having better interpersonal skills.

What is a good handshake? Interviews are filled with opportunities for overthinking. Which tie exudes confidence? Which hairstyle says professional yet approachable? How early should I arrive so that I don’t seem too eager or too disinterested?

And now you’re probably wondering just how to go about crafting the perfect handshake. Chances are you probably already know the answer.

One of the first lessons of Business 101 is to have a firm, personable handshake, and that’s exactly what interviewers favored.

The handshake that received the best responses involved a strong grip, maintained eye contact and deliberate pumps up and down. A lazy handshake makes you appear disinterested, sort of like a five-fingered yawn. If you’re overzealous, however, it’s distracting and annoying.

On your next interview, as you walk into the room and flatten the creases in your crisp suit jacket, remember to give the same attention to the hand you’re extending.

By Joanna Lin

A patch of land in Ventura County’s section of Los Padres National Forest where the ground recently heated up to 812 degrees continues to puzzle firefighters and geologists after weeks of monitoring.

“It’s a thermal anomaly,” said Ron Oatman, spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department.

Firefighters responded to reports of a blaze there a month and a half ago, when observers noticed smoke rising from the parched scrub. But when they arrived, they found no flames.

Firefighters and geologists who have surveyed the area in the Sespe Oil Field are uncertain what’s causing the heat, but they do have a theory.

Allen King, a retired geologist with the U.S. Forest Service who went to the site Friday, said the smoking ground is “a normal occurrence” that does not appear to be the result of human activity.

The hot spot is in an area considered to be an active landslide that has shifted for more than 60 years. Several hundred feet below its cracked surface lie pockets of gas, tar and oil.

King said he suspects cracks along the landslide’s slope allow oxygen to enter into the earth and hydrocarbon material to “seep out” of the fine-grain shale. The combination can create underground combustion, he said.

King said the depth at which hydrocarbon material can be found “varies tremendously” and that he does not know at what depth the combustion in the oil field is occurring. The 812-degree temperature was measured Friday about a foot below the surface, he said. No other temperature checks have been made since, according to Oatman.

During Friday’s visit to the hot spot, smoke rose through five cracks in the ground. From a distance, it looked like “a small, smoldering camp fire,” Oatman said. The smoke comes and goes, he said, and fire officials expect it will last until the next heavy rainfall, when water and mud plug the fissures.

The steep, rugged terrain is owned by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and leased by Seneca Resources Corp. The area is gated off from public access and is free of equipment and buildings.

The hot spot is not considered to be a threat to public safety, Oatman said, and the Fire Department is monitoring the area daily.

The 3,000-acre Sespe Oil Field was discovered in 1887 and has since produced about 50 million barrels of oil, said David Christy, spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management. The field contains more than 300 oil wells, 210 of which are active. In January 2007, about 200 to 300 gallons of oil spilled into a nearby creek after a pipe containing a mixture of groundwater and oil burst.

Jeff Kuyper, executive director of Los Padres ForestWatch, said he had not heard of hot spots in the oil field but was concerned about their potential effect on the nearby Sespe Condor Sanctuary and the forest’s fire-prone nature.

“It’s just a disaster waiting to happen . . . regardless of what the cause is,” he said.

By Michael Robinson

With the American housing market in its worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, President Bush is authorising new legislation to pave the way for massive new government intervention designed to slow the slide.

The intervention would come as a little known quirk of US law threatens to drive down house prices even faster.

Faced with seemingly never-ending falls in the value of their properties, some American home-owners are taking radical action; they are choosing to walk away from homes and their mortgages.

In May 2006, at the height of the housing boom, Karen Trainer bought a $500,000 apartment in California - with money borrowed from her bank.

By this year, Karen still owed $500,000 on her mortgage, but her apartment was worth $200,000 less.

So she was deep in negative equity and, to make matters worse, the interest rate on her loan was about to increase.

“I thought ‘this is crazy’,” Ms Trainer says. “It just does not make financial sense.”

As a successful professional, Karen could comfortably have managed the higher mortgage payments her bank demanded.

Instead, she decided to stop her mortgage payments altogether and let her bank repossess her apartment.

Her credit record will be badly damaged by the decision, but Ms Trainer expects this to recover soon.

“Generally speaking, within 5 years you are about back where you were, so my husband and I decided we’ll take the hit and live with it.”

Over to the bank

In California and much of the rest of America, there is a powerful incentive for homeowners such as Ms Trainer to walk away from their mortgage obligations.

Though banks can repossess and sell the homes of borrowers who stop paying their mortgages, under a legal quirk originating in the Great Depression of the 1930s, banks cannot easily pursue borrowers for any balance outstanding on the main mortgage on their homes.

Consequently, by walking away from her apartment, Ms Trainer has also walked away from the loss on her property.

Her bank gets stuck with that.

Unthinkable option

Traditionally in America there is a social stigma attached to those who default on their debts, which should be a deterrent to walking away from your home.

But according to Susan Wachter, professor of real estate and finance at Wharton School of Business, in the depth of this crisis the social attitudes to such actions are changing.

“This is the kind of conversation that’s going on at cocktail parties, at swimming pools,” Professor Wachter says. “And suddenly this option which was truly unthinkable in the past becomes thinkable.”

Worrying development

Ms Trainer says she feels no moral obligation to go on paying a loan on a property that is going to go on losing her money. She says her friends support her decision.

“I think people are taking a more cold-hearted look at it,” she says.

“Is the bank going to pay for my retirement because I was a good girl and paid my mortgage, even though legally I didn’t have to?”

Professor Wachter believes that, to date, most people have had their homes repossessed because they could not manage the repayments.

The trend of people now positively choosing to walk away because it makes financial sense to do so is a worrying new development.

“The dangers are extraordinary,” Professor Wachter says.

“If all that is needed is that the house value is less than the mortgage value, there is a large number of homeowners in the United States who are in that situation”.

No renegotiation

In the city of Stockton - the foreclosure, or repossession, capital of the US for 2007 - estate agent Kevin Morgan sells repossessed houses on behalf of the banks that now own them.

According to him, walking away has become commonplace.

“I would say it’s probably 70% of the volume of our foreclosures right now,” he says.

“It’s a business decision for their family that the smartest thing they can do is walk away from their home.”

As a sign of the changing times, some 60% of borrowers do not even bother to contact their banks to attempt a renegotiation of their loan, Mr Moran explains.

“They stop paying and they stop talking,” he says. “They just plain walk away.”

Total disaster

It is impossible to know for sure how many of the people who are now walking away from their homes could have gone on paying their mortgages.

But Professor Nouriel Roubini of New York University, one of the first economists to warn of the dangers of the American house price boom, believes the number of people positively choosing to walk away is growing rapidly.

“This is becoming a tsunami of voluntary defaults,” Professor Roubini says.

“The losses for the financial system from people walking away could be of the order of one trillion dollars when the entire capital of the US banking system is only $1.3 trillion.

“You could have most of the US banking system wiped out, so this is a total disaster.”

Which is why it is not just US policymakers who are hoping America’s new, multi-billion dollar initiative to stabilise the housing market will succeed in its aims and thus make walking away less attractive.

Because if it fails, the economic fallout could be felt far beyond America’s shores.

Michael Robinson’s two-part series “The Trouble with Money” is broadcast on 30 July and 6 August on BBC World Service.

By: Darryl R Schoon

The engine used to run on premium, e.g. gold and silver; now it’s being run on credit which over time will destroy the engine and everything else.

The euro, the yuan, the yen, and the dollar are The Four Tires Of The Apocalypse , an event that recently appears to have come out of nowhere. It didn’t. Its apparently sudden appearance is new only to those who wished to see otherwise.

The destructive juggernaut now bearing down on the financial house of cards constructed by central bankers contained within it the seeds of its own destruction from its very beginning. Over time, those seeds would turn into Cerberus, the hound of hell, on whose mercy Bernanke et. al . now depends.

Epochs, like movies, need time to reveal protagonists and antagonists, as well as victims, villains and victors. We are now at the end of an epoch and as the final scene opens, the program notes are becoming disturbingly clear.

We find ourselves participants in the last and final act of capitalism and its credit based capital markets—or more correctly, credit and/or debt markets masquerading as free markets.

THE BIRTH OF CERBERUS — THE GENESIS OF THE JUGGERNAUT

Capitalism did not appear until the Bank of England began issuing its debt-based paper money in 1694. The issuance of credit as money gave rise to capital markets where debt-based money replaced savings-based money

The Bank of England’s debt-based money drove out gold and silver coinage as Gresham ’s Law clearly illustrates—bad money drives out good. No one would willingly pay gold or silver for what paper coupons would just as easily buy.

Capital markets are debt-markets made possible by the fiat issuance of central bank debt-based money. After central bankers’ faux money replaced gold and silver coins, commerce appeared to change forever; but that too is now about to change.

The rise of central banks parallels the substitution of paper debt-based money for gold and silver. When a disease spreads, so, too, do its symptoms. Replacing gold and silver with debt-based money was to eventually cripple commerce itself, albeit after a three hundred year run at the table.

Previous to central banking, commerce was founded on currencies composed of gold and silver. But with the advent of central banks, credit was substituted for gold and silver and after three centuries, credit-based economies are now on the verge of collapse, the juggernaut is in the shop and the long awaited apocalypse has arrived.

SOMEBODY BETTER CHECK THE TIRES

The euro, the yuan, the yen, and the dollar—the four major fiat currencies—are The Four Tires Of The Apocalypse ; and although the economy’s engine, the credit markets, have seized up and are receiving most of the attention, somebody should take a look at the tires.

The mechanics, the central bankers, are instead focused only on the engine. Their solution again proves that good mechanics are hard to find. Like hacks at the corner garage, they’re pouring more credit into an already flooded engine, a sure sign they don’t know what they’re doing.

They’re not even looking at the tires. They should because the tires are fiat made of paper. The front tires are the Japanese yen and the Chinese yuan. The rear two are the euro and the US dollar; and it’s the two rear tires that now pose the greatest threat, the driver’s side rear, the US dollar, in particular—and the spare in the trunk, the British pound has a leak.

Of the four, the Chinese yuan is the newest, which in credit-driven economies is a plus, as usage in such economies equals more debt. Nonetheless, the Chinese yuan is not capable of carrying more than its present load although it is presently holding its own.

The other front tire, the Japanese yen, unlike the Chinese yuan, is well-worn and its tread is almost gone. Its debt load is enormous (the highest ratio of debt to GDP of all major economies) while its pressure, sic interest rate, is the lowest of all, incapable of handling more.

Currently at only 0.5 % because of an almost fatal blowout in 1989, the Japanese yen still hasn’t yet recovered—that the tire is still in service after its severe blowout is in itself something of a miracle.

But the two rear tires, the euro and the US dollar, are the source of our future trouble as they are particularly vulnerable to the continuing collapse of credit markets. The euro and dollar, like all fiat currencies, are dependent on the strength of their underlying economies, economies addicted to credit from increasingly insolvent banks, banks which are in far more trouble than presently believed.

Like someone who has HIV and has only confessed to having the clap, the money-center banks in Europe and the US are holding assets both on and off their balance sheets that are virtually worthless, with actual losses totaling $1.6 trillion, four times what the banks have yet admitted; and because the value of fiat currencies are a function of their economies, the collapse of the US dollar and euro may be ahead.

PUBLIC MONEY — PRIVATE BANKS

It is now clear that central banks are using national treasuries to indemnify losses incurred by private banks. This should come as no surprise. Once private bankers and public government colluded to debase the currencies of their nations in order to enrich themselves, the joining of the two was inevitable and it is happening as we watch.

The last and final act of capitalism will be characterized by the looting of what little remains in our national treasuries as central bankers bail out the banks that caused our present problems. The only thing new is our surprise that it is happening.

The consequences, however, will not end there. The consequence of the public bailout of private banks will be the collapse of fiat currencies, currencies which have been the very basis of government and bankers’ power—power which will be swept away when fiat currencies collapse.

THE END GAME

Capitalism and credit markets—the bastard offspring of fiat money and central banking—are now in their final stage; and the default of fiat money will herald the end of the reign of central bankers in our affairs. No fiat system has ever survived. The present fiat system will be no exception to that rule

For those worried about private property, have no fear. Capitalism has nothing to do with the private ownership of property as maintained by private bankers and their corporate sponsors. The private ownership of property existed long before capitalism and will exist long after.

Capitalism has everything to do with central bankers’ issuance of debt-based money and the increasing power of government in our lives and the increasing profits of bankers at our expense.

Thomas Jefferson, the author of America ’s Declaration of Independence understood well the threat posed by central banks:

The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution…Bankers are more dangerous than standing armies … [and] If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.

With the establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1913, the American people allowed private bankers to destroy the economic freedom the founding fathers had fought to achieve.

That first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations as Jefferson warned are now in the process of depriving Americans and others of their homes and property by the issuance of credit and by default on those debts

The founding father fought a war in 1776; and 137 years later in 1913, Americans ceded back what they had won when they allowed private bankers to establish the Federal Reserve Bank in the US , a central bank which would do exactly as Jefferson said

Since the establishment of the Federal Reserve System, the US has been a slave to bankers and those in government who do their bidding, Today, Americans are bankrupt and indebted to those they allowed to issue their currency.

Today, America’s once free markets are rigged and government officials lie openly and with impunity whenever it serves their purpose to do so, their words no more trustworthy than the statistics they produce in order to pacify a nation regarding the dangers they have put it in.

Soon, however, that will change. For the collapse of the fiat US dollar will also bring about the collapse of those who benefit from its false issuance—private bankers, corporations and those who govern for their benefit in our name.

Although we do not possess the requisite power to successfully oppose those who oppress us, we can however wait for their inevitable demise, a demise that will unfortunately be as devastating to us as it will be to them.

The collapse of the US dollar will be horrific as will be its aftermath. But the price of liberty is always high. It was high in 1776. It will be high again.

THE UNLEASHING OF CERBERUS

These days at Apocalypse Auto, the lights are on at midnight as the mechanics wonder what to do. This is not the first time the once apparently unstoppable US economic juggernaut has been in the shop.

Just a few years ago, when the dot.com bubble burst, the US economy was obviously badly in need of emergency repair. To Al Greenspan, the head mechanic at Apocalypse Auto, it was a dangerous situation.

In 1989, the Japanese stock market bubble had collapsed sending Japan into a deflationary spiral in which it was still mired and if the US suffered likewise, the US , Japan and world economies would be in deep trouble.

So, Al and the others at Apocalypse Auto did what they did. The story is best told by Professor Antal E. Fekete in The Bubble That Broke The World , June 2003, see http://www.professorfekete.com/articles%5CAEFTheBubbleThatBrokeTheWorld.pdf .

… Aladdin Greenspan let the genie out of the bottle. The genie is now at large, entirely on its own, roaming around the world, visiting disaster upon the economies wherever it may go: a depression possibly worse than that in the 1930s. Aladdin hasn’t got a clue how to put it back in the bottle because if he tried, the genie would threaten to plunge the world into another bottomless pit, that of hyperinflation.

Greenspan [explained] the strategy the Fed has developed to combat deflation. He would climb the yield curve, that is, go out to buy government bonds of all maturities, if need be up to and including the30-year Treasury bonds, in an effort to push interest rates down thereby enlarging the monetary base that would, according to him, contain the weakness in prices.

It is a long shot from open market purchases of bonds to a buoyant price level. After all, once in circulation, the new money created by the Fed is no longer under its control. It is under the control of the speculators. They will not necessarily deploy it in the commodity or stock markets, as the Fed is hoping. They may see a better opportunity for profitable speculation elsewhere, say, in the real estate or the bond markets [bold, mine].

Just as Professor Fekete predicted, central bank credit, sic “new money”, went out of central bankers’ control and created an even larger bubble, the US real estate bubble whose collapse is now threatening economies everywhere.

Central bankers are again trying to contain the forces they themselves set in motion. But, irreparable harm has already been done because the genie that Greenspan let out of the bottle was no ordinary genie, it was Cerberus, the hound from hell.

Cerberus, Hades’ three-headed hound, is now on the loose. It is a sign of the times that many still hope central bankers can save them from what is about to happen. But hope is as blind as the information upon which it feeds—for although the bankers let Cerberus out, they are powerless to put him back in.

GOLD & SILVER

THE FOUNDATION OF OUR PAST AND FUTURE FREEDOMS

By Joseph W. Schultz

“Why, Mr. President, can you send hundreds of thousands of troops to far away countries to kill suspected ‘terrorists’ with cluster bombs and munitions coated with depleted uranium and tanks and warplanes and an endless supply of high-tech weapons and I, as an American citizen, cannot go to my neighbors’ house and kill them if I suspect them of being terrorists?”

“Are you implying that you are more intelligent than I, and therefore have the wisdom to decide who to kill, including hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children because suspected ‘terrorists’ are in areas near those innocents?”

“And, Mr. President, if you can pick up anyone off the street in far-off countries and send them to hidden places to be tortured, without benefit of legal counsel or the basic necessities human beings depend upon for keeping their sanity, why can’t I, likewise, drag my neighbors into my dark, rat-infested basement and torture them until they tell me exactly what I need and want to know concerning their suspected terrorist activities?”
Is your answer, “Because you, dear citizen, have a police force to keep you safe from terrorists, so you need not take the law into your own hands.”

“I see, Mr. President. But, you say I have a police force to keep me safe: I noticed you didn’t say I have an army to keep me safe. Is there a difference in an army and a police force?”

Would you answer and say, “There is really no distinction between the two in today’s world, where terrorists are hiding behind every tree and every small child.”

“But, Mr. President, are you telling me that our armed forces are trained to protect and to serve, just as our police force is trained to protect and to serve? In truth, are not our armed forces trained to kill and break things? Is our police force trained in the fine art of torture? Are they trained to kill whole families because a suspected terrorist might be in the bushes? Is our police force really adept at displacing millions of families from their homes and towns and cities? Does our police force shoot at speeding cars and trucks simply because suspected terrorists are in them? Does our police force dive-bomb our citizens with super-sonic jet planes for the purpose of protecting and serving us?
Is your answer, “There are things a Commander in Chief must do that average citizens cannot fathom in their day to day living ­ the average citizen has no idea how difficult it is for me to send people off to kill and be killed?”

“But, Mr. President, were you not an average citizen before you became the most powerful person in the world? Were you miraculously transformed into a god-like being, with omniscient powers of perception and good judgment? Were you suddenly aware of all of the consequences of all of your actions?”

Would you answer me by saying, “I have the best advisers in the free world; I have the best brain-power ever amassed in one think-tank to show me the good and proper way to lead a nation of free people.”

“If this is your answer, Mr. President, then why have you destroyed so many lives? Why have you bankrupted our nation in the eight short years of your stewardship? Why have you neglected to maintain and repair the crumbling infrastructure of our once solvent and viable country? And, why have so many of your advisers and high-ranking people left your command? Were they saying things you did not want to hear, or did they leave because they feared for their lives and fortunes because of impending war-crimes trials?”

“You have suddenly become silent, Mr. President; is it because you are trying to think of some very important, deep, philosophical answer, or are you thinking of all the people you plan on pardoning before leaving office? How long is the list, Mr. President? Is your name the first one on that list? When you leave office, will you once more become just an ordinary citizen, like me? Or will you go on lecture tours and collect $$$$$$$$$$$$ for telling crowds of adoring people how you gave up golf in order to honor those who went off to kill and be killed, while on your watch?”

“I think I know the answer, Mr. President ­ but I would dearly like to hear yours.”

The ships’ logs of great maritime figures such as Lord Nelson and Captain Cook have cast new light on climate change by suggesting that global warming may not be an entirely man-made phenomenon.

By Tom Peterkin

Scientists have uncovered a treasure trove of meteorological information contained in the detailed logs kept by those on board the vessels that established Britain’s great seafaring traditition including those on Nelsons’ Victory and Cook’s Endeavour.

Every Royal Naval ship kept a detailed record of climate including air pressure, wind strength, air and sea temperature and major meteorological disturbances.

A group of academics and Met Office scientists has unearthed the records dating from the 1600s and examined more than 6,000 logs, which have provided one of the world’s best sources for long-term weather data.

Their studies have raised questions about modern climate change theories. A paper by Dennis Wheeler, a geographer based at Sunderland University, recounts an increasing number of summer storms over Britain in the late 17th century.

Many scientists believe that storms are caused by global warming, but these were came during the so-called Little Ice Age that affected Europe from about 1600 to 1850.

The records also suggest that Europe saw a spell of rapid warming, similar to that experienced today, during the 1730s that must have been caused naturally.

“British archives contain more than 100,000 Royal Navy logbooks from around 1670 to 1850 alone,” Mr Wheeler said. “They are a stunning resource. Global warming is a reality, but our data shows climate science is complex. It is wrong to take particular events and link them to carbon dioxide emissions.

“These records will give us a much clearer picture of what is really happening.”