(Gaomei Wetlands again - a mix of old and new technology)
What's blowing in the wind as March begins?
- Mike, your links are far more interesting than mine so I'm also not going to link to your latest collection of thought provoking snippets ...
- A young lady tries to connect with and relate to the Old Testament ... and fails beautifully.
- Chinese Railways Minister: First sacked, now under corruption investigation. This part caught my eye ...
Last year, China publicly admitted in a report that its corruption problem was "still very serious", setting out new measures to tackle it. The report said that more than 200,000 cases - including embezzlement and bribery - had been investigated since 2003. The document was released after the introduction of new rules requiring members of the governing Communist Party to report incomes and investments. However, critics say corruption is ingrained in the system and new regulations will not solve the problem. (And in Taiwan, corruption is .... [fill with preferred answer].)
- European Court of Justice (ECJ) rules differential insurance premiums for men and women are a form of gender discrimination so UK insurers have until December 21st 2012 to adjust. I agree with this in principle though I recognise that in all likelihood, insurers will now just raise female premiums to male levels rather than reduce male premiums and raise female premiums. I liked this comment below the article:
Dan131 - "Car insurance should be based PURELY on years behind the wheel and the number of claims in that time. Anything else would be prejudice. All that insurers need to know is a driver's experience and claim history to determine the risk involved in an INDIVIDUAL. Simple"
- Makers of The Cove have sent free Cove DVDs to all the villagers of Taiji in Japan, the main site of their expose on dolphin 'hunting'.
- Diplomats angry that China is once again clamping down on the freedom of foreign journalists to cover news stories in China. Outgoing US ambassador Jon Huntsman (and possible 2012 Republican Presidential candidate) weighs in.
- Why Accommodation of China and Conceding Taiwan To Keep The Peace are naive and dangerous strategies.
- Taipei 'Plain Clothed Police' manhandle students. More evidence that police are increasingly not wearing uniforms or even clear identification and maybe using their anonymity as a cover to carry out unlawful acts whilst claiming to be following the law. Or, perhaps these are not police at all but self styled 'minutemen' of public protests against visiting Chinese. Are we going to see a process to unification marked by less official police harassment of those who oppose it but more illegal and anti-democratic harassment by unofficial or unmarked groups of security forces?. That's one of the ways how a civil war begins - when people start taking the law into their own hands - it also has disturbing parallels with protest enforcement tactics in China. David has this excellent post. Here's a video of the incident:
- PRC Minister of Environmental Protection looking to make his department more than a paper tiger. I fully applaud his efforts.
- A Must See: Inside Job - a film about how deregulation of financial institutions led to the 'collapse' of the big banks. What I learned ...
- Deregulation of any industry must be examined as to the real motives of those pushing deregulation as well as a exhaustive study on the possible contingencies doing so might have.
- 6 - 10 MILLION US citizens have been made homeless by a combination of their own gullibility and an inability to recognise the dangers of excessive borrowing, their lack of a mathematics PhD required to read mortgage financing documents, the mendacity of sugar tongued predatory lenders and the utter madness of ego-driven cowboy speculators making BILLIONS on what were essentially ponzi schemes.
- Successive changes in Democrat and Republican leaderships since 1979 yet no changes in the composition and ideological bent of the people who have been running the US Federal Reserve, Securities and Exchange Commission or the Treasury Department.
- President Obama is surrounded by the money men noted in point 3. Either he was happy to give these people jobs in charge of the US economy and money system, he was not aware of their pedigree or connections to the biggest financial institutions or it was clearly indicated to him that not choosing those money men would mean the end of any re-election campaign.
- The top US university business schools are run by academics who not only share a similar ideological view as the top executives on Wall Street and in Washington but also work pro bono for the top financial institutions that they are supposed to study impartially.
- Self-regulation of most industries is a sick joke. In essence it means no regulation at all and that means abuse of the system.
- When it is in the interest of (supposedly neutral and expert) valuators to award a CDO or financial institution a AAA rating, they will do so. It is after all, only 'their opinion'. They are not legally required to be accurate. Yet people are making buying and selling decisions on those 'opinions' that affect the value and size of thousands of individual debts (and the very existence of banks themselves).
- There was no real collapse of the financing sector, it was more of a consolidation. The same conditions that led to the crash are still in place today. US citizens have paid out over $700 Billion so far to bail out the banks. Bonuses are once again sky high. No regulation on derivative trading has been put in place.
- Of the top executives in the financial institutions that collapsed or needed bailouts, almost none have been put on trial for theft and fraud. Many moved on with massive golden handshakes.
- Was Elliot Spitzer caught in a honey trap?
