Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Conservatives Orwellian Language Politics

When it comes to bilingualism, the idea of two national languages being equal, the Conservatives like to refer to Linguistic duality, which does not mean the same thing.

For the Harpocrites it means separate but equal languages. That is there is English spoken in English Canada and French spoken in Quebec. That is the meaning behind the Conservatives use of the term; linguistic duality.

This does not mean bilingualism as we know it under the Liberals. Because of course this government hates all things Liberal.



Despite Prime Minister Harper personally setting an example by using both official languages, the government is not living up to its commitment in this area, Graham Fraser, Commissioner of Official Languages, said in his first annual report presented to Parliament today.

"Prime Minister Harper's public behaviour is exemplary in terms of respect for Canada's official languages," Fraser said, noting that Josee Verner, Minister for La Francophonie and Official Languages, had expressed the government's support for the amendments to the Official Languages Act and the Action Plan for Official Languages. "Unfortunately, the government's actions over the last year have not reflected these public statements."

In 2005, the Official Languages Act was enhanced with the amendment to Part VII requiring federal institutions to take positive measures to promote linguistic duality and support the development of official language minority communities. According to the Commissioner, "Although this amendment was approved by Parliament, government action to date casts doubt on its genuine commitment to implementing this Act." The most telling example in the Commissioner's report is the announcement of budget cuts last fall, which abolished initiatives such as the Court Challenges Program.


As I wrote previously and it is worth repeating;

Harper, unlike Preston Manning, was a student of the Calgary School. Harper's political practice is influenced more by this than Manning was. Hence Harpers surprise; the recognition of Quebec as a nation, giving it the separatism it wants within a decentralized federal state. That is more the nuanced politics of the Calgary School than the Reform Party demand that the West Wants In.

The old anti-bilingualism of the Reformers is replaced with the subtle Two Distinct Languages policy of the Conservatives. Which again appeals to Quebecois nationalism, while also keeping the rest of Canada happy with one language; English.


SEE:

Tory Cuts For All

White Multiculturalism



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Work Is A Danger To Your Mental Health


I owe, I owe, it's off to work I go, and go and go....no wonder we get depressed and suffer from increasing forms of mental illness. What is interesting is that it is wage slaves who are now suffering this disease usually associated with the salaried class.


workaholics are not a happy lot, according to the study, called Time escapes me: Workaholics and time perception. The study, in the latest online edition of Canadian Social Trends, reports that 31 per cent of Canadians describe themselves as workaholics. It is based on data from the 2005 General Social Survey on time use.

Nearly 40 per cent of workaholics reported working 50 hours a week and more. They feel rushed and trapped in their routine. They have trouble sleeping and reported more health problems than Canadians who aren't workaholics. They worry that they don't spend enough time with family and friends; that they just don't have time for fun.

And, despite all the time they spend at work, they are no more likely than others to love their jobs or be satisfied with their income.

Managers and tradespeople are more likely to report they are workaholics than professionals, a finding analyst Leslie-Anne Keown found puzzling.

"Perhaps professionals such as doctors and lawyers accept that working longer hours are an integral part of their professional role, whereas managers view these conditions as uncompensated but necessary conditions of their position," she wrote in the report. "As for the higher incidence of workaholics in the trades, an overabundance of work, coupled with a labour shortage in the skilled trades, might be a contributing factor to this phenomenon."

A country of complainers

We live in one of the richest, safest countries and the economy is booming, yet we are among the whiniest people on the planet.

Overall employee morale is highest in the Netherlands, followed by Ireland and Thailand in second place and Switzerland in third, according to a survey of work attitudes in 23 countries.

Canada is near the bottom of the scale on the morale index, sharing 18th place with Portugal.

The only countries where employee morale is worse are Poland, Korea, Australia, Germany and - at the very bottom - Japan.

Canadians are also big complainers when it comes to job satisfaction, the quality of employer-employee relations and work-life balance, according to the study by market research firm FDS International.

On all three indices, we're near the bottom of the list. We score lower on the job satisfaction scale than even Russia, China and Romania, for heaven's sake. Only the Germans and the Japanese complain more about employer-worker relations than Canucks.

And only the Portuguese, the Poles, the Australians and the Japanese are in more of a snit than us over work-life balance.

More than one-third of Canadian workers are dissatisfied with their pay, 29% gripe that they don't get enough holiday time and one-quarter of us are upset at the number of hours we work.


SEE:

Mirror Mirror On The Wall

Psycho Bosses Depressed Workers

Work Sucks

Which Is True



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Forget Cigarettes Ban Asbestos

One of the greatest public secrets is that cigarettes and tobacco do not cause the majority of cases of lung cancer. Rather it is asbestos which kills more folks with its own unique forms of cancer and from lung cancer.

Canada produces the largest amount of asbestos in the world, and our government would rather oppose its elimination, while putting stupid warning labels on cigarette packages.

The WHO lays the blame for the majority of the cancer deaths from occupational risk factors, squarely on the wide use of carcinogenic substances such as blue asbestos, 2-naphthylamine and benzene 20 to 30 years ago.

The WHO warns that if the current unregulated use of carcinogens continues a significant increase in occupational cancer can be expected in the coming decades.

We are in the midst of a global epidemic of asbestos-related disease unfolding primarily in industrialized countries. The International Labor Organization (ILO) states that over 2 million workers die each year of occupational causes. 75 percent of these preventable deaths are due to work-related disease, and the rest to trauma. Ten percent of these fatalities occur among children where child labor is practiced. Cancer represents the largest component of occupational disease mortality. The single largest contributor to this workrelated cancer epidemic is without question "the magic mineral" — asbestos.

Needless deaths due to workplace cancer

Everyday 200,000 people around the world die from cancer related to their workplace, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Tragically, many workers are dying needlessly as the risks of occupational cancer are avoidable.

Common work-related cancers like lung cancer, mesothelioma and leukaemia are caused by exposure to carcinogens (cancer causing agents) in the working environment. Second-hand tobacco smoke, asbestos and benzene (an organic solvent) are the most common workplace carcinogen pollutants.

More than 125 million people around the world are exposed to asbestos at work and 90,000 people die each year from asbestos-related disease. Benzene is widely used by workers in many industries, such as chemical and diamond industries. Thousands die from leukaemia each year as a result of exposure to this organic solvent. Every 10th lung cancer death is closely related to the workplace.

WHO argue that the largest number of deaths are in workplaces that do not meet health and safety requirements and those that do not prevent carcinogens polluting the air.

Dr Maria Neira, WHO director of public health, argues "The tragedy of occupational cancer resulting from asbestos, benzene and other carcinogens is that it takes so long for science to be translated into protective action." She goes on to say "In the interests of protecting our health, we must adopt an approach rooted in primary prevention, that is to make workplaces free from carcinogenic risks."

CANCER KILLS 9/11 COP, 46

A retired NYPD detective who worked for the elite Emergency Service Unit died early yesterday of pancreatic and lung cancer believed to be related to his work at Ground Zero.

Retired Detective Robert Williamson, 45, died at his Orange County home with family around him, said Detectives Endowment Association head Michael Palladino.

"Unfortunately, I knew this day was going to come for a long time," Palladino said. "We are just now starting to see the long-term health affects of 9/11 on first responders."

Williamson was the third NYPD cop to succumb to cancers believed related to their post-9/11 service.



SEE:

Day of Mourning

In Canada Work Kills

Tories Promote Lung Cancer

Prove It

Make Up Your Mind

June Pointer RIP



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Hell Bound Falwell


There is a new guest in hell today, Jerry Falwell.

Being the self appointed pal of God (c) (tm) (inc)f or lo these many years ,little could he guess where he was going, or perhaps he did, at that moment when he had his fatal heart attack.

In 1976, Falwell said, "The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the devil to keep Christians from running their own country."
Seen to the left Jerry with a portrait of his god.

After all Jerry did more for Satan, by declaring so many Americans sinners, then almost any other right wing evangelical with the exception of that other guy God (c) (tm) (inc) talks to; Pat Robertson.

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and 24 other Christian leaders this year tried to pressure the National Association of Evangelicals to silence its Washington director, the Rev. Rich Cizik, because Cizik is trying to convince evangelicals that global warming is real. In a February sermon, Falwell warned worshippers at his Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, that environmental activism by evangelicals "is Satan's attempt to redirect the church's primary focus" away from spreading the Gospel.

Over the years, Falwell waged a landmark libel case against Hustler magazine founder Larry Flynt over a raunchy parody ad, and created a furor in 1999 when one of his publications suggested that the purse-carrying "Teletubbies" character Tinky Winky was gay.

In recent years, Falwell had become a problematic figure for the GOP. His remarks a few days after Sept. 11, 2001, essentially blaming feminists, gays and liberals for bringing on the terrorist attacks, drew a rebuke from the White House, and he apologized.

http://cagle.com/news/falwell/FalwellRobertsonGIFS/wolverton.gif
Prior to the election, Dr. Jerry Falwell wrote in a newsletter and on his Web site: "I believe it is the responsibility of every political conservative, every evangelical Christian, every pro-life Catholic, and every traditional Jew, every Reagan Democrat, and everyone in between to get serious about re-electing President Bush."

Reverend Falwell, national chairman of the Faith and Values Coalition and Moral Majority founder, also labeled the National Organization for Women (NOW) the "National Order of Witches," and called Americans United for Separation of Church and State "an anti-Christ" group.

And at one point on Meet the Press, Dr. Falwell asked James Wallis of Sojourners how, as an ordained minister he could vote for Mr. Kerry, who supports abortion rights.
Since Jerry entered Hell there has been no official comment from those close to him. Those in the know say that Satan however was downplaying his newest guests importance saying the reception wasn't quite the same as when the Pope arrives.
Many had already been looking beyond Falwell and his allies for new leaders when the pastor died. A 2004 poll for PBS's "Religion & Ethics Newsweekly" found that U.S. evangelicals had a lower regard for Falwell than for Pope John Paul II. Falwell became such a polarizing figure that his role in the 2004 Republican National Convention was limited to appearing at a closed-door rally for religious activists.



Evangelicals Prefer Satan to Hillary Clinton

hillary%20clinton%20vs%20lucifer.jpgEnjoying a comfortable lead over her GOP punching-bag opponent in her Senate re-election bid, New York's own Hillary Clinton was cast by evangelist Jerry Falwell as a favorite candidate for the 2008 presidential election:

"I certainly hope that Hillary is the candidate," Falwell said at a breakfast session Friday in Washington. "I hope she's the candidate, because nothing will energize my (constituency) like Hillary Clinton," he said. "If Lucifer ran, he wouldn't."
Clinton's spokesman decried this "demonizing" maneuver, though no one would speculate on evangelicals' potential reaction to a Clinton versus Satan race. The Prince of Darkness declined to comment, saying he has every confidence in GOP Senate majority leader Bill Frist.

Illustration by Robert Neubecker

My Son, the Antichrist - By Alex Heard - Slate Magazine

The Anti-Defamation League is hopping mad at Jerry Falwell for his speech lastweekend in Kingsport, Tenn., where he told a gathering of prophecy-heeding Christians that the Antichrist is "probably" alive and, as a "full-grown counterfeit of Christ," is without a doubt a Jewish male. The ADL said the remarks were typical of "an especially vicious tradition of Christian theological anti-Judaism."

The Antichrist is Jewish? It does sound bad, especially given the 2,000 year history of Jewish persecution by cranky Christians. The speech was also confusing to longtime Falwell buffs and those of us who have watery knowledge of the Book of Revelation, the New Testament text that causes all this prophecy hubbub. Isn't Falwell a longtime "friend of Israel"? Then why is he making anti-Semitic comments? And does Revelation really say the Antichrist must be a Jew?



When Tammy Faye Messner (formely Tammy Faye Bakker) cries for you through the pancake make up you know you are in hell, or else featured on Larry King.
Even Tammy Faye Messner appeared by phone in an interview with CNN’s Larry King, telling him that she “broke into tears” upon hearing the news of Falwell’s death, despite years of animosity between them that began when Falwell stole the ministry founded by Tammy and Jim Bakker.

The rise of the Moral Majority coincided with the Reagan presidency, and Falwell rose to national prominence as well.

But his fortunes changed in the late 1980s when televangelists took a hit from the bad publicity surrounding the financial scandal involving Jim and Tammy Bakker.

Falwell and his ministries faced some tough financial challenges as well in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and he withdrew somewhat from the national limelight as he worked to get Liberty University and his other ministries on a sounder financial footing.

http://home.mweb.co.za/it/iti04330/hate.jpg
See:

Prince of Peace?

Pat Robertson Bev Oda

Secularism Vs. Fundamentalism

Gnostic Easter

Pauline Origins of Social Conservatism

Pat Robertson Anti-Christ

An Antidote to Bush

Crusader for the Pope


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Monday, May 14, 2007

Our Pal Ed


Lame duck Premier Ed Stelmach is our pal says the Biggest Landlord in Canada....

"We are extremely pleased," whooped Boardwalk president Roberto Geremia.

"Though confronted with intense pressure from the media and opposition parties," he continued, "the provincial government has remained steadfast in its stand against legislated rent controls."

CEO Sam Kolias said Boardwalk was now "poised to generate significant gains," and reminded unitholders that "today's most exciting investment story surrounds our Alberta portfolio," which he described as "really hot."

And Edmonton in particular, where 32% of Boardwalk's apartment units are concentrated and the vacancy rate is running under 1%, is "poised to generate significant gains over the next coming months."

Then Kolias rolled out the happy numbers for the cheerleading stockies listening on the conference call.

Funds from operations were up 25% over the same three months in 2006. Distributable income per unit was up 27%. Rental revenues were up 15%, while net operating income of $51 million was up 19%.

Happy days are here again. And probably the most important stat of all was Boardwalk's "outlook and guidance" prediction that distributable income will climb from $1.87 to as high as $2.04 per unit in 2007.

"We're being thoughtful in the amount we are increasing rents," he continued.

"Although the market can bear more," Kolias sighed, "we do realize that our customers are the most important thing that we have."


H/T to West of the Fourth who discovered Neil Waugh is as Socialist.

Something I have pointed out over the past couple of years about Neil.

After you suffer thirty five years of an incompetent One Party State, socialism actually looks good.




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Animal Crimes


Despite the fact that Canada does not have capital punishment it does when it comes to animals. Unfortunately the same law does not apply to the animals owners.

Let the Punishment fit the crime,

My object all sublime I shall achieve in time — To let the punishment fit the crime — The punishment fit the crime; And make each prisoner pent Unwillingly represent A source of innocent merriment! Of innocent merriment!


In this case the dog owner could well do without his ears....


Owner of dog with ears cut off may face cruelty charges but could still reclaim canine

CanWest News Service

Published: Monday, May 14, 2007

The owner of a dog that was found with its ears cut off could face animal cruelty charges, but under the law he can reclaim the dog if he pays its medical bills and other fees. The Windsor-Essex County Humane Society received a call from an anonymous concerned neighbour after the five- or six-month-old dog, a German Shepherd-Rottweiler mix, was spotted in an apartment building on Friday. "Both his ears were severely injured," said Nancy McCabe, the manager of field operations for the humane society. "We believe he [the owner] either took a kitchen knife or a hand saw and cut the dog's ears off." Ms. McCabe met with the owner yesterday. "He said he had nothing to do with the injuries and that he bought the dog from some guy named Jay and that it was already like that," she said. "He said it got attacked by another dog."

In the case of the Tiger mauling, the tiger was like any cat, playing with a loose piece of clothe, attached as it was to the body of a woman, whom it clawed. The cat was summarily executed for this crime. Perhaps its macho hillbilly owner should also share its fate, since the cat was only doing what comes natural and the stupid humans were at fault.

Woman killed by tiger routinely petted wild animals good night

VANCOUVER - A woman killed by a tiger last week had a routine of petting the family's wild animals good night under spotlights turned on to illuminate the animal pens. Over the weekend, more details emerged on last week's death of Tania Dumstrey- Soos, including her relationship with the wild animals who lived at her fiance Kim Carlton's privately owned Siberian Magic Zoo in Bridge Lake, B.C. "Kim told me yesterday that at night, he'd turn the lights on -- the spotlights on -- so that Tania could go down and pet them," Williams Lake Mayor Scott Nelson said yesterday. "She loved those animals dearly." Mr. Nelson, who employed Ms. Dumstrey-Soos at the 100 Mile House Advisor paper, said she always carried around photos of the tigers with her at work. No one knows why the three-year-old tiger, Gangus, lashed out through the cage. Mr. Nelson said six-year-old Nicholas Dumstrey-Soos witnessed the attack and ran to get his mother help. An RCMP media report released on Saturday said the tiger was humanely euthanized and will undergo a forensic examination. Police are investigating the incident. B.C. Agriculture Minister Pat Bell said he will meet with Environment Minister Barry Penner, the SPCA and the Humane Society this week to discuss new laws.
And since clubbing a dog to death after running over it with a car results in a less than satisfactory sentence, perhaps the thoughtless dweebs who did this should be run over by a car and then have their heads wrapped in plastic and bashed in with a shovel to understand that this is not the proper medical procedure for dealing with injuries.


House arrest in Didsbury animal cruelty case

A central Alberta man who pleaded guilty in a horrific case of animal abuse involving a pet dog has been sentenced to three months of house arrest followed by two years of probation.

The young man from Didsbury, Alta., was less than three weeks away from his 18th birthday when he became involved in what his defence lawyer told court was a "poorly thought-out euthanasia attempt."

A young Alberta man was sentenced Thursday to house arrest and probation after he pleaded guilty to animal cruelty towards Daisy Duke, above, a lab-border collie cross.A young Alberta man was sentenced Thursday to house arrest and probation after he pleaded guilty to animal cruelty towards Daisy Duke, above, a lab-border collie cross.
(CBC)

Court heard the accused accidentally backed over a lab-border collie cross belonging to his best friend's mother. The teen helped try to kill the dog, named Daisy Duke, by taping a plastic bag over its head, dragging it behind a car and hitting it over the head with a shovel.

The dog was found still alive in the middle of an intersection, but had to be put down by a veterinarian.

The young man will also have to abide by a curfew for nine months after his house arrest is up and do 240 hours of community service.

Another male accused, Daniel Charles Haskett, 19, has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go on trial May 23.



Poor Bruiser. He regularly patrolled the auto body shop company where he was kept as a guard dog. As usual when dogs are kept as guard dogs around here they have little to keep them company, are treated badly, often lack a dog house or any shade, may go days without water or food, etc.

In this case the owner abandoned the dog to its fate, with little regard for the fact that it was his fault the dog somehow got out of the compound. As for his biting, it is a natural reaction for a 'guard' dog, who only sees others as possible invaders of his space. Confused, lost and wandering around, he is a threat, but not one deserving of being executed.

The owners callous disregard for his dog, shows he thought of it as just another piece of property. He abandoned the dog to its fate, and abdicating his responsibility. Certainly euthanasia of the owner is warranted since he is responsible for his dog loosing its life.



Bruiser the pit bull put down

Bruiser the biting pit bull is dead.

The city's animal control department put the animal to sleep yesterday morning. The dog's rampage last month saw it seized and quarantined at the city pound.

In the April 23 attack, near 101 Street and 81 Avenue, two victims were sent to hospital with bite wounds. A third person was nipped, but not injured.

The city's investigation concluded Bruiser got out of the fenced property he guarded, Extreme Velocity Custom Autoworks & Detailing Ltd., through a weak spot in the fence.

Bruiser’s owner skipped the first two meetings scheduled with the city, but finally gave permission to have the dog euthanized this week.

Bruiser had been involved in another incident, and the city's legal department is considering charges.

Gold Bugs

The Financial Post has an excellent article on the Gold Bugs and their doom saying about the economy.

Gold Bugs along with the Austrian School of Economics are the main economic pillars behind the anarcho-capitalism of the Libertarian Right. The Gold Bug phenomena arose after Nixon took the U.S. dollar off the gold standard, and it made author Harry Browne a tidy profit as he promoted the Gold Standard.

America's No. 1 economic problem and the No. 1 issue
of the 1980 campaign is the Federal Reserve's continued expansion
of the money supply.
They also know that the only cure for this is
to stop the Fed, in short to abolish it and return to a market
commodity money like gold.

As any "Freedomista, anarcho-capitalist, Austrian economist, gun nut, Federal Reserve conspiracy-theorist, gold bug, secessionist, political monkeywrencher, dope-smoking marijuana-reform activist, civil libertarian or other amateur or professional contrarian possessed of even the most rudimentary understanding of his beliefs will tell you: the fundamental human right is the right to be left alone." Indeed, the right to be left alone implies the right to form voluntary associations and oppose and repel those who forcefully prevent you from exercising that right.



Ironically Gold Bugs share a common view with Vulgar Marxists and Technocracy Inc.'s theories of Peak Oil, that capitalism as now constituted will collapse.

Gold bug

Gold bugs, in the traditional sense, believe in, fear, or even hope for another Great Depression or Armageddon, and believe that by holding gold they will survive and prosper.

Leon Trotsky was not only a Monetarist, but
a "hard" Monetarist and gold bug, who
thought that commercial calculation would
be devastated unless gold was employed as
money
. He called for the Soviet Union to go
onto a gold standard, and predicted dire
consequences if it did not. (Although a gold
standard does guarantee that the money
supply cannot be increased beyond a point, it
is purely the regulation of the quantity which
matters, and gold is not essential for that).

"I don't know exactly what the Federal Reserve Board is except that Wikipedia says it has something to do with our fiat money. I must protect our fiat money at all costs. I must protect the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board at all costs. I must protect him from Marxists and Maoists and socialists and Third Worlders and especially those wild-eyed anarcho-Austrian free-market libertarian gold-bug economists. If someone picks up a gold standard and tries to strike the chairman with it, I will throw my body in front of him.

"The Daily Reckoning is a freewheeling Web site for libertarians,
gold bugs and doom enthusiasts of every stripe."


Published: June 5, 2005
The New York Times

Nor do people have any reason to think that the world's financial system is in danger. "Hasn't it always been this way?" they ask.

The answer is "no." The present international financial system is an experiment. It has only existed since 1971, when the United States cut the umbilical cord between the dollar and gold. Before that, gold almost always stood behind the dollar, and other paper currencies. Why? You might just as well ask us "Why do fools fall in love?" or "Why is there air?"

If central bankers could create "money" simply by printing paper currency on a printing press, the world would soon be full of paper currency. And everywhere and always, the price of a thing varies with its availability.

The more there is, the cheaper it is. Generally, as the volume of paper money increases, its unit price falls. Always has; always will.

This is not the first time central bankers have tried a system of purely faith-based currency. Every previous experiment ended in the predictable way: the bankers created more and more "money." And as the quantity increased, the quality decreased. Eventually, the "money" was of such poor quality that people would no longer accept it. In recent history, the Argentine currency lost 90% of its value in a single year. In less-recent history, the German currency lost 999% of its value in a matter of weeks.



Another irony is that Gold Bugs were originally Democrats.

What is a Gold Bug?

"Gold Bug" was the popular name given to Democrats who split with their party over the silver issue in 1896 and supported the gold standard as the basis of U.S. monetary policy. The Gold Bugs, or Gold Democrats, called themselves the National Democratic party, held their own convention, and nominated their own presidential candidate in 1896, John M. Palmer, a 79-year-old Kentuckian. In their platform, the Gold Democrats criticized William Jennings Bryan and the regular Democrats as being reckless radicals. "They advocate a reckless attempt to increase the price of silver by legislation to the debasement of our monetary standard, and threaten unlimited issues of paper money by Government."

At the Democratic Convention of 1896, William Jennings Bryan, a 36-year-old former congressman from Nebraska, electrified the convention when he gave a powerful speech attacking some members of his party for failing to rally behind the silver issue. Bryan thought the gold standard was so detrimental to the welfare of the working people of the nation that he compared the burden to the crucifixion of Christ. "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns," Bryan thundered, "you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."

I am reprinting this whole article in the public interest, since it will soon disappear behind a subscription wall.


How to spoil a good party

These bears see financial Armageddon around every corner. What would happen if they are right?

Jacqueline Thorpe, Financial Post

Published: Monday, May 14, 2007

NEW YORK - On a sultry spring day in Manhattan, the contrarians -- bears and goldbugs -- are in on the prowl.

The 100 or so bankers, money managers and investors gathered at the Union League Club in New York City last week to hear how today's highly leveraged, derivatives-entangled global financial system is about to come crashing down about their ears. Organized by the Committee for Monetary Research & Education, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating the public about markets and "sound money," the evening would not be for the faint of heart.

The theme: "A time of Financial Fragility and Latent Instability."

Some may write off such a collection of downbeats as the financial equivalent of a loopy off-the-grid movement, preparing to work the land and create their own power when the oil runs out.

Many in the dark-panelled dining room see financial Armageddon around every corner. Many believe the financial system started on the road to ruin when the world went off the gold standard once and for all in 1970s, switched to fiat-based currencies and started to inflate its way out of its problems.

They believe escalating debt will cause the U.S. dollar to crash and they probably keep gold bars under their beds. Heck, some, such as Chris Powell of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, believe central banks have been actively colluding to keep the gold price down.

And yet with every tick higher in global stock markets, with every newfangled CDO, CDS or ABS that offloads risk ever further, their warnings about the folly of spiralling debt, paper money and inflation provide a sobering view.

They are certainly well-educated and experienced money men. At the risk of spoiling a perfectly good party, here's what they have to say, beginning with the official historian for the Bank of England, Forrest Capie.

FORREST CAPIE

Official historian of the Bank of England, speaking in his own capacity

Mr. Capie is currently on secondment from the bank, writing the next installment of its commissioned history. History has shown that when asset-backed money is abandoned for fiat-based money, inflation invariably follows, he says.

For close to two centuries and until the 19th century, gold was the basis of the world monetary system.

"The gold standard in its classical form provided price stability and allowed the economy to do what it could with uncertainty reduced to a minimum," Mr. Capie says.

By the 20th century, as the world abandoned the gold standard, inflation reared its ugly head. In the 1920s there were five cases of hyperinflation: Russia, Hungary, Austria, Poland, and in Germany prices rose a billion-fold across 1923-24. In the 1940s, there was hyperinflation in China, Greece and Hungary.

"Stories circulate of how in some department stores in Budapest a bell would ring and that would indicate as of that moment, prices had doubled." he says. "In all these experiences, it was unbacked paper money of the kind we now have everywhere. A vast expansion of paper money preceded or accompanied all these inflations. What's also common to these inflations is there's large and growing fiscal deficits. Deficits of these kinds ultimately require monetizing."

In the second half of the 20th century, controlling the supply of money to control inflation fell out of favour. The trendy idea became wage and price controls. Inflation soared, peaking in the U.K. at 30% in the mid-1970s.

With the current targeting of inflation, price stability does seem to prevail Mr. Capie concedes.

"But it does allow considerable discretion in monetary policy ?and the use of discretion has come unstuck in the past," he says. "The great danger then is, if inflation should begin to edge up and if inflation expectations were to change, it may be difficult to contain the new inflation and take some time to alter expectations. Surely it's better at least to keep an eye on the monetary aggregates and prepare to see them as useful indicators of underlying inflationary pressures."

JAMES TURK

Founder and chairman of GoldMoney, a payment system where gold can be used as online currency, author of The Coming Collapse of the Dollar

No explanation required as to where Mr. Turk thinks the dollar is headed.

"When we talk about money, we talk about the supply of money," he says. "What we don't talk about and what in my mind is even more important is the demand for money. Currency crises start with a collapse in demand, he says. If people lose faith in the currency for whatever reasons --either they don't trust the backing or there's not enough gold backing the currency, or they don't trust the government and its policy to maintain a stable purchasing power or to keep the currency strong so it can be used as an effective means for communicating value in everyday commerce-- they move away into other alternatives."

Mr. Turk says central banks almost daily talk about diversifying away from the dollar or creating their own currency zones. In a recent interview with a Russian journalist, the journalist said even Russians, which have long coveted greenbacks, are now beginning to question the supremacy of the U.S. dollar.

Investors, too, are beginning to shun it, with none other than Warren Buffett leading the pack.

"Look, too, at the stock market," he says. "The stock market is not going up because of economic fundamentals. People would rather own a million dollars of Exxon than have a million dollars in the bank. It's also true people would own a million dollars of copper than have a million dollars sitting in the bank. All these things cumulatively are suggesting to me we are probably on the final slippery slope for the dollar. I do think the next several months are going to be very, very tumultuous."

"We're buying from China," he says. "They're lending us back the money. It's unsustainable. It cannot go on forever because we're eroding our net worth. Just like individuals can have too much debt, companies can have too much debt, nations can have too much debt."

PETER WARBURTON

'Director of Rhombus Research, author of Debt and Delusion

"You could say the central banks, particularly the Fed, have been killing us with kindness," Mr. Warburton says. "They've wanted to prevent bad things happening to us, but in the process they have made assurances and taken steps to help us misprice the risks in the system and emboldened us to take bigger risks."

As far back as the Mexican peso crisis of 1994, an asymmetrical bias began to creep into U.S. monetary policy allowing equity rises to go uncorrected but sharp falls to be cushioned, he says.

There were powerful indications the decade-long credit cycle was close to exhaustion in 2000-01 with bond yields rising back up to their late-1990s peaks.

But it was arrested in 2002 by the U.S. Fed slashing rates and making policy statements that it had numerous tools at its disposal to fend off any deflation risk.

"The opportunity was missed for the system to correct," he says.

Instead the Fed helped create an ever-expanding risk universe, with derivatives, asset-backed instruments, insurance markets, credit protection securities and catastrophe bonds all pushing out the outer front of risk.

"This all works wonderfully well," he says. The risk universe expands by 20% per annum, credit by say 10%, the economy by 6% or 7%." But it all relies upon the credit staying good."

He sees an unwinding in any number of usual ways: a natural or man-made disaster; a spill-over of inflation from asset markets into CPI which would prevent interest rate cuts; a grass roots credit tightening due to lower collection of debt, late settlements or a postponement of capital expenditures.

Eventually, you could see foreclosures, capital losses or break in the hedge fund or derivatives market, as with LTCM in 1998.

"My concern is we have already entered the latter stages of this process," he says. "The price we may yet pay for the fix in 2002 is to have an extended period of underperformance."

HENRY C.K. LIU

Visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin and Asia Times online commentator, has provided unofficial advice to several Chinese governments

"Today, the dollar is the world's prime reserve currency. While depreciating against most assets, it continues to be really overvalued in terms of gold," he says.

To give an idea of how indebted the United States is, Mr. Liu outlines what the U.S. Treasury would require if the dollar was still backed by gold.

The U.S. treasury now owns 261 million ounces of gold. At its peak in in December, 1941, it owned 650 million ounces.

As of March 12, 2007, the price of gold required to pay back the national debt was US$33,864 per ounce. The rise in the price of gold needed to keep up with the rise in U.S. national debt would be US$8.15 per ounce per day.

To back the U.S. monetary base with gold, which was about US$800-billion in February, the price of gold would have to be US$3,763 per ounce.

Unlike many at the dinner, Mr. Liu says gold does not have enough elasticity for a modern global economy.

[With that kind of debt, there may not be enough gold in the ground!]

He believes global financial markets have become completely detached from underlying economic fundamentals. "The old concerns of industrial capitalism, which is production, employment and so on have become byproducts," he says.

With trade becoming an increasingly key engine of the global economy, other aspects such as domestic development have been overlooked.

In a recent column, he said virtual money created by structured finance has reduced central bankers to the status of mere players rather than key conductors of financial markets.

As inflation picks up, the liquidity boom and asset inflation will draw to a close, leaving a hollowed out economy devoid of substance.

Mr. Liu says with financial crises seeming to occur in a regular 10-year pattern-- the October, 1987 crash, the Asian financial crisis starting in July, 1997 -- the world is due a slump.

KEVIN DUFFY

Principal of Bearing Asset Management, which runs the Bearing Fund, a long-short macro hedge fund currently long gold, short financial stocks and Japanese government bonds

"We had the late-1980s bubble in Japan, the biotechnology bubble in 1991, we had the first LBO bubble of '89, of course the technology bubble of 2000 and more recently the housing bubble," Mr. Duffy says. "As you get these asset bubbles, it takes greater and greater doses of credit just to keep the game going. In doing so, you invite more and more borrowers or you extend greater credit to existing borrowers. This is what happened recently with the subprime problem."

Mr. Duffy likes to look for contrarian indicators in popular culture. In June 2005, one month from the top in homebuilding stocks, Time ran a cover about the real estate bonanza.

Another great contrarian indicator is stadium names. In 2000, tech companies had 12 stadium names; 10 of those companies are now bankrupt. Today, 14 stadiums have bank names.

Beneath each bubble is a gargantuan credit bubble.

"What is making this credit cycle so terrifying is the amount of leverage that's being deployed, and Wall Street is applying a lot of that," he says.

Since 2001, the U.S. Federal Reserve's balance sheet has expanded US$300- billion, or 50%, the money supply has grown by 60% while the balance sheets of the top five banks on Wall Street have expanded 160%.

Money in venture capital peaked at US$90-billion in 2000. Some US$160- billion poured into private equity last year and that amount will probably double this year, he says.

The housing bubble has now been replaced by a professional speculator bubble: commercial real estate, hedge funds and private equity, Mr. Duffy says.

But he says the same exotic mortgages are starting to be found in commercial real estate.

"All indicators of a massive top," he says.

Quoting James Stack, editor of InvestTech Research, he says: "Never confuse an economic miracle with a liquidity bubble."





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