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 ABC television recently screened a discussion on the Big Ideas show about the future of Asia. This screening is called "Q & Asia," and a panel of experts on the subjects involved were there to drive the discussion, which was moderated by Virginia Haussegger of ABC. The panel included Professor Andrew MacIntyre, Dr Kathy Morton, Professor Stephen Howes, and Professor Veronica Taylor.
The development of Asia is the definition of economics gone right. They have become a major economic player. What this means for the rest of the world was the first topic to be discussed. The balance of power between Asian countries, particularly China, and countries in the West, particularly the United States, has been the most prominent feature in world wide attention. However, the people of many countries in Asia have experienced a transformation as quality of life shifted away from poverty. Many of the problems currently in focus are short term issues, but there are some long term issues such as the future shrinking of China's population and existing instability in some regions. Also, despite (Read More....)
 In 2011, diabetes affects nearly 26 million people in America – more than 8% of the population. Most striking are the statistics inside those numbers. National diabetes statistics show that 7 million of these people are undiagnosed.
Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital recently released data that makes a diabetes diagnosis all that more important. Perhaps unsurprisingly, researchers found that more frequent visits with your physician actually help diabetes patients improve a trio of trouble areas that can lead to heart issues and stroke.
Frequent doctor visits benefits patients with diabetes by lowering the potentially deadly risks that come with high blood glucose levels, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels. Improvements in these key areas are due in part to the increased level of attention received when you are in more constant contact with your doctor, as well as more opportunities for doctors to adjust medication levels and remind patients about positive lifestyle enhancements.
Alexander Turchin, endocrinologist and the study's senior and corresponding (Read More....)
 America must recognize it does not stand alone. Our present political and economic crises are as much a part of the natural order of world events as evolution itself, and cannot be viewed shortsightedly as just a national issue. We must perceive ourselves for what we are: an integral part of the global economy where our influence, massive though it is— roughly 25 percent of the world’s GNP—cannot be expected to turn this economic malaise around. As never before, we “fatties” sit in the same bathtub with the other slimmer nations of the world, and it is overflowing. Our combined productive capacity (the bathtub’s water) has outstripped our ability to consume it all, with the result that the goods and services of our labors are worth less than the value of labor itself. Now we witness our current depression hitting the working class disproportionately, as it always does. Only by reducing our fat can we stabilize the water level, easing the worldwide depression at the same time.
The trick is to do this carefully; otherwise, the toll of our weakness is the fatal consequence of war. And it is this choice, (Read More....)
 Bush and Cheney entered office in 2000, well before 9/11, ready to topple Saddam Hussein, according to then Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill in Ron Suskind’s The Price of Loyalty.(1) At their first National Security Council meeting, ousting Saddam was high on the agenda. After 9/11 no excuses were necessary. (Perhaps they knew it was coming?) So to get America into an imperialist war, contrary to the Constitution, both lied about Saddam’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. More than a decade later, with 4,000 dead and 50,000 seriously injured US troops, and at a conservative estimate, 650,000 dead and 1,000,000 displaced Iraqis, we are still there, stuck in alien territory. They even branched out to include Afghanistan, “surging” along attempting to “spread democracy.” Eight years later Obama took over. Instead of the promise of change he told us we could believe in, he widened the war, blowing up the Afghan campaign into a surge we were all made to believe in—meanwhile receiving the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize (sign on Texas gas station: “Free Nobel Peace Prize with Oil Change”)—while holding an election no one can believe (Read More....)
 ***The following is a guest post for Personal Security by author Jim Knapton***
Fourteen trillion dollars is a lot of money. That is the size of our national debt. Someone said recently that if it were in five-dollar bills placed end to end, they would almost reach the moon. That’s what the USA owes the world, from the newest born to the oldest still with us: $45,000 each! Yet we’re at war in Afghanistan wasting billions on what? Fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda apparently. If we are the greatest military machine the world has ever known and they are a bunch of “desert derelicts” (quoting Mark Steyn’s delicate words in America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It), after a hundred months of conflict, why is President Obama “winding it down”? Isn’t it because we can’t afford it? In other words, thirty-six years since the end of the Vietnam War, haven’t we lost again?
I am sure President Obama doesn’t wish to see it that way. Motivated by pressure from the military-industrial complex, whose (Read More....)
 Birds Do It, Bees Do It, Even Educated Fleas Do It
By Barbara Fix
For the trivia buffs out there, "Let's fall In Love" was first recorded in Paris in 1928, and the words held true until the honeybees began to disappear in late 2006. Befuddled honeybee keepers remain alarmed over the sheer magnitude of the problem that is a staggering 30% to 90% loss, with the hardest hit beekeepers reporting a nearly total loss of their colonies. As the scientific community became involved, the bee loss was given the term of Honeybee Colony Collapse Syndrome.
The US is not the only country to suffer honeybee losses. Canada, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, and Greece also reported heavy losses, and soon Switzerland, Germany, South and Central America and Asia reported losses with their honeybee colonies as well.
Honeybees pollinate approximately one third of our fruit and vegetable crops, including almonds, apples, blackberries, cantaloupe, cherries, cranberries, cucumbers, peaches, pears, (Read More....)
 Following in the footsteps of a rather ignominious list of nations like Argentina and Hungary, the government of lreland is set to take its ‘fair share’ of private retirement funds. Drowning in debt and faced with unpopular, unrealistic, ridiculously unpopular austerity measures, the government has announced that it will now tax private pension savings in order to raise 470 million euros (roughly $675 million) per year… a lot of money in a country of only 4.4 million people.
Somehow, the government expects to be able to create 100,000 jobs to bring down an unemployment rate at 14.7%. Perhaps they plan on hiring 100,000 new workers to go around the country and collect the tax.
It reminds me of what I saw in Bolivia a couple of weeks ago– there’s a tax or toll or fee for nearly everything you do. Driving on the highway (if you can call it that) outside of Santa Cruz, you pay a toll… obviously not for the maintenance of the road, but to pay the salary of the toll collector.
At the airport, you have to pay an airport tax before departure… obviously not for the upkeep and efficiency of (Read More....)
Courtesy of Phil of Phil's Stock World
1,332.
That is a 100% in the S&P since it's March 2009 low of 666 (see David Fry's chart). Does it matter? Can we expect even a LITTLE pullback after a 100% run or is it "to the moon Alice" and maybe Mars and Jupiter while we're at it as the Federal Reserve's multi-Trillion Dollar thrusters send us to the stars, breaking the bonds of gravity(and logic) as they send stocks every higher in an expanding universe of freshly supplied money. As fellow stock market physicist, Art Cashin said yesterday:
The Newtonian Rally Continues – A mild paraphrase of one Sir Isaac Newton’s laws of force and motion (inertia) says that a body in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by some counterforce. That seems to be the guiding rule for (Read More....)
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