Replies to post #322407 on $Stock*Shop*Charts*News*Option$

[Tuff-Stuff]

>>G20 shifts from stimulus to austerity in final communiqué

June 5, 2010

A meeting of G20 finance ministers ended in South Korea today with a clear call on governments around the world to put their fiscal houses in order as the global economy remains in the grip of deepening market turmoil and uneven growth.

Although the meeting’s final communiqué said that the global economy was recovering faster than anticipated, the event was overshadowed by unresolved sovereign debt problems in Europe, warnings of worldwide “fragility” and frenetic attempts to play down suggestions that Hungary could be poised for a Greek-style crisis.

>The G20’s final communiqué introduced a surprise change of tone from the document produced by G20 finance ministers just six weeks ago — a shift for which Britain’s new Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, was keen to claim credit as he made his debut on the international summit circuit.

>>The April 23 G20 communiqué supported the idea that governments should continue to support growth with stimulus until the recovery is driven by the private sector. Today’s document, though, backed the sort of immediate fiscal consolidation being planned by Mr Osborne

"We welcome the recent announcements by some countries to reduce their deficits in 2010 and strengthen their fiscal frameworks and institutions,” read the second paragraph of the communiqué.

That part of the document — and the whole question of whether policy emphasis should be on deficit reduction or on maintaining stimulus — is understood to have been a source of wide and heated disagreement among G20 ministers.

“I think we’ve achieved a significant success by getting the endorsement of the G20 for the fiscal position we adopted just three weeks ago,” said Mr Osborne before beginning his return to the UK from a four-day visit to the Far East.

~>His comments were followed moments later by a warning from Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, who said that global growth could take a hit if efforts to rebalance demand are not properly coordinated.

Although Mr Strauss-Kahn said that he was “totally comfortable” with calls on troubled countries to speed-up fiscal consolidation he cautioned that the process would have “some bad effect” on growth.

Other risks were also highlighted. Timothy Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary, preceded his arrival in Busan by sending a letter to his G20 colleagues in which he cautioned that the belt-tightening and greater saving by American household could reduce overall demand.

The rest of the world should accordingly be prepared to make up for that shortfall by generating demand of its own. The projected weakness in the large economies of Japan and Germany, he wrote, were a source of concern.

Although ministers played down the nature of their discussions on the euro and China’s currency, the yuan, G20 sources were clear that “robust discussions” had taken place. On the euro particularly, delegates France were heard strongly defending the currency’s credibility after its recent plunge to a four-year low.

Mr Geithner, who alluded to China’s currency policy in his pre-meeting letter, said on Saturday that the yuan question had been discussed “but only in the context of the need for a more flexible exchange rate policy”.

With US politicians complaining of unfair trade conditions arising from a falsely undervalued yuan, Mr Geithner is under mounting domestic pressure to officially label China a manipulator of its currency and to call more vociferously for Beijing to lift the currency’s two-year peg to the US dollar.

The meeting appeared to yield very little agreement — and only passing mention — on the proposal for a global bank tax to protect taxpayers from the theoretical costs of any future bailouts.

The idea has been strongly resisted by countries whose banks required no government support during the financial crisis, and the G20 has, for the time being, abandoned the discussion by “recognizing that there is a range of policy approaches.”

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article7144663.ece

[Tuff-Stuff]

GOOD QUESTION>>Why is BP turning away natural oil-cleanup materials being offered for free?

(Hair, Hay, Mats, microbes and more, so much which could be used and NOT toxic dispersant)




Hair booms may not be pretty, but they work

A month and a half later, we're back to square one with the BP oil spill: BP doesn't know how to make it stop.

I suppose that shouldn't be a surprise when most of the contingency plan it filed was blank pages and bits of photocopied emergency plans for Arctic spills.

Did you know that "top kills" and "junk shots" are also recycled 30-year-old approaches (video) that haven't been modified for or attempted in deep water?

Meanwhile,a number of approaches that sound at least as likely to succeed have been proposed but not attempted.

Some are still experimental — such as hyper-absorbant peat moss — but others have been used effectively in other major spills. For instance, supertankers were deployed to clean up a massive Saudi Arabian spill in the 1990s. Shell's CEO has been trying to persuade BP to use the method, as well. The proposal has been aggressively stonewalled. Its major drawback? It would tie up a huge part of BP's money-making process.

Another technique involves using a vacuum that separates oil from water, returning the water 99.9 percent pure. Actor Kevin Costner invested in this technology in the wake of the Exxon Valdez disaster. BP has purportedly approved six of the machines for use, for a total cleanup potential of more than a million barrels a day, but if the company is actually using them I haven't heard about it. (If you have, share a link in the comments.)

If that's all Kevin Costner can get from BP, imagine the uphill battle of the little San Francisco nonprofit, Matter of Trust. They're the people who have lobbied for human and animal hair to be used as mats and in absorbent booms made of panty hose. Call them crazy, but it worked in the 2007 Cosco Busan spill here in the Bay Area, and they've got 19 warehouses full of mats and booms ready to be deployed for free, ED Lisa Craig Gautier told me yesterday.

Unlike synthetic booms which are made of — you guessed it — petroleum, these booms are made of a readily renewable resource, as my barber can attest. Initially, BP's booms department, Critical Resources Material Management, contacted the nonprofit and indicated that it would approve use of the hair products, but it was elbowed aside by the PR department, which, as part of the Unified Command, issued a press release stating categorically that BP would not use hair booms. First it said said the booms don't float. They do (video), especially when made from fur or fleece. Then BP claimed to have more than enough synthetic boom. It may or may not, but the hair booms are free. Then it said they feared the hair booms would leave behind debris. That's rich! A little natural debris sounds pretty good right now!

When I asked how effective the hair products were, Gautier explained that hair naturally absorbs oil — which is why we shampoo. And, she explained, hair has "an enormous amount of surface area. That's whey when birds are out there and oil gets into their feathers, they can't clean it — it's too much to clean."

Gautier is confident the booms — assembled by volunteers with materials shipped by salon and grooming businesses at their own cost — will be used eventually, because the oil's going to be around for quite a while (as tar on one's feet at Santa Barbara and Padre Island attest). But sooner is better, and her group wants BP to agree to pay shipping costs and take charge of disposing of the used material.


Hair Video Usage at link~~

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/green/detail?entry_id=64905#ixzz0q1p6QHw5