Saturday, September 27, 2008
Part of Maine coast under tropical storm warning
ASTPORT, Maine - A rare tropical storm warning and hurricane watch were posted for parts of the Maine coast on Saturday as Hurricane Kyle roared north toward the region with a threat of conditions similar to one of New England's nor'easter storms.
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"Hurricane season isn't over, " said Maine Emergency Management Agency director Rob McAleer. "It's been a very active season."
It was Maine's first hurricane watch in 17 years, the National Weather Service said. Elsewhere in New England, a hurricane warning was posted for Nantucket Island off the coast of Massachusetts in September 1996, according to the weather service office in Taunton, Mass.
Two to 4 inches of rain had already fallen along some coastal areas by midday Saturday, and the storm was expected to deliver an additional 2 to 4 inches, said Eric Schwibs of the weather service in Gray.
At 5 p.m. EDT, Kyle was centered about 315 miles west-northwest of Bermuda and 485 miles south of Nantucket, Mass., the National Hurricane Center said in Miami.
The storm had top sustained wind near 75 mph and became a Category 1 hurricane Saturday afternoon. It was moving north over the open Atlantic at 23 mph.
Kyle's center was forecast to be near eastern New England or the Canadian Maritime provinces late Sunday, the hurricane center said.
The hurricane center posted a hurricane watch from Stonington, at roughly the center of the Maine coast, to Eastport, on the border with New Brunswick, Canada. A tropical storm warning extended from Port Clyde, about 50 miles northeast of Portland, to Eastport. A tropical storm watch extended from Port Clyde to Cape Elizabeth, an area that includes Portland, Maine's largest city.
A hurricane watch means hurricane conditions, with winds of at least 74 mph, are possible within 36 hours. A tropical storm warning means conditions for that type of storm, with winds of 39 to 73 mph, are expected within the next 24 hours. A tropical storm watch means those conditions are possible within 36 hours.
Kyle could make landfall near Eastport, possibly late Sunday, the hurricane center said.
That would put the storm's strongest wind in New Brunswick, rather than in Maine, which would get conditions more akin to "a garden variety nor'easter," Schwibs said.
The government of Canada issued a hurricane watch and a tropical storm warning for southwestern Nova Scotia, and a tropical storm watch remained in effect for the rest of Nova Scotia and southwestern New Brunswick.
The weather service also issued flood watches for the southern two-thirds of New Hampshire and southern Maine through Sunday evening.
McAleer said the storm's biggest threat in Maine would be the potential for high waves and small stream flooding.
"We urge everyone to pay close attention to weather warnings, and stay away from any flooded roadways, or fast-running streams," McAleer said.
The Coast Guard prepared crews and equipment for the storm and urged boat owners to secure their vessels in anticipation of high wind and seas that could run 10 to 20 feet high off shore.
Eastern Maine's power company, Bangor Hydro-Electric, said it prepared for potential outages and planned to have additional crews on duty.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Bailout can't hide it; the country is busted
ven leading Republicans in Congress, including presidential nominee John McCain, recoiled from Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson's proposal to take absolute power over $700 billion to be borrowed by the federal government and used to purchase every sort of bad debt without ever having to answer for it -- not to the courts, not to regulatory agencies, and only occasionally and incidentally to Congress itself.
The bad-debt bailout would be the biggest government patronage program in history and would amount to declaring martial law over the U.S. financial system and economy. Even if such martial law is necessary, its implementation should be put in democratic hands -- a non-partisan agency with full transparency, statutory standards for its purchases, and close accountability to Congress.
The bad-debt bailout would be the biggest government patronage program in history and would amount to declaring martial law over the U.S. financial system and economy. Even if such martial law is necessary, its implementation should be put in democratic hands -- a non-partisan agency with full transparency, statutory standards for its purchases, and close accountability to Congress.
All the same, even if it can work -- that is, prop up insolvent financial institutions -- the Treasury's proposal is still a proclamation of the collapse of the whole U.S. financial system. Even if some financial institutions are saved, the collapse will manifest itself in other ways, probably ways more damaging to the public. For who cares if Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley endure if the issuance of $700 billion more in government bonds drives interest rates
way up, diverts credit from the private economy, devalues the already sinking dollar, and sends commodity prices soaring again?
In that case the financial class will have won another battle in its long war against the producing class. It will be again as was said about the maneuvers of the Second Bank of the United States two centuries ago: "The bank was saved; only the people were ruined."
Injecting throughout the world financial system their bogus and unregulated financial instruments, like collateralized debt obligations and credit-default swaps, the big New York financial houses have taken the world economy hostage. The president and Congress should strive to save the hostages, not the kidnappers.
But the president and Congress have participated eagerly with the kidnappers in the total corruption of the financial system.
They have staffed the regulatory agencies largely from Wall Street and then diminished financial regulation.
They have let the financial houses finance presidential and congressional campaigns.
They have watched haplessly as accounting firms and credit-rating agencies engaged in conflict of interest and failed to do their jobs over and over again even as corporate scandal followed corporate scandal.
They have waged mistaken imperial war not with taxes but with huge amounts borrowed from abroad, making the country hostage to foreign nations, including some with hostile interests.
They have approved the government's falsification of inflation data and its surreptitious suppression of the price of gold so that interest rates could be set below the inflation rate, the government and everyone else could borrow more at lower interest, and the public would not become alarmed by monetary debasement.
Now the U.S. government is conjuring into existence via a few computer keystrokes fantastic, virtually inconceivable amounts of money. Unreal as these amounts are, they will be claims on the real goods and services of the country, and, if the rest of the world wants to keep playing along, which is doubtful, claims on the real goods and services of the rest of the world as well.
The purpose of all this will be to save the people who happen to be in charge of the payments system and to save the propertied class generally. But people without many assets, people who don't earn enough to own housing, people who could gain from lower housing prices and lower prices of everything else, are not even in the government's equation.
The country is simply busted. Its financial obligations are unpayable, its asset prices are illusions, and the great undertaking in Washington and New York is to preserve those illusions rather than face reality. If the price of preserving those illusions is $700 billion -- and of course it is more likely to run into the trillions -- could it really be more expensive to dispense with the illusions now? After all, instead of rescuing financial institutions that disregarded risk, the government just as easily could keep the country going by sending checks to everyone every month -- as it already sends Social Security checks to retirees.
But as long as the government keeps paying ransom, the financial class will keep taking the country hostage.
http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2008/09/25/chris_powell/doc48db9d8625518811197071.txt
way up, diverts credit from the private economy, devalues the already sinking dollar, and sends commodity prices soaring again?
Injecting throughout the world financial system their bogus and unregulated financial instruments, like collateralized debt obligations and credit-default swaps, the big New York financial houses have taken the world economy hostage. The president and Congress should strive to save the hostages, not the kidnappers.
But the president and Congress have participated eagerly with the kidnappers in the total corruption of the financial system.
They have staffed the regulatory agencies largely from Wall Street and then diminished financial regulation.
They have let the financial houses finance presidential and congressional campaigns.
They have watched haplessly as accounting firms and credit-rating agencies engaged in conflict of interest and failed to do their jobs over and over again even as corporate scandal followed corporate scandal.
They have waged mistaken imperial war not with taxes but with huge amounts borrowed from abroad, making the country hostage to foreign nations, including some with hostile interests.
They have approved the government's falsification of inflation data and its surreptitious suppression of the price of gold so that interest rates could be set below the inflation rate, the government and everyone else could borrow more at lower interest, and the public would not become alarmed by monetary debasement.
Now the U.S. government is conjuring into existence via a few computer keystrokes fantastic, virtually inconceivable amounts of money. Unreal as these amounts are, they will be claims on the real goods and services of the country, and, if the rest of the world wants to keep playing along, which is doubtful, claims on the real goods and services of the rest of the world as well.
The purpose of all this will be to save the people who happen to be in charge of the payments system and to save the propertied class generally. But people without many assets, people who don't earn enough to own housing, people who could gain from lower housing prices and lower prices of everything else, are not even in the government's equation.
The country is simply busted. Its financial obligations are unpayable, its asset prices are illusions, and the great undertaking in Washington and New York is to preserve those illusions rather than face reality. If the price of preserving those illusions is $700 billion -- and of course it is more likely to run into the trillions -- could it really be more expensive to dispense with the illusions now? After all, instead of rescuing financial institutions that disregarded risk, the government just as easily could keep the country going by sending checks to everyone every month -- as it already sends Social Security checks to retirees.
But as long as the government keeps paying ransom, the financial class will keep taking the country hostage.
http://www.journalinquirer.com/articles/2008/09/25/chris_powell/doc48db9d8625518811197071.txt
Thursday, September 18, 2008
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