Hats off to the mighty Bob Marley

I was listening to couple of his songs tonight of Bob Marleys,

Them belly full(but we hungry), 

Pimper's Paradise,

Concrete Jungle.

Three great songs. real pick you up when your feeling tired.

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The guitar solo in Concrete Jungle has to be one of my favorite guitar leads in rock of all time.
Right up there with Jimmy Page’s intro the the song the Rover off of the Album Physical Graffiti

Egypt on the verge...

Whether these mob reactions in the Arab world are engineered or spontaneous, the ramifications of what is happening has the potential for major Geo-Political shifts involving, Israel, Suez Canal (energy that flows through there to Europe) , Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Western Europe(if big exodus of people starts trying to migrate to Europe due to upheavals in North Africa).

Be interesting to see what unfolds..

Big Events Sweeping North Africa ..

From Tunisia to Egypt, to Yemen, to where next ? Big doings over in that region of the world.

Devon Alexander vs Timothy Bradley 140 pound showdown this Saturday 1/29/2011

The four best 140 pound fighters in the world are in my estimation.

In order

1-Timothy Bradley USA
2-Amir Kahn UK
3-Devon Alexander USA
4-Marcos Rene Maidana Argentina

Amir Khan beat Maidana in a close fight a few months back, and I if the winner of the Timothy Bradley, Devon Alexander fight then takes on Khan . The winner of the Khan vs Bradley/Alexander bout would be considered the best 140 pound fighter in the world.

Street Artist Kent Craig

Sometimes while driving my cab near the end of my shift around 3:20 PM I will be down in the Financial District of San Francisco looking for one last ride to the airport I will see one particular street artist singing and think wow that guy is good.
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The guy is around 38 years old and I never have a chance to stop and ask his name or if he has a website were I can find out about or buy his music.
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Well today on my day off while walking around the Pacific Heights section of San Francisco near Union Street I see this street artist singing just him , his guitar and his amp.
I walked over to him, told him I loved his music and bought a CD for $10.
I found out his name was Kent Craig.

Free Trade and Democracy are Aribtrary words.

In our most primitive thoughts Democracy means something like if you have 3 people in a boat and two say lets go left and 1 says lets go right. The two override the 1 and the boat goes left.
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In real life in the governance of Nation states Democracy seldom works this way.
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Same thing with Free Trade. Everything from senior citizens in the United States ability or inability to buy their drugs from Canada, to China’s subsidization of industries , competing against non state subsidized industries in other countries, or the undervaluing of the Chinese currency to the US dollar point to arbitrariness of the term Free Trade.

I am in my work grind mode now..

Started taking night classes again this semester taking two classes this time, while slowly looking for a new job that will feather into my schooling schedule.
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probably be driving a cab three months from now..
but slowly trying to work my way out of this job...

Had true believer in my cab today..A true believer in the American economic system

The true believer was an American woman who studied business at a college in Moscow for the last 18 months, and she felt that America still had the advantages to beat off all comers...I hope she is right and we will see..

I knew that United States was in deep trouble and might collapse when...

I knew that United States was in deep trouble and might collapse when I saw The Front Line (PBS) Documentary “Is Walmart good for America”
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In this video it showed the de-industrilzation of the American Midwest, the last Rubbermaid factory being disassembled in the US and being sent to China.
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It showed the things the US sent to China from the port of Long Beach to China things like scrap metal , scrap paper and animal hides and it showed an area of Southern China with mountains of containers(conex) ready to be shipped to the US and I knew the US was done, Decadent life style of consumerism based on credit and two major wars going on the US system did not look sustainable.
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This was in around 2005 before the bailouts.
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I thought though the collapse would come in about 20-30 years not as fast as it did.
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Got to wonder way the US government would allow the trade policies it did, stupidity, greed. I suppose. The political system was unable to defend itself from the moneyed interests that benefited from the de- industrialization of the country.

Swatting flies in the rest room ..

All time stopped as I swatted flies in the restroom with my fly swatter..felt the primal hunter come out in me as I stalked these annoying pests...

Peak Oil..

I am a sometimes Peak Oil believer

A peak oil definition by Jason Brent goes like this
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“Peak oil can be defined in two ways--- The first way is when total amount of oil withdrawn from the earth for use by humanity starts to decline; example--- in year one 100 barrels of oil are withdrawn, in year two 120 barrels of oil are withdrawn, in year three 80 barrels of oil are withdrawn, and in year four 60 barrels are drawn – in this example year two is the peak oil year since in years subsequent to year two the amount of oil withdrawn goes down: The second way is when oil withdrawn per capita starts to decrease; example in year one 100 barrels of oil are withdrawn and there are 100 people on the Earth (one barrel per person), in year two 150 barrels of oil are withdrawn and there are 120 people on the Earth (1.25 barrels per person), and in year three 200 barrels of oil are withdrawn but the population has increased to 500 people (0.4 barrels per person)--- in this example the peak oil year is year two as the amount of oil withdrawn per capita has reached its maximum in year two and has decreased in year three.”

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In plain talk it means there is not enough cheap oil readily available to keep running civilization the way we have been running it.

For the moment I am leaning away from Peak Oil although I think that it is generally a pretty plausible theory.
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I am going to have faith (just for today)that the Saudi’s really have as much oil in their oil fields as they say they do.
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That tar sands in Venezuela and Canada mixed in with emerging technologies should give humanity at least 20 years to get it together.
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On the other hand I believe oil is going to up in price not due to supply and demand but due to weakening currencies,speculation and collapse of the fiat money system.

Simon Johnson fromer chief economist IMF..Said

Here is an excerpt from recent article of his ,

The American political elite – right and left – believes that we are different from the Europeans because we issue the dollar and therefore have some special privileges forever.

But this is not the 1950s. Asia has risen. Europe will sort itself out and become more fiscally Germanic. The Age of American Predominance is over.

Our leading bankers looted the state, plunged the world into deep recession and cost the United States eight million jobs. Now many of them stand by with sharpened knives and enhanced bonuses – willing to suggest how the salaries and jobs of others can be further cut. Consider the morality of that.

Will no one think hard about what this means for our budget and our political system until it is too late?

A few recent jaw dropping headlines..

CHINA TO BAIL OUT SPAIN

Watched a news video that showed the leadership of Spain sit down at a table across from their Chinese counterparts with about 12 people on each side of the table.
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The Chinese looked like a conquering force signing papers after one country surrenders to another after a war.
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Some pundits say China benefits from this a variety of ways, it allows China to diversify out of dollars, keeps a competitor to the dollar the Euro afloat, opens up the possibility of dual technology transfers of going to China to give China access to more advanced weaponry , gives political leverage to China in the case of rising protectionism within the EU pretty much a win win deal for China.

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Of course this empowerment comes from the trade deficits that the US runs with China that gave China this surplus capital to give it more power.

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INDIA INVESTIGATING BUYING OIL FROM IRAN USING JAPANESE YEN , OR DIRHAM.

The Dirham I believe is some type of Gulf currency either from Qatar or U.A.E.

The main significance of this is less dollars to be needed by an major emerging economy India and further pressure on the dollar.

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PIPELINE BEGINS SUPPLYING OIL FROM RUSSIA TO CHINA.

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I believe this whole deal was done outside of the dollar in a bilateral trade arrangement between China and Russia.
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CHINA EYES BUILDING HIGH SPEED RAIL SYSTEM IN CALIFORNIA

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Per article U.S. lacks both technology and expertise in high-speed rail will need outside help to build railway.

Read in comments section on this article that much of trains original technology came from Siemens the German company I don’t know if that is accurate or not.

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But this article points out that the US is much better at engineering bonds as opposed to things in the real world.

Inflation

I guess about 8 months ago would have been when US Federal Reserve would have started raising short term interest rates to stave off the inflation we are now seeing in commodities like gold, food and oil.
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Federal Reserve chief Bernanke said he wanted some inflation so he is getting it.
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Prices in houses are still deflating though, odd mix of deflation and inflation going on in different areas of economy.

Hmmm whats happening here?

Price Gold 1421.60 oz, cost of cup of coffee and my favorite coffee shop went up .20 cents in a month, from 1.95 for large cup of coffee to 2.15 a cup , and gasoline is 3.39 cents a gallon here.
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This is definitely inflation in these items.

Happy New year every body..

Hope everyone has a prosperous, healthy and peaceful 2011..