RFK Jr. writes:
As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, it’s worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2.
Huh? Somebody please explain non sequitur to the man.
h/t to JJ for the link.
Update: for more, see this.
RFK Jr. writes:
As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, it’s worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2.
Huh? Somebody please explain non sequitur to the man.
h/t to JJ for the link.
Update: for more, see this.
RFK Jr. writes:
As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, it’s worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2.
Huh? Somebody please explain non sequitur to the man.
h/t to JJ for the link.
Update: for more, see this.
From Movie Guy at Calculated Risk [Thanks to JJ], here is a lengthy compilation of websites and blogs that have information about the flood, New Orleans, and other related analysis.
Remember that Katrina dumped a LOT of rain on the Mississippi valley and its tributaries.
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/calculatedrisk/112543552918384298/
Hurricane Katrina Aftermath
“The already dire situation in New Orleans has taken a turn for the worse this morning as the breach in the 17th Street Canal Levee is now 200 feet wide and slowly flooding the entire city. In short, the worst-case scenario may be occurring as flood waters completely fill the below sea-level bowl that is New Orleans, potentially turning Lake Pontchartrain and the city into one big toxic lake.” — 12:05 PM, Tuesday, 30 August 2005, Tom Kirkendall of Houston’s Clear Thinkers
New Orleans:
New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau Update
** Excellent details on current status.
The Irish Trojan’s Blog
http://www.brendanloy.com/
backup link: http://66.237.232.84/
SciGuy
http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/
Houston’s Clear Thinkers
http://blog.kir.com/
WMTV.com New Orleans updates
http://www.wmtw.com/weather/4913354/detail.html
The Times-Picayune
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/
The Weather Channel – http://www.srh.noaa.gov/lmrfc/fop/
** Do check this out.
Louisiana Weather Warnings
http://iwin.nws.noaa.gov/iwin/la/warnings.html
Mississippi Weather Warnings
http://iwin.nws.noaa.gov/iwin/ms/warnings.html
National Weather Servicehttp://nws.noaa.gov/
Maps – West to East:
Katrina & Louisianna Petroleum Resources Map
http://www.pannexresearch.com/katrina/LAOil.gif
* Couresty of Oil Drum/Econbrowser/Calculated Risk (see links below)
New Orleans Evacuation Map
http://www.dotd.state.la.us/maps/Web_ContraFlow.jpg
http://www.southeastroads.com/new_orleans.html
Lake Pontchartrain Causeway
http://www.southeastroads.com/lpc.html
Area East of New Orleans Map
http://photos1.blogger.com/img/243/2888/640/mapp.jpg
Gulf Coast MS-AL Map
http://www.southeastroads.com/i-010a_ms.html
Mississippi Map
http://www.sitesatlas.com/Maps/Maps/MS1.htm
Mississippi Highways
http://www.southeastroads.com/mississippi.html
Mississippi Gulf Coast Highways
http://www.southeastroads.com/mississippi_gulf_coast.html
Alabama Map
http://www.sitesatlas.com/Maps/Maps/AL1.htm
Mobile, Alabama Map
http://www.cofairhope.com/images…ges/%20areamap.gif
Fuel Supply Analysis:
Calculated Risk
http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/
Econobrowser
http://www.econbrowser.com/
Oil Drum
http://theoildrum.blogspot.com/
General Economic Analysis:
Full Disclosure
http://blogs.chron.com/fulldisclosure/
Insurance Journal
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/
Government Agencies and Red Cross:
Alabama Emergency Management Agency news releases
http://disaster.ema.alabama.gov/
Alabama Emergency Road Closure Information
http://www.dot.state.al.us/closures/
Florida Division of Emergency Management
http://www.floridadisaster.org/
Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness news releases
http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/
Louisiana Road Closure Information
http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/evacinfo/rdclosureindex.htm
Mississippi Emergency Management Agency news releases
http://www.msema.org/newsreleases/news.htm
Mississippi Road Closure Information
http://www.gomdot.com/
Tennessee Emergency Management Agency
http://www.tnema.org/
FEMA
http://www.fema.gov/news/recentnews.fema
AMERICAN RED CROSS
http://www.redcross.org/news/
Remember how everyone around the world pledged and donated so much money to help the tsunami victims last December and January? I’ve searched a bit and haven’t found an equal outpouring of aid from outside the US for the victims of Katrina. Even if the US is, on average, wealthy, that’s no reason to be uncaring about the victims. They are facing massive losses and disruptions over the next months.
At the very least, Amazon and Walmart could set up web-site donation buttons as they did for the tsunami victims.
This has been a serious tragedy. If you want to do something, check this site.
Update: In Canada, you can donate to the Canadian Red Cross and specify “2005 hurricane relief”.
Update: The Economist thinks it is serious enough that it might send the U.S. and global economies into recession [thanks to MA for the pointer]:
Hurricane Katrina is already known to have killed dozens along the Gulf of Mexico coast, with the death toll expected to rise as rescuers reach more affected areas. Besides its devastating cost in lives, Katrina could push the American economy—maybe even the world economy—into recession
Update again: The USA Today has lots of photos.
Andy Xie of Morgan Stanley says the global economy has been in a bubble of bubbles for over a decade, due to constant inflation of the money supply and low interest rates.
The world may be in the middle of the biggest bubble in history. The bubble (e.g., property, stock, commodities) could exceed 50% of global GDP in value. The key cause of the bubble is that the major central banks failed to lower inflation targets to account for the combination of productivity acceleration due to IT and the new upward stickiness in wages due to the influx of three billion people into the global economy since the mid-1990s.
The major central banks mistakenly released too much money in the past decade, justifying it with the low inflation relative to the recent past. The monetary excesses have led to the rapid expansion of asset valuation relative to income. The global economy has become dependent on the demand spillover from asset inflation.
The bubble began in the 1990s as a part of the stock-market run-up:
Something unusual happened in the mid 1990s: the ratio of the US stock market capitalization to its GDP began to surge above its normal range. Mr. Greenspan made his famous speech on the ‘irrational exuberance’ in the stock market in 1996. The market shivered briefly but resumed climbing. It culminated in early 2000 when the listed stocks in the US exceeded 160% of GDP in value – more than twice the historical normal level.
And then, because money supplies were still growing, people started buying real estate instead of stocks, leading to the rapid increases in housing prices:
After the tech bubble burst, US housing value began a similar upward move in relation to the US GDP. The ratio of US housing value to GDP could exceed 160% this year, up from 120% in the 1990s. The average of this ratio was 105% between 1950 and 1999 and the highest level during this period was 130% in 1989, right before the S&L crisis.
The source of the bubbles was asset inflation:
The fundamental changes in the 1990s severed the short-term relationship between money supply and inflation. Indeed, the monetarist explanation for inflation championed by Milton Freidman was discarded in the 1990s as inflation rates failed to respond to surging money supplies.
However, money did cause inflation in asset markets.
Asset inflation has fueled the consumer boom as people borrow against (and/or count on) the rising asset values to finance growing consumption. And Morgan-Stanley’s Andy Xie thinks it is all about to come crashing down or maybe slowly slithering down:
The end of the global bubble economy may be near. Mr. Greenspan recently recognized the role of the Fed’s monetary policy in the US housing boom, its associated consumption boom and the US savings shortfall. The Fed may be in a campaign to pop the bubble. The global economy could experience a big downturn or many years of slow growth to correct the past excesses.
There is much more at the original site. [Thanks to MA for the pointer.]
Update: For a similar perspective, see this piece from The Economist.
Andy Xie of Morgan Stanley says the global economy has been in a bubble of bubbles for over a decade, due to constant inflation of the money supply and low interest rates.
The world may be in the middle of the biggest bubble in history. The bubble (e.g., property, stock, commodities) could exceed 50% of global GDP in value. The key cause of the bubble is that the major central banks failed to lower inflation targets to account for the combination of productivity acceleration due to IT and the new upward stickiness in wages due to the influx of three billion people into the global economy since the mid-1990s.
The major central banks mistakenly released too much money in the past decade, justifying it with the low inflation relative to the recent past. The monetary excesses have led to the rapid expansion of asset valuation relative to income. The global economy has become dependent on the demand spillover from asset inflation.
The bubble began in the 1990s as a part of the stock-market run-up:
Something unusual happened in the mid 1990s: the ratio of the US stock market capitalization to its GDP began to surge above its normal range. Mr. Greenspan made his famous speech on the ‘irrational exuberance’ in the stock market in 1996. The market shivered briefly but resumed climbing. It culminated in early 2000 when the listed stocks in the US exceeded 160% of GDP in value – more than twice the historical normal level.
And then, because money supplies were still growing, people started buying real estate instead of stocks, leading to the rapid increases in housing prices:
After the tech bubble burst, US housing value began a similar upward move in relation to the US GDP. The ratio of US housing value to GDP could exceed 160% this year, up from 120% in the 1990s. The average of this ratio was 105% between 1950 and 1999 and the highest level during this period was 130% in 1989, right before the S&L crisis.
The source of the bubbles was asset inflation:
The fundamental changes in the 1990s severed the short-term relationship between money supply and inflation. Indeed, the monetarist explanation for inflation championed by Milton Freidman was discarded in the 1990s as inflation rates failed to respond to surging money supplies.
However, money did cause inflation in asset markets.
Asset inflation has fueled the consumer boom as people borrow against (and/or count on) the rising asset values to finance growing consumption. And Morgan-Stanley’s Andy Xie thinks it is all about to come crashing down or maybe slowly slithering down:
The end of the global bubble economy may be near. Mr. Greenspan recently recognized the role of the Fed’s monetary policy in the US housing boom, its associated consumption boom and the US savings shortfall. The Fed may be in a campaign to pop the bubble. The global economy could experience a big downturn or many years of slow growth to correct the past excesses.
There is much more at the original site. [Thanks to MA for the pointer.]
Update: For a similar perspective, see this piece from The Economist.
Andy Xie of Morgan Stanley says the global economy has been in a bubble of bubbles for over a decade, due to constant inflation of the money supply and low interest rates.
The world may be in the middle of the biggest bubble in history. The bubble (e.g., property, stock, commodities) could exceed 50% of global GDP in value. The key cause of the bubble is that the major central banks failed to lower inflation targets to account for the combination of productivity acceleration due to IT and the new upward stickiness in wages due to the influx of three billion people into the global economy since the mid-1990s.
The major central banks mistakenly released too much money in the past decade, justifying it with the low inflation relative to the recent past. The monetary excesses have led to the rapid expansion of asset valuation relative to income. The global economy has become dependent on the demand spillover from asset inflation.
The bubble began in the 1990s as a part of the stock-market run-up:
Something unusual happened in the mid 1990s: the ratio of the US stock market capitalization to its GDP began to surge above its normal range. Mr. Greenspan made his famous speech on the ‘irrational exuberance’ in the stock market in 1996. The market shivered briefly but resumed climbing. It culminated in early 2000 when the listed stocks in the US exceeded 160% of GDP in value – more than twice the historical normal level.
And then, because money supplies were still growing, people started buying real estate instead of stocks, leading to the rapid increases in housing prices:
After the tech bubble burst, US housing value began a similar upward move in relation to the US GDP. The ratio of US housing value to GDP could exceed 160% this year, up from 120% in the 1990s. The average of this ratio was 105% between 1950 and 1999 and the highest level during this period was 130% in 1989, right before the S&L crisis.
The source of the bubbles was asset inflation:
The fundamental changes in the 1990s severed the short-term relationship between money supply and inflation. Indeed, the monetarist explanation for inflation championed by Milton Freidman was discarded in the 1990s as inflation rates failed to respond to surging money supplies.
However, money did cause inflation in asset markets.
Asset inflation has fueled the consumer boom as people borrow against (and/or count on) the rising asset values to finance growing consumption. And Morgan-Stanley’s Andy Xie thinks it is all about to come crashing down or maybe slowly slithering down:
The end of the global bubble economy may be near. Mr. Greenspan recently recognized the role of the Fed’s monetary policy in the US housing boom, its associated consumption boom and the US savings shortfall. The Fed may be in a campaign to pop the bubble. The global economy could experience a big downturn or many years of slow growth to correct the past excesses.
There is much more at the original site. [Thanks to MA for the pointer.]
Update: For a similar perspective, see this piece from The Economist.
From the Onion [h/t to Jack]
Christian Science Pharmacist Refuses To Fill Any Prescription
The Jerk-O-Meter. Not what you think. [thanks to MA for the link, though I am just a little concerned that he felt the need to send it to me].
Are you a jerk on the phone? You might want to be a bit nicer the next time you take that call.That’s because there’s new technology coming out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology called the “Jerk-O-Meter.” The software measures stress levels in your voice and rates you on a scale of zero to 100 to let you know just how annoying you might be sounding.
I don’t even know how to pronounce it. Is it JERK-oh-mee-ter, or is it jerk-AH-meh-ter?
This product sounds like a loser to me. I can’t imagine (m)any people would pay much for this product. Actually, it sounds like just the thing to be produced by one of those left-wing interventionist academies. Next thing you know they’ll be lobbying Congress to get regulations requiring its use.
