Amercian debt has long been considered “risk free.” But with the deficit blowing out, and sovereign nations around the world crumbling, more and more are wondering just how safe our debt actually is.
Hopefully, any real crisis is a long way off, or will never happen. But, just in case, we’ve put together a guide of who holds US debt, and what might trigger them to hit the SELL button. #1 on the list the
Federal Reserve and Intragovernmental Holdings: $5.127 trillion and rising*Nightmare Scenario: The Fed actually decides to get “independent” and refuses to go along with reckless spending.
The leader of Venezuela Hugo Chavez is blaming the United States for Haiti’s earthquake claiming that the U.S. tested a “tectonic weapon” causing the devastation.
According to Chavez the earthquake was a result of “weapon earthquakes” started by the U.S. that would eventually be used to take over Iran.
The Venezuelan media also coincides with Chavez’s claim and reports that the earthquake “may be associated with a project called HAARP, a system that can generate violent and unexpected changes in climate.”
HAARP which stands for High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program has been the source of controversy for many conspiracy theorists.
Former Secretary of Defense William Cohen even expressed concerns over the program previously saying,
“In eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves….”
PRESS TV reports that the purpose of HAARP is “directed at the occasional reconfiguration of the properties of the Earth’s ionosphere to improve satellite communications.”
Chavez also said the U.S should “stop playing God.”
Welcome to The Vice Guide to Liberia. In this eight-part series, VBS travels to West Africa to rummage through the messy remains of a country ravaged by 14 years of civil war. Despite the United Nations eventual intervention, most of Liberia’s young people continue to live in abject poverty, surrounded by filth, drug addiction, and teenage prostitution. In Part 1, Vices own Shane Smith provides a brief history lesson and some essential context for understanding what caused Liberia’s civil war and how things got so bad.
Queen Latifah & actress Dania Ramirez announced Covergirl’s partnership with the Children’s Safe Drinking Water (CSDW) non-profit organization. In celebration of its loyal makeup users, Covergirl launched the “Clean Makeup for Clean Water” campaign with a one time $500,000 contribution to CSDW.
“Covergirl’s generous donation will provide 50 million liters of clean water to children in need around the world,” says Dr. Greg Allgood, Director, CSDW. “More than 4,000 children die every day from diseases caused by unsafe drinking water, and we’re thrilled to join the Covergirl Clean Makeup for Clean Water Campaign to help eradicate this global health issue.”
Veteran spokesmodel Queen Latifah and the makeup brand’s newest face Dania Ramirez announced the Clean Water partnership during a recent press conference in Los Angeles. Ramirez discussed her recent trip to her native Dominican Republic, in which she helped deliver a year’s supply of clean drinking water to villages in need. “I was thrilled to be back in my home country to help Covergirl deliver clean drinking water,” she says. “I know firsthand that a shortage of safe drinking water can be a matter of life or death. When I was growing up, at times we had to boil our water before drinking it so we didn’t get sick or worse.”
As a part of the Clean Makeup for Clean Water initiative, consumers are encouraged to enter a contest at CoverGirl.com for a chance to win a trip to Africa as part of the next Clean Water mission. For every entry received, Covergirl will provide one week’s worth of clean drinking water to a child in need.
Haiti today faced a natural disaster of unprecedented proportion, an earthquake unlike anything the country has ever experienced. The magnitude 7.0 earthquake – and several very strong aftershocks – struck only 10 miles from Port-au-Prince. I cannot stress enough what a human disaster this is, and idle hands will only make this tragedy worse. The over 2 million people in Port-au-Prince tonight face catastrophe alone. We must act now.
President Obama has already said that the U.S. stands ‘ready to assist’ the Haitian people. The U.S. Military is the only group trained and prepared to offer that assistance immediately. They must do so as soon as possible. The international community must also rise to the occasion and help the Haitian people in every way possible.”
Many people have already reached out to see what they can do right now. We are asking those interested to please do one of two things: Either you can use your cell phone to text “Yele” to 501501, which will automatically donate $5 to the Yele Haiti Earthquake Fund (it will be charged to your cell phone bill), or you can visit Yele.org and click on DONATE.
-Wyclef
NBA player Samuel Dalembert of the 76ers who grew up in Haiti reflects on the catastrophe.
Before President Barack Obama touched down in China for his three-day visit this week, the country’s top banking regulator joined the ranks of those complaining about the U.S. Federal Reserve’s low interest rates and the falling dollar. The combination, said Liu Mingkang, has fed speculation in stock and property markets (especially in Asia) and threatens the worldwide economic recovery.
What can China do about it? As long as the country banks on Americans to buy Chinese products, economists say, not much.
The two countries are effectively locked in an embrace: China buys U.S. debt and the U.S. buys China’s goods. “It’s a symbiotic relationship,” Greenhaus said.”They don’t have any credibility,” said Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak. China has played the same game for years, keeping its currency cheap so that other countries will buy its goods. The U.S. certainly cares about what its largest creditor thinks, Greenhaus said, but has little reason to change course. A cheaper currency boosts U.S. exports, just as it does for China, and the Federal Reserve won’t raise rates at the risk of choking the economy.
According to Sun News Bill Gates is granting millions to Africa and India for farming. Well maybe he can throw Detroit in that pool also considering close to half the city is unoccupied and the only hope of reviving the city is adapting the urban farming concept.
Microsoft co-founder turned philanthropist Bill Gates on Thursday announced 120 million dollars in grants to help small-scale farmers in Africa and India improve their lives through sustainable agriculture.
The grants, announced on the eve of World Food Day, are from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the philanthropic organization co-chaired by Gates and his wife.
“Three-quarters of the world’s poorest people get their food and income by farming small plots of land,” Gates said as he announced grants to nine projects, mostly in Africa, during a speech to the World Food Prize Symposium in Iowa.
“So if we can make small-holder farming more productive and more profitable, we can have a massive impact on hunger and nutrition and poverty.” Gates also paid tribute to the late Norman Borlaug, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who is often called the father of the Green Revolution and who has been credited with saving hundreds of millions of lives by developing disease-resistant wheat.
The Green Revolution “was one of the great achievements of the 20th century, but it didn’t go far enough,” said Gates. “It didn’t go to Africa,” where the bulk of the grant money announced by Gates on Thursday will go.
In keeping with the Gates Foundation’s approach to promoting development, which Gates described as “investing across the value chain in ways that will benefit small farmers and their communities,” the grants will help “bring the technology that has transformed farming in other parts of the world” to Africa and India.
Funds will be used to promote the development of crops which can help the environment such as legumes, which are a natural fertilizer or improve health, such as a new variety of sweet potato enriched in Vitamin A, which is often missing from the diets of children in the developing world.
The heated climate before the Istanbul meeting led some to expect global policymakers to take a stand, but despite the strong tone, Andrew Wilkinson, senior market analyst at Interactive Brokers, said it was short on action. “It invites investors to test the dollar’s lines of resistance in order to see what response, if any, might be forthcoming in the event of a further fall in the value of the dollar,” Wilkinson said.
The dollar’s loss of value over the past six months has been a cause for concern for the world’s financial chief’s, Wilkinson said, and reasonably so because the greenback’s instability threatens financial markets and economies.
“Many currency traders were braced for some hint of intervention to prevail from this meeting,” Wilkinson said, “especially given several verbal warnings or complaints from central bankers and politicians who had warned against dollar weakness.”
The problem with intervention is that it would only be partially effective, especially if the U.S. isn’t on board. The Treasury Department would never admit this, but for the time being it’s in the country’s interest to keep its currency low because it stimulates exports for the economy’s manufacturing base and lowers the value of the debt that the Treasury is piling up.
U.S. wealth, measured in assets under management, has fallen farther than its transatlantic cousin’s.
As market participants reflect on the anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, so emerges the sobering consequence of the market crash that followed: North America’s wealth has now fallen the most out of any other region in the world, allowing Europe to step up to the plate as the world’s richest continent.
North America, defined as the United States and Canada, had $29.3 trillion in assets under management in 2008, while Europe had $32.7 trillion, according to a survey by the Boston Consulting Group.
North America had the steepest decline of all regions last year, with total wealth as measured by assets under management dropping by 21.8%. One reason is the region’s heavy investment in shares: North America still has the highest proportion of wealth held in equities, according to Boston Consulting, at 38% in 2008. That proportion had been even higher in 2008, at 50%.
Latin America was the only region where wealth increased, with assets under management growing by 3% in 2008.
The number of millionaires around the world fell to 9 million from 11 million, the survey said, and the drop was steepest in both North America and Europe, where the number of millionaires dropped by 17.8%. The United States still has the most millionaire households though, at nearly 4 million.
Check out Nandan Nilekani, the visionary co-founder of outsourcing pioneer Infosys, as he explains four brands of ideas that will determine whether India can continue its recent breakneck progress. Nandan Nilekani is the author of “Imagining India,” a radical re-thinking of one of the world’s great economies. As the co-founder of Infosys, he helped move India into the age of IT.
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Amercian debt has long been considered “risk free.” But with the deficit blowing out, and sovereign nations around the world crumbling, more and more are wondering just how safe our debt actually is.
