eeyores news and views

This week Prep Talk item is still talking about tools. As you can see from the last few Saturdays, tools are a big deal. Especially not having them when they are needed, is a bigger deal. So this week it is kitchen tools and Firearms.

Kitchen Tools
The easiest way to cover this topic, is to go into your kitchen and figure out what you would need to prepare, cook and serve a meal, without electricity. You need to look at your pots and bowls first. If you have a earthquake, how much of your dishes, bowls, pots and pans would make it through?

Serving dishes
Plates, bowls get a cheap set of plastic back up dishes. For something that really last metal (pewter or stainless steel) would work well.
Same goes for the dishes like big bowls and mixing bowls.
Kitchen knives, serving spoons and mixing utensils. Go with one that has a lifetime warranty. What every you can afford. Make sure you have a way to sharpen them also (without electricity).

Firearms are just a tool like anything else. But they are one that if abused will hurt you quickly. I would recommend anyone that is going to buy them go a firearms class and or a hunters safety course at the least. But what you need to remember is that like any tool unless you use it and practice with it you can not expect it to do it's job to it's ability. Firearms breaks down into two catagories, the first is utility and the second is protection. There are very few that over lap.

Do you hunt shoot skeet? those would be utility.

Do you want to protect yourself? Those are the protection ones.

For protection i would get a shotgun, 12 gauge if you can handle the recoil. 20 gauge if you can't.
For utility i would get a shotgun, 12 gauge if you can handle the recoil. 20 gauge if you can't. If you wanted to hunt deer size animals i would opt for a 3006 or 308 caliber bolt action rifle.

Jericho at FRC brought up an interesting article on the Russian Economy with some thoughts
http://www.news.com.au/business/money/story/0,25479,24359118-31037,00.html The Russian stock market, Mices, suffered 11.47%, 54% below its highest point. Their fuel giant Gazprom, lost 17.2% Oil fuels their growth, and build their military. I'm just hoping that they get hit much harder than us... ****************************** RUSSIA'S main stock market suspended trading today after plummeting more than 11 per cent, having lost more than half its value since May, as failing Wall Street banks caused panic on global markets. The benchmark RTS index halted trade after a fall of 11.47 left it 54 per cent below its record close on May 19. The ruble-denominated Micex was also suspended for an hour after dropping 16.6 per cent. "Panic has gripped the Russian stock market," read a headline on the Interfax news agency. Those hardest hit on the RTS were energy companies, with state-controlled gas giant Gazprom falling 17.2 per cent and oil firm Rosneft losing 19.12 per cent. "The turmoil on Wall Street and worries about fall in the oil price are keeping buyers away despite the cheap prices," said analyst Chris Weafer in a note from Moscow-based investment bank Uralsib. "The only feeling is one of numbness, shock," he said. "The hope is that this is the final clear-out, that this week we will find a floor." The fall came after repeated attempts by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to calm market fears. Yesterday he told a meeting of top businessmen that "we do not have a crisis", and ordered the government to pump money into the markets. Before the latest wave of turmoil on Wall Street, investors were selling Russian stocks on falling commodity prices, turmoil in international markets and political uncertainty, analysts said. Increasing tensions with the West stoked by Moscow's military intervention in Georgia last month have also hit prices - the RTS has fallen more than a third since the conflict began. President Medvedev estimated last week that a quarter of the market's losses were due to the war, in part due to fears a stand-off with the West would hurt business. The market collapse has so far had little impact on tens of millions of Russians whose lives have been transformed by a five-year economic boom. The fall has revived uncomfortable memories of the August 1998 financial crisis, which cut short an earlier boom exactly 10 years ago. But Mr Weafer said the market turmoil appeared unlikely to spread into the wider economy. "There is a risk that if this persists, it could spread into consumer confidence, but so far it is being seen as a market event." But traders on the Internet site quote.ru, many of whom have seen their investments fall in value by half, found it hard to see the bright side. "This isn't Black Tuesday. This is worse," said one forum contributor. "There's only one kind of paper that can be sold now. Toilet paper," wrote another.
Oh... China also said that we need a new financial order not dependent on the United States. Can you say one-world-currency?
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My responce was this
It does seem like the next logical step. We talked about this a couple of times in chat, but from what i remember we were talking about it on a conteintal scale ie the America's and Canada going to a common currency like the Amero.
China paper urges new currency order after "financial tsunami"Wed Sep 17, 2008 1:45am BEIJING (Reuters) - Threatened by a "financial tsunami," the world must consider building a financial order no longer dependent on the United States, a leading Chinese state newspaper said on Wednesday.
The commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily said the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc (LEH.P: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) "may augur an even larger impending global 'financial tsunami'."
The People's Daily is the official newspaper of China's ruling Communist Party, and the overseas edition is a smaller circulation offshoot of the main paper.
Its pronouncements do not necessarily directly reflect leadership views, but this commentary by a professor at Shanghai's Tongji University suggested considerable official alarm at the strains buckling world financial markets....
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSPEK4365020080917?sp=true

This what appears to have turned the markets around.
Fed announces $180 billon cash flood to fight crisis
The US Federal Reserve announced a 180-billion-dollar cash line to fight the racing fires of global financial crisis Thursday, as leading central banks said they would join in.
The Federal Reserve said it was expanding its temporary arrangements for banks to obtain dollars by 180 billion "to provide dollar funding for both term and overnight liquidity operations by other central banks."
The move was to fight "continued elevated pressures in US dollar short-term funding markets," the Federal Reserve said.
The Fed's statement concerned "reciprocal arrangements", which several central banks had authorised to run up to January 30, 2009, or for another four and a half months.
Central banks have intervened massively with direct cash injections since financial disaster struck Wall Street at the weekend.
The Fed said those actions, and the latest more technical measures to relieve tension on the dollar money market, "are designed to improve the liquidity conditions in global financial markets."
The Fed acted minutes after the Bank of England announced that leading central banks around the world would make a concerted onslaught through intervention in money markets.
These extraordinary statements came after wild falls on stock markets and US Treasury bond yields, a surge in the price of gold, reports that investment bank Morgan Stanley is looking for help after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and uncertainty after the nationalisation of AIG insurance.
The Fed said in a statement that it had "authorized increases in the existing swap lines with the ECB and the Swiss National Bank."
It said the Japanese, British and Canadian central banks had also increased their arrangements giving access to dollars through so-called "swap" arrangements
It gave the amounts as 60 billion dollars for the Japanese bank, 40 billion dollars by the Bank of England and 10 billion dollars by the Canadian bank.
The Fed said its own latest massive liquidity window for the banking system would back up such support of 110 billion dollars by the European Central Bank, marking an increase in its facility of 55 billion dollars, and 27 billion dollars by the Swiss bank, an increase of 15 billion dollars.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080918083207.wh5hl7iv&show_article=1


Corn flops as energy source
Mario Parker BLOOMBERG NEWSThursday, September 18, 2008
Ford Heights Ethanol LLC applied in June 2006 to build a distillery in the Illinois town whose name it bears, promising an economic revival to replace abandoned houses and closed stores. Two years later, no work has begun.
For Ford Heights and other agricultural towns, the "green-collar" job revolution envisioned by federal biofuel mandates is a dream deferred. Knee-high grass and old tires cover the site as record prices for corn, the main ingredient in ethanol, discourage investment in new plants.
The $20.8 billion industry may have itself to blame. Breakneck construction led to 168 ethanol plants, already producing more than U.S. mandates require for the fuel additive this year. The distilleries buy so much corn - as much as a third of the U.S. crop this year - that they have contributed to price increases, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says.
"I kept saying they're going to kill the golden goose," said Jim Jordan, president of Jim Jordan & Associates LP, a Houston fuel-consulting company. "We have in fact overbuilt. This thing is pretty devastating."
President Bush and Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate from Illinois, have backed ethanol as a way to support American farmers and reduce dependence on imported oil. Ethanol is distilled from corn kernels in the United States and blended into gasoline. One corn bushel yields 2.75 gallons of ethanol.
Initial enthusiasm has given way to concern that diverting crops for fuel is accelerating a rise in food costs. Riots have erupted over shortages from Haiti to Egypt.
Some U.S. food companies, including chicken producer Tyson Foods Inc., formed a Food Before Fuel coalition in June to oppose ethanol mandates.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican presidential candidate, has "traditionally been opposed to ethanol subsidies that distort the market," spokesman Tucker Bounds said.
Ethanol may account for 20 percent of the gain in the rate of U.S. food inflation, said Ephraim Leibtag, an agriculture department economist. U.S. food prices may climb 6 percent this year, the most since 1980, the department estimates.
The overcapacity prevents lenders from financing ethanol plants that distill ethanol from corn kernels, said Mike Tian, an analyst at Morningstar Inc. in Chicago.
"A lot of these towns that hoped to get an ethanol plant probably [won't]," he said.

A vacant field beyond a small intersection in Ford Heights, Ill, is where Ford Heights Ethanol LLC hoped build a distillery to produce ethanol from corn, bringing the town an economic revival. The proposed $130 million plant was scheduled to begin production by the first quarter of 2009, but two years after the application was filed, no building has begun. (Bloomberg News)
Ford Heights Mayor Saul Beck said he was ecstatic in 2006 about having a distillery in his town of 3,300, where the U.S. Census Bureau found that 49 percent of residents live in poverty.

An unused basketball court surrounded by knee-high grass and covered with old tires remains in the location where Ford Heights Ethanol LLC hoped to build a distillery in Ford Heights, Ill. Record prices for corn, ethanol's main ingredient, is discouraging investment in new plants. (Bloomberg News)
At least three ethanol producers went public that year, including Aventine Renewable Energy Holdings Inc. of Pekin, Ill., VeraSun Energy Corp. of Brookings, S.D., and Green Plains Renewable Energy Inc. in Omaha, Neb. At one point, the American Coalition for Ethanol tracked 500 planned plants, said Ron Lamberty, a vice president at the Sioux Falls, S.D., trade group.
Corn prices rose 58 percent to $5.3675 a bushel in the year through Sept. 10. When Ford Heights Ethanol applied for the permit for its proposed $130 million plant in 2006, producers were pocketing an average of $2.64 on every gallon made. By Sept. 10, rising corn prices had reduced that margin to 57 cents, Bloomberg data show.
Lenders balked at funding the project, said Jonathan Kahn, president of Ford Heights Ethanol: "One of our biggest regrets is that we couldn't get manufacturing in a community that so desperately needs it."
Abandoned homes pepper the plant site's neighborhood.
"It would have brought some jobs," Mr. Beck said. "They got the permit, and we haven't heard anything else."
Across Illinois, 795 million gallons of ethanol are on hold, the Chicago-based investment firm William Blair & Co. estimates.
That has slowed construction and growth in permanent ethanol-related jobs, said Tom Hauser, vice president of CoBank, an Omaha-based lender to ethanol companies. Each plant employs about 50 people, who earn $40,000 a year on average, he said.
The country's 168 plants had capacity for 9.96 billion gallons as of Aug. 26, almost 1 billion more than the U.S. requires this year, the Washington trade group Renewable Fuels Association said. Another 43 plants scheduled to be built or expanded would raise capacity to 13.8 billion gallons. Most make ethanol from corn.
Even established corn-ethanol producers put more emphasis on making "cellulosic" ethanol from alternate sources such as wood chips. The still-imperfect process doesn't promise immediate benefits for towns with nearby corn growers.
Asked whether Mr. Obama may reduce his support for corn-based ethanol as president, spokesman Tommy Vietor referred to an April speech in Indiana:
"We have to recognize that corn-based ethanol is a transitional technology," the candidate said then.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/18/corn-flops-as-energy-source/