Eeyore's News and View

Thank you Veterans

If i have ever heard of a worth wide project this would be it. It is called the Bent Prop Project.

Latest Stuff:
The June 2008 issue of GQ Magazine includes an article by Wil Hylton that deals with a B-24 crash site that was located and identified by the BentProp team in 2004, and was the subject of three JPAC recovery missions over four years, finishing up in the first quarter of 2008. This site yielded the remains of airmen who went down with that aircraft on 1 September 1944. You can read about the process, the people involved in the search and recovery, and the family of one of those airmen in this moving article. This is a long article and a great read. You'll be handsomely rewarded if you read it all the way through to the end...
The 2008 expedition has wrapped up, and everyone's safely home. We arrived in Palau late on 23 February and headed home on 23 March. While we were in the field, we posted daily progress reports for the 2008 expedition.
"Last Flight Home" is finally, lovingly completed. Six years in the making, this moving documentary about the BentProp Project by team members Jennifer Powers and Dan O'Brien is now available Here's where you can check out the film, view a trailer, and order a copy.

During World War II, many American airmen lost their lives in the western Pacific, some in the western Caroline Islands, in what is presently known as The Republic of Palau. The ultimate fate of hundreds of these men remains a mystery today. For more than a half century, families and wingmen of airmen who were declared Missing In Action (MIA) have lived with a painful lack of closure: they do not know exactly how and where their loved ones died. If they could have such knowledge it might not eliminate the pain of loss, but such knowledge can sometimes ease the emptiness and silence the nightmares.

http://www.bentprop.org/

Nurse in Times Square war photo reunites with Navy

By RICHARD PYLE Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - A 90-year-old who says she's the woman being kissed by a sailor in Times Square in one of World War II's most famous photographs reunited in town with the Navy on Sunday _ days before she is to serve as grand marshal of the city's Veterans Day parade.
Edith Shain of Los Angeles, donning a white nurse's uniform like the one she wore back in 1945, went to see the musical revival of "South Pacific" and posed for pictures, being hoisted off her feet on stage by five of the actors in their Navy whites. http://wtop.com/?nid=104&sid=1514221

The "D" word is starting to creep into the vocabulary of the economist. Well it has to come up with all the money they are printing, along with the other "D" word eventually also.


Deflation: the new threat
Deep global rate cuts show that policymakers fear a drop in price levels, regardless of their brave words.
By Colin Barr, senior writer

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Forget about inflation. The opposite threat - deflation - is what has policymakers sweating now.
Central banks across Europe slashed interest rates again Thursday. The Bank of England cut its policy rate to 3% from 4.5% - a cut three times as big as the market expected - while the European Central Bank trimmed its own rate by half a point, to 3.25%. The moves come a week after the Federal Reserve cut the Fed funds rate to 1%, touching the lows it set earlier this decade before the housing bubble took shape.
The cuts are remarkable because it was only four months ago that the ECB was raising interest rates to stem inflation fears tied to the surging prices of energy and food.
But since then, the deleveraging that has upended the financial sector has accelerated, and economic activity has slowed sharply. Policymakers have changed their tune accordingly, saying falling commodity prices will ease pressures for wage increases and support broad price stability.
"Real sense of concern"
The rate cuts are so severe, though, they suggest that the issue isn't the absence of fear about inflation. Rather, it's that bankers are worried that the destruction of trillions of dollars of wealth in the collapse of the housing and stock markets will stem demand for goods of all sorts, creating the kind of falling price environment not seen here since the 1930s.
Among central bankers, there is "a real sense of concern about falling inflation," says Lena Komileva, an economist at interdealer broker Tullett Prebon in London. She says that concern is reflected in the aggressive rate cuts seen around the globe of late.
Many economists say there's no reason well-managed modern economies should ever have to fret over the prospect of deflation - a drop in the money supply that, by making cash more valuable and lowering prices, slows economic activity and increases the debt burden on people and companies. As Fed chief Ben Bernanke infamously noted in a 2002 speech, a government pushed to the brink has a surefire remedy for falling prices: the printing press.
But the events of the past year have made clear that the mere threat of cranking out more currency isn't enough to restore debt-engulfed economies to equilibrium.
The Fed began cutting interest rates 15 months ago, and soon after started rolling out policies aimed at providing liquidity to cash-strapped players in the financial system. Other central banks hastily joined in the march to monetary expansion in September, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers led to the near collapse or partial nationalization of the global financial system.
Since then, officials have piled on all sorts of programs - backstops for money market funds, guarantees for bank deposits, swap lines for borrowers in foreign currencies - in a bid to support financial institutions and unlock frozen credit markets.
Komileva says governments in the U.S. and Europe, after initially ignoring structural problems in the financial markets, have embarked on "a super-expansionary policy" in which government purchases aim to prop up flagging private-sector demand.
Tight credit, weak demand
But just as the Fed's interest rate cuts couldn't keep an overleveraged domestic economy from heading into its first recession in seven years, there is the suspicion that massive injections of liquidity won't be enough to avert a steep decline in global demand.
The problem, Komileva says, is a glut of productive capacity that came online worldwide during the credit boom earlier this decade. Now that credit is increasingly unavailable, demand for goods stands to fall substantially below the available supply - a mismatch painfully visible in the U.S. auto industry, for instance, where sales fell 32% from a year ago in October to their lowest level in more than two decades.
Companies seeing weak demand often respond by cutting staff, which in a weak labor market leads to further declines in consumer spending, feeding additional drops in demand that call for lower prices.
Of course, the deflation thesis has no shortage of doubters, both in official circles and among economists.
"What matters, if we are going to worry about it, is if we have sustained deflation," International Monetary Fund chief economist Olivier Blanchard said Thursday. "At this stage, this is something that we should worry about. But we think that the probability of such a sustained deflation is, for the moment, very small."
Adam Posen, deputy director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, writes that asset price declines almost never result in broader price declines.
He wrote a paper in 2003 pointing out that only two of 44 stock or real estate bubbles led to deflation going by the consumer price index, and that only two of 18 deflationary episodes in advanced economies were preceded or accompanied by asset-price busts. He also notes that interest rates on long-dated government bonds and inflation-protected Treasury securities show that inflation expectations remain positive, which likely wouldn't be the case if investors expected to see deflation ahead.
Still, it's worth recalling that optimists have been wrong before about this crisis. After all, a year ago at this time the short-term interest rates targeted by the Fed, ECB and Bank of England were at 4% or above, and the so-called decoupling thesis - the notion that the U.S. could have a recession without the rest of the world being affected - was alive and well.
Komileva notes that trading one- and two-year U.S. inflation swaps show investors perceive a real threat of deflation. One-year swaps, for instance, currently show inflation at minus 1.9%, she says.
"Just as the real economy was 'recessionary' a year ago before GDP turned negative, the pricing backdrop is 'deflationary' today even though consumer prices have yet to deflate on a year-over-year basis," Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg wrote last week. The U.S., he adds, has "a credit contraction of historical proportions on our hands."




http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/06/news/deflation.fortune/index.htm

I guess it would not have anything to do with the Unions and with out the Unions the Democratic Party would have lower raters the the Green Party. Here are two similar articles
Cracks deepen, spread
Economic downturn pushes more consumers, companies into slow lane for long haul
By Michael Oneal Tribune reporter
November 8, 2008
A grim cascade of data this week shows how rapidly the financial crisis that started on Wall Street has embroiled the rest of the economy, creating a downturn that will be longer and deeper than once expected.American employers are jettisoning workers, consumer spending has tanked and General Motors, one of the nation's pre-eminent manufacturers, said Friday it is in danger of running out of cash.Economists marveled at the breadth and speed of the downturn, noting that the panic that shook the financial markets in September turned a run-of-the-mill slowdown into what promises to be a severe recession likely to drive the unemployment rate toward 8 percent by 2010.They also said it raises the pressure on President-elect Barack Obama and the administration of George W. Bush to work together well before January's transfer of power to create another stimulus package to spur economic activity.
"The financial crisis went from tough to acute; now the crisis in the real economy has gone from tough to acute," said Barclays Capital economist Ethan Harris. "This is the kind of data you get in a serious recession."The week's numbers were indeed sobering. Surveys of purchasing managers in both the manufacturing and the service sectors indicated a sharp slowdown across a broad swath of industries. Sales at department and big-box stores plummeted. Auto sales were the worst the industry had seen since World War II. And the economy shed 240,000 workers in October, bringing the year-to-date total to 1.2 million jobs lost."The economic lights went out in September and haven't been turned on yet," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.In one of the most jarring examples of how a panic that started on Wall Street has created pain in the rest of the economy, General Motors Corp. on Friday reported a $2.5 billion third-quarter loss and acknowledged that its cash and liquidity position has fallen 23 percent, to $16.2 billion from $21 billion on June 30.David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., noted that GM has worked hard recently to shed manufacturing capacity and keep inventories low.But faced with stunning declines in vehicle sales, including a 45 percent drop in October alone, the auto giant's cash burn in the quarter accelerated to $6.9 billion, prompting it to join Ford and Chrysler in an industry plea Thursday for an additional $25 billion in government loans.In a conference call, GM Chairman Rick Wagoner said the company will "take every action we possibly can" to avoid bankruptcy. But without government help or a big increase in sales, GM's cash supply could dip below the $11 billion to $14 billion the company needs to operate by the early part of next year.While GM has struggled for years, the cash crunch is a direct result of the financial panic. Economists said the market for short-term financing has been helped substantially by a government program to buy commercial paper. But banks are still reluctant to lend to any but the healthiest customers, and auto loans are difficult to get. Consumers, even wealthy ones, battered by losses in home values and retirement accounts have retrenched to such a degree that many are putting off purchases of such big-ticket items as cars and appliances.For firms like GM this presents a double whammy. Slower demand reduces production, making factories more expensive. Workers get laid off, contributing to slower demand. Meanwhile, the company itself can't find banks or investors willing to lend it money. GM has pledged to raise as much as $20 billion, largely through cost cutting, asset sales and the capital markets. But a plan to raise as much as $3 billion of that from investors has stalled.Barclays' Harris said the thaw in the short-term debt markets is a promising sign that the government's radical steps to rescue the economy are working. But unfreezing longer-term loans to spur car sales, home buying or capital spending will take time."It's hard to get a bank to lend money if nobody has a job or companies don't make money," said economist John Silvia of Wachovia Economics Group.That's why many economists say a new stimulus package like the one being devised by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is probably an essential bridge.Zandi reckons the government would have to spend another $300 billion just to keep the economy from contracting in 2009. But he said it will be important to spend about half of that before the inauguration, especially to shore up ailing state and local governments to keep them spending.At his first news conference as president-elect, Obama said Friday that he favored a stimulus package and pledged to act swiftly. He also signaled that the auto industry, which he called "the backbone of American manufacturing," would get help.But, "the United States has only one government and one president at a time," he said, and until Jan. 20, the Bush administration and Congress will have to lead the rescue.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-sat-mainstreetnov08,0,6657339.story?track=rss
Unions aim to collect on White House clout
David R. Sands and David Dickson, THE WASHINGTON TIMESMonday, November 10, 2008
For the nation's labor union leaders, it's time to cash in.
Having mobilized an army of workers to help elect Barack Obama, top union officials have not been shy about their plans to push a legislative wish list blocked under President Bush, and they say they will not wait. On the other hand, business leaders have not been shy about warning the president-elect against such early moves.
"American workers turned out for the election. American voters voted for Barack Obama. And American workers won this election," Anna Burger, chairman of Change to Win, an activist coalition of unions including the Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union.
She said union volunteers were critical to Democratic victories in such battleground states as Nevada, Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia.
"We turned Virginia blue, and we're going to keep it blue," Mrs. Burger said.
Karen Ackerman, political director for the AFL-CIO, said her unions provided 250,000 campaign volunteers and 4,000 paid political staffers and "were the firewall that prevented John McCain from victories in the Rust Belt."
AFL-CIO head John Sweeney said the labor movement's "No. 1 priority" for the Obama administration is the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), designed to make it easier for unions to recruit and organize in nonunion workplaces.
The bill, anathema to leading business groups, has majority support in the Democrat-dominated House and Senate, but has not been able to clear the 60-vote mark in the Senate to end a filibuster.
With Mr. Obama's election and sizable Democratic gains in both chambers, "we think our prospects have increased dramatically to get it passed," said AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka.
Business organizations have offered an early olive branch to the president-elect, but caution that signing the unions' pet bill would make good relations with the administration difficult, when the overall U.S. and global economy face recession and severe credit problems.
(the Rest of the article is at) http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/10/unions-aim-to-collect-on-white-house-clout/

No hidden white bias seen in presidential race November 7, 2008 - 6:29am
Graphic shows presidential vote by religious affiliation and race; two sizes;
By ALAN FRAM Associated Press Writer
Obama's election triumph on Tuesday presented no evidence of the so-called Bradley effect, in which whites who oppose a black politician mislead pollsters about whom they will vote for. Instead, national and state pre-election polls were generally accurate in reflecting voters' preferences in the presidential contest.
"I certainly hope this drives a stake through the heart of that demon," Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin political scientist and polling authority, said of the Bradley effect.
The phenomenon is named after former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, an African-American who in 1982 lost the race for California governor after leading in the polls. There were similar contests over the following decade in which black candidates facing white opponents had comfortable leads in polls, only to lose or narrowly win the elections.
Critics have said such turnabouts might have been largely the product of poor polling. Others have concluded that some whites, nervous about appearing to harbor anti-black feelings, in fact misled pollsters up through the early 1990s but that such behavior has faded over time.
Obama, who will become the first African-American president, defeated Republican John McCain on Tuesday by 52 percent to 46 percent with nearly all votes counted.
If the Bradley effect were a factor, pre-election polls should have consistently overstated Obama's share of the vote, or understated McCain's. Instead, most did a solid job of previewing how the vote would go, both nationally and in crucial states.
Shortly before Election Day, an NBC News-Wall Street Journal survey showed Obama ahead 51 percent to 43 percent among likely voters. The Gallup Poll showed a 53 percent to 42 percent Obama lead, while CBS News had Obama up 51 percent to 42 percent.
An Associated Press-Yahoo News poll in late October had Obama ahead 51 percent to 43 percent. An AP-GfK poll in mid-October showed a virtual tie, 44 percent for Obama to 43 percent for McCain.
Web sites that combine major polls to estimate support also performed well. Among some popular sites, http://www.pollster.comhad Obama ahead 52 percent to 44 percent, http://www.realclearpolitics.comsaw Obama up 52 percent to 45 percent, and http://www.fivethirtyeight.comgave Obama a 52 percent to 46 percent advantage.
Such accuracy was a relief to pollsters rattled last winter when widespread projections of an Obama victory in the New Hampshire primary were upended after Hillary Rodham Clinton won narrowly.
"We're getting much more sophisticated estimates," said University of Michigan political scientist and polling analyst Michael Traugott, citing improved techniques.
Among them is the increased polling of people who have cell phones but no landlines. A Pew Research Center report in September, and exit polls of voters conducted Tuesday for The Associated Press and the television networks, suggest that people who have only cells tend to vote more Democratic than people like them with only landlines.
Many state surveys were impressively accurate also.
For North Carolina, http://www.realclearpolitics.comgave McCain a pre-election edge of less than 1 percentage point. That state finally was awarded to Obama on Thursday, when he had a 14,000-vote lead out of 4.2 million votes cast.
Pre-election polls by Quinnipiac University, Mason-Dixon and AP-GfK all showed Obama ahead by 2 percentage points in Florida, which the Democrat won by 3 points. The combined estimate for Pennsylvania by http://www.pollster.comput Obama up 8 points, and he won by 11.
None of this means race was not a factor on Tuesday.
Whites nationally preferred McCain by 12 percentage points, while 95 percent of blacks backed Obama, according to exit polls. Seven percent of whites said race was important in choosing a candidate, and they backed the Republican 2-1.
Analysts said any reluctance to support Obama because he is black may have been overwhelmed this year by a desire to support the candidate people thought would fix the struggling economy. They also said the Bradley effect has faded as Americans have become used to blacks winning local elections and as the 1990s' more intense focus on crime and welfare has ebbed.
The Bradley effect was "a product of a particular political environment that seems to have passed us by," said Daniel Hopkins, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University who wrote a study this summer concluding that the phenomenon has disappeared.
http://wtop.com/?nid=213&sid=1512787

Wall Street heads to higher open on China stimulus November 10, 2008 - 8:47am
Jeffrey Vasquez, right, and fellow traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange after the Federal Reserve interest rate decision, Tuesday Aug. 5, 2008. Wall Street held on to a big advance Tuesday after the Federal Reserve left the benchmark federal funds rate target unchanged at 2% and assuaged some of the market's fears about the economy. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
By JOE BEL BRUNO AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - Wall Street headed for a higher open Monday, boosted by hopes that China's $586 billion economic stimulus package will help ease the global recession.
Futures for the Dow Jones industrial average and broader market indexes rose more than 2 percent ahead of the opening bell in New York. The advance follows a rally in Asia and Europe after China announced plans to boost its economy through a mix of spending, subsidies, looser credit policies and tax cuts.
Also boosting U.S. markets, the government on Monday provided new financial assistance to troubled insurance giant American International Group Inc., including pouring $40 billion into the company in return for partial ownership. The action was announced jointly by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department.
All told, the moves, on top of the bailout of AIG announced in September, boost aid to the insurer to around $150 billion. AIG also announced a $24.47 billion loss for the third quarter.
Investors are also watching for developments with General Motors Corp., Chrysler and Ford Motor Co. after the automakers met with congressional leaders last week in hopes of securing financial help.
Democratic leaders in Congress asked the Bush administration on Saturday to provide more aid to the struggling auto industry, which is losing money and jobs as sales have dropped to their lowest level in a quarter century. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that the administration should consider expanding the $700 billion bailout program to include car companies.
Dow futures jumped 148, or 1.62 percent, to 9,144. Standard & Poor's 500 futures rose 20.30, or 2.17 percent, to 956.50. Nasdaq 100 index futures added 24.50, or 1.90 percent, to 1,313.00.
Last week, the major indexes each lost about 4 percent. Trading this week is expected to remain volatile as the market tries to recover from October's devastating losses.
With stocks heading for a higher open, some investors moved out of the relative safety of government bonds. The three-month Treasury bill's yield rose to 0.32 percent from 0.28 percent late Friday. A higher yield indicates less demand. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose to 3.83 percent from 3.79 percent late Friday.
Oil prices jumped above $63 a barrel Monday in Asia as regional stock markets rallied on China's economic stimulus plan, which could underpin demand for crude. A barrel of light sweet crude rose $4.42 to $65.46 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
With no major economic data due during the session, investors will turn to corporate news for direction. Investors later this week will pore over a stream of reports, including retail sales, the labor market and consumer sentiment.
Citigroup Inc. is in talks to acquire a regional bank to boost the bank's presence in areas it already operates, including the Northeast, California and Texas, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The report, which did not name a potential target, said Chief Executive Vikram Pandit is attempting to broaden the bank's deposit base.
Circuit City Stores Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection about a week after it said it would close 20 percent of its stores. The electronics retailer, based in Richmond, Va., has been struggling as nervous consumers spend less and credit has become tighter.
Mail and logistics company Deutsche Post AG says it will cut 9,500 jobs and close all of its DHL express service centers in the U.S. amid heavy losses in the market there. The cuts are part of a wider plan to curtail operations in the U.S., including ground deliveries, and are likely to affect drivers, shipping clerks and warehouse workers. The express unit employs some 18,000 workers.
Power generator NRG Energy Inc. on Sunday rejected an unsolicited $6.1 billion all-stock bid from nuclear power giant and utility operator Exelon Corp., calling the offer too low. The deal would create the nation's largest power company.
Overseas, Japan's Nikkei stock average closed up 5.81 percent, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng index added 3.52 percent. In Europe, the Britain's FTSE 100 rose 2.87 percent, Germany's DAX added 3.22 percent, and France's CAC-40 rose 2.95 percent.
http://wtop.com/?nid=111&sid=1450051