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Links 11/27/12

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Nowhere to put your aging parents? Install them in a granny pod in your backyard (but you might lose your inheritance) Daily Mail

Isabelle Dinoire: Life after the world’s first face transplant BBC. She is very brave.

Whale Shark Rescue YouTube (Robert M)

Could a Newly Developed RNA-Based Vaccine Offer Lifelong Protection From Flu? Medical Daily

Saxo Bank warns of 2014 Australian recession MacroBusiness

China’s ubiquitous ghost cities FT Alphaville

Meanwhile, in Japan… Tim Duy

Eurozone agrees deal with IMF to cut Greek debt by €40bn Telegraph

Banking union: If Ireland were Nevada Daniel Gros, VoxEU

‘We Reacted Immediately to Symptoms of Crisis’ Der Spiegel (Swedish Lex). On Iceland.

A Move Made During The Middle Of The Crisis Showed Why Mark Carney Is One Of The World’s Greatest Central Bankers Clusterstock

Clues to Carney’s thinking Financial Times. I’m told Carney really understands bank operations.

New Bank of England Governor Mark Carney’s wife: an eco-warrior who says banks are rotten Telegraph. She may be an anti-materialist, but it looks like her hubby nevertheless gave her a really serious opal necklace, displayed in one of the Telegraph pix. So she’s not completely of the macrame and granola school.

Morsi signals compromise over Egypt decree crisis Guardian

Why Israel Didn’t Win London Review of Books

White House warns of $200bn consumption fall Financial Times and Fiscal cliff failure would hurt Christmas spending, White House warns Guardian. No change in body language, Obama wants his deal by year end, no matter how bad a deal it is for anyone other than the 1%.

What It Was Like To Be A Woman At Goldman Sachs In The 1990s Clusterstock

Down But Not Out: Yahoo! Readers Share Their Stories of Unemployment and Job-Hunting Yahoo. Joins the Gawker series on unemployment…

Antidote du jour (martha r):

Since that one is small, you get a bonus:

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  1. S.

    That Yahoo! store is surely some kind of joke! Besides her huaband’s income from the business he owns, she runs a ranch, maintains a small herd of cattle, and farms on a small scale. How is this at all comparable to the destitution that we’ve been reading about on Gawker?

  2. vlade

    Well, I’m not sure what to think of Carney. He’s tough, and doesn’t let bankers (like Jamie D.) run roughshod over him, which is a plus. On the other hand, he dissed Haldane’s call for simpler (but more powerful regulation) and is a strong supporter of B3 as is (and has a strong investment in it) and would like even more granular and detailed RWA workouts, which tells me he trusts the models too much.

    1. Synopticist

      Looks like he may of bailed out of Canada just in time to avoid a gigantic housing crash. Nicked this link from a Biz insider comment…

      OK that’s vancouver, Chinese money etc, but broadly how the heck can housing in Canada be worth more than a similar house in California or England? It’s the second biggest country in the world with 35 million people there. it’s f*cking freezing 6 months of the year.

      1. vtek

        i think it’s worse than that, but you beat me to the punch.

        to me it looks like canadian banks are close to blowing up and carney doesn’t want to be there when that happens.

      2. Kurt Sperry

        Vancouver real estate prices are insane but have been for decades. I don’t know how it has gone on as long as it has. The 1999 influx from HK didn’t help. The Winter isn’t really that cold here though by Canadian standards, just dark, wet and dreary.

  3. skippy

    The report’s researchers led by Kevin Schaefer, of the University of Colorado, summarised recent permafrost research and found that even if humans made deep cuts to their greenhouse gas emissions, the thaw would go on for centuries, increasing global warming. “Anthropogenic emissions targets in the climate change treaty need to account for these emissions or we risk overshooting the 2 degrees Celsius maximum warming target,” Professor Schaefer said.
    The findings are buttressed by other research in the air and on the ground in the Arctic.
    A NASA expedition in Alaska is measuring the methane and carbon dioxide filtering out of the thawing permafrost as frozen organic matter warms up and begins to decay. ”We’re finding very, very interesting changes, particularly in terms of methane concentrations,” the expedition’s principal investigator, Charles Miller, told Fairfax Media.
    ”We’re seeing biological activity in various places in Alaska that’s much more active than I would have expected, and also much more variable from place to place. There are changes as much as 10 to 12 parts per million for CO2 – so that’s telling us that the local biology is doing something like five or six years’ worth of change in the space of a few hundred metres.”
    Researchers at the University of Alaska agreed it was now clear a massive thaw was under way.
    The extra emissions are not accounted for in the Kyoto Protocol agreement that some nations, including Australia, are using as a guide for their greenhouse gas cuts.
    ”It’s a significant problem in the carbon budget,” said Pep Canadell, a CSIRO scientist and executive director of the Global Carbon Project. He calculated, using data in Professor Schaefer’s report, that the extra greenhouse gases would cost an extra $35 billion to abate if they were valued under the federal government’s $23-per-tonne carbon price.
    UN Environment Program executive director Achim Steiner called on nations to cut fossil fuel emissions faster and start accounting for permafrost emissions.

    Read more:

    Skippy… better call my broker, accountant and insurance agents to make sure I’m positioned properly.

    1. ambrit

      Dear skippy;
      After Katrina, we saw the writing on the wall and moved inland to above the 60 meter full thaw sea level. I don’t know much about the geology of where you live, but, head for the hills. (Positioning indeed!)

        1. Susan the other

          Did you mean 60 meters or 60 feet? Anybody else notice the projected inundation from sea level rise on either the Nova or History Channel doc about global warming? It briefly showed what would happen across the globe and I was surprised to see Africa almost completely underwater, kind of swamp-like with islands surrounded by water. I didn’t realize Africa was so vulnerable.

      1. cris kennedy

        Or….. you Sandy “victims,” you Katrina “victims” could have just heeded the words of Jesus a long time ago:

        Mat 7:24-27 (NIV) “Therefore everyone who hears these words of
        a great crash.”

        Now somebody has to bail you out (the federal government) when you ought to be ashamed and just take your lumps. Otherwise, how will you ever learn??

        1. ambrit

          Dear cris;
          Well now, the Good Lord aside, much of the devastation was due to bad advice given by the so called ‘wise men’ of our society. Where we lived took 19.5 feet above high tide level while being officially declared, for insurance purposes no less, as Flood Zone C. That C meant that we weren’t expected to get any significant flooding but once in a very long while. We weren’t even expected to get flood insurance for mortgage purposes. One of the hidden purposes for the rebuilding grants, and we got one, was to speed up a population shift to the interior. All sorts of new obstacles to living close to the coast have been put in place since that hurricane. We now live inland, at roughly 60 metres elevation above sea level. That 60 metre elevation is the best approximation of the coastline after a full meltdown of ice and permafrost occurs. This was the Mississippi Gulf Coast. As to who or what was responsible for the fiasco in New Orleans, do your own research.

    2. Eclair

      Ah, Skippy. The machinations of the global super-rich to kick and claw and haul themselves to the safety of the mountain peaks, dragging with them all the glittering detritus of our capitalist society, are, in turn, laughable, pathetic and horrific.

      They are trying to escape the rising oceans, which will inundate the world’s financial centers, and the drought-blasted plains, formerly the planet’s bread-baskets and rice-bowls. Only the wealthy will be able to afford increasingly expensive carbon-based energy sources.

      Their safety depends on keeping the majority of this world’s over-populated masses in happy denial. Thank-you, Fox News.

      Eventually, the rest of us will be left, trying to migrate from flooded villages, dusty farm towns and ruined industrial cities to … where? Someplace where we will be shot because we’re the wrong color or believe in a different god?

      As Gail Tverberg writes, there are too many people on a limited planet with finite resources.

      We’re still playing the game using the set of rules that worked when there were many fewer players, the forests stretched over the horizon and the seas teemed with fishes. We need a new set of rules.

      1. Hypothetical_Taxpayer

        Bet the prices of Manhattan apartments above the 18th floor go way up and we start to see marlin fishing poles bolted to the balconies. Yacht tie-ups too. Nothing the Masters of the Universe can’t handle!

    3. wbgonne

      There is a cliff alright but it has nothing to do with fiscal fantasies. It is a real physical cliff when the heat balance of the planet gets knocked irreversibly out-of-whack. We are there now and these wise stewards of the future, so fretted by the possibility of future debt, are blithely blind to the calamity they (we) are visiting upon future generations.

      Funny that.

      1. jrs

        Indeed, in the 3rd party debates it was mentioned the climate cliff is more real than the fiscal cliff. Duh. All who didn’t now weep and regret not having voted for Jill Stein.

        1. cris kennedy

          We’re already over he fiscal cliff (16 Trillion$), so why wouldn’t we already be over the anthropogenic emissions cliff? Global warming is irreversible, so let’s just give up the whole idea of trying to fix it……..


          maybe none of these “cliffs” exist at all……

          C’mon all you who insist on being left or right. You know you can’t have one “cliff” without the other. And you’re the ones yelling that no one is doing anything about your “cliff” issue. You should all just put a sock in it. It’s hopeless.

      2. ambrit

        Dear wbgonne;
        Funny that, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that those pesky dinosaurs thrived for some 200 million years in a climate some ten to twenty degrees hotter than today. It took a big comet to wipe them out.

    1. Synopticist


      True dat.

      1. jrs

        So right-wing ex-Republicans have now got the memo. So the only question is how long until the Obama fans join the reality based community and recognize that yes Obama is a right-winger. I shouldn’t hold my breath I guess, reality may never reach some distant lands.

        1. ScottS

          Since the election, I’ve come to realize that we are looking at another left-right swap. Democrats are the new conservative, status-quo party. Republicans have no rallying cry anymore, other than overt racism — which doesn’t seem like a long-term winner due to “demographic changes” (cf Bill O’Reilly’s death of “Traditional America”).

          Republicans still like to win, and a third party can’t gear up the party machinery like a legacy party. Having painted themselves into the right-wing corner, Republicans will be the new Progressive party. Again.

          Don’t believe that Tea Partiers will make loyal progressives? Why not? They are populist and eat cognitive dissonance for breakfast. Add a dose of MMT (that government spending is private saving) and they will rally to whatever progressive cause the Republican leaders cook up to attract disaffected Democrats.

          The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and frankly the overtly pro 1% squeaking hasn’t worked recently for Republicans. The Tea Partiers where the only recent Republican success, and mainly that was on their anti-bailout anti-Fed inertia from the early days of the Tea Party.

          So watch for Republicans to start doing their impression of all Democrats since LBJ — promising labor and identity groups the sun and the moon and the stars and walking it all back after election day.

    2. JTFaraday

      Good article–and look, the triangulating Dick Morris is a “right-wing pundit” now:


    1. Kurt Sperry

      When does deliberate prosecutorial malfeasance cross over into criminal complicity after the fact? That seems to me to be one of defining questions hanging in the air unanswered over the Obama era.

  4. Synopticist

    Wow, all those empty Chinese cities and unlived in apartments. It’s not new news, but it’s still mindboggling, and worrying when you compare Spain and Ireland.
    I know they have their own currency etc etc, but it’s hard to see it ending well.

    1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      The other choice would be to build ghost robots, I guess.

      How do you build ghost robots, instead of ghost cities?

      You make robots first, and then you kill them (only if it’s legal for robot owners to murder robots! So, check with your lawyer(s) first.)

  5. Jim Haygood

    From the Telegraph article:

    Under the new plan, Greece is forecast to reach a debt to GDP ratio of 175pc in 2016, shrinking to 124 pc in 2020.

    Talk about a fiscal cliff! Compared to what Greece has signed up for, the U.S. fiscal cliff looks about as harrowing as stepping off a curb.

    I can’t think of any example in history in which a country slashed its debt by 50% of GDP in four years. But we all know of a case where it was attempted: German war reparations after World War I, a burden which amounted to about 900% of Germany’s GDP. Maynard Keynes made his reputation with his prophetic The Economic Consequences of the Peace, saying that the hair-shirt reparations plan was a barmy load of bollocks.

    Of course, such absurd plans aren’t meant to be taken seriously. They are just the necessary fibs which enable fudging, an art at which Europe is the acknowledged master. Now they’ve started adding hashish to the fudge — ahhh, all better!

    1. Hypothetical_Taxpayer

      They’ve now made the transition from “kicking the can down the road” to “kicking the ‘optics’ down the road”.

      1. curlydan

        Oh, they’re still kicking those cans short and long.

        Short kick (there’s always an “if” in these deals):
        “But in a signal that the IMF expects the eurozone to deliver on the debt relief, Mrs Lagarde said that the Fund would not release its share of the Greek bailout until a Greek bond buyback transaction is successfully completed in the coming weeks.”

        Long kick:
        “In a decision that may return to haunt the EU and IMF, the eurozone has agreed to be responsible for a Greek debt to GDP ratio to be “substantially lower than 110pc” in 2022.” 2022? Ain’t nobody gonna be haunted by that deadline. Now that’s a kick.

    2. Susan the other

      I’ve been wondering about the source of Greek debt. Not sure the connection to the so-called housing bubble which is the cause claimed for Irish, Spanish, Cypriot, American, South African, etc. debt messes. The National Bank of Greece (?) has been clocked, forcing all the austerity – but China has stepped in; and last night a report from BBC that the EU came to an agreement with the IMF and wrote down 40Bn in Greek debt…so how much money got sent to Greece? None, as usual? And how is this helping?

      Then this Link today: VoxEu. Daniel Gros. About the need for a EU wide banking union like our federal system with the FDIC insurance fund behind it. The EU currently has no way to resolve anything. Except in this convoluted maze of bailouts. Gros said that international banks are also resilient and can pass their in-country losses as write offs against their gains in other countries…implying that they are stable institutions compared to nationally based banks. So my question is: Why are we bailing out our TBTFs? They are about as international as you can get. Why are we still bailing, foaming the runway and buying up 40Bn of toxic MBS per month? Gros says forget a fiscal union – it won’t be effective because it only taxes. What does he think is bailing out our banks. Fairy dust?

  6. jsmith

    Nice summary of the “fiscal cliff” fraud:

    Trillions in taxpayer funds have been handed over to the banks in government bailouts, and trillions more have been squandered on imperialist wars in the Middle East, Central Asia and north Africa. Corporate profits, CEO pay and the fortunes of the top 1 percent have never been greater.

    The official discourse on the “fiscal cliff” is based on a set of unstated assumptions, including:

    * The wealth of the ruling class is inviolable. The full burden of the debt piled up by the ruling elite must be imposed on the working class.

    * There can be no significant reduction in the hundreds of billions of dollars consumed every year by the massive military/intelligence complex.

    The unstated premises behind the “fiscal cliff” are bound up with the fundamental class interests that underlie the austerity drive. The deficit and debt are expressions of the crisis of American and world capitalism. The real issue is which class is to pay for this crisis—the working class through impoverishment and repression, or the ruling class through the abolition of its stranglehold over society’s productive forces.

    The working class must advance its own program. It must insist that all people have the right to the necessities of life: a secure and decent-paying job, economic security, food, housing, education and medical care. The realization of these rights, however, is not compatible with the continued rule of the corporate and financial elite.

  7. Cynthia

    The jail warden, Israel, says they’re not there yet on a truce. A truce? Between whom? The Israelis who are lobbing all manner of high tech weaponry on to the Palestinian people living in the largest open air concentration camp on earth. Or, the Palestinian inmates who are lobbing all manner of low tech weaponry, rocks and bottle rockets, at their jailers. At very minor risk to themselves, Israel is essentially shooting fish in a barrel. To broker a truce between Israel and Palestinians is like brokering a truce between Hitler and the concentration camp inmates; as if they were both on a level playing field.

    Bibi’s claim that “we are not there yet” on a truce is another way of saying we’re not done exterminating Palestinians.

    1. Susan the other

      Just a thought – the Palestinians think the Israelis poisoned Arafat. We won’t know if it was polonium for 4 more months, in order to measure the half-life of synthetic polonium. So…. how did Mubarak die? He was pronounced dead at least 3 times; no explanation of his strange illness, etc. Are they going to dig him up too?

    1. cris kennedy

      This event is a little above this thread. Don’t expect many intelligent comments or recognition of the significance of this.

  8. wbgonne

    I love David Dayen at FDL. While I sometimes think he’s a bit naive about what’s really happening in American politics today, he does appear to be tuning in to reality. DDay writes today:

    “Now, as it happens, returning the estate tax to Clinton levels would raise a fair chunk of money. But to Max Baucus and frankly most of Washington, it’s more important to protect rich inheritors and exacerbate inequality and advance the new American aristocracy than it is to reduce the deficit. In fact, nobody cares about the deficit as much as they do protecting the wealthy.”

    “I pretty much don’t buy that fiscal slope talks are “heating up,” but I do know this: the overriding goal of the top levels of the Democratic Party at this point is to ignore their base in service to a deal. I’m not sure it even matters what that deal is, as long as they look more “responsible” than the other side.”

    And here is Plouffe, quoted by Dayen, confirming the game plan I outlined yesterday for the Great Betrayal:


    We are nearing the end of Act II of the Great Betrayal, which will be punctuated by Obama declaring (whatever the reality) that the GOP has agreed to “compromise” on taxes. Immediately after that, we move into Act III of the Great Betrayal, where Obama “reciprocates” the GOP’s “compromise” by offering up the social safety net and slaughtering the American People.

    BTW: who says that Rich People paying a fewer more points in income tax, yet still benefiting from historically low rates, is equivalent to slashing essential medical care and cutting money for food and shelter for Middle Class and Poor Americans?

    No. They are not equivalent. This is not “shared sacrifice.” This is a Great Betrayal.

      1. wbgonne

        “I sell one of my yachts, you sell one of your kidneys.”

        A great line. Unfortunately true.

        I just emailed my Congressman (Capuano) and Senator Kerry (Sen-elect Warren is incommunicado, though I called her office the day after the election). The pols’ websites and office staff are fully immersed in the “fiscal cliff” bullshit and clearly these turncoats are salivating for the Great Betrayal. Here is what I told Capuano and Kerry:

        If the Democrats cut the social safety net I will never vote for another Democrat as long as I live.

        It ain’t much but it’s all I got right now.

        1. wbgonne

          Or how about this for “shared sacrifice”?

          I refinance one of my yachts, you sell one of your kidneys.

  9. charles sereno

    My apology for not finding an appropriate link or comment. The WSJ has long been known for recruiting talented reporters. Here’s an amazing example from their report about demonstrations in Tahrir Square today –

    “Despite the well-worn revolutionary chants, the secularists gathered in Tahrir Square included the ranks of Egypt’s well-heeled, who rarely join mass demonstrations.

    A group of women standing on a sidewalk made fun of one of their own, saying she was a “designer label society lady” who had come to Tahrir for the first time ever.

    Their presence brought a party-like mood to the protests. Many women affixed to their designer handbags stickers in the shape of a CD titled “Your Constitution is False, False!” portraying a beloved popular singer, Shadia.

    “We are in a mess, Egypt is being smashed, we want a strong Egypt that moves forward and not go 15 centuries backward,” said one of the women, tour operator Randa Bassil.

    A half dozen turbaned independent clerics took to a stage set up in the square to assail what they said was the extremist and intolerant version of Islam embraced by the Brotherhood and their Salafist allies in government.

    Other groups congregated in a makeshift open air cafe of plastic chairs and tables sipping tea and eating grilled corn on the cob and sandwiches. Nearby vendors behind a cart marked “revolution juice” did brisk business selling freshly squeezed orange juice.”

    1. jsmith

      So the right-wing WSJ is reporting that people in a country that just had a leader that was a stooge to the U.S and which now has a leader that is a stooge to the U.S. with another stooge to the U.S. (ElBaradei) waiting in the wings are unhappy.


      Here’s ElBaradei in June telling the world that Egypt is not ready for democratic elections especially ones involving Morsi et al.

      “According to El Baradei, Egypt needs the government of the national salvation that will implement the tasks of the 2011 revolution, which are the provision of Egyptians with food, guarantees of freedom and the establishment of the social justice.

      Current conditions in the country are not suitable to hold the presidential election as a new constitution should be adopted at first to comply with the tasks set by the revolution, El Baradei added.”

      Gee, and who would be garnering all the recent Western press calling Morsi “Pharoah” etc?

      Why, that would be ElBaradei

      And who is even a bigger US stooge than Morsi?

      Yes, that’s right, ELBaradei, who is affliated with the International Crisis Group.

      Either way the people of Egypt are going to lose much like their American counterparts just did.

      1. charles sereno

        Thanks for noticing the real world. Too bad the new “carny” operators (now well-paid) are still gathering suckers. Egypt is still one of the most important centers in the Mideast. “Rule of law!” “Rule of law!” Yes indeedy. The Judges are right. Almost Jeffersonian. OK, he too might’ve had money and a few well-treated slaves. You needs to keep a proper balance in these hard times.

  10. Susan the other

    An RNA flu vaccine that is a lifetime vaccine? The germans have come up with an interesting approach. RNA is safe because it can’t be spliced into the human genome. This genome thing has always been a problem when dealing with the design of cancer vaccines, if memory serves me. Do I sense a breakthrough in cancer vaccines? Or is this old news?

  11. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

    Carney’s eco-warrior wife and her opal necklace.

    I think if he or she personally mined the opal and made the necklane, it is still eco-responsible.

    1. Valissa

      The traveling eco-warrior

      The corporate eco-warrior, part 1

      The corporate eco-warrior, part 2

      The corporate eco-warrior, part 3

      The eco-war in the home front

  12. MyLessThanPrimeBeef


    Hmmm…then it goes both ways then. If you worry about losing your inheritance doing that, then your parents should worry about any inheritance tax that will make you worry-free.

  13. Hugh

    Not a Gensler fan. I thought Lew had the inside track located as he is in the White House. It seems to me both Canada and Australia have pretty significant housing bubbles going on which could pop! at any time.

    It’s anecdotal but most of the home remodeling/flipping shows on cable seem to come out of Canada. I guess most of the American ones died with the bubble here. I wonder too how many of the shows will be around when the Canadian real estate market goes splat or how many of the homeowners highlighted will be able to hold on to their homes.

  14. Valissa

    Toilet Theme Park: World’s First Toilet Park Opens In South Korea [article & video]

    The latest in bigfoot news… Scientist claims to have sequenced ‘Bigfoot’ DNA


    Guiness World Records 2013
    This includes the “Highest flame blown by a fire breather” and, for all you sports fans, the “Most slam dunks by a parrot in one minute” and “Heaviest weight lifted by eye sockets.” Also included are the world’s “Tallest Cat” (now deceased) and the “Tallest Living Dog.”

    1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      Do they include the world’s sexiest living onion?

      This one might require a strong stomach to read – the fastest human digestion time, from input to ‘output?’ Is there a Guiness World Record for that?

  15. Valissa

    Protesters strip down in Boehner’s office




    That’s a hilarious stunt, but not sure this kind of thing actually changes minds on issues. btw, when speaking I always pronounce his name as ‘Boner’… because he’s just that kind of guy.

  16. ohmyheck

    Funny!….but not. “Sensitive documents found in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade confetti”






    1. Valissa

      Recycling gone wild! I wonder who has the the contract for hauling away the NYPD’s shredded papers.

    2. Ms G

      The Nassau County Police’s talents run primarily towards stopping drivers who look like they don’t live in Nassau County (while wearing double-reflector sunglasses like Texas State Troopers.) Enough said.

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