Just when some thought it all over, in reality, the race had just begun.

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There we were, enjoying a calm afternoon, erasing the memories of a crappy first week of 2008, and AT&T’s CEO singlehandedly goes and clobbers the stock market. The economy’s so bad, he said, that consumers aren’t paying their phone bills. Two hours later, -238 on the DOW.

Six weeks ago, the market probably would have rallied on the news in the confused delusion that all the bad news must be out by now. But the mood now is markedly different. The bad news just keeps a’coming. For example, Countrywide got clobbered on rumors it’ll do a bk.

The recession is here. No more maybes about it.

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Bill Gross of giant bond management company PIMCO says losses on credit default swaps could reach $250 billion based on historical default rates.

To put that number in perspective, many Street estimates ascribe similar losses to subprime mortgages, a derivative category substantially distinct from CDS insurance.

With CDS, a bond issuer sells risk to the buyer who agrees to make good on defaults above a certain level in return for an income stream. They can’t call it insurance because only insurance companies can sell insurance, but that’s what it is. But insurance companies and banks are required to have cash reserves to meet black swan events, buyers of CDS are not. He calls this the shadow banking system, a huge, unregulated entity now filled with hidden icebergs of risk and lurking catastrophe.

“Buyers of protection” will be on the other “winning” side, but the point is that as capital gains and capital losses slosh from one side of the shadow system’s boat to the other, casualties and shipwrecks are the inevitable consequence.

This also spells, in his view, an end to the neocon style of capitalism.

Market based, regulation-lite American style capitalism, seemingly so ascendant after the dot.com madness nearly a decade ago, has met its match with the subprimes and the poorly structured and supervised derivative conduits of today’s markets.

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Archipelagos of artificial islands [could] produce electricity, clean water and even food in the belt of warm water that passes from the Caribbean across to the south China Sea, the Indian Ocean and west Africa.

They would produce energy from ocean thermal currents, wave power, and solar, would have housing for the crews and be mostly self-sustaining, as food could be grown too. Power would be transferred to where it was needed.

50,000 of them could provide energy for the planet, designers say, and building them would be the equivalent of the WWII mobilization effort, a huge undertaking but certainly doable.

Will this idea work? Too soon to tell, but we are seeing more and more inventive, ingenious ideas like this. Certainly some of them will work, and will provide clean, renewable energy in mass quantities in the near future.

Article. PDF.

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An anti-Zionist speaker who is also clearly anti-Semitic has been forced to cancel a speech in Britain after pressure from Left groups.

From Another Green World

Criticism of Israel is one thing, anti-semitism is quite another.

So I am glad to see that Gilad Atzmon who seems to have anti-semitic views is not going to be airing them in Brighton.

Socialist Unity has more, including a, ah, lively comments section and links to this excellent piece from local newspaper, the Brighton Argus.

Those who campaign for the rights of Palestinians are rightly incensed by the frequency with which they are falsely accused of “anti-semitism”. They point out that criticism of the actions of the Israeli government and the Zionists who sustain and support it is not anti-semitic.

However, the fact that false allegations of anti-Semitism are often made against those who criticise the Israeli state does not mean that anti-Zionists are not also sometimes anti-semitic. Or that those who oppose Zionism can cease to be vigilant about the allies they choose to stand alongside.

Well put indeed.

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The Hartford Courant provides a useful comparison of the global warming policies of the presidential candidates.

Obama favors the most governmental spending for R&D, something I strongly favor too. His plan also seems the most comprehensive.

Romney and Paul are clueless, Thompson is an open denier.

Most surprising is McCain, “League of Conservation Voters calls him a ‘leader’ on climate issues.”

Most favor some form of cap-and-trade, which might sound like a solution, but is unworkable because it’s voluntary, not worldwide, and has no way to enforce compliance. Simultaneously working towards creating new forms of renewable, clean energy while also working on ways to cut down on energy use with smarter technology and conservation measures is a much better way to go.

This is also the only way that rapidly industrializing countries like China and India will get interested. Don’t preach to them they must be green when we aren’t. Instead, show them how clean tech will save them money and energy.

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This is the Vernon C. Bain floating prison barge, still in use in New York City. Subtopia has another of their trademark long and fascinating articles, this one on floating prisons of all types. Their prose can be positively hypnotic, while their focus is “military urbanism” as it relates to architecture.

And so, what shores have we moored these futuristic immigration prisons on? What dark and contentious legal waters have we cast the management of untried terrorist suspects and unsorted global refugees to, either inside the bowels of some classified naval destroyer, or perhaps packed inside the cargo spaces of the greatest floating prisons of all time – the CIA’s unmarked 747?

Being imprisoned either on a boat or in a plane would be scarier than being in regular prisons. Escape of course, would be impossible, plus there would be a feeling of being dissociated from everything and utterly helpless.

Then there’s Old Newgate Prison in Connecticut which was operational from 1773-1827. It was an abandoned copper mine. Prisoners were marched to bottom of it at night and the openings were then sealed. Even back then it was thought to be inhumane. While not a floating prison, it seems equally as hideous - and not for the claustrophobic.

Will there come a day when the world’s oceans are dotted with new hegemonic naval networks of prison floatillas patrolling the human smuggler routes of lost seas, scooping up thousands of refugees like schools of fish in a great surveillance net.

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