US bank CEOs get paid way more than in other countries

Greedy little thugs, aren’t they? But Obama hearts them and says, by golly, their bloated pay and bonuses are just fine with him, even if the government is bailing them out and shipping them billions as fast as it can.

Reuters graphic via The Big Picture

[...]

Climate change data used by IPCC can not be verified

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

Phil Jones, keeper of the records, has refused FOIA requests and it may well be his records are such a mess that [...]

Richard Whitney, head of NYSE in 30′s, went to prison

Richard Whitney leaves Sing-Sing

It was for embezzlement.

Richard Whitney was arrested and eventually pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to a term of five to ten years in Sing Sing prison. On April 12, 1938, six thousand people turned up at Grand Central Station to watch as a scion of the Wall Street Establishment [...]

Wales plans hydrogen fuel stations

The stations will be on M4 in Wales and will be part of a network reaching to London for fuel cell cars. Plus, the hydrogen will be created from renewable sources.

“If you build it, they will come.”

The next crisis: prepare for peak oil

From those wild-eyed tree huggers at the Wall Street Journal.

Catalina State Park, AZ

Ocotillo

Saguaro

Why oh why is Democratic ‘leadership’ so lame

Harry Reid stripped down a jobs bill that had bipartisan support because in his cunningness, he thinks this will help passage and ease “voter concerns about federal spending.”

The bill was $85 billion. Now it’s $15 billion and excludes provisions for unemployment insurance extension and subsidies for medical insurance. They’ve given trillions to the banksters [...]

Quants make it impossible for individual traders

How can the individual trader hope to succeed against programs trading thousands of times a second programmed by Ph.D’s? They can’t. Such quant trading increasingly dominates Wall Street now.

It’s inevitable that something outside their parameters will happen and they will all try to get out the door at the same time. They aren’t [...]

Tidal energy turbine goes 1000+ hours of operation

It is the first and only tidal current or wave energy system in the world to have achieved this milestone.

The 1.2MW tidal turbine, the largest megawatt scale grid-connected marine renewable energy system in the world, has so far delivered 800MWh into the National Grid with an average Capacity Factor of 66%.

They plan [...]

Western Union fined $94 million in money laundering probe

The fines are part of a four state settlement. Western Union acknowledged it had reason to know active money laundering was happening at several of its locations. The money was transferred from the US to Mexico.

A Phoenix-area businessman is charged in an 80-count state criminal indictment of running a money-laundering operation that processed tens [...]