XIAM007

Making Unique Observations in a Very Cluttered World

Friday 19 July 2013

The U.S. Government Will Borrow Close To 4 Trillion Dollars This Year

The U.S. Government Will Borrow Close To 4 Trillion Dollars This Year - 



When you add maturing debt to the new debt that the federal government is accumulating, the total is quite eye catching.  You see, the truth is that the U.S. government must not only borrow enough money to fund government spending for this year, it must also "roll over" existing debt that has reached maturity.  Of course the government never actually pays any of that debt off.  Instead, it essentially takes out new debts to cover the old ones.  So the U.S. government is actually borrowing far more money each year than most Americans realize.  For fiscal year 2013, the U.S. budget deficit will be about $845 billion, but on top of that the government will also have to borrow about 3 trillion dollars to pay off old debt that is maturing.  Overall, the U.S. government will borrow close to 4 trillion dollars this year, and that number will likely be even higher next year.  That is not going to cause a crisis as long as interest rates stay super low, but if interest rates begin to rise substantially, the game will change dramatically.

When the government borrows money, it has to pay it back someday.  Back in the old days, the federal government used to issue lots of debt that would not mature for a very long time.  But in recent years things have been very different...

In order to fund the government, the Treasury Department periodically auctions Treasury securities with various maturities ranging from 30-day Treasury bills to 30-year Treasury bonds, with 2-3-5-7-year and 10-year Treasury notes in between. It used to be that the bulk of Treasury borrowing was done in the longer-term instruments with maturities of at least 10 years.

In more recent years, however, this trend has shifted more toward shorter-term Treasury securities. There are pros and cons to both strategies. Generally speaking, the shorter maturities are considered more risky since short-term interest rates can vary frequently. Shorter-term maturities obviously have to be rolled over much more often. That raises the risk that there might not be enough buyers when the government needs them.

At this point, the average maturity of outstanding government debt is only 65 months, and only about 10 percent of all Treasury debt matures outside of a decade.

So what does that mean?

It means that the federal government must constantly roll over massive amounts of debt.  Once again, this is not too much of a problem as long as interest rates stay super low, but as John Cochrane pointed out, if rates start rising back to "normal" levels things could get quite hairy very quickly...

Here’s the nightmare scenario: Suppose that four years from now, interest rates rise 5 percent, i.e. back to normal, and the US has $20 trillion outstanding. Interest costs alone will rise $1 trillion (5% of $20 trillion) – doubling already unsustainable deficits! This is what happened to Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Don’t think it can’t happen to us. It’s even more likely, because fear of inflation – which did not hit them, since they are on the Euro – can hit us.

Sadly, those running things appears to be quite clueless.  For example, retiring U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann recently asked Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke why the national debt has remained frozen in place for 56 straight days even though we have been borrowing lots of money.  Bernanke seemed to have no idea how to answer that question...

As Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified before the House Financial Services Committee Wednesday, Bachmann asked how there could be no increase reported in the total debt when the government is racking up about $4 billion a day in new debt.

“After nearly 10 years as the head of the Federal Reserve, Chairman Bernanke could not answer my question today in Financial Services Committee,” Bachmann told WND.

She wondered if there’s a political motive.

“I asked whether the Treasury Department was cooking the federal government’s books as it was reported that the Feds debt balance sheet remained at $16,699,396,000,000 for 56 days straight, presumably so the Treasury Department wouldn’t officially register that once again the Congress had exceeded its legal borrowing limits.”

For the moment, the federal government is able to recklessly borrow and spend money and investors are rewarding this behavior with super low interest rates.

Unfortunately, this state of affairs is completely and totally unsustainable.  At some point global financial markets will begin to behave rationally, and when that happens it is going to mean a tremendous amount of pain for the United States.

Over the past decade, the U.S. government has added more than 11 trillion dollars to the national debt at a time when the U.S. economy has been steadily declining.  Anyone that thinks that we can continue to pile up more debt like this indefinitely does not know what they are talking about.

The following are some more statistics about the U.S. national debt for you to consider...

-Back in 1980, the U.S. national debt was less than one trillion dollars.  Today, it is rapidly approaching 17 trillion dollars.

-During Obama's first term, the federal government accumulated more debt than it did under the first 42 U.S presidents combined.

-The U.S. national debt is now more than 23 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became president.

-If you started paying off just the new debt that the U.S. has accumulated during the Obama administration at the rate of one dollar per second, it would take more than 184,000 years to pay it off.

-If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.

-If you were alive when Jesus Christ was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.

-Some suggest that "taxing the rich" is the answer.  Well, if Bill Gates gave every single penny of his entire fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.

-If the federal government used GAAP accounting standards like publicly traded corporations do, the real federal budget deficit for 2011 would have been 5 trillion dollars instead of 1.3 trillion dollars.

-The United States already has more government debt per capita than Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or Spain does.

-At this point, the United States government is responsible for more than a third of all the government debt in the entire world.

-The amount of U.S. government debt held by foreigners is about 5 times larger than it was just a decade ago.

-The U.S. national debt is now more than 37 times larger than it was when Richard Nixon took us off the gold standard.

-The U.S. national debt is now more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was first created.

-Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff is warning that the U.S. government is facing a gigantic tsunami of unfunded liabilities in the coming years that we are counting on our children and our grandchildren to pay.  Kotlikoff speaks of a "fiscal gap" which he defines as "the present value difference between projected future spending and revenue".  His calculations have led him to the conclusion that the federal government is facing a fiscal gap of 222 trillion dollars in the years ahead.

For the moment everything is fine because interest rates are incredibly low and the mockers in the "deficits don't matter" fan club are having a field day.

But what is going to happen when interest rates return to rational levels?

How will the U.S. government be able to borrow the trillions of dollars that it needs to borrow every single year?

That is why it is so important to watch interest rates.  When they start skyrocketing, big trouble is ahead.

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Noises in woman's head were from Flesh-Eating Maggots -


Noises in woman's head were from Flesh-Eating Maggots - 



A British woman returned from a holiday in Peru hearing scratching noises inside her head to be told she was being attacked by flesh-eating maggots living inside her ear.

Rochelle Harris, 27, said she remembered dislodging a fly from her ear while in Peru but thought nothing more of it until she started getting headaches and pains down one side of her face and woke up in Britain one morning with liquid on her pillow.

Thinking she had a routine ear infection caused by a mosquito bite, she sought medical treatment at the Royal Derby Hospital in northern England, where a consultant noticed maggots in a small hole in her ear-canal.

"I was very scared. Were they in my brain?" said Harris, recounting her ordeal in a new Discovery Channel documentary series called "Bugs, Bites and Parasites" to be aired in the UK from July 21.

Doctors tried first to flush the maggots out of the ear using olive oil.

"It was the longest few hours that I have ever had to wait... I could still feel them and hear them and knowing what those scratching sounds were, and knowing what that wriggling feeling was, that just made it all the worse," she said.

When flushing the maggots out failed, the medics resorted to surgery and found a "writhing mass of maggots" within her ear, raising concern they could eat into her brain.

The surgery removed a family of eight maggots. Analysis found that a New World Army Screw Worm fly had laid eggs inside Harris's ear.

"I'm not so squeamish around those kinds of bugs now. How can I be? They've been in my ear!" Harris said.

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STUDY: Mothers of obese children more likely to be depressed... -


STUDY: Mothers of obese children more likely to be depressed... -



The findings of a new study indicate a possible relationship between mothers who suffer from symptoms of depression and children who are obese, especially in low-income families living in urban areas.

The study, titled “Maternal Depressive Symptoms and Child Obesity in Low-Income Urban Families,” was conducted by researchers from the Department of Pediatrics and the Montefiore Medical Center at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

“Maternal depressive symptoms are associated with child overweight and obese status and with several obesity-promoting practices,” a published summary of the study states. “These results support the need for maternal depression screening in pediatric obesity prevention programs.”

Information was collected by conducting cross-sectional surveys with mothers of children around 5 years of age who were receiving pediatric care.

“We used regression analyses to examine the relationship between maternal depressive symptoms … and … child weight status, … obesity-promoting feeding practices, including mealtime practices and feeding styles and … activity-related behaviors, including sleep time, screen time, and outdoor playtime,” the study further explained.

A total of 401 sets of mothers and children were involved in the study. Of those, a reported 23.4 percent reported depressive symptoms. Researchers were then able to determine that mothers who said they experienced those symptoms were more likely to have children with weight issues than mothers who did not.

The discrepancy in weight was said to be caused by depressive mothers having a lower likelihood of setting dietary limits and playing outdoors with their children while also setting poor examples for eating habits.

Researchers additionally noted in the study, “Further research should explore how to incorporate needed mental health support.”

There may be hope, however, at least in regards to obesity trends for young children in poor urban areas – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta has found that obesity rates among preschool children from low-income families is declining.

“Obesity and extreme obesity among U.S. low-income, preschool-aged children went down for the first time in recent years, according to CDC’s first national study,” the CDC official website states. “From 2003 through 2010, the prevalence of obesity decreased slightly from 15.21 percent to 14.94 percent. Similarly, the prevalence of extreme obesity decreased from 2.22 percent to 2.07 percent.”

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Wired Teddy Bear monitors kids' heartbeat, body temp... -


Wired Teddy Bear monitors kids' heartbeat, body temp... - 



With Fitbits clipped to our pants, sleep-assistance apps recording our sleep patterns during the night, and sports sensors helping us exercise, we're all getting used to the quantified life our smart devices are creating. But Teddy the Guardian, from Croatia-based firm IDerma, takes the idea to a whole new level. This kid's plushie is filled with electronics and sensors designed to measure heart rate, blood pressure, and other important medical data.

Connected via Bluetooth, the bear reports a kid's vital signs to their parents' smartphones--and can also provide long-term data on background health stats to physicians when the child actually is ill, to provide a good comparative data set.

Demonstrating that this is definitely an idea with (fluffy) legs, the bear has just received FDA approval for the medical tech inside it.

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Jumbo viruses hint at 'fourth domain' of life -

Jumbo viruses hint at 'fourth domain' of life  - 



The discovery of two new jumbo-sized viruses is blurring the lines between viral and cellular life and could point to the existence of a new type of life, scientists suggest. 
The two large viruses, detailed in this week's issue of the journal Science, have been dubbed "Pandoraviruses" because of the surprises they may hold for biologists, in reference to the mythical Greek figure who opened a box and released evil into the world.
The discovery of Pandoraviruses is an indication that our knowledge of Earth's microbial biodiversity is still incomplete, explained study coauthor Jean-Michel Claverie, a virologist at the French National Research Agency at Aix-Marseille University.
"Huge discoveries remain to be made at the most fundamental level that may change our present conception about the origin of life and its evolution," Claverie said.
Eugene Koonin, a computational evolutionary biologist at the National Center for Biotechnology Information in Bethesda, Md., who was not involved in the study, called the Pandoraviruses a "wonderful discovery," but not a complete surprise.
"In a certain sense, it's something that we saw coming, and it's wonderful that it has come," Koonin said.
A systematic search
Claverie's lab found one of the viruses, Pandoravirus salinus, in sediments collected off the coast of Chile.  The other, Pandoravirus dulcis, was lurking in mud in a freshwater pond near Melbourne, Australia.
'These viruses have more than 2,000 new genes coding for proteins and enzymes that do unknown things.'
- virologist and study coauthor Chantel Abergel
Both of the new viruses are so massive that they can be seen using a traditional light microscope. Their genomes are also super-sized: the genome of P. salinus is 1.91 million DNA bases long, while that of P. dulcis is 2.47 million DNA bases. For comparison, the size of the previous viral genome record holder, Megavirus chilensis, is 1.18 million bases.
M. chilensis is a marine relative of Mimiviruses, a class of large viruses that was first discovered more than a decade ago and forever changed scientists' conceptions of how large viruses could be.
After sequencing the first Mimivirus genome in 2010, Claverie and his team began a systematic search for even larger viruses. They found P. salinus in the same environment in Chile where M. chilensis was found.
The discovery of P. dulcis was more serendipitous, being the result of water sample Claverie took during a trip to Melbourne.
At first, the French scientists thought both viruses were the same. But after comparing the two genome sequences and their encoded proteins, they realized that the pair represented a new virus family, said Claverie.
What are they?
The team also conducted several experiments to confirm that Pandoraviruses were indeed viruses. Using light and electron microscopes, the scientists followed their newfound entities through a complete replication cycle. The gigantic entities met all three key criteria to be labeled viruses.
First, instead of splitting in two like typical bacterium or cells, the Pandoraviruses spawned hundreds of new copies in one cycle. Secondly, they both lacked the genes needed for energy production. Finally, they could not produce proteins without infecting single-celled organisms known as amoebas, which seem to be the Pandoraviruses' preferred hosts.
Further surprises awaited the team when they analyzed the Pandoraviruses' genomes. That of P. dulciscontained about 1,500 genes, while that of P. salinus contained more than 2,500 genes. A typical flu virus can have as few as 10 genes, and M. chilensis has only about 1,000 genes.
What's more, scientists don't know what most of the Pandoravirus genes do. There are "a few recognizable genes involved in DNA replication, and a few transcription-related genes. Not much else is recognizable," explained study co-first author Matthieu Legendre, who is also at CNRS.
The Pandoraviruses are also unlike other viruses in that they lack the gene for the capsid protein that typically forms the housing, or "capsid," of giant viruses.
The fourth domain
These irregularities raise interesting questions about the origins of Pandoraviruses, scientists say.
According to a theory preferred by Claverie and his team, the ancient ancestors of Pandoraviruses were once free-living cells that gradually lost most of their genes as they became parasites.
Some scientists think this hypothetical ancestral cell could have constituted a so-called "fourth domain" of life — that is, a previously unknown branch of life that is distinct from the accepted three domains: Bacteria; Archaea, another type of single-celled organism; and Eukaryotes, the domain that animals and plants belong to.
Practical applications
Claverie and his team are now on the hunt for other Pandoraviruses to unravel their evolutionary origins and better study their genes.
"These viruses have more than 2,000 new genes coding for proteins and enzymes that do unknown things, and participate in unknown metabolic pathways," explained virologist and study coauthor Chantel Abergel, who is also at CNRS.
"Elucidating their biochemical and regulatory functions might be of a tremendous interest for biotech and biomedical applications," she added.
The scientists have reason to believe that many more Pandoraviruses await discovery.
"The fact that two of them were found almost simultaneously from very distant locations either indicate that we were incredibly lucky," Claverie said, "or that they are not rare."


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'Comet of the century' nears Earth -

'Comet of the century' nears Earth - 

hubble-ison-photos-scale

About 10,000 years ago, Comet ISON left our solar system's distant shell, a region known as the Oort cloud, and began streaking toward the sun. This November, the icy wanderer will reach the climax of its journey, potentially providing a stunning skywatching show here on Earth.
Comet ISON was discovered just last September by two Russian amateur astronomers. Scientists have since recognized ISON as a possible "comet of the century," but to live up to its promise, it will have to survive its dangerous perihelion, or closest approach to the sun. 
ISON is what's known as a sungrazing comet. These suicidal objects have orbits that bring them within 850,000 miles of the sun, and scientists estimate that ISON's closest pass will be about 730,000 miles above the surface of Earth's star. [Photos of Comet ISON: A Potentially Great Comet]
Sometime this month or perhaps in August, ISON is set to cross what's called the frost line. At this boundary, which lies some 230 million to 280 million miles from the sun, our star's radiation will start taking its toll on the comet, driving off more of its water and making ISON appear brighter.
ISON's road will only get rockier from there. After the comet flies by Mars in October and then Mercury in mid-November, intensifying solar radiation will boil more material off ISON; pressure from solar particles could break the comet into pieces; tidal forces will create great gravitational stress; and one ill-timed solar storm could rip the comet's tail right off.
All eyes will be on ISON as it makes this perilous journey. The comet has already had its picture taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Swift spacecraft, and in the coming months, the agency has a slew of ISON observations planned for its solar telescopes in space and some instruments on the ground.
In September, NASA will even launch a comet-watching balloon almost 23 miles above Earth's surface to capture images of ISON with minimal interference from the atmosphere.
If the sun is merciful to ISON when it whips around the star on Nov. 28 (Thanksgiving Day), the comet could light up the sky for weeks. In the Northern Hemisphere, it could be visible in the morning near the east-southeast horizon in early December. Later in the month, and into early January, the comet could be visible all night, according to NASA.
Even if ISON fizzles, tracking the comet's path and reaction to solar forces could shed light on the makeup of the early solar system, scientists say.
Sungrazing comets like ISON sometimes plunge into parts of the sun's fiery atmosphere where no spacecraft can go. Researchers can learn about the sun itself by watching how the comet and its tail interact with the solar atmosphere.
For example, Comet Lovejoy passed just 87,000 miles above the solar surface in mid-December 2011. The strange wiggle of Lovejoy's tail as it dove through the sun's corona helped scientists map out the region's complex magnetic field.


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World's first mission to the Moon's South Pole announced -

World's first mission to the Moon's South Pole announced - 

Moon_071813.jpg

The world’s first mission to the South Pole of the Moon was announced Thursday, opening up the possibility that the public will be able to access images from the moon online.
The private enterprise mission, announced by the International Lunar Observatory Association and Moon Express, Inc., will be both scientific and commercial, and plans to deliver the International Lunar Observatory (ILO) aboard a Moon Express robotic lander. 
 The observatory is intended to establish a base for permanent astrophysical observations and a lunar commercial communications systems for researchers to utilize.
“We are very excited to announce that our second Moon mission will be to the lunar South Pole to deliver the International Lunar Observatory and to prospect for resources,” said Moon Express CEO Dr. Robert Richards.  “The mission will provide a historic landing in an unexplored region of the Moon that may harbor some of the greatest resource deposits in the solar system.”
If successful, the ILO will be the first private space telescope to operate from the lunar surface and be available to researchers, educators and the general public through the internet.
 It will allow them to access images from the surface of the Moon, and it is hoped that it will create a new model of “citizen science” public participation and international collaboration.


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Robert Seldon Lady, former CIA chief in Milan, was detained after he entered Panama - for 'extraordinary rendition' -

Robert Seldon Lady, former CIA chief in Milan, was detained after he entered Panama - for 'extraordinary rendition' - 



A former CIA base chief convicted in the 2003 abduction of a terror suspect from an Italian street has been detained in Panama after Italy requested his arrest in one of the most notorious episodes of the U.S. program known as extraordinary rendition, Italian and Panamanian officials said Thursday.

Robert Seldon Lady, the former CIA chief in Milan, was detained after he entered Panama and unsuccessfully tried to cross the border into Costa Rica, according to an Italian official familiar with Italy’s investigation of the rendition of Cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the case.

A Panamanian National Police official said Lady, 59, had been detained yesterday on the Costa Rica-Panama border. The official also spoke on condition of anonymity due to lack of authorization to discuss the matter.

The government of Panama, which maintains one of the region’s closest relationships with the U.S., was officially silent on the case. Security Minister Jose Raul Mulino told The Associated Press that he was unaware of Lady’s detention and the press office of the National Police — which works with Interpol, the international police agency — said it had no information. The CIA also declined to comment.

Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was abducted in February 2003 and transferred to U.S. military bases, first in Italy then Germany, before being flown to Egypt. He alleged he was tortured in Egypt before being released.

Italy conducted an aggressive investigation and charged a series of CIA and other U.S. government employees, despite objections from Washington, in a case that led to the first convictions of agents involved in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program

Lady was sentenced to nine years in prison by an Italian appeals court in Milan this after being tried in absentia. Two other Americans were also tried and convicted.

Lady, who was born in Honduras, left Italy early into the Italian investigation of the abduction. He also retired from the CIA. Interpol had issued a request for Lady’s arrest, reflecting Italy’s determination to get him back.

Italy and Panama have no extradition treaty, Italian diplomats said, but Panama would be free to send Lady to Italy if it wanted.

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