Tag Archive: Story of the Year

Oil prices suddenly go into freefall despite chaos in the world of oil producers.  

In a year predicated with problems afflicting all of the oil producers of the world, oil prices plummet.  The last time I saw mark downs of this kind. I was being offered vinyl record albums at half their normal values one year before they became obsolete.

US Republican Party brinksmanship brinks the world to brink of yet another financial meltdown.

Unable to defeat the US Democratic Party’s Health Care legislation democratically or legally, the Republican Party decides extortion might be the answer.  They shut the US government machine down and send all federal civil servants home without pay for 16 days (and nudge the world to brink of economic collapse).  Everyone is now back to normal which in government-speak means nobody agreed to anything, nothing gets done and the problem will be deferred in the hope that it will take care of itself.  Stay tuned for part douche of this cliff-hanger when it comes around again in February of 2014.   Even if those crazy Republicans still have a leg to stand on by then, legs won’t help if they continue to shoot themselves in the foot.  Regardless, they will have a health plan to staunch those wounds.   Disclaimer:  Although some animals might have been affected by the closure of the Washington National Zoo (the real one, not Congress), I can assure you that no congressmen lost any salary as a result of this story.

Their calendar was not as good as Mayan

The world did not end on December 21, 2012.

Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan

The magnitude 9.0 earthquake that occurred off the coast of Japan on Friday, 11 March 2011 was the most powerful earthquake ever to have hit Japan. The earthquake triggered powerful tsunami waves that reached heights of up to 40.5 metres (133 ft) and traveled as far as 10 km (6 mi) inland. The earthquake moved Honshu 2.4 m (8 ft) east and shifted the Earth on its axis by estimates of between 10 cm (4 in) and 25 cm (10 in).

The Death toll sits at 15,844 deaths, 5,890 injured and 3,451 people missing as well as over 125,000 buildings damaged or destroyed including the ongoing meltdowns at three reactors in the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant complex. The World Bank estimated the total economic cost at US$235 billion, making it the most expensive natural disaster in world history.

“China scores a TKO in Tokyo”

The Japanese seized the crew of a Chinese fishing boat that rammed two Japanese coast guard vessels on Sept 7.  The dispute escalated but although Japan appeared willing to challenge the brunt of China’s military might, they quickly backed down when they realized that,  when it came to the actual fight,  China meant “business.”  When China rolled out its weapons of mass production and threatened to cut off their supply of dysprosium, the Japanese surrendered outright. Dysprosium is the lifeblood of Japan’s vaunted high-tech industries.  It is used in everything from iPhone screens to the electric motor of the Toyota Prius. China produces 93 per cent of the world’s supply.  Although no shots were fired and no-one got hurt, I think we can safely score this one a Technical Knock Out in favour of the Chinese (and for Japan a technical knockout is tantamount to failure of the most heinous proportion).   More details (a.k.a. the facts) are available here.

U.S. Congress slaps 90% Tax on bailout bonuses

After the CEO of troubled Insurance Giant AIG responded to public outrage and a U.S. Congressional Hearing with little more than a shrug and the assurance that he would do his best to encourage his executives to give back half of their $165 million in bonus money, it took Congress just 40 minutes to vote decisively in favour of imposing a 90% tax on the millions of dollars in employee bonuses paid by AIG and any other companies that were bailed out by the American taxpayer.  In a statement issued by the White House, President Obama said the House vote “rightly reflects the outrage that so many feel over the lavish bonuses that AIG provided its employees at the expense of the taxpayers who have kept this failed company afloat.”  AIG received $182.5 billion in federal bailout money and is now 80 per cent government-owned.

$700,000,000,000 (a.k.a. $700 Billion and/or the new “$1.44 day” version of public teat bailouts)  

The US Congress bails out their banks to the tune of $700 billion (plus what was previously spent on Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac). Across the pond, the U.K. announces a $700 Billion dollar bailout of their own for British bankers.  Talk about your get out of _j^bail free.  To put $700 billion into perspective, it is estimated that the US has spent approximately $700 billion on their war  liberation investiture of Iraq, since it commenced in 2002.  It is also $100 Billion more than the entire annual budget for all US social programs. In Canadian dollars, $700 Billion is the approximate total value of Canadian investments in Registered Retirement Savings Plans (or what they used to be worth before they went kerplunk courtesy of the fine mess our bankers got us into).

Expert Analysis: The 700 billion dollar figure has been selected, not based upon a Nobel Prize winning can’t miss formula, but more along the lines off its being the biggest number that can be pitched without being associated with the dreaded and probably more realistic Trillion dollar word – i.e. 750 Billion would become ¾ of a trillion dollars and any thing over that would be dubbed close to a Trillion – hence $700 billion. [Okay, I’ll admit that was actually my analysis; however, given that the experts got us into the predicament in the first place, perhaps that’s for the better.]

Chinese missile test prompts concerns

China opened the year with a very big bang on January 11, when they fired a ballistic missile that blasted one of their old weather satellites out of orbit more than 800 kilometers above the Earth.  The Chinese satellite was about the same distance from Earth as U.S. spy satellites.  The U.S. has been able to knock out satellites with missiles since the mid-1980s. The only U.S. test was conducted on Oct. 13, 1985. Later that year, the U.S. government implemented a ban on testing anti-satellite weapons.

Ancient Ice Shelf Breaks Free from Canadian Arctic  by: Associated Press    29 December 2006

A giant ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields snapped free from Canada’s Arctic.  The Ayles Ice Shelf, roughly 66 square kilometers (41 square miles) in area, was one of six major ice shelves remaining in Canada’s Arctic.  The collapse was so powerful that earthquake monitors 250 kilometers (155 miles) away picked up tremors from it.  “It is consistent with climate change,” Vincent said, adding that the remaining ice shelves are 90 percent smaller than when they were first discovered in 1906.

(Hurting) Headitor’s note: The event actually occurred in 2005 but the story did not “break” until late in December 2006 – which is in itself something of a story, if not “the” story of how stories that don’t involve impotent Hollywood gossip or inane political bickering rank in our news agencies’ perception of what constitutes news. 

In a related story, our Canadian Prime Minister gave the cold shoulder to an international gay and lesbian convention hosted by Canada in order to oversee exercises designed to bolster Canadian sovereignty over a Northwest Passage that many expect will become a busy and viable alternative to the Panama Canal in the not too distant future.  Later in the year, at a United Nations Climate Conference, his Environment Minister’s defense of a Made in Canada alternative to Kyoto that would deliver measurable results by the year 2050 received an icy reception.

“When Mother Nature’s Water Breaks…its Water, Water, Everywhere.”

Water and China were popping up everywhere in the news of 2005.  Heck China even ended the year by accidentally spilling Benzine into one of their major river systems and then six weeks later cadmium into another. Add that to the constant flow of western jobs to Chinese sweatshops and the flood of Chinese goods onto the global market and I guess I’ll compromise and call 2005 the International Year of the Flood.  The year opened with the aftermath of the Great Southeast Asian Tsunami, the skies opened in what would be the worst Hurricane season on record and the New Orleans dikes opened to flood the Big Easy.  Alberta and Manitoba experienced serious flooding, Central Europe spent several weeks underwater, a northern Ontario Indian village was airlifted from their tainted drinking water and my basement flooded again.  Meanwhile in Niger an estimated 2.5 million could die as a result of famine brought on by a lack of water.

In a related (emerging) story:  We got water and everyone wants it.  The following is an excerpt from a Nov. 24, 2005 MacLean’s magazine article entitled, “America is Thirsty “:

“…When the U.S. government surveyed the 50 states in 2003, more than two-thirds said they expect to face some sort of water shortage within the next 10 years. The situation is even worse in the developing world. The United Nations estimates that by 2025, two-thirds of the world population, or almost 5.5 billion people, will face chronic water shortages, and scientists expect global warming will only make things worse.

In this context, Canada is a country of unbelievable water wealth. This country boasts more than 20 per cent of the world’s fresh water, and the flow of rain, spring water and snowmelt that courses through our waterways represents seven per cent of the planet’s renewable water supply — all to satisfy the needs of just 0.5 per cent of the world’s population.

But as the global water crisis deepens over the next two decades, this country’s intransigence will prove increasingly difficult to maintain. Canada is offside even the UN’s position on the matter. In 1997, the UN said that international water markets and trade are likely the only way to alleviate chronic shortages worldwide, while discouraging water waste in areas where it’s plentiful. But it’s not just a humanitarian issue: there is an enormous commercial opportunity and economic imperative at stake. If Canada insists on opting out of international water trade, that decision will almost surely do severe damage to the country’s economy and standard of living.

Dr. Isabel Al-Assar, an international trade expert based at the University of Dundee, Scotland said, “Water will become like oil one day, I have no doubt about it.”   If Al-Assar is right, then Canada, through a miraculous stroke of lucky geography, is sitting on a liquid gold mine. Pinpointing exactly how much Canada could reap by selling fresh water depends heavily on a long list of questions: what price would buyers be willing to pay? How would it be transported? How much could be safely withdrawn without damaging sensitive ecosystems? But in 2001, the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a Winnipeg-based think tank, constructed a theoretical business model showing that if Manitoba could sell 1.3 trillion gallons of water per year (roughly the amount that drains from provincial rivers into Hudson Bay in only 17 hours) at the same price charged for desalinated sea water in California, the province could reap annual profits of close to $4 billion. In 1992, the World Bank estimated that worldwide trade in water could be worth US$1 trillion within the next generation. Even the opponents of water trade acknowledge that much of that market could belong to Canada.”