Ted Auch

BOTE stands for Back-Of-The-Envelope and is a common phrase applied to macroscale or overly coarse calculations done kinda haphazardly. Well given this caveat I came across an article from The Telegraph (UK) titled “Detroit to Bulldoze Thousands of Homes in Fight for Survival”, which quoted the following statistic:

“Almost a third of the city’s 139 square miles is vacant or derelict, though its land area would comfortably fit Manhattan, San Francisco and Boston, cities with combined populations of three million.”

I thought it would interesting to apply some of my dissertation data to figuring out how much of Detroit’s CO2 footprint could potentially be offset if this land was reforested. So, here it goes step by step.

(33%*139 Sq Miles)=45.87 Sq Miles of vacant or derelict land

Convert to Hectares=45.87*259>11,880 Hectares

Hectares to Square Meters=11,880*10,000>118,803,229 Square Meters

Grams of Carbon per Square Meter Per Year (From my Thesis work we assume the average for Great Lakes forests is 10,849 g C m-2 yr-1)=118803229 Square Meters*10,849 g C yr-1>1,288,896,240,464 g C m-2 yr-1

Metric Tons Per Year=1,288,896,240,464 g C m-2 yr-1*0.000001>1,288,896 Metric Tons of C captured Per Year IF the 45.87 Sq Miles of vacant or derelict land was reforested!

NOW lets put this number in perspective relative to Detroit’s actual emissions.

If we assume Detroit’s population (For Now!) is 951,270 and residents of the city emit approximately 23.4 Tons of CO2 per person per year that comes out to 22,260,764.4 Tons of CO2 per year for the city of Detroit, which means……..

The figure calculated above for potential carbon captured by reforestation of vacant and derelict land (i.e., 1,288,896 Tons of CO2 per year) equals 5.80% of total city-wide emissions. This number while not jaw dropping is far from trivial and any efforts to implement such plans should be encouraged locally and nationally as 5.8% of anything at that scale adds up and would greatly increase the quality of life in Detroit. Similar projects are sprouting up in neighboring F lint, Michigan as well as places as far off as Chilibre, Panama. Likewise we have data on those areas as well and could do similar BOTEs in an effort to quantify the impact of reforestation, both above- and belowground.

We have an interesting love affair with shopping in this country and I thought it would be illustrative to quantify its influence on our land to capture carbon. First lets quickly look at how much we love shopping and how much our economy (and by association China, Japan, the EU, etc etc) depend on our insatiable appetite for stuff. It is true that we have come down off our Great Depression high of 83% Consumption as  a percent of GDP, but for the better part of the last 63 years we have maintained a relatively static 65% of GDP attributable to consumption.

However, this figure has risen substantially in the last 20 years from 62% in 1981 to 70.8% in 2009.

You might say well what does my local strip mall have to do with CO2? Well your local strip mall displaced some sort of native ecosystem that, up until the big trucks and earth-moving equipment came, was drawing down CO2 via photosynthesis and decomposition of biomass to produce soil carbon.

Well that has had a cumulative effect and I have attached a couple of graphs to demonstrate this phenomenon. Using Gross Leasable Area (GLA in sq feet) per person data back to 1990 we can calculate above- and belowground carbon displacement via shopping center expansion (Blue Line), which sums to about 218 Million Metric Tons between 1990 and 2009, which when subtracted from Total US CO2 Emissions gives us the inset in the figure below.

How you might ask does this relate in-terms of percentages? Well it turns out it is quite similar in magnitude to what I described for Detroit. If we assume – based on EIA assumptions – that Residential emissions is 6.65% of the story here in the US with respect to CO2 emissions than the above removal of native ecosystems for shopping centers translates to anywhere from 2.78 to 3.31% of Residential CO2 emissions across the entire US. However, if we had implemented the type of plain they are considering in Detroit across all fifty states beginning in 2005 we would have had the opportunity to “offset” 3.13% of our emissions per year as opposed to 2.85% between 1990 and 2004. You may say what is the big deal about 2.85 to 3.13%? Well when you consider we are measuring our fiscal and monetary peril here in the US with values like 3 to 12% of GDP and the fact that US GDP is expected to grow by 3.0% in 2010 v. 0.18, a decline of 1.83, and 2.53% in 2009, 2008, and 2007, respectively…Then the numbers I present here start to take on a whole new meaning. The harm inflicted by shopping centers – never mind the removal of capital and liquidity from local markets via large multinationals like Wal-Mart and Best Buy – is not just skin or in this case soil surface deep. It impacts the ability of communities and watersheds to withstand flooding, retain nutrients that would otherwise pollute reservoirs and aquifers, moderate temperature and moisture volatility, and propagate a sense of ownership among residents. The data back it up. Chalk another one up for BOTEs!

I just read an article at Project Syndicate by Heizo Takenaka former Minister of Economics, Minister of Financial Reform, and Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications under former LDP Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi; of Japan. Who cares you may ask? And you would be right for asking that….BUT the reason we should care is that if you replaced Japanese people and places with US people and places this article would read like a John Boehner or Mitch McConnell manifesto replete with the privatization, deregulation, reduced government spending, and lower taxes (See Friedman, M) mantra of these 2 esteemed leaders of the Republican party. This would be awesome and totally worth considering if it weren’t for 1 conveniently downplayed FACT….Mr. Takenaka’s party – prior to the current DPJ government that can’t get out of its own way with respect to broken promises – had had complete autonomy in Japan for the better part of 50 years. Likewise Messrs. Boehner and McConnell along with a moderate agenda going back to Gerald Ford have been running the show since the early seventies. Okay I know there was a brief hiccup by the name of Jimmy Carter, who decided the American people needed to hear certain truths that would prove hard to swallow. Well we canned his ass the next chance we got! The point is that these Monday morning quarterbacks are incapable of acknowledging their participation in the games to which they refer. Until they do this their rhetoric and bombastic critiques of current and future regimes will – in my humble but certain opinion – be comedic at best and counterproductive to the point of being obstructionist at worst. Do the current folks in office in Japan and the US and the soon to be Green administration in Columbia have problems? Sure lots of them and their growing by the day, but to say that the trouble a/o irresponsibility starts with them, while simultaneously ignoring their own malfeasance is the reason why I just can’t imagine why anyone would give such biased and myopic voices any type of local or global platform. Enough with the sectarian rhetoric!

The importance of GDP to economic growth is exceeded by the importance of CNP in nature

It all started with the discovery by American oceanographer Alfred C. Redfield (1890-1963) that the ratio of Carbon (C) to Nitrogen (N) to Phosphorus (P) (C:N:P) of free-floating marine phytoplankton (seston) throughout the world was quite static and reflected the differences of dissolved nutrients in associated waters. The Redfield Ratio as it is known today is 106:16:1 for C:N:P, which means that for every unit of phosphorus there are 16 units of P and 106 units of C. The importance of this discovery for biologists was equated to Avogadro’s number or the speed of light in a vacuum by some scientists according to Sterner & Elser’s book “Ecological Stoichiometry”. Redfield’s Ratio has since been proven an overly generalized depiction of aquatic C:N:P, with an average of 354.4:20.1:1 across all manner of aquatic phytoplankton (See Chart 1).

Out of this discovery grew a very specialized but extremely important discipline called Ecological Stoichiometry, which is essentially a bunch of balanced equations describing how C, N, and P are transferred and transformed in ecosystems. It is quite a revolutionary and at the same time elementary concept, with detractors noting that Ecological Stoichiometry is either too complicated to be understood or too simple to be true. Another way to look at it is that Ecological Stoichiometry gives scientists the opportunity to quantitatively attach elemental importance to the balance of energy and materials. The name stoichiometry comes from the Greek root stoicheion for element and metron meaning measure. Broadly speaking the field focuses on C, N, P, to some extent sulfur (S), and rarely hydrogen (H) and oxygen (O) or as scientists like to call them “The Big Six” for their ubiquity and import in all organic and some inorganic processes. Every constituent of this planet, whether living or dead, flora or fauna, above or belowground, land or sea has a unique stoichiometric ratio of these elements. Organisms must vigilantly maintain these ratios in order to survive, which is also the case for humans (homeostasis). In their book “The Natural Selection of the Chemical Elements: The Environment and Life’s Chemistry” Williams & Fraústo da Silva hypothesized that evolution from early to late prokaryotes, to unicellular eukaryotes, and eventually to complex multicellular eukaryotes was coupled with an increased affinity for homeostasis.

Homeostatic stoichiometry is the struggle to maintain a consistent internal chemistry, while an organism’s environment particularly the elemental makeup of its food fluctuates quite drastically. Some organisms – usually of the sedentary variety – display a flexible Ecological Stoichiometry. Their lack of mobility means they must capitalize on the resources available at any given point in time. Truly homeostatic creatures, whether they be ants (C:N:P = 4.8:12.0:1), snakes (C:N:P = 4.4:3.7:1), or the Dalai Lama (C:N:P = 13.3:6.3:1) are not, in the strict sense, what they eat, rather they maintain their C:N:P by a variety of unsavory and malodorous activities we won’t expand on here for fear of offending the faint of heart. Needless to say organisms that must maintain a narrow C:N:P will go to great lengths in pursuit of that goal even if it means no one to sit next to in the lunchroom. You know that stuff you accidently stepped in while walking down the sidewalk or in your local park? That present Fido left for you has a C:N:P of 9.7:0.9:1.

The question is why should we care about these ratios? Well for the answer let’s look to the most famous examples of balanced chemical reactions, photosynthesis [Eq. 1] and decomposition [Eq. 2]. After all when you peel away the layers of scientific mumbo-jumbo this is what Ecological Stoichiometry is all about. If you are starting to have horrible images of your Intro Organic Chemistry class now would be a good time to stop reading. Are you still here? Good. These two reactions drive plant growth [Eq. 1] and decay of everything from tree leaves (C:N:P = 18.6:8.2:1) to septic waste (C:N:P = 12.0:2.7:1). These reactions and those that produced the Redfield Ratio rely on what is called the Law of Definite Proportions.

The importance of the “Big Six” in nature is not hard to find. One need not look further than Adenosine Tri (ATP) and Diphosphate (ADP) the primary energy transfer molecules in cells for the importance of phosphorus, while sulfur is crucial to amino acids (i.e. cysteine) the primary precursors of proteins. Researchers have shown that the Stoichiometric formula for humans in number of atoms is:

H_375,000,000O_132,000,000C_85,700,000N_6,430,000Ca_1,500,000P_1,020,000S_206,000

Na_183,000K_177,000C_l127,000Mg_40,000Si_38,600Fe_2,680Zn_2,110Cu_76I14Mn₁₃

F₁₃Cr₇Se₄Mo₃Co₁

Thus, we humans have a “Big Six” H:O:C:N:P:S Stoichiometry of 2.8:1.5:13.3:6.3:5.0:1. This may seem confusing but understanding how these elements flow into and around the human body or for that matter ecosystems tells us a great deal about the so-called “velocity of elements”. Many reading this have heard about the “velocity of money” in recent years and the importance of keeping the flow of money brisk and consistent. Well the same is true of elements and Ecological Stoichiometry is an important tool in determining where elements are backed-up or where they are moving too fast to be utilized. Two interconnected examples of the human condition’s influence on Ecological Stoichiometry are the Haber-Bosch process that fixes nitrogen gas to produce ammonia for N, P, and Potassium (K)-rich fertilizers and the Gulf Coast algal blooms in the US that have created consistent and ever expanding deadzones in the waters off the United State’s Gulf Coast. The latter is a direct function of excessive fertilizer application and manure production in the Mississippi River watershed, with manures having C:N:P of 20.3:7.0:1 and most fertilizers either having equal parts N:P:K (10:10:10) or an excess of P (10:20:10). Thus, Gulf Coast’s aquatic ecosystems are experiencing an increase in the velocity of Ecological Stoichiometry – specifically P – via the Mississippi river, which is leading to increases in algal production and decay all of which deplete the waters of oxygen.

Plants and animals adhere to relatively strict C:N:P (:S), because in theory they are trying to fulfill their maximum growth potential, even though such conditions in actuality might be completely illusory. Living beings want to find that stoichiometric “Sweet Spot”. Ecological Stoichiometry explains why we crave certain foods and can’t stand the sight of others. Ecological Stoichiometry, and specifically the C:N:P:S ratio, is a field of study and a natural process that will receive increasing attention in the coming years given the fact that humans are rapidly depleting the world’s supply of P, with 62 Gigatons remaining according to the USGS’ most recent estimates.

In addition, this ratio and its variability is responsible for phenomena such as acid rain in the northeastern US and Europe, and groundwater contamination in and around areas of heavy agriculture. Scientists have known since Redfield and earlier the importance of understanding the interconnectedness of the “Big Six” and more specifically C, N, P, and S. In 2000 Falkowski and colleagues compared natural and human-induced changes in the stoichiometry of earth and found that the change due to anthropogenic causes was 13%, 108%, 400%, and 113% for C, N, P, and S, respectively. Thus, our fascination with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) may be at best myopic and at worst dangerous. Forget the GDP what is your country or state’s CNP?

Complete Chart 1 From Above:

“Size is not the appropriate restriction,” said Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia and a member of the banking committee, who helped draft the regulatory bill. “The real question should be the level of inter-connectedness and the risk-taking we saw in the crisis of 2008.” Mr. Warner added, “The Dodd bill does provide ability for these banks to be broken up.”

So let me see if I have this straight Senator Warner your not concerned about the size of bangs with respect to Senator Kaufman and Senator Browns Safe Banking Act of 2010 – which would have limited the size of individual bank’s assets to 3% of GDP (6 Largest banks currently account for 63% of GDP) and the all important leverage factor to 16 to 1 (It had risen to 30 & 40 to 1 at places like Bear Sterns and Lehman) -  but you want to minimize inter-connectedness?

Well let me ask you a simple question: If you go to a family reunion and their are only 6 Warner’s – or whatever your mother’s maiden name was – at the shindig are you more or less likely to be “inter-connected” with those individuals than if that reunion instead included 100 of your nearest and dearest relatives?

See this is classic talking out of both sides of your mouth. As Stephen Roach likes to say you can’t have both decoupling and globalization at the same time. Pick your Poisson Senator Warner: Inter-connectedness or TBTF?

Goldman Sachs paid back the TARP money no doubt and that is exciting, but here are the other 2/3 of the bailout pie they don’t like to talk about.

First the Federal Reserve discount window where they borrowed >$30 Billion at 0.75% interest and turned around and lent it to businesses and governments at 3-4% interest….THAT MY FRIENDS IS CALLED MINTING MONEY!

Also the AIG bailout basically funneled a large amount of liquidity to Goldman and a variety of other large multi-national financial “institutions” (See below). So those smug smiles are indicative of Foxes In The Hen House. The graph below is another reason why Tim Geithner, Hank Paulson, et al are complicit in this fiasco. TOO CONNECTED TO FAIL!

Data rarely lies especially Pie Charts.

Ever heard of the Gini Coefficient? Yeah I thought not who has and frankly who cares? Well in reading Stephen Roach’s “Stephen Roach on the Next Asia: Opportunities and Challenges for a New Globalization” I came across this measure of income dispersion within and across economies of all shapes and sizes. When I went to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics looking for a historical record of US Gini coefficients I was disappointed (but not surprised) to see a very disturbing trend developing.

First let me note that the Gini Coefficient is a decimal between Zero and One (The Grey Between Binary!), with One being absolute inequality (i.e. The Rich Have Everything) and Zero being completely equitable distribution of income across any given economy.

What I saw when I plotted the Bureau of Labor’s data was a sharply upward trending slope from left (1967) to the present (2007). At the current trend we will have a Gini Coefficient of 0.537 in 2025, 0.652 in 2075, 0.767 in 2125, and 0.939 in 2200. That is unless the world ends. OR H1N1 kills us all. This should disturb those on the left and the right equally, because believe you me the folks benefiting from this trajectory have no religion or aspirations for any type of greener planet, rather they are driven by Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction and really big yachts. This points towards a New America, which when we think about income equality or meritocracy we see that it is becoming more and more a Zero Sum Game or what what 18th/19th Century British economist David Ricardo called Comparative Advantage (See Below). Although in this instance we are talking about intra-country or -region income disparities.

Comparative Advantage (According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics): When one nation’s opportunity cost of producing an item is less than another nation’s opportunity cost of producing that item. A good or service with which a nation has the largest absolute advantage (or smallest absolute disadvantage) is the item for which they have a comparative advantage.

I think that this trend and the data it describes to are two more examples of why across-the-board capitalism does not work. Do aspects of capitalism work? OF COURSE no one (not least of which me!!) is saying differently, but to assume that any “-ISM” in its entirety is suitable for an entire country or across the board is foolish, arrogant, dangerous, and short-sighted. BEWARE OF THE -ISM PEOPLE!!!

Lets briefly put this trend and Gini in some perspective. First it is worth noting where the US sits globally with respect to Gini. As you can see below we (US in Red) are somewhere in the middle of the 153 global average of 0.409±0.103. Some of the esteemed nations with a more equitable distribution of wealth include Russia, Myanmar (That’s Right Myanmar!), Cuba, and Saudi Arabia. Our neighbors on the Gini scale include Irag, Petro States like Iran and Nigeria, not exactly paragons of freedom. Given the projections I calculated above we will join nations like Zimbabwe (Hint: You know the nation with inflation >1 quadrillion %) by 2025, systemically corrupt nations like Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, and Namibia in 2075, AND…..Drumroll Please…………..We will be off the current distribution by 2125 at a Gini of 0.767. Not bad huh? So with all the huffing and puffing from the right about our dept and deficit climbing as a % of GDP I think it is worth paying credence to this much maligned index, given its current value and projected trend. Sure we need to consume less and save more, but the fact is that many in this country are under the impression that “Compared with people in other rich countries, Americans tend to accept relatively high levels of income inequality because they believe they may move up over time. The evidence is that America does offer opportunity; but not nearly as much as its citizens believe.”

So the final point that many on the way- and intermediate-right, along with countless centrists and Efficient-Market Hypothesis ideologues make is that this type of asymmetrical wealth distribution is a product of and promoter of competition. The idea that a rising tide lifts all boats with respect to consumption, investment, government spending, and export-import (ie GDP = C+I+G+(Exp-Imp)). However, if we look at GDP as a function of the Gini Index across the aforementioned 153 nations we see ZERO RELATIONSHIP! Let me say that again there is no relationship between an increasing Gini (ie, Rich Getting Richer!) and GDP growth. So, what are we to make of this? Well the answer is that The Great Decoupling with respect to income inequality has spread geographically and will prove insidious and along with an increasing redistribution of water rights another reason why bottom-up “concern” should and will grow. We’re not talking about astroturf revolution, but rather empirical and well-thought out multi-angle reform.

Clean Energy, Clean Coal, Foreign Oil, Middle East Instability, blah blah blah blah blah.

The 2 graphs presented here derived from the US Mine Health & Safety Administration show the true cost of coal. Since data was first recorded back in the 1930s we have lost at least (ie Average Annual Derivation) 420,960 men due to coal mine fatalities and 25,633, 151 have been injured. As to the severity of the latter I wasn’t able to get my hands on how many resulted in men that were Functionally Dead. With more and more union busting and people like Don Blankenship the owner of Massey Energy the company that oversaw the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia making no bones about his distaste and most likely hatred of unions fatalities will rise in my opinion. Yes mechanization and strip-mining has resulted in a decline in fatalities but there has been – in recent years – an increase in large and broadly fatal “accidents”. The Upper Big Branch was a non-union mine thanks to Mr. Blankenship’s machinations. I am not promoting across-the-board unionization but I am worried that erosion of unions where their presence is required may prove economically costly to miners and in the worst case scenario Upper Big Branch Reduxes throughout Appalachia. There may be clean ways to burn coal but it’s extraction is dirty on so many levels not least of which is the fact that it robs communities of their fathers, brothers, uncles, little league coaches, and more importantly their collective spirit. West Virginians and coal mining communities writ large consist of proud, determined, stubborn, and resourceful people. However, the Paradox of Plenty (ie, The Resource Curse) caught them off-guard with the speculative and nefarious vultures swooping in to promise riches that have yet to be delivered. We need to stop stigmatizing these communities and start infusing them with capital aimed at a more diversified economic portfolio. I have been to these communities and they are desperate to decouple themselves from Carbonaceous Robber Barons like Don Blankenship.

Enjoy the data I think the figures speak for themselves.

Average Annual Deaths and Injuries:

Average Cumulative Deaths and Injuries:

“prompting the rating agency Moody’s to threaten a downgrade in America’s bond ratings”

I am not an economist or an expert in finance, rather I am a soil scientist, but I am wondering from the outside looking in why you all even put any stock in the rating agencies any more, Didn’t Michael Lewis in “Panic” and elsewhere thoroughly debunk the validity of these completely subjective TripleA ratings? I am not implying that the US economic standing is not teatering….it is indeed! But to rely on one of the “Big 3″ to validate such a claim….well that would not have held water if I were to try to defend it to my dissertation committee. Just a thought.

Two things I have learned since this crisis about regulation…Its all about the Big 3:

1. Federal Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is basically run by Ernst & Young, KPMG, and Deloite Touche.

2. Moody’s, Fitch, and Standard & Poors control the rating process in the US.

Isn’t this worth an anti-trust glance or two or three?

Is the output from these companies valid in any way if we don’t have access to their methods?

What have we learned from the H1N1 scare?

Well we have learned that fear grips even the most rational of human beings when they are bombarded with scare campaigns not seen since the days following 9-11. I suspect that much of this fear was ginned up by the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex (PIC). How can I make such a dark accusation? Let us look at the movement of Roche’s share prices before and after H1N1 was discovered. Roche happens to be the predominant maker of H1N1 vaccine commonly called Tamiflu. They are based in Switzerland and trade on the Swiss Exchange. The graph below depicts shares of Roche in current US dollars (i.e. 1 Us Dollar = 0.9437 Swoss Framcs). The perforated lines in the main graph and inset pinpoint the week of April 27th, 2009, which is commonly used as the starting point of the “pandemic”. The inset is simply the aforementioned week to the present blown up to highlight the post-H1N1 trend for Roche’s shareholders.

I am not proclaiming some sort of grand conspiracy, but what I am pointing out is that there clearly was a financial incentive for Roche to perpetuate the global tamiflu campaign given their near monopoly on the vaccine (Note: This is the kind of thing that antitrust advocates have been screaming about for decades).

Roche’s share price had reached lows not seen since November of 2004 in the month prior to the H1N1 outbreak, but curiously enough many investors were prescient in going overweight Roche in the weeks leading up to the outbreak raising the share price from the previously mentioned five year low of $121.81 to 140.04 in the week that preceded the 1,400 suspected cases reported in Mexico (i.e., April 2oth, 2009).  To put it more succinctly shares of Roche have gained 142% between the IPO in May of 2001 and March 5th, 2010 (116 Months). Yet,  they only gained 117% between the IPO and the week prior to the H1N1 outbreak (104 Months). In the  forty-seven weeks since the April 26th, 2009 outbreak shares of Roche have gained 122% rising from $140.04 to 170.52. That is quite a turn of events for a company that seemed to be floundering and it is also quite the investment for those investors I mentioned earlier that went long Roche in the month prior to the “pandemic” as they have accrued an average return of 140%.

There is one more point to dovetail with the apparent windfall profits generated for one business in a time of near global panic and that is the data used to generate said panic.

The data above describe the total number of H1N1 cases globally as of calendar year 2009-2010. The data represents 28% of the world’s 195 countries, 81 and 94% of the reported Cases and Deaths, 72% of the world’s population, and 58% of the world’s births per annum (h1n1). From this table we see that the phrase “much ado about nothing” – either the Shakespeare comedy or Kenneth Branagh flick – doesn’t do justice to this supposed global scare. The Average-Median Case and Total Death Range was 5,798-52,804 and 132-601, respectively, with totals of 1,326,367 and 16,264. However, the percent of cases that resulted in death globally was 1.10% with an Average-Median range of 2.47-6.83%. I assume this number is one that Roche will take all the credit for and will likewise brush aside the accusation that the panic was at the very least overblown and more likely generated to save a stale and passed-it’s-prime pharmaceutical company.

So some will say and rightly so that I am being completely insensitive to those that lost loved ones during the H1N1 outbreak. I would simply say that I am not insensitive but simply pointing out the fact that a very small sector of the world benefited greatly from your loss (i.e., Roche Shareholders) and that unfortunately people do die, but to say we need to pull out all the stops for such an infinitesimal sector of society is crazy and frankly irresponsible.

Lets look at the data another way so as to put it – and the campaign to eradicate the world of all viruses and sicknesses no matter the cost – in perspective. Globally 0.00026% of the population died from H1N1 and when you consider the world’s exponentially mushrooming population as the balance between births and deaths we see that H1N1 deaths were 0.01258% of births worldwide. These are numbers that border on the non-detectable when compared to pressures such as drought, war, famine, AIDS, malaria, etc. Additionally, it is worth noting the US has lost 4,386 men and women in Iraq since the occupation began, with a similar trend evident in Afghanistan. The former is 0.00143% of the US population, which is a greater than those killed by H1N1 in this country. Just a little perspective as I don’t see any fuss being made over the countless bodies arriving in Delaware every week. As a matter of fact former President Bush/Cheney wouldn’t even let pictures be taken of this type of seen.

The fact is that H1N1 and the inertia involved in fighting it’s spread lined the pockets of Roche shareholders. The general public writ large was stirred into a frenzy by a convergence of private and public forces for myriad reasons, but undoubtedly the private concerns centered on going long Roche in the weeks leading up to the outbreak and sustaining that momentum to the present day. The data does not lie!

What is that famous line “The Plural of anecdote is data”? Well it says here that the data paint an entirely different and markedly less dire picture than tha forwarded by popular media and the Madison Avenue wunderkinds.

There is now very serious talk about a European Central Fund, which would largely be supported by the profligate ways of Eastern and Southern Europe.

I wonder how this EMF would be funded? Would it be as its supporters claim a function of a 1% tax on all money a given EU country has about the Maastricht Treaty Debt and Deficit to GDP requirements? How long would a country have to be above the 60 and 3% thresholds, respectively. I feel as though countries with stout track records would be given substantial temporal leashes while the PIIGS would be put on a spit and roasted within months and prayed upon by speculators. Look if you go ahead with this EMF and the Lisbon Treaty you are opening yourself up to a common currency aggregate that has no ceiling (i.e., a global currency). Talk about too big to fail! Or is it too interconnected to fail?

“The EMF could be run along similar governance lines to the IMF, by having a professional staff remote from direct political influence and a board with representatives from euro-area countries. Just as the existing fund does, the EMF would conduct regular and broad economic surveillance of member countries. But its main role would be to design, monitor and fund assistance programmes for euro-area countries in difficulties, just as the IMF does on a global scale.”

No way does the highlighted part of the above quote from The Economist article happen! We have reached a point as Steven Roach of Morgan Stanley noted in “Stephen Roach on the Next Asia: Opportunities and Challenges for a New Globalization” where the line between fiscal policy, monetary policy, and politics is imperceptible. It is as if we are redressing the church v. state debate even though we know there is not such thing.

“Countries could, for instance, be charged an annual contribution of 1% of their “excess debt”, the difference between their actual level of public debt and the limit of 60% of GDP agreed on as one of the Maastricht criteria for euro entry. A similar charge could be levied on governments’ excess deficits, the amount exceeding the Maastricht limit of 3% of GDP. Under these parameters the EMF would have accumulated about €120 billion ($163 billion) over the past decade, enough to cover the likely costs of rescuing Greece. These levies are not so big that they make it impossible for offenders to get to grips with their finances. Under this scheme the Greek contribution to an EMF would have been 0.65% of GDP in 2009.”

Another canard. We are being guided by captains that would like to steer the ship towards a single global currency, which as I said would be the ultimate paradox given everyone’s fascination with Too Big To…..(Fill in the blank!).