COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Obama says he is fousing on jobs. He better talk to the EPA.



Obama believes that increased regulation and additional taxes and increased deficits will stimulate the economy. I do not know why he believes that but one of the reasons is that he never worked in a private for profit business. He is clueless about the reality.

Every new law and regulation gets enforced by some government agency. Most are disincentives to employers to hire new workers.

If you employ one person, you put yourself under layers of federal and state scrutiny and you imperil your present wealth and security.

The latest proposed expansion of the EPA is but one example of the US Federal Government, spending money and placing burdens on private industry, hardly a formula for job creation.

____________________________




New EPA Rules Could Increase Cost Of Compliance Tens Of Billions

Stricter new smog limit would hit rural areas, too

BY DINA CAPPIELLO, ASSOCIATED PRESS Philadelphia Bulletin
THURSDAY, JANUARY 07, 2010


WASHINGTON — Hundreds of communities far from congested highways and belching smokestacks could soon join America's big cities and industrial corridors in violation of stricter limits on lung-damaging smog proposed Thursday by the Obama administration.

Costs of compliance could be in the tens of billions of dollars, but the government said the rules would save other billions — as well as lives — in the long run.

More than 300 counties — mainly in southern California, the Northeast and Gulf Coast — already violate the current, looser requirements adopted two years ago by the Bush administration and will find it even harder to reduce smog-forming pollution enough to comply with the law.

The new limits being considered by the Environmental Protection Agency could more than double the number of counties in violation and reach places like California's wine country in Napa Valley and rural Trego County, Kan., and its 3,000 residents.

For the first time, counties in Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, the Dakotas, Kansas, Minnesota and Iowa might be forced to find ways to clamp down on smog-forming emissions from industry and automobiles, or face government sanctions, most likely the loss of federal highway dollars.

The tighter standards, though costly to implement, will ultimately save billions in avoided emergency room visits, premature deaths, and missed work and school days, the EPA said.

"EPA is stepping up to protect Americans from one of the most persistent and widespread pollutants we face," said agency administrator Lisa Jackson. "Using the best science to strengthen these standards is long overdue action that will help millions of Americans breathe easier and live healthier."

The proposal presents a range for the allowable concentration of ground-level ozone, the main ingredient in smog, from 60 parts per billion to 70 parts, as recommended by scientists during the Bush administration. That's equivalent to a single tennis ball in an Olympic-sized swimming pool full of tennis balls.

EPA plans to select a specific figure within that range by August. Counties and states will then have up to 20 years to meet the new limits, depending on how severely they are out of compliance. They will have to submit plans for meeting the new limits by end of 2013 or early 2014.

Former President George W. Bush personally intervened in the issue after hearing complaints from electric utilities and other affected industries. His EPA set a standard of 75 parts per billion, stricter than one adopted in 1997 but not as strict as what scientist said was needed to protect public health.

Some of those same industries reiterated their opposition Thursday to a stronger smog standard.

"We probably won't know for a couple of years just what utilities and other emissions sources will be required to do in response to a tighter ozone standard," said John Kinsman, a senior director at the Edison Electric Institute, an industry trade group. "Utilities already have made substantial reductions in ozone-related emissions."

Parts of the country that have already spent decades and millions of dollars fighting smog and are still struggling to meet existing thresholds questioned what more they could do. They've already cut pollution from the easier sources, by increasing monitoring and enforcement and requiring car emissions tests.

"This EPA decision provides the illusion of greater protectiveness, but with no regard for cost, in terms of dollars or in terms of the freedoms that Americans are accustomed to," said Bryan W. Shaw, chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Texas, with its heavy industry, is home to Houston, one of the smoggiest cities in the nation.

Environmentalists endorsed the new plan. "If EPA follows through, it will mean significantly cleaner air and better health protection," said Frank O'Donnell, president of the advocacy group Clean Air Watch.

EPA estimates meeting the new requirements will cost industry and motorists from $19 billion to as much as $90 billion a year by 2020. The Bush administration had put the cost of meeting its threshold at $7.6 billion to $8.5 billion a year.

The new regulations would mean more controls on large industrial facilities, plus regulating smaller facilities and sources. New federal regulations in the works to improve car and truck fuel economy and curb global warming pollution at large factories will also help communities meet any new standards, the EPA said.

Smog is a respiratory irritant that has been linked to asthma attacks and other illnesses. Global warming is expected to make it worse, since smog is created when emissions from cars, power and chemical plants, refineries and other factories mix in sunlight and heat.

But some parts of the country that could be found in violation of the proposed standards have very few cars and little industry. In places like these, smog-forming pollution is being blown in from hundreds of miles away.

Charlene Neish, director of Trego County Economic Development, moved to the rural county in western Kansas a decade ago from Phoenix to escape big city problems like traffic and air pollution. Neish was shocked that her county, which has about nine people per square mile and virtually no industry, made the list.

"There is absolutely nothing in Trego County," Neish said. "We have wide open spaces and fresh air."

In Utah, six more counties would join the three in violation of the Bush standard.

Cheryl Heying, director of Utah's Division of Air Quality, said the change will not only require additional reductions in vehicle and industrial emissions, but a regional focus on other contributors such as wildfire smoke and offshore shipping.

"That doesn't mean we're just going to point our finger at everyone else, but if we don't cooperate, we're never going to get it done," Heying said.




69 comments:

  1. Regarding your last post: The only "Bubble" I'm seeing right now is "Government."

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  2. Fuck, people.

    Your planet is COLD.

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  3. It's that Global Warming, you see.

    When it gets warm, that makes it Cold. Or, Warm.


    Oh, wait; If it gets cold, that's because it's warming, but if it gets Warm, THAT'S because it's Warming.

    Or, something like that.

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  4. All this hideously expensive War on Terror nonsense...

    I'll tell you where the tax dollars ought to be going: Outdoor heating.

    Convince me that's not a worthy project.

    Or regime removal in Mexico and we'll all move right down to Cabo.

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  5. My parents are leaving tomorrow for southern Bavaria and Tirol. Leaving the deep damn deep freeze of western PA for...the deep damn deep freeze of the Alps.

    I ask you, what old people in their right fucking minds do that every winter? Hm?

    The gulasch suppe and bier just aren't THAT GOOD.

    Screws loose, the both of them.

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  6. Trish, they are obviously going there for the music

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  7. Don't ever do that again, Deuce.

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  8. Chinese Exports up 17.7 (now, top exporter in the world,) and Imports up 55.9%

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  9. Bless their hearts, they eat that shit up, dear host.

    Two tours and countless TDYs in Germany left them forever demented.

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  10. We humor them because we're in the will and they might otherwise bequeath everything to the SPCA.

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  11. Anyone else quit, hang themselves, or get heartburn while
    i was out?

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  12. And for every anonymous human being in Atlanta (now the southernmost reach of the Arctic circle) who smilingly welcomed me (and my newly American dog) home yesterday, I wish I had a winning lottery ticket to give in return.

    Sad as hell (yes, I was) to leave. Still, there's NOTHING, just NOTHING, like coming home.

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  13. Were you wearing purple moccasins?

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  14. : )

    I wore short heels, actually. The very pair I first flew down in and my favorites.

    The new mocs (I ended up getting the pink instead) I packed.

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  15. Once a Lilly Pulitzer, there is no going back.

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  16. In the back of my yard underneath some pines is a hwak that has been field stripping his latest squirrel kill.

    I have been keeping an eye on him for twenty minutes and along comes the dumbest squirrel ever. He hipped and hopped to about three feet in front of the hawk and decided that was as good as place as any to bury something or dig something up.

    Hawk 2 - Squirrels 0

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  17. :)

    Every Hawk has his day.

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  18. He probably can't wait to get back to the "Hawk Bar" to tell the gang about this trip.

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  19. Guys, you won't believe this. You know those pine trees over by Deuce's house?

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  20. Man, Baltimore is kicking New England's butt.

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  21. Just so you know, I didn't quit, leave or start having any type of offensive heartburn. I'm just trying to stay out of the limelight. Or, should I say, be the limelight.

    Welcome home, Trish. Pink?

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  22. ..and you obviously have not hanged yourself.

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  23. Squirrels are the good guys! Incontrovertibly established fact!

    You are a sick, sick person, dear host.

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  24. Nope! And I don't own any guns, either. Besides, I love myself too much to take it away, under any circumstances.

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  25. Yes, pink.

    God invented pink to remind us that we should be happy.

    I shall have deliriously happy feet.

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  26. Thanks, MeLoDy.


    It's a treat, to be home.

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  27. Now you have to get use to the cold weather. Good luck with that, I never get use to it.

    I prefer red.

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  28. Three Palestinian militants were killed in an Israel Air Force strike in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday, hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed a "powerful response" to any attacks from the territory.

    Haaretz, of course, has to call stateless bloodthirsty terrorists "Palestinian militants" but they can't hide the fact that Bibi is no Ehud Olmert, which is what I took away from this story.

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  29. Funny you should mention that.

    I did red for the past two years, and wore the hell out of a pair of red driving mocs (arm and a leg to Ralph Lauren) that were both the most comfortable and gorgeous walkaround shoes I've ever owned. Wore them with almost every damned informal thing, to almost every occasion and pedestrian errand imaginable.

    These mocs are the relacement.

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  30. Welcome back, Trish...and everyone.

    Trish, I warned you about the cold...and is it ever?

    Not long ago, it just got above freezing here in my part of sunny Florida. Even 480 miles to the south it was 37 this morning.

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  31. Actually, I would have went for the purple. It's my favorite color. It combines the stability and trust, of my least favorite color blue and the energy and passion of my next favorite color red.

    I don't think I would wear purple shoes, though, unless it's with the right outfit, of course. I've been searching high and low for just the right pair of red shoes and damn it, I can't find a pair.

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  32. "Obama says he is fousing on jobs. He better talk to the EPA."

    Fousing: Google really thinks I meant to search for "Housing".

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  33. "It's my favorite color."

    Heh.

    I don't know about North America yet. But in South America it's THE color this year.

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  34. Feeling That Cold Wind? Here’s Why.
    By KENNETH CHANG
    Published: January 9, 2010


    A bitter wind has been blowing over parts of North America, Europe and Asia. Some places have been colder than ever, like Melbourne, Fla., which dipped to 28 degrees last Thursday, a record low. Europe has been walloped by snowstorm after snowstorm.

    What’s going on? Global cooling?

    Nope. A mass of high pressure is sitting over Greenland like a rock in a river, deflecting the cold air of the jet stream farther to the south than usual.

    This situation is caused by Arctic oscillation, in which opposing atmospheric pressure patterns at the top of the planet occasionally shift back and forth, affecting weather across much of the Northern Hemisphere.

    What’s notable this year is that the pattern of high pressure over the Arctic is more pronounced than at any time since 1950.

    In most years over the past few decades, the opposite has been true: there has been lower-than-average pressure over the Arctic, and higher-than-average pressure over the mid-latitudes — the middle of which cuts through Maine, across the Great Lakes and on to Oregon.

    That pattern allows the jet stream to blow unimpeded from west to east and keeps the cold Arctic air largely north of the United States. The result tends to be warmer temperatures across much of the United States east of the Rocky Mountains.

    No one is quite sure what drives these flip-flops in air pressure.

    “I tend to think of it as a random thing,” said John M. Wallace, who is a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington. “I don’t think we understand any reasons why it goes one way one year and the other way another year.”

    What does seem clear is that these oscillations have nothing to do with global warming, or, for that matter, global cooling. For one, they’re not new. And this winter’s cold has not been global. Santa, by North Pole standards, has been experiencing a balmy winter.

    “Pretty much all of the Arctic is above normal,” said Dr. Walter Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. In some areas, the temperatures are as much as 15 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.

    In terms of global average temperature, this winter’s arctic oscillation “probably roughly cancels out,” Dr. Meier said. (In fact, last year ranked as the fifth-warmest year on record since 1850, the United Kingdom’s Met Office says.)

    And it is certainly not the coldest air that has descended on the United States. In a great blizzard that swept across the East Coast in 1899, even parts of Florida dropped to below zero.

    “We’re not close to those types of things,” said Michael Vojtesak of the National Weather Service.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/weekinreview/10chang.html?scp=1&sq=greenland%20high%20pressure&st=cse

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  35. "Welcome back, Trish...and everyone."

    : )

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  36. The term "palestinian" wil come to mean by the world as "One who murderers at will, children, women, goats and men" The term "palestinian" in arabic means "street shit that fucks the dirty behind of goats"

    It is common knowledge in middle east, that as a "people" there is no such thing as a arab "palestinian" before 1966 and that it was actual invented by the Egyptian secret police and the Egyptian Yasser Arafat.

    As the decades move forward the term "palestinian" has brought to us airplane hijackings, suicide bombers, ied's and of course goat fucking for fun and profit. It is also known thru out the middle east that so called "palestinian" women do in fact look alot like goats...

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  37. Allen: "Pretty much all of the Arctic is above normal," said Dr. Walter Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. In some areas, the temperatures are as much as 15 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.

    That's great, Allen. Maybe pretty soon Greenland will be green again, and Vinland (Newfoundland and Labrador) will make vino again like they do in Italy and California.

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  38. Lilith, welcome to the bar, you'll find it educational, entertaining and suicidal.

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  39. Lilith, that was Ash, not Allen.

    Global warming would be good were it real.

    .

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  40. My parents are leaving tomorrow for southern Bavaria and Tirol.

    Anywhere near Bad Tolz?

    Maybe the attraction is Jaeger Schnitzel.

    .

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  41. Welcome back to the land of 2BuckChuck. Always a good year!

    .

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  42. Texas v. The Unionocracy of California

    I knew who was going to win; but This is a Holy Butt-Kicking.

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  43. I knew who was going to win; but This is a Holy Butt-Kicking.

    Good for Texas.

    Another interesting set of curves would be California v Arizona and California v Nevada over the same period.

    I'd bet the sums of Arizona and Nevada would just about equal losses in CA.

    .

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  44. Shocking Predictions

    The man who predicted the 1987 stock market crash and the fall of the Soviet Union is now forecasting a revolution in America, food riots and tax rebellions - all within four years, while cautioning that putting food on the table will be a more pressing concern than buying Christmas gifts by 2012.

    Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is renowned for his accuracy in predicting future world and economic events, which will send a chill down your spine considering what he told Fox News this week.

    Celente says that by 2012 America will become an underdeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.
    "We're going to see the end of the retail Christmas....we're going to see a fundamental shift take place....putting food on the table is going to be more important than putting gifts under the Christmas tree," said Celente, adding that the situation would be "worse than the great depression."

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  45. The Australian market has opened higher after receiving positive leads from overseas, with Wall Street indices higher, precious metals and oil higher, although copper ended lower on Friday.

    ...

    The nation's ability to fund billions of dollars in much-needed infrastructure is under threat because of tax rulings designed to crack down on private equity raiders, the Treasurer Wayne Swan has been warned.

    ...

    On Friday, banks and consumer staples stocks pushed the Australian share market to a 15-month high as profit-taking drove mining stocks lower.


    Positive Sentiment

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  46. Nice catch, Deuce. I had received it in text in an email.

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  47. They fly into Munich, spend a day or two, and go south into Austria from there.

    There are, like, twenty of them, old friends and drag-alongs, that do this every year.




    Jaegerschnitzel - with spaetzle - I dig.

    Wanna freeze my ass off for it?

    Mmmmmnotanymore.

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  48. And that establishment specializing in Belgian beers outside of Pittsburgh that I mentioned a few days ago: The Sharper Edge.

    I had a Duvel this afternoon. And an excellent fish sandwich.

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  49. Wall Street Journal - J.R. Wu, David Winning

    BEIJING -- China's exports surged in December from a year earlier, ending 13 months of declines. Despite the rebound in external demand, however, the country's annual trade surplus dropped for the first time in ...

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  50. I may think the economy is bad and not going to get better any time soon but I wouldn't go on Russia Today and give them the satisfaction. The Russians eat that stuff up. They would love to see America groveling in the mud.

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  51. Celente, talking to Russia Today in another video says that Fascism is coming to America. I wonder what he thinks about Russia.

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  52. I hope we (at the EB) don't sound like Celente. He is annoying as hell.

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  53. Celente fingers Goldman Sachs as the string pullers. I hear this more and more.

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  54. Celente is not only predicting revolution, he is calling for it.

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  55. There is a revolving door, whit, 'tween the Treaury Dept and Goldman Sucks.

    But we've all known that for a long, long time.

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  56. I hope we (at the EB) don't sound like Celente.

    - whit

    Take a stroll through the BC again sometime.

    The completely-out-there nuttiness - a bunch of half-whits planning the populist desktop overthrow of a nation they are acquainted with most urgently and uselessly through any number of political hacks...

    I think of Habu as their unintended mascot: "Workout time. It's bicep and tricep day."

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  57. Well, I still do not know of anyone that is ready to fire at the National Guard, other than the cross border raiders and smugglers.

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  58. It's all self-referential wanking.

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  59. The Left does the same thing...to the same end.

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  60. ...The completely-out-there nuttiness - a bunch of half-whits planning the populist desktop overthrow...

    Half-whits? :-)

    double in-ten-ders there...

    ?

    .

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  61. Okay, maaaaybe that wasn't the best way to put it.

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  62. TOKYO (MarketWatch) -- Gold futures climbed by as much as $24 an ounce in electronic trade Monday morning in Asia to touch their strongest intraday level in more than a month, as a further weakness U.S. dollar and strong trade figures from China lured investors.

    "We've seen carry-over selling in the U.S. dollar, which is helping to boost U.S.-dollar denominated commodity prices," said Ben Potter, a research analyst at IG Markets in Melbourne. "Gold is flying."

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  63. One had a passion for planes. The other preferred the power of a muscle car.

    Mark C. Jennings joined the Air Force as a young man, earned Top Gun honors as an F-16 pilot, and flew combat missions over Iraq.

    ...

    After Jennings' funeral in the pilot's native Ohio, a procession of mourners stopped briefly at a nearby park.


    Highway Tragedy

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  64. And in the European Union the seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate for the 16 euro countries hit 10 percent in November -- the highest since the currency was launched a decade ago and up from 9.9 percent in October.

    That news hit the dollar, which ended last week's New York trading at 92.72 yen, down from 93.25 yen.

    Gold opened higher in Hong Kong at 1,154.00-1,155.00 US dollars an ounce, up from Friday's close of 1,124.50-1,125.50 dollars.


    Markets' Rally

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  65. Survival group against God?? LOL. Good luck with that. Truth is, no one knows the exact time this will happen except the man upstairs, however, I firmly believe that there are people placed here by God that post the warning signs and it's up to you to take heed.
    [url=http://2012earth.net
    ]apocalypse 2012
    [/url] - some truth about 2012

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