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| Jack O'Lantern Sun |
Ebola Update--Sierra Leone Lost. From the New York Times:
Acknowledging a major “defeat” in the fight against Ebola, international health officials battling the epidemic in Sierra Leone approved plans on Friday to help families tend to patients at home, recognizing that they are overwhelmed and have little chance of getting enough treatment beds in place quickly to meet the surging need.
The decision signifies a significant shift in the struggle against the rampaging disease. Officials said they would begin distributing painkillers, rehydrating solution and gloves to hundreds of Ebola-afflicted households in Sierra Leone, contending that the aid arriving here was not fast or extensive enough to keep up with an outbreak that doubles in size every month or so.
“It’s basically admitting defeat,” said Dr. Peter H. Kilmarx, the leader of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s team in Sierra Leone, adding that it was “now national policy that we should take care of these people at home.”Russia Moving Tactical Nuclear Weapons Into Crimea. Full story at the Washington Times. I don't think Russia is going to give it back. This move mirrors the U.S. moving tactical nuclear weapons to Germany during the 1980s, making it impossible for the USSR to ever invade Western Europe without initiating nuclear hostilities.
“For the clinicians it’s admitting failure, but we are responding to the need,” Dr. Kilmarx said. “There are hundreds of people with Ebola that we are not able to bring into a facility.”
Deflation Stalks Europe. The Telegraph reports:
A key gauge of deflation risk in Europe is flashing red, dropping to record lows on fears of fresh recession and lack of decisive action by the European Central Bank.
The sudden lurch downwards came as Bank of America warned that France’s debt ratio could rocket to 120pc of GDP within five years, unless the EU authorities take radical steps to reflate the region’s economy. Italy’s debt could threaten 150pc even earlier.
Bond markets echoed the refrain, with yields on 10-year German Bunds falling to an all-time low of 0.88pc on flight to safety, though the bond rally can also be seen as a bet by traders that the ECB will soon be forced to launch full-blown quantitative easing.
Mario Draghi, the ECB’s president, has adopted the 5Y/5Y rate as the bank’s policy lodestar, used to distill expectations of future inflation. Any fall below 2pc is deemed a risk that expectations are becoming “unhinged” and could lead to a Japanese-style deflation trap.European technocrats are warning that Europe needs a full blown quantitative easing program.
My guess is that Europe is seeing the same thing as the U.S.--stagflation, albeit, hidden because price indexes don't include important and major household expenses. QE allows government and banks to suck the money from the middle-class in a couple of obvious ways--(1) if funds are in savings, the value will be eroded through inflation, causing savers to move their funds to (2) stocks which will eventually crash and burn in a bubble.
US and UK To Run "Wargame" of the Collapse of a Major Bank. (Story here). Does this mean that no bank is too big to fail anymore?
" Does this mean that no bank is too big to fail anymore?"
ReplyDeleteNo, that just means that Obama has repeatedly demonstrated he is incapable of making timely decisions. In the era before Obama, serious problems like bank collapses or stock market crashes were dealt with quickly and had minimal long-term impacts, with virtually no noticeable effect on most people. In the era of Obama, problems that could have been acted upon quickly are allowed to fester and grow until they become unmanageable disasters.