Egypt on the verge…

Whether these mob reactions in the Arab world are engineered or spontaneous, the ramifications of what is happening has the potential for major Geo-Political shifts involving, Israel, Suez Canal (energy that flows through there to Europe) , Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Western Europe(if big exodus of people starts trying to migrate to Europe due to upheavals in North Africa).

Be interesting to see what unfolds..

Devon Alexander vs Timothy Bradley 140 pound showdown this Saturday 1/29/2011


The four best 140 pound fighters in the world are in my estimation.

In order

1-Timothy Bradley USA
2-Amir Kahn UK
3-Devon Alexander USA
4-Marcos Rene Maidana Argentina

Amir Khan beat Maidana in a close fight a few months back, and I if the winner of the Timothy Bradley, Devon Alexander fight then takes on Khan . The winner of the Khan vs Bradley/Alexander bout would be considered the best 140 pound fighter in the world.

Street Artist Kent Craig

Sometimes while driving my cab near the end of my shift around 3:20 PM I will be down in the Financial District of San Francisco looking for one last ride to the airport I will see one particular street artist singing and think wow that guy is good.
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The guy is around 38 years old and I never have a chance to stop and ask his name or if he has a website were I can find out about or buy his music.
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Well today on my day off while walking around the Pacific Heights section of San Francisco near Union Street I see this street artist singing just him , his guitar and his amp.
I walked over to him, told him I loved his music and bought a CD for $10.
I found out his name was Kent Craig.

Free Trade and Democracy are Aribtrary words.

In our most primitive thoughts Democracy means something like if you have 3 people in a boat and two say lets go left and 1 says lets go right. The two override the 1 and the boat goes left.
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In real life in the governance of Nation states Democracy seldom works this way.
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Same thing with Free Trade. Everything from senior citizens in the United States ability or inability to buy their drugs from Canada, to China’s subsidization of industries , competing against non state subsidized industries in other countries, or the undervaluing of the Chinese currency to the US dollar point to arbitrariness of the term Free Trade.

I knew that United States was in deep trouble and might collapse when…

I knew that United States was in deep trouble and might collapse when I saw The Front Line (PBS) Documentary “Is Walmart good for America”
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In this video it showed the de-industrilzation of the American Midwest, the last Rubbermaid factory being disassembled in the US and being sent to China.
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It showed the things the US sent to China from the port of Long Beach to China things like scrap metal , scrap paper and animal hides and it showed an area of Southern China with mountains of containers(conex) ready to be shipped to the US and I knew the US was done, Decadent life style of consumerism based on credit and two major wars going on the US system did not look sustainable.
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This was in around 2005 before the bailouts.
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I thought though the collapse would come in about 20-30 years not as fast as it did.
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Got to wonder way the US government would allow the trade policies it did, stupidity, greed. I suppose. The political system was unable to defend itself from the moneyed interests that benefited from the de- industrialization of the country.

Peak Oil..


I am a sometimes Peak Oil believer

A peak oil definition by Jason Brent goes like this
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“Peak oil can be defined in two ways— The first way is when total amount of oil withdrawn from the earth for use by humanity starts to decline; example— in year one 100 barrels of oil are withdrawn, in year two 120 barrels of oil are withdrawn, in year three 80 barrels of oil are withdrawn, and in year four 60 barrels are drawn – in this example year two is the peak oil year since in years subsequent to year two the amount of oil withdrawn goes down: The second way is when oil withdrawn per capita starts to decrease; example in year one 100 barrels of oil are withdrawn and there are 100 people on the Earth (one barrel per person), in year two 150 barrels of oil are withdrawn and there are 120 people on the Earth (1.25 barrels per person), and in year three 200 barrels of oil are withdrawn but the population has increased to 500 people (0.4 barrels per person)— in this example the peak oil year is year two as the amount of oil withdrawn per capita has reached its maximum in year two and has decreased in year three.”

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In plain talk it means there is not enough cheap oil readily available to keep running civilization the way we have been running it.

For the moment I am leaning away from Peak Oil although I think that it is generally a pretty plausible theory.
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I am going to have faith (just for today)that the Saudi’s really have as much oil in their oil fields as they say they do.
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That tar sands in Venezuela and Canada mixed in with emerging technologies should give humanity at least 20 years to get it together.
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On the other hand I believe oil is going to up in price not due to supply and demand but due to weakening currencies,speculation and collapse of the fiat money system.