KABUL, Afghanistan — The fields of Balkh province in northern Afghanistan were free of opium poppies this year, a success touted often by Afghan and international officials. But one look at Mohammad Alam's fields uncovers an emerging drug problem.Making the fruitless War on Drugs even more pointless is a possible shortage of legal opium. Although disputed by some, the developed world's rapidly aging and ailing population could represent an enormous demand for morphine.
Ten-foot-tall cannabis plants flourish in Alam's fields. The crop — the source of both marijuana and hashish — can be just as profitable as opium but draws none of the scrutiny from Afghan officials bent on eradicating poppies.
Cannabis cultivation rose 40 percent in Afghanistan this year, to 173,000 acres from 123,550 in 2006, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimated in its 2007 opium survey. The crop is being grown in at least 18 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, according to the survey released last month.
"The government cannot provide a good market for other crops like cotton, watermelon and vegetables, so I have to grow marijuana instead of poppy," said Alam, a farmer in Balkh province, which the U.N. singles out as a "leading example" of an opium-free area. [More]
Linda started her online business, the Prairie Tumbleweed Farm, as a joke. It was 1994 and she wanted to teach herself how to design a website. Since she lived on the prairie in southwest Kansas, where rolling tumbleweeds are sometimes the only dynamic feature of an endless flat horizon, she invented a farm that sold tumbleweeds, listing prices at $15 for a small one, $20 for a medium and $25 for large.
-DEKALB is delivering better yielding seed to corn farmers: According toShoot - my whole premise just evaporated.
more than 14,000 comparisons taken during 2007 harvest, DEKALB corn
seeds delivered an average of 8.4 more bushels per acre yield compared
with genetics from leading competitive national corn seed brands. This
margin widened to more than 12 bushels per acre in hybrids planted in
the 110-day relative maturity zone, the area which comprises the top
corn-producing states in the Corn Belt (e.g. Illinois, Indiana and
Iowa). [More]
- ummm...
The North American Union is a supranational organization, modeled on the European Union, that will soon fuse Canada, the United States, and Mexico into a single economic and political unit. The details are still being worked out by the countries' leaders, but the NAU's central governing body will have the power to nullify the laws of its member states. Goods and people will flow among the three countries unimpeded, aided by a network of continent-girdling superhighways. The US and Canadian dollars, along with the peso, will be phased out and replaced by a common North American currency called the amero.One of the supposed pieces of evidence is the NAFTA Super-highway. This monumental undertaking is perhaps the outgrowth of the Trans-Texas Corridor.
If you haven't heard about the NAU, that may be because its plotters have succeeded in keeping it secret. Or, more likely, because there is no such thing. Government officials say a continental union is out of the question, and economists and political analysts overwhelmingly agree that there will not be a North American Union in our lifetimes. But belief in the NAU - that the plans are very real, and that the nation is poised to lose its independence - has been spreading from its origins in the conservative fringe, coloring political press conferences and candidate question-and-answer sessions, and reaching a kind of critical mass on the campaign trail. Republican presidential candidate and Texas congressman Ron Paul has made the North American Union one of his central issues. [More of an even-handed report]
Add up all the above ingredients--NASCO, SPP, Lázaro Cárdenas, the Kansas City SmartPort, the planned pilot program allowing Mexican truckers to drive on US roads--and you still don't have a superhighway four football fields wide connecting the entire continent. Which is why understanding the persistence of the NAFTA highway legend requires spending some time in Texas, where Governor Rick Perry and his longtime consigliere, Texas Department of Transportation commissioner Ric Williamson, are proposing the $185 billion Trans-Texas Corridor (TTC), 4,000 miles of highway, rail and freight corridors, the first of which would run up from the border through the heavily populated eastern part of the state. Plans for the TTC call for it to be up to four football fields wide at points, paving over as much as half a million acres of Texas countryside. The first section will be built and operated by a foreign enterprise, and when completed it would likely be the largest privatized toll road in the country.
And unlike the NAFTA highway, the Trans-Texas Corridor is very, very real. [More of a must read for non-Texans]
In my conversations with people in Texas, it seemed that the privatized nature of the road was what got folks the angriest. Bad enough that drivers would face tolls, that ranchers would have their land cut out from under them, but all for the financial gain of a foreign company? "If you liked the Dubai ports deal, you'll love my TTC land grab," taunts an animated Rick Perry on one anti-TTC website. The cartoon goes on to portray Cintra as conquistadors clad in armor riding in to steal Texans' treasure.That is the curious fact. While our government debt is in Chinese/Japanese hands, and our financial institutions glad to be acquired by Mideastern governments, why the uproar over highways?
"What really drives this is economic," activist Terri Hall told me. "It's about the money. We're talking about obscene levels of profit, someone literally being like the robber barons of old. And this is one thing that government actually does well, build and maintain roads."
Naturally, advocates of the war wish to lower the fiscal stakes, whereas opponents wish to raise them. But cost estimates follow certain broad rules of logic and convention. Estimates differ along with definitions of scope and because of new information. Here are six reasons cost estimates for the Iraq war have varied and keep rising:The rising tide of tax revenues which surprised almost all seem to be waning as capital gains become capital losses. On the other side of the ledger, our borrowing costs seem set to escalate as foreign investors need more incentive to buy our debt. In short, massive deficits could fall out of fashion - if only because nobody wants to pay for it.
- The cost of invasion is a down payment. The cost of exit continues for years.
- If the war is financed by borrowing, some estimates may add interest costs.
- Costs are borne by the U.S. taxpayer, but also by others. Costs may be added relating to costs borne by individuals, especially military personnel, or by the economy.
- War is cruel and combatants bear the brunt of it. Unexpected new costs can emerge, such as undiagnosed physical damage among returning vets.
- Like life expectancies, cost estimates usually rise as the war continues. When the first estimates were prepared, the war was projected to last ten years at most. Now, five years later, the war is still being projected to last 10 more years, i.e., 15 years altogether.
- Some estimates include the war in Afghanistan or worldwide anti-terrorism costs. [More]
The effect includes the changes in the amounts and composition of consumer consumption caused by changes in consumer wealth. Economists believe people spend more when one of two things is true: when people actually are richer (by objective measurement, for example, a bonus or a pay raise at work, which would be an income effect), or when people perceive themselves to be "richer" (for example, the assessed value of their home increases, or a stock they own has gone up in price recently). Economists also believe that this situation has macroeconomic implications. A typical response to the wealth effect includes a reduced supply of labor; however, personal income will still be increased. This can be seen by the parallel outward shift in the production function, which is indicative of the wealth effect. The effect's size is governed by a different calculation in either case. [More]Given this definition we have dual engines for our wealth effect: realized wealth in the form of an extra $20B in net farm income, and perceived wealth as we all revise our capital inventory (land, equipment, etc.) by the current market prices.
The latest puzzle design innovation in a beautiful classic world globe. Interlock all of the challenging 264 curved plastic pieces together, assemble onto the gold tone stand and you have a showpiece to display in your home or office. The high gloss surface is marked with longitudes and latitudes. Tight fitting pieces are designed so that virtually no seam is showing where the pieces interlock. The globe rotates on its axis to help you locate countries, cities and bodies of water. A remarkable gift. The globe measures 9" in diameter x 15 1/2" high when mounted on stand.Couldn't hurt modern geography skills - $30
This is not how Mary and Joseph came into Bethlehem, but this is how you enter now. You wait at the wall. It's a daunting concrete barricade, three stories high, thorned with razor wire. Standing beside it, you feel as if you're at the base of a dam. Israeli soldiers armed with assault rifles examine your papers. They search your vehicle. No Israeli civilian, by military order, is allowed in. And few Bethlehem residents are permitted out—the reason the wall exists here, according to the Israeli government, is to keep terrorists away from Jerusalem.The myths surrounding our most precious memories are not surrendered easily - and whatever pictures we want to enjoy in our minds will usually not be displaced by mere facts. This used to drive me nuts, until I backed off and made allowances not simply for those who preferred fiction to reality, but also for my own blind allegiance to how some things are.
Bethlehem and Jerusalem are only six miles apart (ten kilometers), though in the compressed and fractious geography of the region, this places them in different realms. It can take a month for a postcard to go from one city to the other. Bethlehem is in the West Bank, on land taken by Israel during the Six Day War of 1967. It's a Palestinian city; the majority of its 35,000 residents are Muslim. In 1900, more than 90 percent of the city was Christian. Today Bethlehem is only about one-third Christian, and this proportion is steadily shrinking as Christians leave for Europe or the Americas. At least a dozen suicide bombers have come from the city and surrounding district. The truth is that Bethlehem, the "little town" venerated during Christmas, is one of the most contentious places on Earth. [More]
Fewer Kids Are DyingWhat’s happening: Mortality rates for young children are at a record low.
The stats: The number of children younger than 5 who died worldwide in 2006 fell to 9.7 million, the first time that figure dropped below 10 million since such records have been kept. And the good news isn’t confined to one continent. Latin America is on track to reach the Millennium Development Goal of reducing its 1990 child mortality rate by two thirds by 2015; so far, its under-5 mortality rate has already plummeted by half, from 55 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 27 in 2006. In China during the same period, child deaths dropped from 45 per 1,000 births to just 24, while India registered a 34 percent drop. Even parts of sub-Saharan Africa improved, with child mortality decreasing more than 20 percent from 2000 to 2004 in Ethiopia, Malawi, Rwanda, and Tanzania.
The reasons why: Simple solutions. More kids are getting vaccinated—measles deaths having fallen 60 percent globally since 1999. More kids are avoiding malaria by sleeping under insecticide-treated bed nets. Higher rates of breast-feeding and vitamin A supplements to strengthen immune systems are also keeping children alive. Safer water, better nutrition, more cash for public health, and more community health workers are also getting kids past their fifth birthdays. None of these solutions is particularly new or high-tech—just proof that implementing healthcare basics can save millions of lives. [More of a short, uplifting report]
The computer shipped with Leopard included, but not installed. That went fine - as far as I know. Right now I'm just getting into the different basic commands and unlearning Windows habits.
Leipzig. A new map showing the distribution of loess sediments in Europe has been published for the first time in 75 years, in digital format. With this map, Dagmar Haase, a geographer at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), has completed the work of various researchers who had begun as far back as the 1970s and 80s to revise the last comprehensive inventory produced by Rudolf Grahmann, which appeared in Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde in Leipzig in 1932. Haase and her colleagues have produced the new map with a scale of 1:2,500,000 with the help of modern digital information systems. [More]
Hmm - I'm looking for big production numbers to start coming out of Ukraine.Whether they are lime-grey or dark black, loess sediments and the soils derived from them are of special importance for agriculture worldwide because they are some of the most fertile soils there are. In Germany, soil quality is given a rating using an index. The maximum value of 100 was attributed to the loess soil at Eickendorf in the Magdeburger Börde plains.When people say they aren't making any more farmland, they are right. But what happens when really good land that has been abused or underutilized finally gets farmed well?
Loess sediments and their soils cover around one-tenth of the earth. In Europe, loess is a powdery product of glaciations during the Ice Age. During those cold periods, this very fine, light material was swept from bare regions on the edges of the glaciers and deposited in regions with denser vegetation. Loess consists largely of quartz grains and lime. The very fine grains ensure good aeration, water storage and mineral levels. This means that soils derived from loess are very fertile, like the black earth of the Börde plains, but are also particularly susceptible to erosion. It is therefore important to know where exactly these fertile soils so worthy of protection are to be found.
Additionally, the European Union uses 87 percent of the world's export subsidies, which severely disadvantages U.S. exports. The U.S. utilizes only 3 percent and the rest of the world uses the remaining 10 percent.People who routinely use the language of war to describe entitlement payments to a handful of farmers likely have never served in the military with real armaments or have children who now face them. The 2007 Farm Bill is not a war - Iraq is - and evoking the language of death and conflict for political advantage is contemptible and dismissive of the very real threat of very real armaments, IMHO.
“Farmers and ranchers are willing to lower farm program payments via WTO negotiations if — and only if — they can secure increased opportunities to sell their products overseas,” said Stallman. “However, we are not willing to unilaterally disarm.” [More]
The analytic crowd likes to give odds on the U.S. economy falling into recession, but Merrill Lynch figures the consumer knows something Wall Street isn’t admitting: that a recession has already arrived.Most watched is the action of you and me and our credit cards during the early few months of the holiday season (now officially extending from Independence Day to the Ides of March). And some see a little spending fatigue.
Citing results from the latest University of Michigan survey of consumer sentiment, economist David Rosenberg points out that the year-over-year trend in buying intentions for large household goods is closing in on the pace that was evident just ahead of the last two economic downturns in 1990 and 2001. [More]
The malaise in the mortgage market is starting to spread to credit-card and auto loans in what one analyst has dubbed consumer credit "contagion." It's an ominous warning signal for the economy.Economists are watching the fallout from the housing market. The loss of the feeling of wealth and the ability to extract equity to fund consumption may just be beginning to be felt.
Many of the nation's big banks and credit-card companies have begun acknowledging they are seeing a shift in consumer behavior, including more people unable pay off their debts.
Things are unraveling faster than expected for some like Capital One Financial Corp., which on Tuesday boosted its estimates for credit losses next year to potentially above $5-billion in part because of elevated delinquencies on its cards. [More]
The question, though, is just how much consumers will restrain their free-spending ways. Research by economist Carroll suggests that every $1 decline in house prices lops about 9 cents off of spending. The current value of residential housing is about $21 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve. So if home prices fall by 10%, as many people expect, that would lead to roughly a $200 billion hit to spending over the next couple of years. A 15% tumble in home prices would produce a $300 billion pullback in spending, or about 3% of personal income.[Note the value of residential real estate above : $21T. Now compare to the value of all farmland: $1.7T]
That accords well with calculations by BEA economists. They figure that households took out $340 billion in cash from mortgage and home-equity financing in 2006. That source of funding could largely disappear over the next couple of years.
Three percent—that doesn't sound like a lot. Look a little closer, though, and it's a bigger hit than it seems. The reason is that much of what the government counts as consumer spending is not directly controlled by households. For example, the $1.7 trillion in medical costs is counted as consumer spending, but 85% of that is spent by the government and health insurers, not individuals. And $1.5 trillion in "housing services" is listed as part of consumer spending, but for homeowners it really just represents the value of living in a home rather than any spending they can change. It's mainly a bookkeeping convention, not a real outlay. [More]
The past couple of holidays, you've patted yourself on the back for buying gift cards for your picky teenager or out-of-town relative. "They can choose what they want, and I get credit for being thoughtful," you've thought.But while the consumer outlook is iffy, other experts see a different set of players in the US and global economy. For one, emerging economies like the RISC countries are growing more rapidly and could pick up much of the slack if American spenders tire.
Well, hang on just a minute. While the popularity of gift cards has skyrocketed over the past four years, the rate of growth is slowing. The National Retail Federation said Tuesday that sales of gift cards would grow 6% to $26.3 billion in 2007. But that's much less than the 35% growth in 2006.
What's going on?
"Kids are getting bored with gift cards," says Candace Corlett of WSL Strategic Retail, a consulting firm.
Part of the problem is that the cards get lost or don't get used before their expiration dates, or the amount on the card is too small to buy anything decent. [More]
The best hope that global growth can stay strong lies instead with emerging economies. A decade ago, the thought that so much depended on these crisis-prone places would have been terrifying. Yet thanks largely to economic reforms, their annual growth rate has surged to around 7%. This year they will contribute half of the globe's GDP growth, measured at market exchange rates, over three times as much as America. In the past, emerging economies have often needed bailing out by the rich world. This time they could be the rescuers.One thing to remember as well: with the US dollar sinking, much of the overseas growth could help US-made products. A second economic "bright spot" is a questionable plus - US government spending, especially for the war. But this addition to the economy is more likely a huge cost instead.
Of course, a recession in America would reduce emerging economies' exports, but they are less vulnerable than they used to be. America's importance as an engine of global growth has been exaggerated. Since 2000 its share of world imports has dropped from 19% to 14%. Its vast current-account deficit has started to shrink, meaning that America is no longer pulling along the rest of the world. Yet growth in emerging economies has quickened, partly thanks to demand at home. In the first half of this year the increase in consumer spending (in actual dollar terms) in China and India added more to global GDP growth than that in America. [More]
You may recall that you got rid of your loyal White House economic adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey back in 2002 after, among other sins, he claimed that a war in Iraq might cost as much as $200 billion. At the time, White House staffers sneered that Lindsey was being alarmist. Hardly. One commonly cited estimate of Iraq's cost, based on an August analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, is $1 trillion, and that's probably on the low side. A report released last week by the Democratic staff of Congress's Joint Economic Committee put the war's 2002-08 tab at $1.3 trillion.All these factors seem to weighing on our citizens and coloring their deliberation of choices about the future. Not mere political choices, but economic and personal ones as well. I've never placed much weight in consumer confidence surveys, but the persistence of negativity in the US despite relatively good economic figures does not bode well.
But all these figures don't quite get at Iraq's real cost. Indeed, we usually don't even frame the question the right way. We'd do better to recognize what we've lost, rather than focusing only on what we've paid.
We often think of cost simply in terms of dollars spent, but the real cost of a choice -- what economists call its "opportunity cost" -- consists of the forgone alternatives, of the things we could have had instead. For instance, the cost of seeing a movie is not just the dollars you plunked down for the ticket, but also the subtler cost of missing a dinner at home or a cocktail party at work. This idea sounds simple, but if applied consistently, it requires us to rethink and, yes, raise the costs of the Iraq war.
Set aside the question of what we could have accomplished at home with the energy and resources we've devoted to Iraq and concentrate just on national security. Here, the hidden cost of the war, above all, is that the United States has lost much of its ability to halt nuclear proliferation. [More of economist Tyler Cowen's superb essay]
