Os enfermeiros do INEM da região centro exigiram hoje a resolução dos problemas contratuais e laborais dos profissionais actualmente ao serviço das várias valências daquele organismo de emergência médica para poderem continuar a trabalhar.

Reunidos esta tarde em Coimbra, 25 dos 30 enfermeiros que trabalham em backoffice (coordenação e supervisão de meios) e na prestação de cuidados de emergência com ambulâncias de Suporte Imediato de Vida (SIV) apelaram à direcção do Instituto Nacional de Emergência Médica (INEM) que solucione um conjunto de problemas para que possam “continuar a abraçar este projecto (emergência médica).

Em comunicado, os enfermeiros, que ameaçam não continuar ao serviço após 31 de Dezembro, exigem também a regulamentação das ambulâncias SIV e que sejam considerados elementos integrantes da equipa, «respeitando a Carreira de Enfermagem e o Regulamento do Exercício Profissional de Enfermagem».

Por outro lado, defendem também a criação de uma carreira para os Técnicos de Ambulância de Emergência das ambulâncias SBV (Suporte Básico de Vidas) e SIV, que não colida com as funções da enfermagem e negociada com as Ordens dos Médicos e dos Enfermeiros.

Vinte e três dos 24 enfermeiros que integram os meios SIV não têm vínculo ao INEM, estando requisitados a outros serviços do Ministério da Saúde ao abrigo de comissões de serviço por interesse público.

Há anos que a maioria destes profissionais anseia fazer parte dos quadros daquele organismo, não vislumbrando agora que tal venha a acontecer até final de 2010.

No comunicado, os enfermeiros lamentam que o INEM tenha aberto concurso para admissão destes profissionais em Março de 2009 e o resultado ainda não tenha sido conhecido.

«Segundo informação obtida, este concurso foi já terminado pelo júri, tendo sido todo o processo dirigido ao Conselho de Direcção do INEM, que ainda não deu seguimento e publicação do mesmo”, lê-se no documento, que refere a falta de proposta para admissão definitiva dos enfermeiros dos backoffices».

Na sequência desta situação, sublinha o comunicado, «muitos enfermeiros e outros profissionais retornaram aos seus Hospitais, perdendo o INEM um conhecimento técnico dificilmente substituível», uma vez que diversos estabelecimentos de saúde não renovam a Cedência de Interesse Público (actual Regime de Mobilidade Interna), ao abrigo da qual estão requisitados.

Os enfermeiros mostram-se, no entanto, confiantes que haverá resolução para as suas preocupações nas reuniões que a Ordem dos Enfermeiros (quarta-feira) e o Sindicato dos Enfermeiros Portugueses (quinta-feira) vão ter com o Ministério da Saúde.

Fonte: Lusa / SOL

Animals presumably lack God-belief. Are they atheists?

To so define atheism as the mere lack of God-belief is absurd.

Would it then therefore, be more reasonable to presume that “agnostic” would be more accurate? Or perhaps, would anti-theist be more accurate?

There are things outside ourselves which we do not know, and cannot now know, and perhaps may never know. Yet, at some time in the future, some things now not known may be known, an example of which is the existence of the atomic particles.

From such an one’s perspective (as from those whom so describe themselves as “atheist”), the existence or nonexistence of God can neither be proven, nor denied.

Science, for example, has failed to prove that God does NOT exist. And while there are individual claimants whom so assert, no scientific body of evidence has arisen to assert – or dissuade through proof – otherwise.

Atheism can be and is defined as “the doctrine or belief that there is no God,” which also claims “a lack of belief in the existence of God.” And it so narrowly defined, that though it is variously worded, the bottom line is that there is a belief.

Belief, however, is accurately defined and understood as an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists, and perhaps secondarily, as trust, faith or confidence in something or someone.

Atheism is defined as the belief that God does not exist; then is it not inherently antithetical to assert that God does NOT exist?

There is no proof that God does NOT exist.

According to select individuals (not necessarily active upon this forum) whom self-identify as “atheist,” and organizational dogma (principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true) a “belief” is what they possess, yet simultaneously argue against their possession of a belief, or existence of the same.

The American Atheist website says that “…atheists certainly do not “deny” that gods exist. Denial is the “refusal to believe.” ” However, they further conclude that “There is no proof or evidence for the existince (sic) of gods.”

Yet the site also states that “We are atheists because in our view…” Other suitable words for “view” are “perspective” and “opinion.” And an “opinion” is synonymous with “belief.” Thus, their site could also accurately state, “We are atheists because we believe…” How inherently contradictory!

Such a remark is antithetical to that which is previously espoused, that “The common thread that ties all atheists together is a lack of belief…”

Yet setting all that aside, even Richard Dawkins remains open-minded about the claim that Intelligent Design is a scientific hypothesis writing in his 2006 tome “The God Delusion,” that “the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other.”

There is logical conclusion to which those such as Dawkins arrive, whom assert in The Great Ape Project that chimpanzees, gorillas or baboons have moral rights, or warn of allegedly dire consequences of the “overpopulation” of Earth. Truly, they must be Enemies of Reason. For if apes have the same rights as you… then they are your peers.

Go ask the residents or visitors to Kyoto’s district of Arashiyama, with Japan’s “Monkey Mountain” if they think those viciously dangerous apes ought to have the same rights as humans.

Yeah… don’t keep that chimp in jail! Imprisoning him just because he flung a turd at you because you wouldn’t give him your banana and peanuts!? So he stole your purse, and infected you with SIV (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus) when he scratched open your face with his claws… so what?! Why, he has the same rights as you!

Who would be the judge? What law school would they attend?

Planet of the Apes, anyone? “Get your stinkin’ paws off me, you damned dirty ape!”

Now… what’s that about being a “monkey’s uncle”?

L’arrivée de nouvelles plaques d’immatriculation pour une uniformisation européenne a provoquée de vives réactions. Certains se sont indignés, d’autres ont été passifs ne voyant pas de dérangement sur le fait d’avoir une nouvelle plaque.
Depuis le 15 octobre, les véhicules d’occasions sont désormais concernés par cette réforme. Le blog auto, sans concession, fait le point sur le SIV (système d’immatriculation des véhicules) pour que tout soit clair.
Désormais, les nouvelles plaques d’immatriculations sont composées de 2 lettres, un tiret, 3 chiffres, un tiret, 2 lettres (par exemple VI-038-CT).

Cette immatriculation est l’identité du véhicule. Il la conservera jusqu’à sa destruction.
Sur la plaque est situé également le N° du département ainsi qu’un logo de la région correspondante. Cette partie de la plaque peut être modifiée en changeant le jeu de plaques si une personne le souhaite pour environ 25 €.
Finies les démarches et les files d’attente à la préfecture pour obtenir son n° d’immatriculation, désormais des garages agréés sont en droit de réaliser l’opération. Les plus férus des administrations pourront toujours tout de même se rendre à la préfecture pour réaliser l’opération.
Le temps d’obtenir le certificat définitif d’immatriculation, les garagistes sont même en droit de vous fournir un certificat provisoire.

A retenir

- Les véhicules ont une immatriculation à vie
- La carte grise bleutée va être remplacée par une carte grise orangée.
- De nombreux dispositifs de sécurité seront mis en place sur cette carte afin d’éviter toutes fraudes (un fil de sécurité, un filigrane de Marianne, le sigle RF en fond, une encre noire devenant verte sous les rayons ultraviolets (U.V), un hologramme “trois dimensions” représentant dans un sens une voiture, dans un autre sens la France et dans le dernier sens le monde…)
- Le tarif fiscal sera appliqué en fonction de votre lieu de résidence. 2,50€ seront ajoutés pour l’envoie de la carte grise directement au domicile du bénéficiaire.
- Le tarif moyen des nouvelles plaques est de 70€ contre 50€ précédemment.
- Les véhicules d’occasions sont désormais concernés par le SIV

Bonne route !

Yeeez, I have a spot at the great knitting event happening here in March: Stickfest i Väst. Now I need to save loads of money to spend on yarn.

It was just posted that sending an email at 10:00 was not enough to get a spot (in Swedish). Uh, I thought I was safe. Guess you can never be safe with so  many crazy knitters. I would have been crushed if I’d not gotten in.

Thank you Marie, Linda and Ingrid for all the hard work. I guess you have figured out just how much we love what you do.

Hier, le système d’immatriculation des véhicules à été interrompu.

L’interruption fait suite à une forte demande venant des professionnels et des préfectures.

Selon le ministère de l’intérieur, le système a connu un engorgement et une instabilité jusqu’à midi.

Le système a été redémarré et la situation est redevenue à la normale vers 12h30.

Wall Street Lies Blame Victims to Avoid Responsibility for Financial Meltdown

By Nomi Prins, Wiley Press
Posted on September 29, 2009

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Nomi Prins’ new book, It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street.

The Second Great Bank Depression has spawned so many lies, it’s hard to keep track of which is the biggest. Possibly the most irksome class of lies, usually spouted by Wall Street hacks and conservative pundits, is that we’re all victims to a bunch of poor people who bought McMansions, or at least homes they had no business living in. If that was really what this crisis was all about, we could have solved it much more cheaply in a couple of days in late 2008, by simply providing borrowers with additional capital to reduce their loan principals. It would have cost about 3 percent of what the entire bailout wound up costing, with comparatively similar risk.

Just as great oaks from little acorns grow, so, too, can a Second Great Bank Depression from a tiny loan grow.  But so you know, it wasn’t the tiny loan’s fault. It was everyone and everything that piled on top. That’s how a small loan in Stockton, California, can be linked to a worldwide economic collapse all the way to Iceland, through a plethora of shady financial techniques and overzealous sales pitches.

Here are some numbers for you. There were approximately $1.4 trillion worth of subprime loans outstanding in the United States by the end of 2007. By May 2009, there were foreclosure filings against approximately 5.1 million properties. If it was only the subprime market’s fault, 1.4 trillion would have covered the entire problem, right?

Yet the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and the FDIC forked out more than $13 trillion to fix the “housing correction,” as Hank Paulson steadfastly referred to the Second Great Bank Depression as late as November 20, 2008, while he was treasury secretary. With that money, the government could have bought up every residential mortgage in the country — there were about $11.9 trillion worth at the end of December 2008 — and still have had a trillion left over to buy homes for every single American who couldn’t afford them, and pay their health care to boot.

But there was much more to it than that: Wall Street was engaged in a very dangerous practice called leverage. Leverage is when you borrow a lot of money in order to place a big bet. It makes the payoff that much bigger. You may not be able to cover the bet if you’re wrong — you may even have to put down a bit of collateral in order to place that bet — but that doesn’t matter when you’re sure you’re going to win. It is a high-risk, high-reward way to make money, as long as you’re not wrong. Or as long as you make the rules. Or as long as the government has your back.

The Second Great Bank Depression wouldn’t have been as tragic without a thirty-to-one leverage ratio for investment banks, and, according to the

New York Times

, a ratio that ranged from eleven to one to fifteen-to-one for the major commercial banks. Actually, it’s unclear what kind of leverage the commercial banks really had, because so many of their products were off-book, or not evaluated according to what the market would pay for them. Banks would have taken a hit on their mortgage and consumer credit portfolios, but the systemic credit crisis and the bailout bonanza would have been avoided. Leverage included, we’re looking at a possible $140 trillion problem. That’s right — $140 trillion! Imagine if the financial firms all over the globe actually exposed their piece of that leverage.

But for $1.4 trillion in subprime loans to become $140 trillion in potential losses, you need two steps in between. The most significant is a healthy dose of leverage, but leverage would not have had a platform without the help of a wondrous financial feat called securitization. Financial firms run economic models that select and package loans into new securities according to criteria such as geographic diversity, the size of the loans, and the length of the mortgages. A bunch of loans are then repackaged into an asset-backed security (ABS). This new security is backed, or collateralized, by a small number of original home loans related to the size of the security. Some securities, for example, might be 10 percent real loans and 90 percent bonds backed by those loans. Some might be 5 percent real loans. Whatever the proportion, the money the mortgage holders pay to lenders on their loans is used to make payments on new assets or securities. Those securities, in turn, pay out to their investors.

During the lead-up to the Second Great Bank Depression, the securities themselves were a much bigger problem than the loans. Between 2002 and 2007, banks in the United States created nearly 80 percent of the approximately $14 trillion worth of total global ABSs, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), and other alphabetic concoctions or “structured” assets. Structured assets were created at triple what the rate had been from 1998 to 2002. Bankers from the rest of the world created, or “issued,” the other 20 percent, around $3 trillion worth. Everyone was paid handsomely. In total, issuers raked in a combined $300 billion in fees. Fees can be made for all types of securitized assets, but the more convoluted they are, the riskier and more lucrative they become. Fees ranged from .1 percent to 0.5 percent on standard ABS deals and up to 0.3 percent for mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) and whole business securitization (WBS) deals. Fees were better for CDOs—between 1.5 and 1.75 percent for each deal, and higher for the riskier slices. All told, the $2 trillion CDO market alone netted Wall Street around $30 billion before CDO values headed south. Because U.S. investment banks were making huge profits from packaging churning loans and leveraging them, mortgage-and asset-backed security volume skyrocketed.

Investment banks, hedge funds, and other financial firms could use the $14 trillion of new securities as collateral against which to borrow money and incur more debt (leverage them). There is no way of knowing exactly how much was leveraged, because the players operated in an opaque system — that is, a system without proper regulatory oversight or enforcement to detect or curtail leverage. But a conservative estimate of the average amount of leverage is about ten to one, considering the roughly eleven-to-one leverage of the major commercial banks and the thirty-to-one leverage of investment banks. So, we’re talking about a system that ultimately took on $140 trillion in debt on the back of $1.4 trillion of subprime loans. How insane is that? And, it happened so fast.

In 2005, the mortgage on some little home in Stockton provided the capital for two or three ill-advised loans that soon disappeared into an ABS. But it was the global banks, the insurance companies, and the pension funds — particularly in Europe — that purchased the related ABSs. Like their U.S. counterparts, European financiers bought boatloads of ABSs with borrowed money. 13 They also shoved them off-book into structured investment vehicles (SIVs) that required no capital charge and little reporting.

By the fall of 2008 those ABSs, CDOs, and all their permutations would be known as “toxic assets.” They were considered by many to be the major cause of Big Finance’s failures and losses. The push for TARP centered on ridding banks of these poisonous creatures. But make no mistake: toxic assets are not the same as defaulted subprime mortgage loans; loans are merely one of the ingredients that make up the assets. All the subprime loans in existence could have defaulted and the homes attached to them could have been devalued to zero (which didn’t happen), but without the feat of securitization, the banks wouldn’t have become nearly insolvent. Toxic assets became devoid of value, not because all the subprime loans stuffed inside them tanked, but because there was no longer demand from investors. If no one wants your Aunt Mary’s antique gold-plated, diamond-encrusted starfish, for all intents and purposes, it has no monetary value at the moment. This basic supply-and-demand concept is something our government apparently didn’t understand when it offered to take the toxic assets off the banks’ books. And the Fed, as we’ll see, doesn’t seem to care that it took on trillions of dollars’ worth of these assets.

Lazy Lending Legislation

The greedy predatory lending that fueled the Second Great Bank Depression could have been avoided. Back in 1994, there was actually enough popular pressure to introduce legislation that would have ushered in controls on lending and other banking activities. As is par for the course, a handful of consumer-oriented congresspeople and watchdog groups initially faced an uphill battle against a band of well-funded, well-placed politicians such as Florida’s Bill McCollum, Texas’s Phil Gramm, and Iowa’s James Leach and Charles Grassley, who were carrying Wall Street’s torch toward deregulation.

But a burgeoning predatory lending crisis reached a very public head in 1994 amid allegations that Fleet Finance Group had gouged hundreds of low-income and minority consumers. Busloads of irate anti-loan-shark-T-shirt-sporting citizens rallied through the halls of Congress to chronicle lending abuses.

In response, just before Newt Gingrich assumed power as Speaker of the House under Democrat president Bill Clinton, the House battled for the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act of 1994 (HOEPA) to cap the most outrageous predatory loans. 37 It was the last piece of legislation that attempted to regulate appalling lending practices. Perhaps if lending had been better regulated, subprime loans wouldn’t have been the fodder for the Second Great Bank Depression. Maybe something else would have been. But that wasn’t the case.

HOEPA contained several provisions that curbed “reverse redlining,” in which nonbank lenders target low-income and minority borrowers. But it didn’t reinstate full interest rate caps, which had been deregulated during the previous two decades, or limit fees or tighten requirements to determine the ability of borrowers to repay their loans. As you can imagine, the industry and certain Republicans bitterly opposed the original House bill.

“Why can’t the lenders police themselves?” Senator Richard C. Shelby (R-AL) asked. Sure, and while we’re at it, why not let power companies determine what’s pollution and what isn’t? Why not let agribusiness make the rules about what farms can do? Why not put lions in charge of your gazelle sanctuary or hire a fox to guard the henhouse? Shelby, as you may reca ll, later sprouted an activist streak in 2009 and took the Treasury Department to task for lying to Congress about TARP.

Even with the best intentions, HOEPA’s passage had dire consequences. First, it left a huge gap between the first and second tier of rates and fees a lender could charge. If lenders didn’t want to hit the new caps, they had plenty of fertile ground to play on by extending loans with rates and fees just beneath the HOEPA triggers. Because lenders would make less money from each loan, due to the reduced rates and fees, they’d have to find more borrowers to make the same profits. Voil à , the quiet birth of predatory subprime lending.

During those early and middle years of the Gingrich revolution, there was no talk of regulation. The market zoomed, and even though a spate of corporate fraud was percolating, it didn’t look broke, so no one in Congress fixed it.

As the late 1990s stock market boom headed into the new millennium, there were renewed legislative attempts to rein in the lending industry. Notably, in April 2000, the dynamic duo of Representative John LaFalce (D-NY) and Senator Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) introduced the Predatory Lending Consumer Protection Act of 2000 (PLCPA) to strengthen the Truth-in-Lending Act.

PLCPA would have brought down the HOEPA triggers and cut origination fees so that profit from home mortgages had to come from payments, ensuring that everyone in the chain had an interest in homeowners’ ability to repay loans. Sarbanes and Senate staffer Jonathan Miller worked feverishly to line up cosponsors.

The industry attacked the bill and won, with help from McCollum and Connie Mack III (R-FL). What did pass, however, was Phil Gramm’s Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (CFMA). That act ushered in tremendous growth of unregulated commodity trades through its “Enron Loophole,” which allowed companies to trade energy and other commodity futures on unregulated exchanges.

It also sparked growth in the unregulated credit derivative trades that bet on defaults of corporations or loans, which became the main ingredient in the hot new Wall Street financial gumbo. Credit derivatives were a type of insurance contract written against not just one corporation or loan but on investments that scarfed up bunches of subprime loans and stuffed them into the unregulated CDOs that imploded and hastened the greater lending crisis. The problem was that they weren’t regulated (even half-heartedly) like insurance policies were.

Meanwhile, the quixotic Sarbanes and LaFalce soldiered on, trying to avert lending disaster through appropriate regulation. They reintroduced their bill as the Predatory Lending Consumer Protection Act of 2001, but the mortgage industry and its mouthpieces were relentless. In July 2001, Stephen W. Prough, chairman of Ameriquest Mortgage Company, said at the Senate’s Banking Committee hearings, “‘Predatory’ is really a high-profile word with no definition.” In August 2001, Senate Banking Committee chairman Gramm concurred, “Some people look at subprime lending and see evil,” he said. “I look at subprime lending and I see the American dream in action.” The 2001 version of PLCPA also died.

Down and nearly out, Sarbanes and LaFalce tried to pass their act again in May 2002. It failed again and then again, for the final time, on November 21, 2003. Bush’s ownership society ideology was in full swing by then, and the country was at war. Any hope for regulation or transparency in the lending or banking sector was basically dead.

The culmination of years of minor and significant acts of deregulation coalesced with mortgage industry sycophants beating back solid attempts at regulation or transparency. Loans that lenders pushed on homeowners were the perfect fodder for Wall Street, which eagerly packaged the loans and profited. House prices, in turn, skyrocketed.

How Lenders Created a Risk-Free Business

Meanwhile, lending practices had gotten really wild. Alan Greenspan had chopped rates dramatically to bolster the economy following the stock market plunge in 2001 and 2002. Lower rates meant that it was cheaper for banks to borrow more money from the Fed and from one another. It also meant that lenders had more funds to play with. Because prime loan rates fell in tandem, these loans weren’t funneling as much profit to lenders. To make up for it, lenders extended riskier (nonprime) loans at higher rates to more borrowers.

With cheaper money, lenders were able to fund more mortgages for those riskier borrowers. If some loans didn’t go well, it wouldn’t matter. Lenders bet that they could either sell the underlying homes for higher prices, which would more than cover the defaulted loans, or convince the borrowers to take out equity loans backed by the homes’ presumably rising value.

That increased the risk of default and, more so, the potential loss to the lender: the same house could now back two loans instead of one, so if its value fell and the borrower couldn’t pay up, both loans were screwed. Super-low teaser interest rates lasted for two or three years and begged to be refinanced (for which lenders got extra fees) before they zoomed up. This added more risk to the system: loans couldn’t be refinanced, and borrowers couldn’t make the high rate payments. But as long as home prices kept rising as they had since at least the early 1960s, systemic loan defaults weren’t a huge concern.

While rates remained fairly low, there was always more cash for lenders to dole out. Lenders pushed an ongoing cycle of refinancing and new home purchases, both of which could be classified as new mortgages on their books, which was good for stock prices. Between 2002 and 2005, the stock price of the once-largest independent mortgage lender, Countrywide Financial, had tripled — well before Bank of America agreed on January 11, 2008, to buy its remains. The firm created $434 billion in new loans in 2003, a 75 percent increase over 2002, securing a post in Forbes America’s top twenty-five fastest-growing big companies for 2003. The number-three home lender, Washington Mutual, issued $384 billion in loans that year. (Emulating Countrywide’s rapid descent later in the decade, Washington Mutual lost a combined $4.44 billion in the first and second quarters of 2008, before JPMorgan Chase swooped in to buy it, with the government’s help, on September 25, 2008.) Wells Fargo, which hung on to buy Wachovia in October 2008, topped the charts in 2003 with $470 billion in new loans. That’s a combined $1.3 trillion in new home loans created by the big three mortgage lenders in 2003.

As home prices spiked amid low rates, demand increased for securitized loans, and more loans were offered. In 2003, the securitization rate of subprime loans matched that of prime loans in the mid-1990s. From 2002 to 2006, subprime loan originations went from 8.6 percent of all mortgages to 20.1 percent.

The more subprime loans there were in the market, the more the securities piled on top of them became exposed to the risk that a larger number of loans than expected might default. Of course, this risk was hidden until home prices started to fall and defaults started to rise. Subprime defaults decreased to 5.37 percent in 2005 (nearly half of what they’d been during the 2001 recession), right before those seeds of risk between lenders and borrowers began to sprout like Audrey II, the alien plant in Little Shop of Horrors.

Consumer protections were simultaneously chucked. On April 20, 2005, President George W. Bush signed the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse and Consumer Protection Act, sponsored by Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA), which worsened the quietly growing housing crisis for consumers. 55 Borrowers facing bankruptcy could no longer negotiate down the principal of their mortgages with their creditors if the market declined, meaning that they had no way to avoid foreclosure, even if they wanted to.

On September 1, 2005, two years after the final Sarbanes-LaFalce bill failed to gain traction, Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) chief economist Patrick Lawler said, “There is no evidence here of prices topping out. On the contrary, house price inflation continues to accelerate, as some areas that have experienced relatively slow appreciation are picking up steam.”

Markets weren’t yet constrained for credit. Because lenders were assured money through securitizations on Wall Street, they didn’t have to worry about guidelines on individual loans. If rating agencies would certify trillions of dollars worth of collateralized packages of loans with the highest possible rating, AAA, Wall Street investment banks could sell them to a wider pool of investors, which included pension funds, university endowments, and municipalities. High-interest loan volume, which includes most subprime loans, soared to a combined $1.5 trillion between 2004 and 2006, representing 29 percent of home loans made in 2006.  Home equity loans bulged simultaneously. It was a loan-lending fest until adjustable rates ultimately kicked in, and prices topped out. At the same time that housing values were faltering, borrower mortgage payments jumped by 25 to 30 percent as adjustment periods began. Then the foreclosures ramped up to levels last seen during the Great Depression.

The Cruelest Lie of All

There are those who blame lending, and certainly subprime lending was terribly predatory. Conservatives, however, toward the end of 2008, began to blame the people getting the subprime loans and the Democrats for pushing through the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) in 1977, which sought to end discriminatory home-lending practices.

CRA “led to tremendous pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — which in turn pressured banks and other lenders — to extend mortgages to people who were borrowing over their heads. That’s called subprime lending. It lies at the root of our current calamity,” the conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote on September 26, 2008, in his nationally syndicated column. Translation: the Democrats allowed Poor People to do this. And innocent Wall Street paid the price.

Krauthammer continued, “Were there some predatory lenders? Of course. But only a fool or a demagogue — i.e., a presidential candidate — would suggest that this is a major part of the problem.” 95 (Of course, maybe Krauthammer is just always reactionary. At the beginning of the Iraq War, he wrote, “Hans Blix had five months to find weapons. He found nothing. We’ve had five weeks. Come back to me in five months. If we haven’t found any, we will have a credibility problem.” 96 Credibility problem indeed.)

Since late 2008, plenty of fools and demagogues have argued and, in fact, proved Krauthammer wrong. But for a while, conservative stalwarts such as Fox News’s Neil Cavuto and newspaper columnist George Will echoed the idea that it wasn’t greed but a 1977 regulatory law that brought down the economy. 97 Given that the value of subprime loans in the market is overwhelmed by the amount of the full federal bailout by a factor of ten to one, that’s not anywhere near reality.

The finance community’s theory is one of selective Darwinism: Little people who take bad risks deserve the consequences. Companies that take bad risks are a welcome addition to the fallen competitor list. Banks that survive the chaos can reposition themselves at the top of the financial piles, and deserve all the federal bailout money, and assistance in growing even bigger, that they can get.

Indeed, after the Bear Stearns bailout, then treasury secretary Paulson said of his former competitor, “When we talk about moral hazard, I would say, ‘Look at the Bear Stearns shareholder.’” 98 Blaming the bad apple and delivering some well-chosen words about America’s destiny will usually mute the need for regulation. That’s why current congressional packages tend to offer cosmetic financial solutions to long-term regulatory dilemmas.

No matter where the blame lies, as housing prices kept dropping and foreclosures kept rising, the feds jumped into gear late and indicted several hundred mortgage players, including former Bear Stearns credit hedge fund stars and current scapegoats Ralph Cioffe and Matt Tannin, and many lesser-known characters. The FBI and the Department of Justice targeted a slew of small and big firms after the fact, from Puerto Rico – based Doral Financial Corporation, unknown to most households, to more prominent names: AIG, Countrywide Financial, Washington Mutual, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, UBS AG, New Century Financial, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae.

When all is forgotten and we’ve moved on to our next financial crisis, there will be certain fingers frozen in time pointing at the subprime loans as the cause of the calamity. Big Finance would prefer that. But the truth is that the subprime loan tragedy was merely the catalyst that exposed the mega-tiered securitizations of securitizations, the massive leverage chain derivatives attached to nothing concrete, and the ineffective regulatory restraints. All of which led us down the rabbit hole of the Second Great Bank Depression.

Nomi Prins is a senior fellow at the public policy center Demos and author of It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street.

© 2009 Wiley Press All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/142944/

Bara satt ni vet så Ringmor är Bengts fru. Bengt är farfars kusin. Åke är Pappas Farbror/ Farfars Bror . Siv är Åkes fru . Tony är Ringmor och Bengts son . Camilla vet jag inte vem som är “biologiska” pappan men Bengt är som hennes pappa. Ungefär som Alexandra och pappa . Lily är våran Hund som du vet och Gallaxy är Ringmor och Bengts Hund . Jag vaknade steg upp vid nio tiden och åt frukost . Gick runt och mumlade lite eller nåt i ett par timmar och försökte väcka mamma . Tänkte att mamma karnse kunde klippa mig då men inte då . Får göra det imårgon eller något sådant . Han inte mycket mer sen än att Duscha sen kom farmor och jag åt lite lunch . När vi for for vi först in på statoil och mamma köpte läsk . Liten grej som mamma alltid gör när vi ska fara iväg långt som tar lång tid . Hon brukar bli så där törstig , men det brukar faktiskt jag också bli . Det är också gott . När vi kom dit såg jag att dom hade ganska stort hus . Fint och så . Inne var det också fint . Av Camilla och Tony fick Ringmor ett jätte kort som Camilla hittat på ÖoB . Av alla ställen så är det ÖoB . Jätte fint faktiskt med Blommor till som dom köpt . Hon fick också en Dyr Champange som nån kompis eller nåt till Camilla skickat tror jag . Antingen var det att han/hon skickat den eller så skickade han/hon pengar till Camilla så hon kunde köpa . Till middag åt vi först Varmrätt som var bröd med nån vitt klägg på med förmodligen Majonäs och Lök i förmodligen nåt mer . och lite Rom och Persilja på . Dricka hade hon Massor . Äppel Cider , Päron Cider , Nån hallon dricka tror jag och 21 till oss men typ bara jag som drack det . 21 är ungefär samma sak som cola fast det är lite annorlunda . En Wasa Bryggeri grej så det är förmodligen nåt som funnits länge . Gott var det i alla fall . Förrätten var också väldigt god det var Potatis med Lax som hon haft i Folie i Ungnen väldigt länge tror jag . Vet inte vad man kallar det då . Lite sås till det som man kunde ta om man ville . Såsen var inge vidare men Laxen och Potatisarna var Gudomliga . Mjuka goda underbara potatisar med jätte god lax . När jag var på promenad med Lily när pappa tänkte fara och köpa senap till Fläsk och Rotmos trodde jag att vi skulle äta det till middag. Tänkte lite “Va!!!? ” ska vi äta husmanskost? . Men det åt han och Farmor till Lunch XD . Till Efterrätt var det Glass med Hjortron Sylt . Första gången jag prövar Glass med Hjortron sylt . Super Gott!!!! . Lite Fika sen med massor av bullar och kakor och allt som Ringmor bakat . Hon sa att det hade tagit ett tag för att Ringmor säger att hon är sjuk . Inte sjuk så men att hon har ont och så . Dom var också gudomligt goda . Har ju sina Konsekvenser att äta mycket och Dricka mycket . Fick gå på toa minst 5-6 gånger på ett par timmar . Seriöst jag överdriver inte . En av dom alla gångerna tog det minst en timme innan jag kom ut . Det kom absolut inget bara klet var som att jag hade Rännskita med endå inte . Försökte säga det så  o äckligt som möjligt men det är ganska omöjligt . När jag äntligen var klar efter typ 55 min gick jag och Leo ut för att ta lite luft och se på Baksidan . Den såg jätte fin ut genom fönstret så jag ville verkligen gå ut och titta . Spelade lite kort sen med Tony,Camilla och Leo . Vi spelade Hjärter 7 . Förutom sen när jag och Leo försökte spela Stress men vi gjorde fel hela tiden tror jag . Lite babbel och så innan vi skulle fara hem . Jag skaffade deras nummer endå när hon kom upp i det så nu har jag det på mobilen XD . Lily fick en Skummbanan av mamma för att hon varit så snäll . Hon har legat still hela tiden typ förutom några gånger har mamma fått säga till henne . När vi kom hem var Lily jätte hungrig , hon åt upp hälften på en gång sen åt hon väll upp den lite sen när jag gick för det var slut sen när jag gick till köket . Efter det shallade intenet lite och jag såg lite på teve men när det funkade så sitter jag och skriver som jag gör nu   . oj Justja Ringmor fick en Buddah av Mamma och oss (Mest mamma) men från oss alla . Ha det bra allihopa !

Sigge

Om man blandar ihop RÖTT + GRÖNT, vad blir det för färg?

Svar: Brunt

Ni förstår säkert vad jag vill ha sagt med det.

Att låta dem få 4 år till, är helt enkelt som att  säga ” Ja men allt har ju funkat så bra hittills, och inget behöver förändras, så vi fortsätter som vi har gjort.”

Vilka av vallöftena var det ni föll för egentligen? De som de inte uppfyllde de senaste 4 åren? Saker och ting som kanske kan rättas till om de får 4 år till på sig (or not!)? “Norrmän will be norrmän” (till er som röstade (stemte) annat – ta inte åt er!).

Kanske det var för att många kvinnor kände sig hotade (truet) av denna mäktiga Siv, som deras män i smyg masturberade till. Kanske var det valfusk. Kanske folk helt enkelt inte förstår hur dumma de är. Kanske folket inte hade något bra alternativ. Kanske folket väntar på Apedog-partiet. (nej, har inget med AP att göra). Kanske vann det rätt blocket. Teoriera är många. Tiden får avgöra.

Nog om det.

Jag har satt på mig student-brillorna. Därav det något mindre frekventa uppdaterandet av bloggen. Men oroa er inte, jag har inte glömt er! Någonstans där ibland er, finns denna schizofrena skapelse, som inte vet om han är/vill vara hund eller apa, men som tjänar för samhället, det fria ordet & massa sex. (För er som inte vet, så är jag en f.d. sexmissbrukare, men jag försöker hålla det mer på det personliga planet nu. Ni vet, lära känna den jag ligger med någorlunda innan de får smaka på “guleböjen”. Bloggen är en form av terapi).

Så här ser jag ut på dagtid.

Jag lär mig väldigt mycket nytt & intressant nuförtiden.

Dessutom, så skiner solen, vilket fortfarande ger oss tid för lite “outdoor activities” innan hösten/vintern kommer.

Med kärlek

Olika artiklar om valet 2009: VG,VG,VG,VG,VG

Update: Jag tror det tog ca 2 timmar innan VG blockerade inlägget. Vad fan är det med folk egentligen?

La noticia, publicada el pasado 2 de Agosto del año 2009 en Nature, se hace eco de la aparición de una nueva cepa de HIV-1 no descrita con anterioridad. Se sabe que el HIV-1 es el principal responsable de la actual pandemia de SIDA. Es un virus que ha sido aislado, fotografiado e incluso filmado en vídeo. Se ha experimentado con él y desgraciadamente se han observado los drásticos efectos que conlleva ignorar las medidas aconsejadas para deterner su expansión.

El HIV tampoco es el único de su estirpe. Se cataloga en la familia Retroviridae, que engloba a muchos más géneros virales, siendo varios de ellos patógenos. Un breve repaso a su taxonomía nos desvela:

Familia Retroviridae

Virus envueltos; genoma ss (+) RNA
Morfología viral: esférica (100 nm F)
Genoma: 2x (+) ss RNA lineal (diploide) (8-11 Kb)
Taxonomía

1. Género Alpharetrovirus: virus de la leucosis aviar (AVL)
2. Género Betaretrovirus: virus del tumor de mama murino (MMV)
3. Género Gammaretrovirus: virus de la leucemia murina (MLV)
4. Género Deltaretrovirus:virus linfotrópico humano de células T (HTLV1 y -2)
5. Género Lentivirus: virus de la inmunodeficiencia humana tipo 1 (HIV)
6. Género Spumavirus:virus “foamy” del chimpanzé

Patogénesis:
Provocan diferentes tipos de tumores en vertebrados mamíferos. Algunos transducen protooncogenes del hospedador), otros producen inmunodeficiencia (HIV) o diversos procesos como parálisis, ataxia, artritis, demencia,…

• Fuente: Virología Animal, curso 2008/09, Universidad de Murcia.

El HIV es por tanto, dentro de los retrovirus, un Lentivirus. Pero, lamentablemente ¡No es el único Lentivirus! Existen varios más. El más famoso de ellos es el  SIV (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus). Y no solo existe un único SIV, sino que existe “una plétora de ellos” (7). Estos virus tienden a ser asintomáticos para sus huéspedes pero patógenos cuando infectan otras especies (10). De igual modo, la transmisión de una especie a otra es un fenómeno habitual (6; 8). Y otra cosa, el SIDA tampoco es una enfermedad exclusiva del ser humano, también los primates la sufren, solo que en este caso la enfermedad recibe el nombre, en lengua inglesa, de AIDS-like disease <<enfermedad parecida al SIDA>>, o directamente Simian AIDS (SAIDS).

Micrografía de electrones del VIH-1. Yemando y liberándose (pulsar para ampliar). Crédito: Microbiología y Virología Online.

La “gracia” (entre comillas, porque de gracioso no tiene nada) es que además, aplicando los postulados de Koch, cuando animales experimentales (monos en este caso) son inyectados con cepas virales a las que no son tolerantes, los animales desarrollan el SAIDS irremediablemente (2; 5; 3). Y como colofón final, con vacunas que emplean este mismo virus pero desactivado, algunos autores han logrado evitar que tal enfermedad tenga lugar (1), si bien posteriores investigaciones han desvelado, lamentablemente, que esta técnica no es tan efectiva a la hora de impedir el desarrollo del SAIDS en animales infectados (4; 9).

Después de esta necesaria introducción, vayamos a la noticia. Se conocen varias cepas de HIV-1, conocidas como M (principal), N (no principal, no atípica) y O (atípica). Desde el año 2001, una red francesa de laboratorios ha estado monitoreando la diversidad genética de este virus. En el año 2004 detectaron un nuevo caso seropositivo en una mujer que recientemente había viajado a París desde Camerún. Si bien, afortunadamente todavía no ha desarrollado síntomas de SIDA.

El virus fue aislado, cultivado in Vitro y secuenciado. El análisis de su secuencia lo reveló como un nuevo tipo de Virus de la Inmunodeficiencia Humana, que ha sido designado en un grupo propio, P. Pero quizás lo más sorprendente es el estudio comparado de la misma. El análisis comparado de su material genético mostró un extraordinario parecido con el de otros Lentivirus previamente identificados, concretamente con el SIVgor, un “Simian Immunodeficiency Virus” propio de gorilas.

Taxonomía del nuevo virus de VIH-1 (mostrado en rojo). SIVgor, es el SIV de los gorilas. SIVcpzPts y SIVcpzPtt son de chimpancé (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii y Pan troglodytes troglodytes, respectivamente). Crédito: Nature.

Sin embargo, su aspecto molecular también desvela que no es un descendiente tan directo. Mientras que por un lado posee características moleculares propias, el cultivo in Vitro del mismo ha mostrado que posee una gran adaptación y capacidad de replicación en células humanas. Esto sumado al testimonio de la mujer, según el cual, ella no había estado en contacto con matanzas de monos o con estos animales en vivo; permite suponer la hipótesis de que este virus, ya ha estado circulando silenciosamente en Camerún sin que se reportaran noticias suyas. Permitiéndole además, disponer del suficiente tiempo para escindirse del SIVgor original convirtiéndose en un virus con identidad propia.

En conclusión de los autores, los reservorios originales del HIV-1, al igual que ahora,  son los gorilas y chimpancés. Siendo estos animales además, origen de nuevas variedades de este virus. El oeste de África central está catalogado como punto caliente del origen de todos los HIV-1 existentes.

En cualquier caso, son precisos más estudios.

1. Fuente: Plantier, J.-C. (2009) A new human inmunodeficiency virus derived from gorillas. Nature Medicine. Published online: 2 August 2009 | doi:10.1038/nm.2016

REFERENCIAS

• (1) Hu, Shiu-Lok et al 1989. Protection of macaques against simian AIDS by immunization with a recombinant vaccinia virus expressing the envelope glycoproteins of simian type D retrovirus. Proc. Nati. Acad. Sci. USA Vol. 86, pp. 7213-7217, September 1989 Microbiology

• (2) Kestler, H. et al 1990. Induction of AIDS in rhesus monkeys by molecularly cloned simian immunodeficiency virus Science, Vol 248, Issue 4959, 1109-1112

• (3) Letvin, N. I. et al 1985. Induction of AIDS-like disease in macaque monkeys with T-cell tropic retrovirus STLV-III Science, Vol 230, Issue 4721, 71-73

• (4) Marthas, M. L. et al 1990. Immunization with a Live, Attenuated Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) Prevents Early Disease but Not Infection in Rhesus Macaques Challenged with Pathogenic SIV JOURNAL OF VIROLOGY, Aug. 1990, p. 3694-3700. Creo que el pdf es accesible gratuitamente.

• (5) Marx, P. A. et al 1984 Simian AIDS: isolation of a type D retrovirus and transmission of the disease. Science, Vol 223, Issue 4640, 1083-1086

• (6) Murphey-Corb, M. et al 1986 Isolation of an HTLV-III-related retrovirus from macaques with simian AIDS and its possible origin in asymptomatic mangabeys. Nature 321, 435 – 437 (22 May 1986); doi:10.1038/321435a0

• (7) Peeters, M. et al 2002. Risk to Human Health from a Plethora of Simian Immunodeficiency Viruses in Primate Bushmeat. Emerging Infectious Diseases • Vol. 8, No. 5, May 2002

• (8) Tsujimoto, H. et al 1988. Isolation and characterization of simian immunodeficiency virus from mandrills in Africa and its relationship to other human and simian immunodeficiency viruses. J Virol. 1988 November; 62(11): 4044-4050. Creo que el pdf es accesible gratuitamente.

• (9) Sutjipto, S. et al 1990. Inactivated simian immunodeficiency vaccine failed to protect rhesus macaques from intravenous or genital mucosal infection but delayed disease in intravenously exposed animals. J Virol. 1990 May; 64(5): 2290-2297

• (10) Wikipedia – Simian immunodeficiency virus.

La noticia, publicada el pasado 2 de Agosto del año 2009 en Nature, se hace eco de la aparición de una nueva cepa de HIV-1 no descrita con anterioridad. Se sabe que el HIV-1 es el principal responsable de la actual pandemia de SIDA. Es un virus que ha sido aislado, fotografiado e incluso filmado en vídeo. Se ha experimentado con él y desgraciadamente se han observado los drásticos efectos que conlleva ignorar las medidas aconsejadas para deterner su expansión.

El HIV tampoco es el único de su estirpe. Se cataloga en la familia Retroviridae, que engloba a muchos más géneros virales, siendo varios de ellos patógenos. Un breve repaso a su taxonomía nos desvela:

Familia Retroviridae

Virus envueltos; genoma ss (+) RNA
Morfología viral: esférica (100 nm F)
Genoma: 2x (+) ss RNA lineal (diploide) (8-11 Kb)
Taxonomía

1. Género Alpharetrovirus: virus de la leucosis aviar (AVL)
2. Género Betaretrovirus: virus del tumor de mama murino (MMV)
3. Género Gammaretrovirus: virus de la leucemia murina (MLV)
4. Género Deltaretrovirus:virus linfotrópico humano de células T (HTLV1 y -2)
5. Género Lentivirus: virus de la inmunodeficiencia humana tipo 1 (HIV)
6. Género Spumavirus:virus “foamy” del chimpanzé

Patogénesis:
Provocan diferentes tipos de tumores en vertebrados mamíferos. Algunos transducen protooncogenes del hospedador), otros producen inmunodeficiencia (HIV) o diversos procesos como parálisis, ataxia, artritis, demencia,…

• Fuente: Virología Animal, curso 2008/09, Universidad de Murcia.

El HIV es por tanto, dentro de los retrovirus, un Lentivirus. Pero, lamentablemente ¡No es el único Lentivirus! Existen varios más. El más famoso de ellos es el  SIV (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus). Y no solo existe un único SIV, sino que existe “una plétora de ellos” (7). Estos virus tienden a ser asintomáticos para sus huéspedes pero patógenos cuando infectan otras especies (10). De igual modo, la transmisión de una especie a otra es un fenómeno habitual (6; 8). Y otra cosa, el SIDA tampoco es una enfermedad exclusiva del ser humano, también los primates la sufren, solo que en este caso la enfermedad recibe el nombre, en lengua inglesa, de AIDS-like disease <<enfermedad parecida al SIDA>>, o directamente Simian AIDS (SAIDS).

Micrografía de electrones del VIH-1. Yemando y liberándose (pulsar para ampliar). Crédito: Microbiología y Virología Online.

La “gracia” (entre comillas, porque de gracioso no tiene nada) es que además, aplicando los postulados de Koch, cuando animales experimentales (monos en este caso) son inyectados con cepas virales a las que no son tolerantes, los animales desarrollan el SAIDS irremediablemente (2; 5; 3). Y como colofón final, con vacunas que emplean este mismo virus pero desactivado, algunos autores han logrado evitar que tal enfermedad tenga lugar (1), si bien posteriores investigaciones han desvelado, lamentablemente, que esta técnica no es tan efectiva a la hora de impedir el desarrollo del SAIDS en animales infectados (4; 9).

Después de esta necesaria introducción, vayamos a la noticia. Se conocen varias cepas de HIV-1, conocidas como M (principal), N (no principal, no atípica) y O (atípica). Desde el año 2001, una red francesa de laboratorios ha estado monitoreando la diversidad genética de este virus. En el año 2004 detectaron un nuevo caso seropositivo en una mujer que recientemente había viajado a París desde Camerún. Si bien, afortunadamente todavía no ha desarrollado síntomas de SIDA.

El virus fue aislado, cultivado in Vitro y secuenciado. El análisis de su secuencia lo reveló como un nuevo tipo de Virus de la Inmunodeficiencia Humana, que ha sido designado en un grupo propio, P. Pero quizás lo más sorprendente es el estudio comparado de la misma. El análisis comparado de su material genético mostró un extraordinario parecido con el de otros Lentivirus previamente identificados, concretamente con el SIVgor, un “Simian Immunodeficiency Virus” propio de gorilas.

Taxonomía del nuevo virus de VIH-1 (mostrado en rojo). SIVgor, es el SIV de los gorilas. SIVcpzPts y SIVcpzPtt son de chimpancé (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii y Pan troglodytes troglodytes, respectivamente). Crédito: Nature.

Sin embargo, su aspecto molecular también desvela que no es un descendiente tan directo. Mientras que por un lado posee características moleculares propias, el cultivo in Vitro del mismo ha mostrado que posee una gran adaptación y capacidad de replicación en células humanas. Esto sumado al testimonio de la mujer, según el cual, ella no había estado en contacto con matanzas de monos o con estos animales en vivo; permite suponer la hipótesis de que este virus, ya ha estado circulando silenciosamente en Camerún sin que se reportaran noticias suyas. Permitiéndole además, disponer del suficiente tiempo para escindirse del SIVgor original convirtiéndose en un virus con identidad propia.

En conclusión de los autores, los reservorios originales del HIV-1, al igual que ahora,  son los gorilas y chimpancés. Siendo estos animales además, origen de nuevas variedades de este virus. El oeste de África central está catalogado como punto caliente del origen de todos los HIV-1 existentes.

En cualquier caso, son precisos más estudios.

Entradas relacionadas:

• ¡Un misterio resuelto del VIH-1! Descubierta la estructura secundaria de su genoma

Fuente:

• Plantier, J.-C. (2009) A new human inmunodeficiency virus derived from gorillas. Nature Medicine. Published online: 2 August 2009 | doi:10.1038/nm.2016

REFERENCIAS

• (1) Hu, Shiu-Lok et al 1989. Protection of macaques against simian AIDS by immunization with a recombinant vaccinia virus expressing the envelope glycoproteins of simian type D retrovirus. Proc. Nati. Acad. Sci. USA Vol. 86, pp. 7213-7217, September 1989 Microbiology

• (2) Kestler, H. et al 1990. Induction of AIDS in rhesus monkeys by molecularly cloned simian immunodeficiency virus Science, Vol 248, Issue 4959, 1109-1112

• (3) Letvin, N. I. et al 1985. Induction of AIDS-like disease in macaque monkeys with T-cell tropic retrovirus STLV-III Science, Vol 230, Issue 4721, 71-73

• (4) Marthas, M. L. et al 1990. Immunization with a Live, Attenuated Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) Prevents Early Disease but Not Infection in Rhesus Macaques Challenged with Pathogenic SIV JOURNAL OF VIROLOGY, Aug. 1990, p. 3694-3700. Creo que el pdf es accesible gratuitamente.

• (5) Marx, P. A. et al 1984 Simian AIDS: isolation of a type D retrovirus and transmission of the disease. Science, Vol 223, Issue 4640, 1083-1086

• (6) Murphey-Corb, M. et al 1986 Isolation of an HTLV-III-related retrovirus from macaques with simian AIDS and its possible origin in asymptomatic mangabeys. Nature 321, 435 – 437 (22 May 1986); doi:10.1038/321435a0

• (7) Peeters, M. et al 2002. Risk to Human Health from a Plethora of Simian Immunodeficiency Viruses in Primate Bushmeat. Emerging Infectious Diseases • Vol. 8, No. 5, May 2002

• (8) Tsujimoto, H. et al 1988. Isolation and characterization of simian immunodeficiency virus from mandrills in Africa and its relationship to other human and simian immunodeficiency viruses. J Virol. 1988 November; 62(11): 4044-4050. Creo que el pdf es accesible gratuitamente.

• (9) Sutjipto, S. et al 1990. Inactivated simian immunodeficiency vaccine failed to protect rhesus macaques from intravenous or genital mucosal infection but delayed disease in intravenously exposed animals. J Virol. 1990 May; 64(5): 2290-2297

• (10) Wikipedia – Simian immunodeficiency virus.

I find it stupefying that people are SOOO ignorant of facts: They want to act so horror struck at insurance companies and the ‘profits’ they make.

Where do those profits go?

Let’s try this one: They are paid out to dividend holders to be absorbed back into the economy – they aren’t stuck in someone’s mattress that’s for certain.

How about another: They are paid out in the fulfillment of realized growth of whole life, universal life (Chose the name your company uses, mine calls theirs Whole Life) policies. You didn’t think they paid those out from the premiums taken in last month did you. Hey Bernie ya missed a few.

Here’s one I bet you didn’t even know about: Real estate ventures.

You know: Malls, office complexes, apartment complexes… that are built with these ‘nasty’ profits?

Direct private placement investment, limited partnerships, private equity and hedge funds, joint ventures and start-up companies (read third or fourth and beyond round venture capital), real estate, securitized financial assets and insurance risk, public and private debt (Treasury and Municipal bonds) and “repackaged” investments.

There is an entire industry out there that it’s sole purpose is to advise the insurance industry on the creation and management of various investment vehicle structures such as investment subsidiaries, investment pools, investment funds, structured investment vehicles (SIVs) and credit derivative product companies (CDPCs).

We’ve all heard about the fall of insurance giant AIG. Well, one tentacle of their downfall was due to their position in the housing market. When that housing market started to collapse and sub-prime assets plummeting in value, AIG was faced with a Goldman Sachs demand of $1.5 billion in collateral. Because AIG’s credit rating had been devalued from AAA to AA, and according to the terms of their contract, AIG Financial Products was required to post more collateral than it would have had its credit rating remained at AAA. By October 2007, it had posted almost $2 billion, and other players in the game were beginning to make their own demands for collateral to cover various mortgage-backed securities that AIG had insured. I will leave defining the derivatives and credit default swaps instruments that were based on sub-prime and other mortgage-backed securities to someone who actually knows what the world those are.

Now… all this, and you wonder where in the world am I going… well, one more step and we are there: when Big Barry takes over one-sixth of the U.S. economy and our very lives by rationing out our healthcare through the local U.S. Government office.
· Not only will the U.S. Government be ruling EVERY aspect of our lives.
· THEN after our healthcare they will go… Auto…? Life…?
· An industry that can trace its roots back to when the Babylonians developed a system to insure early merchants sailing the Mediterranean will have also been mortally wounded if not outright abolished.
· Without the insurance companies there will be an IMMENSE amount of money lost to the U.S. economy.

Money that would have been reinvested in the economy through capital infusions into up and coming technologies… maybe even GREEN technologies. Won’t be happening… that engine will be on the ash heap of what this country used to be.

Enjoy your wait in line for your mandatory checkup, I’m off to the DMV…

After 30 years of research, HIV-1 has no vaccine.  Barely 4 months into the A/H1N1 pandemic we are about to have a vaccine available.

A nine-year study of chimps in their natural habitat found that the monkey version of HIV; the simian immunodeficiency virus or SIV- was thought to not sicken and kill chimps in the wild, but new research published in this week’s Nature shows otherwise.

Chimps and humans probably caught these viruses in the same way — by eating infected monkeys, says another study author, Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama. And they probably spread the virus the same way, too — through sexual activity, she says. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106904155

Nine years is a long time to study these chimps to discover that, “”The last thing these chimps need is another source of mortality.”

AIDS like Swine Flu is a pandemic.   In 2007, it was estimated that 33.2 million people lived with the disease worldwide, and that AIDS had killed an estimated 2.1 million people, including 330,000 children. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS  By comparison, the CDC reported as of  Friday that there have been 43,771 confirmed cases of H1N1 infection and 302 deaths in the United States alone.

AIDS can not be spread by casual contact like the Swine Flu.  The pork industry continues to assure us eating pork is fine although numerous countries have culled pigs.  Eating monkeys is bad for chimps and humans. 

For years researchers have sought a vaccine to prevent everything from AIDS to the common cold, all to no avail.  Yet we are expected to believe than in barely 6 months time, scientists are working around the clock for the right mixture of viruses to begin mass inoculations to prevent Swine Flu? 

Yep.

The “U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it has issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for a another diagnostic test for the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus.”

The EUA for the Focus Diagnostics Influenza H1N1 (2009) Real-Time Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) diagnostic test is the third diagnostic test authorized under an EUA by the FDA since the public health emergency involving the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus was declared on April 26, 2009. http://7thspace.com/headlines/315407/us_food_and_drug_administration_announced_it_has_issued_an_emergency_use_authorization_eua_for_a_another_diagnostic_test_for_the_2009_h1n1_influenza_virus.html

The Focus Diagnostics test is an unapproved device whose use is authorized by the EUA.   Swine Flu Vaccines for all intents and purpose will fall into the same category of emergency use with no liability issues to the manufacturer of the vaccine or the governments that might order a mass vaccination campaign.  

An analysis by NPR’s Dollar Politics team finds that America’s biggest drug makers spent $40 million lobbying Congress over the last three months.http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2009/07/what_do_big_pharmas_deep_pocke.html?ft=1&f=103537970

One of the most powerful players in health care is a group called the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA. It represents just 32 brand-name drug companies, but it has so much influence that when Congress passes a bill, PhRMA almost always gets its way. One big reason why: PhRMA and its members have spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress as lawmakers work to overhaul health care.http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106899074

The world is accelerating support for mass inoculations with various pharmaceutical companies manufacturing and testing a vaccine already in human trials.  The impact for viral shedding is unknown and even the WHO heads are warning of the of danger. Thousands of Americans are currently being recruited for swine flu vaccine testing at several research centers across the country. 

“Many European governments say that they will fast-track the testing of a new swine flu vaccine in an attempt to vaccinate people before winter, although some experts say they are concerned about risking safety and giving proper vaccine doses. The European Medicines Agency is accelerating the approval process for the swine flu vaccine. Countries like Britain, Greece, France and Sweden all say that they will start using the vaccine once it is given approval, which could happen within weeks. http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1726759/swine_flu_vaccinations_to_be_expedited_in_europe/ 

Kind of like being a human guinea pig- the article says, “Although it is unlikely that the vaccine will endanger anyone, experts say that cannot be determined until it is used in large numbers of people….The WHO said that the swine flu viruses are not producing enough key vaccine ingredients, which might limit how much vaccine is available. 

Its laboratory network is now working to produce a new set of viruses that it hopes will work better.”

Just what the world needs, a new set of viruses.  Conspiracy theorists would argue the OPV AIDS connection that AIDS was accidentally or intentionally started in the 1950’s in the Congo by Hilary Koprowski researching the polio vaccine.  Conspiracy theorists also argue that Baxter Pharmaceutical may have unleashed the Swine Flu virus. http://ahrcanum.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/baxter-pharmaceutical-plant-in-mexico-ground-zero-for-flu-outbreak/

Smallpox. What’s important to notice is that smallpox vaccination in the U.S. persisted another 30 years after the disease was at an incidence of practically zero. Again, the only source of death from smallpox in the U.S. for 30 years was from the vaccine itself. (Mendelsohn, p 232, World Book, 1994) [24, 25]  http://www.cyberclass.net/smallpoxvaccine.htm

Just a lot of monkey business. 

 pix props to http://www.laughparty.com/funnypicture/Monkey-Business/305/

Open wide, say ahhh and check out these posts on the A/H1N1 Swine Flu from Ahrcanum, where the conspiracy spreads as fast as the virus itself .  Our disclaimer-Swine Flu Conspiracy theory can sometimes be triggered by real world events.  http://ahrcanum.wordpress.com/swine-flu-report/

That means no one is safe.  [ScienceDaily]

Cientistas acreditam ter encontrado um “elo perdido” na evolução do vírus causador da aids. Ele preenche a lacuna entre um vírus que não faz mal a macacos infectados e outro que mata milhões de pessoas.

O elo é um vírus que está matando chimpanzés na natureza num ritmo alto, de acordo com estudo publicado na edição desta quinta-feira, 23, da revista científica Nature.

Chimpanzés são os primeiros primatas, além do homem, em quem se constata uma alta taxa de mortalidade, na natureza, causada por um vírus relacionado ao HIV. Os chimpanzés também são os primatas mais semelhantes ao ser humano.

A descoberta da doença afetando esses macacos poderá ajudar os médicos a descobrir melhores tratamentos, ou até mesmo uma vacina, para seres humanos, dizem especialistas.

O versão em macacos do vírus que causa a aids é chamada vírus da imunodeficiência símia (SIV), mas a maioria dos macacos e primatas que o adquirem não demonstra sintomas ou doença. Então, “se conseguirmos descobrir por que os macacos não adoecem, talvez possamos aplicar isso aos humanos”, diz a principal autora do estudo, Beatrice Hahn, da Universidade do Alabama em Birmingham.

O estudo dos chimpanzés em seu hábitat natural durou nove anos, no Parque Nacional Gombe, na Tanzânia, e determinou que chimpanzés infectados com SIV têm uma taxa de mortalidade de 10 a 16 vezes maior que os chimpanzés não infectados. E autópsias dos macacos infectados mortos mostraram contagem baixa de proteínas de leucócitos T, semelhantes aos níveis encontrados em humanos com aids.

Quando os cientistas analisaram o vírus responsável, descobriram que se trata de um parente extremamente próximo da primeira versão do HIV a infectar seres humanos.

“De um ponto de vista evolucionário e epidemiológico, estes dados podem ser encarados como o ‘elo perdido’ na história da pandemia de HIV”, disse o pesquisador de aids Daniel Douek, do Instituto nacional de Alergia e Doenças Infecciosas do governo dos EUA. Ele não tomou parte no estudo apresentado pela Nature.

Agência Estado – 22.07.2009

Aus dem Rechnungshofbericht vom 15/07/09: Und bei solchem Dilettantismus sind “keine Konsequenzen fällig” ? Was würde wohl ein Gericht zum Vorwurf der “Untreue” sagen? Aber da wird wohl keine Staatsanwaltschaft tätig werden!

16.1 (1) Um zusätzliche Einnahmen zu erwirtschaften, nahm die ÖBFA Mittel am Geldmarkt auf und versuchte, diese zu günstigeren Konditionen weiter zu veranlagen. Dadurch erhöhte sich auch der Kassastand des Bundes, der gemäß § 40 Abs. 1 Bundeshaushaltsgesetz, BGBl. Nr. 213/1986, der Vorsorge für die Aufrechterhaltung der jederzeitigen Zahlungsfähigkeit des Bundes dienen sollte (so genannte Kassenstärker). So betrug der durchschnittliche Kassastand 2002 4,841 Mrd. EUR und stieg bis 2006 auf rd. 9,608 Mrd. EUR. Im Jahr 2007 erreichte er bereits einen Wert von 16,668 Mrd. EUR; der Höchstwert lag im Oktober 2007 bei 26,839 Mrd. EUR.

(2) Die Veranlagungen und deren Renditen entwickelten sich von 2002 bis 2006 wie folgt:

…

18.1 Die Aufteilung der Veranlagungen im Jahr 2007 war wie folgt (man beachte die Steigerung von Jänner bis September; wann platzten die ersten Toxic Papers in den USA ? ENDE JULI 2007!)

Die ÖBFA sah in ihrem System des Risikomanagements auch für den Fall laufender Finanzkrisen keine qualitativ angelegten Krisentests der von ihr erworbenen Finanzprodukte in Bezug auf ihren potenziellen Anteil von US–Immobilien– bzw. US–Subprime–Forderungen vor.

18.2 Der RH kritisierte, dass die ÖBFA sowohl im Verhältnis zu ihren Kassamitteln als auch zum Weltmarkt sehr hohe Beträge in intransparente Wertpapiere, die von der US–Subprime–Krise besonders gefährdet waren, veranlagte. Er bemängelte weiters, dass die ÖBFA diese vom Bund erworbenen Finanzprodukte vor dem Hintergrund der sich im Jahr 2007 ausbreitenden US–Subprime–Krise nicht im Sinne eines Krisentests auf ihren möglichen Gehalt an US–Immobilien– bzw. US–Subprime–Risiken analysierte. Es gelang der ÖBFA daher nicht, den potenziell hohen US–Immobilien– und US–Subprime–Anteil dieser ABCP zur Refinanzierung von SIV rechtzeitig zu erkennen. Dadurch war der Bund auch zu einer Zeit, als die Krise bereits in voller Ausbreitung begriffen war, in unvertretbar hohem Ausmaß in besonders gefährdeten ABCP zur Refinanzierung von SIV veranlagt.

Aufsichtsräte der ÖSTERR. BUNDESFINANZIERUNGSAGENTUR (ÖBFA) im Jahr 2007: 

Anlässlich der intelligenten Anlage des Cash-Bestandes der Republik Österreich in Toxic Papers (Finanzminister Pröll: “Aber alle hatten beste Ratings!”) sind wieder ein paar Spezialbegriffe aufgetaucht:

SIV, SPV, CDO, CDS, ABS. Anbei eine kurze Beschreibung (aus Wikipedia):

SIVs