Both Ford and Chrysler are reporting increased sales revenues, but both are reporting decreases in profits. The culprit, inflation.
Inflation is driving up the cost of materials used to build their cars, and even with retail price increases the result is lower profits.
Now Ford is preparing to deal with Union contract negotiations in the United States. Obviously workers are going to want more money, because inflation is driving up their cost of living.
Taxpayers in the United States lost $1.3 billion when Fiat bought back all the remaining Chrysler stocks held by the U.S. government (U.S. taxpayers lost at least $14 billion, between Chrysler and GM).
Now Chrysler/Fiat is claiming they lost money too. Chrysler would have reported a profit for the second quarter of 2011, it weren’t for the stock buy back, which they claim cost $551 million.
Chrysler is also reporting a 30% increase in sales revenue (compared to the second quarter of 2010), but don’t think you can buy some of that Chrysler stock, they’re privately held by Fiat and Union trust funds.
The city of Pocatello is back to the drawing board after voting against buying $6.2 million worth of water rights. The deal would have been made with Portneuf Marsh Valley Canal Company. City officials backed out after credible threats of lawsuits from water users “downstream”.
Water is a big issue for Pocatello. Its main source of water is the Lower Portnuef Valley Aquifer, and it’s running dry. The Portneuf River flows through Pocatello, but it does not recharge the aquifer, and the city does not take any water from it.
To add to the problem, the city of Pocatello is not the only one using the Aquifer, the city of Chubbuck also gets its water from the same source.
For a long time it was thought that surface water runoff made its way to the ground water (Aquifer), but now its known that most surface water runoff just ends up in rivers heading out to the oceans (although some recharging comes from Mink Creek, and snow).
Geoscientists believe the Lower Portnuef Valley Aquifer was created 17,000 years ago when a natural dam broke, releasing a huge sea into the area (Bonneville Flood). Part of that sea was trapped in what is now known as Lower Portnuef Valley Aquifer.
Another issue is that while many aquifers are held in small rock formations, even pebbles and sand, the Lower Portnuef Valley Aquifer is trapped by huge boulders, which were part of the natural dam holding back the ancient sea. You can see huge boulders around the area now. Every time a housing development goes in they end up spending a lot of time digging out the boulders in order to put in basements. It has also resulted in lucrative local rock mining businesses.
The water in the Aquifer is almost finite, it does not easily recharge as was once thought.
However, while most rain ends up in rivers, any water from slow melting snow, or used on farms or residential properties can get into the Aquifer. The problem is that large boulders do not filter the incoming surface water, like sand or pebble aquifers. This means the Lower Portnuef Valley Aquifer is very vulnerable to contamination.
To add to that, the soil is only about 2 to 8 feet thick, before you hit rock. I can attest to that since I’ve done a lot of landscaping here, and I grow vegetables and fruits. I can dig the depth of a shovel blade and hit rocks 4 inches in diameter or bigger. The thin soil means if you dump used motor oil on the ground, or use chemicals on your garden, it’s almost instantly heading for the Aquifer.
There is a three part (boring, basically a college lecture from 2010) video explanation of the Lower Portnuef Valley Aquifer issue, presented by Glenn Thackray of Idaho State University:
Thackray explains that the cities, residents, farmers and businesses take out more water from the Lower Portnuef Valley Aquifer, per year, than what flows into the Aquifer. This has been going on for a long time, and is why we’re running out of water. Add to that the fact that we’ve had some very dry winters, with less than normal snowfall (a big source of recharge, because it melts into the ground, unlike rain that runs off). The water level has been dropping since the 1990s.
Pocatello city officials say they are taking this issue seriously, and are being proactive about finding a solution.
British Prime Minister David Cameron lamented that “…a general feeling that maybe our best days as a country are behind us…”. He was talking about everything from the economic disaster to the scandal involving Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and public officials.
Cameron says it’s become clear that elected leaders, as well as corporate leaders, even government employees, are acting out of pure greed: “I’m talking about the expenses scandal, the financial crisis, this whole disgraceful and sorry episode of phone hacking. There’s a sense that the rich and the powerful – politicians, bankers, the press and the police – have been serving themselves…”
The USPS lost $8.5 billion in 2010. It lost $3.8 billion in 2009. So far this year the USPS has lost $2.2 billion. The result; the United States Postal Service will make public a list of post offices that could be closed this year, as many as 3,653.
The United States Postal Service does not make money off taxpayers, they are solely funded by the postage they charge. The problem is that Congress controls the postage they are allowed to charge, and so far Congress has refused to allow postal rates to reflect the actual operating cost of the USPS.
On top of that, Congress overcharged the USPS $75 billion for the Federal Employees Retirement System plan. The Postmaster General asked for that money to be returned, but Congress refused (you think they already spent it?).
As a result of incompetence (or is it on purpose?) by our elected officials in Congress, thousands more USPS employees will lose their jobs.
“If you were admitted to hospital tomorrow in any country … your chances of being subjected to an error in your care would be something like 1 in 10. Your chances of dying due to an error in health care would be 1 in 300.”-Professor Liam Donaldson, World Health Organization envoy
The United Nations released a study saying that hospitals in the ‘western’ world are sure places to catch a deadly disease, or die from mistakes made by medical personnel.
The UN World Health Organization discovered that your chances of dying in a hospital, by medical errors, are far greater than dying in a plane crash.
More interestingly, Canada takes the number one spot for worst hospital related infections, at an 11.6% infection rate. The European Union has a 7% rate, followed by the United States with 4.5%.
But lets put that U.S. rate of 4.5%, which sounds low, into real numbers. According to the research 1.7 million infections are acquired in U.S. hospitals, which leads to 100,000 deaths each year. That’s 100,000 people in the U.S. being killed because of hospital uncleanliness.
Catching an infection while in the hospital means a longer stay and more treatment. The study suggests that the increased infection rate while being in the hospital, along with medical mistakes, are partly to blame for increasing medical costs.
To be sure most health care systems around the world are in trouble, but, what surprised the WHO researchers is that the developed ‘western’ world has made no progress in improving medical care inside hospitals. Former United Kingdom chief medical officer Liam Donaldson, said this: “It shows that health care in general worldwide still has a long way to go. Health care has not achieved the level of safety of many other high-risk industries.”
An organization called Project on Government Oversight discovered the U.S. Treasury Department is letting big banks, and corporations, pay off their taxpayer funded loans with new taxpayer funded loans meant for small banks.
On paper it looks like big banks who took out TARP bailout loans are paying those loans off. It turns out that many of those payoffs came from new loans also offered through the Treasury Department.
The new loans are being made with a program that was meant for smaller banks, to lend money to small businesses. The program is called Small Business Lending Fund.
What this means is the U.S. Treasury is not really getting the taxpayer funded TARP bailout money back. Instead the Treasury is allowing the big banks to rob Peter to pay Paul. The problem here is that both Peter and Paul are one in the same, the U.S. taxpayer!
This isn’t the first time claims were made that TARP money was being paid back with loans. In April 2010, Senator Charles Grassley, of Iowa, claimed that General Motors paid back their TARP loan, with another TARP loan: “It looks like [GM’s] announcement is really just an elaborate TARP money shuffle. The repayment dollars haven’t come from GM selling cars but, instead, from a TARP [escrow] account at the Treasury Department.”
Now the question is why can’t the big banks, and other corporations, pay back their taxpayer TRAP (I mean TARP) loans? After all many have reported big profits. Is this a case of no real money left in the United States?
Brazil’s unemployment rate in June hit a low of 6.2%. Compare that to June of 2002 when Brazil’s unemployment rate was 11.6%.
Officials credit the drop in unemployment to new job creation. Last year alone half a million (512,000) new jobs were created in Brazil. Also, the average wage went up 4% since last year.
Take into account that Brazil counts employment only in the six largest cities, officials admit there are still at least 1.5 million Brazilians out of work.
Idaho’s Interconnect Solar Development has hired Germany’s Siemens to build a solar power plant.
The 20 megawatt plant will be built in Owyhee County, and supply power to the utility company Idaho Power.
Siemens says it will use parts built in its Chicago, Illinois, plant. Some good news for the U.S. economy.
Even though Idaho’s unemployment rate is still 9.4% (for several months now) it actually edged up by 500 newly unemployed, for the month of June.
To make matters worse, the Idaho Department of Labor says most of the 15,000 people who found jobs in June, are filling existing positions. In other words almost no new jobs were created.
Sadly the 15,000 who found work is the highest number since October 2010, yet still far below the average hirings before the 2007/8 credit crisis.
Idaho officials also said that 1,800 unemployed people stopped looking for work in June.