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 Iceland on the brink of a meltdown. |  Having been on a business trip to Iceland this week, and seeing first hand the state of their economy, I am brought back to our own 6. October, in our case 1992 and not 2008.
Iceland was a surreal place, everything costs half. The ISK króna has lost over half it's value over the last year, and is currently slugging it out with Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan as the worst preforming currency of the past 12 months. Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan FFS! This is further compounded by the fact that many loans in Iceland were obtained in Yen, Euros and Dollars. Hence they have seen their loans basically double in size. The Guardian has a good article out today on this issue. It is well worth a read. For those looking to buy a cheap car it might not be a bad idea to look in Iceland. Plenty of luxury cars that they now cannot afford to have.
Finally the size of the Icelandic banks is a problem, the 3 biggest banks are between 5 and 15 times the size of the public budget (depending upon how it's calculated), which means that the Government cannot afford to bail them all out. I witnessed a bank-run on Landsbankin (which is privatized, go figure, luckily they made a new real Landsbanki)
On the up side I recommend everyone to go Christmas shopping in Reykjavik. Things are half-price, it's like Eastern Europe in the 90's. Even the Hilton Hotel was cheap...
...but tomorrow is the 6. of October...
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| New Hurricane hitting New Orleans | 3 years ago this week, New Orleans was hit by hurricane Katrina, which caused catastrophic damage.
Tonight the city braces itself for a hurricane of equal or greater strength as hurricane Gustav is making it's way for the Louisiana coastline. Unlike Katrina which hit to the east of New Orleans, Gustav is on track to hit on the western side, which is worse as the storm surges are more intense directly east of the hurricanes eye.
One can only hope that the US Government learned it's lesson 3 years ago so we'll not witness the city drowned yet again.
For more on this story read the science blog at DailyKos.
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| White House Briefed On Potential For Mars Life | White House Briefed On Potential For Mars Life
The White House has been alerted by NASA about plans to make an announcement soon on major new Phoenix lander discoveries concerning the "potential for life" on Mars, scientists tell Aviation Week & Space Technology.
Sources say the new data do not indicate the discovery of existing or past life on Mars. Rather the data relate to habitability--the "potential" for Mars to support life--at the Phoenix arctic landing site, sources say.
The data are much more complex than results related NASA's July 31 announcement that Phoenix has confirmed the presence of water ice at the site.
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| Zimbabwe inflation at 2,200,000% | Zimbabwe's annual rate of inflation has surged to 2,200,000%, official figures have shown. The figure is the first official assessment of prices in the troubled African nation since February, when the rate of inflation stood at 165,000%.
Zimbabwe, once one of the richest countries in Africa, has descended into economic chaos largely blamed on the policies of President Robert Mugabe.
This is in stark contrast with the situation at independence in 1980 when one Zimbabwe dollar was worth more than US$1.
More...
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