3572-ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? | View Thread

Global central bankers, stuck at zero, unite in plea for help from governments

A picture illustration of crumpled kuna, Dollar and euro banknotes, taken in Zagreb January 18, 2011. REUTERS/Nikola Solic

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. (Reuters) - Central bankers in charge of the vast bulk of the world's economy delved deep into the weeds of money markets and interest rates over a three-day conference here, and emerged with a common plea to their colleagues in the rest of government: please help.

Mired in a world of low growth, low inflation and low interest rates, officials from the Federal Reserve, Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank said their efforts to bolster the economy through monetary policy may falter unless elected leaders stepped forward with bold measures. These would range from immigration reform in Japan to structural changes to boost productivity and growth in the U.S. and Europe.

Without that, they said, it would be hard to convince markets and households that things will get better, and encourage the shift in mood many economists feel are needed to improve economic performance worldwide. During a Saturday session at the symposium, such a slump in expectations about inflation and about other aspects of the economy was cited as a central problem complicating central banks' efforts to reach inflation targets and dimming prospects in Japan and Europe.

ECB executive board member Benoit Coeure said the bank was working hard to prevent public expectations about inflation from becoming entrenched "on either side" - neither too high nor too low. But the slow pace of economic reform among European governments, he said, was damaging the effort.

"What we have seen since 2007 is half-baked and half-hearted structural reforms. That does not help supporting inflation expectations. That has helped entertain disinflationary expectations,” Coeure said.

Bank of Japan governor Haruhiko Kuroda said he is in regular talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe about opening Japan to more immigration and other politically sensitive changes needed to improve potential growth, currently estimated at only around one percent annually.

Fed Chair Janet Yellen devoted the final page of her keynote talk on possible monetary policy reforms to a list of fiscal and structural policies she feels would help the economy.

Fiscal policy was not on the formal agenda for the conference, but it was a steady part of the dialogue as policymakers thought through policies for a post-crisis world. One of the central worries is that households and businesses have become so cautious and set in their outlooks - expecting little growth and little inflation - that they do not respond in expected ways to the efforts central banks have made.

That has included flooding the financial system with cash, and voicing a steady commitment to their inflation targets in an effort to make people believe they will be met.

Kuroda acknowledged that household expectations have not moved, and said the BOJ was prepared to continue its battle to figure out how to shift them. In modern monetary theory, households and business expectations are felt to play a defining role in spending and investment decisions, and thus in shaping inflation and growth.

"Japanese inflation dynamics remain vulnerable," Kuroda said. "It could be that long-term inflation expectations are yet to be anchored in Japan" at the bank's 2 percent target.

The concern about expectations is a paradox. The Fed for example fought a difficult battle with inflation in the 1970s, hiking interest rates to recession-provoking levels and eventually winning a war of credibility over its ability to rein in price increases.

Some central bankers remain fearful of clipping that cord.

But they also are hunting for ways to jolt the economy out of its doldrums, and a fiscal push is a possible tool.

In a lunch address by Princeton University economist Christopher Sims, policymakers were told that it may take a massive program, large enough even to shock taxpayers into a different, inflationary view of the future.

"Fiscal expansion can replace ineffective monetary policy at the zero lower bound," Sims said. "It requires deficits aimed at, and conditioned on, generating inflation. The deficits must be seen as financed by future inflation, not future taxes or spending cuts."

It was not clear whether such ideas will catch on. But there was a broad sense here that the other side of government may need to up its game.

(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

(Yahoo News)

Here’s the cast of characters:

Valery Spiridonov, 31: Russian tech geek who runs an educational software company from his home east of Moscow. Because he has Werdnig-Hoffmann disease, a genetic disorder that wastes muscles and motor neurons, he is physically capable of little beyond feeding himself, steering his wheelchair with a joystick, and typing. The disease is usually fatal, and doctors expected him to be dead by now.

Xiaoping Ren, 55: Chinese surgeon who, when he lived in the United States, was on the team that performed the first successful hand transplant. He practiced for it by switching pigs’ forelegs, and he keeps in his office a bronzed pig ear that the transplant team sent him as a trophy.

Sergio Canavero, 51: Shaven-headed, flamboyant Italian neurosurgeon who compares himself to Dr. Frankenstein, mentions Nazi doctor Josef Mengele and has written not only dozens of respected scientific papers but also a guide to seducing women. In 2013, he announced he wanted to try to transplant a human head.

You see where this is going, right? Canavero and Ren want to perform the world’s first head transplant, and Spiridonov has volunteered to provide the head.

[Risky transplants focus on improving lives, not saving them.]

Sam Kean’s story about the project, published inthe Atlantic magazine, is deeply weird. Canavero says the transplant could happen as early as 2017 and has a “90 percent plus” chance of success. If it does take place, it would require 80 surgeons and cost tens of millions of dollars.

Many scientists and ethicists have derided the project as “junk science” that raises false hopes. One says that if Spiridonov dies — a not-unlikely outcome — the doctors should be prosecuted for murder.

Kean weaves in history, science and entertaining detail: Doctors would color-code the severed muscles of Spiridonov and the brain-dead body donor, to make reattachment easier; the surgery would be done with a transparent diamond blade; the procedure probably would take place in China because it would not likely be approved in the United States or Europe.

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 8/30/2016 11:21:15 AM
	European ships rescue thousands of migrants off Libyan coast August 29, 2016 Watch video OFF THE COAST OF LIBYA (AP) — Italian naval ships and vessels from non-government groups rescued thousands of migrants off the Libyan coast on Monday, the latest surge in desperate attempts to flee to Europe driven by war, poverty, and human traffickers. The dramatic operation took place just 21 kilometers (13 miles) north of the town of Sabratha in Libya. Groups such as Proactiva Open Arms and Doctors Without Borders helped take on some 3,000 people who had been travelling in some 20 small wooden boats. In images and video by The Associated Press, migrants from Eritrea and Somalia cheered as the rescue boats arrived, with some jumping into the water and swimming toward them while others carefully carried babies onto the rescue ships. Their boats too weak and technically unequipped for a voyage across the stretch of the Mediterranean to the shores of Italy, the migrants had set off with a bit of gasoline in the overcrowded vessels, hoping to make it at least 15-20 miles out to sea and reach awaiting rescuers. Tens of thousands of Africans take the dangerous Mediterranean Sea route as a gateway to a better life in Europe, alongside those fleeing wars from Syria to Afghanistan. Libya's chaos and lack of border controls have made it into a transit route. Since the 2011 ouster and killing of longtime Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, the country has sunk into lawlessness, facing a myriad of militias vying for influence and an emerging Islamic State affiliate. In June, the European Union expanded its anti-smuggling operation in the central Mediterranean to include training Libyan coastal and naval forces, which are intercepting boats and returning migrants to Libya, where some are being held in abusive conditions. Rights groups and experts estimate that there are about 3,500 migrants held in roughly 20 official detention facilities across Libya. Others are held in informal detention centers controlled by criminal gangs or armed groups. ___ This story has been corrected to show that the Spanish navy did not take part in the operation. (Yahoo News)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 8/30/2016 2:03:20 PM
	James Byrum The warmer it gets, the more it snows in Antarctica. Huh? By Amelia Urry on Aug 26, 2016 Antarctica is a weird place. While it’s losing ice faster than an heiress in a caper movie, it’s also getting a whole lot more snow — at least, it’s supposed to. Warmer air holds more moisture, so globally warmed jet streams should dump even more snow over the frozen continent than they used to. Since Antarctica is cold as ****, scientifically speaking, the snow won’t melt despite the warmer air, making the continent probably the only place on Earth where glaciers might actually grow (at least for the time being). All that extra precipitation is good for the rest of us: Snow that falls on Antarctica is water that’s not adding to sea-level rise. While sea level is definitely increasing (you didn’t think it was that easy, did you?), Antarctica’s blizzard forecast could spare us a few critical inches. But, so far, the snowfall has not increased as scientists expected. According toresearch published this week, that’s OK — there’s enough natural wobble-wobble in Antarctica’s climate to account for the lower-than-expected snow levels. In the next couple of decades, however, we should see the white stuff really start to pile up. But as Antarctica’s ice sheets continue to crumble into the sea around the edges, faster and less predictably than scientists had hoped, we’ll need more than snow to save us. (GRIST)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 8/30/2016 2:32:58 PM
	A lightning strike killed 323 reindeer, and this is the ghastly aftermath By Karin Brulliard August 29 at 11:13 AM Some of the more than 300 wild reindeer that were killed by lighting in Hardangervidda, Norway, on Friday. (Havard Kjotvedt /Norwegian Environment Agency, NTB scanpix, via AP) The macabre images released Monday by the Norwegian Environment Agency look like something out of a wildlife zombie-apocalypse movie, or the aftermath of a cervid “Game Of Thrones” battle: a treeless landscape dotted with hundreds upon hundreds of reindeer corpses. The 323 reindeer were killed by lightning Friday, the agency said, in a rare natural massacre that counts as the deadliest lightning strike on record. It took place in a private hunting area of the Hardangervidda mountain plateau in central southern Norway, a verdant and frigid tableau of streams, rocks and glaciers that is home to one of the largest reindeer herds in Europe. Officials told Agence France-Presse that a gamekeeper stumbled upon the eerie scene Friday and that 70 young reindeer were among the victims. Five animals had to be euthanized, said officials, who told the news service that they were not sure what they would do with the bodies. The gamekeeper told NTB, the Norwegian news service, that samples of the carcasses were sent to a state veterinary institute, which would officially determine the cause of death. “We’ve never seen anything like this on this scale,” agency official Kjartan Knutsen said.”There were very strong storms in the area on Friday. The animals stay close together in bad weather and these ones were hit by lightning.” Some of the reindeer killed by lightning. (Havard Kjotvedt/Norwegian Environment Agency, NTB scanpix, via AP) Death by lightning is not terribly unusual, of course. According to the National Weather Service, 32 people in the United States have been unlucky enough to die that way so far this year, and about 350 people here have been killed by lighting since 2006. Guinness World Records says the “worst lightning strike disaster” occurred in 1971, when a bolt took down a commercial airplane in Peru, killing 91 people. So it follows that animals, most of which spend the majority or all of their lives in the great outdoors, also meet their end this way, though the record-keeping on those fatalities is assumed to be spotty at best. Wildlife officials in Norway believe lightning from a powerful storm killed a herd of migrating reindeer, including 70 calves, in a remote area southwest of Oslo.(Reuters) Cattle and sheep are common victims. Guinness reports that the largest recorded number of livestock killed by a single lightning bolt is 68. They were Jersey cows struck in Australia in 2005. (Three cows were briefly paralyzed but recovered.) In March, 21 cows in South Dakota were killed when lightning struck the metal bale feeder they were eating from, leaving their hulking carcasses frozen in an haunting circle. Sea lions, caribou and wild turkeys have also been documented lightning victims, as have elephants, antelope, a sort-of-famous TV giraffe and a flock of 52 geese in Canada in 1932. The fowl were collected for “wild goose dinners,” according to a news account turned up by science blogger Darren Naish. Naish noted that most animals are killed by currents that run through the ground, not from direct strikes. Officials said all of the reindeer were found within a 165-foot radius. (Havard Kjotvedt/Norwegian Environment Agency, NTB scanpix, via AP) Among the more well-known animal lightning strike victims is a bison who resides at Neal Smith Wildlife Refuge in Iowa. A wildlife biologist discovered the bull, bloodied and emaciated, in the summer of 2013. The reserve decided to “let nature take its course,” according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service account — and against the odds, the bison’s tale had a happy ending. Nearly three years later, he seemed to be doing just fine, one large hairless patch of shoulder notwithstanding. And he had been given a fitting name: Sparky. Sparky the bison in early 2016. (Karen Viste-Sparkman/USFWS) (The Washington Post)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 8/30/2016 3:02:36 PM
	Surgeons want to transplant a human head — really — and a Russian is offering his Sergio Canavero unveiled plans to perform the first human head transplant, saying he believes he has a 90 percent chance of success on his Russian patient.(Reuters) By Nancy Szokan August 29 at 11:32 AM Here’s the cast of characters: Valery Spiridonov, 31: Russian tech geek who runs an educational software company from his home east of Moscow. Because he has Werdnig-Hoffmann disease, a genetic disorder that wastes muscles and motor neurons, he is physically capable of little beyond feeding himself, steering his wheelchair with a joystick, and typing. The disease is usually fatal, and doctors expected him to be dead by now. Xiaoping Ren, 55: Chinese surgeon who, when he lived in the United States, was on the team that performed the first successful hand transplant. He practiced for it by switching pigs’ forelegs, and he keeps in his office a bronzed pig ear that the transplant team sent him as a trophy. Sergio Canavero, 51: Shaven-headed, flamboyant Italian neurosurgeon who compares himself to Dr. Frankenstein, mentions Nazi doctor Josef Mengele and has written not only dozens of respected scientific papers but also a guide to seducing women. In 2013, he announced he wanted to try to transplant a human head. You see where this is going, right? Canavero and Ren want to perform the world’s first head transplant, and Spiridonov has volunteered to provide the head. Valery Spiridonov, who has a disease that is usually fatal, has volunteered to have his head transplanted to another person’s body. (Maxim Shipenkov/EPA) [Risky transplants focus on improving lives, not saving them.] Sam Kean’s story about the project, published inthe Atlantic magazine, is deeply weird. Canavero says the transplant could happen as early as 2017 and has a “90 percent plus” chance of success. If it does take place, it would require 80 surgeons and cost tens of millions of dollars. Many scientists and ethicists have derided the project as “junk science” that raises false hopes. One says that if Spiridonov dies — a not-unlikely outcome — the doctors should be prosecuted for murder. Kean weaves in history, science and entertaining detail: Doctors would color-code the severed muscles of Spiridonov and the brain-dead body donor, to make reattachment easier; the surgery would be done with a transparent diamond blade; the procedure probably would take place in China because it would not likely be approved in the United States or Europe. And the story raises interesting questions: Even if Ren and Canavero can do the surgery, should they? If the donor body belonged to a pianist, would its muscle memory enable Spiridonov to play the piano? Who would the surviving patient be— Spiridonov or some kind of amalgam? (The Washington Post)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

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Global central bankers, stuck at zero, unite in plea for help from governments

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