[NinerSevenTango]

As anyone who has read my previous rants on fiat currency and inflation knows, I warned that the U.S. banking system is literally insolvent, and I attempted to show that this is the inevitable result of the use of paper as currency.

The recent attempts by the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank (a privately owned institution) to shore up the crumbling financial sector are not only historic, but they run the risk of pushing the dollar into total collapse. The housing bubble was caused by using their unconstitutional power to fix interest rates for their own profit, expanding the money supply at an unprecedented rate. Almost all money borrowed from banks is created on the spot. Artificially low rates encourage borrowing. The resulting expansion of the money supply causes prices to increase on whatever is being purchased with that borrowed money. The expansion went on for so long that people took it as gospel that housing prices would continue to increase beyond the rate of inflation. If you could qualify for a loan to buy a house, within a few years you would have a bunch of paper equity. This equity could be cashed out if you sold the house, but most people didn't do that (because prices were going through the roof). What they did with that equity was to borrow against it, since the equity qualified them for a bigger loan. People competing for housing with this borrowed money kept demand artificially high and drove prices up. This is called malinvestment.

Now that the whole ball of string is unwinding, the Fed is stuck between a rock and a hard place, and so is the U.S. government. The entire financial sector is literally insolvent. The difference between them and you is that if you were insolvent, they would seize your assets and auction them off. But since they are the lenders (creators of money from thin air), and at the basis of the currency system (above actual producers), they cannot be allowed to fail. So they are being bailed out. The largest of them might even be bailed out by the government. Not that it matters too much who creates the money out of thin air, because the government is insolvent too. The only tool they have left in the toolbox is to print more money, and that is what caused the problem in the first place. The rock is: bail them out or they fail. The hard place is: keep printing money and the currency will collapse.

The collapse of a currency doesn't happen overnight (but it might!). It just slowly becomes more and more worthless. One reason the housing bubble hit such highs is that countries that export to the U.S. were saving their dollars, and investing them in U.S. bonds and other instruments. This has the effect of swallowing up the inflation. Temporarily. When the globe stops buying, the value tumbles faster than usual.

The lower value of a currency is the same as higher prices for everything; the currency just buys less than it used to. People are trained to think that this is inflation. Actually, inflation literally means inflation of total amount of currency in existence. The inflation happens a long time before the market reacts by granting less purchasing power to the money. So now, when the officials have to admit that inflation is a concern, and they might have to do something about it, they are lying. The inflation happened ten years ago and every year since. The purchasing power of the currency you must earn is only now beginning to reflect that, and there is a whole lot more to be accounted for before it is all over. The horse is out of the barn and ten miles away before the admission is made. Meanwhile, they attempt to hide it by pretending it just doesn't exist. The official inflation rate ignores the cost of fuel and uses a lot of other shenanigans that would be illegal to use on a tax return.

The problem they've gotten themselves (and us) into now is bad, really bad. That's because not just the banks are insolvent, but the government-backed lending houses (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) bundled up these loans and sold them all around the world. As in any government intervention that involves price-fixing, the laudatory goals of setting minimums for something end up causing the fake minimum to be the maximum as well. And so the lion's share of the mortgage money was backed by these unconstitutional entities. And now, they are going to be nationalized. The only solution to communist intervention in the market is eventually a total communist take-over of that market. Or allow it to fail.

But they can't allow it to fail. They must rescue them, because the bad paper is spread around the world, held by other governments and their own fiat currency banks. If that paper became worthless overnight (it is, technically), those economies would falter (and they are, already). And so they will be rescued, by the issuance of huge amounts of fake paper money. Which will come back to haunt us all in the form of higher prices. How much higher? You guess.

Every time there is a huge release of unearned currency into the economy, a class of people benefits by it. And the rest of the people are swindled by it. They create it and spend it, but you have to earn it. Once the effects settle out as less purchasing power (higher prices), the next time around, it takes more money for the thieves to get the same effect. Each round requires larger and larger infusions of cash to get the same response out of the dying patient. So the money halves in value in shorter and shorter time periods.

So, what they are up to now is throwing the taxing authority of the U.S. government behind all this bad paper in an attempt to prop up the value in the market. This might help you now, if you see what is happening and dump the paper before it falls any further. This can only work for the short term, however. The U.S. government is insolvent too, borrowing at the rate of $2 Billion per day to fund ongoing operations. It is clearly already far, far in excess of its ability to tax any more. The debt can never be paid back. The government has abandoned any schemes to become solvent through taxation, they have been forced to resort to inflation - issuing more currency- for everything they do. Including the attempt to price-fix bad paper in the market to hold the whole house of cards up.

What precipitated this rant is the following article in today's news:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle4563171.ece

Bottom line: Gold, silver, or other commodity-based currencies prevent the issuer of that currency from stealing from the people through the silent tax of inflation. That's why all currencies in the world are now fiat, paper currencies. The temptation is just too great. The power to issue currency gives the holder of that power unlimited reign over a nation. The only risk comes from going too far, ruining the economy and starving the people, who then tend to react with violent overthrow.

The chickens are coming home to roost. It is immoral to steal. Institutionalizing immorality and implementing it on a historically large scale does not make it legitimate. It only multiplies the damage done to innocent victims. The outcome is inevitable, however long it takes for those chickens to find their way home. Here they come! When things start unraveling, innocent people are going to get hurt (more than they have already). No nation is immune, their paper money schemes are all interlocked, and private trade goes everywhere. The rising prices here cause people to buy less, which hurts the producers, who then buy less, and the cycle continues until all of the the false currency is accounted for, leaving the producers in the economy with nothing. When production stops, everything stops.

What's this got to do with global warming? In the coming depression, only the insiders will be allowed to produce anything. Because they will be the only ones who get energy rations. If you want to produce something and sell it to a willing buyer at a profit, you will only be allowed to do so if you have the influence to get the energy you need. Control over energy, and extraction of wealth by controlling the access to it, leaves you as powerless to resist as being in perpetual debt servitude. And a destitute people will be powerless to resist this take-over of the energy market.

--97T--

[Geof]

97T

I read some, maybe most, of your financial 'rants', and find most of them good. In some cases, maybe many cases, I think you reverse cause and effect but I am not going to argue the point mostly because after the fact it does not matter. However, the excerpt below interests me.

I have followed the global 'credit crisis' but I must have missed something. When you use the term 'these loans' are you referring to the notes that were backed by a mix of good assets with a predominance of bad assets such as subprime mortgages; that were passed off as being all good assets? I never noticed anything about Fannie and Freddie getting involved in these shenanigans. It was my understanding that these two have predominantly good mortgages, and their good assets outweigh or are pretty much equivalent to their liabilities, but they have been caught in a backlash of tightened credit conditions.


That's because not just the banks are insolvent, but the government-backed lending houses (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) bundled up these loans and sold them all around the world.

[skippy]

Good post 97T ! You cite a good example of why sport is and should be, very important in this day and age. It's better to think about who's going to win the next match than to think about how fast and why we're all going down the gurgler. In all seriousness though, it does make one think about where things are heading exactly and in what timeframe, regardless of what country one comes from. As you rightly state, they’re all interlinked anyway.

[NinerSevenTango]

Fannie Mae and the other alphabet soup agencies that were created to intervene in and distort the housing market were following official policy in providing backing for subprime and alt-A loans, which were packaged as AAA rated securities and sold to all comers from around the globe. People and governments bought these securities in the belief that they were safe because of implicit backing by the U.S. government - something that was not true but now will be made necessary to prevent the entire system from collapsing.

The noise coming from the press is "Don't panic, everything is all right. Sleep. Sleeeep. And don't pull your retirement savings out of the sinking market." The truth is that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are eyeball deep in bad paper, and they provided the backing for most of it. That's why they will be nationalized, as the test balloons are being floated in the press right now, today. When the shock of the idea wears off, it will be done (my prediction).

From the wiki, snipped and emphasis added by me:

Fannie Mae was founded as a government agency in 1938 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal to provide liquidity to the mortgage market. For the next 30 years, Fannie Mae held a virtual monopoly on the secondary mortgage market in the United States.

In 1968, to remove the activity of Fannie Mae from the annual balance sheet of the federal budget, it was converted into a private corporation.[2] Fannie Mae ceased to be the guarantor of government-issued mortgages, and that responsibility was transferred to the new Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae).

FNMA's primary method for making money is by the positive interest rate spread it earns on its retained portfolio of mortgages.That portfolio is in excess of $700 billion as of August 2008. It also earns significant income from charging a guarantee fee on loans that it has securitized into mortgage-backed security bonds. Investors, or purchasers of Fannie Mae MBSs, are willing to let Fannie Mae keep this fee in exchange for assuming the credit risk; that is, Fannie Mae's guarantee that the scheduled principal and interest on the underlying loan will be paid even if the borrower defaults.

Fannie Mae and smaller Freddie Mac own or guarantee almost half of all home loans in the United States. They face billions of dollars in potential losses, and may need to raise additional, potentially substantial, amounts of new capital as the current downturn in the U.S. housing market continues.

Markets assume that the taxpayer will if necessary take on the burden of all their mortgages because they underpin the whole U.S. mortgage market. If they were to collapse, mortgages would be harder to obtain and much more expensive. U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has said the government's primary focus is in supporting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in their current form.

FNMA is a financial corporation which uses derivatives to "hedge" its cash flow. Derivative products it uses include interest rate swaps and options to enter interest rate swaps ("pay-fixed swaps", "receive-fixed swaps", "basis swaps", "interest rate caps and swaptions", "forward starting swaps").

And, the rest of the story, from http://www.lewrockwell.com/englund/englund43.html -- published before the rest of the financial world found out just how deep the muck is:

From a speech by Mr. Mozillo, previously the Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of the failed Countrywide Financial Corporation --

Our Nation took another important step in 1938 – in fact, 65 years ago this week – when Fannie Mae was created to buy those FHA loans, and as a result, the secondary mortgage market was born. We took a few more giant steps in the 1940s with the G.I. Bill in 1944 and the Housing Act of 1949, which stated the goal of "a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family." We witnessed the Fair Housing Act in the 60s, the creation of Freddie Mac in 1970, the expansion of Fannie Mae’s activities, the Community Reinvestment Act in the 70s, the introduction of adjustable-rate mortgages in the 80s, and more recently, the National Affordable Housing Act of 1990.

We have traveled so far – thanks to a mortgage-finance system that remains the envy of the world; thanks to a constant stream of creative and innovative mortgage products, and efforts directed at encouraging the offering of loans to those who have been previously shut out; and simply put, thanks to housing being an enduring public policy objective and the lasting commitment to that objective symbolized by our partnership.

We have transformed from a Nation of renters to a Nation of homeowners. The overall U.S. homeownership rate, which was at 44 percent in 1940, hit 68 percent by the end of the third quarter of 2002.

It started with the New Deal, and now, we’re in a new century. But through it all, one thing has remained, more or less, constant. This constant is our challenge. And this challenge is to increase the access to affordable housing. And in order to do this, we must close the homeownership gap that still exists.

As President Bush said last October:

"Two thirds of all Americans own their homes, yet we have a problem here in America because fewer than half of the Hispanics and half of the African Americans own their home. That’s a homeownership gap. It’s a gap that we’ve got to work together to close for the good of our Country, for the sake of a more hopeful future. We’ve got to work to knock down the barriers..."

While the number of minority homeowners has advanced recently, climbing from 9.5 million in 1994 to 13.3 million in 2001 – an increase of 40 percent – the fact remains that it is still not at a level equal to that of white homeownership. And as President Bush pointed out, the homeownership rate for African Americans is 47 percent and for Hispanic Americans it is 48 percent, a stark contrast to the homeownership rate of 75 percent for white American households. That means there is currently a homeownership gap of over 25 points when comparing white households with African Americans and Hispanics. My friends, that gap is obviously far too wide. It has been far too wide for far too long. And when adding new factors into the equation – like an influx of new immigrants or continued reduction in the supply of affordable housing – it has the potential to become far worse.

And from an article written four years ago, at http://www.lewrockwell.com/englund/englund13.html -- which warned about the housing bubble, explicitly nailing the cause and effect relationship,

What follows is an excerpt from President Bush’s March 27, 2004 radio address:

"Good morning. This week brought good news about home ownership in America. The Census Bureau reported that new home sales in February rose to an annual pace of 1.16 million homes, a 24 percent increase over the past year. This success follows one of the most impressive years in America's housing industry. More homes were sold in 2003 than ever before. Housing starts last year were at their highest level in a quarter century. Rising home values have helped take the wealth of American households to a new record level.

In our growing economy, more Americans can afford a new home. Incomes are rising. The unemployment rate is falling. Mortgage rates are low. And because of tax relief, Americans have more to save, spend and invest – and that means millions of American families have moved into their first homes.

Our nation's 68 percent homeownership rate is the highest ever, and our government is taking steps to make owning a home a reality for more Americans, especially minorities and those with low incomes. In June 2002, I set the goal of adding 5.5 million new minority home owners in America by the end of this decade. Since then, more than 1.5 million minority families have moved into houses of their own. And for the first time, most minorities own their own home."

To this end, President Bush and Congress have been playing the property-envy card that must warm the hearts of all redistributionists. On December 16, 2003 "The American Dream Downpayment Assistance Act" was signed into law. For first-time homebuyers, this act will provide $200 million of federal funding to assist lower income and minority households to make a downpayment on a home. The amount of the downpayment assistance – i.e., redistributed money – may not exceed $10,000 or six percent of the home’s purchase price, whichever is greater. Here again, the message is why work hard and save for a downpayment when the federal government will provide you with a shortcut?

I included the above to illustrate my point: The subprime mess was caused by official government policy (and the central bank rolling in free dough). Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the rest of the mortgage industry were playing by the rules set forth (and rolling in free dough). As long as the bubble continued expanding, it was free money for everybody! And anyone who didn't play got left far, far behind.

Here come the chickens home to roost!

You can't create something out of nothing. No matter how complicated you make it sound. Price-fixing always results in the disappearance of the commodity. In this case, price-fixing interest rates will result in the disappearance of loans, and then of the currency, eventually. We have been robbed of our assets and also the value of our time. We are no longer a society of freeholders and land owners. Now, we are in perpetual debt servitude not only to the banks, but to our own governments.

--97T--

Edit: The headline for this article, published today, should have been Quietly Dumping Fannie Mae Securities:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/feedarticle/7739401
So far, Russia has dumped 40% of this paper. They're trying to get out while the gettin' is good, without causing a panic rush for the exits. And central banks around the world are buying up (a very small amount of) the new paper from Fannie in order to prop up the value of what they already hold. Now that's solidarity, and that's how badly the central banks are interconnected in this mess. If it falls, it hurts them all.

[NinerSevenTango]

Good post 97T ! You cite a good example of why sport is and should be, very important in this day and age. It's better to think about who's going to win the next match than to think about how fast and why we're all going down the gurgler. In all seriousness though, it does make one think about where things are heading exactly and in what timeframe, regardless of what country one comes from. As you rightly state, they’re all interlinked anyway.

Thanks for your kind words.

Yeah, how 'bout them Tigers, anyway? Heh.

--97T--

[skippy]

For those that haven't seen it, here's some typical witty Brit comedy about "the subprime thing".
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwRFoxgEcHc"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwRFoxgEcHc[/ame]

[fizzissist]

I prefer to stay with the Global climate change ramifications as documented by eminent scientist that are gaining world wide attention.

Ian.....

...Refresh our memory....Which "eminent scientist" would that be???

[dufas]

Never mentioned the word, but then apparently it's quite a fetish over on your side of the pond.
.

See below which should be easy for you........

[Post 4088]
Man, you Humanoids are so dumb, unless it was rammed up your rectums you wouldn't notice anything was there at all, that is really being blind.

==================================
[Post 2561]
Take a look at the big picture, you do not have the power to save the world, not whilst you have a hole in your rectum.


Ian.

RE: Post 4088 and 2561 along with you constantly pronouncing 'far up yourself, up yours, from behind', plus you incessant association of anything to Greek can only be some subliminal fetish that you are carrying around. I'll drop a note to the psychiatrists and confirm this for you since you are so unsure of yourself.

Before you make blanket statements, you had better be sure of what you posted before......but since your mind is scattered all over the place, I can see how it would be difficult to keep track of all the misstatements, hyperbole, and general crap that issues forth from that infertile pea brain that occupies the area that you sit on which resides very near your favorite body part....

[fizzissist]

Since we seem to have found Greece as a subject...What with Confucius influencing their culture and our climate by way of HW's Nostradamus like prognostications....

Here's a little something out of Greece that addresses HW's endless claims of "eminent scientist" credibility..

These "eminent scientists" predict all manner of dire consequence,,,and it's all based on the output of computer programs called General Circulation Model (GCM).

......Never mind that there's a whole bevy of qualified U.S. and foreign scientists who quickly point out countless flaws of these 18 some odd models used by the IPCC...Now we've got some Greeks to muddy HW's water.

On the credibility of climate predictions
D. KOUTSOYIANNIS, A. EFSTRATIADIS, N. MAMASSIS & A. CHRISTOFIDES

Department of Water Resources, Faculty of Civil Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Heroon Polytechneiou 5, GR-157 80 Zographou, Greece
[email protected]

Abstract: Geographically distributed predictions of future climate, obtained through climate models, are widely used in hydrology and many other disciplines, typically without assessing their reliability. Here we compare the output of various models to temperature and precipitation observations from eight stations with long (over 100 years) records from around the globe. The results show that models perform poorly, even at a climatic (30-year) scale. Thus local model projections cannot be credible,

http://www.atypon-link.com/IAHS/doi/...71?cookieSet=1

[dufas]

The results show that models perform poorly, even at a climatic (30-year) scale. Thus local model projections cannot be credible,[/I]

http://www.atypon-link.com/IAHS/doi/...71?cookieSet=1

Ahhhh man !!!!! You have went and burst Handywipe's bubble, not that IT would notice though. There is only one line of reasoning and that belongs to the little HW thing or whatever it is...... Just ask IT, IT will tell you so in around 20 paragraphs or so.............. What is Handlewanker anyway since IT claims not to be humanoid.....

[fizzissist]

Just saw this on Anthony Watt's blog in a piece on Arctic Ocean Circulation.....thought you guys might get a grin...it's a new AGW computer program...

10 IF |Climate Change| > 0.1% THEN AGW = true, ELSE WAIT 1 month GOTO 10

[handlewanker]

Very droll, still can't understand why yo'all got so much to worry about when you say everthing in your garden is rosy, I missed something somewhere.

Still, I suppose you can't get it wrong all the time, the message I get from the Fanny whatsisname fiasco is that too much was too inflated by so few for so long.

Take the example of the non white gentleman from Alabama in the stringy vest, sitting on the rickety porch of a run down shack, being offered a mortgage to buy the place and so put him into that rare breed of home owner status while being unemployed in an area of low employment opportunities.

What kind of morons are you breeding in the New World?

In OZ, one of the first things that apply is if the property is worth the money being borrowed, even if the new wannabe owner is of millionaire status, and even if the new wannabe owner is prepared to pay whatever for the property.

It seem some people across the pond should be directly accountable for the Fanny/Freddy balls up, or are the kick backs masking the banking activities so much?

I remember when in the 50's it was 1/3rd deposit and 1 year to pay on any retail hire purchase borrowing.
Gradually from retail pressure it went to 10% down and three years to pay, and you had to get a written letter from Mom and Dad to open a post office savings book.

It would seem that the housing market is driven by the estate agents as the prime cause of overinflating house values and then the banks being prepared to pay out on their expertise.

What does it profit a nation when the homeowners partly own the tangible assets and the banks own the wannabe homeowners.

That is complete crowd control, just .1% in mortgage interest rate rise is enought to cause foreclosure and eviction.

The other damming scene is the rise of squalid low class housing neighbourhoods that tend to concentrate low wage earning low moral character people that normally would be spread around in rented accomodation and kept in check by peer pressure.

I know you find this uncomfortable to think about but how yo'all gonna feed yo fool selves when your population expands and the job market continues to shrink?

I bet the universities are still churning out the graduates, so over educated in obsolete consumer manufacturing techniques, when it's peasant farmer capabilities yo'all gonna need to survive the coming winds of change.
Ian.

[handlewanker]

BTW Fizzwizz, Confucius couldn't have supposedly influenced Greek culture way back when, the Greeks were a spent force by then having been whomped by the Romans, so in actual fact Confoo' would probably have some Romano Greco influences, depending on the years he existed in.

That would make him a Republican with Deocratic tendencies living in a Chinese Feudal society?
Wow, a man for all reasons.
Ian.

[NinerSevenTango]

For a basic understanding of how fiat currency and a central bank inevitably cause the boom-bust cycle, you can read Ludwig Von Mises. It has nothing to do with flights of fancy.

--97T--

[NinerSevenTango]

You can pick either candidate in the fake horse race, and it won't matter. And no, not just because we have secret ballot-counting via electronic voting machine.

It's because both parties agree that a free market will not bring the best energy at the lowest cost. Well, they don't believe that, they know damn well the free market is the ONLY way to get the best energy at the least cost. What they really agree on is that they want to CONTROL it, milk it for money, and RULE OVER YOU.

And here, they tell it to your face.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-NIbZXNRns"]YouTube - Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich Agree on Climate Change[/ame]

[fizzissist]

Oh, if we could only be as smart as they are in Oz....

http://www.abc.net.au/science/planetslayer/greena.htm

From the folks that tell their kids when they should die.....


(ain't it ironic...someone here casting disparaging remarks about technology, in a forum whose specialty is high tech..
....and Greena sports metal piercings, most of which are made of titanium or at least stainless steel. Materials which require a fairly sophisticated level of technology to produce)

[dynosor]

....and Greena sports metal piercings, most of which are made of titanium or at least stainless steel. Materials which require a fairly sophisticated level of technology to produce)

Yes, but she inherited those from her grandmother.

[One of Many]

Oh, if we could only be as smart as they are in Oz....

http://www.abc.net.au/science/planetslayer/greena.htm

From the folks that tell their kids when they should die.....


(ain't it ironic...someone here casting disparaging remarks about technology, in a forum whose specialty is high tech..
....and Greena sports metal piercings, most of which are made of titanium or at least stainless steel. Materials which require a fairly sophisticated level of technology to produce)

Fiz,

Sure, this does seem to glorify the strange idea that face piercings are attractive, but IMHO it was the small minded characterization in cartoon that was revealed, while those high tech metals were only produced out of pixels. That whole site WASTES POWER around the world on those that get suckered in, counter to their agenda.

What I found comical in the underlying truth behind each episode was the attempts to fix something and only making things worse. Save something and only have it end up as part of the food chain anyways. Be ignorant to ones own BO for the sake of green. Or Pie Protest only to have it backfire at an unintended victim. This mentality is so ridden with guilt complex, they need to find oxymoronic methods to unload it in a judgmental way on the rest of the populations in order to boost their pride in what they do, even though misguided in foolish vain.

This description fits Wanker to a tee. He has more worry and cynical insight to what other nations do(all be that hyper-sensitive to the USA) while ignoring serious issues that happen elsewhere or in his own "gypsy life styled continent of choice" with very superficial allegiances. The incessant tones of talking down to people he does not even know, is a sign he may die a lonely old man, without a friend in the world.....unless they agree with his warped points of view or passively enjoy being verbally abused. When he cannot score points on one argument, he changes the subject or alters his direction enough to slide in another insult on those he portends as intellectually inferior.

While there are plenty of things wrong with the US internal and external, and somewhat less that other nations, yet no one here in the zone has any direct control over it. Beating them issues as old dead horses must be gratifying though, eh?

DC

[fizzissist]

I guess those Aussie's weren't thinking very far ahead....
...seems like all that coal they sell to China gets burnt and blown back to them!!!

What was that about "morons"??


by Staff Writers
Canberra, Australia (SPX) Aug 20, 2008
CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research scientist, Dr Leon Rotstayn, says the influence aerosols have on climate is still one of the 'great unknowns' in climate science.

"We recently identified that the extensive pollution haze emanating from Asia may be re-shaping rainfall patterns and monsoonal winds in northern Australia. Establishing the impacts of aerosols across the rest of the country presents a new research challenge," Dr Rotstayn says.

He was speaking on the eve of 'Something in the Air', an international workshop organised by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology through the Australian Climate Change Science Program and that has attracted 60 participants. At the centre of workshop discussions on August 18 and 19 will be a just-published review in the International Journal of Climatology of how aerosols could be influencing climate in Australia.

Sources of human-generated aerosols include; smoke-stack emissions, vehicle emissions and vegetation burning. Natural aerosol sources include; volcanic eruptions, dust storms and ocean plankton.
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Ae...imate_999.html

[Geof]

I guess those Aussie's weren't thinking very far ahead....
...seems like all that coal they sell to China gets burnt and blown back to them!!!.......

No matter what the eminent scientists say I think they must have re-configured atmospheric circulation to get haze from China blowing over the north part of Australia.