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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (10047)	10/11/2006 8:03:11 AM
From: foundation	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 218251

piles of pawns... cords of deadwood... ---------- Washington Monthly -- October 11, 2006 washingtonmonthly.com THE DEATH RATE IN IRAQ....A team at Johns Hopkins has done another study of the post-invasion death rate in Iraq: A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred. ....Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from violence....Of the violent deaths that occurred after the invasion, 31 percent were caused by coalition forces or airstrikes, the respondents said. This is remarkable. If you do the arithmetic, it means that coalition forces have killed 186,000 Iraqis in the 39 months between the invasion and the period when the study was done. That's about 4,700 per month — and the numbers are on a steady upward trend. This study was done by the same team that did a similar "cluster sampling" analysis in 2004 that generated a huge amount of controversy. As near as I can tell, though, their methodology turned out to be sound and the objections mostly didn't hold water. (For example, they were accused of inflating the figures by including a cluster from Fallujah, which had just gone through a horrific battle. In fact, they specifically excluded the Fallujah cluster for exactly that reason.) This time around, the figures from their new study buttress the previous one, and also match up with other data, which suggests their methodology is on target. There is, of course, a fair amount of inherent uncertainty in this study. There's a roughly 10% chance the true figure could be half the reported size and a 10% chance it could be double the reported size. Still, the most likely figure is the one the Johns Hopkins team reported, and if it's accurate it means that coalition troops are killing nearly 5,000 Iraqis per month. That's truly an astonishing number.

To: TobagoJack who wrote (10047)	10/13/2006 6:56:23 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 218251

Fed Reports Resilience in Economy. Maybe the sputtering housing market will not be that big of a drag on the economy after all. Fed Reports Resilience in Economy. By JEREMY W. PETERS Published: October 13, 2006 Maybe the sputtering housing market will not be that big of a drag on the economy after all. Modest Growth in Most Regions Falling gas prices are leaving Americans with more money to spend, and inflation has become less of a threat in recent weeks, according to a report released yesterday by the Federal Reserve. Wall Street reveled at the news. Stock prices — already buoyed by a series of strong corporate earnings announcements from companies like McDonald’s and Costco — surged even higher after the Fed’s report, the beige book, came out yesterday afternoon. The benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index jumped to its highest close in more than five and a half years. The Dow Jones industrial average, which last week broke a record high that had stood since 2000, climbed past 11,900 to close fewer than 53 points short of 12,000. The Nasdaq composite gained more than a point and a half. A separate report showing that the nation’s trade deficit reached a record high in August was apparently an afterthought for investors. The Commerce Department said that on a seasonally adjusted basis, Americans imported $69.9 billion more than they exported, up 2.7 percent from a $68 billion deficit in July. That increase was in large part a result of near record petroleum prices. While the beige book was hardly a glowing picture of the nation’s economy, it did strike a generally optimistic tone. It described a “widespread cooling” in residential housing but noted that growth in commercial real estate activity was picking up some of the slack. And there were a handful of areas where residential home sales “showed signs of resilience,” the report said. Manhattan, Houston and Sioux Falls, S.D., were among these pockets of strength. “It seems like things are still stable,” said Marisa DiNatale of Moody’s Economy.com. “There may be moderating growth, but it’s certainly not a drastic slowdown.” Other potential problem spots in the economy — rising prices and slower consumer spending — do not appear to be much of a problem at all in many areas of the country, the report said. Consumers spent freely, taking vacations and shopping for back-to-school items. Wage growth was described as generally “modest.” And there were few signs of pressure from higher prices as the cost of gasoline dropped. Economists said falling fuel prices should be reflected in the next trade deficit report. Energy costs were the major reason for the widening trade gap in August, with the deficit in petroleum-related products accounting for nearly all of the $1.9 billion increase. The amount Americans spent on foreign-made household appliances and electronics also rose. “The trade balance should improve significantly soon,” Dimitry Fleming, an economist with ING, said in a research note. “August, however, was never going to be the starting point, with the lagged effects of higher oil prices.” The growing trade imbalance with China was another major factor in the ballooning trade deficit. The unadjusted trade deficit for August was $79 billion. Nearly a third of that, $22 billion, represented the gap in trade between the United States and China. The numbers defied expectations. Economists who were surveyed before the numbers came out predicted that the overall deficit would fall in August, but it rose, seasonally adjusted, by $1.9 billion from July. When the gap hit a record in July, economists said they believed that the numbers were nearing a peak. But as energy prices remained high this summer, the deficit continued to swell. Still, many economists said yesterday that they now believed that the turning point was near. “This is probably as bad as it gets,” wrote Paul Ashworth, senior United States economist with the economics research firm Capital Economics. Yesterday, the Chinese reported their own trade numbers, which showed a surplus of $15.3 billion for September. China’s trade surplus hit a record $18.8 billion in August. While American reliance on foreign goods is showing no signs of weakening, exports also remained strong. After declining in July, exports grew in August by 2.3 percent, to $122.4 billion. But that rate of growth was not strong enough to offset the rise in imports, which reached $192.3 billion in August. That was an increase of 2.4 percent. Peter Kretzmer, senior economist with Bank of America, said such strong import growth was a sign the economy would expand at a faster rate in the final months of the year. “We’ve been surprised by how strong import growth is,” he said. “This strong domestic demand may be a bit of a harbinger of a strong domestic economy going into the fourth quarter.”