Inhalt:

According to researchers working in the exclusion zone surrounding Chernobyl, there is a "strong signal of decline associated with the contamination".

The team found that bumblebees, butterflies, grasshoppers, dragonflies and spiders were affected.
[...]
The two researchers previously published findings that low-level radiation in the area has a negative impact on bird populations.

"Wildlife really thrives in Chernobyl area - due to the low level of [human] influence," Dr Gashchak told BBC News.

"Maybe 1,000 to perhaps 10,000 times that rate and that is occurring right across all organisms.
[...]
"Whether you look at the land biodiversity, the freshwater biodiversity, or the marine ecosystems, we are in some way having a major impact on all of those."

They said that efforts introduced to halt overfishing in five of the 10 large marine ecosystems they examined were showing signs of success.

A combination of measures - such as catch quotas, no-take zones, and selective fishing gear - had helped fish stocks recover, they added.

Details of the two-year study by 21 marine scientists appear in Science.

As solar activity picks up again in the coming years, the research suggests, temperatures will shoot up at 150% of the rate predicted by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

At the same time, there are good reasons to think that it is not entirely accidental that the countries (and regions) that were ahead in per capita income terms in 1700 were also the first to industrialise. How the world could escape the Malthusian trap at all has become a matter of intense interest to economists in recent years (Galor and Weil, 2000, Jones, 2001, Hansen and Prescott, 2002). In a related paper, we calibrate a simple growth model to show why high per capita income at an early stage may have been key for Europe’s rise after 1800 (Voigtländer and Voth, 2006).

In the “Three Horsemen of Riches”, we ask how Europe got to be rich in the first place. Our answer is best summarised by the smuggler Harry Lime, played by Orson Welles in the 1948 classic “The Third Man“:

"In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had 500 years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

We argue that a similar logic held in economic terms before the Industrial Revolution. Europe’s exceptional rise to early riches owed much to forces of destruction – war, aided by frequent disease outbreaks and deadly cities.

Why? Because besides valuation changes and interest income there are two reasons for the increase in the reserves – the very high trade surplus and net capital inflows into China. Take the second reason first. If money flows into China for investment purposes, it must flow out of somewhere else, and that somewhere else for the most part means the global pool of dollar savings which would anyway have been available to fund the US fiscal deficit directly or indirectly.

In that sense China is acting as kind of upside-down bank that takes risk-seeking money and intermediates it into low-risk assets – as an aside almost the opposite of what the US does, and whereas the US profits from this intermediation, China runs a significant negative carry. Of course the fact of intermediating risk money into low-risk assets will have some impact on US Treasury rates, but the impact is minimal (technically risk-free rates will decline a tiny bit and credit spreads will increase by the same amount).

The trouble is that excludes local government borrowing, the current surge in loans backstopped by Beijing and bad assets cleared from the banking system but still floating about.

When all are thrown into the pot, analysts estimate that China's debt may be closer to 60 percent of GDP, putting it in virtually the same league as the United States, which was at 70 percent at the end of 2008 before it launched its massive economic stimulus programme.

Tax intakes are, of course, closely tied to economic activity, so China's upturn should deliver cash to government coffers. But improvement in June came mainly from land sales, a one-off revenue source that masks the difficult road ahead.

Until recently investment’s share of GDP growth peaked at around 65% in 2003 – a very high share by any standard – and going back the full thirty years of China’s reform period achieved an historical high astonishing of 81% in 1985. From 2005 to 2008 the investment share of GDP growth averaged around 40% – still high – and then in the first half of this year accounted for a mind-boggling 88% of this years GDP growth.

Of course Guiyang has a quarter the population and probably a quarter the per capita income of Shenzhen. They built sprawling new government buildings about a 20-minute drive north of town. And then the residential high rise projects started going up. From driving around the area, Tom and I figured well over 100 20+ storey buildings.
[...]
The only buildings that were occupied were six-storey towers built to accommodate the peasants who had been displaced by the construction.

This flood of money has buoyed asset prices: the Shanghai stockmarket is up 69% since the start of the year, while investors are now returning to the property market after the government clamped down on an emerging bubble there in 2007. Today, "long queues increasingly form whenever new apartments go on sale" in cities such as Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Nach dem allgemeinen Hypoport-Index, der die tatsächlich erzielten Verkaufspreise für Gebäude umfasst, haben Ein- und Zweifamilienhäuser im Bestand seit Jahresbeginn durchschnittlich neun Prozent an Wert verloren. Seit Dezember verbilligten sich diese Objekte demnach im Bundesschnitt von 185.000 Euro auf nur noch 168.375 Euro Ende März. Es handelt sich um den stärksten Preisrückgang binnen einem Quartal seit Beginn der Indexberechnung im Januar 2005. Damals kosteten Häuser im Bestand im Schnitt noch 204.856 Euro. Seither haben existierende Eigenheime den Indexdaten zufolge im Schnitt rund 18 Prozent an Wert verloren. Einzig Immobilien in Innenstadtlagen erweisen sich als wertstabil.

Prices fell 0.6% in July from a year earlier - the first fall since March 1987, when they declined by 0.3%.

The decline was largely due to falls in energy prices, which peaked in summer 2008, and analysts said Germany was unlikely to see a deflationary spiral.

About 150 hooded youths, armed with sledgehammers and steel bars, entered the Kolonaki district in central Athens on Friday afternoon, smashing shop windows and cars. The attackers fled after police used tear gas, scattering leaflets identifying them as members of anarchist groups.

No casualties have been reported, and no arrests were made.

Greece has seen regular street violence since last December's worst riots in decades, sparked by the killing of a teenager by police. Last week a home-made explosive device went off outside a Citibank branch in Athens.

“There is simply no case for the pressure that we, who have been among the lowest emissions per capita, face to actually reduce emissions,” Jairam Ramesh said at a meeting today with Clinton in Gurgaon near New Delhi, according to a statement he issued to reporters. “And as if this pressure was not enough, we also face the threat of carbon tariffs on our exports to countries such as yours.”

“In 2020, it’s conceivable that we might look at a limited target. But in 2009, no way,” said Mr Ramesh.

While the falling energy prices that have been the main driver behind the decline are no bad thing for resource-poor Japan, analysts increasingly worry that deepening deflation – fuelled by job insecurity and massive manufacturing over-capacity – could undermine economic recovery.
The fall in “core-core” consumer prices, excluding food and energy, accelerated to 0.7 per cent in June. More recent July price data for urban areas of Tokyo showed a fall of 1.1 per cent.

Sales slid 3 percent from a year earlier, the Trade Ministry said today in Tokyo. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News predicted a 2.5 percent drop.

The Public Sector Pension Investment Board reported Thursday it was buffeted by the financial crisis that began last year, seeing its assets fall by $5.1-billion to $33.8-billion as of March 31, 2009, down from $38.9-billion a year earlier.

His pay included a $485,000 base salary, an annual bonus of $189,122, a deferred incentive plan payment of $611,100, benefits and other compensation worth $35,876, and accrued pension benefits worth $98,500.

Poland receives gas from Russia through the Yamal pipeline, which is capable of carrying about 30 billion cubic metres of gas annually to Europe, but the government wants to diversify from its dependence by building a liquefied natural gas terminal.

The current Russian depopulation—which began in 1992 and shows no signs of abating—was, like the previous episodes, also precipitated by events of momentous political significance: the final dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of Communist Party rule. But it differs in three important respects. First, it is by far the longest period of population decline in modern Russian history, having persisted for over twice as long as the decline that followed the Bolshevik Revolution, and well over three times as long as the terrifying depopulation Russia experienced during and immediately after World War II.

A consortium headed by the World Health Organization estimated that for 2005 a woman’s risk of death in childbirth in Russia was over six times higher than in Germany or Switzerland. Moreover, mortality levels for women in their twenties (the decade in which childbearing is concentrated in contemporary Russia) have been rising, not falling, in recent decades.

Yet even these numbers may substantially understate hard spirit use in Russia, since the WHO figures follow only the retail sale of hard liquor. But samogon—home-brew, or “moonshine”—is, according to some Russian researchers, a huge component of the country’s overall intake. Professor Alexander Nemstov, perhaps Russia’s leading specialist in this area, argues that Russia’s adult population—women as well as men—puts down the equivalent of a bottle of vodka per week.

Putin’s Kremlin made a fateful bet that natural resources—oil, gas, and other extractive saleable commodities—would be the springboard for the restoration of Moscow’s influence as a great power on the world stage. In this gamble, Russian authorities have mainly ignored the nation’s human resource crisis. During the boom years—Russia’s per capita income roughly doubled between 1998 and 2007—the country’s death rate barely budged. Very much worse may lie ahead. How Russia’s still-unfolding demographic disaster will affect the country’s domestic political situation—and its international security posture—are questions that remain to be answered.

Take for example, citizens over 90; there has been a three-fold increase since 1971. The number is likely to triple again by 2031. Over-90s incur major medical costs. While we might be able to delay the retirement age by a couple of years, the typical 90 year-old is extremely unlikely to be a financially self-supporting member of the community.

The over 65’s in Britain are, on average, worse off than their counterparts in Romania, Poland and France.

The research, which compared relative poverty in the 27 member states, showed nearly one in three UK over-65s were at risk of poverty - the same proportion as in Lithuania (30 per cent).

Only pensioners in Cyprus (51 per cent), Latvia (33 per cent), and Estonia (33 per cent) came out worse. The EU average was 19 per cent.

In the past year more than 250,000 extra people who would like to be in full-time employment have found themselves working four days a week or fewer, according to the Office for National Statistics.

This is an increase of more than a third on the previous year, and illustrates the extent to which companies are trying to cope with the downturn by reducing staff hours, rather than just laying them off.

Overall, the data cannot be seen as anything but bullish.

Mortgages from the Chinese bank are offered via four brokers, starting at 2.5% above the base rate.

Bank of China previously focussed on lending to Chinese communities in the UK, but is now widening its scope.

Treasuries are the cheapest relative to inflation since 1994 after consumer prices fell 1.4 percent in June from a year earlier. The real yield, or the difference between rates on government securities and inflation, for 10-year notes was 5.10 percent today, compared with an average of 2.74 percent over the past 20 years.

The Treasury has agreed to pump $200 billion into each company in order to keep them solvent. In exchange, the government receives senior preferred stock that pays a 10% dividend. So far, it has injected $85 billion in total into the companies, but Lockhart said that figure was likely to rise in the coming months.

In addition, American Home has “unconditionally” guaranteed the obligations of 16 other A.I.G. subsidiaries, bringing the total it might have to pay to $140.6 billion.

• The DIF Balance Declines by $16 Billion, and Insured Deposits Grow by 4.6 Percent in the Fourth Quarter
  
• DIF Reserve Ratio Declines to 0.40 Percent
  
• Twenty-Five Insured Institutions Fail During the Year; Another Five Insured Institutions under the Same Holding Company Receive Assistance

The fund lost 23.6 percent, or $12.8 billion, in the fiscal year that ended June 30, according to Michael Travaglini, executive director of the Massachusetts Public Reserves Investment Management Board, which runs the state pension fund. Assets are now down to $37.8 billion.

Worse, the long-vacant rental home had been vandalized and she faced a raft of housing code violations. Since then, she has been saddled with debts of about $12,000 to pay for demolition and back taxes.

"I thought I had nothing else to do with that home," said Atterberry. "I was so embarrassed and humiliated by this."

U.S. banks may incur about $470 billion of losses and writedowns by the end of 2010, which may cause the banks to be unprofitable in the period, the ratings company said in a report published today.

2) Banks stopped piling into US assets. In October — at the peak of the crisis — private investors abroad bought $64 billion US t-bills and increased their dollar deposits by $196 billion (see line 29 of the TIC data; “change in banks own (net) dollar-denominated liabilities). In January, credit conditions eased a bit, and private investors reduced their t-bill holds by $44 billion and the banks reduced their (net) dollar deposits by $119 billion.

Russia also, interestingly, added to its holdings of short-term Treasury bills. The Gulf reduced its dollar deposits (now at $114.3b, down from a peak of $125.5b in November) whether to support its domestic banks or to cover stretched budgets. The Gulf (and Brazil) also bought a decent number of long-term Treasuries. Most official buying, though, came at the short-end. In aggregate, the official sector sold $1.9 billion of long-term Treasuries while adding $29 billion to its short-term bills.

The “quality” of the financial flows into the US consequently bears watching. A modest revival in foreign demand for longer-dated US assets would be a positive sign. To date, the sale of US assets abroad and a scramble for liquid dollar assets has provided the US with more than enough financing to sustain its deficit. Those flows though may not continue.

And if — as seems likely — foreign demand for Treasuries fades long before the US fiscal deficit, the US Treasury will need to sell an awful lot of Treasuries to American investors. For the past several years I have argued that it was almost impossible to overstate the impact of central bank demand on the Treasury market.

That may no longer be the case going forward.

The world is changing. Global reserves aren’t growing. The echo from their past peak that we observe in the current Treasury data will fade.

The Russian-language newspaper Delo, which is published in Ukraine, said that Ukraine's largest state company has to repay loans of over 25 billion hryvna ($3 billion) in 2009, with another 4 billion hryvna (about $500 million) due in interest payments.