Kitimat pulp mill to close

Elk Falls Workers

Campbell River B.C.

Kitimat pulp mill to close shop

By Gordon Hamilton, Vancouver Sun October 28, 2009

West Fraser Timber says it is shutting down its Eurocan pulp mill at Kitimat, throwing 535 people out of work. The mill will close Jan. 31, the company said in a news release late Wednesday. Company president Hank Ketcham blamed “a steep decline” in the mill’s financial results for the closure. Prices for its products — linerboard and kraft paper — are falling, the high Canadian dollar has knocked down revenues, and sawmills in the region have shut down, reducing the supply of low-cost chips for the mill. Ketcham made the announcement in person at the Kitimat mill. “We deeply regret the impact the mill closure will have on our 535 employees, their families and the community, and we will ensure those who are affected are treated with fairness and respect,” Ketcham said in the release. The 40-year-old Kitimat mill is one of the town’s largest employers.

http://cep1123.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/kitimat-pulp-mill-to-close-shop/

http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&cf=all&cf=all&ncl=dNCS3ddK3pgL3ZMqMEwmQFkzKNVHM

China: Overcapacity – Commodity Stockpiling

http://urlet.com/schedule.anything

http://www.rgemonitor.com/emergingmarkets-monitor/257856/chinas_september_data_suggest_that_the_long-term_overcapacity_problem_is_only_intensifying

Bank failures hit 106 on year

By Greg Morcroft, MarketWatch

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Seven more banks failed Friday, pushing the 2009 total to 106 and marking the first year since 1992 that at least 100 have gone under

Experts suggest we could be no more than 10% of the way through this cycle of bank collapses, which is sure to be the worst run of closures since the Great Depression.

http://urlet.com/len.man

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bank-failures-hit-100-for-year-2009-10-23

Matt Taibbi on Wall Street Criminals

Like all the great merchants of the bubble economy, Bear and Lehman were leveraged to the hilt and vulnerable to collapse. Many of the methods that outsiders used to knock them over were mostly legal: Credit markers were pulled, rumors were spread through the media, and legitimate short-sellers pressured the stock price down. But when Bear and Lehman made their final leap off the cliff of history, both undeniably got a push — especially in the form of a flat-out counterfeiting scheme called naked short-selling.

The new president for whom we all had such high hopes went and hired Michael Froman, a Citigroup executive who accepted a $2.2 million bonus after he joined the White House, to serve on his economic transition team — at the same time the government was giving Citigroup a massive bailout. Then, after promising to curb the influence of lobbyists, Obama hired a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, Mark Patterson, as chief of staff at the Treasury. He hired another Goldmanite, Gary Gensler, to police the commodities markets. He handed control of the Treasury and Federal Reserve over to Geithner and Bernanke, a pair of stooges who spent their whole careers being bellhops for New York bankers. And on the first anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, when he finally came to Wall Street to promote “serious financial reform,” his plan proved to be so completely absent of balls that the share prices of the major banks soared at the news.

http://urlet.com/go.caught

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30481512/wall_streets_naked_swindle

AND THEN WHAT? Prolonged Aid to Unemployed Is Running Out

ERIK ECKHOLM

Published: August 1, 2009

Over the coming months, as many as 1.5 million jobless Americans will exhaust their unemployment insurance benefits, ending what for some has been a last bulwark against foreclosures and destitution.

Because of emergency extensions already enacted by Congress, laid-off workers in nearly half the states can collect benefits for up to 79 weeks, the longest period since the unemployment insurance program was created in the 1930s. But unemployment in this recession has proved to be especially tenacious, and a wave of job-seekers is using up even this prolonged aid.

http://urlet.com/strategies.fair

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/us/02unemploy.html?hp

Eureka’s City Charter Charade

One of the articles that they want to delete from the city charter is 719: Revenue Bonds.

This section is actually a section that ALLOWS THE CITY TO RUN A BUSINESS.  FOR INSTANCE THE CITY COULD BUY THE PULP MILL BY SELLING BONDS TO DO SO.
This is a sensible option in economic times like these.  This clause is in the charter for a reason.  IT WAS PUT THERE IN RESPONSE TO THE LAST ECONOMIC DEPRESSION.

Do we really want to give up this option?  Their claim is that this is covered under general city powers but I like it SPELLED OUT.  DON’T YOU?

WE MAY NEED SOME MANUFACTURING HERE SOME DAY and the city may be the only source of capital.

have a peaceful day,
Bill

SECTION 719.  REVENUE BONDS.

     Whenever the Council determines that it is in the public interest to acquire, construct, or improve or finance any enterprise when it is feasible to finance exclusively from the revenues of said enterprise, it may by resolution submit a proposition to the voters to incur a bonded indebtedness for such purpose to be secured by revenue bonds subject to all of the terms and procedures provided by State law. Such resolution shall state clearly the revenues which may be obligated, which may be all those permitted by general law.

http://www.amlegal.com/nxt/gateway.dll/California/eureka/charterofthecityofeureka/articleviifiscaladministration?f=templates$fn=altmain-nf.htm$3.0#JD_718

US and UK on brink of debt disaster

20 Jan 2009, 0419 hrs
 
 
 
LONDON: The United States and the United Kingdom stand on the brink of the largest debt crisis in history. 
While both governments experiment with quantitative easing, bad banks to absorb non-performing loans, and state guarantees to restart bank lending, the only real way out is some combination of widespread corporate default, debt write-downs and inflation to reduce the burden of debt to more manageable levels. Everything else is window-dressing.
 
The proximate trigger of the debt crisis was the deterioration in lending standards and rise in default rates on subprime mortgage loans. But the widening divergence revealed in the charts suggests a crisis had become inevitable sooner or later. If not subprime lending, there would have been some other trigger.

The charts strongly suggest the necessary condition for resolving the debt crisis is a reduction in the outstanding volume of debt, an increase in nominal GDP, or some combination of the two, to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio to a more sustainable level.

From this perspective, it is clear many of the existing policies being pursued in the United States and the United Kingdom will not resolve the crisis because they do not lower the debt ratio.

In particular, having governments buy distressed assets from the banks, or provide loan guarantees, is not an effective solution. It does not reduce the volume of debt, or force recognition of losses. It merely re-denominates private sector obligations to be met by households and firms as public ones to be met by the taxpayer.

BANKRUPTCY OR INFLATION

The solution must be some combination of policies to reduce the level of debt or raise nominal GDP. The simplest way to reduce debt is through bankruptcy, in which some or all of debts are deemed unrecoverable and are simply extinguished, ceasing to exist.

Bankruptcy would ensure the cost of resolving the debt crisis falls where it belongs. Investor portfolios and pension funds would take a severe but one-time hit. Healthy businesses would survive, minus the encumbrance of debt.

http://urlet.com/bingo.angels

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/rssarticleshow/msid-4004567,flstry-1.cms

Its Time to Dump Your Dollars – If You Still Have Cents

Crude Oil Caps Biggest Monthly Gain Since 1999 on Dollar Drop

By Mark Shenk

May 29 (Bloomberg) — Crude oil rose, capping its biggest monthly gain in a decade, as the dollar weakened against the euro, bolstering the appeal of commodities.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=af0H16dCeM_A&refer=home

CottonWorks Going Out of Business – Old Town Eureka is Suffering

CottonWorks on 2nd st in old town eureka is going out of business – the latest in a half dozen or so business closings in Old Town.  Also closing in recent months have been Restoration Hardware across the street and Geppeto’s next door, and several others within a block or two.

These closures illustrate the folly of a business model that relies upon tourism.  Our local business owners who have been fed this bullshit for a decade or  two should get an apology, but they sure won’t get their investment back.

I do feel sorry for these business owners, there is real pain involved for at least some of them, but they bet on a faulty business model and lost.

We need to follow a local plan.  Build the city that we want to live in.  Open (or re-invent) your business to serve LOCAL NEEDS and you will prosper (or survive), even in the desperate times to come.

have a peaceful day,

Bill

Top General Motors executives dump their shares at knockdown prices

 

Six top executives at General Motors have sold their entire shareholdings in the stricken carmaker for a knockdown price of $315,000 as the Detroit-based company teeters on the brink of bankruptcy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/may/12/generalmotors-automotive-industry