Saturday, October 20, 2007

A Perfect Storm of Perfect Storms

Wall St caught in a perfect storm
It is unclear, however, whether the Fed can act as aggressively as it might wish, given stubborn inflation now running at 2.8pc and concerns that the dollar slide could get out of hand if managed badly by Washington.

This is hauntingly similar to events in October 1987, just before Black Monday.


Oil's Big Rise
Ellis said that over the past four years prices have been driven up by an explosion in demand, led by China, on the one hand, the onset of war in the Middle East and strike and maintenance disruptions. "Together, with the weakness of the dollar, they have cooked up a perfect storm."

US housing nightmare worsens as starts tumble 10.2 percent
Brian Bethune, economist at Global Insight, said "the housing market is now navigating through 'perfect storm' conditions -- a downward spiral involving reductions in demand, repetitive slashing of output, downward pressure on prices, tightening credit conditions and rising foreclosures."

Is property revaluation the "Perfect Storm"?
Albany - Hundreds of disgruntled taxpayers appear before the Dougherty County Commission, demanding what they call a flawed reassessment of properties be thrown out. They say senior citizens and working people are being taxed out of their homes. One taxpayer called it the perfect economic storm, that will ultimately devastate the entire county.

McCain calls health care system "a perfect storm" in Upstate visit
This country is facing “a perfect storm,” the Arizona senator said, adding that Medicare and Social Security “are going broke” and that Medicaid has an unmanageable rate of inflation.

The looming food crisis
A "perfect storm" of ecological and social factors appears to be gathering force, threatening vast numbers of people with food shortages and price rises.

State's water trouble a perfect storm
Southern California's water resources are much like its freeways: A single problem can bog down the flow of the precious liquid.

Right now, the region's water supply is experiencing a 10-car pileup.


Rain on me
So we have a perfect storm of factors draining away metro Atlanta’s water, with no real storms to alleviate the problem in sight. How then to avoid what conceivably could become a water panic?

Proposed rate hikes anger many in Anthem
The Arizona Corporation Commission has been reviewing the issue since June after the Arizona-American Water Authority sought to increase Anthem water bills by 71 percent for homes and 120 percent for businesses. The water company has since revised those requests downward, but those rates continue to change.

...

"This is not just a one time rate increase," Golembe said. "It's a perfect storm for future rate increases."

In millions of Windows, the perfect Storm is gathering
A spectre is haunting the net but, outside of techie circles, nobody seems to be talking about it. The threat it represents to our security and wellbeing may be less dramatic than anything posed by global terrorism, but it has the potential to wreak much more havoc. And so far, nobody has come up with a good idea on how to counter it.

2 comments:

Rob Dawg said...

While everthing you say is generally correct be careful when talking about "California's Water Crisis." What we have is a management crisis. The legislature needs some money so they've invented a very expensive ad campaign to promote a very expensive bond to get more money out of taxpayers. The actual program is nothing but developer subsidies.

Stagflationary Mark said...

What we have is a management crisis.

Well, I certainly can't argue with that!