When the Crisis comes… Kick the Can Down the Road…

The Economic Collapse
October 28, 2011

Have you heard the good news?  Financial armageddon has been averted.  The economic collapse in Europe has been cancelled.  Everything is going to be okay.  Well, actually none of those statements is true, but news of the “debt deal” in Europe has set off a frenzy of irrational exuberance throughout the financial world anyway.  Newspapers all over the globe are declaring that the financial crisis in Europe is over.  Stock markets all over the world are soaring.

The Dow was up nearly 3 percent today, and this recent surge is helping the S&P 500 to have its best month since 1974.  Global financial markets are experiencing an explosion of optimism right now.  Yes, European leaders have been able to kick the can down the road for a few months and a total Greek default is not going to happen right now.  However, as you will see below, the core elements of this “debt deal” actually make a financial disaster in Europe even more likely in the future.

The two most important parts of the plan are a 50% “haircut” on Greek debt held by private investors and highly leveraging the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) to give it much more “firepower”.

Both of these elements are likely to cause significant problems down the road.  But most investors do not seem to have figured this out yet.  In fact, most investors seem to be buying into the hype that Europe’s problems have been solved.

There is a tremendous lack of critical thinking in the financial community today.  Just because politicians in Europe say that the crisis has been solved does not mean that the crisis has been solved.  But all over the world there are bold declarations that a great “breakthrough” has been achieved.  An article posted on USA Today is an example of this irrational exuberance….

 

Investors — at least for now — don’t have to worry about a financial collapse like the one in 2008, after Wall Street investment bank Lehman Bros. filed for bankruptcy, sparking a global financial crisis.

“Financial Armageddon seems to have been taken off the table,” says Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott.

Wow, doesn’t that sound great?

But now let’s look at the facts.

Read Full Article…

Scientists Plan Mission to blow up Apophis Asteroid

Apophis is the Asteroid that could collide with Earth in 2036

Mail Online
August 17, 2011

It seemed far-fetched on the silver screen.

But the European Space Agency is planning to launch a mission similar to the plot of Hollywood movie Armageddon, in which Bruce Willis and his intrepid team attempt to blow up a huge asteroid that’s hurtling towards Earth.

Asteroid 99942 Apophis to come by Earth in 2036.

The real version, if it goes ahead in 2015, will see a satellite fired at break-neck speed into a ‘test’ asteroid to see if its course changes.

The aim is to assess whether it would be possible to save Earth using this method, should we discover that an asteroid is on a collision course with our planet.

The mission, called Don Quijote, will involve sending two spacecraft towards a near-Earth asteroid.

One will be an ‘impactor’, which is fired into the asteroid, the other an orbitor that will analyse data from the experiment.

One potential target is a 1600ft-wide asteroid called 99942 Apophis, which experts say does have a minute chance – around one in 250,000 – of hitting Earth in 2036, so it would be useful target practice.

The 500kg impact craft, which will be called Hidalgo, will ram into the asteroid at a speed of around six miles a second.

The orbitor, called Sancho, will scan the collision and monitor whether the asteroid changes direction at all.

There will be a lot of fingers crossed in mission control, as a big asteroid impact could wipe out life on Earth.

Nasa, meanwhile, is planning something even more spectacular.

It wants to put humans on the surface of an asteroid within 15 years.

But sending people to one won’t be easy. You can’t land on an asteroid because you’d bounce off – it has virtually no gravity. Astronauts couldn’t even walk on it because they’d float away.

Reaching it might require a Nasa spacecraft to harpoon the space rock.

Nasa is thinking about jetpacks, tethers, bungees, nets and spiderwebs to allow explorers to float just above the surface of it while attached to a smaller mini-spaceship.

Kent Joosten, chief architect of the human exploration team at Johnson Space Center, said: ‘This is the big step. This is out into the universe, away from Earth’s gravity completely… This is really where you are doing the Star Trek kind of thing.’

For information on previous asteroid impacts click here.

For information on asteroid impact planning and analysis click here.

  • B612 Foundation Statement Regarding NASA’s Analysis of Asteroid 99942 Apophis Impact Potential [PDF]
  • SCENARIOS FOR DEALING WITH APOPHIS [PDF]
  • Predicting the Earth Encounters of Apophis in 2029 and 2036 [PDF]
  • Apophis Risk Forecast [PPS PowerPoint 1 Page]
  • 99942 Apophis Rendezvous Mission Opportunities [PDF]
  • Albedo and size determination of (99942) Apophis from polarimetric observations [PDF]
  • The Planetary Society Apophis Mission Design Competition [PDF]
  • Head-On Impact Deflection of NEAs: A Case Study for 99942 Apophis [PDF]
  • APEX Apophis Explorer [PDF]
  • Apophis and the Keyhole [PPS]

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