PAYING the bank to keep your money there: negative interest rates

Negative Inttest RatesThis likely slided below your own radar screen — except that of BZ’s — but the European Central Bank recently acted in an amazing fashion.  It cut its deposit rate for banks from zero to -0.1%.

That is what is called a “negative interest rate.”

The point of the move is to prompt banks in the ECB to disseminate more loans to businesses and individuals.  To try to create a current flow, if you will.  Some people have an entirely different take on the ECB move: it’s outright desperation due to general failing European economic recovery.

Some people say a move like this will only serve to further unemployment and cause inflation, due to unintended circumstances.

Neil Irwin of the New York Times recently wrote in his June 4th article:

Europe Gets Negative Interest Rates. What Does That Even Mean?

First there was ZIRP. Now get ready for NIRP.

The first is “zero interest-rate policy,” the strategy for trying to stimulate economic growth that the United States has undertaken for the last five and a half years (and the Bank of Japan much longer than that). The second is “negative interest rate policy.” And that’s what the European Central Bank put in place on Thursday for the 18 nations that use the euro currency.

Irwin provides an example of a negative interest rate:

When a bank pays a 1 percent interest rate, it’s clear what happens: If you deposit your money at the bank, it will pay you a penny each year for every dollar you deposited. When the interest rate is negative, the money goes the other direction.

Negative interest rates.

Coming soon to a bank near you?

BZ

 

Anthropogenic Global Warming? No, says new study: volcanoes

??????????From the DailyCaller.com:

Study: West Antarctic Glacier Melt Due To Volcanoes, Not Global Warming

by Michael Bastach

A new study by researchers at the University of Texas, Austin found that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is collapsing due to geothermal heat, not man-made global warming.

Researchers from the UTA’s Institute for Geophysics found that the Thwaites Glacier in western Antarctica is being eroded by the ocean as well as geothermal heat from magma and subaerial volcanoes. Thwaites is considered a key glacier for understanding future sea level rise.

UTA researchers used radar techniques to map water flows under ice sheets and estimate the rate of ice melt in the glacier. As it turns out, geothermal heat from magma and volcanoes under the glacier is much hotter and covers a much wider area than was previously thought.

“Geothermal flux is one of the most dynamically critical ice sheet boundary conditions but is extremely difficult to constrain at the scale required to understand and predict the behavior of rapidly changing glaciers,” UTA researchers wrote in their study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The geothermal heat under the glaciers is likely a key factor in why the ice sheet is currently collapsing. Before this study, it was assumed that heat flow under the glacier was evenly distributed throughout, but UTA’s study shows this is not the case. Heat levels under the glacier are uneven, with some areas being much hotter than others.

At the same time:

But reports of the western ice sheet’s collapse comes as Antarctic ice sheets continue to break records. At the end of May, Antarctic sea ice extent reached the highest level since measurements began in 1979.

Sea ice extent reached nearly 13 million square kilometers — 10.3 percent above the 1981-2010 climatological average of 11.7 million square kilometers. The previous record was 12.7 million square kilometers set in 2010.

Warming and cooling?  Yes, the earth does both.  Caused solely by man, anthropogenic,  and irrevocably unrecoverable?  No.  Do the Religious Left believe “global warming” is unrecoverable, fervently, with all their hearts?  Yes, they do.  But I submit: in the extremely brief time we have been documenting the earth’s climate, we no more have a grasp of earth’s changing face than we do the depth and breadth of space.

I also submit: over-reacting to so-called “global warming” is a wonderful way to break nations, pit people against each other, fleece the pockets of the American Taxpayer and redistribute wealth as determined by DC in concert with the Religious Left.

BZ

Antarctic Sea Ice Record

 

BZ’s 10-year Bloggiversary

BZ 10-Year BloggiversaryBloviating Zeppelin began on June 19th of 2004.

I never thought it would last more than a few months.  I never thought I would be interested in posting more than a few months.

Surprise, surprise.

I was convinced I’d lose interest.

First it went five years.

I wrote only for myself. I had no idea how to embed links, how to post photographs. I could do nothing but write and click the “PUBLISH POST” button.

My continuing thanks to Texas Fred and Robert from American & Proud for bringing my graphics into the 20th Century, and then on my conversion from Blogspot.com to WordPress.

I’ve written for me; I’ve written to document portions of my life so I won’t forget; I’ve written to bloviate, to excoriate, to yell, to educate. I’ve written when stone cold sober and remarkably inebriated. I’ve written with tears running down my cheeks. And I’ve written as the snow fell and stacked up, over six feet, on my deck.

Throughout all this, my greatest thanks go to you, my readers. Thank you for trusting me, for visiting, for taking the time to comment and interact.

With all the hubris, arrogance, violence, hate, discontent, confusion, lack of understanding and, mostly, lack of time, I know that each and every one of you are challenged in your lives.

Yet you still find the time to come by.

I stand amazed. And incredibly thankful.

Thank you again.

BZ

 

What we already knew: dogs have more honor than Leftists

Don't Feed the Leftists or the BearsFrom the (this makes me smile) UKDailyMail.com:

Clever boy! Dogs prefer to EARN treats by solving problems, rather than receiving handouts

by Jonathan O’Callaghan

  • Researchers in Sweden say dogs like to solve problems just like humans
  • They found the pets were visibly happier when they had a ‘eureka moment’
  • In experiments 12 beagle dogs were trained to use pieces of equipment
  • Half had to use the equipment to get a reward while the other half didn’t
  • And the scientists found those that had to earn their reward were happier

In humans the ‘eureka moment’ is a commonly known feeling that occurs when we solve a particularly troubling problem.

But new research suggests that we’re not the only animals to experience this – dogs, too, gain pleasure from solving a tricky task.

In a series of experiments, scientists found dogs were happier when they earned a reward by performing a task, rather than just being handed a treat.

Proving once again: dogs are smarter than Free Cheese Leftists.  Now, to include illegal immigrants of all stripes.

People value nothing that they have not earned.  And “earning” generally involves work, sacrifice, pain and hardship.

Free Cheese solves nothing.

Even dogs know that.

BZ

Free-Cheese

Ex-border agents: Immigrant flood ‘orchestrated’

Illegal ImmigrationIt is a man-made disaster from Mr Obama, pure and simple.

From WND.com:

‘We are not gullible enough to believe thousands came without aid and assistance’

by Bob Unruh

An organization of former Border Patrol agents Wednesday charged that the federal government, under the administration of President Obama, is deliberately arranging for a flood of immigrant children to arrive in America for political purposes.

“This is not a humanitarian crisis. It is a predictable, orchestrated and contrived assault on the compassionate side of Americans by her political leaders that knowingly puts minor illegal alien children at risk for purely political purposes,” said the statement released by the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers.

“Certainly, we are not gullible enough to believe that thousands of unaccompanied minor Central American children came to America without the encouragement, aid and assistance of the United States government,” the officers said.

“Anyone that has taken two six- to seven-year-old children to an amusement park can only imagine the problems associated with bringing thousands of unaccompanied children that age up through Mexico and into the United States.”

Allow me to interject at this point:

News stories have indicated that women, children and others have come up from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua.  That means one very specific thing: Mexico is allowing those persons through their country, in order to cross the northern border.

A federal judge even concluded the White House “has simply chosen not to enforce … border security laws.”

FoxNews.com reported this week Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer calls the situation a “creation” of the federal government, and Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., assigned blame for the “calamity” to Obama.

Fox News reported it had obtained a memo from an official with Customs and Border Protection who said the current policies are serving as an incentive for illegal aliens to sneak into the U.S.

Vice President Joe Biden said this week at a manufacturer’s conference that the US needs a “constant, unrelenting stream” of new immigrants to buttress the national economy.

I would add: no, not quite.  I would also add: let’s take care of our own people first, before we bring in others.  Let’s take care of those individuals who were born here.  Let’s educate them and train them.

Because the people who are flooding into the United States via our southern border are ill-educated, sometime ill in health, and the first to sign up for more federal and state Free Cheese — at the insistence of the federal government.

Specifically to the point:

The former Border Patrol agents said the campaign is a “political deception,” and the responsibility rests with the political leaders who support “a path to citizenship, regularization or any other form of amnesty for illegal aliens before providing for full protections for national security (jobs and economy) and public safety (the right of the people to be secure in their property and person).”

The officers argue that the non-enforcement of immigration laws is “the next step in becoming a failed state.”

And so, that is very true.  A failed nation-state.

The Augusta Chronicle writes today:

As one Guatemalan detainee told The Christian Science Monitor: “They’re saying that women and children are allowed to stay.”

The Obama administration certainly isn’t doing anything to dispel that notion.

It set up housing for detainees at a San Antonio Air Force base and a Ventura, Calif., Navy base. They can’t handle the sheer numbers, so a processing center has been set up in Nogales, Ariz., which also can’t handle the sheer numbers. The center already is running out of supplies. Another planeload of about 130 illegals was dumped in El Paso, Texas, for processing and care. Fort Sill, Okla., is being prepared for still more illegals.

And President Obama is asking Congress for $1.4 billion of your money to pay for all of that.

Even more outrageous: The administration said Friday that it was starting a program issuing $2 million in grants to fund about 100 lawyers and paralegals to represent immigrant children facing deportation.

The White House not only is refusing to turn these kids away, it’s fighting like mad to keep them here.

Read that very important series of paragraphs again, if you will.  Digest it a bit.  This is a very purposeful and man-made “crisis.”

We don’t need more low- or no-skilled workers with poor education.  We need persons who are vocationally trained and highly educated.  We don’t need more burger flippers and weed-pullers; we need those whose educated and clear brains can create the next generation of technological improvements.

The massive and current flood of children and women through our porous borders, gathered and then purposely-released by the USBP into border state population centers at the direction of federal management via DC and the Spite House — in the very dead of a blazing hot summer — is the Cloward-Pivening of our social fabric.  It is designed to crash the system so that the system can be rebuilt under a more Socialist bent.  As advocated by Richard Cloward, Frances Fox Piven, William Ayers, and Saul Alinsky.

This is purposeful, it is willful, it is artificially created, it is heinous, it is despicable, and it stems directly from the Oval Office of the Spite House.

It is a man-made disaster of huge proportions, pure and simple.

As Obama clearly knows, having been schooled at the feet of Alinsky, Ayers, Cloward and Piven: no nation can survive absent true sovereignty.

BZ

Illegal Invaders