"March 13, 2009"
http://www.spaceweather.com/
"Daily Sun: 13 Mar 09 The sun is blank--no sunspots. Sunspot number:
0"
"Far side of the Sun: This holographic image reveals no sunspots on
the far side of the sun."

The face of the Sun is without blemish:
http://www.spaceweather.com/images20...9c5mjlen s157

Please visit:
http://blog.nj.com/southjersey_impac...SolarCycle.jpg

The right panel shows the face of the Sun as it looked on a good day
during
the late Modern Warm Period. Sunspots are the apparent size of craters
on
the moon. The left panel shows a spotless Sun as it looks today.

Please write to Al Gore so that Al knows that the Sun is not living up
to
his religious expectations. Al Gore is a divinity school dropout.
George
Carlin had a better grasp of the true nature of God's creation, than
does Al
Gore.

Please visit:
http://www.co-intelligence.org/newsl...es/sun-etc.jpg
which shows the relative sizes of the Sun and planets. Compared to the
Sun,
Jupiter is the size of a pea, earth is the size of a grain of sand.

G-20 Moves Focus From Regulation as Economy ‘Battling For Life’

By Simon Kennedy

March 13 (Bloomberg) -- The guardians of the world economy are finding
their efforts to revamp the global financial system overwhelmed by the
deepening recession and banking crisis.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Bank of England Governor
Mervyn King and their Group of 20 counterparts meet near London today
having originally intended to push along plans to tighten market
regulation. Distracting them is a global economy in freefall,
pressuring them to instead focus on ways to revive growth and tackle
toxic bank assets.

“It’s like a patient battling for life in an emergency room,” said
Nouriel Roubini, a professor at New York University. “That’s not the
time to advise about the benefits of exercise and healthy diet. You
have to first make sure the patient survives.”

The prognosis is worsening and failure to find a cure may disappoint
investors as G-20 leaders prepare for their own summit in three weeks.
The International Monetary Fund expects the first global contraction
in six decades and equity investors are $3 trillion poorer than a
quarter ago.

The cost of borrowing dollars is rising, Citigroup Inc. fell below $1
and companies from Deere & Co. to Volkswagen AG are axing jobs or
investment.

Divided

The G-20 remains divided as European governments rebut U.S. overtures
to bolster spending, while President Barack Obama’s administration
takes heat for lacking the staff to work on an international remedy.
That risks an impasse when officials convene tonight and tomorrow at a
luxury countryside retreat near Horsham, southern England, that counts
Winston Churchill among its former guests.

“The Europeans want to use this as a forum to discuss global
coordination of regulation, and the Americans are more interested in
global coordination of firefighting,” said Randal Quarles, a former
U.S. Treasury undersecretary and now a managing director at the
Carlyle Group in Washington.

The conflagration of the 19-month crisis is putting policy makers
under “enormous pressure” to take more action and head off further
deterioration, said Marco Annunziata, chief economist at UniCredit MIB
in London.

The U.S. has yet to implement its plan to remove tainted assets from
banks and the Federal Reserve’s $1 trillion initiative to prop up the
market for consumer and business loans won’t start until later this
month. The European Central Bank has lagged behind the Fed in cutting
interest rates and the region’s governments have been slow to cut
taxes.

Failure

Failure by the G-20 to step up efforts to rid banks of damaged
securities may delay the recovery beyond 2010, says IMF Managing
Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

“The stimulus will not work without a healthy financial sector,”
Strauss-Kahn said in an interview March 9. U.K. Chancellor of the
Exchequer Alistair Darling said two days later that the crisis needs
to be fought with “far greater urgency.”

The London interbank offered rate, or Libor, that banks say they
charge each other for three-month funds has climbed back to the
highest since Jan. 8 as financial companies stung by almost $1.2
trillion of writedowns and losses hoard money.

Policy makers are also under pressure to coordinate their efforts more
or risk diluting their individual moves. While governments and central
banks have provided more than $495 billion in aid for financial
companies and cut rates to record lows, their efforts have been
uneven.

Budget Boost

The IMF estimates that only Saudi Arabia, Australia, China, Spain and
the U.S. will introduce budget boosts worth 2 percent of gross
domestic product this year -- a benchmark Geithner endorses as
“reasonable.” The refusal of some governments to be as generous
undermines those efforts and the Fund calculates the U.S. receives
twice the boost of higher government spending if it’s matched
elsewhere.

European ministers argue their social safety nets are bigger than
elsewhere and blowing up budgets would create future problems. The
appeals from the U.S. “were not to our liking,” Luxembourg’s Jean-
Claude Juncker said March 9.

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde and Germany’s Peer
Steinbrueck of Germany instead want the G-20 to focus more on cracking
down on bankers’ bonuses, hedge funds, tax havens and credit ratings
companies.

“All that is froth,” said Richard Portes, a professor at London
Business School. “The accelerating decline in economic activity has to
be dealt with first.”

Reach

One previous participant says the G-20 doesn’t need to decide between
fighting the current crisis and unveiling a long- term solution to
rewire the system.

“It’s quite possible and desirable for the G-20 to pursue both goals,”
said Daniel Price, President George W. Bush’s G-20 negotiator and now
senior partner for global issues at Sidley Austin LLP in Washington.

An overhaul of the financial system may nevertheless exceed the
group’s reach in the immediate future.

Obama has yet to outline a detailed program for regulation, lacks key
Treasury advisers and would have to work with Congress. Nor has the
European Union formed a plan to improve the rules governing its own 27
members.

The most likely outcome is that the G-20 agrees to principles on
regulatory reform, said Jim O’Neill, chief economist at Goldman Sachs
Group Inc.

That could include an agreement that banks put away money during good
times so they have a buffer to fall back on during hard times, he
says. Other areas of agreement may include boosting IMF resources and
warning against protectionism.

G-20 members are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France,
Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia,
Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the U.S., the U.K. and the
European Union. Officials from Spain and the Netherlands will also be
present.

To contact the reporter on this story: Simon Kennedy in Paris at


Last Updated: March 12, 2009 20:01 EDT

I don't get what you are saying. If there are no sun spots then the sun is
in an inactive phase then the world should be the coolest we have seen for
decades. However it is the coolest since ....

I think the inactive phase will just counter AGW for a few years but when
sun becomes active again we will see some more record average temps.

The world economy is due to us all spending too much over the last 30 or so
years. As with most debt it will get you at some point. Hence so I don't see
what you are getting at?

Stan

wrote in message
...
"March 13, 2009"
http://www.spaceweather.com/
"Daily Sun: 13 Mar 09 The sun is blank--no sunspots. Sunspot number:
0"
"Far side of the Sun: This holographic image reveals no sunspots on
the far side of the sun."

The face of the Sun is without blemish:
http://www.spaceweather.com/images20...9c5mjlen s157

Please visit:
http://blog.nj.com/southjersey_impac...SolarCycle.jpg

The right panel shows the face of the Sun as it looked on a good day
during
the late Modern Warm Period. Sunspots are the apparent size of craters
on
the moon. The left panel shows a spotless Sun as it looks today.

Please write to Al Gore so that Al knows that the Sun is not living up
to
his religious expectations. Al Gore is a divinity school dropout.
George
Carlin had a better grasp of the true nature of God's creation, than
does Al
Gore.

Please visit:
http://www.co-intelligence.org/newsl...es/sun-etc.jpg
which shows the relative sizes of the Sun and planets. Compared to the
Sun,
Jupiter is the size of a pea, earth is the size of a grain of sand.

G-20 Moves Focus From Regulation as Economy ‘Battling For Life’

By Simon Kennedy

March 13 (Bloomberg) -- The guardians of the world economy are finding
their efforts to revamp the global financial system overwhelmed by the
deepening recession and banking crisis.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Bank of England Governor
Mervyn King and their Group of 20 counterparts meet near London today
having originally intended to push along plans to tighten market
regulation. Distracting them is a global economy in freefall,
pressuring them to instead focus on ways to revive growth and tackle
toxic bank assets.

“It’s like a patient battling for life in an emergency room,” said
Nouriel Roubini, a professor at New York University. “That’s not the
time to advise about the benefits of exercise and healthy diet. You
have to first make sure the patient survives.”

The prognosis is worsening and failure to find a cure may disappoint
investors as G-20 leaders prepare for their own summit in three weeks.
The International Monetary Fund expects the first global contraction
in six decades and equity investors are $3 trillion poorer than a
quarter ago.

The cost of borrowing dollars is rising, Citigroup Inc. fell below $1
and companies from Deere & Co. to Volkswagen AG are axing jobs or
investment.

Divided

The G-20 remains divided as European governments rebut U.S. overtures
to bolster spending, while President Barack Obama’s administration
takes heat for lacking the staff to work on an international remedy.
That risks an impasse when officials convene tonight and tomorrow at a
luxury countryside retreat near Horsham, southern England, that counts
Winston Churchill among its former guests.

“The Europeans want to use this as a forum to discuss global
coordination of regulation, and the Americans are more interested in
global coordination of firefighting,” said Randal Quarles, a former
U.S. Treasury undersecretary and now a managing director at the
Carlyle Group in Washington.

The conflagration of the 19-month crisis is putting policy makers
under “enormous pressure” to take more action and head off further
deterioration, said Marco Annunziata, chief economist at UniCredit MIB
in London.

The U.S. has yet to implement its plan to remove tainted assets from
banks and the Federal Reserve’s $1 trillion initiative to prop up the
market for consumer and business loans won’t start until later this
month. The European Central Bank has lagged behind the Fed in cutting
interest rates and the region’s governments have been slow to cut
taxes.

Failure

Failure by the G-20 to step up efforts to rid banks of damaged
securities may delay the recovery beyond 2010, says IMF Managing
Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

“The stimulus will not work without a healthy financial sector,”
Strauss-Kahn said in an interview March 9. U.K. Chancellor of the
Exchequer Alistair Darling said two days later that the crisis needs
to be fought with “far greater urgency.”

The London interbank offered rate, or Libor, that banks say they
charge each other for three-month funds has climbed back to the
highest since Jan. 8 as financial companies stung by almost $1.2
trillion of writedowns and losses hoard money.

Policy makers are also under pressure to coordinate their efforts more
or risk diluting their individual moves. While governments and central
banks have provided more than $495 billion in aid for financial
companies and cut rates to record lows, their efforts have been
uneven.

Budget Boost

The IMF estimates that only Saudi Arabia, Australia, China, Spain and
the U.S. will introduce budget boosts worth 2 percent of gross
domestic product this year -- a benchmark Geithner endorses as
“reasonable.” The refusal of some governments to be as generous
undermines those efforts and the Fund calculates the U.S. receives
twice the boost of higher government spending if it’s matched
elsewhere.

European ministers argue their social safety nets are bigger than
elsewhere and blowing up budgets would create future problems. The
appeals from the U.S. “were not to our liking,” Luxembourg’s Jean-
Claude Juncker said March 9.

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde and Germany’s Peer
Steinbrueck of Germany instead want the G-20 to focus more on cracking
down on bankers’ bonuses, hedge funds, tax havens and credit ratings
companies.

“All that is froth,” said Richard Portes, a professor at London
Business School. “The accelerating decline in economic activity has to
be dealt with first.”

Reach

One previous participant says the G-20 doesn’t need to decide between
fighting the current crisis and unveiling a long- term solution to
rewire the system.

“It’s quite possible and desirable for the G-20 to pursue both goals,”
said Daniel Price, President George W. Bush’s G-20 negotiator and now
senior partner for global issues at Sidley Austin LLP in Washington.

An overhaul of the financial system may nevertheless exceed the
group’s reach in the immediate future.

Obama has yet to outline a detailed program for regulation, lacks key
Treasury advisers and would have to work with Congress. Nor has the
European Union formed a plan to improve the rules governing its own 27
members.

The most likely outcome is that the G-20 agrees to principles on
regulatory reform, said Jim O’Neill, chief economist at Goldman Sachs
Group Inc.

That could include an agreement that banks put away money during good
times so they have a buffer to fall back on during hard times, he
says. Other areas of agreement may include boosting IMF resources and
warning against protectionism.

G-20 members are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France,
Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia,
Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the U.S., the U.K. and the
European Union. Officials from Spain and the Netherlands will also be
present.

To contact the reporter on this story: Simon Kennedy in Paris at


Last Updated: March 12, 2009 20:01 EDT