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Life After the Oil Crash
Deal With Reality or Reality Will Deal With You
Editor's Note: Health Care Provision Allows the IRS to Ass-F--k You Even More than Usual, in fact Actually Mandates it
I haven't covered the health care reform clusterfuck too much as I don't believe in mainstream medicine except in very limited circumstances such as car accidents but one hidden provision in the current bill really deserves more attention:
. . . there are other "revenue provisions" in the [health care] bill that also deserve a close look.
One would change the law to mandate that the Internal Revenue Service slap penalties on honest but errant taxpayers.
Under current law, taxpayers who lose an argument with the IRS can generally avoid penalties by showing they tried in good faith to comply with the tax law. In a broad range of circumstances, the health-care bill would change the law to impose strict liability penalties for income-tax underpayments, meaning that taxpayers will no longer have the luxury of making an honest mistake. The ability of even the IRS to waive penalties in sympathetic cases would be sharply curtailed. Source: Wall Street Journal
Editor's Note: China Considers Banning Export of Rare Metals, Total Deep-Sixing of "Green Shoots" Economy, Alternative Energy Systems, Computers, Cell Phones
The other big story of the day in my opinion is that China is considering banning exports of rare metals, the exact ones necessary for many of the "green" technologies that people think will save us from industrial collapse. From yesterday's UK Telegraph:
China mines over 95pc of the world’s rare earth minerals, mostly in Inner Mongolia. The move to hoard reserves is the clearest sign to date that the global struggle for diminishing resources is shifting into a new phase. Countries may find it hard to obtain key materials at any price.
New technologies have since increased the value and strategic importance of these metals, but it will take years for fresh supply to come on stream from deposits in Australia, North America, and South Africa. The rare earth family are hard to find, and harder to extract.
Mr Stephens said Arafura’s project in Western Australia produces terbium, which sells for $800,000 a tonne. It is a key ingredient in low-energy light-bulbs. China needs all the terbium it produces as the country switches wholesale from tungsten bulbs to the latest low-wattage bulbs that cut power costs by 40pc.
No replacement has been found for neodymium that enhances the power of magnets at high heat and is crucial for hard drives, wind turbines, and the motors of hybrid cars. Each Toyota Prius uses 25 pounds of rare earth elements. Source: UK Telegraph
Something the UK Telegraph article didn't mention is that alternate sources of these metals are *extremely* energy intensive to mine. So just as more energy is needed to pull the rare metals out of the ground, the world's number one producer bans the export of the more economical deposits. Most LATOCers are very familiar with issues of rare metals scarcity but for anybody who is new here are some articles that will bring you up to speed:
The rest of today's update is as follows, starting with the day's banking and industrial meltdown articles:
Most important articles from yesterday (Tuesday's) update:
Great survival and disaster preparedness books:
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