The John Batchelor Show

Thursday 2 August 2012

Air Date: 
August 02, 2012

Syrian rebels drew criticism for images like this one from Aleppo on Tuesday in which they dragged a suspected pro-government militiamen into the street.

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Thursday 905P Eastern Time: Mary Kissel, Wall Street Journal editorial board, in re: India blackout and market solutions; Wayne Swan of Australia trash talks New Jersey with Bruce Springsteen quotes; Florida economy and presidential election.

Tokyo Japan March 11th 1945. The Firebombing over two days from 279 bombers killed 100,000 people and destroyed 25% of the city.

Thursday 920P Eastern Time:  Charles Pellegrino, author, Last Train from Hiroshima, in re: Titanic. Persons who left Hiroshima for Nagasaki, then were bombed again in Hiroshima.  US natl security apparatus – Gen Curtis LeMay - was prepared to burn Japanese cities to the ground if necessary to stop the war.  "It enabled he emperor to say, 'We're surrendering because America has come with this cruel weapon.' " On 14 Aug US sent 3,000 planes!

Japanese children were told that if the American arrived, the children would be raped and then eaten by American soldiers. They were making bullets from all that remained: hardwood.

Thursday 935P Eastern Time:  McKay Coppins, Buzzfeed, in re: Harry Reid makes odd remarks: "I  have it from a good source that Mitt Romney went for ten years paying no taxes."   Romney said, in effect, Put up or shut up.  Reid went blank.

Thursday 950P Eastern Time:  Dino Falaschetti, PERC, in Bozeman, Montana, in re: Finance and Environment conference. Entrepreneurs are finding ways to make wise environmental decisions within the free market. Private-equity forestry.  Through 20 years of experience in business, policy, and inter-disciplinary research and teaching, Dino Falaschetti (PhD, MBA, CPA) managed Fortune 100 audit-engagements and corporate finance operations, created insightful business analytics and litigation support strategies, and helped develop productive policies for the White House and state legislatures.

Dr. Falaschetti now serves as Executive Director of the Property & Environment Research Center (PERC), a think tank that builds productive environmental solutions on sound economic principles. He also serves as Special Consultant to Economists.  Incorporated, a premier economic consulting firm in the fields of law and economics, public policy, and business strategy.  Dr. Falaschetti previously served the Executive Office of the President as Senior Economist for the Council of Economic Advisers (under President George W. Bush and Chairmen Ben Bernanke and Edward Lazear), held tenured and other academic appointments in Economics, Finance, Law, and Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, Florida State University, Montana State University, Seattle University, Stanford University, University of Tennessee, and Washington University in St. Louis, and managed a $1 billion money market portfolio, foreign currency exposures, and business valuations for a Fortune 100 conglomerate. He continues to share his opinions on politics, law, and economic performance through public and professional speeches, radio and television interviews, and other news and policy media.

Dr. Falaschetti earned a PhD in economics from Washington University in St. Louis (with fields in political economy, economic theory, and industrial organization), an MBA with high honors from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business (with concentrations in economics and finance), and a BS with distinction from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business (with a major in accounting and work-in-depth in philosophy). 

Thursday 1005P (705P Pacific Time):  Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: Kofi Annan resigns as envoy to Syria; Syrian civil war is dragging in many parties.  Intractable conflict; the two sides are well matched.  This is not the romance of a revolution, but the major weapons systems of Russia, IRGC, ground troops of Iran, vs same from US, Israel and Y=Turkey. Now 150,000 Turkish troops massed at Syrian border; facing 50,000 Syrian army troops on the other side. he Free Syrian Army has driven 250,000 refugees to the Turkish border to destabilize Turkey. Unstable and armed.  Palestinians in Syrian camps long supported Assad, now its different. Annan's resignation generally brings a yawn,  but Russia and China have vetoed everything.   US SecDef says we need to keep Syrian army together post-Assad – others say, What??  Russians are digging in.  Russian navy near Latakia; Russian air defense now deployed across Syria to Iran.  Ergo, no possibility of an air strike by any Westerner on the Syrian army.   ____ buying the ports that the Russians want.   Turkish forces have withdrawn from Kurdistan.  ___ Erbil to meet Iraqi Kurds.    Assad can turn on the PKK in southern Syria.  Wall St Journal: "Turkish military is pummeling mountainous regions of Kurdistan" Border firefight.  Panetta visits Iran, says naught about preventing Iran from producing a nuclear weapon.  New cabinet in Egypt.

Kofi Annan is quitting as UN-Arab League peace envoy for Syria, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general,  has announced, as the 17-month-old conflict spiralled further out of control.

Thursday 1020P (720P Pacific Time): Rabbi Shlomo Gertzulin, VP Finance & Administration, Agudath Israel of America, in re: Daf Yomi ("Daily Study") is a daily regimen of learning each of the 2,711 pages of the Babylonian Talmud – which is the oral companion to the written Torah: on law, ethics, philosophy, theology customs; the basis of Jewish daily conduct; in Aramaic (no vowels) – a cycle that takes 7 ½ years to complete.  On Wednesday, 92,000 people congregated at MetLife Stadium (second-largest US stadium, after Dallas) on Wednesday, joined by 200,000 more around the world, to celebrate the 7 ½ year completion of the Daf Yomi Talmud reading cycle.   Agudath Israel is the organization credited with creating the Talmud learning regimen and facilitating the massive celebrations last night.

Thursday 1035P (735P Pacific Time): Shoshana Bryen, US defense policy and Middle Eastern affairs analyst, in re: US-Israel relations. Palestinian Authority financial crisis: the challenges facing the Palestinian economy – primus inter pares is corruption. Palestinians produce nothing anyone wants to buy except agriculture, Their annual budget is always in the red, expect huge donations.  Last week, Pal made a threat vs the European Union (which gives $600mil/year to the PA; Arabs always pledge and don’t pay): If you enhance your relations with Israel, we don’t want you in our territory.  PA wants to destroy the Israeli economy so badly it'll crush its own to do so. "Israeli culture allows Israel to survive and thrive," is all Mitt Romney said. Palestinians keep sabotaging their own ability to work in Israel, usu with rocket attacks or murders, which obliges Israel to close checkpoints for basic safety.  US not allowed to give funds directly to Hamas, but US money arrives in Gaza nonetheless (as PA salaries in Gaza, to Hamas).  Palestinians receive $10,000 per capita per annum – which is not small. There's also a huge, thriving black market.  If Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood have good relations, the black market with Egypt will dwindle. There cd well be a trade corridor from Gaza to Israel if Palestinians aimed at improving their economy instead of destroying Israel's. Both Hamas and Fatah paid large honoraria to the murderers released in exchange for Gilad Shalit.   Palestinian villagers are forbidden to sell at a real price (Palestinian land must be undervalued – PA gang deliberately suppresses the value of Palestinian land)  and a villager can be executed for selling to a Jew.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party, commonly known as PKK, also known as KGK is considered and listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States, the European Union andNATO and has been fighting an armed struggle against the Turkish state for an autonomous Kurdistan and greater cultural and political rights for the Kurds in Turkey.

Thursday 1050P (750P Pacific Time): Dr. Jonathan Schanzer,  FDD and former counterterrorism analyst for the Office of Intelligence & Analysis, US Treasury, in re: Syria.  the half-million Palestinians I Syria are starting to effect – PFLP and other groups have held allegiance to the Assad family; these aren’t the refugees of 948, they’re the descendants of them.  Even the PLO , part of the Syrian military, has refused Syrian orders to kill fellow Syrians. If 1% of the Palestinian contingent defected, that'd be 5,000 fighters for the FSA.

Thursday 1105P (805P Pacific Time): Abdullah Mohtadi, Secretary-General, Iranian Komala Party, a Kurdish political party resident in Suleimaniya, Iraq; advocate for Iranian reform; in re: Kurds in Iran.  Turkey wants to make a distinction between Kurds in general and a specific force in Turkey, the PKK.  Iran has been extremely repressive. Our party, alone, has lost 3,000 of our brethren in Iran. There are eight to ten million Kurds in north and northwestern parts of Iran (out of 75 million total Iranian population). Iranian "negotiators" are terrorists, and assassinate Kurds during discussions. Dissidents, intellectuals, all sorts of Iranians have been assassinated by Iranian agents – in the Middle East, in Vienna, everywhere. Pls know that Iranian Kurdistan has been under severe repression for years; we ant a free, secular Kurdistan with a constitution; a federal govt in Iran so Kurds and all Iranian people ca have a free democratic country.

Thursday 1120P (820P Pacific Time): R. James Woolsey, Jr,  former Director of Central Intelligence.  Also was Under-Secretary of the Navy, delegate-at-large to the U.S.-Soviet Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) and Nuclear and Space Arms Talks (NST); Ambassador to the Negotiation on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), Vienna; in re: the president is/is not supporting the Free Syrian Army; according to a leak, he signed a covert order. where covert seems to mean, "not instantly on YouTube.  US needs to support the Iranian people; Pres Obama has not done so.  Almost every administration since Carter has tried to negotiate with the Iranians, and failed. Their objective is to get a nuclear weapon.  Assad massacres his people to stay in power; there's been no actual diplomacy, as there's no decent chance we'll get a deal with Syrians or Iranians.  This is a surrogate battlefield; Syria has been Iran's window into the Arab world, an important piece on the chess board.  Syrians are a conduit to Hamas and Hezbollah for funds that Iran has sent to keep those groups in play. Syria has done Iran's bidding and it’s good to disrupt that link – even if there's a risk of really undesirable persons in the new Syria.  Hardball with Russia: their entire natl economy depends on oil; insofar as we can put pressure on t hem by weakening our oil dependence, that's good.  We've been very weak on sanctions; need nat gas and to break OPECs's cartel and oil's monopoly on transportation.

Thursday 1135P (835P Pacific Time): Jeff Bliss,  The Bliss Index, in re: California bankruptcies, Solyndra, Jerry Brown and the union's party at Vegas.

Thursday 1150P (850P Pacific Time):  Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack, in re: NASA contracts to be announced for ISS capsules; also estimate of private space, also Russians have successfully docked their Progress freighter to ISS, using a fast route – launching from a higher latitude – that took only 6 hours. Nationwide mania for Curiosity: broadcasting the launch at Times Square very late on Sunday night.

The Berekeley Pit: the mine was opened in 1955 and operated by Anaconda Copper and later by the Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO), until its closure in 1982. When the pit was closed, the water pumps in the nearby Kelly shaft, at a depth of 3,800 feet, were turned off, and groundwater from the surrounding aquifers began to slowly fill the pit, rising at about the rate of one foot a month.[1] Since the pit closure in 1982, the level has risen to within 150 feet of the natural groundwater level.

Thursday/Fri 1205A (905 Pacific Time): James R Brown, PERC, in re: entrepreneurs taking risks in environment from PERC conference: Expertise: Financing R&D and Innovation; Financial Markets and Economic Performance; Corporate Liquidity Management and Investment Volatility; Private Equity and Entrepreneurial Finance 

Thursday/Fri  1220A (920 Pacific Time): Jonathan Klick, PERC, in re: environmental finance and emissions controls: Jonathan Klick is an American economist who has written numerous works on empirical law and economics. His scholarship addresses tort liability and moral hazard, criminal punishment, health regulation, and business regulation. He is a Professor of Law at University of Pennsylvania Law School and previously served on the faculty at Florida State University College of Law. He holds a J.D. and Ph.D. from George Mason University. Since 2007, he has been a senior economist at the RAND Corporation. 

Thursday/Fri  1235A (935P Pacific Time): Jonathan Karpoff, PERC, in re: Jonathan M. Karpoff is the Washington Mutual Endowed Chair in Innovation and Professor of Finance at the University of Washington’s Michael G. Foster School of Business. Jon also serves as an Associate Editor for The Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Managerial and Decision Economics, and Management Science, and is a member of the Board of Trustees for The Financial Management Association International. Jon received his BA (1978) from the University of Alaska - Anchorage, and his MA (1980) and Ph.D (1982) degrees from UCLA. He has held appointments as the John M. Olin Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business (1998) and as the Visiting Alumni Professor of Finance and Alumni Research Scholar at the Emory University’s Goizueta Business School (2000-02).

Butte, metropolis of Montana. Pamphlet on Butte, Montana, "to dispel the old fallacy that Butte is a mere mining camp, to show that Butte is a growing, flourishing and permanent city, to place this community in the proper light before the world and to invite the home-builder, the investor and the new capital to join us.";

Jon’s research seeks to understand how and when Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand works, or does not work, to coordinate economic activities and promote social well-being. This research addresses a wide range of topics, including fisheries management, natural resource regulation, trading volume, insider trading, dividend policy, organizational structure and performance, antitakeover regulation, shareholder activism, corporate governance, corporate boards, and the causes and consequences of corporate misconduct. In 2003 Jon was awarded the Griliches Prize in Empirical Economics for his research on leadership in arctic exploration. His research on corporate financial scandals was recognized with the Best Paper Award at the University of Chicago’s CRSP Forum in 2006 and the William F. Sharpe (JFQA) Best Paper Award in 2009. Different papers won the CRSP Forum Best Paper Award again in 2008, the Best Paper Award at the George Mason University Conference on Corporate Governance and Fraud Prevention in 2009, and the Best Paper Award at the Financial Research Association Conference in 2011. Jon’s work frequently is cited in media outlets – including The New York Times, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and National Public Radio. 

Thursday/Fri  1250A  (950P Pacific Time): Exeunt. Michael Orlando, PERC, in re:Michael J. Orlando is an Economic Advisors Principal Consultant and Adjunct Professor of Finance at Tulane University.

He began his career with Shell Oil Company, providing reservoir engineering and economic evaluation expertise for oil and gas exploration and development projects in the Gulf of Mexico. He also worked as an environmental engineer, ensuring environmental compliance and managing the Company's relationship to a listed Superfund site.

Dr. Orlando later served as a Research Economist in the Federal Reserve System, and then as Vice President and Branch Executive of the Fed's Denver Branch. He was responsible for regional economic research, energy markets analysis, policy advising, and public communication. Dr. Orlando also worked as Vice President for Research and Product Development at a business analytics firm, guiding media measurement algorithm development and validation.

Dr. Orlando's research spans a range of topics in applied microeconomics. He has published work on corporate governance, financial regulatory policy, the economics of payments networks, the geography and industrial demography of innovation, and energy and environmental policy. He is also a practiced teacher, has developed courses in economics, finance, and energy business strategy, and has co-authored a textbook on money and banking.

Dr. Orlando holds degrees in economics from Washington University in St. Louis, in business administration from Tulane University, and in petroleum and natural gas engineering from The Pennsylvania State University. 

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Above: A Group of Butte Churches (1915): From left to right: 1) Congregation B’nai Israel Temple (1903), 327 W Galena St.; 2) First Baptist Church, 201 W Broadway; 3) Serbian Orthodox Church (1905, no longer standing); 4) Christian (no longer standing); 5) Methodist Church, 203 W Quartz (not verified); 6) First Presbyterian Church (1878), 215 W Broadway; 7) Catholic Sacred Heart, E Park (no longer standing).

Music (times based on Eastern Daylight Time broadcast)

9-hour: Mad Max; Titanic; Frost/Nixon; Ides of March.  10-hour:  Green Zone.  11-hour:  Green Zone; Ides of March; Serenity.  midnight hour:   Crysis; Invasion.

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