Mar. 10th, 2008

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According to AP story Drug Traces Common In Tap Water (title a bit misleading, since the drug traces may well be common in filtered and bottled water too; and by drugs they also mean hormones and the like, pharmaceuticals in general)

Summary:

--Trace amounts of drugs, hormones, etc. are common in drinking water sources, including headwaters and aquifers (get into the environment from humans and livestock excreting the pharmaceuticals into sewage and from leakage in manufacturing)
--The long-term effects of these traces of pharmaceuticals on humans and other living things is not well understood, but studies of wildlife are disturbing (e.g., male fish developing female characteristics), and medications are of special concern because most are designed to work on the human body - this doesn't mean that they're necessarily dangerous in these trace amounts but rather that we don't know
--There are no standards or regulations regarding their presence
--There isn't extensive screening yet to see how much is in the water
--There are no current sewage systems designed to remove pharmaceuticals
--The current technologies that could remove the pharmaceuticals may be prohibitively inefficient and expensive
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Three blog posts and one column from Paul Krugman all give reasons why the financial markets may be in the midst of a meltdown. Unfortunately, I don't understand the arguments. Can any of you help me?

Krugman's saying that the Fed's recent actions are basically like slaps in the face to give the markets a chance to catch their breath, but that we're on the third slap and the slaps don't seem to have more than a momentary effect. So what the Fed's doing is just a drop in the bucket, and if the markets don't respond, way more drastic measures need to be taken. (Like what?) This seems to be a key sentence: "But a sterilized intervention means an intervention that doesn't affect the monetary base - swapping dollar t-bills for euro T-bills, or T-bills for mortgage-backed securities. And here the numbers are much bigger: $11 trillion in home mortgages, for example."

What Is To Be Done?

What's Ben Doing?

Why Sterilization Matters

The Face-Slap Theory

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Frank Kogan

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