Australian Muslim Found Guilty of terror plot to Blow up Australian Power Grid - National - smh.com.au

Lodhi guilty of terror plot - National - smh.com.au Every day, around the world, Islamic extremists are out there, at war with us, though many Democrats would argue otherwise.
See also "Jihad Watch", which quotes the convicted on a videotape found in his home, echoing what many conservative Muslims believe (check their public opinion polls if you have any doubt),

"Jihad "is a way to spread the religion and terrorise the enemy, to expand the domain of Islam all around the world".Jihad Watch --"Jihad is the best thing that man can ever volunteer to do" -- May 4, 2006

Whereas most Western religion has abandoned the concept of coercive conversion to their "true faith", many Muslims have not, and this is the basis for Western civilization's problem with Muslims, not a couple of square kilometers of land in the hands of Israel. There is no denying that trying to come to a settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict would be extraordinarily helpful in shoring up the "center" in the Arab world, removing an excuse for many Arab regimes, and taking away one barrier to modernization (i.e., the excuse of wounded pride due to Zionist-Western Colonialism -- pride is way too important in Arab culture, reflecting its overall backwardness as a civilization). However, any peace deal that weakens Israel and would ultimately lead to its demise (such as the Saudi Plan currently on the table) will only embolden the radicals, who would view such a settlement as a "win", jsut as they have viewed so many other concessions by the Israelis as wins.

The only hope of the Arab moderates -- and of Israel -- is a peace deal that would leave Israel with defensible borders as a result of land swaps, a fair and creative solution for Jerusalem and its respective holy sites, strong and reliable third party trusteeship for an indefinitely long period over the Palestinian territories to both protect Israel from the terrorist failed state that would otherwise take root there and allow a normal society to develop, and the absorption of Palestinian refugees outside of Israel.

JINSA Report #653: Turkey in the Middle on Arab-Israeli Relations

Very well-written piece from Jinsa on the role Turkey can play, and regrettably, does not play, in mediating and bringing a dose of reality to the Arab-Israeli dialogue. It is truly a tragedy that the Middle East today is so short of brave leadership.
#653 Turkey in the Middle

Pelosi Going to Syria Despite Objections

Nancy Pelosi is dangerous, a vain egotist and too arrogant to subrogate to the traditional Executive Branch-Legistative Branch relationship, where the Executive Branch is in charge of foreign policy, and the Legislative Branch is not supposed to take clearly diplomatic actions like this one which could undermine efforts. (Pelosi Going to Syria Despite Objections). It is one thing to vote against funding for a war, it is another to engage in foreign policy trips to enemy nations against the administration's wishes. Anyone who would argue that this is merely a "fact-finding trip" is delusional -- look at this trip through the eyes of the Syrians, and you see an effort to undermine Western and "moderate" Arab efforts to isolate Syria.

In addition, this action should be taken as yet more evidence that, other than Hillary Clinton (whom I do not support for other reasons), the Democratic leadership, permeated by Leftist ideologues, is NOT a committed friend of Israel or its long term survivability.

thanks to Joel for this article.

Iran Escalates - WSJ.com

Well written Op-Ed about the Iranian challenge and the need to win. Iran Escalates - WSJ.com
Debka reports that Russian intelligence places a US air and missile attack on Iranian nuclear sites on April 6th. That's a week form today.

Olmert: 'Not one refugee can return' | Jerusalem Post

Olmert is a putz who can't be trusted (Olmert: 'Not one refugee can return' | Jerusalem Post). Rather than dancing around words on the Palestinian "right of return" issue, the King of the Saudis should show the bravery to come out and face the issue, as Thomas Friedman outlined last week -- the only peace deal Israel can POSSIBLY even discuss, however faulty the rest of Friedman's analysis was ("Abdullah's Chance").

NY Times Biased Story: Heads of Arab States Prod Israel to Embrace Peace Offer - New York Times

The Saudi's unwillingness to revisit the issue in its "Peace Plan" of Palestinian "right of return" to Israel -- which would destroy Israel -- illustrates the lack of bravery or good intent of the Saudis in resubmitting their peace plan to the world. Heads of Arab States Prod Israel to Embrace Peace Offer - New York Times

This article is also an example of artfully biased news coverage by the Times -- because the bias is in some sense subtle, and as much formed by omission rather than commission, so that you have to be familiar the issues to see the bias. this article has the Arabs fuming in righteous indignation, making accusations of Israel's lack of good will in not embracing this "generous offer" of Israeli self-destruction, with no possibility extended of modifications (as previously announced by the Saudis, who said this was a "take it or leave it" deal -- but not mentioned in this article). No mention is made in the article about the core Israeli concerns with this position -- or for that matter that a nation does not go to the negotiating table where they are told "take it or leave it", and if you "leave it" you are responsible for any war that may result. It is interesting that theis article, in articulating an Israeli response, makes no mention that the proposal shuts out any possibility of talk regarding core issues to the Israelis, like:

-- right of return of Palestinians to Israel (even though they'd already be getting their own nation under the proposal, Palestine -- forget about Jordan),

--the issue of a like number of Jewish refugees from Arab countries who no one hears about because Israel and the West showed responsibility and compassion in absorbing them, while the Palestinian refugees were not shown a similar courtesy by their Arab brothers,

-- land swaps of the type Jordan has engaged in with Israel (which has tons of international precedent) or which President Bush has previously anticipated as official US policy,

-- or any hint of compromise on Jerusalem.

This article's use of totally disingenuous soundbites, with no effective Israeli counter response, is another tool to make the reader think that the Israelis are being unreasonable, in the face of a concerted Arab effort to extend the hand of peace. For instance, take the following quote from the article,

"The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said, in addressing the meeting on Thursday, 'I reiterate the sincerity of the Palestinian will in extending the hand of peace to the Israeli people.' ”

OH, REALLY? Then why did the Palestinian people vote for the rejectionist Hamas over Abbas' Fatah, or why do public opinion polls in the Palestinian territories almost universally support a fight to the death with Israel? In the West we put more value on the truth of the spoken word (one reaosn that we tend to believe most of what we read -- and hence the danger of articles like this one). We have seen time and time again that in Arab cultures, "lying with a straight face" is totally acceptable behavior (a political psychologist would describe the Arab mentality in this regard as an acceptance of "parallel truths").

To write an article like this with as little countervailing opinion from the Israelis -- or anyone remotely balanced, for that matter -- illustrates the bad intent of the NY Times in reporting the news, and all right-minded individuals should express this view to the Times editors.

More in tis blog, later today, on what the Saudis are doing, as their foreign policy becomes more activist in a way that cleaves away from US foreign policy. Oil is spiking because of the lamentable Iranian British prisoner situation, but I wouldn't be selling oil to cover yet....

Gaza sewage flood kills at least ten | Jerusalem Post

Israel withdrew from Gaza over a year and a half ago, to let the Palestinians run their own society. They chose to elect Hamas, build missiles and bomb belts, teach their children the cult of death, and die in their own sewage, as this article relates. I am sure the West will be held responsible for holding up the building aid that could have been used to prevent this, but whose fault is it anyway? Are the Palestinians children not to be held responsible for their own choices?

Gaza sewage flood kills at least ten | Jerusalem Post

“Islam will enter every house and will spread over the entire world, says Hamas leader Al-Zahar”

“Islam will enter every house
and will spread over the entire world,”
says Hamas leader Al-Zahar

by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook

While the Hamas goal of destroying Israel is well known, its aspiration for Islamic subjugation of the entire world is just as basic to Hamas dogma. Both aims appear in the Hamas Charter as God's irrepressible will, and both aims were reiterated this week by senior Hamas leader and former PA Foreign Minister Mahmoud Al-Zahar.

At a mass rally in memory of Hamas founder Ahmad Yassin, Al-Zahar said that the Quran promises the "liberation of all of Palestine," meaning the destruction of Israel. He went so far as to challenge the Islamic faith of those who deny this goal: "No one can deny it. One who denies it must check his faith and his Islam.”

Regarding the Hamas religious goal of Islamic world domination, he said: “Islam will enter every house and will spread over the entire world.”

Below is the translation of Al-Zahar’s speech:

[Mahmoud] Al-Zahhar spoke at the mass rally held on the memorial day for Sheikh Ahmad Yassin…

Al-Zahhar emphasized that the Islamic Movement’s [Hamas'] position concerning the problem of the liberation of Palestine is clear and known, and said: "We have two important foundations: One is Quranic and the other is prophetic. The Quranic: The divine promise made in the ‘Al-Israa Sura’ [Chapter 17] is that we will liberate the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, 'and we will enter it as we have entered it the first time.' [paraphrasing Sura 17 (The Night Journey), verse 7]. And the prophetic foundation is the message of the prophet Muhammad, that Islam will enter every house and will spread over the entire world."

And added: "Our position is the liberation of Palestine, all of Palestine. This is the final and strategic solution for us. There is a Quranic message for us, that we will enter the Al-Aqsa mosque, and the entrance to the mosque means the entrance into all of Palestine. This is the message, no one can deny it. Anyone who denies it must check his faith and his Islam.” [Al-Ayyam, March 25, 2007]

Please feel free to forward this bulletin, crediting Palestinian Media Watch

Horrific video of a child sending her suicide bomber mother to her death | the Daily Mail

It is encouraging to see this type of "cult of death" dimentia covered by the British media. Britain, with its large, Muslim population, is particularly in the cross hairs of radical Islam, and the Brits are only now beginning to awake to this fact. Israel is merely the "canary in the mineshaft" for the rest of Western civilization. Thanks to Honestreporting (www.honestreporting.co.uk) for pointing this out.
Horrific video of a child sending her suicide bomber mother to her death | the Daily Mail

WSJ: Shariah in Minnesota

Thanks to Joel for this one, on how radical Islamists in our country are attempting to use naive civil libertarians to destroy the US.
OpinionJournal - Cross Country

Abdullah’s Chance - New York Times

Nice sentiment by Friedman in the op-ed below that peace can be achieved if the King of Saudi Arabia sticks his neck out for it and asks that we all be friends, but it ignores the basic issue -- the lack of any functioning government on the Palestinian side. Palestinian culture today stands for no more than a cult of death, and wishing otherwise won't make anything productive happen. What did the Paelstinians do with Gaza after Israel withdrew? They trashed it and it is in anarchy, politically security-wise and economically. Until the Palestinians evolve beyond a failed culture (taking a generation, at least), no peace can be achieved unless a third party, perhaps Jordan, stands in to run the security affairs of the Palestinian territories and assure Israel's security for such a sacrifice. Make that modification to your plan, King Abdullah, and maybe we can get somewhere.

Oh, and what about Syria, Mr. Friedman?
Abdullah’s Chance - New York Times

YouTube - Daughter of Palestinian suicide terrorist sings to her mother

Following as broadcast on Palestinian TV.
YouTube - Daughter of suicide terrorist sings to her mother

The New Blood Libel - March 19, 2007 - The New York Sun

The New Blood Libel - March 19, 2007 - The New York Sun

Mideast: On Target - Saudi Peace Initiative

A good primer on what the "take it or leave it" Saudi Plan is really about. Israel would be best advised to tell the "moderate" Arabs that when they indicate a willingness to negotiate over this plan, then it will be time to talk (even though I believe that, at a minimum, it would take a generation of Palestinian re-education for this plan to have any prospect of working -- and hence the idea of Jordanian confederation with the Palestinians for an interim period to assure Israel's security and allow wounds to heal).
Mideast: On Target - Saudi Peace Initiative

The Long Exit - New York Times

"The Democratic leaders don’t want to be for immediate withdrawal because it might alienate the centrists, and they don’t want to see out the surge because that would alienate the base. What they want to do is be against Bush without accepting responsibility for any real policy, so they have concocted a vaporous policy of distant withdrawal that is divorced from realities on the ground.

Say what you will about President Bush, when he thinks a policy is right, like the surge, he supports it, even if it’s going to be unpopular. The Democratic leaders, accustomed to the irresponsibility of opposition, show no such guts."

The Long Exit - New York Times

Our World: Lame ducks and sitting ducks | Jerusalem Post

Great article about the sorry state of Middle Eastern statecraft. As Gluck says at the ending of the attached piece:

PERHAPS what is most interesting about the diplomatic maneuvering taking place today is that all four main actors [Bush Olmert, King Abdullah and Abbas] carrying it out are advancing aims inimical to their national or organizational interests. Israel and the US's security interests, like those of Jordan, are harmed rather than advanced by the empowerment of Hamas. As for Abbas, Fatah's fiduciary interests are harmed by the transfer of power to Hamas.

So why are these men behaving as they are?

The answer to that apparently is to be found in a characteristic shared by Bush, Olmert, Abdullah and Abbas. All of them lead without the support of their people. All of the men, in engaging in near-manic diplomatic wrangling, are advancing the aims of neither peace nor security. They act as they do not because they believe in what they are doing - indeed, none of them could possibly believe in what he is doing. Rather, they are doing this because they want us to ignore the fact that in Bush's and Olmert's cases they are lame ducks, and in Abdullah's and Abbas's cases, they are sitting ducks."

Our World: Lame ducks and sitting ducks | Jerusalem Post

Poor Leadership, Part 2: Focussing on the Wrong Things....

Congress the Fed, the SEC etc... have fixated for years on the dangers that hedge funds pose to our nation's health (valid with respect to the issue of excess leverage, though most of their work has been focused on protecting high net worth investors from the small fraction of dishonest funds). In the meantime, right beneath Congress's nose has been the ever-increasing issue of sub-prime mortgages creating an increasingly risky situation for the most vulnerable of our citizens, the 70% or so who live paycheck to paycheck, have an average credit card debt of $8,500 per family, and generally lack the financial sophistication to understand the toxicity of the adjustable rate mortgages that they were being sold. Compounding this default risk is the fact that too many of debt-laden America has become accustomed to using their houses as a home equity piggy bank, gorging on this increased debt as if at the all you can eat buffet at the Sizzler, without regard to the consequences when house prices finally come down, as they have begun in earnest in many areas of the South, by 20% or more. Where has the Congress been while this problem has developed -- asleep, on the take, or both? How about the media, which has been very successful (once again AFTER the crime has already been committed) at focusing for the past several weeks on the scandal of poor health care for our brave soldiers? Isn't the definition of good leadership the ability to confront problems before they blow up in your face, rather than after they create terrible harm? this is truly a case of a bipartisan crime. See the article below for more on the subprime mess, and ramifications it can have through out our real estate economy.

	Contact John Mauldin Print Version Volume 3 - Issue 23 March 12, 2007 The Plankton Theory Meets Minsky By Paul McCulley Today's Outside the Box will feature one of the better pieces written in the last few years by my good friend Paul McCulley. In his article "The Plankton Theory Meets Minsky," Paul shows the importance of why the problem with sub-prime mortgages will affect the entire housing market rather than just a small sector of it. He goes on to further point out that the excess liquidity in housing and the ability to borrow against home equity over the last couple of years was more than just the doing of the Fed as the loosening of credit lending standards played a significant role. This topic is important because it is at the heart of why I think a housing slowdown will affect the nation's economy. For a little background on Paul, he is a Managing Director at PIMCO where he writes a monthly commentary titled "Global Central Bank Focus." He is a very intelligent thinker but what I enjoy the most about Paul is his ability to take seemingly complex data and transform it into an easy to understand analysis. The sub-prime sector has been a hot topic as of late but I trust that you will find this piece to be an "outside the box" take on how it happened and what it will affect in the coming year. John Mauldin, Editor ADVERTISEMENT Key Statistics Discount to Fair Value: 34% Price / Sales: 1.0 Return on Equity: 25.8% % Below 52-Week High: -30% If you're looking for a great bargain on one of the world's fastest-growing companies, then you need to learn more about our "Undervalued Stock of the Month" for March 2007. Due to short-term market volatility, the shares have pulled back -30% from their highs. As a result, bargin hunters now have a rare opportunity to pick up one of the world's most dominant companies at a 34% discount below our estimated fair value. Tell me the name of this stock! The Plankton Theory Meets Minsky By Paul McCulley Watching the on-going meltdown in the sub-prime mortgage market, which is triggering a sharp tightening of underwriting standards to these dicey credits, I was reminded of prescient writings by two serious thinkers: Bill Gross and Hyman Minsky. Both narratives go back a long ways, with something that Bill wrote in August 1980 - 27 years ago! - particularly poignant: "The Plankton Theory, like life itself, begins and ends in the ocean. Plankton, of course, are almost microscopic organisms that serve as food for higher life forms. Without plankton almost every fish and mammal in the sea could not survive, since most species depend upon other fish for their existence and plankton are the initial building blocks of the entire process. Logic would suggest, therefore, that in attempting to forecast the well being of the Great White Whale, Jaws, or even Jaws II, that one of the factors to consider would be the status and future outlook of the plankton. That, in one hundred words or less, is the Plankton Theory. Now, what possible significance could this have for the investment world? Plenty. Take for example, the area of real estate, especially that of single family housing. We're all familiar with the rapid escalation of home prices over the last 10 years. For most Americans, their homes have been the best and in many cases the only investment that they have made in their entire lives. Some have gone so far as to invest in several homes and have endured 'negative carry' on the cash flow in anticipation of leveraged capital gains a few years down the road. But where does it stop? Can housing continue to increase at twice the Consumer Price Index for the next 10 years? One way to measure might be via the Plankton Theory. In the case of real estate, the plankton would be the first-time buyer (perhaps a young married couple) with a desire to own their own home but with very little capital to carry it off. When the time comes that they can't pull it off - either through an inability to come up with a down payment, or to service the monthly mortgage - then the 'plankton' would disappear and the rapid escalation in housing prices would ease as well. For, unless the current homeowner has someone to sell his house to, he'll be unable to afford the house with the view or that extra bedroom, and the process would continue into the echelons of Beverly Hills and Shaker Heights. In the end, the entire market would wither on the investment vine and home prices would stop increasing at the same rapid rate. So to gauge the health of the housing market, look first at the plankton. Without their presence and financial vitality, the market's not going to repeat the experience of the past 10 years." ADVERTISEMENT Never worry about market direction again. With options make monster profits in bull and bear markets Our recent positions include Computer Associates a 196% profit... SBC Communications 118% profit... Monsanto up 153%...Sony a 268% profit -- all earned in less than 3 weeks. There is more to profitable investing than buying and selling stocks... make triple digit profits on a routine basis in up and down markets Click here for more free information. Bill's call was a good one, as displayed in Chart 1: home price appreciation tumbled in the first half of the 1980s, as the homeownership rate fell: the Plankton Theory at work! Draconian Fed tightening at the beginning of the 1980s had something to do with it, too, of course, as the Plankton were priced out of the market by high interest rates, independent of the availability - or underwriting standards - for home mortgage loans. But the theory held: it's the first-time buyer, stretching to buy, that is the life's blood of vibrant property markets. And intrinsically, there is nothing wrong with a young family stretching to buy that first house; most all of us did, as did our parents (many with the aid of the GI Bill). Optimism about rising incomes and making lives better for our children is the cornerstone of the American Dream. But the human condition is inherently given to the Mae West Doctrine that if a little of something is good, more is better, and way too much is just about right. Such is the case in capitalist finance, as brilliantly diagnosed by both John Maynard Keynes and his disciple, Hyman Minsky. I first introduced Minsky to these pages way back in January 2001, just as the corporate sector was sinking into recession, taking the aggregate economy with it, and the Fed was initiating a massive easing cycle. Minsky, who passed away in 1996, was the father of the Financial Instability Hypothesis, providing a framework for distinguishing between stabilizing and destabilizing capitalist debt structures. He first articulated the Hypothesis in 1974, and summarized it beautifully in his own hand in 1992: "Three distinct income-debt relations for economic units, which are labeled as hedge, speculative, and Ponzi finance, can be identified. Hedge financing units are those which can fulfill all of their contractual payment obligations by their cash flows: the greater the weight of equity financing in the liability structure, the greater the likelihood that the unit is a hedge financing unit. Speculative finance units are units that can meet their payment commitments on 'income account' on their liabilities, even as they cannot repay the principal out of income cash flows. Such units need to 'roll over' their liabilities - issue new debt to meet commitments on maturing debt. For Ponzi units, the cash flows from operations are not sufficient to fill either the repayment of principal or the interest on outstanding debts by their cash flows from operations. Such units can sell assets or borrow. Borrowing to pay interest or selling assets to pay interest (and even dividends) on common stocks lowers the equity of a unit, even as it increases liabilities and the prior commitment of future incomes. It can be shown that if hedge financing dominates, then the economy may well be an equilibrium-seeking and containing system. In contrast, the greater the weight of speculative and Ponzi finance, the greater the likelihood that the economy is a deviation-amplifying system. The first theorem of the financial instability hypothesis is that the economy has financing regimes under which it is stable, and financing regimes in which it is unstable. The second theorem of the financial instability hypothesis is that over periods of prolonged prosperity, the economy transits from financial relations that make for a stable system to financial relations that make for an unstable system. In particular, over a protracted period of good times, capitalist economies tend to move to a financial structure in which there is a large weight to units engaged in speculative and Ponzi finance. Furthermore, if an economy is in an inflationary state, and the authorities attempt to exorcise inflation by monetary constraint, then speculative units will become Ponzi units and the net worth of previously Ponzi units will quickly evaporate. Consequently, units with cash flow shortfalls will be forced to try to make positions by selling out positions. This is likely to lead to a collapse of asset values." Clearly, the explosion of exotic mortgages - sub-prime; interest only; pay-option, with negative amortization, et al - in recent years, as shown in Chart 2, have been textbook examples of Minsky's speculative and Ponzi units. And as Bill Gross explained long ago, such mortgages have been the food of the Plankton, the first-time homeowner, driving the homeownership rate to record highs, as displayed back in Chart 1, while also fueling accelerating home price appreciation. But as Minsky had forewarned, eventually this game must come to an end, as Ponzi borrowers are forced to "make positions by selling out of positions," frequently by stopping (or not even beginning!) monthly mortgage payments, the prelude to eventually default or dropping off the keys on the lenders' doorstep. That is happening. And true to form, Ponzi lenders are now recognizing their sins of irrational exuberance, repenting and promising to sin no more, dramatically tightening underwriting standards, at least back to Minsky's Speculative Units - loans that may not be self-amortizing, but at least are underwritten on evidence that borrowers can pay the required interest, not just the teaser rate, but the fully-indexed rate on ARMs. From a microeconomic point of view, such a tightening of underwriting standards is a good thing, albeit belated. But from a macroeconomic point of view, it is a deflationary turn of events, as serial refinancers, riding the back of presumed perpetual home price appreciation, are trapped long and wrong. And in this cycle, it's not just the first-time homebuyer - God bless him and her! - that is trapped, but also the speculative Ponzi long: borrowers who weren't covering a natural short - remember, you are born short a roof over your head, and must cover, either by renting or buying - but rather betting on a bigger fool to take them out ("make book", in Minsky's words). Thus, the supply of plankton is twice drained. Which means that the bigger fish in the domestic and global economic sea are going to be living on leaner diets. It also means that any given level of central-bank enforced short-term policy rates will become ever more restrictive with the passage of time. That is nowhere more the case than in the United States, where mortgage originators' orgy of Ponzi finance stifled the Fed's ability to temper irrational exuberance in housing with hikes in the Fed funds rate. More specifically, as long as lenders made loans available on virtually non-existent terms, the price didn't really matter all that much to borrowers; after all, housing prices were going up so fast that a point or two either way on the mortgage rate didn't really matter. The availability of credit trumped the price of credit. Such is always the case in manias. It is also the case that once a speculative bubble bursts, reduced availability of credit will dominate the price of credit, even if markets and policy makers cut the price. The supply side of Ponzi credit is what matters, not the interest elasticity of demand. ADVERTISEMENT The Only Three Questions That Count Financial experts are raving about the New York Times Best Seller from Forbes columnist and money manager Ken Fisher, "The Only Three Questions That Count" with a foreword by the legendary Jim Cramer. Get your copy today! Bottom Line The ongoing meltdown in the sub-prime mortgage market would not matter, except for those directly involved, except that it marks the unraveling of Ponzi finance units that, on the margin, were the plankton of the bubbling property sea of recent years. As the bubble was forming, riding on first-time homebuyers with first-time access to credit on un-creditworthy terms, and first-time speculators riding the same with visions of bigger first-time fools to take them out, all looked well. But as Minsky warned, stability is ultimately destabilizing, as those who require perpetual asset price appreciation to make book are forced to sell to make book. Such is reality presently in the U.S. residential property market, which has flipped from a sellers' market on the wings of buyers with exotic mortgages to a buyers' market of only the creditworthy. This state of affairs need not produce a U.S. recession. But it does unambiguously render any given stance of Fed policy more restrictive: a tightening of credit supply based on underwriting terms means that any given policy rate will elicit reduced effective demand for credit. And that's the stuff of seriously easier monetary policy to come. Just as mortgage demand seemed inelastic to rising short rates when availability was riding relaxed terms, so too will demand seem inelastic to falling short rates when availability faces the headwind of restrictive terms. It may be a while before the Fed accepts and recognizes this, waiting for these Minsky style debt-deflation dynamics to become evident in broader measures of the economy's health, notably job creation. But make no mistake: A Minsky Meltdown in the most important asset in most Americans' asset portfolio is not a minor matter. Bill Gross' Plankton Theory ain't just a theory, but a reality. Once the Fed begins easing, it will be a long journey down for short rates. Your thinking the "plankton will be in short supply" analyst, John F. Mauldin johnmauldin@investorsinsight.com You are currently subscribed as blum1@ix.netcom.com. To unsubscribe from John Mauldin's "Outside the Box", go here. Reproductions. If you would like to reproduce any of John Mauldin's E-Letters or commentary, you must include the source of your quote and the following email address: JohnMauldin@InvestorsInsight.com. Please write to Reproductions@InvestorsInsight.com and inform us of any reproductions including where and when the copy will be reproduced. For advertising inquires please contact adsales@investorsinsight.com John Mauldin is the President of Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC (MWA) which is an investment advisory firm registered with multiple states. John Mauldin is a registered representative of Millennium Wave Securities, LLC, (MWS) an NASD registered broker-dealer. MWS is also a Commodity Pool Operator (CPO) and a Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) registered with the CFTC, as well as an Introducing Broker (IB). Millennium Wave Investments is a dba of MWA LLC and MWS LLC. All material presented herein is believed to be reliable but we cannot attest to its accuracy. Investment recommendations may change and readers are urged to check with their investment counselors before making any investment decisions. Opinions expressed in these reports may change without prior notice. John Mauldin and/or the staffs at Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC and InvestorsInsight Publishing, Inc. ("InvestorsInsight") may or may not have investments in any funds, programs or companies cited above. PAST RESULTS ARE NOT INDICATIVE OF FUTURE RESULTS. THERE IS RISK OF LOSS AS WELL AS THE OPPORTUNITY FOR GAIN WHEN INVESTING IN MANAGED FUNDS. WHEN CONSIDERING ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENTS, INCLUDING HEDGE FUNDS, YOU SHOULD CONSIDER VARIOUS RISKS INCLUDING THE FACT THAT SOME PRODUCTS: OFTEN ENGAGE IN LEVERAGING AND OTHER SPECULATIVE INVESTMENT PRACTICES THAT MAY INCREASE THE RISK OF INVESTMENT LOSS, CAN BE ILLIQUID, ARE NOT REQUIRED TO PROVIDE PERIODIC PRICING OR VALUATION INFORMATION TO INVESTORS, MAY INVOLVE COMPLEX TAX STRUCTURES AND DELAYS IN DISTRIBUTING IMPORTANT TAX INFORMATION, ARE NOT SUBJECT TO THE SAME REGULATORY REQUIREMENTS AS MUTUAL FUNDS, OFTEN CHARGE HIGH FEES, AND IN MANY CASES THE UNDERLYING INVESTMENTS ARE NOT TRANSPARENT AND ARE KNOWN ONLY TO THE INVESTMENT MANAGER. Communications from InvestorsInsight are intended solely for informational purposes. Statements made by various authors, advertisers, sponsors and other contributors do not necessarily reflect the opinions of InvestorsInsight, and should not be construed as an endorsement by InvestorsInsight, either expressed or implied. InvestorsInsight is not responsible for typographic errors or other inaccuracies in the content. We believe the information contained herein to be accurate and reliable. However, errors may occasionally occur. Therefore, all information and materials are provided "AS IS" without any warranty of any kind. Past results are not indicative of future results. We encourage readers to review our complete legal and privacy statements on our home page. InvestorsInsight Publishing, Inc. -- 14900 Landmark Blvd #350, Dallas, Texas 75254 © InvestorsInsight Publishing, Inc. 2007 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Debka: Russia announces indefinite delays in Bushehr nuclear project, accuses Iran of abusing its goodwill

Odd story... could it point to some discord in Iranian ranks? Some discord in Russian ranks on this issue?

---

Russia announces indefinite delays in Bushehr nuclear project, accuses Iran of abusing its goodwill March 12, 2007, 7:18 PM (GMT+02:00) The contractor, Atomstroiexport Moscow, said the first fuel deliveries to Iran’s nuclear reactor would not go ahead as planned this month and the September launch date would not be met. Moscow and Tehran have been embroiled in a payment row. However, officials in Moscow accuse Tehran of exploiting Russia’s diplomatic support against the US drive for harsh sanctions over its nuclear weapons aspirations, while offering nothing in return. “If they do not respond to the questions of the International Atomic Agency,” said an informed source in Moscow, “let them answer for themselves.” Russian policy has consistently opted for engagement with Iran rather than confrontation.

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