­por Charles Augustine

Nurses around the estate of California went on strike for one day to protest against the cuts that put patients in danger.

Throughout California thousands of register nurses (RN’s) took part in a massive one-day strike Thursday September 22. This protest which included more than 23,000 RNs picketing hospitals around the state, resulted from an attempt by Sutter Alta Bates (Berkeley), Kaiser Permanente (Oakland) and Children’s (Oakland) hospital’s, to cut operating expense’s, at the cost of, either reducing patient services or cutting their nursing and caregiver’s staff personnel.

The response of state’s nurse’s, represented by California Nurses Association (CNA) and National Nurses United (NNU), was a resounding and emphatic, “no.”

At issue is: Sutter and other hospital’s administrative policy-makers desire to limit RNs ability to challenge their directives. The nurse’s say, even when it is out of concern, for their patients. They also allege these medical institutions are advocating that RNs show up to work, even when they are ill, hence exposing patients to infections.

RNs also differ with administration’s view on cutting hospital management cost by reducing nurses’ healthcare coverage and retiree health benefits.

Admin point’s out though that the only alternative would be to reduce vital patient care services. Understandably, nurses have a problem with. “They disrespect you by attacking your healthcare, your retirement benefits, your right to advocate for patients; and now they want to force you to work when you are sick. Having sick nurses care for sick patients is sick,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka stated.

CNA Co-President DeAnn McEwen went even further, stating, “When nurses are on the outside, there’s something wrong on the inside.”

She went on to say, “They’re harming patients and we’re standing in the gap.”

Locally, Children’s Hospital RN (of Oakland) Martha Kuhl said, “Nurses will never be silenced, in standing up for patients and our communities or members and our families.”

In contrast, management’s point-of-view, of how the lack of operating cash, might be remedied, the NNU is lobbying for “Taxing Wall ­Street.” To this end on Sept. 15, 1000 NNU members engaged in a demonstrations statewide.

Locally, a rally took place in front of the Federal Reserve Bank building in San Francisco at Main and Market streets that same day; and followed on the heels of similar actions held by labor and community nationwide. NNU Co-President Deborah Burger, RN points out that taxing Wall Street trading ventures could raise hundreds of billions of dollars.

What started out as a cute chi-chi clique, the notion to tax Wall Street, seems to be on the fast track to becoming a hot new political trend, and as it gains momentum, many Americans are being swept up in its wake; on Sept. 15 NNU got on board. At a speech in San Diego, NNU Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro said, “What we have to say to Wall Street is, you have taken and taken and taken, and you have given nothing back. You have abandoned this country, and you have conabandoned the people. There should be no hungry people in America, and no people without jobs in America.”

Also on board with the concept of taxing corporative institutions is a growing number of homeowners, who are currently finding themselves in a situation that might result in them losing their homes. They too believe financial giants like Wall contribute to the growing number of evictions and home foreclosures by skirting paying its fair share of taxes.

Coinciding with the action that took place in front of the Fed in SF Sept. 15, a coalition of homeowners in San Jose (SJ) calling themselves, “Refund and Rebuild California.”

They then went door to door to make residents of the blighted area aware of this new movement that is underway – to use Taxing Wall Street – as a means of helping to aid the government in digging itself out of the current economic mess the U.S. economy is in.

Their rally cry was, “It’s time to make Wall Street pay” for its short-sighted approach to doing business – that puts profit above all else – even human.

by Christine O’Brien

According to Dr. Wright, cinnamon/MHCP might not only help control blood sugar but also, when combined with appropriate diet, exercise, and other supplementation, make patent medications and their myriad adverse effects (including significantly increased cardiovascular mortality and occasional deaths from other causes) totally unnecessary.

Individuals with type 2 diabetes who aren’t using patent medications should also consider this addition to their diet, exercise, and supplement plan. If you have a mild case of diabetes, it’s quite possible that your blood sugar level will normalize simply by using cinnamon or MHCP. At the very least, it should improve.

And in either circumstance, using cinnamon or MHC should postpone or even help prevent progression of type 2 diabetes and its complications. Of course, always work with a physician who can monitor your progress and help you withdraw from any patent diabetes medication you may be taking.

Since insulin and MHCP have been found to be synergistic, taking MHCP or whole cinnamon should make it possible to regulate blood sugar with less insulin. Some complications of type 1 diabetes may come from insulin use itself, so using less insulin while maintaining blood sugar control could be beneficial. Always work with a physician whenever trying to taper down insulin usage.

But before you start sprinkling it on…

Dr. Anderson noted in his research that all species of cinnamon and numerous bottles of commercial cinnamon were tried and that they all worked to help regulate glucose metabolism in his research teams’ experiments.

Coupled with the widespread availability of self monitoring devices for blood sugar measurement, it isn’t hard to tell if cinnamon or MHCP is helpful. However, keep in mind that whole cinnamon, like most plants and other living things, has both fat-soluble and water-soluble fractions. There is some evidence that high levels of the fat-soluble fractions of cinnamon could be cause for concern.

Some researchers have found that substances in the fat- (and oil) soluble fractions of cinnamon may be both carcinogenic and genotoxic (damaging to genes, and leading to an increased risk of both cancer and birth defects). Fortunately, these risks are easily avoidable, and you can still get all the benefits of cinnamon just by taking a few simple ­steps.

Dr. Anderson has observed that essentially all toxic materials in cinnamon are fat soluble. He simply recommends that, to be safe, anyone using more than 1/4 to 1 teaspoonful of whole cinnamon daily first boil it in water, then pour off the resulting watery solution for use, and discard the solid remainder, which would contain the fat- and oil-soluble fractions. Since MHCP is water soluble, it’s still readily available in the watery solution poured off after boiling the cinnamon.

A helpful hint for actually going about separating the oils and fats on the surface of the water: Try pouring the water through a cheesecloth (cheesecloths are available in many supermarkets and other cooking-supply stores).

If you prefer not to take these steps, but still want to try this natural approach to controlling diabetes, you can avoid the potential hazard of whole cinnamon by using the cinnamon derivative, MHCP, in supplement form.

Note: Bear in mind we are not addressing anyone’s personal situation and you should rely on this for informational purposes only. Please consult with your own physician before acting on any recommendations contained herein.

­by the El Reporero’s staff

Felipe Calderón

On Sept. 29, 35 bodies were found dumped in two trucks on the main road from the port city of Veracruz to Boca del Río (also in the state of Veracruz). The state and federal authorities are losing control of Veracruz. This could have major political implications, because the state is the third biggest electoral district in the country after the Estado de México and the Distrito Federal. If drug gangs intimidate voters, they could determine the result of next year’s general elections.

In Veracruz’s 2010 gubernatorial election, 3.1m people voted, of a total electorate of 5.3m. In the 2006 presidential election, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa won the presidency by the narrowest margin ever: 243,934 votes.

Guatemala heads into the unknown

Right-wing former general Otto Pérez Molina of the Partido Patriota (PP) will face populist businessman Manuel Baldizón of Libertad Democrática Renovada (Líder) in the Nov. 6 run-off for the presidency. While this is in line with poll predictions, the big surprise on Sept. 11 was the relatively poor performance by Pérez Molina, who had consistently led the polls by a country mile.

This, together with the surge of Baldizón, who has most benefited from the exclusion of former First Lady Sandra Torres of the Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE)-Gran Alianza Nacional (Gana), and the strong performance in the congressional and municipal vote by the UNE-Gana, which has rejected outright a future alliance with the PP, suggest that the second round is a far from foregone conclusion.

­Is Humala setting himself up for a Bolivian dilemma?

President Ollanta Humala has had a good run of it in his first six weeks in office, scoring two important triumphs. First, he secured the unanimous approval of the new congress, in which his ruling Gana Perú doesn’t have a reliable working majority, for a new ‘Law of Consultation’ (Ley de Consulta), which will give local (mostly indigenous) communities more say over mining and other investments in their areas.

Secondly, he secured the agreement of mining companies for a new regulatory framework for the sector, including a new royalty tax scheme applicable to operating profits known as the ‘Gravamen’ or ‘Obolo Minero’.

Politicians and commentators from all sides applauded. Yet the two reforms risk creating the very tensions they were supposed to avoid.

The Law of Consultation enshrines the right of indigenous groups to have a say in how their land is developed; the mining deal binds the government and mining companies together in a memorandum of understanding (MOU) which effectively says that the government will respect investment rights in exchange for higher taxation – revenues the government is ultimately dependent upon to implement its plans for social development and economic inclusion. (Latin News contributed to this report).

Published by The Financial Times

Will global financial markets reach a breaking point during the month of October? Right now there are all kinds of signs that the financial world is about to experience a nervous breakdown. Massive amounts of investor money is being pulled out of the stock market and mammoth bets are being made against the S&P 500 in October.

The European debt crisis continues to grow even worse and weird financial moves are being made all over the globe. Does all of this unusual activity indicate that something big is about to happen? Let’s hope not. But historically, the biggest stock market crashes have tended to happen in the fall. So are we on the verge of a “Black October”?

The following are 21 signs that something big is about to happen in the financial world and that global financial markets are on the verge of a nervous breakdown….

#1 We are seeing an amazing number of bets against the S&P 500 right now. According to CNN, the number of bets against the S&P 500 rose to the highest level in a year last month. But that was nothing compared to what we are seeing for October. The number of bets against the S&P 500 for the month of October is absolutely astounding. Somebody is going to make a monstrous amount of money if there is a stock market crash next month.

#2 Investors are pulling a huge amount of money out of stocks right now. Do they know something that we don’t? The following is from a report in the Financial Post….

Investors have pulled more money from U.S. equity funds since the end of April than in the five months after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., adding to the $2.1 trillion rout in American stocks.

About $75 billion was withdrawn from funds that focus on shares during the past four months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from the Investment Company Institute, a Washington-based trade group, and EPFR Global, a research firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Outflows totaled $72.8 billion from October 2008 through February 2009, following Lehman’s bankruptcy, the data show.

#3 Siemens has pulled more than half a billion euros out of two major French banks and has moved that money to the European Central Bank. Do they know something or are they just getting nervous?

#4 On Monday, Standard & Poor’s cut Italy’s credit rating from A+ to A.

#5 The European Central Bank is purchasing even more Italian and Spanish bonds in an attempt to cool down the burgeoning financial crisis in Europe.

#6 The Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank have announced that they are going to make available an “unlimited” amount of money to European commercial banks in October, November and December.

#7 So far this year, the largest bank in Italy has lost over half of its value and the second largest bank in Italy is down 44 percent.

#8 Angela Merkel’s coalition is getting embarrassed in local elections in Germany. A recent poll found that an astounding 82 percent of all Germans believe that her government is doing a bad job of handling the crisis in Greece. Right now, public opinion in Germany is very negative toward the bailouts, and that is really bad news for Greece.

#9 Greece is experiencing a full-blown economic collapse at this point. Just consider the following statistics from a recent editorial in the Guardian….

Consider first the scale of the crisis. After contracting in 2009 and 2010, GDP fell by a further 7.3 percent in the second quarter of 2011. Unemployment is approaching 900,000 and is projected to exceed 1.2 million, in a population of 11 million. These are figures reminiscent of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

#10 In 2009, Greece had a debt to GDP ratio of about 115 percent. Today, Greece has a debt to GDP ratio of about 160 percent. All of the austerity that has been imposed upon them has done nothing to solve their long-term problems.

#11 The yield on 1 year Greek bonds is now over 129 percent. A year ago the yield on those bonds was under 10 percent.

#12 Greek Deputy Finance Minister Filippos Sachinidis says that Greece only has enough cash to continue operating until next month.

#13 Italy now has a debt to GDP ratio of about 120 percent and their economy is far, far larger than the economy of Greece.

#14 The yield on 2 year Portuguese bonds is now over 17 percent. A year ago the yield on those bonds was about 4 percent.

#15 China seems to be concerned about the stability of European banks. The following is from a recent Reuters report….

A big market-making state bank in China’s onshore foreign exchange market has stopped foreign exchange forwards and swaps trading with several European banks due to the unfolding debt crisis in Europe, two sources told Reuters on Tuesday.

#16 European central banks are now buying more gold than they are selling. This is the first time that has happened in more than 20 years.

#17 The chief economist at the IMF says that the global economy has entered a “dangerous new phase”.

#18 Israel has dumped 46 percent of its U.S. Treasuries and Russia has dumped 95 percent of its U.S. Treasuries. Do they know something that we don’t?

#19 World financial markets are expecting that the Federal Reserve will announce a new bond-buying plan this week that will be designed to push long-term interest rates lower.

#20 If some wealthy investors believe that the Obama tax plan has a chance of getting through Congress, they may start dumping stocks before the end of this year in order to avoid getting taxed at a much higher rate in 2012.

#21 According to a study that was recently released by Merrill Lynch, the U.S. economy has an 80 percent chance of going into another recession.

When financial markets get really jumpy like this, all it takes is one really big spark to set the dominoes in motion.

Hopefully nothing really big will happen in October.

Hopefully global financial markets will not experience a nervous breakdown.

But right now things look a little bit more like 2008 every single day.

None of the problems that caused the financial crisis of 2008 have been fixed, and the world financial system is more vulnerable today than it ever has been since the end of World War II.

As I wrote about yesterday, the U.S. economy has never really recovered from the last financial crisis.

If we see another major financial crash in the coming months, the consequences would be absolutely devastating.

We have been softened up and we are ready for the knockout blow.

Let’s just hope that the financial ­world can keep it together.

We don’t need more economic pain right about now.

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/nervous-breakdown-21-signs-that-something-big-is-about-to-happen-in-the-financial-world.