DOD Budget, Russia Missiles, Hyperinflation + News

The $8,000 in Government Spending That You Missed
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/8000-government-spending-you-missed/story.aspx?guid=%7B1ABA8276-23AC-493C-8855-C0B2769E1642%7D&dist=hppr

WASHINGTON, Oct 13, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- This is the WashingtonWatch.com federal legislative update for the week of October 13, 2008.
While you were watching the financial service bailout, Congress spent $8,000 per U.S. family with almost no consideration and no comment in the press. The WashingtonWatch.com blog has the details.
http://tinyurl.com/538e8v
Congress has adjourned until January, but leaders may call the membership back to take care of unfinished business later this year.
The recent spending bill that passed Congress spent money on the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, military construction, and the Department of Veterans Affairs for the full 2009 fiscal year.
It also funded domestic, non-defense government programs for part of the 2009 fiscal year, and it contained "emergency supplemental" spending on relief and recovery from hurricanes, floods, and other natural disasters.

Russia test-fires missiles in large-scale drill
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-10/12/content_10184292.htm
Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev (L), Commander of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces Col.-Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov (C) and Defence Minister Anatoli Serdyukov visit cosmodrome Plesetsk, which is nestled among the taiga forests of Russia's north


President Dmitry Medvedev watched the launching of the RS-12M Topol intercontinental ballistic missile from the Plesetsk test ground, which hit a set target in Kamchatka of Russia's Far East.

Kemp: “The United States is now, in some very general sense, bankrupt”

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2008/10/12/16931/kemp-the-united-states-is-now-in-some-very-general-sense-bankrupt/
Why the world's new rules will punish us all
http://www.moneyweek.com/news-and-charts/economics/why-the-worlds-new-rules-will-punish-everyone-13808.aspx

"After the panic subsides, the Fed will rein in much of this new money. Right now, banks are 'stuffing it under the mattress,' so to speak. Banks and individuals are crowding into the perceived safety of Treasury bonds. That's why consumer prices aren't immediately rising; private market credit is contracting as fast as the Fed's balance sheet is expanding. The Fed will always lend when no one else is willing to do so. "The US government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost," said Fed Chairman Bernanke in November 2002. This means that there will always be paper money available to lend. However, the US dollar is getting debased on an unprecedented scale.
The printing press may be the only way to prevent a self-sustaining credit panic, but it doesn't come without a price; it lowers the US dollar's stature even further in the eyes of our foreign creditors.
I'm betting that government inflation will defeat private market deflation. However, when the dust settles, I expect the Treasury and Fed to have its own set of negotiations with foreign creditors. The obligations they are assuming and monetising are simply too enormous without inciting a potential panic among our generous foreign creditors. Maybe we'll see a Bretton Woods-type agreement in 2009 - one where the US dollar is devalued by 50% against certain foreign currencies overnight."

Will Bailouts Risk Hyperinflation?
http://www.cnbc.com/id/27159117
Government bailouts of the financial system will destroy the dollar, euro and sterling because of hyperinflation, Martin Hennecke, senior manager of private clients at Tyche told CNBC. But Todd Everts, president & CEO of Wall Street Global, disagreed.
See also:
Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe a Lesson in Economics

'Mercury 08'

Qld hosts counter-terrorism exercise (AU)
http://news.theage.com.au/national/qld-hosts-counterterrorism-exercise-20081014-507q.html
Queensland and West Australian emergency services officers are testing their skills in Australia's largest ever counter-terrorism exercise.
The states are taking part in the four-day training exercise, Mercury 08, with officers responding to a simulated emergency at Whyte Island, in the Port of Brisbane.

DARPA seeks technology for seeing inside buildings
http://www.fcw.com/online/news/154056-1.html
A new Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency project hopes to give warfighters the ability to see inside buildings in urban environments.The DARPA pre-solicitation aims to develop a suite of sensing technologies for looking deep inside a building from above- and below-ground. The technologies should be suitable for a broad range of building types

U.S. limits bird flu vaccine, fearing bioterror http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/12/MNOQ13FH9E.DTL

When Indonesia's health minister stopped sending bird flu viruses to a research laboratory in the United States for fear Washington could use them to make biological weapons, Defense Secretary Robert Gates laughed and called it "the nuttiest thing" he'd ever heard

Terror attack drill at US embassyhttp://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=231700&Sn=BNEW&IssueID=31208

Starting in '09, a license that doubles as a passport
http://www.freep.com/article/20081013/NEWS06/81013053
New ID to ease travel to Mexico, Canada, Caribbean


Nev. communities train for disaster with flu shots
http://www.krnv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9172226&nav=8faO

Army Orders Pain Ray Trucks; New Report Shows 'Potential for Death'
For $25 Million, Army Buys System That Drives Off Rioters With Microwave-Like Beam
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=6007823&page=1