World View: Half of China's Rivers Have Disappeared

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Half of China’s rivers have disappeared
• Germans may be removing their savings from banks
• Suspicions grow that the Cyprus bailout numbers don’t make sense
• Jordan and Palestine agree to jointly defend Jerusalem from Israel

Half of China’s rivers have disappeared

Dead pigs along the riverbank near Shanghai (AP)

From a country of 1.3 billion people and fraught with water shortages,comes a startling new census report that over half the nation’s rivershave disappeared. According to the Ministry of Water Resources, Chinacurrently has 22,909 rivers, some 28,000 fewer than in the 1990s. Thedrastic drop is blamed on faulty maps, severe overexploitation ofgroundwater in 400 cities in China, and severe pollution.

This comes just after a series of “animal apocalypse” stories, oneafter another. First, over 16,000 pig carcasses were found in one ofthe rivers supplying the water supply of Shanghai, China’s financialhub, starting last month. Then more than 1,000 dead ducks were foundin a river in southwest China. And what’s just as amazing is thatChinese authorities are offering no explanation for these carcasses,except to say that they’re “investigating.”

And now a new story is coming out of Anhui province in eastern China,about a scenic pond inhabited by a bevy of beautiful black swans forthe the last decade. All of a sudden, five of the black swans werefound dead on Wednesday morning. Once again, there’s no officialexplanation, but a reporter found that the water had an oily qualityto it, and quite a lot of garbage could be seen on the surface. Manypeople often used the pond to rinse cloths, mops, mats and other itemscontaining various chemicals.Global Times and Shanghaiist and Danwei

Germans may be removing their savings from banks

Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble is insisting thatbank savings deposits are safe in all eurozone countries besidesCyprus are safe:

“Cyprus is and will remain a special one-off case.The savings accounts in Europe are safe.

Cyprus’s economy will now go through a long and painful period ofadjustment. But then it will pay back the loan when it is on asolid economic foundation. …

[You] could see [the strength of the euro] during the Cypruscrisis. The entire turbulence did not have any impact on theother countries in southern Europe. The financial markets haveseen: we are better prepared now. We’ve accomplished quite a bit.

What is more important is that we are strong enough to keepeveryone in the boat.

I believe that we will one day read in the history books aboutthis period that the crisis brought Europe even closertogether.”

He added that the continent was currently enjoying “a very fortunateera.”

Schäuble was trying to reassure the wider European public, many ofwhom fear the power of the Germans, and see them as imposing theGerman culture on the rest of Europe by force. The Germans are deeplyangered by portrayals in Cyprus of Chancellor Angela Merkel with aHitler moustache.

At the same time, Schäuble was addressing the domestic Germanaudience, which is headed for federal elections in September. TheGermans are relieved, comforted and pleased with themselves, becausethe Germans didn’t have pay to bail out the Russian oligarchs.

That’s why few people really believe that Schäuble was telling thetruth. Everybody knows that Greece is headed for another crisis, asare Spain, Portugal and Italy. What will happen then? Will Germanyreally be willing to bear the brunt of another bailout, without takingadvantage of “the Cyprus solution” — taxing the depositors’ savingsaccounts? If you believe that, then I have a bridge I’d like to sellyou.

Even most Germans don’t believe that their savings are necessarilysafe, with one in three saying they’d like to return to thedeutschmark. And there’s growing anecdotal evidence that some Germanshave begun removing their savings from banks, and that others haveopened new accounts to spread their savings around and avoid gettingcaught like Cypriot depositors with more than 100,000 euros.Spreading savings around several banks may not be a bad idea for largeAmerican savers, as well.

As I’ve been saying for years, from the point of view of GenerationalDynamics, both Europe and America are in a deflationary spiral, and amajor financial panic and crisis, worse than 1929, is coming withmathematical certainty. VOA and Kathimerini and Guardian (London)

Suspicions grow that the Cyprus bailout numbers don’t make sense

Various bloggers are digging into the math behind the Cyprus bailout,and are finding that the figures don’t make sense. It was originallyreported that Russian oligarchs had over 35 billion euros in Cyprusbanks, but it now appears that it’s really more like 10 billion.We’ve been told that the immediate cause of the problem was all theforeign money in the banking system, but that explanation now appearsto be wrong. Forbes

Jordan and Palestine agree to jointly defend Jerusalem from Israel

On Sunday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’sKing Abdullah signed an agreement on “the defense of Jerusalem and theholy sites.”

According to the agreement:

• Jordan and Palestine will exert all efforts to protect Jerusalem and its Holy Sites from Israeli escalatory Judaisation.
• Jordan and Palestine agree to the common goal of defending Jerusalem together.
• The status of East Jerusalem as Palestinian sovereign occupied territory is reaffirmed. According to the agreement, all post-1967 occupation practices or aggressions against Jerusalem are not recognised by any international or legal entity.

Jerusalem Post and Petra (Jordan)

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