Sure China Inc is stock piling Aus energy and materials and as DR states you don't have to own the land just get a good price for the stuff - but really its just the thin edge of the wedge, and its not a naive 'reds under the beds' thing. The USA would play a role in negotiating the breaking up Aus but it all rests on the continuing cycle, bear rally what ever.......the decline of the US as the dominant power relegated to turn on its ally........

We are using the financial rules developed by western culture, they are failing and fast......CO2 economy is pathetic eg RE "The Great Global Warming Swindle"

There is a positive side in the short term although in the long term I just think there are too many people in the world to provide for nanotechnology's high energy material capita ratio. I am talking of evolution and I use the "Engines of Creation" by Eric Drexler as a reference on nanotechnology seek ref on 'memes'.

Maybe some signs of life?

http://investmenttools.com/futures/bdi_baltic_dry_index.htm

I agree too with Greg on the Chinese exchanging USD reserves for commodities and commodities linked currencies but I want to think that through further.

Commodities were floating on USD funny money for the past decade which was employed by US bankers to buy and bid the rest of the world's asset prices up (remember the Chinese had a perfectly valid defence in fending off speculative USD originated Chinese local asset purchases and bidding up their prices and they "reacted" with controls that had the effect of also suppressing the Yuan). So up your nose with a rubber hose to those Americans accusing the Chinese of systemic exchange rate chicanery because it was an act of war by the Americans to try to sew inflation into the Chinese economy past the point that the central government could control their economy.

Now to the effects of Hedge Funds and foreign bank branch lending. Remember that long climb of the AUD from well under 0.50 to the USD. Remember as the hedge fund redemptions forced the unwinding of the leveraged offshore positions and the commodity bubble burst there was a subsequent massive drought of USD liquidity in all the offshore markets as hedge funds and foreign bank branches had to buy back USD's.

Now the Chinese are switching reserves for commodities they are effectively selling USD's but year on year they were buying thios level of commodities and more so it won't be so obvious in the figures and the global USD pool is massive. The UST is creating so many USD's and readying to buy its own and is getting into a sovereign version of the mezzanined debt market

This is the point I have reached and have not kicked onto a conclusion.

The IMF bemuses me. They only know the macro debt market, remain hyper focused on govt vs private speculative debt and have abaolutely no conception of the discretionary services & goods bubble other than what the trade accounts tell them. They have therefore a trade based modelling for their projection, and for US services they are just projecting from the 20% collapse of the import trade. They really don't have a clue and never did have. Like a super sized McKibbin projection.

The way I read it the best way to monitor the crash is the tax receipts for those countries that have bent themselves over for consumption and property asset inflation taxation. And hence -1.6% for Australia will prove ridiculously optimistic and like Dan said our commodity prices won't save us except maybe in USD basis terms and that is where I go back to not having a conclusion yet.

Also, I don't get the use of your talking marks apropos the below quote:
There's nothing "so-called" about GHGs.
There's nothing questionable about the use of pollution in terms of CO2e.

Obama is talking about C&T (if Waxman Markey is implemented) CO2e revenue being put straight back into consumer's pockets.

C&T (or consumption or generation tax) is all about price signalling to
a) put a ceiling on emissions and therefore make increasing emissions into a limited emissions allowance pool increasingly expensive in order to increase generation innovation and efficiency, and
b) consumption awareness and increased efficiency and reduction in waste

And there is nothing wrong with that.

BAU coal/fossil use cannot continue.

(maybe I misunderstood your use of quotation marks)

Otherwise, carry on.

Tim M
Heresy Snowboarding

***

several other so-called greenhouse gasses as threats to public health.

This reclassification gives the EPA authority to regulate threats to public health under the U.S. Clean Air Act. More likely is the passage of a bill in the U.S. Congress to institute a "cap-and-trade" system on carbon dioxide in which carbon dioxide "polluters" could bid for permits that allow them to emit a certain amount of CO2.