[Pen-l] Blame CAFOs for possible Pandemic?

[mckenna193@xxxxxxx]

In âA Capitalist Pigâs View of Swine Flu,â investor Brian Orelli said that âthere is nothing wrong with drug companies and investors making moneyâ from the swine flue crisis (April 27). He predicted that âthe big winners should be Baxter and Novavax which can produce a vaccine in 12 weeksâ should a pandemic strike.

If a pandemic does indeed arrive, the losers will be millions of human beings. Given that the H1N1 came into being at a Smithfield CAFO in North Carolina in 1998, is it fair to say that their lives would be sacrificed, in part, to profligate corporate agriculture and Wall Street? Indeed, Wall Street investors and pharmaceutical companies helped create this potential pandemic. Theyâve been the âbig winnersâ whoâve supplied antibiotics for corporate meat production in ânormalâ times, including pig farms like Smithfield In so doing they made it possible for millions of hogs to live in hellish conditions where they trade germs fluidly. 

The largest frame for infectious diseases like these are "Diseases of Civilization" owing to the close human animal contact over the past 10,000 years. A better frame is "diseases of capitalism" owing to the historic conjecture. But what about diseases of CAFOs?

Does that work?

Please comment.

Best,

Brian Mckenna



-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Lear <rael@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Sat, 23 May 2009 8:17 am
Subject: [Pen-l] Why is Canadian dollar falling versus U.S. dollar?

The NY Times has a story today "As Dollars Pile Up, Uneasy Traders

Lower the Currency's Value" by Jack Healy

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/business/economy/23dollar.html?hpw

It says the U.S. dollar is at "its lowest point in five months this
week", and a chart accompanying the story, the dollar is compared to
"the euro, yen, British pound, Canadian dollar, Swedish krona and
Swiss franc."  The source of this is listed as "Bloomberg".

But in a May 13th story on the Bloomberg site, "Canadian Dollar
Weakens as U.S. Retail Sales Drop, Stocks Fall".

So, what is the general picture here, and is the behavior of the
Canadian dollar qualitatively different than the other currencies
versus the U.S. dollar?

I believe that the U.S. represents a very large chunk of the Canadian
export market (I think around 80%), and my guess is that as the slow
screw-the-people-save-the-bankers recovery starts/continues the Canadian
dollar will gain.

Any thoughts on the causes of this?  Crude oil prices?  Bank of Canada
interest rate cut?  Others?


Bill
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