Particulate pollution causing Himalayan glacial melt

And, given that India and China burn a lot of wood and coal cooking things don’t look good. The Indian scientist who discovered how strong the effect is said that if nothing changes, all the Himalayan glaciers could be gone in 50 years.

With major rivers like the Yangtze, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Mekong and Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) originating from the area, that’s a huge, huge problem.

Half of corporate bonds are junk

That’s literally, not figurately, if you substitute “junk” for Standard and Poor’s “speculative.” And, it’s going to get worse:

S&P said the ratings mix of corporate bonds continues to deteriorate as firms borrow to buy back shares and make acquisitions, but the key factor to the deterioration is simply the sheer number of lower-rated bonds coming to market.

Can you start saying “recession”?

More on why the Fed and Wall Street is a rigged game

Like Mish says, the Fed never has trouble with inflating bubbles, just deflating ones. Here’s his own words:

Essentially the Fed views a falling market as a threat. Of course a rising market, no matter how reckless or speculative is not a threat. Such is the nature of the misguided policies of the Fed that constantly blows bigger and bigger bubbles to cover up its own mistakes.

This is of a piece with New York Stock Exchange’s shutting down computerized trading programs whenever stocks drop too rapidly in a day, but letting them run wild in an uptick of the same percentage, as I posted here.

The question is, will Democratic presidential candidates address how bad Greenspan was about this? Will they pledge to hold Bernanke’s feet to the fire of a different policy? And, what about Congress? Will we get action, not fluff?

Mortgage defaults to peak next summer

The default number is expected to hit 3.6 percent of mortgage debt by then.

Of those mortgages, about $460 billion will end up in default before the end of 2008. Of that amount, $113 billion will not be recovered, Moody’s Economy.com calculates.

About 2.5 million first mortgage loans are expected to default over the next two years, with credit problems rising sharply in California's Central Valley, Florida, and the metropolitan areas of Las Vegas, Phoenix, Washington, and New York, according to the study.

This tracks closely with the expected peak in resets for adjustable rate mortgages.

Dems to cave on expanded warrantless international call snooping?

That’s what The New York Timessays. But, giving this administration carte blanche to do ANYTHING without a warrant is stupid and even negligent, especially when BushCo says this is just Request Round 1:

The White House has told Democratic lawmakers that it will accept a narrow bill now but will come back later for broader changes, including legal immunity for telecommunications companies involved in the wiretapping program.

Congress needs to listen to voices like this, instead:

“Congress needs to take its time before it implements another piece of antiterrorism legislation it will regret, like the Patriot Act,” American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony Romero told the Times. “The Bush administration clearly has abused the FISA powers it already has and clearly wants to go back to the good old days of warrantless wiretapping and domestic spying. Congress must stop this bill in its tracks.”

Here’s one crux of disagreement right now, according to Raw Story:

A key point of disagreement between Congress and the administration involves how to audit the wiretapping of calls between two people outside the United States that are routed through US telecommunications switches.

Again, it’s simply unbelievable Congress would sign off on any of this.

Another home mortgage company crashes

This time, it’s American Home Mortgage Investment Corp., which says it’s out of cash and could have to liquidate. The news sent yesterday’s Dow down almost 150 points. And, here’s why its problems are so newsworthy:

Because American Home does not specialise in sub-prime, its knock-on involvement set off alarm bells. Sam Rahman, at Baring Asset Management, said: “That’s the big news that's hitting the markets today. It is raising concerns about the whole mortgage market.”

It certainly raises alarm bells with me, for the same reason. Until this week, American Home wasn’t even on the radar screen of home mortgage problems.