Friday, September 30, 2011

Tags: Gillian Tett, Financial Times, Increase Short Term Interest Rates Increases Long Term Rates Freeing Loan to Middle Small Businesses by Big Banks

Japan’s Rate Dilemma Casts Shadow Over Fed Financial Times, Gillian Tett, USA Executive Editor, Sept 29. 2011


Tett’s compares the problem Bank of Japan Governor, Masaru Hayami a decade ago when he wanted to raise interest rates, but politicians and business forced him to keep the rate low.


I will try to answer the question of why he should raise rates that Tett did not provide herself, but I can guess what she is thinking.


She asks why banks and corporation awash in cash won’t lend it out when they could get free interest money from the Federal Reserve?


What would Hayami tell Bernanke if he were alive today?


Bernanke’s goal should be to get big banks to lend money to medium and small businesses which would help increase both the economy and jobs. Banks need a spread in interest rates so they can profit from longer term loans. The ten year Treasuries are now below 2 percent, a historical low.


His current policy of selling short term Treasuries and buying longer term ones does not seem to be helping much.


By sharply increasing short term rates, longer term rates will go up even faster if I am right about what Tett and Hayami think.


Jim Kawakami, Sept 30, 2011, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Vitamin D3 Higher Levels Needed for Optimum Health

Tags: Vitamin D3 Random Study 77 Percent Reduction Cancers

Vitamin D3 Increasingly Clear that It Has Important Improvement in Health


From Vitamin D Council www.vitamindcouncil.org

Some researchers believe the link between vitamin D sufficiency and a decreased risk in cancer is promising. A randomized controlled trial found a 77% reduction in all-cancer incidence when the study group supplemented with 1100 IU/day of vitamin D plus 1450 mg/day calcium. Says Dr. Grant, “Based on various studies of UVB, vitamin D and cancer to date, it appears that global cancer burden can be reduced by 15-25% if everyone had vitamin D blood levels above 40 ng/ml.” ...


When I discovered that for Whites, just one minute in high sun during the summer allows them to produce 1,000 IU of vitamin D3 which is then stored is their fats for later use as needed. For Blacks it takes 6 minutes to make the same amount of vitamin D3 so the well known poorer health of Blacks could partly be attributed to a lack of vitamin D3 synthesis. NOTE that vitamin D3 is made by exposure to UVB, the same radiation that sunscreens have effectively eliminated with sunscreens and led to an increase in skin cancers including the deadly melanoma.


In the 1980s I noticed that both Sweden and Australia saw a huge increase in melanoma in areas where the intensity of the sun is quite different. One research article in Sweden suspected that sunscreen chemicals may be causing the increase in melanoma. I concluded that UVA which penetrates our skin to activate our tanning process probably causes melanoma. I tried to sunscreen researchers to include an UVA blocker, but as is usually the case most researchers follow the crowd and fail to think for themselves. It's safer!


Practically no vitamin D good research were available at least on Google when I first became interested. The last several years brought out a huge number of copy cat research once a prestigious Harvard university published research showing how vitamin D3 supplements do indeed improve health and a reduction in cancer. But at least one Dermatologist at Harvard said there is no proof that sunscreens contribute to increasing melanoma!


The Vitamin D Solution: A 3-Step Strategy to Cure Our Most Common Health Problem by Michael F. Holick, Ph.D., M.D., Professor at Boston University Medical School, 2010,


Foreword by Andrew Weil, M.D. ... "Dr. Holick has stood at the forefront of vitamin D research, pioneering groundbreaking studies that have linked a wide array of disorders that afflict up to 200 million Americans with a single common risk factor--vitamin D deficiency. It's the most common medical condition in the world with sometimes devastating, even fatal, consequences.


Whether you live in a norther region like New England or near me in the sunny southwest where the sun shines most days, you could be suffering from a silent vitamin D deficiency that undermines all of your efforts to achieve optimal health." Dr. Andrew Weil graduated from Harvard with an M.D. and is well known for using both standard medicine and alternative medical approaches for optimum health.


Seniors have more difficulty producing vitamin D3 from UVB burning radiation from the sun due to age and likely the use of statins which lowers cholesterol production at an early stage. My doctor me take ten milligram every other day for one year and then 1 mg daily. Dr. Makoff at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, the hospital of choice for the rich because of great doctors and private accommodations believed that if we lower low density lipoprotein in the blood too much, will be harmful because it is used to build cell walls and make vital hormones such as testosterone and other vital hormones. I agree. Most doctors try to get the cholesterol lower too fast and harms the patients.


Only seniors who worked in the sun all day had the 40 ng/ml levels of the 25-hydroxy-vitamin D metabolite. Some studies indicate that up to 90 percent of seniors are deficient in vitamin D3. If you want to get to the 40 ng/ml level of the metabolite fast you can take 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 without sun and it will take about a year to come up to that level. This dose will be completely used up in 12 days according to one study.


Vitamin D plays an important role in activating T-Cells which protects us from many diseases. Two friends were sick all winter in Iowa and California due to vitamin D3 deficiency. Once they started taking vitamin D3, they stopped having colds. Another friend advised me that two of her friends who had children with Autism tried vitamin D on their children. The ones who has Autism the shortest amount of time improved almost immediately and even older children started to improve and speaking in such a way that indicates their brain was working well.


My doctor prescribes 2,000 IU of vitamin D3 daily for all her patients. Oregon has one of the highest level of Autism and MS in the United States due primarily to use of sunscreen in the summer which blocks vitamin D3 production. I suspect those who use the tanning salon has less cancers and greater health unlike what has been emphasized by some researchers including Dermatologists to show that sunscreen use all the time stops cancer. Just the opposite occurs! Eugene is at a similar latitude as Buffalo, NY.


The summaries can be found under the “Health conditions” tab on the Vitamin D Council website, or more specifically at http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/cancer/. …


One Texas study for three years showed that those had 40 ng/ml or higher levels of the non-active metabolite from the liver 25-hydroxy-vitamin D among seniors and not the less reliable 1,25-dihydroxy-vitamin D active metabolite produce in the kidney for bone production. My doctor measured the latter until I told her which one to measure.


Powerful Corporations Strongly Affect How We Think Including Who We Vote for:


We can see that economic powers (billionaires, millionaires, and corporations) control the voting behavior of the Republican Party's large majority in the House and senate rules allow a minority in the Senate to stop all bills to help the economy as well as crucial numbers of Democrats in the Senate.


Big Pharma using the tool of advertising and stopping bills to make drugs cheaper makes them the most profitable corporations in our country with average profits of close to 50% each year.


There are exceptions to the rule, but the candidates who have a significant lead in money for television commercials normally win elections. With our corporate Supreme court who have voted 5-4 on essentially all cases that support corporations and the most cynical and criminal was the elimination of the amount of money by corporations and foreign governments and corporations in campaign donations.


Ask yourself, who caused the financial crisis by not paying for two wars, two tax cuts for the rich, and stopped regulating Banking and insurance companies by shredding documents at the SEC.


Bloomberg Business Week had an editorial stating all the crimes by our SEC and strongly recommends eliminating this division and make one without direct Financial employment before or after they serve. A civil service unit seems more ideal at pay equivalent to corporations to attract the best people. Hint our IRS has difficulty understanding the tax code so corporations with top accountants get away with not paying taxes and hiding money outside the country.


For example, the leading Republican candidate, Rick Perry, based on his Texas record, will carry out policies that corporations want no matter how much it harms Texas citizens. Allowing the dumping of radioactive nuclear reactor waste products only eight feet from an aquifer indicates how far he would go to serve large contributors to his campaign. He will raise most of his money from secret campaign donations in his advisors Super PAC. So far our economically harmed Americans have too many worries to not realize the implications of this free ride radical Supreme Court Justices have harmed our election process.


But there is also good news in Wisconsin recall elections where the Republicans had as much as $8 million dollars in one State Senate recall race. Democrats will still able to win two of the three races against Wisconsin State Senate Republicans in the recall race! Normally these races bring donations at the $4,000 level!


The same happens when two businesses that are huge for Big Pharma are pills for various diseases and huge profits for cancer drugs. When Dermatologists at Harvard and other top schools have consultantships with Big Pharma, it cannot help slant the arguments for a cheap vitamin D3 that does much more than Big Pharma drugs at a much cheaper price. Stanford, regarded as one of the best in drug research, could not get funding to conduct his research while those who get consulting fees from Big Pharma have almost uniformally came out against whether Americans have enough vitamin D3 for health.


Jim Kawakami, Sept 6, 2011, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com