Earth Running out of Rare Elements
January 26, 2010
NaturalNews
by Mike Adams
It’s the bubble you’ve probably never heard of: The rare earth bubble. And it’s due to pop in 2012, potentially devastating the industries of western nations that depend on these rare elements.
What industries are those? The automobile industry uses tens of thousands of tons of rare earth elements each year, and advanced military technology depends on these elements, too. Lots of “green” technologies depend on them, including wind turbines, low-energy light bulbs and hybrid car batteries. In fact, much of western civilization depends on rare earth elements such as terbium, lanthanum and neodymium.
So what’s the problem with these rare elements? 97 percent of the world’s supply comes from mines in China, and China is prepared to simply stop exporting these strategic elements to the rest of the world by 2012.
If that happens, the western world will be crippled by the collapse of available rare earth elements. Manufacturing of everything from computers and electronics to farm machinery will grind to a halt. Electronics will disappear from the shelves and prices for manufactured goods that depend on these rare elements will skyrocket.
These 17 rare earth elements (REE) — all of which are metals — are strategic resources upon which entire nations are built. In many ways, they are similar to rubber — a resource so valuable and important to the world that many experts call it the “fourth most important natural resource in the world,” right after water, steel and oil. Without rubber, you couldn’t drive your car to work or water your lawn. Many medical technologies would cease to work and virtually all commercial construction would grind to a halt.
Many of the strategic battles fought in World War II were fought, in fact, over control of rubber, most of which now comes through Singapore and its surrounding regions (Malaysia and Indonesia).
Global shortage of Rare Earth Elements coming…
Now, by threatening to cut off the world’s supply of rare earth elements, China appears to be attempting to monopolize this extremely important strategic resource. According to information received by The Independent, by 2012 China may cease all exports of rare earth elements, reserving them for its own economic expansion.
An article in that paper quotes REE expert Jack Lifton as saying, “A real crunch is coming. In America, Britain and elsewhere we have not yet woken up to the fact that there is an urgent need to secure the supply of rare earths from sources outside China.”
And yet virtually no one has heard of this problem! People are familiar with peak oil, global warming, ocean acidification, the national debt and the depletion of fossil water, but very few are aware of the looming crisis in rare metals… upon which much of western civilization rests.
For those who still aren’t convinced this is a big deal, consider this: Without rare earth elements, we would have no iPhones. Yeah, I know. That’s a disaster, huh?
We would have no fiber optic cables, either. No X-ray machines, no car stereos and no high-tech missile guidance systems for the military. And here’s the real kicker: No electric motors.
Decade of Decline in U.S. Teen Pregnancies Ends
January 26, 2010
The Washington Post
by Rob Stein
The pregnancy rate among teenage girls in the United States has jumped for the first time in more than a decade, raising alarm that the long campaign to reduce motherhood among adolescents is faltering, according to a report released Tuesday.
The pregnancy rate among 15-to-19-year-old’s increased 3 percent between 2005 and 2006 — the first jump since 1990, according to an analysis of the most recent data collected by the federal government and the nation’s leading reproductive-health think tank.
Teen pregnancy has long been one of the most pressing social issues and has triggered intense political debate over sex education, particularly whether the federal government should fund programs that encourage abstinence until marriage or focus on birth control.
“The decline in teen pregnancy has stopped — and in fact has turned around,” said Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research for the Guttmacher Institute, the nonprofit, nonpartisan research group in New York that conducted the analysis. “These data are certainly cause for concern.”
The abortion rate also inched up for the first time in more than a decade — rising 1 percent — intensifying concern across the ideological spectrum.
“One of the nation’s shining success stories of the past two decades is in danger of unraveling,” said Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “Clearly, the nation’s collective efforts to convince teens to postpone childbearing must be more creative and more intense, and they must begin today.”
The cause of the increase is the subject of debate. Several experts blamed the increase in teen pregnancies on sex-education programs that focus on encouraging abstinence. Others said the reversal could be due to a variety of factors, including an increase in poverty, an influx of Hispanics and complacency about AIDS, prompting lax use of birth control such as condoms.
“It could be a lot of things coming together,” said Rebecca Maynard, a professor of economics and social policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It could be we just bottomed out, and whenever you are at the bottom, it tends to wiggle around. This may or may not be a sustained rise.”
The report comes as Congress might consider restoring federal funding to sex-education programs that focus on abstinence. The Obama administration eliminated more than $150 million in funds for such groups, but the Senate’s health-care reform legislation would reinstate $50 million.
The new findings immediately set off a debate over funding. Critics argued that the disturbing new data were just the latest in a long series of indications that the focus on abstinence programs was a dismal failure.
“Now we know that after 10 years and over $1.5 billion in abstinence-only funding, the U.S. is lurching backwards on teen sexual health,” said James Wagoner of Advocates for Youth, a Washington advocacy group.
Supporters of abstinence programs, however, said the findings provided powerful evidence of the need to continue to encourage delayed sexual activity, not only to avoid pregnancy but also to reduce the risk for AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
Processed Foods Have Too Much Salt
January 26, 2010
Reuters
Many processed foods contain too much salt, and sauces, spreads, and processed meats are the top offenders, new research shows.
People who consume lots of salt are more likely to see their blood pressure rise as they get older, with a corresponding increase in their heart disease risk.
Public health officials are increasingly looking to the food industry for help in cutting people’s salt intake; the United Kingdom and France, for example, have been able to achieve significant reductions in salt consumption through industry collaborations, while New York City has just launched a campaign to cut US salt intake by 25 percent over the next five years.
Similar efforts are now underway in Australia, and some companies have begun to reduce the salt content of some of their products, according to Dr. Jacqueline L. Webster and colleagues from the George Institute for International Health in Sydney, Australia.
To help guide such efforts, the researchers gathered data on the sodium content of 7,221 products in 10 food groups, 33 categories, and 90 subcategories.
According to a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, foods were considered to be high in sodium if they contained more than 500 milligrams of sodium for every 100 grams, while foods with sodium contents below 120 milligrams of sodium for every 100 grams were classified as low sodium.
The researchers found dramatic variation in salt content within certain food categories. For example, the saltiest type of hard cheese had six times more sodium than the least salty type, while there was a 14-fold difference in salt content within the sliced meat category and a 100-fold difference within the frozen potato product category.
Sauces and spreads, at 1,283 mg per 100 g, and processed meats, at 846 mg per 100 g, were the categories with the highest average sodium content.
Sodium content was lowest for cereals (206 mg per 100 g) and fruits and vegetables (211 mg per 100 g). Nearly two-thirds of the 33 food categories had average sodium concentrations that were higher than the maximum standards set by the UK Food Standards Agency, while breads, processed meats, sauces and canned vegetables included many subcategories above these targets.
High Blood Pressure May Increase Risk of Dementia
January 26, 2010
The Canadian Press
by Lauran Neergaard
If the cardiologist’s warnings don’t scare you, consider this: Controlling blood pressure just might be the best protection yet known against dementia.
In a flurry of new research, scientists scanned people’s brains to show hypertension fuels a kind of scarring linked to later development of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. Those scars can start building up in middle age, decades before memory problems will appear.
The evidence is strong enough that the U.S. National Institutes of Health soon will begin enrolling thousands of hypertension sufferers in a major study to see if aggressive treatment – pushing blood pressure lower than currently recommended – better protects not just their hearts but their brains.
“If you look … for things that we can prevent that lead to cognitive decline in the elderly, hypertension is at the top of the list,” Dr. Walter Koroshetz, deputy director of NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, told The Associated Press.
Age is the biggest risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia that affect about one in eight people 65 or older.
Scientists have long noticed that some of the same triggers for heart disease – high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes – seem to increase the risk of dementia, too. But for years, they thought that link was with “vascular dementia,” memory problems usually linked to small strokes, and not the scarier classic Alzheimer’s disease.
Now those lines are blurring as specialists realize that many if not most patients have a mix of the two dementias. Somehow, factors like hypertension – blood pressure readings of 140 over 90 or higher – that weaken arteries also seem to spur Alzheimer’s disease-like processes.
One suspect: Scarring known as white matter lesions. White matter acts as the brain’s telephone network, a system of axons, or nerve fibres, that allow brain cells to communicate with each other. Even slightly elevated blood pressure can damage the tiny blood vessels that nourish white matter, interrupting those signals.
Among the strongest new studies:
-MRI scans showed women 65 and older with high blood pressure had significantly more white matter lesions in their brains eight years later. The study included 1,403 women who were enrolled in a memory subset of the landmark Women’s Health Initiative that tracked postmenopausal health. The worse their blood pressure, the higher volume of white matter damage, says the study published online last month in the Journal of Clinical Hypertension.
“This is a silent disease in the brain,” says lead researcher Dr. Lewis Kuller of the University of Pittsburgh. “It’s evolving over time and it leads to very bad outcomes.”
-The journal Stroke just published similar evidence from a Johns Hopkins University-led study that tracked 983 people for more than 15 years, starting in middle age. The longer people spent with uncontrolled high blood pressure, the more white matter damage they accumulated. The researchers could see a change with each 20-point jump in too-high systolic pressure, the top number in a blood-pressure reading.
Clearly, hypertension alone doesn’t doom someone to later dementia. Far more people, nearly one in three U.S. adults, have hypertension.
And there are plenty of other reasons to lower blood pressure: Hypertension is a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes and kidney failure.
But while some studies have found hypertension treatment lowered the dementia risk, others haven’t.
Enter the NIH’s SPRINT study, which in a few months is to begin enrolling 7,500 hypertension patients age 55 and older around the country. The test: Whether aggressive treatment to lower systolic blood pressure below 120 – what’s considered normal – will prove healthier than today’s guidelines that urge getting it below 140, or 130 for diabetics.
The main focus is on heart and kidney health. But all participants will be screened for dementia, and a subset will undergo repeated cognitive testing and MRI scans to tell if lowering blood pressure also protects against a slide toward dementia. Another question: If older patients can tolerate bigger than usual blood pressure drops without side effects, such as falls.
With dementia rising fast as the population greys, even a small effect from better blood pressure control could have a big public health impact, says Dr. William Thies of the Alzheimer’s Association.
Other dementia-preventing efforts, such as targeting the sticky amyloid plaques in Alzheimer’s patients brains, haven’t panned out so far – while hypertension control has little downside, notes Pittsburgh’s Kuller.
More Proof Exercise Leads to Healthier Aging
January 26, 2010
Time
by Alice Parker
We all know that exercise is good for you. Staying physically active helps keep your heart healthy and your muscles strong, and in cancer patients it has even been shown to ward off relapse. Now a series of independently conducted studies on the effects of exercise in healthy older adults, published on Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, confirms that logging time at the gym not only helps maintain good health but may even prevent the onset of chronic diseases, such as heart disease, osteoarthritis and dementia.
In one surprising trial, researchers led by Dr. Teresa Liu-Ambrose at the University of British Columbia randomly assigned 155 aging women to three separate groups and directly compared the cognitive effects of two types of exercise: resistance training, done once or twice weekly, in which participants worked out with free weights and weight machines and did squats and lunges, versus toning and balance exercises, which participants did twice a week.
By the end of the yearlong study, the women who weight-trained saw an improvement in their performance on cognitive tests of memory and learning as well as in executive functions such as decision-making and conflict resolution — women who trained once a week improved their scores in executive functioning by 12.6% — while those who did balance and toning exercises showed no such improvement. The muscle-strengthening exercise also helped the volunteers, ages 65 to 75, boost their walking speed, a commonly used indicator of overall health status in the elderly, as faster pace has been linked with lower mortality.
The Canadian researchers’ findings were somewhat unexpected, given that previous studies on the issue have typically focused on aerobic exercise, which experts believe enhances cognitive function by promoting blood flow to the brain. Liu-Ambrose says her team speculated that anaerobic weight training would have a similar effect for other reasons. First, a resistance-training regimen requires a considerable amount of learning, especially for elderly people who may not be accustomed to the equipment. To learn how to use dumbbells, a leg press or a latissimus pull-down machine correctly, for example, the volunteers were required to focus on the task at hand, master new techniques and retain new information about proper and safe use of equipment. Previous studies have shown that such learning can help older adults maintain mental acuity.
The women also had to remember their weight settings and adjustments to the seats and keep track of the number of repetitions they completed, says Liu-Ambrose. “There is a lot more learning involved that may not occur if you take up a walking program,” she says, noting that it took the volunteers a good two months to get comfortable with the equipment and the training regimen.
In addition, Liu-Ambrose says, other studies have found that people who weight-train show an increase in blood levels of a growth factor that is important for maintaining skeletal mass. This factor, it turns out, also promotes nerve growth, which could be another way that resistance training boosts mental function.
In a second brain-function study, published in the same journal, scientists in Germany found that increased physical activity was associated with a lower incidence of dementia. In this study, researchers recruited 3,485 elderly residents in Bavaria and asked them about their physical activity. None of the participants had dementia at the start of the analysis, but after two years of follow-up, researchers found that those who exercised at least three times a week were half as likely to have developed dementia, compared with the people who reported no physical activity. Based on his results, says lead author Dr. Thorleif Etgen, a professor of psychiatry and psychotherapy at München University, “it doesn’t make a big difference if you have moderate or high physical activity. The important message is that you do any activity. And even if you start late in life, at 60 or 70, there is a benefit, for it’s never too late to start exercising.”
The key words are “moderate or high,” according to another study that was published on Monday in the Archives. Dr. Qi Sun, a researcher at Harvard School of Public Health, analyzed 13,000 women participating in the Nurses’ Health Study and found that when it came to exercise, more was better. Compared with women who jogged for 20 minutes a week, those who jogged three hours a week or walked briskly for five hours a week were 76% more likely to age successfully, free of chronic illnesses such as cancer and heart disease, as well as mental and physical impairment.
Sun’s group found that this benefit occurred across all weight divisions, meaning that even among those who were overweight or obese, women who exercised improved their odds of aging without chronic disease. The effects may apply across different age groups as well; the women were at least 60 years old by the time they enrolled in the study, and while Sun was not able to determine how long they had been exercising prior to that, the results suggest that the health benefits are not limited to the young.
That was the same message of the final exercise paper in the journal, by researchers at University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. In this trial, a group of 246 elderly women were randomly assigned to an 18-month exercise regimen or wellness program. The women participating in the four-times-weekly exercise sessions, which involved aerobics and balance and muscle training, improved their bone mineral density by nearly 2%. The women in the wellness group, which focused on walking, muscle relaxation and breathing skills, had a 0.33% increase in bone density over the same time period. Perhaps more important, participants in the exercise group saw no increase in their risk of experiencing a fracture-causing fall, compared with a 66% higher risk in the control group.
Despite the positive evidence, however, not all researchers are ready to suggest that exercise is a sure-fire prescription against mental decline or chronic disease in healthy people. To make that claim, a large, longer-term, controlled trial would be needed, in which participants are randomly assigned to exercise or not, and are then followed for the development of chronic conditions such as cancer, heart disease or dementia.
Low-Carb Diet Lowers Blood Pressure
January 26, 2010
WebMD
by Jennifer Warner
A low-carbohydrate diet may have health benefits that go beyond weight loss.
A new study shows that a low-carbohydrate diet was equally good as the weight loss drug orlistat (the active ingredient in Alli and Xenical) at helping overweight and obese people lose weight, but people who followed the low-carb diet also experienced a healthy drop in their blood pressure levels.
“I expected the weight loss to be considerable with both therapies but we were surprised to see blood pressure improve so much more with the low-carbohydrate diet than with orlistat,” researcher William S. Yancy, Jr., MD, an associate professor of medicine at Duke University Medical Center, says in a news release. “If people have high blood pressure and a weight problem, a low-carbohydrate diet might be a better option than a weight loss medication.”
Researchers say studies have already shown that the two weight loss methods are effective at promoting weight loss, but it’s the first time the health effects of each have been compared head to head.
“It’s important to know you can try a diet instead of medication and get the same weight loss results with fewer costs and potentially fewer side effects,” Yancy says.
Low-Carb Lowers Blood Pressure
In the study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, 146 obese or overweight adults were randomly divided into two groups. Many of the participants also had chronic health problems, such as high blood pressure or diabetes.
The first group was advised to follow a low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diet consisting of less than 20 grams of carbohydrates per day, and the second group received the weight loss drug orlistat three times a day, plus counseling in following a low-fat diet (less than 30% of daily calories from fat) at group meetings over 48 weeks.
The results showed weight loss was similar in the two groups. The low-carb diet group lost an average of 9.5% of their body weight and the orlistat group lost an average of 8.5%. Both weight loss methods were also not significantly different at improving cholesterol and glucose levels.
But when researchers looked at changes in blood pressure, they found nearly half of those who followed the low-carbohydrate group had their blood pressure medication decreased or discontinued during the study, compared to only 21% of those in the orlistat group.
Overall, systolic (the top number in a blood pressure reading) dropped an average of 5.9 points among the low-carb diet group, compared with an increase of 1.5 points in the orlistat group.
Researchers say weight loss itself typically produces a healthy reduction in blood pressure, but it appears that a low-carbohydrate diet has an additional blood pressure-lowering effect that merits further study.
WHO Denies Big Pharma Swayed Its Flu Decisions
January 26, 2010
Reuters
The World Health Organisation (WHO) denied on Tuesday that it was unduly influenced by drugs companies to exaggerate the dangers of the H1N1 flu virus.
Pharmaceutical firms picked up multi-million dollar vaccination contracts when the United Nations health agency declared the flu a pandemic last June.
Although many millions around the world have been infected with H1N1, and many thousands have died, the pandemic proved milder than health experts had originally feared.
Accusations from some politicians and media that the WHO relied too much on advice from experts in the pay of the pharmaceutical industry — who could have a vested interest in dramatising the crisis — have triggered an internal review by the WHO and an inquiry by the Council of Europe, a European Union human rights watchdog.
The WHO’s top flu expert, Keiji Fukuda, told a hearing at the Council of Europe that although the organisation’s response to the virus was not perfect, it had not been bounced into the wrong decisions by the drugs giants.
“Let me state clearly for the record. The influenza pandemic policies and responses recommended and taken by WHO were not improperly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry,” Fukuda told the Strasbourg-based body.
The Council, which groups together most European countries, called on the WHO to address concerns over the handling of the pandemic.
Many countries ordered tens of millions of doses of vaccines against H1N1 in a bid to protect their populations against H1N1 and are now trying to cut the orders or sell off surpluses of unused stock.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L), Novartis (NOVN.VX) and Sanofi-Aventis (SASY.PA) are among H1N1 vaccine producers.
SAFEGUARDS IN PLACE
Fukuda said the WHO consulted a range of experts, including scientists working in the private sector, when drawing up its health advice and had safeguards in place to protect against conflicts of interest.
“We are under no illusions that this response was the perfect response,” Fukuda told the hearing.
“But we do not wait until (these global virus outbreaks) have developed and we see that lots of people are dying. What we try and do is take preventive actions. If we are successful no one will die, no one will notice anything,” he added.
“We feel we should move quickly. Our purpose is to try to provide guidance, to try to reduce harm,” he said.
Accusations began circulating in British and French media in November that the H1N1 pandemic may have been “hyped” by health experts and medical researchers keen to boost study grants and line the pockets of drug companies.
At that time, France’s Le Parisien newspaper ran a headline saying: “Swine flu: why the French distrust the vaccine” and noted a gap between the predicted impact of H1N1 and the less dramatic reality, while Britain’s independent newspaper asked “Pandemic? What Pandemic?”.
The WHO said earlier this month that it would review the way it dealt with the flu outbreak, calling in independent outsiders to look at its workings.
Fukuda said the review would include scrutinising the way it classified virus outbreaks following widespread confusion over what the definition of “pandemic” actually meant.
Wisconsin Senate to vote on BPA ban
January 26, 2010 by Brandy
Filed under Government
January 26, 2010
Associated Press
The Wisconsin state Senate is poised to vote on a bill that would ban the chemical bisphenol A (BIS’-phen-ol) from baby bottles and other cups for children.
The Senate is scheduled to vote on the ban Tuesday. A similar bill was scheduled to be voted out of an Assembly committee on Tuesday as well.
The Senate bill would ban BPA in cups and bottles intended for children under age 5.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said research shows cause for concern over the chemical’s potential effect on children. The Food and Drug Administration says the six major makers of baby bottles and infant feeding cups no longer use BPA in those products in the U.S.
Connecticut and Minnesota passed similar BPA bans last year.
Obama to Propose Three-Year Federal Spending Freeze
January 26, 2010 by Brandy
Filed under Government
January 26, 2010
The Atlantic
by Derek Thompson
How Will Obama’s Spending Freeze Play in Washington?
The announcement that President Obama will freeze non-military discretionary spending for three years has the liberal caucus in a tizzy. The key fact is that non-military discretionary spending today is about 25 percent of the budget. Freezing 25 percent of spending while entitlements grow faster than inflation does not confront our deficit, but it does make the Democratic base really really mad.
Here are five quick questions about the gambit and some answers.
Where will the cuts come from?
This is being called a budget freeze, but the biggest parts of the budget won’t feel the frostbite. The exemptions include: security departments like the Pentagon, Homeland Security, the Veterans Administration, and entitlements like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The freeze targets close to a quarter of the yearly budget — departments like Education and Health and Human Services, agricultural subsidies and earmarks. The White House will provide a specific list of possible cuts to adhere to the freeze, but ultimately it will be up to Congress to determine how the money sloshes around.
Will it dent the debt?
A little. The freeze is not — repeat, not — tied to inflation. That means the cuts will get even deeper each year. $15 billion saved next year. Maybe $50 billion the next year, and $75 billion the year after that. The White House is projecting $250 billion saved over ten years. My understanding is that our projected accumulated debt over that time is close to $9 trillion.
Who is the intended audience?
There are a couple candidates. (1) Moderates concerned about the deficit, whom the administration fears are slipping away nationally, as they did in Massachusetts. (2) Republicans who want to see good-faith compromises from the president to verify that he is willing to work with them, not around them, in 2010. (3) Foreign investors looking for a signal that the administration is aware of/concerned about the deficit. This freeze would represent more of a psychological boost for bondholders than a substantive economic shift.
What do the Republicans/Democrats think about it?
It sounds like they’re laughing. And not with the president, either. At him. From the Times:
Republicans were quick to mock the freeze proposal. “Given Washington Democrats’ unprecedented spending binge, this is like announcing you’re going on a diet after winning a pie-eating contest,” said Michael Steel, a spokesman for the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio.
The year on liberal economists’ minds is 1937. That’s the year that FDR, seeing an economic recovery, pulled back the reigns on fiscal and monetary stimulus, causing the economy to “double-dip” into a second recession. The left is worried that, since government spending is very clearly fueling what consumer spending we’ve got going, tightening the federal budget could drive down the economy. You could also make the case that if the economy does turn down again after the freeze — whether or not the freeze has anything to do with the downturn — it will look horrible for the administration.
What could be the fallout/unintended consequences?
A couple theories are floating around. Could this be a move to slow the growth of earmarks? Possibly. By forcing a broadly Democratic Congress to wrangle amongst themselves for the cuts, it seems to me that he’s setting the stage for hoards of angry elect-eds who are in danger of seriously ticking off their constituents in an election year. Take Blanche Lincoln for example. She chairs the Senate Agricultural Committee, is a conservative Democrat, a swing vote on every major issue including health care, and is locked in a tough reelection battle. You think the White House is going to force her to sign off on agricultural subsidy cuts?
Maybe the administration thinks this move gives them political space. You propose a freeze that is unpopular with Congress, hold it over electeds’ heads as a bargaining chip, and then approach senators throughout the year making promises to spare their programs from the Deep Freeze in exchange for votes.
I’m interested to see how this polls. America’s deficit hawk streak has been on a tear for months. Confronted with this semi-serious effort to demonstrate deficit hawkery, will Americans applaud the move? I’m sure the administration is hoping it can buy some good will among moderate debt watchers — enough to forge ahead with a maybe-sorta-still-alive health care bill and apparently-very-still-alive jobs bill.
The Government owes $12,245,872,000,000!
January 26, 2010 by Brandy
Filed under Government
January 26, 2010
Associated Press
Figures on government spending and debt (last six digits are eliminated). The
government’s fiscal year runs Oct. 1 through Sept. 30.
Total public debt subject to limit Jan. 22 12,245,872
Statutory debt limit 12,394,000
Total public debt outstanding Jan. 22 12,302,465
Operating balance Jan. 22 142,454
Interest fiscal year 2009 383,365
Interest fiscal year 2008 451,154
Deficit fiscal year 2009 1,417,121
Deficit fiscal year 2008 454,798
Receipts fiscal year 2009 2,104,613
Receipts fiscal year 2008 2,523,642
Outlays fiscal year 2009 3,521,734
Outlays fiscal year 2008 2,978,440
Gold assets in September 11,041
