Tag: ek Politics

Here’s a pretty good summary of Bankster crime.

This summer.

In London.

String of summer scandals tarnishes reputation of London’s financial industry

By Associated Press

Published: August 7

First came U.K. bank Barclays. Its chief executive, Bob Diamond, was forced to step down last month after U.S. and British authorities fined the bank $453 million for manipulating a key market interest rate. Other banks are being investigated for their part in the scandal.

Then there was HSBC, another big London-based bank. It faces fines of up to $1 billion after the U.S. Senate issued a damming report last month alleging it had failed to stop the laundering of Mexican drug money.

Back in May, JPMorgan Chase & Co. disclosed a surprise $2 billion trading loss – later upgraded to $5.8 billion – racked up by its London office in a portfolio designed to hedge against risks the company takes with its own money.

…

And now Standard Chartered, that most predictably profitable of British banks, has been accused by a regulator in New York of laundering Iranian oil money for years.

And what is the problem with this?

“We will get out of it, but it is a blow that means regulators will have a greater say in life, which means that economic growth will be slower.”

Coalition deadlock as Nick Clegg and David Cameron veto each other

Patrick Wintour, The Guardian

Monday 6 August 2012

Nick Clegg’s plan for constitutional reform and David Cameron’s scheme to shift parliamentary boundaries in the Conservatives’ favour both lay in ruins on Monday as victims of the prime minister’s inability to persuade his backbenchers to support an elected House of Lords.

A subdued and depressed Clegg announced he was abandoning all plans to reform the Lords in this parliament, adding as a result he will also be instructing his MPs to vote down revised parliamentary boundaries designed to reduce the number of MPs to 600.

…

The announcement represents a personal blow to Clegg, who had championed widescale political reform as a distinctive Liberal Democrat contribution to the coalition but has been thwarted at virtually every turn.

It leaves the deputy prime minister increasingly reliant on an upturn in the economy, progress on social mobility and a broader liberal agenda to justify the original decision to form the coalition with Cameron.

…

Clegg was eager on Monday to limit the damage from the collapse of Lords reform – insisting the government would still be anchored in the centre ground, and focused on delivering a revival of the economy, the reason the coalition agreement was made in the first place. He said a relationship of mutual trust and respect could be maintained with his partners.

Sucker or Liar?

UK coalition in crisis over parliamentary reform

By Tim Castle and Mohammed Abbas, Reuters

Mon Aug 6, 2012 2:56pm

The scuppering of Lords reform, a key plank of the coalition agreement struck in May 2010 with Cameron’s Conservatives, is particularly damaging for Clegg as it fuels the perception that the Liberal Democrats have gained little from going into government with a party that was not their ideological ally.

…

However, neither governing party is eager to sink the coalition and spark an election during a recession, and while polls show both parties are unpopular.

…

Dropping Lords reform is especially difficult for his party because he backed an unpopular proposal to increase university tuition fees as part of the coalition deal, a move that saw the Liberal Democrats hemorrhage support in opinion polls.

…

Jeremy Hunt, a Conservative minister, said Clegg’s announcement was disappointing but said the coalition would remain focused on its economic program.

“There isn’t a cigarette paper between us on that. That is what we are focused on getting the gold medal for. Nothing is going to change that focus,” he told Sky television.

Electoral Victory?  Hah, hah, hah, hah, hah.  They don’t care about that any more over there than they do over here.

An Annual Reminder.

Echo… echo… echo… Pinch hitting for Pedro Borbon… Manny Mota… Mota… Mota…

You may remember my brother the activist.  I keep trying to get him to post, but he’s shy and busy.  He sent me this yesterday and I thought I’d share it with you.

I need to add that he’s a great admirer of James Carville’s political savvy (though not his policies) and one story he likes to tell is how during the height of Monica-gate Carville was on one of the Talking Head shows and made a point about how important it is to stay on message.  Carville then proceeded to demonstrate his gift by working the phrase “Cigarette Lawyer Ken Starr” 27 times in the next 30 seconds.- ek

The date – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 needs to be as well known to Joe and Jane American as September 11, 2001.

Presidential Daily Briefing of August 6, 2001 PDB

Declassified and Approved for Release, 10 April 2004

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct foreign terrorist attacks on the U.S. Bin Ladin implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the fighting to America.”

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a [deleted] service.

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an [deleted] service at the same that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike.

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.

So Vice President Dick, tell me again how the REPUBLICANS WILL KEEP US SAFE?

So Senator McSame, tell me again how invading and occupying IRAQ has helped the U.S. hunt down BIN LADEN?

I’m printing my own bumper stickers filled with images from 9-11 and this text-

“I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center”- Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor

“All right. You’ve covered your ass now.”- George W. Bush

Leaving a sinking ship-

As Libor Fault-Finding Grows, It Is Now Every Bank for Itself

By AZAM AHMED and BEN PROTESS, The New York Times

August 5, 2012

Major banks, which often band together when facing government scrutiny, are now turning on one another as an international investigation into the manipulation of interest rates gains momentum.

With billions of dollars and their reputations on the line, financial institutions have been spreading the blame in recent meetings with authorities, according to government and bank officials with knowledge of the matter.

…

Authorities around the world are investigating more than 10 big banks for their roles in setting global interest rates like the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. Such benchmarks underpin trillions of dollars of financial products, including mortgages and student loans.

Regulators are examining whether banks colluded to move the rates up or down to get extra profits and limit losses on their trading positions. Some banks are also under investigation for reporting artificially low rates to make themselves appear financially healthier.

When banks first started conducting internal investigations at the behest of regulators two years ago, they figured the potential penalties would be manageable, according to bank officials.

But the size of the Barclays settlement and the growing public outcry have left banks scrambling to limit their culpability as the threat of criminal actions increases. Part of the banks’ problem is that their internal investigations have created a road map that authorities are using to pursue criminal and civil cases.

…

The financial industry often tries to negotiate a common deal to avoid getting singled out for bad behavior. This year, five banks collectively struck a multibillion-dollar agreement with federal authorities to address foreclosure abuses.

With the rate investigation, institutions are not sharing information or even discussing the case with rivals, according to lawyers involved in the matter. In part, they do not want to appear to have close ties with their rivals, since such cozy relationships are part of the government’s inquiry.

…

The Justice Department is aiming to file criminal actions against two banks before the end of the year and is preparing to arrest former traders at Barclays and other banks, according to government officials. In addition, state attorneys general and local district attorneys have approached the Justice Department in recent weeks, seeking a role in the case.

Coming home to roost-

Banks face valuation losses

Reuters

August 6, 2012

Global banks are delaying what will be an inevitable shift to valuing unsecured derivative positions at market rates because it could hit their bottom lines, but new global prudential regulations next year are set to force their hands.

Traders and accountants have known for some time what is only becoming apparent to the public now – the London Interbank Offered Rate or Libor, the interbank funding rate now at the centre of a rigging scandal, is not the appropriate price to value most derivative deals on banks’ books.

…

As of now, no one’s quite sure how entities with huge discrepancies in funding costs will arrive at a market standard for pricing unsecured trades.

FVA, or funding valuation adjustment, is a bitter pill to swallow. In the simplest terms, it means traders have to absorb the rise in borrowing costs over the past four years into the way they price a swap, pay for an option or discount future cash flows from long-term derivatives.

…

All that’s clear is the absence of collateral makes these trades riskier, and the economic case for revised valuations is strong.

The Basel III reforms, which kick in from next year, prescribe capital requirements for unfunded deals. The amount of margin banks will have to post with their clearing agents will likewise build as interest rate swaps, currency forwards and other over-the-counter derivatives are mandatorily cleared on exchanges.

I’ve been disappointed so often it’s hard to get enthusiastic, but facts are stubborn things and the current corrupt Merchantilist system is not going to be able to satisfy even its own ‘beneficiaries’.  It wasn’t the peasants who demanded the Magna Carta, it was the Barons.

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book 4 Chapter 8–

But in the system of laws which has been established for the management of our American and West Indian colonies, the interest of the home-consumer has been sacrificed to that of the producer with a more extravagant profusion than in all our other commercial regulations. A great empire has been established for the sole purpose of raising up a nation of customers who should be obliged to buy from the shops of our different producers all the goods with which these could supply them. For the sake of that little enhancement of price which this monopoly might afford our producers, the home-consumers have been burdened with the whole expence of maintaining and defending that empire. For this purpose, and for this purpose only, in the two last wars, more than two hundred millions have been spent, and a new debt of more than a hundred and seventy millions has been contracted over and above all that had been expended for the same purpose in former wars. The interest of this debt alone is not only greater than the whole extraordinary profit which it ever could be pretended was made by the monopoly of the colony trade, but than the whole value of that trade, or than the whole value of the goods which at an average have been annually exported to the colonies.

It cannot be very difficult to determine who have been the contrivers of this whole mercantile system; not the consumers, we may believe, whose interest has been entirely neglected; but the producers, whose interest has been so carefully attended to; and among this latter class our merchants and manufacturers have been by far the principal architects. In the mercantile regulations, which have been taken notice of in this chapter, the interest of our manufacturers has been most peculiarly attended to; and the interest, not so much of the consumers, as that of some other sets of producers, has been sacrificed to it.

So tonight at 1:30 am-ish the new Mars Rover, Curiosity, will, if all things go as planned, land gently on the surface near Gale Crater close to the Martian equator.

If I sound a little tentative it’s because there’s a lot that could go badly.

For one thing this whole separate rocket descender concept is a bit complicated.  The idea is that you don’t need the motors and fuel once you’re on the ground so you’re better off ditching them.  I think that stringing your mission critical cargo beneath another chunk of untested junk that could go spectacularly, amusingly, and expensively wrong is a mite…

ambitious.

But hey, I’m not a rocket scientist.

As I write NASA has already forgone their last course correction and is debating a final update to the data that the computers will use.  The rover has to land independent of radio control because light is slow and on a round trip to Mars takes just a little under half an hour.  If you’ve ever gamed over a sucky connection or are a high frequency trader you know what I’m talking about.

But people aren’t talking about that very real problem and are instead focused on the “Seven Minutes of Terror” that uses conventional atmospheric braking and includes a radio blackout from the plasma which will only be 50% or less (one way) of the regular everyday lag.

No one has a really good record at landing intact probes on Mars, though the United States has the best.  This is why last time out we sent both Opportunity AND Spirit in the expectation something would probably fail.

Instead they were both incredibly successful, far exceeding their designed objectives.

This time we have only 1 lander and it’s the size of an SUV, not a Golf Cart.  The mission is not to find life, but to determine if conditions on Mars could have supported the development of life.  I consider this a pretty settled question, but you can never know too much and actual results often lead to unexpected discoveries.

We will probably not know tonight, or even for the next week, whether things have gone as planned.  If the lander is even partly functional we can get some data, if not it would be 8 months to get there if we launched tomorrow.

However once down and functional Curiosity should prove much more capable than its predecessors.  It has nuclear power for one thing so we’ll be a lot less dependent on favorable storms.

And if you are a Deficit Hawk who likes to pretend money matters I invite you to compare the $2.5 Billion for the Curiosity program to the $23.7 Trillion we gave to the Banksters.  Even a non-rocket scientist can use a calculator to figure out that’s just barely over .0001%.

And because no frontier is final without Tiberius-

Here are some places you can stream the video commentary-

• PCMag- How to Watch the Mars Curiosity Rover Landing
• Los Angeles Times- Where you can watch Curiosity Mars landing coverage

Jon Stewart’s extended interview with Fred Guterl.

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

I haven’t written a lot about Mitt Romney because it’s too painfully obvious that he’s a soulless, unprincipled waste of breath, the epitome of the sociopathic thieving greed heads who’ve ruined our environment and economy, as well as an out-of-touch selfish piece of shit who has utterly no empathy or understanding of anything not Mitt Romney.  It really is like the whole world disappears when he leaves the room for him.

I’d say his only natural talent is lying except he’s very bad at it.

Nor do I waste much time on Republicans as the Party is merely a haven for ignorant bigots and those who prey on their gullibility.  The only reason they survive at all is the Democratic Party resurrected them as a stalking horse for their own basic instincts to defraud and steal from the people of the United States, all 99.9% of us, for the benefit of their corporate masters.

Jon is not the only ‘liberal’ who misses the point.

Irony Appears Lost on Romney

By: Jon Walker, Firedog Lake

Friday August 3, 2012 9:31 am

The simple fact is that Romney has made claims about his tax returns that he refuses to provide proof for. The position of the Romney campaign is that the everyone should simply trust what Romney says about his taxes even though Romney won’t verify them by releasing his returns. Now that Reid is the one making claims about Romney’s tax returns, though, Romney ironically claims it is totally unacceptable for someone to make statements unless they are willing to provide the proof to back them up.

In the same interview Romney attacks Reid for not being willing to “put up” proof to back up his claims, Romney makes his own counterclaims that Reid is not telling the truth, while he himself is still refusing to “put up” the simple piece of proof that would show if Reid is wrong.

It really is that transparent, and it would be ‘irresponsible’ not to speculate.

The problem is that Democrats are lying too when they say what matters is ‘electoral victory’.

Reid Quadruples and Quintuples Down on Romney Tax Return Comments

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Friday August 3, 2012 10:56 am

The liberal squishes deeply concerned with Reid “playing dirty” are sadly typical, but it’s not going to change Reid’s position.

…

In yet ANOTHER comment (quintupling down?), Reid welcomed Romney to Nevada by reiterating that he couldn’t be confirmed by the Senate to a Presidential appointment without releasing more tax returns, adding that “The contents of the one year of returns he has released would probably be enough to tank his nomination anyway: secret overseas bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands, tax avoidance tricks and a lower tax rate than middle-class families pay.” He also connected the tax plan Romney has put out, the subject of a damning Tax Policy Center report this week, to the tax returns issue. Not only is the very rich Romney hiding his tax exposure, he’s planning as President to make millionaires pay less and the middle class pay more. “In short, Romney’s message to Nevadans is this: he won’t release his taxes, but he wants to raise yours.” That’s a winning slogan.

My final point is, and I’ve said this before, you can stop talking about Democrats being “weak.” They know how to play politics; none of them got into office as idealistic rubes. They can be tough. They can play dirty. They just don’t want to do that for things like genuine universal health care or increasing Social Security benefits or protecting the climate or ensuring workers’ rights to collective bargaining. When it’s about getting their guy re-elected, sure they’ll get tough. Just not on, you know, liberal policy, which isn’t really their main focus.

A government unresponsive to the needs of the people will inevitably fail.

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

When Gridlock Works: Cybersecurity Bill Stuffed, For Now

By: David Dayen, Firedog Lake

Thursday August 2, 2012 11:06 am

The Senate, unable to come up with a schedule for amendments, blocked the cybersecurity bill today in an outcome that, despite being a result of Republican obstruction, satisfied Internet activists who had been urging a no vote.

…

He (Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid) decried the fact that meetings continued on amendments without a deal, and that the Chamber of Commerce, which opposes the legislation because they feel it still puts too many demands on business groups to maintain standards for resisting cyber attacks on public infrastructure, was driving the process. Lawmakers took out the mandatory standard prescriptions on businesses, but the Chamber of Commerce still finds the bill too stringent. “Republicans are running like scared cats” on the legislation, Reid said. “The Chamber of Commerce has now become the protector of our nation’s security.”

But if the Chamber is forcing Republicans to “run scared,” privacy groups and experts are running from the bill as well. Though they did get improvements from the truly awful CISPA bill that passed the House, most activist groups on the left paying attention to the bill still oppose it. The activist group Demand Progress generated 500,000 contacts to Congress opposing the bill, and the coalition Fight for the Future has been rallying against the bill as well.

…

The best hope for stopping these breaches of privacy for coming into being is to kill a cybersecurity bill that many experts have doubted is necessary, especially without the mandatory standards. Sometimes gridlock is a friend.

As with Keystone XL, Social Security, and Medicare/aid this is likely a temporary victory.  Versailles is convinced the proles have too much and want to take it away.  The solution is to fire them.

All.

Remember in November.

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Bank official admits economists were to blame for recession

A top economist at the Bank of England has admitted that his profession should share the blame for the financial crisis and recession.

By Philip Aldrick, Economics Editor, The Telegraph

12:01AM BST 01 Aug 2012

Andy Haldane, executive director for financial stability at the Bank (of England), said economists misled policymakers in the years before the crisis by promoting a “blinkered” view of the world based on the assumption their theories were unfailingly correct.

…

He said the error was not driven by economists seeking financial gain but “the quest for certainty”. But their error was to think of the assumptions used to build economic models as cast-iron laws.

“A concept gets formalised and then gets socialised and then believed as an almost theological doctrine,” he said. “The notion of not knowing, of imperfect information, of uncertainty, got lost from economics and finance for the better part of 20 or 30 years.

“I think one of the great errors we as economists made was that we started believing the assumptions of economics, and saying things that made no intellectual sense. We started to believe that what were assumptions were actually a description of reality, and therefore that the models were a description of reality, and therefore were dependable for policy analysis.

“With hindsight, that was a pretty significant error.”

(h/t Naked Capitalism)

Just in case you think this will have any effect on faith cult not science voodoo academics-

Greenspan – I was wrong about the economy. Sort of

Andrew Clark in New York and Jill Treanor, The Guardian

Thursday 23 October 2008

A long-time cheerleader for deregulation, Greenspan admitted to a congressional committee yesterday that he had been “partially wrong” in his hands-off approach towards the banking industry and that the credit crunch had left him in a state of shocked disbelief. “I have found a flaw,” said Greenspan, referring to his economic philosophy. “I don’t know how significant or permanent it is. But I have been very distressed by that fact.”

It was the first time the man hailed for masterminding the world’s longest postwar boom has accepted any culpability for the crisis that has engulfed the global banking system.

…

“I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms,” said Greenspan.

They have learned nothing at all.

Who To Listen To

Paul Krugman, The New York Times

July 30, 2012, 9:03 am

One thing that’s striking in Portes’s discussion – and something I very much agree with – is the irrelevance of formal credentials. As we’ve debated how to deal with the worst slump since the 1930s, a distressing number of economists have taken to arguing on the basis that they have fancy degrees and you don’t – or in some cases that well, you may have a fancy degree too, and even a prize or two, but in the wrong sub-field, so there.

But all this counts for very little, especially when macroeconomics itself – or at any rate the kind of macroeconomics that has dominated the journals these past couple of decades – is very much on trial.

I’ve always wanted to use that title.

Maybe I can get Samuel L. Jackson to play the Pope.

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Twitter Restores Journalist’s Account But Remains at Ethical Crossroads

By Mat Honan, Wired

July 31, 2012

When news broke that Twitter had suspended journalist Guy Adams’ account for violating its privacy rules by tweeting the email address of NBC executive Gary Zenkel, it sent shock waves across the Twitter community.

…

Here’s an interesting thought experiment. Imagine that instead of going after an NBC executive, Adams’ target was a dictator. Imagine that Adams tweeted, say, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s email address, along with a call to action to protest his policies. Had Twitter worked back-channel with the Syrian government, showing it how to have Adams’ account taken down on a technicality, it would clearly be an indefensible act of censorship. Heads would roll.

But even though the issues at play are smaller when someone criticizes Olympic coverage, Twitter’s actions are no more defensible. Especially because Adams broke none of Twitter’s rules.

…

Just because the Adams flare-up revolves around sports on TV, Twitter should take this no less seriously than were it a geopolitical issue. The same principle is at stake: free speech. Although Twitter must comply with local laws, none were broken in this case. Twitter should defend that principle, or abandon it completely. There’s no room for middle ground – especially when it involves a corporate partner. Users are right to be distrustful of Twitter after this debacle. Reinstating Guy Adams’ account was a good first step, but Twitter needs to go farther.

…

It needs to treat the person who gave special favor to NBC no differently than it would treat someone who gives special favors to the Syrian regime. It must stand by its “tweets will flow” stance in every case if it’s to demonstrate that it stands for principles, and not just marketing.

Or, it can be a big media player, like its partner, Comcast, which owns NBC.

Just another example of the casual crony corruption of the current capitalist system.

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

A World Without Coral Reefs

By ROGER BRADBURY, The New York Times

July 13, 2012

It’s past time to tell the truth about the state of the world’s coral reefs, the nurseries of tropical coastal fish stocks. They have become zombie ecosystems, neither dead nor truly alive in any functional sense, and on a trajectory to collapse within a human generation. There will be remnants here and there, but the global coral reef ecosystem – with its storehouse of biodiversity and fisheries supporting millions of the world’s poor – will cease to be.

Overfishing, ocean acidification and pollution are pushing coral reefs into oblivion. Each of those forces alone is fully capable of causing the global collapse of coral reefs; together, they assure it. The scientific evidence for this is compelling and unequivocal, but there seems to be a collective reluctance to accept the logical conclusion – that there is no hope of saving the global coral reef ecosystem.

…

But by persisting in the false belief that coral reefs have a future, we grossly misallocate the funds needed to cope with the fallout from their collapse. Money isn’t spent to study what to do after the reefs are gone – on what sort of ecosystems will replace coral reefs and what opportunities there will be to nudge these into providing people with food and other useful ecosystem products and services. Nor is money spent to preserve some of the genetic resources of coral reefs by transferring them into systems that are not coral reefs. And money isn’t spent to make the economic structural adjustment that communities and industries that depend on coral reefs urgently need. We have focused too much on the state of the reefs rather than the rate of the processes killing them.

Overfishing, ocean acidification and pollution have two features in common. First, they are accelerating. They are growing broadly in line with global economic growth, so they can double in size every couple of decades. Second, they have extreme inertia – there is no real prospect of changing their trajectories in less than 20 to 50 years. In short, these forces are unstoppable and irreversible. And it is these two features – acceleration and inertia – that have blindsided us.

…

This is not a story that gives me any pleasure to tell. But it needs to be told urgently and widely because it will be a disaster for the hundreds of millions of people in poor, tropical countries like Indonesia and the Philippines who depend on coral reefs for food. It will also threaten the tourism industry of rich countries with coral reefs, like the United States, Australia and Japan. Countries like Mexico and Thailand will have both their food security and tourism industries badly damaged. And, almost an afterthought, it will be a tragedy for global conservation as hot spots of biodiversity are destroyed.

What we will be left with is an algal-dominated hard ocean bottom, as the remains of the limestone reefs slowly break up, with lots of microbial life soaking up the sun’s energy by photosynthesis, few fish but lots of jellyfish grazing on the microbes. It will be slimy and look a lot like the ecosystems of the Precambrian era, which ended more than 500 million years ago and well before fish evolved.