After two years of struggling to maintain outsized returns as gas prices sank to 10-year lows and trading regulations grew tighter, Arnold told investors he would return their funds and pursue “other interests”, according to an investor in the fund who had received the letter.

Natural gas prices tumbled after news of the fund’s closure, ending the day down nearly 5 percent.

Centaurus, famed for gaining more than 300 percent in 2006 by taking bets opposite to those held by failed rival Amaranth Advisors, was the most successful energy hedge fund ever, boasting a compound annual return of about 130 percent.

Formed in 2002 when Arnold was a 20-something whiz kid from Enron, Centaurus grew to as much as $5 billion at its peak, earning him a personal fortune estimated at $3 billion.

In recent years, Arnold’s pledge to give away three-quarters of his fortune drew more attention than his trading prowess.

At the fund’s offices in Houston, a 65-story blue glass skyscraper that is a landmark in the posh Galleria area, several casually dressed employees entering the Centaurus suite declined comment, saying only: “He’s retiring.” A person who answered the phone there said no one was available to comment.

Arnold and his fund drew measured praise from some peers and rivals who have watched his career — often with awe — over 17 years. But there was little surprise at his move.

Arnold had thrived on the extreme volatility of the natural gas market, once the Wild West of commodities. But booming output of shale gas in recent years has produced a glut of natural gas in the United States, taming prices which have plumbed their lowest levels in a decade.

“I think his style, and how the market was during his time of trading, was really legendary. He just kept making returns with that kind of volatility,” said former Sempra star gas trader Todd Esse, who now manages about $500 million at hedge fund Sasco Energy Partners in Westport Windows XP Key, Connecticut.

“Success never went to his head, that’s for sure.”

The Centaurus Energy Master Fund is the biggest one that is open to outside investors Exchange Server Key, the source said. Arnold had a total of about $4 billion assets under management last year, although the source estimated that the Master Fund held around $2 billion.

The fund suffered its first-ever annual loss in 2010, and Arnold, who turned 37 last year, reduced its size because of diminishing market volatility and tough new limits on commodity speculators. He returned $1 billion of capital to investors last summer. The fund gained less than 10 percent in 2011.

Natural gas futures extended earlier losses by about 5 cents per million British thermal units (mmBtu) on news of the fund’s closure, halting a recent rebound in prices from a 10-year low hit two weeks ago.

Some traders said Arnold may need to unwind positions to close out the fund. Other analysts said the losses were a reflection of waning faith among traders that natural gas is going to recover any time soon.

“When people see this big a speculator getting out of the game, there is a possibility that, because fundamentals are weak anyway, it does take confidence out of the market,” said Phil Flynn, analyst, PFGBest Research in Chicago.

ON THE HILL

Arnold is not the only commodity fund manager to bow out after one of the most industry’s difficult years. Pierre Andurand and his partners said a month ago they would shut down BlueGold Capital, an oil-oriented fund Where to buy windows 7 key, after a 35 percent slump in 2011. Billionaire George Soros said a year ago that he would stop managing outside money, converting his fund to a family office.

Like many hedge fund managers Arnold shunned the media, but his youth and success drew widespread attention, and he was called to testify before Congress in 2008 as soaring energy prices prompted a political attack on speculators.

Traders said U.S. regulatory moves toward position limits on speculation in commodity markets may have constrained a trader like Arnold accustomed to placing big bets. Centaurus has been hit with small fines in recent years for violating position limits on NYMEX natural gas.

In recent years Arnold has focused more on philanthropy. In 2008, he and wife Laura, founded the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, that funds a variety of causes in areas including criminal justice and education.

Arnold also was among those wealthy individuals who was part of Warren Buffett’s “The Giving Pledge,” pledging to give away 75 percent of his wealth over his lifetime.

(Additional reporting by Bruce Nichols, Barani Krishnan, Edward McAllister and Jonathan Leff; Editing by David Gregorio)

The controversial drone program, a key element in U.S. counter-terrorism efforts, is highly unpopular in Pakistan, where it is considered a violation of sovereignty which causes many civilian casualties.

A Pakistani parliamentary committee recently demanded an end to drone strikes on Pakistani territory as part of its recommendations for how its relationship with Washington should change. The United States has given no indication it intends to halt the campaign.

The remotely piloted aircraft targeted an abandoned girls’ high school building used by militants in Miranshah replica watches, the main town in North Waziristan, the officials and witnesses said. Three militants were wounded.

“We intercepted internal conversation of the militants asking for arranging four coffins for the slain men in the drone attack. We don’t know about their identity and nationality but those living in the girls’ school were mostly Arabs,” a security official said.

A local resident, Haji Niamat Khan replica watches, said more than two dozen militants were living in the school when it was attacked.

The last drone strike replica watches, on March 30, killed four suspected militants and wounded three in the same town of Miranshah, a known hotbed for Pakistan Taliban and foreign militants.

The strikes are a major stumbling block in restoring ties with Washington, badly frayed after an inadvertent cross-border attack by NATO aircraft on Nov 26 last year killed 24 Pakistani troops.

The United States says the strikes in Pakistan’s unruly northwestern tribal regions along the Afghan border are very accurate and there is minimal collateral damage.

(Additional reporting by Haji Mujtaba in MIRANSHAH and Saud Mehsud in DERA ISMAIL KHAN; Writing By Mahawish Rezvi; Editing by Chris Allbritton)

What the President’s pronouncement does is set the stage to further ramp-up the volume in the Kulturkampf that will pass for this year’s presidential election. The delineations between “red” and “blue” states are essentially those between states whose populations define themselves as religious or secular with a preponderance of religious people identifying with the Republican party and secular folks with the Democrats. There are independent and swing voters in both categories and people who straddle the fence.

Social conservatives say that “marriage” is only between a man and a woman, primarily citing religious imperatives and directives to that effect. Liberals talk about equal rights for all Americans and no discrimination based on sexual preferences. Both groups want legislation to enforce their particular view of this domestic arrangement. That’s where both sides have it wrong.

The one question not asked in this debate is “Why is the government in the marriage business at all?” Marriage and other intimate relationships are very much at the core of one’s personal life, which ought not be anyone’s business. Why is the government determining the status of marriage of any kind and why do married people receive preferences or differentiations in their tax status?

Government should not be in people’s bedrooms. The best way to handle the issue is to get government out of the marriage business entirely. Let couples be joined either religiously or with any kind of ceremony they want (or not) and/or with legal contracts drawn by lawyers stating their mutual and reciprocal responsibilities without the government being the certifier or arbiter of peoples’ status as a couple. Why do we need a “government stamp” on these personal decisions? And if people decide to split-up, let the courts just handle property settlements as civil suits. The government should not be granting divorces either. A waste of government time, personnel and money.

To make this entirely fair Tattoo Gun For Sale, there ought to be no discriminatory laws or preferences for singles or couples, particularly in taxation. Everyone should pay the same rate. Folks should be able to designate (especially for medical emergencies and the like) who their significant other is Tattoo Supplies sale, likewise for inheritance issues. Tax deductions for dependents (particularly children) should not be contingent on marital status Tattoo Machines, but on dependent status which makes things fair for single parents.

Because we have separation of Church and State, as enshrined in the Constitution, the logical resolution to this issue is for government to shutter the marriage bureaus entirely and leave these things to peoples’ consciences and preferences.

The gay marriage debate is a sideshow to the more important challenges facing Americans during this critical election year — it enables both candidates to effusively pander to their core constituencies on an issue that is decided on the state, not federal level anyway. Let’s get government, at every level out of the bedroom and focused instead on the basic, essential services which really are its mandate.

“We see a picture of the economy healing Tattoo Ink Supply,” Alan Krueger, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told CNBC.

“Given the problems that the economy has had over the past decade, we need faster growth; we have a very large jobs deficit, we are making progress. We need to do the things to continue to build on that progress.”

Employers added 115 Cheap Tattoo Machine,000 new jobs to payrolls in April after hiring 154 Machine Gun Tattoo,000 workers in March. While the unemployment rate fell to 8.1 percent, it was largely the result of people giving up the search for work and leaving the workforce.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by James Dalgleish)

Politics Money

As bewilderment mounts, public opinion appears to be congregating around two main conclusions – that he is insane or evil – or both.

The problem is the legal and psychiatric processes often fail to recognise either conclusion. So after weeks of harrowing testimony the Norwegian public could be left upset or enraged that they have been cheated of justice.

It may come as a surprise that two of the most obvious phenomena we see around us – madness and wickedness – are not recognised by experts. But this is because specialists claim they dig deeper and therefore end up in a different place. Also legal and medical professionals are supposed to engage in argument and decisions over these kinds of cases, in an un-emotional manner.

Yet it feels impossible to respond to Breivik in any way other than a heightened emotional one. Indeed it seems almost sick to not do so.

But flick through psychiatric textbooks and diagnostic manuals, and you won’t find ‘Evil’ formally listed anywhere. Yet you will encounter a term which appears to be the closest scientific equivalence to evil – this expression is – psychopath.

The modern clinical term for evil might therefore be sociopath or anti-social personality disorder (ASPD) or dissocial personality disorder. The ever-multiplying number of different expressions reflects an attempt by academics to find a dispassionate, scientific, or non-emotionally laden way of talking about Discount White Herve leger, and researching the phenomenon.

This is a personality disorder, which (see our previous article on this here) and has been one of the most common clusters of diagnoses metered out to so-called ‘lone wolf’ killers, of which Breivik appears so far most close to.

A personality disorder refers to an enduring set of attitudes and behaviours which go on all your life – so crucially it’s not like an illness which arrives and changes you – instead you were always that way. The puzzle is the court has so far not been hearing evidence of long-standing deep personality flaws which would anticipate such gross violence. Most suffering from deep psychopathy would have been in serious trouble with the police before, or had a history of conflict, fights, or anger management, and so on.

Perhaps we will be hearing evidence along these lines later.

Personality disorders reveal pasts littered with social isolation or short term unsatisfactory relationships, with difficulty holding down jobs or staying within any kind of organisation such as a political one.

Breivik doesn’t appear to have been able to cooperate for any extended period with even the small groups of ultra-right wing extremists that he seems to have made contact with. Those he might find himself most aligned to, have also since dissociated themselves with him. In 2006, he moved in with his mother ‘to save money’ and then devoted 16 hours a day to playing on line computer games. At face level this is classic of a certain kind of inadequate personality type. We already covered how data from his playing of such games might be analysed to assist in the diagnosis in a previous article here.

Of course neither gaming nor living with your mother are either in themselves signs of a disturbed mind. They are part of a pattern which emerges in a case where patterns are difficult to discern. The data provided by the way he played computer games may provide additional clues as to his personality when he himself is an unreliable witness to himself. The context is that Breivik appears to display a degree of social ineffectiveness and social isolation; he spent a lot of time by himself and struggled to establish and maintain intimate human relationships.

But Breivik apparently claims this was all part of a strategy which would culminate in the devastating attack five years later. Meticulous long term, relentless, single-minded planning is not usually consistent with the impulsivity linked to anti-social personality disorder, or the chaotic mind set associated with psychosis.

In court, Breivik claimed to have been ordained into a militant-nationalist group called the Knights Templar in London in 2002, but then he has to date refused to answer, apparently according to some reports, over 100 questions on the topic. This is very interesting from a psychiatric standpoint. He could just be lying, or covering up for collaborators. Someone who has a delusion, arising out of a psychotic illness, is not aware that what they are saying is not true. They firmly believe something which is palpably nonsensical to anyone else.

Yet a psychopath is more likely to know they are lying, and so endeavours to cover up. Some clinicians would say this response ticks a box for a personality disorder such as anti-social.

So far, Breivik hasn’t been reported thus far in court to suffer overt classic psychotic symptoms such as delusions or auditory hallucinations (hearing voices). A psychotic illness strikes you down and deviates you from your previous life path, and so is distinctly different from a personality disorder which dates back to childhood.

In this context it’s intriguing that it has been reported that about 10 years ago Breivik started to change profoundly, around the age indeed that, statistically, paranoid psychotic disorders are most likely to start. As a schoolboy Cheap DKNY Dresses, it’s reported he was fond of hip-hop music and had a Muslim best friend. But then he began to view immigrants as enemies, and those accommodating them as traitors who must be killed. Did this reported shift arise out of some psychotic mental illness which started then?

But not all extremists, or even the majority, are frankly psychotic. Some espouse extremist causes because politics can provide an external focal point for everything going wrong in your life. Blaming enemies can be a convenient explanation for your own lack of success.

Yet demanding to be released and treated as a hero, as he apparently has done in the past, appears delusional. As does his statement to the court last week that they only have two options – to release him, or execute him, when neither is indeed the most likely outcomes.

In one of the most pivotal moments in the last few days of testimony, before shooting his first victims, Breivik claimed he heard “100 voices” in his head telling him not to do it. Does this mean he was literally hearing voices? It’s quite a strange expression. If he wasn’t formally experiencing auditory hallucinations, is this a hint that he may have in the past?

What is key about this evidence is that it sounds like Breivik has come the closest he has ever done in describing a strange kind of conscience. If he had doubts and was torn, then this provides a clue that he’s not falling into the category of psychopath quite so neatly. This is why investigating precisely what was going through his head at that precise moment is so important. These so-called ‘100 voices’ telling him not go ahead appears contradictory to his other plans to detonate more bombs, decapitate the prime minister, and kill more than he managed to.

The crucial bit of the evidence is missing – how come he just moved on and started shooting people? How did he rebut these voices in his head – if they really were there? Did he say to himself that these people deserve it? The ends justify the means? Did he remind himself of his grand mission to save Norway? Did he know, delusionally, what the outcome would be?

Unfortunately we don’t know the answer to these questions, and that could be because Breivik so far doesn’t appear to have been yet subject to the right kind of cross-examination which would clarify the darkening mystery surrounding him.

We can only hope these questions are yet to come. But as it’s reported his personal evidence is going to finish on Monday, we might be running out of time. It might seem almost offensive to try and understand the motivation and psychology of mass killers, but given there is some tentative evidence this kind of tragic event might be increasing in recent times, it becomes vital to spot patterns so that preventive action can be taken.

But another reason we might be against the clock, is it’s not unknown for this kind of mind set to be contemplating suicide. This might be the only way now left of eluding the ultimate indignity, and impotence, of incarceration.

Suicide also assists in confronting so many truths a murderer may have psychologically avoided so far, which living a long time might be the only treatment for.

While suicide prevention strategies may well be in place, one truth that has emerged this week, is this is a person who appears capable of delivering death, against all odds.

While $68,000 will net you a super Nissan that challenges the likes of Porsche Tattoo Supplies, a V-Spec edition will surely cost you quite a bit more. Something tells us there will be plenty of buyers waiting in line with their check books in hand, so Mr. Ghosn and company shouldn’t spend much time worrying if they’ll attracting enough customers.

Related Gallery2008 Nissan GT-R Details

[Source: Inside Line's Straightline]

“Did you know that it was never supposed to be called a Charger?”

The man posing the question is Ralph Gilles Discount Hale Bob Dresses, President and CEO of Chrysler’s SRT group. According to Gilles Discount Herve Leger gown, the modern Charger was styled to have been branded differently Discount Herve leger strapless, but the suits wanted a sporty full-size four-door. The design team delivered what was asked and the marketers went ahead and applied the name. Much to the chagrin of many a Mopar fanboy on the planet.

Thankfully, our time with the the affable Mr. Gilles wasn’t spent pondering the last generation LX’s branding issues. Or refinement issues. Or interior gaffes. Instead Herve Leger sale, Chrysler rounded up its newest factory-fettled performance superstars in Southern California so we could get some quality time with the latest generation of SRT machines, including the 2012 Dodge Charger SRT8.

This updated model provides a welcome change compared to its predecessor. Some may still feel that the last-gen Charger may not have deserved to wear the badge Discount DKNY Dresses, but Chrysler’s latest is clearly closer to its B-Body brethren. To find out just how close, we strapped in and ran down some of California’s finest roads on our way out to Willow Springs for some track time.

Aston Martin may not be the only premium European automaker interested in Toyota’s innovative iQ microcar. According to Inside Line and Autocar in the U.K. DKNY Dresses sale, BMW and Toyota are in talks to collaborate on future small cars based on the Mini and iQ platforms. BMW may possibly use the interior and diminutive platform from the Japanese automaker’s next-gen iQ for its long-rumored Isetta revival Replica Bandage dresses, possibly with an electric powertrain.

In return Buy Chanel Dresses, Toyota would gain access to the German automaker’s Mini division – specifically the Coupe and Roadster that were recently shown in concept form ahead of their expected debuts at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September – though its not currently clear what Toyota would do with them. Neither company has confirmed these reports Replica Herve Leger gown, so we’re currently taking this rumor with an appropriately large grain of salt.

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[Sources: Inside Line Buy Marc Jacobs Dresses, Autocar]

Click here for a slideshow of one abandoned block in Flint, Mich.

Dan Kildee is driving with his knees and talking with his hands as his rental car pushes 80 mph on a stretch of Interstate 69 near East Lansing, Mich. But that’s not what scares me. What really gets me nervous is how he insists on eye contact as he discusses his plan for saving the rest of America from the sorry fate suffered by our shared hometown of Flint. “It really comes down to getting people to stop assuming that expansion is always desirable,” Kildee says. “The important thing is how people feel about their city when they stand on their front porch in the morning Buy Marc Jacobs Dresses, not how many people actually live in the city. It’s just irrational to simply pursue growth.”

Dan Kildee

As we swerve around a familiar Michigan tableau—a dead deer on the side of the highway—Kildee previews the speech he is scheduled to deliver that afternoon on a familiar Michigan imponderable: “The Future of Michigan Cities.” For Kildee, the talk is yet another chance to trumpet what he sees as a common-sense approach to urban planning in an age of decline. Others view it as a radically un-American idea that embraces defeat and limited horizons.

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First, he says Herve leger strapless sale, shrinking cities must accept that they’re not going to regain their lost populations anytime soon. Abandoned houses and buildings should be leveled and replaced with parks, urban gardens, and green space. Eventually, incentives can be used to lure residents into higher density neighborhoods that have been reinvigorated with infill housing and rehab projects. While there are no hard numbers, local governments could save money by reducing infrastructure costs, and the housing market would stabilize, if not improve.

For many years, Kildee had no real way of making this vision—Utopian or not—a reality. As the treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint, he oversaw a tax foreclosure process that often took seven years to complete, and private speculators always had first dibs at public auctions. Kildee simply couldn’t get his hands on very many abandoned houses. So he helped craft legislation in Michigan in the ’90s that enabled public “land banks” to quickly gain control of delinquent property—and the revenue it often generates. Once it acquires a property, the land bank can sell it, rent it, or demolish it. It also collects interest penalties and principal from property owners behind on their taxes, rather than selling off the debt at a reduced rate to private investors, as many municipalities do.

Kildee brought an evangelical zeal and a knack for attracting an audience when he took over the local land bank in 2002. He has appeared on Al Jazeera and in the pages of the New York Times. He has lectured at Harvard. With a shrug, he mentions that his pal Michael Moore put him in Capitalism: A Love Story (albeit only as a DVD extra).

Earlier this year, Kildee stepped down from his county posts and co-founded the Center for Community Progress, a well-funded if blandly named nonprofit based in Flint and Washington and dedicated to helping distressed cities. Kildee now splits time between a suburban home just outside Flint and a D.C. condo. He’s working with state and local officials to try his approach in cities like Buffalo White Herve leger sale, N.Y.; Cleveland; Little Rock, Ark.; and New Orleans. He met with President Obama on the campaign trail to talk urban policy and meets often with administration officials. He sees his work expanding to the West and the Sun Belt as once-booming cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas deal with rampant foreclosures and declining populations.

As Kildee points out, more cities in the developed world shrank than grew in the last three decades. More than 40 of those cities were in the United States, according to City Mayors, an urban affairs think tank (slogan: “Running the World’s Cities”). Germany is credited with pioneering many of the ideas Kildee espouses. After reunification, nearly 2 million Germans abandoned the former Communist East for the more prosperous West. Declining birthrates and employment trends also have created shrinking cities throughout the rest of Europe. In Japan, an aging population and strict immigration rules have emptied out many cities and towns.

Flint is an obvious laboratory for Kildee’s approach, if not the ultimate shrinking-city proving ground. Immortalized in the film Roger & Me, Flint has lost nearly 80,000 GM jobs in the last half century and suffered through the ensuing demographic fallout. Flint’s population dipped to just over 111,000 in 2009 from a peak of nearly 200,000 in 1960. Last year Cheap Marc Jacobs Dresses, it lost a bigger percentage of its population than any other large city in the country.

Kildee managed to tear down more than 1 Replica Missoni Dresses,000 houses before leaving the land bank. But roughly one-third of all parcels in Flint, including about 6,000 homes, remain abandoned. If all the empty structures and vacant lots were consolidated, there would be 10 square miles of abandonment in the city. Demolition costs about $9,000 per house, and there’s just not enough money to cull Flint’s blighted housing stock completely.

But Kildee insists demolitions are just part of the plan. He says the “genius” of his approach is that it implements a regional land use strategy that redistributes real-estate wealth. The land bank often gains control of property in Flint’s more prosperous suburbs that can be sold or rented. (A single such sale last year netted $323,000.) The money can then be used to raze or rehab property in the urban core. “The city of Flint built Genesee County by importing cash and exporting products around the world for decades,” he tells the panel audience, to enthusiastic applause. “The shoe is now on the other foot. The economic model we’ve developed takes some of that money back to restore the city. And by doing that the entire region improves.”

That’s the kind of rhetoric that fuels Rush Limbaugh’s ire—Kildee was targeted in a memorable rant in 2009—and rankles national property rights advocates. For others, the plan simply runs counter to America’s can-do spirit, its reputation for boundless optimism. “Politically, it’s hard for mayors to stand up and say ‘Well, I think we ought to be smaller. I think we ought to lower our expectations,’ ” says Robert Beauregard, director of the Urban Planning Program at Columbia University. “That’s not a speech many politicians want to deliver.”

Kildee also has critics closer to home. In Flint, many blighted neighborhoods are predominantly African-American, and the plan triggers memories of failed urban-renewal projects that displaced black residents in the 1960s and ’70s. Kildee admits he hasn’t successfully countered the misconceptions surrounding his work. For example, he has never advocated forcing residents to leave their homes or cutting city services to compel relocation, as Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has hinted. Kildee also says he doesn’t want to bulldoze entire neighborhoods, instead favoring a block-by-block approach.

And then there are the more mundane issues. The land bank now owns 10 percent of all the parcels in Flint, and it struggles to board up the empty houses and mow the vacant lots. “I don’t blame the residents for complaining,” Kildee says. “But popularity doesn’t equal good policy. The land bank’s first obligation should not be property maintenance. It should be focused on transformative, catalytic policies.”

Think of it as a kind of manifest-destiny-in-reverse for urban areas. “We have a 35-year history of letting so-called market forces deal with the problem of abandonment in cities, and we all know how well that worked out,” Kildee says. As a fellow Flint native—one whose childhood neighborhood is now dominated by abandoned houses—I don’t need him to elucidate.

Like Slate on  Facebook. Follow us on  Twitter.

This time around Burberry Replica Watches, the Hyundai Santa Fe CRDi (Common-Rail Direct injection) supplied Tholstrup with his thrill. After the diesel mid-size sport utility vehicle not only transported Tholstrup from Adelaide to Sydney on a single tank of gas — with over a quarter of a tank left — Tholstrup decided to trek a little bit farther to Port Macquarie for a total of 1 Wholesale Replica Rolex Watches,100 miles and over 50 miles per gallon. Not bad for an all-wheel drive mid-sized seven-seater weighing in at just under two tons.

In a press release yesterday Fake Bvlgari Watches, Hyundai touted the achievement in the same breath as it denounced hybrids such as the Lexus RX400h as less efficient vehicles with issues surrounding battery disposal and cost. Hyundai has rumbled here and there within the last year about creating affordable hybrid versions of its vehicles Replica Sinn Watches, and it and even went so far as to launch the Portico concept vehicle in Chicago, but so far, no firm plans have been announced.

[Source: Gizmag]