Favorite Links Friday Week of August 26, 2016

First step taken toward logging Deer Mountain

The Alaska Mental Health Trust took its first step toward logging Ketchikan’s iconic Deer Mountain, along with a parcel in Petersburg.

During a Board of Trustees meeting Wednesday morning, the board agreed with staff recommendations to move forward with plans to negotiate timber sales for both parcels by Jan. 15th, unless Congress approves a bill trading that land for selected U.S. Forest Service land.

John Morrison is Executive Director of the Mental Health Trust. He said time is running out for the region’s timber industry, and the trust needs to make money while it can.

“We’ve reached the recognition that we need to be prepared to harvest the timber that we have while there is a timber industry to harvest it, in the event that the legislation is not passed this session of Congress,” he said.

Revenue from trust lands is the sole funding source for mental health programs in the State of Alaska.

Morrison said the lands to be exchanged have been identified through an administrative process. It just needs to get through Congress.

[Full Source]

Hope Solo: USA goalkeeper suspended for six months for 'cowards' comment

United States goalkeeper Hope Solo has been suspended for six months by US Soccer for describing Olympic opponents Sweden as "a bunch of cowards".

The 35-year-old was speaking after Sweden knocked her side out of Rio 2016 in the quarter-finals, winning 5-4 on penalties after a 1-1 draw.

US Soccer president Sunil Gulati said her comments were "unacceptable".

Sweden lost 2-1 to Germany in the Olympic final. [Full Source]

This is why nobody watches soccer....cause it's lame...

Iceland Experiments With A Jubilee Of Debt Forgiveness

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

A jubilee can be a dessert or a special event. In Biblical times, a jubilee was a year in which debts were forgiven, and that kind of jubilee never got much traction in the modern world. But Planet Money's David Kestenbaum has this story about one country giving it a try - Iceland.

KESTENBAUM: In Iceland, a lot of people have these odd mortgages that adjust with inflation. And when the financial crisis happened, there was a lot of inflation in Iceland. Heida remembers getting these statements saying she owed more and more. And I don't mean she just owed more that month. The total amount she owed to the bank went up by 30 percent. It's, like, if you'd borrowed $100,000 for your house, all of the sudden, you owed a $130,000.

JONSDOTTIR: It's kind of like you are drowning. That's the feeling.

KESTENBAUM: After the crisis, people were stuck with much larger mortgages than they'd started with. It was this wound that just would not go away. So last year, when Iceland's Progressive Party found itself with very low poll numbers, it proposed the jubilee, though it didn't call it that.

KESTENBAUM: The party promised to go back and correct everyone's mortgages - basically, forgive the additional debt everyone had built up in 2008 and 2009. It's a beautiful idea that you could go back in time and try to undo this one very painful part of the financial crisis, make it like it had never happened. One problem with the jubilee idea of forgiving debt is that there's always someone on the other side, someone who lent the money.

But there is a plan to make even this part feel painless. The money to pay for the jubilee would come from a tax on three dead Icelandic banks - banks that many people blamed for Iceland's part in the financial crisis. A lot of people were really into the proposal. The Progressive Party ran on the jubilee idea and won. [Read the full interview]

Despite what people believe, human nature doesn't change but rather goes in cycles--debt forgiveness is a good idea and has long historical precedence... what doesn't have historic precedence is "interest" which arguably is one of the reasons that precipitates these economic collapses.....

This 350-foot megayacht comes with its own private 'beach' onboard

Award-winning Norwegian design studio Hareide Design has released new renderings for a concept yacht.

Its name, the 108m, refers to its 108-meter-long "mono hull." To differentiate itself on the crowded superyacht scene, the boat includes a garden, a "beach" area, two pools, and a double-story "Grand Hall" with an enormous floor-to-ceiling window.

These features were designed to give the boat a seamless indoor-outdoor experience and provide a connection to nature, according to the designers.

"Today's mega yachts are most often designed like floating luxury hotels with interiors based on traditional luxury," Einar Hareide, founder of Hareide Design, told DesignBoom.com. "With this hybrid megayacht concept we want to shift the focus from extrovert admiration to creating a platform for actively experiencing the beauty of nature and the changing elements." [Full Source]