A Good Day Not To Be a Banker

"What we are witnessing is the culmination of deposit insurance, fractional reserve banking, an undefined currency and a long trail of bailouts and other interventions into the workings of the world of money. The Fed—and by extension the US taxpayer—has become the reinsurer of the banking system, willing to bear the risk of catastrophe."

The fact that the industry is dominated by a handful of giants, the biggest of which hold billions of dollars in odd sorts of derivatives, might be a catastrophe waiting to happen, one which could be extended far into the future by the same policies that turned the 1929 crash into a world depression -- and war.

"It slipped."

"It slipped," Stiff said, according to a law enforcement source.

But cops found a second bowling ball racked up on the Brownsville balcony - ready to roll, sources said.

Empty cans of Budweiser and several bottles of cheap rum sat next to a metal chair on the balcony yesterday morning.

Israel and Iraq

In fact, a lot of Sistani's feistiness and determination that Iraq is not going to end up with a long-term Western occupation derives from his low opinion of the Israeli treatment of Palestinians. The US can to some significant degree thank Ariel Sharon's iron fist for the distrust and suspicion with which their presence in Iraq is greeted. -- Juan Cole, with thanks to orlandobr. A blog worth paying attention to, I think.

More Mental Testing

Nihilist Bear


Which Dysfunctional Care Bear Are You?
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Fred on the Watchful State

"Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather live in a world with less enforcement of laws and more freedom to choose. Years back, this worked. In a society in which reasonable responsibility was culturally mandated, people took laws as guidelines. There were far fewer laws in the first place. The United States is now a country in which personal responsibility is attacked as elitist and electronic control of behavior seems set to become a substitute."