Yes. CMBX. As in Commercial Mortgage Backed Credit Default Swaps. They’re currently going south big time, signaling that commercial real estate itself is in trouble. Wait, wasn’t subprime residential real estate just supposed to be a little blip and not contagious? Whoops, guess not.

Hey, what’s happens if huge banks own hundreds of billions of dollars of TGPKAI (Toxic Glop Previously Known As Investments) and not only can’t sell them, they can’t even price them? So, they just sit on the floor stinking up the place while everyone either runs in panic or pretends it’s not happening. Until the garbage rots the floorboards and the floor collapses, that is.

Citigroup reports $134.8 billion in ‘level 3′ assets ( level 3 assets have “no reliable price” and are impossible to sell, because they are difficult to price and no one wants to buy them.)

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Stop drinking seltzer water. Asymptotic Life stopped drinking four bottles a seltzer water a week, crunched the numbers on CO2 savings, and found it was a startling two tons.

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The Left Coaster does a lengthy and useful comparison of the policies and actions of candidates Clinton, Obama, and Edwards towards Iraq and Iran and finds, despite their rhetoric, no significant difference. All are hawkish.

Progressives need to present an alternative plan to prevent “strategic drift”, they say, suggesting the following.

Suspend training and arming forces in a deadly civil war
Broker a political settlement to Iraq’s conflict
Buffer Iraq’s neighbors from the effects of the conflict

While these appear well-meaning enough, they also imply the US ought and should be an active participant in the process, managing events. Worse, it appears comatose about the cause of “Iraq’s conflict,” which of course was the invasion by the US followed by the noxious constitution shoved down their throats which makes Iraq a puppet of the US, giving them practically no sovereign powers. Why should any of the players there be expected to trust the US to suddenly do the right thing by brokering a fair constitution? More to the point, shouldn’t the task of creating a constitution for Iraq be left to Iraqis, and be free of US interference?

As for buffering the conflict from Iraq’s neighbors, this would have to be done by military, which certainly sounds like the US would remain there. So how does this plan bring the troops home? Answer. It doesn’t.

Implicit in this three-part plan is the assumption of imperialism, that US could and should continue to manage and control events in the Middle East - the same attitude, albeit kinder and gentler, that created the problem in the first place.

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Lots of people know what is driving up the price. It can be stated simply — the demand line has crossed the supply line -

Production from Saudi Arabia and Mexico is slowing, China is importing much more and using their stockpiles of dollars to bid up the price, oil field equipment is often old and creaky, and the “major” oil companies only control 5% of world production with the other 95% coming from state-controlled companies - many of whom are not friendly to the US.

Might be a good time to sell your gas hog, assuming you still own one.

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