The publicized and photographed overnight “runs” on Countrywide and the UK’s Northern Rock in mid-August were nothing compared to what’s taking place in the shadows of the real banking system. Credit contraction, with its inevitable companion of asset destruction, is spreading with the speed of an infectious bacterial disease.

– Bill Gross, Managing Director of PIMCO. They manage $720 billion in assets, mainly bonds.

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We’ll be having five days in a row of precipitation, which will certainly help bring an end to the “moderate drought” here in Connecticut.

The bad news is much of the precipitation will be freezing rain and sleet, which makes roads, driveways, and sidewalks extremely treacherous. (I went skating down the driveway this morning while getting the newspaper!)

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Today, there will be rallies in six cities organized by several organizations including Jesse Jackson’s RainbowPush. The main march will be on Wall Street at noon where protesters will demand Wall Street play a major role in helping those who are losing their homes.

Jackson wants financial leaders to restructure mortgage plans for people who risk losing their homes because they are falling behind in their payments, he said in a statement.

“Two million homes nationwide will be at risk of foreclosure by 2008,” Jackson said in a statement. “Most foreclosures result from shady products that have been offered by subprime lenders ultimately financed by Wall Street.”

This is expected to be just the opening move in a continuing series of protests.

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Britain is to embark on a wind power revolution that will produce enough electricity to power every home in the country, ministers will reveal [Monday].

The Independent on Sunday has learnt that, in an astonishing U-turn, the Secretary of State for Business, John Hutton, will announce that he is opening up the seas around Britain to wind farms in the biggest ever renewable energy initiative.

Wow. Imagine that. A government-backed plan to go completely renewable.

Now if the US government and Congress would only get off their dead ass and do something like this. Their stunning inaction on all matters having to do with climate change and renewable energy are embarrassing. While other countries speed ahead on developing renewable energy, the US government and Congress remain mired in what can only be described as deliberate willful ignorance on the subject.

Renewable energy and climate change should be  a major part of the presidential campaign debates. Yet hardly any of them are talking about it. Sad.

The US has vast deserts with little in them that could provide massive amounts of power, were solar plants to be installed. Wind power is quite feasible in many areas as is tidal and wave power. All that’s needed is the national initiative to do it.

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Not sure why it took me so long, considering my love of music and tech, but I just got my first iPod, an 8 GB Nano.

Ok, I truly get it now about Apple. Using iTunes to load the iPod is intuitive and easy. My next computer purchase will be a Macbook, and I suspect I’ll end up like Dave Winer, one of the creators of both blogging and podcasting. A few years back he blogged he was getting a Mac after years of using PCs and Windows, just to see what they’re like. He didn’t appear real convinced there would be much of a difference. Cut to now. A few weeks ago he mentioned his new home network has four Macs (and no Windoze.)

Yeah, I know everyone has said how intuitive the iPod is to use. And it truly is. So is OS X Leopard, no doubt.

(The next step is to hook up the iPod to the home audio and to figure out how to stream from the Net all over the house.)

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