BFF. Seven banks seized today

Eight were seized last week. The trendline for Bank Failure Friday is definitely rising.

Doug Henwood on liberal reaction to Tea Party

Liberals have done their fair share of puffing up the Tea Party. They love nothing more than getting hot and bothered over the fascist threat as a way of scaring people into voting for Democrats as our last line of defense against the brownshirts. Yeah, the TP is awful, and a lot of people hate [...]

The Bob & Sue Traveling Road Show moves on

Cedar Breaks National Monument

We’re moving! Yet again.

Sue is a CPA and Certified Fraud Examiner. We moved to Orange County for an business possibility for her that ended in Feb. There are no jobs or contracts for CPAs in SoCal now. In fact, they were laying off CPAs during tax season, something [...]

Sen. Dodd, as always, guts financial reform while pretending to favor it

We really need a special circle in Hell for Dodd.

Alan Grayson discloses that Dodd Bill covertly eliminates already passed legislation requiring full Fed audit.

Jon Stewart To Muslim extremists threatening South Park “Go f*ck yourself”

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c [...]

Arizona to pass harsh immigration law

Polls show 70% of the population supports the law, which mandates that police can check anyone for immigration papers, that municipalities can not declare safe haven and ignore the law, and that citizens can sue if they think police aren’t enforcing the law strongly enough. The governor will redoubtably sign the bill. There have been [...]

Greek debt crisis goes nuclear

Greek bond yields rose from 7.8% to 10.38% in one day. There are virtually no sellers for insurance against a default either. This is highly unusual, and most definitely a bad moon rising for Greece.

Apparently the vampire squids of Goldman Sachs played a role in tarting up Greece’s books (I knew you’d be [...]

Imagine a city of 13 million with continual blackouts

That’s Dhaka, Bangladesh now. Uncontrolled growth is a primary reason that blackouts now occur every few hours, something which usually shuts down the water supply too. And here I get cranky when the Internet goes down for ten minutes. If you’re reading this on a laptop in a developed country, you are in the global [...]

Financial reform not tough enough, says NY Times

NY Times weighs in on financial reform: “loopholes.” Too many derivatives trades are exempted from public disclosure on exchanges. Too many users are subject to relaxed scrutiny. Regulation in hindsight is not adequate to prevent systemic collapse. It is not clear in the reform bills if synthetic CDO’s would be traded on exchanges and subject [...]

How to get passengers off high speed rail without stopping the train

A mere 5 min stop per station [between two Chinese cities] (elderly passengers cannot be hurried) will result in a total loss of 5 min x 30 stations or 2.5 hours of train journey time!

So, what if the train didn’t have to stop? (Audio in Mandarin)