Month April 2008

Lunatic stock market

UBS announced a $11.9 bn loss today. Lehman said they’d managed to raise $4 bn in new capital to prop themselves up. Ordinary rational folks might think this would be construed as being seriously bad news, but not Wall Street,…

Protest music and societal fragmentation

Music, say some sociologists, is just one manifestation of a more fundamental trend. Opposition to the Iraq war, which commands strong majorities in the polls, has not produced mass marches on the Pentagon or shut down college campuses. The reasons…

Mortgage crisis solution proposed

A bold new plan from the federal government proposes to end the mortgage crisis and provide extra troops for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time. Homeowners whose mortgages have reset to higher interest rates can now…