Today's best

Great monochrome commercial for Audi

Wish I could go to this "Illustration Rally" in Bilbao...

John Stewart on U.S. torture: Daily Show clip

Currently reading: Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken -- I'm at a chapter that details a fantastic cascade of thought and action from Emerson to Thoreau to Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Beautifully crafted and written.

Rock, Paper, Scissors for the Bail Out

About a month ago, I started talking with some friends and family about the sub-prime mortgage scramble, and the inevitable business deal that would have to take place between the Fed and the financial sector. That somebody, in some meeting, would need a hefty incentive to volunteer to insert his finger in the hole in the dike that Bear Stearns drilled. Economist Dean Baker does an excellent job of explaining how the whole scenario runs:

The Welfare King of the 21st Century
By Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research

" ...While the subsidy involved in the below market lending is easy to see, the commitment to support the investment banks is probably the bigger subsidy to the Wall Street crew. The basic story here is that the investment banks made commitments, mostly in the form of credit default swaps, that they lack the resources to honor. These credit default swaps are essentially a form of insurance. The investment banks promise to make payments to bondholders in the event that there is a default on the bonds they hold.

The banks were prepared to deal with an occasion default, but they don't have the resources to deal with the sort of large-scale collapse that we are now witnessing as a result of the bursting of the housing bubble. Mr. Bernanke has effectively told the banks' creditors not to worry, because the Fed will make good on these credit default swaps, even if Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, or Goldman Sachs can't.

This is a very nice deal for the investment banks, because they got the fees for selling the credit default swaps, not the Fed. And they were very big fees, making the banks and the bank's executives extremely wealthy. In effect, the investment banks sold insurance that they actually were not in a position to provide. Instead the Fed is providing the insurance, but the investment banks get to keep the money they got from selling the insurance: nice work, if you can get it..."

Taxi to the Dark Side: Response

America who are you?
Are you who you want to be?
A once proud Nation
for Honor,
for Liberty.
Does that Nation stand behind
the good Person you want to be?

America who are we?
Does our land reflect
Our
Faith
Our
Hope
of what we want our children to see?

America who are you?
Who do you want to be?
Search your Heart
your
Dreams
You are the child of Freedom,
born with a promise to Humanity.

Step into the Light child.
Show the world your face.
You are not gone
your life is still strong.
Step Forward
Step Forward
to be the Nation
who You Were Born to Be.