SAR #8183

The game is over and you are not a winner.

'No' is the new Yes! After officials all the way up to the White House denied there was any American involvement in Iraq's deals with major oil companies, it turns out that the contracts were drawn up by American lawyers under the State Department's wing.

Bernanke's Neighborhood: A vicious smear campaign has started suggesting that because the US gets such a free ride from being the world's premier currency, the Fed should act to lower inflation on a global basis! Pshaw: the Fed's not even concerned about it domesticly.

Your Mileage May vary: Stock markets around the world have no turned out to be great places to park your retirement funds. In Germany the DAX is down 20% this year, in France the CAC is down 22%, Britain's Footsie is down 15%, while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong is down 21%. Shanghai's Composite Index is down about 50% and the Bombay 500 is down about 40%. Makes the Dow look pretty good.

Put It On My Tab: Credit card debt is defaulting faster and faster and analysts are anticipating increased losses. WaMu, which is sort of the bellwether of bad tidings, reported first-quarter charge-offs at 9.32% -$2.5 billion. Rising unemployment means rising card defaults. It is that simple.

Another Shoe: A year ago the Bank for International Settlements warned that the credit bubble would burst with "much higher costs than is commonly supposed." Now the BIS cautions that we are heading into a much deeper and longer lasting deflationary crisis "with much higher costs than is commonly supposed."

Diagnosis: According to Lawrence Summers, "We are in an economic environment where we have more to fear than fear itself." It's the solvency, stupid.

Let's Be Reasonable: US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson again explains: High oil prices are a supply and demand phenomenon for which there ise no quick solution. In other words, stop blaming me and my Wall Street friends.

Protecting The Base: Under Mr. Bush's tax cuts for the rich, the US savings rate has fallen from 6 to 1% and while consumer debt doubled. The plan works!

More Bad News: Jim Rogers, who in April 2006 correctly predicted oil would reach $100 a barrel and gold $1,000 an ounce, said investors should steer clear of the US dollar "at all costs" and favor commodities this year.

Vocabulary: Scientists and lay people have written and written, talked and talked about the dangers of global warming and climate change, but haven't found a way to say: " the world is about to become something unrecognizable. Do something!" Maybe math will work. The enemy is atmospheric CO2 and the number is 350 ppm. Anything above that and we are risking the future. We're already at 387.

Pudding: Remember the Export Land Model of peak oil? In the first 5 months of 2008. Russia's oil exports fell 5% from last year. The government says it was due to lower production and increased domestic use. Sound familiar?

Porn O'Graph : Crudely Put