SAR #8278/Weekender

Of course we don't learn from our mistakes,

we don't even recall them

Definition: Dictator was a political office of the Roman Republic. The dictator was above the three branches of government in the constitution of the Roman Republic as no other body or officer could check his power. (Thanks Debt Rattle .)

Correction: Goldman Sachs now predicts the US recession will be "significantly deeper" than previously thought. 'Headline' unemployment (the number cited by the Bureau of Faulty Statistics) will reach 8% by 4Q09 and will probably not peak until 2010. 3Q08 GDP growth will be 0.0% at best. U6, a broader measure of unemployment and underemployment used by Bureau of Labor Statistics but not often publicized, now stands at 11%.

Book of The Dead: Who gets bailed out next?

Stop Me If You've Heard This Before: The toxic financial instruments on banks' books are not the problem. The problem is that homeowners cannot afford the mortgages that underlie the bad paper. Thus the foreclosures. Houses do not support the valuations placed on them. Thus the downward spiral. Moving the financial instruments onto the Treasury’s books does not stop the rising default rate. Falling car sales, rising unemployment and an on-rushing recession are not going to improve homeowners' ability to pay their mortgages or qualify for new loans. Another bubble, quickly inflated, is the only thing that can stave off disaster.

Me Too! Schwarzenegger has asked Tribunes Paulson and Bernanke for a $7 billion 'loan' in order to pay state employees and to keep the lights on. He'd also like to fill up the Hummer.

Blowing Bubbles: Unnoticed in all the noise about the credit crisis, the sub-prime crisis, and the banking crisis are two long term bubbles that are reaching their bursting points. One is the easy energy bubble (which peak oil has doomed) and the other is the population bubble (which has doomed itself).

Leftovers: Congress want the SEC to let banks value bad assets at a price they might fetch later on. This approach was advocated earlier by five friends of Charles Keating back in the S&L days. Ask McCain how that turned out. Bad idea then, still is.

Slow Learners: A U.S. missile strike, or maybe two, struck inside Pakistan again on Friday, killing 21, 12, or 9 people, 16 (or at least some) of whom were foreigners. Most of the dead were not women and children, this time.

Silenced After the Storm: On September 14th, Hurricane Ike hit the Texas coast, destroying Galveston and devastating a great swath of the coast and inland far north of Houston. 45,000 homes were destroyed. Millions were without power and water, for weeks, not days. I bring this up because you probably didn't hear much about it. The Media was not allowed to film people stranded on rooftops, prohibited from filming the crushed and scattered small towns. Prohibited from reporting what was going on in FEMA's latest battle zone. Freedom of the press? It too seems to have been pretty badly battered.

Way Back Machine: By reconstructing DNA and RNA strands from decades-old tissue samples, scientists have discovered that the most wide-spread strain of HIV was established in African urban areas as early as 1884.

Porn O'Graph: The unemployed Underemployment data.