SAR #9156

Either greed or gullibility was sufficient to cause our downfall,
together they guaranteed it.

The house always wins…: PPIP is in the ICU. Banks - now that they can't get public funds to buy their own toxic assets from themselves at inflated prices - don't want to play. Even though the government was prepared to overpay for them, selling would force the banks to book big losses. For now the banks will sit on their 'legacy loans' and see if some future recovery will prop them up a bit. If not, they're sure to get rescued later.

Big Brother Bird Is Watching: Scientist are using satellites to track emperor penguins by their poop. A little like tracking Americans through their cell phone useage.

Playing Dress-up: From electricity consumption to a rebound in commodity prices and a putative increase in demand for oil and other natural resources, reports of improvement in China's economy seem... decorative?

Bidding War: Goldman Sachs sees oil at $85 a barrel by December, $90 in a year, OPEC sees oil only in the $70 - $75 range. Ignore the ulterior motives of the sources; gasoline was $2.44 a gallon at the Grab 'n Go this morning.

Apples & Oranges: Cutting carbon emissions will decrease the earning of the S&P 500 by 14%. A new study predicts the higher cost of carbon, as proposed in Congress, would hurt the earnings of 14% of the S&P 500. Too high a price, just to save people and small animals.

On the Never Never: At the beginning of the housing bubble lenders eliminated such barriers to home-ownership as having a down payment or a prayer of making monthly payments. Turned out to be not such a Good Idea, and down payments returned. But don't worry, the FHA will give you the money for a down payment, so you still don't have to have any skin in the game.

That's a Baby: In the last 50 years, the US population went increased by half. At the current immigration-driven rate, it will double to 600,000,000 by mid-century. Usual prize to any who can demonstrate that this is in any way desirable.

Porn O'Graph: The rich really do get richer.

Houskeeping: Some Safari users report not being able to access a new SAR daily. I do not know what causes this, for SAR is published every morning, six days a week, at 8:55 my time (your mileage may vary). And yesterday (June 4th) my IE browser was unable to access the proper days SAR (it kept coming up with the previous day's version). This is a blogger/blogspot website and I use their plug-in layouts. All I do is post my text. The html is theirs. I'd love to hear from folks who have problems. I'd also love to hear from anyone who has a solution! Either via comments or email to ckm3 at bellsouth dot net, Thanks.