SAR #8343

Does our money have a 'use by' date on it?

Road Warriors: An attack on NATO's Portward Logistic Terminal near Peshwar left more than 30 dead and 106 vehicles destroyed including 62 Humvees on their transports. A simultaneous attack on the nearby Faisal depot destroyed an additional 60 vehicles destined for Afghanistan.

The Real Deal: If the BLS used the same parameters it used before wholesale political manipulation of the data set in, the November unemployment figure would have been 12.2%. But these days we don't count the 637,000 that gave up trying to find a job last month. Just being unemployed doesn't qualify you to be counted as unemployed.

Worse, then Worser: Nassim 'Black Swan' Taleb says doomster Roubini is an optimist. Taleb sees the economic system deteriorating much faster than the 5-6-7 years it took the Great Depression, and wreaking much, much worse devastation, worldwide.

Priorities: First the Republicans get to bad mouth the Unions and stomp them down a bit more, but after that Congress will find a way to bail out Cerberus the Big Three. Propping up Detroit into the spring will save Cerberus and its powerful friends most of their $2 billion investment in the auto business.

Egress, this way: Ben & Hank's excellent plan was to reinflate a bubble, any bubble. Looks like they've found it in 10 and 30 year Treasuries. Keep this in mind as you rush in, that reinflation will lead to inflation.

Failure: No deisel, no food, no electricity, no democracy and now a cholera epidemic. Quite simply, Zimbabwe is dying.

Doubting Thomas Paul: The economy is falling fast. Employment is disappearing at a rate of 6 million a year before the Big Three crater. Obama's infrastructure spending revival will take months and months to get the tent up and the chairs set. To quote Krugman, "I'm getting scared." That's economics speak for "Run!"

Car Czar: Congress will go along with giving away a pittance to Detroit, but along with the money they get a Czar to look over their shoulder. Can't trust those manufacturers with $30 billion without supervision like we could Wall Street with $350 billion.

Registered warrants: What California calls the IOUs it will use to pay bills once the money runs out. They got the idea from companies that issue little bonds in lieu of interest payments on their bigger bonds. Try paying your electric bill that way.

Don't Peek: Gun nuts can now carry loaded weapons in the National Parks so they can save themselves from packs of rabid of boy scouts. A parting gift to the NRA from George the Unindicted.

Spot Quiz: Will We Be Honest in Our Healthcare Reform Effort? The answer is no. Single payer is the only reform that makes sense and converting to a single payer system would wreck the economy. It'd be much worse than shutting down the Big Three. If you find this hard to understand, you are suffering from Attention to our Deficit Syndrome..

Crossroad: A SWAT team in full drag, semi-automatic weapons and all, kept the Stowers family immobilized on their living room couches for 9 hours while the team searched for an illicit food supply. Rationing? We don't need no stinking rationing. Nor warrants, apparently.

Difference: Fannie/Freddie's new policy that limits one person to mortgages on but four houses is seen as a treat to investors. I thought this bailout/foreclosure nonsense was directed at home-owners, not house-owners.

A Rose: Peggy Noonan's half right. She argues that "Homeland Security" has echoes of Nazism and has at best provided the illusion of security. She thinks it should be renamed. I think it should be required to behave constitutionally and then be disassembled and its day-care-for -adults program be reassigned to HHS.

Turf War: Obama's Treasury nominee Tim Geithner first goal for the improvement of the economy appears to be canning fellow Republican Sheila Bair, chief of the FDIC. Her crime? She shows indications of being concerned with the welfare of homeowners as opposed to mortgage owners - and behaving like a liberal Democrat won't be tolerated in the Obama administration.

Porn O'Graph: In the distance, hoofbeats...