SAR #9191

We should have learned.

What's wrong with this question: "Is Goldman Stealing $100 Million per Trading Day?" The answer doesn't matter, what does is that most of us view it as a valid question.

Line Up Quietly: California isn't rushing to close its budget deficit, so state workers are being sent home, taxpayers are getting IOUs as tax refunds, and the National Park Service is set to take back the parks it gave the state if it can't keep them open. Elsewhere, NJ is upping its sin taxes on cigarettes, booze and wealth, Illinois may release 10,000 prisoners to cut the cost of feeding them. Washington dropped 40,000 from their health care program and is hiking tuition 14%, Vermont is closing highway rest stops - which can't save much money and will turn out to be costly in lives.

Go Away! Subprime mortgages aren't fading quietly into the sunset. Having started the housing crunch, now the repos that resulted from subprime foreclosures are being dumped on the market, further forcing down prices.

Q & A: "When Will The Recovery Begin? Never." Robert Reich.

Subsitute: During the Great Depression, most of those in need still had family 'down on the farm.' No longer. Now 33 million Americans are on food stamps.

Know Thy Enemy: Richard Scott has become the rabid right's liar-in-chief on health care ("Obama wants to put bureaucrats in charge of your health care...). Scott should know - his bureaucracy, Columbia/HCA, cheated enough folks that it had to plead guilty to 14 felony counts of criminal misconduct. It also paid $1.7 billion to settle over-billing charges. Yep, gotta watch those bureaucrats. 'Specially those lining their own pockets.

Fixer-Upers: At the end of June some 5,300 buildings across the US were in "financial distress". Over $100 billion in commercial real estate is now in some stage of default/foreclosure.

In Over Its Head: The worlds largest shipper, Maersk Line, with 470 ships and about 2 million containers, lost $559 million in the first quarter of 2009.

Buy the Numbers: China claims that car sales rose 48% in June, and so far this year are up 18%, to 6.1 million units. Is this possible? If so, their demand for petroleum should surge and their output of carbon dioxide, too. Let's hope it's just bragging.

Self-Centered: One quarter of British homeowners complain they can't get a new home loan because the banks are requiring horrible things like down payments and proof of income. This, they say, proves that banks are acting in their own self-interest. Duh?

Imitation: In its pursuit of drug traffickers, th Mexican army has engaged in disappearances, torture, mass punishments, martial law... Much like their neighbors to the north. Or is it the other way around?

Here, Piggy, Piggy: Parts of Great Britain are approaching epidemic levels of H1N1 infection, with 14 dead and nearly 10,000 confirmed cases. London and the West Midlands have the highest concentrations of cases.

Class Wellfare: Justice Ginsburg points out that wealthy women will always have a personal choice regarding abortion - state laws prohibiting abortion only affect those who cannot jet off to a place where abortion is legal.

Cheap Chic: It's a recession, so the top end stores don't do well , the lower end stores scrape by. A&F (sales down -32%) needs to rethink the whole thing.