SAR #9250

The coming crash is not “impossible to anticipate”.

Newspeak: When a majority of both houses and the nation's chief executive run on a health care reform platform, win by landslides and then pass health care reform - much to the pleasure of the majority of voters who elected them - this is known, to the minority party, as “ramming thru legislation.” (op. cit. Bush's tax cuts for the rich.)

Cost Control: Aircraft parts manufacturer TAD managed to drastically reduce its employee-related health care costs. It canceled the insurance without telling the employees, and continued to deduct the premiums from employee paychecks.

Doggie In the Window: Where's all this pent up customer demand the stock markets are pricing in? Where are the earnings going to come from? Why are these potential customers continuing to default on their debts?

Excellent Question: Iceland's a goner and Switzerland is big enough to take care of itself, but what happens when places like Turks and Caicos, the Caymans, and Bahama lose their tax-haven incomes and their banks go belly up and someone has to bail them out? And to make good on the deposits of the rich and greedy? Isn't that someone going to be the UK? Just what they need right now.

Take A Break : Laying people off in dribs and drabs called furloughs is becoming popular. Nearly 20% of companies now force employees to take unpaid vacations. Stay-home-and-worry vacations.

Revisionism : Texas, the 800 pound gorilla of the school textbook business, has dropped its desire to teach bible precepts instead of science, is considering a new US History text that emphasizes the exploits of Newt Gingrich (skipping the divorces), Phyllis Schlafly, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, the Moral Majority and the NRA, but only lightly touches on the communist Dr. King and socialist Cesar Chaves and the whole, unnecessary civil rights thing. Next time they say they want to leave, let 'em.

The Money Quote: “Jobs report points to better profits, at workers' expense.”

Too Reasonable To Work: Why not simply make a law that says that if you cannot vote for the candidate, you cannot give money to that candidate? And let's quit pretending that corporations are people with the right to vote or the right to corrupt the electoral process.

Easy Come, Easy Go: The actual cost of the materials and labor that goes into building a house, even a McMansion, cannot explain house prices over the last 5 to 10 or so years. So, where's the money gone? Why, surprise, surprise, to the bankers and financiers – who as usual didn't build anything, didn't produce anything. They just got richer. And have their usury enabled by Fannie and Freddie.

Porn O'Graph: How the hole was dug - in the US, Europe, & Japan.