Where to Invest

Assuming impending monetary collapse, isn't education one of the best investments? Value stored in your mind is more portable than gold and can't be taken away (short of blunt force trauma).

- Tim G.

Is Growth Always Good?

Limitless growth is the ideology of a cancer cell.

- Edward Abbey

Night of the Living Citibank

"Zombie banks beg for money. They are very clever. They come up with ways you can give them money while pretending not to give them money, such as guaranteeing their assets, guaranteeing new debt issues, or buying up assets at "hold to maturity" values. Just say no! A healthy financial system cannot be run by zombies. "Rescuing" insolvent banks makes about as much sense as tying string to the arms of a loved one's corpse so it can come to the dinner table as a marionette. For a while that may be comforting (or not), but pretty soon it's sure to smell really bad, and it's gonna ooze. If you think you have engineered a miraculous turnaround, you have only made matters worse. An undead bank is an abomination. It will pretend good health but hide a rot. It will afflict you, over and over and over again, with harrowing near insolvencies (cf Citibank). Dead banks must be allowed to die."

--Steve Waldman

Our Situation

“The situation we find ourselves in at this moment, this week, is very strongly reminiscent of the situations we've seen many times in other places. But they're places we don't like to think of ourselves as being similar to. They're emerging markets. It's Russia or Indonesia or a Thailand type situation, or Korea... I have this feeling in my stomach that I felt in much poorer countries, countries that were headed into a really difficult economic situation, when there’s a small group of people who got you into a disaster, who were still powerful, and disaster made them more powerful... Don’t get me wrong – these are fine upstanding citizens who have a certain perspective and a certain kind of interest, and they see the world a certain way... That web of interest is not my interest or your interest or the interest of the taxpayer. It’s the interest, first and foremost, of the financial industry in this country.”

- Simon Johnson

The Internet and Farraris

“I am shocked and awed at how few people use RSS feed readers. If you are using the web without a rss reader, it is kinda like putting your Ferrari in neutral and pushing it around town with your feet.”

- Josh Reighley

Peace in our time....

"The stock market responded badly to Geithner because it is crying out for someone in authority who can make bold moves and justify them, someone non-mealy-mouthed, someone who has an equal mix of brains, principles and confidence. The market wants Churchill and they keep tossing it Chamberlains."
-Emanuel Derman

Why fight it?

"As for writers, there's no keeping your stories and books yours, all yours. Unless you print it out and put it in a locked safe. In which case no one would ever read it. That's not what a writer wants. It's not what I want, anyway. I want people to read what I've written. The enemy of a writer is not piracy. It's obscurity.

If you put content on the internet, you give it away. That's the reality. Rather than fight it, I think it behooves writers and artists of all stripes to embrace this reality."

--Court Merrigan

Hmmm......

"It's a curious reversal in moralizing. Food was once a matter of personal taste. Now sex is a matter of taste, and food puts people in high moral dudgeon."

--Mary Eberstadt as paraphrased by A&L Daily

"The Bailout Shuffle"

"I think this is called the "bailout shuffle." Step 1: Company goes out of its way to appear financially sound in order to appease private investors. Step 2: Company pivots 180 degrees and goes out of its way to appear financially strapped in order to access government bailout funds. Step 3: Company pivots back to step 1 in order to convince thegovernment that the money has been used effectively.... I'm guessing step 4 looks a whole lot like step 2. Repeat until company and government are both out of money."

--Tim F.

Hrmph.

Pakistan Lifts Restrictions on Nuclear Scientist - NYTimes.com

Starting to wonder if people and countries aren't taking advantage of our political transition. Between this and Russian pressure on Kyrgystan, things don't look pretty right now. Did I mention North Korea is directly threatening the South again...?

A continued slide into chaos

Not only has the Mexican government lost its monopoly on the use of force, it has proven to be far less effective in leveraging that force than its opponents.

If we just stare a little bit harder...

If you stare at a cloud long enough, you can see whatever you want, right? Is the same true for a statistical tie...?