Rec list:

The Blow-out continues...
by Frank Schnittger - Oct 14
68 comments (44 new)

How will the EU manage the pending collapse of the US Empire?
by BruceMcF - Oct 12
47 comments

Same on recent:

The Blow-out continues...
by Frank Schnittger - Oct 14
34 comments (10 new)

How will the EU manage the pending collapse of the US Empire?
by BruceMcF - Oct 12
47 comments

Feel OK so walk to Prom des Anglais and have breakfast on the beach - first time in two months. Didn't bring camera (no excuse, it's small) - but it was like this and almost deserted:

Able to sit with little discomfort and feel fit enough to walk back, popping into FNAC and buying latest versions of Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements.

Get back home with some energy left ! Back to 65% YIPEEEE !! :-)

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice. Blog - Nice Experience

So much for the crisis being over?  What's next?

When the music's over, turn out the light. Jim Morrison, the doors

In fact, she had a set of bloods taken for test while I was there and if they continue the improvement she'll probably be moved from the Regional centre to her local hospital for convalescence. This will be much more convenient for her and her family (but a step too far for me). She reckons she'll be back on the internet there as well so hopefully we'll hear see her herein the next few days

keep to the Fen Causeway

I always thought that the market we witnessed these many years was in fact an equities bubble. I got everything out of the market (an IRA, a 401K, and what equities I purchased myself) just after the DJIA hit 10,000 for the first time). Nobody's calling this a correction yet, but that's what I've always thought it is.

The banking crisis is a separate matter. It's as if bankers themselves have stopped believing in their own business model.

Also a separate, though it's all related, matter is the underlying softness of the US economy and the ongoing conservative assault on the middle class.

In other words, a lot of chickens are coming home to roost.

"The cure for bullshit is fieldwork"
--Robert Bates, Department of Government; Harvard University

A brief summary of the interview by Stephen Brown for Reuters is now online. It, alas, lacks the expressive power of Roberto's language.

Solidarity has been expressed throughout the day by everyone ranging from the president of the republic to his numerous readers. The euro-parliamentarian Claudio Fava, son of the writer Giuseppe Fava who was murdered by the mafia, put it aptly:

"Che triste Paese sta diventando l'Italia: Saviano per vivere la propria vita deve andare all'estero, un sottosegretario - l'on. Cosentino, chiamato in causa da pentiti della camorra - rimane imperterrito nel governo".

"What a sad country has Italy become: In order to live a decent life Saviano must go abroad [while] undersecretary [of Economy]- Honourable Cosentino, accused by camorra supergrasses- remains blithely in the government."

Cosentino's decade long relations with the Casalese families has been the object of two scoops published by l'Espresso this past month reporting grave accusations that have been completely ignored by the press and the media as well as the interested parties.

After all, Mr. Cosentino has been doing a good job cleaning up the Naples garbage.

The president said the plan was necessary to deal with extraordinary hardship in the U.S. economy.

"They are necessary and I'm confident in the long run, that this economy will come back," he said.

Of all the places in the world, this was supposed to be the safest to stash your wealth during times of calamity, war and financial panic.

But here in the heart of Zurich's financial district, anxious Swiss investors have been lining up to watch the stock tickers in front of the headquarters of UBS, a financial behemoth that has written off a stunning $43 billion in loser investments since 2007, more than any other bank in Europe.

"The idea that this could happen in Switzerland is unbelievable," said Klaus Stoeckli, 55, a food-products salesman who has withdrawn about $90,000 in investments from UBS, worried that its storied vaults might not be able to protect his money from the global credit crisis.

UBS executives say the bank is not in danger of failure. It has cut 7,000 jobs worldwide and is still trying to unload billions of dollars' worth of risky securities. But the bank has moved aggressively since December to reinforce its balance sheet with $25 billion in fresh private capital. It announced this month that it expects to report a small profit for the third quarter.

UBS had or still has Phil Gramm as a VP, si my guess is that they're going down. From an April 2008 story in WaPo, Economic Slump Underlines Concerns About McCain Advisers.

One of them helped deregulate the financial services industries in the 1990s, and now sits in the corporate suites of Swiss banking giant UBS, which yesterday announced $19 billion in investment losses tied to the crumbling U.S. real estate market...

Former senator Phil Gramm, with his aw-shucks Texas drawl, ... helped deregulate the financial services industries in the 1990s, and now sits in the corporate suites of Swiss banking giant UBS, which yesterday announced $19 billion in investment losses tied to the crumbling U.S. real estate market...

Gramm, UBS's vice chairman, said yesterday he was "totally unaware" of his bank's massive holdings of securities tied to subprime mortgages, but, he added, "I'm confident we'll recover."

Gramm: Fail.

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=10&year=2008&base_name=the_best_t hing_ive_read_all_ca

Eddie the Head, the demoniacal mascot of the British heavy metal group Iron Maiden, has made his way into the debating chamber of a Spanish town hall.

Eddie's cadaverous face appears regularly at council meetings in the town of Villava, in Navarre, as part of a war of political symbols between local parties.

Basque separatist councillors insist on hanging the Basque flag on their desks during debates, upsetting other politicians at the town hall. Most dislike the idea of the Navarre region being treated as part of the Basque country.

The Socialists have responded by hanging an Iron Maiden flag on their desks. The Socialist leader, José Luis Uriz, said: "The Iron Maiden flag means a lot to me. If I have to put up with their flag, they'll have to put up with Eddie's face."

The conservative Navarrese People's Union party has joined the protest. Its councillors now hang the flag of the local La Liga football club, Osasuna, from their desks.

A church choir mistress was so infuriated by a fine she received for parking at a hospital that she put 3,500 pennies in a sweet jar and took it to the council offices in a wheelbarrow to pay it.

Susan Catcheside, 74, from Longney, Gloucester, said "Hitler-ite" parking wardens had shown a "lack of humanity" by giving her a £70 fine while she visited a friend awaiting a heart operation.

The retired company secretary, who runs Longney and Elmore Church Choir, left her car in a permit holders' parking bay she claimed was poorly marked outside Gloucester Royal Hospital.

She fired off an appeal letter to the council upon discovering the fine on her windscreen, but was told she would have to pay.

Although Mrs Catcheside, whose son is a priest, paid the fine within two weeks - meaning it was reduced to £35 - she said she decided to make city council bureaucrats "work for it" by doing so in the most awkward way she was allowed.

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEE, BITCHES!@

[Drew's WHEEEEE™ Technology]

Where's your motherf*%&ing flag pin?