Should also go out and get some stuff, though it is pretty cool, needs as sweater and socks. :-(

I answer: "What breaks?"

Bloody hell.

"Later, two men got off the bus, then it exploded. One-third of the bus was seriously damaged. The fire wasn't very big, but the smoke was dense and there were strong odors," the newspaper reported. (Earlier reports said three people had been killed in the explosions, but authorities later revised the toll to two dead and 14 injured, according to the Associated Press.)

An explosion on a bus in Shanghai in May killed three people in an attack that Chinese authorities blamed on a passenger carrying flammable liquids. Few public details have been released about the incident. Terrorist attacks are relatively rare in China.

Authorities have announced in recent months roundups of Islamic separatists who they say planned to disrupt the Beijing Olympics. Security has been tightened at airports and train stations across the country. Commuters in Beijing are screened as they enter the subway and Shanghai is also installing a surveillance system in its subways.

It's not only Obama's youth, eloquence and energy that have stolen hearts across the Atlantic. For Europeans, there have always been two Americas: one of cynicism, big business and bullying aggression, another of freedom, fairness and nothing-is-impossible dynamism.

Up until three years ago I was a member of the working class (Benefits clampdown, July 21). I have no qualifications and I raised my family by working hard and earning little. As such I was never able to have either a pension, a mortgage or insurance. Three years ago, within six days of each other, I had a heart attack and my wife had heart failure (totally unconnected). We as a small family were destroyed.

My wife was in intensive care for a month and my daughter took an overdose believing us both dead. What happened to us as a family can happen to any family. We rallied and my son put himself through university by working in a pub and looking after himself - without a single penny from us because we had nothing.

My point is real poverty grows on you and as the things you have become obsolete or break, the poverty deepens. We are now three adults living on £23 a day. Admittedly we have our rent and rates paid. As heart patients we have been instructed to stay warm in the winter as the cold thickens the blood. To this end I contacted my gas and electric supplier in a bid to have the prepayment meters taken out of my home as the tariff was too high and my income was so low. I was told it would cost £200.

I told the supplier that the meters were in place from a former tenant and I had no credit issues with them. They told me it was not their problem. I went to the ombudsman and now I can have the meters taken out if I pay for the energy by direct debit, the rub being that I have to pay in advance, costing me 79% of my income in one month for this to happen. So it can't and they know it.

Every day I shop for the house. I am conscious of the need to eat healthily but I cannot afford to. Every day I walk past the grapes and look at the price of strawberries. We eat greens and pulses, and we eat pork, but cannot afford chicken. We do not drink, smoke, go out nor entertain and life is hard and getting harder, not just for us but for many.

The television is our only window on a life we once led. We sit destroyed by poverty and watch the world go by as if we were dead but have yet to fall over. While watching the TV we see MPs and MEPs who spend more on taxis than we get to live on and they are telling the country they are going to get tough on us and people like us because we live on benefits.

In relative terms we are poor and getting poorer, but those who represent us are completely oblivious to our needs.

I can speak, but have no voice, and those claiming to represent me have failed me. As the gas and electric prices rise for all, they may also become out of reach for many. Now I fear the winter and hope for nothing.

The BBC news now tells me my benefits will be scrapped and I will be tested (I have been tested twice already). I will have to bare all my privacy in the hope of retaining the right to survive the winter. So I ask myself, why can people demand the destruction of the poor? The answer is simple. There are 600-odd vacancies in Westminster every four years. The job, if you can get it, pays a king's ransom and all that is required is that you follow whatever is in vogue. At the moment, acting Dickensian is all the rage.

There is a sickening irony in the fact that Gordon Brown stayed in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem - blown up by Jewish terrorists exactly 62 years ago (July 22 1946), with the loss of 91 lives - and then proceeded to lecture the Palestinians on the importance of Israel's security (Brown warns Iran, July 21). Israel was founded on terrorism and continues to use it to this day. Mr Brown should have used the opportunity to advise his friends on the need to end the occupation, stop the IDF's random acts of violence and remove the illegal settlements. The complete removal of the settlers and their "facts on the ground" will surely be a prerequisite for a lasting peace. Why can't western leaders stand up to Israel in the same way that they address the likes of Iran?
Ibrahim Hewitt
Leicester

Money & Company, Tom Petruno's blog in the LA Times

In Bernanke's portfolio: annuities, and a bit of Canada
5:21 PM, July 21, 2008

If Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke leads the U.S. into financial ruin, he'll still have his Canadian Treasury bonds to fall back on.

The Fed today issued Bernanke's annual financial disclosure report, which shows the central bank chief is well-off compared with most Americans -- although he's a pauper compared with the Wall Street CEOs who expect the Fed to save their bacon.

Bigben Bernanke and his family listed financial assets of between $1.2 million and $2.5 million in 2007, according to Bloomberg's dissection of the report.

Bernanke, a former Princeton University professor, reported that his two largest assets were annuities: TIAA Traditional and the CREF Stock Large Cap Blend. Each was worth between $500,001 and $1 million, according to Bloomberg....

He also listed Canadian Treasury bonds as an asset. (His ticket across the border, maybe, if things get really bad? Just kidding . . . we hope.)

The magazines he sees failing amid the downturn are those that court the advertiser before the reader. "In the 41 years I've been in the industry, I've learnt the only thing that counts is the reader. Quite a few sectors have forgotten that the reader is not only King, but God Almighty."

"There will certainly be some very surprising closures. And hopefully, some very surprising sales", he chuckled.

McCain communications director Jill Hazelbaker says they are just having a little fun.

"It's done with a light touch, especially this week, when it's at its height," she says, referring to the Obama trip coverage.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism, in a report today, says that in the six weeks since Clinton left the race, "Obama has appeared as a leading newsmaker in 78 percent of election stories, and McCain in 51 percent." The study covers both print and electronic coverage.

The two McCain videos are similar, punctuated by heart images and such music as the Four Seasons singing "You're just too good to be true, can't take my eyes off of you." MSNBC's Chris Matthews is the biggest star, beginning with his reaction to an Obama speech during the primaries: "I felt this thrill running up my leg."

Simply Appalling

Clearly we need calendars,

Bare-chested Mormon in a hothouse. It doesn't get any steamier than this!

and thanks to an excommunicated Mormon our menological choices have expanded. While I've long admired the rather chaste Roman Priest Calendar, the Mormon version featured at "Mormons Exposed" is a bit more risqué--

The 2008 Men on a Mission calendar features twelve handsome returned Mormon missionaries from across the United States who, for the first time ever, have dared to pose bare-chested in a steamy national calendar.

Dare we hope that the Randy Rabbis and the Magnificent Mullahs calendars will appear soon? Along with Buddhist Monks Laid Bare?

Yet with so many choices I'm no longer sure which religion to embrace.

ye gods!

:)

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower

The Fed has been actively beefing up the earnings and balance sheet of financial institutions in four major ways.

First, a 325bps reduction in the Fed Funds rate sharply reduced the cost of
borrowing for banks and allowed them to enjoy a nice intermediation margin (the
difference between longer terms interest rates at which they lend and the much
lower short term interest rates at which they borrow). This steepening of the
yield curve is a major subsidy to financial institutions.

Second, the Fed has created a range of new liquidity facilities - the TAF,
the TSLF, the PDCF - that allow banks and now non-bank primary dealers to swap
their illiquid toxic asset backed securities for liquid Treasuries and that
provide access for non-banks - and now also Fannie and Freddie - to the Fed's
discount window liquidity.

Third, the bailout of Bear Stearns creditors - JP Morgan and many other
counterparties of Bear - not only avoided a systemic meltdown and a certain run
on the other broker dealers but it has led the Fed to take on a significant
credit risk by taking off the balance sheet of Bear Stearns over $29 billion of
toxic securities. So the Fed has directly and indirectly systemically subsidized
and propped up the financial system and the earnings of bank and non-bank
financial institutions.

Fourth, a variety of forbearance regulatory actions - starting with the
waiver of Regulation W for some major banks - have been used to beef up the
profits and earnings of financial institutions and reduce their reported
writedowns.

The entire Federal Home Loan Bank system - another GSE system that is another effective arm of the government - has been used to prop hundreds of mortgage lenders. The insolvent Countrywide alone received more than $51 billion of funds from this semi-public system. This is a system that has increased its lending in the last 18 months by hundreds of billions of dollars: Citigroup, Bank of America and most other US mortgage lenders have also been beneficiaries of this public subsidy to the tune of dozens of billions of dollars each.

...

In spite of the headline figures that showed better than expected earnings at some major financial institutions - Citi, JPM, Wells Fargo - the details were utterly ugly. For one thing, Merrill announced massive writedowns and losses that were much worse than expected. Second, even JPMorgan's results details were worrisome: for example the recognition of a significant amount of rising losses on prime mortgages. In the case of Citi - a firm that has a presence in over 100 countries and whose revenues come, to a great extent, from foreign operations - there was a sharp increase in the losses on its consumer credit operations, including a large increase in delinquencies on credit cards both in the US and other markets (Brazil, Mexico). Thus, after having already shut down its money losing consumer credit operations in Japan, Citi is now experiencing a surge of delinquencies on unsecured consumer debt both at home and abroad. And the reserves set aside to take care of such expected loan losses are still woefully insufficient as they are based on very optimistic assumptions about the level at which such delinquencies will peak; this is another way to pad earnings and not recognize early on such losses. Systematic use of creative accounting is at work in all of these institutions and other banks and other financial institutions to hide the extent of the incoming losses on assets and loans.

With the excuse of wanting to crack down on "manipulators" the SEC has now imposed restrictions on short sales on the stocks of 19 major financial institutions including Fannie and Freddie. Let us be clear about this new rule: this is a clear and naked attempt by the SEC to manipulate upwards the price of equities of financial firms. The SEC should start investigation and legal action against itself for actively manipulating the stock market. And shame on the SEC for this most un-capitalist and manipulative action: when there is an upward bubble in stock prices and 95% of investors/speakers on CNBC are talking their books in that most public forum to manipulate upwards their portfolio the SEC does nothing and allows this charade to go on. But when short sellers are shorting the stocks of firms that are likely to be bust that is considered manipulation. That is a pretty pathetic action by the SEC that has artificially boosted the equity valuations of US financial firms - now up 20% plus in the last part of the past week after the introduction of this manipulative rule. And of course this manipulated increase in financials' equity prices reduces the mark to market losses that banks and other financial firms holding such equities would have incurred, another additional way to pad upwards earnings.

The few and rare banks and mortgage/MBS analysts that were willing to provide a realistic assessment of the mortgage market and the financial conditions of US banks and brokers have been effectively muzzled by upper management. With the partial exception of Meredith Whitney who benefits from being at an independent research firm, many other analysts have gone into the spin mode that the Fed, the regulators and the senior management of these financial institutions have dictated to them. Sell-side research that was never independent - even after the additional Chinese walls that the corporate scandals of the early part of the decade led to - is even less independent today. So you have financial institutions manipulating at will their earnings and analysts falling for this supreme baloney.

The FDIC will for sure run out of money as hundreds of banks will go bust and their depositors will have to be made whole given deposit insurance. With funds of only $53 billion, already up to 15% of such funds will be used to rescue the depositors of IndyMac alone. Thus, the FDIC is already requesting to Congress that the deposit insurance premia should be raised to compensate for this shortfall of funding. Too bad that this increase in insurance premia - that should be high enough in advance (not ex-post) to ensure that deposit insurance is incentive-compatible and not leading to gambling for redemption via risky lending in banks - is now too little and too late and is requested when the damage is already done as the biggest credit bubble in U.S. history is now going bust. Also the FDIC has done a mediocre job at identifying which banks are at risk. So far there are only about 90 banks on its watch list; and IndyMac was not put on that list until last month! So if the FDIC did not even identify IndyMac as in trouble until it was too late, how many other IndyMacs are out there that that the FDIC has not identified yet? Certainly a few hundred but such honest analysis of banks at risk is nowhere to be found.

As I have argued in previous work all independent broker dealers are in deep trouble and may not survive - in a few years' times - as independent firms. And some of them are already walking zombies. In a few years time there will be no major independent broker dealers as their business model (securitization, slice & dice and transfer of toxic credit risk and piling fees upon fees rather than earning income from holding credit risk) is bust and the risk of a bank-like run on their very short term liquid liabilities is a fundamental flaw in their structure. I.e. the four remaining U.S. big brokers dealers will either go bust or will have to be merged with traditional commercial banks. Indeed, firms that borrow liquid and short, highly leverage themselves and then lend in longer term and illiquid ways (i.e. most of the shadow banking system) cannot survive without formal deposit insurance and a formal permanent lender of last resort support from the central bank. (They did have quite a long run though - Jesse)

While a formal government bailout of most U.S. financial institutions has not occurred yet the U.S. government has avoided such bailout only by making sure that foreign government-owned institutions - the Sovereign Wealth Funds - did that job in lieu of the U.S. government. So instead of the U.S. government recapitalizing U.S. financial institutions we have seen foreign governments doing the job. Too bad that such SWFs have already lost 30% to 50% of their initial investments in such financial institutions. Thus, while U.S. financial firms will need hundreds of billions of additional capital injections to survive this crisis it is not obvious that foreign governments (SWFs) will not require conditions for such recapping (a percentage of equity that implies control, board membership, voting powers, common shares rather than preferred stock, etc.) that may not be politically acceptable in the U.S.

One could go on in more detail - as I have done in recent analyses - in discussing the severity of the current banking and financial crisis in the U.S. and how the official figures on earnings and balance sheets of financial institutions provide a misleading picture of the real financial state of such firms. As I argued before the $1 trillion of credit losses ($300-400 bn for mortgages and $600-700 bn for all the other non-mortgage credit) that I estimated last February are only a floor, not a ceiling, for such expected losses. Such losses are likely to end up being closer to my $2 trillion estimate. And such an estimate do not include the $200 to 300 billion that the rescue of Fannie and Freddie will entail. And such losses don't even include scenarios where up to 50% of households who will end up underwater will walk away from their homes: that factor alone could entail mortgage losses of $1 trillion (average mortgage of $200k times the 50% loss that a foreclosure/walk away implies on that mortgage times 50% of the 21 million households that are underwater) rather than the $300-400 bn that I originally estimated.

So when you add it all up this will be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression: not as severe as that episode but second only to it. And the real effects of this financial crisis will be severe and more severe if remedial policy action is not rapidly undertaken. Ditto for the US recession: this will be the worst of such U.S. recessions in decades.

pour stiff drink and read the rest

"Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do." Jim Hightower

The researchers studied health records in 21 countries and found that obtaining an I.M.F. loan was associated with a 13.9 percent increase in new cases of tuberculosis each year, a 13.3 percent increase in the number of people living with the disease and a 16.6 percent increase in the number of tuberculosis deaths.

The study, being published online Tuesday in the journal PLoS Medicine, statistically controlled for numerous other factors that affect tuberculosis rates, including the prevalence of AIDS, inflation rates, urbanization, unemployment rates, the age of the population and improved surveillance.

The lead author, David Stuckler, a research associate at Cambridge University, defended the study against the fund's criticisms, noting that the researchers considered whether increased mortality might have led to more loans rather than the other way around.

Instead, they found that the increase in tuberculosis mortality followed the lending; each 1 percent increase in credit was associated with a 0.9 percent increase in mortality. And when a country left an I.M.F. loan program, mortality rates dropped by an average of 31 percent.

"When you have one correlation, you raise an eyebrow," Mr. Stuckler said. "But when you have more than 20 correlations pointing in the same direction, you start building a strong case for causality."

The Finnish title, literally, is 'My uncle is from another planet' which is absolutely out of tune with the movie.

You can't be me, I'm taken