WaMu gets siezed and sold in a fire sale, the $700billion bail out hasn’t passed yet, there are no large investment banks left on Wall Street, China has either completely cut off funds to the US, or in part depending on the report. I even read on FriendFeed that the Saudi’s were holding back money as well.
No matter the outcome, history in the making.
Lets ask David Gray 🙂
If things really get bad, there’s always REM
Chinese banks have been told to immediately stop lending money to the United States, according to Reuters.
Game over.
No. 1 lender of finance to the United States: China. According to AFP, China is the world’s biggest holder of foreign reserves and second biggest holder of US treasury bils. Take Chinese money off the table, $700 billion is likely not enough.
The takeaway line?Ǭ†from “New America Media:
“In times of hardship, China and the United States seem to have traded places. The United States seems to be moving closer to a Communist economy in the wake of the financial implosion, while officially Communist China is hurtling towards capitalism.”
So your poll numbers are tanking so badly that even FoxNews gives Obama a 9pt lead. Your strategy of hiding Caribou Barbie from the evil liberal press has backfired by taking her out of the spotlight, resulting in the positive buzz shifting away from her. You’ve got a serious case of foot in mouth, making one mistake after another. Things are looking grim, and as the economic crisis continues, Obama looks more the man, so what do you do?
You suspend your campaign, and you spin it as a being a statesman like decision for the good of the country, days out from the first debate. You then call on your opponent to do the same, shifting the spotlight back on him, and hope that if he refuses, you look like you’re putting your country before the election.
Brilliant politics.
The only question now though is will voters buy it? McCain had to try something, and this is a bold gambit. If it works the way they hope it’s going to work, Obama looks bad and McCain gets a boost.
However….people might see through the ploy in a campaign that has been thick with lies and deception. But then again, while some might see through it, it’s the swinging voters in battleground states that count. Only time will tell.
Jim Cramer on MSNBC calls end of the world if the $700 billion bailout isn’t approved. (via Donklephant). Still, bailing out the industry doesn’t fix the problem, it prolongs it. No one wants a great depression, but likewise the concept of bailing out private enterprise from their own muck doesn’t sit right.
While waiting for the obligatory “global warming is to blame” commentary, we’ve got the storm covered at The Inquisitr: Hurricane Ike Live.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Susan Ertz
and yet…
All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing.
Maurice Maeterlinck
still
What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.
but Woody has a point:
I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.
Woody Allen
either way, another year and the quest for eternal life has not been found.
The idea is to die young as late as possible.
Ashley Montagu
Both show me tired, a little puffy, sadly (in retrospect) unshaven, bad hair (I’d confused the conditioner which said something like Apres Shampoo in french on it as being shampoo) but jeez Brian Solis takes a good pic.
Original source links via the pics themselves
I was in a cab yesterday and the driver had the radio tuned into what I believe was Ernie Sigley’s afternoon show, and they were talking job cuts at Fairfax. The discussion was not about how these job cuts are directly related to the downturn in print advertising caused by online alternatives, no, according to the clowns on the radio, it was the beginning of a new recession where unemployment will go through the roof. It’s a sign of the times they claimed, a weakening economy, the first of massive job cuts to come.
I wonder what it’s like to live in a state of pure ignorance, a delusional state that ignores reality instead of looking at the real reasons. I know that not everyone is so stupid in the Australian media as to not understand the changing marketplace, and talkback radio isn’t always a platform for highlighting the most intelligent debate, but still, it doesn’t bide well for large chunks of the mainstream media when they simply can’t see the change not only coming, but happening all around them.
I did my first radio interview yesterday in probably 9 months. Moving from country WA to Melbourne has meant that I’ve become a small fish in a big pond as opposed to a small fish in a small pond.
The audio isn’t great, probably my VOIP connection, but I was called by ABC Melbourne today to let me know that the interview was being distributed nationwide on the ABC Local network. No other stations may play it, but apparently ABC HQ selects a best of from around the network and distributes it daily for stations to use. They also asked permission for my contact details to go out with that in case stations wanted a local interview. We’ll see I guess. Still, it was a nice chat and the interviewer was sympathetic to what I had to say as opposed to badgering.
Link here, unfortunately I cant embed it.
The following is reprinted from today’s subscriber edition of Crikey. They didn’t attribute a source, and I haven’t asked for permission to reprint it, so apologies on any copyright issues up front. I’ll pull it if asked, but I’m sure Crikey wouldn’t ask such a thing, and this is a story that needs to be spread far and wide. The problem with Zimbabwe today is that not enough people really know the daily realities the Mugabe regime has imposed on a country that was once the bread basket of Africa.
From someone in Zimbabwe
Dear Friends,
We have survived the worst week yet — no water since 12th of this month & still no water, power came on briefly on Sunday and then again yesterday morning, after being off for seven days. Associated with power-out is the lack of telephone. Now also total lack of food and money.
We are allowed to draw only 100 billion dollars per day from our bank accounts. This is currently worth less than 20 UK pence or 40 US cents or two South African Rand. It is a criminally cruel policy which is causing extreme suffering and costing huge unnecessary transport costs to get to the bank daily & then stand in the queue for hours.
This daily maximum withdrawal is not enough to buy even a single bread roll which this week cost 140 billion dollars. On Saturday 1kg of potatoes was 110 billion, 1kg of oranges 500 billion, so one cannot buy anything for the daily drawn-sum and then by the next day everything has again increased beyond one’s purse.
Supermarkets are empty. Vegetables available only from street vendors. Our telephone calls are 2.2 billion dollars per unit. We are desperate for relief. On Friday 25th exchange rate was 850 billion dollars to the US. Inflation was 150 quintillion percent (that is 150 plus 18 0’s ). We try to keep each other going but it is extremely difficult. It is incomprehensible that the world will not come to our aid.
The bank employees are helping themselves to client’s money and all municipal and state services have collapsed. There is no justice to be found anywhere.
My farming friends who had their larger farm expropriated now do not have enough grazing for their dairy herd. They were told to reduce their herd, but the shortage of milk is already so critical that most children never see milk. We are told that we are lucky to have enough water to drink!
These farmers are daily threatened by a police chief who wants to move into their remaining small farm. He has brought a contingent of police to squat on the farm to make sure that they do not remove anything from the farm. They are in terror for their lives and those of their workers but trying to hang on. There is no recourse to justice or help from any quarter. Common human decency has left us. These farmers supply me with two litres of milk and six eggs and sometimes vegetables each week. Without this food I would have nothing.
Last week we ran out of bread, having rationed ourselves to one thin slice per day to make it go further. The bread which we brought back from Johannesburg in April lasted us four months.
The sun still shines & birds are chirping in the garden & spring is coming. The warmer weather helps our mood.
Love to all …