tears

Sitting, sick listening to this (on this). Five years of victory in Iraq. Animals destroy the house around me.

Doing taxes, think of asking J.P. Morgan and overpriced suits at Bear Stearns for advice.

Michael Perelman:

I cannot help but feel some satisfaction in watching recent event confirm the diagnosis found in my Confiscation of American Prosperity: From Right Wing Extremism and Economic Ideology to the Next Great Depression (Palgrave). The toxic combination of speculative excesses, financial deregulation, and unequal incomes, which make demand dependent on credit.

All the while, Panglossian economics insisted that this was the best of all possible worlds, except for some residues of the New Deal.

The book begins with the historical perspective that the earlier massive waves of inequality and free market dogmatism all led to disaster. This one may not become a renewal of the Great Depression. The Fed may succeed in reflating the bubble, but sooner or later the purge [you know where] will occur.