Sitting over here on the porch I'm experiencing the current economic mess in the US as a double victim: Recession in the US exacerbated by the sub-prime meltdown, and inflation in Australia from a too hot economy.
But I have to say, my annoyance at the sub-prime meltdown has no bounds. Why? Because I think it can be summed up in one word:
greed. Greed by mortgage banks to issue loans to people whose credit did not support them or worse
used predatory lending practices; greed by the borrowers who counted on the housing and real-estate bubble to continue unabated; and greed by the commercial banks who sold
creative investments heavily based on these dubious loans.
And my annoyance continues at Alan Greenspan, who only now that he is ex-Fed Chairman is a
claxon of doom about it and yet was eerily quiet about it when holding the office.
Now the banks are all crying about how much money they're losing and how they need bailing out. But if you think about it, the money didn't really exist anyway but was all on paper: write-downs of future profit based on these loans.
It's not that the banks won't be making record profits, but rather it will be less.
It seems to me what's really hurting the banks right now is that they are all now
too wary to lend money to each other anymore, I guess afraid the borrowing bank will just use the money to pay off bad debt.
If only they had all used this much caution in the first place.
- Farmer Ted
I'm talking, of course, about the cane toad.
While talking about today with some co-workers, someone asked the question "Say, what was everyone doing LAST Valentines Day?" This was met by a puzzled silence as not a single person in the entire group could remember.
Anatole France said:
...for a cool USD 2.7M, that is! Yes, that's what a 30-second spot purportedly went for during this year's Superbowl. Being here the sports coverage doesn't include the commercials rather we're treaty to pithy and highly inaccurate Australian commentary on "gridiron", as they call it.
Sitting over here on the porch I'm experiencing the current economic mess in the US as a double victim: Recession in the US exacerbated by the sub-prime meltdown, and inflation in Australia from a too hot economy.
Television has finally gotten it right. One of my favorite BBC America shows from the US has started its second season simultaneously in Australia. What I'm talking about is Robin Hood. And how good it was to see Robin, Sir Guy, and the Sheriff back again in Episode 1 of Season 2 this past weekend. An episode which promises that the season will be darker and even more bizarre than the first.
Well, that's what was happening to me from someone named "Kasie" who kept sending to my mobile veritable twitters of her life:
Over this past weekend, I was helping a friend do some yard work. The great thing about this area of Australia in the summer is that the weather is so dang-blasted hot and dry that plants, including your lawn, just don't grow. So the work was limited to mostly cleaning up work.
