Here is one of the best articles I’ve come across about the implications of the mortgage crisis, including some interesting insights on what the bailouts may mean and some advice for managing through an increasingly probable collapse (buy gold and silver, STAT).

“Are things really this bad? Well, let me ask you which do you think is more likely?

Scenario one: The U.S. government recognizes its severe financial mismanagement. It allows Fannie and Freddie to collapse completely and does not assume their liabilities. Mortgage investors take huge losses. Mortgage rates soar to more than 10%. Housing prices fall 75% – which makes housing affordable for millions of Americans previously priced out of the market.

In the meantime, the government cuts spending by 30% and reduces taxes radically to encourage economic growth (which, ironically, increases tax receipts, leading to a balanced budget). It restructures Social Security, moving the age of retirement to 75. And most importantly, the government gets out of health care completely, renouncing all of its Medicare obligations. Hospitals and doctors immediately drop their fees to meet the affordability requirements of a free market.

Scenario two: The U.S. government refuses to take responsibility for causing a bubble in mortgage finance. Rather than allow the bubble to deflate quickly, it bails out Fannie and Freddie. Mortgage losses build for five years, reaching more than $1 trillion. Housing prices stabilize in good neighborhoods, but risk-averse lending practices result in ghetto-like conditions and widespread vacancy across broad swaths of America.

Refusing to substantially raise taxes, annual deficits surpass $1 trillion in 2010. Total government debt begins to spiral out of control as our interest costs mount. Our foreign creditors lose confidence in the dollar and begin dumping it on the world market. Inflation surpasses 20% annually and prices for energy soar. Oil reaches $250 per barrel. The president alleges an international conspiracy to destroy America and threatens to attack China if it continues to sell the dollar. Price controls are instituted.

No paper currency regime has ever lasted. No government in history has ever repaid debts as large as those already assumed by our government (in terms of GDP). A default is not likely - it is inevitable.”

Read the full article

From the LA Times:

“A funny thing happened over on the Barack Obama campaign website in the last few days.

The parts that stressed his opposition to the 2007 troop surge and his statement that more troops would make no difference in a civil war have somehow disappeared. John McCain and Obama have been going at it heavily in recent days over the benefits of the surge.

The Arizona senator, who advocated the surge for years before the Bush administration employed it, says the resulting reduction in violence is proof it worked with progress on 15 of 18 political benchmarks and Obama’s plan to withdraw troops by now would have resulted in surrender.

When President Bush ordered the surge in January, 2007, Obama said, “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse,” a position he maintained throughout 2007. This year he acknowledged progress, but maintained his position that political progress was lacking.

Tuesday, while Obama gave a speech on foreign policy, the New York Daily News was first to notice the removal of parts of Obama’s campaign site listing the Iraq troop surge as part of “The Problem.” An Obama spokeswoman said it was just part of an “update” to “reflect changes in current events,” as our colleague Frank James notes in the Swamp. The update includes a new section on the rise of al-Qaeda violence in Afghanistan.”

I’m sure anyone that bothers to read this blog already reads BoingBoing, but I thought this was important enough to post over here as well.

On the face of it, this new loophole might not seem to be such a big problem, barring the facts of a) retroactive telecom immunity and b) the implication that Bush will never be held accountable for numerous felonies. Unfortunately, it also really is, as far as I can tell, a back door to greatly expanded wiretapping powers. Beyond the obvious fact that it requires only certification and loose judicial review rather than a warrant, it does so in the following way:

1. It Eliminates the requirement that there be probable cause that a foreign target is a suspect of any kind - terrorist, criminal, ore “foreign agent.” They merely need be your French grandmother, as long as they are outside the United States and not a U.S. person, and if the government says wiretapping them is for the purpose of collecting “foreign intelligence information” (e.g., her Pommes Frites recipe)
2. It requires the cooperation of telecoms in these efforts
3. It eliminates of the need to specify a particular email address or phone number to be wiretapped
4. 1-3 together imply that certifications of wiretapping on individuals is not the issue. The point is to use telecom cooperation to target large collections of data on communications between U.S. Persons and foreigners. This implies data mining - where, for instance, because a foreign target has communications passing through a given domestic switch, any communications (domestic or international) passing through that switch are subject to collection, analysis, and storage. There are “minimization requirements” meant to ameliorate this, but it is unclear if they really help.
5. The compromise of domestic communications in (4) is exacerbated by the fact that targets need only be “reasonably believed” to be outside the U.S.
6. It includes only minimal court oversight - who it is that is subject to warrantless wiretapping will not be know to the FISA court; the government can wiretap before it court order is sought and continue to do so even if it is denied - during a lengthy appeal process.

Here’s the full blog entry from KetchupandCaviar.com

This past weekend I had the pleasure of knocking heads with my old punk band from high school, Heel. We blazed onto the Downers Grove/Chicago punk scene, blew minds and then self-destructed in a fury of drugs and gay, inter-racial sex. They still speak of us in whispers when they are brave enough to speak of us. ‘Genius’, is a word often used. So is ‘Gorgeous’ and ‘Vaguely Interesting’.

Heel was fun and it taught me a lot about creating a more interesting life, designed by my own interests without waiting for approval from some untouchable authority or record label. Few people in the early ’90s were plugged in enough to make original music, press it to vinyl and distribute it all by themselves, but the ones that were doing it were a gold mind of people and offered a master class to a young suburban kid of the important task of TCBing. In addition to pressing 7″s there was a thriving zine culture and a strong community of kids who loved playing music, dancing, and supporting one another. This was before the internet, mind you, but there was still a community connected (by phones at the time) where if your band was playing at some shitty VFW Hall in Indianapolis or something there would be a kid who would put you up for the night, feed you, and help you find some amusing trouble to get into.

My time in Heel opened up the world of DIY to me, demystifying, first, the record industry and then so many other aspects of living after that. It turned me on to Veganism (which I’ve happily recovered from), design, music production, political activism, business and community to name just a few. In all truth, our songs were pretty shitty, but the friendships and the fun were very real, very funny, and pretty exciting most of the time. And that’s what punk rock is supposed to be about anyway, right?

The sad side of this - as with age many things seem to be driven by sadness or, at least, tragedy or struggle - is that the bassist for Heel, Craig Ackerman, recently discovered his youngest daughter has cancer. She is presently undergoing treatment and seems to be doing well, but the improvement of her health speaks nothing of the medical bills that Craig and his family are having to deal with. To help the Ackerman’s through this difficult time the community that I was very proud to be a part of 16 years ago is still supporting one another. Names have gotten more recognizable and the talent has gotten a bit more compelling, but if you look at the movers and shakers in the Chicago indie rock scene the faces are all very familiar (though a bit fatter…).

That’s the long dramatic story of this storied reunion I drank myself through the other night. Some hot-shot honest to god indie rock STUDS put their tickers together and played a sold out show at the Empty Bottle for Craig, Stella and the rest of his family. Very fucking cool to see people pull together for someone like that.

If you would like to do your part to help make a darling little girls difficult time a bit less difficult you could send even just a little money, by PayPal, to this account (forstella@emptybottle.com) and feel real good about yourself for the rest of the day. Seriously, if you’ve got a spare $5 it would really help.

Now go do something you’ve always wanted to and make it really fucking cool.

Here is a fun artifact of the fun loving dawn of the Aquarian Age, The Black Panther Coloring Book.

Full of pictures of policeman with drooling pig faces beating black children and being shot by BPP members, this little gem was sent out to thousands of white households in the early 70’s apparently causing quite a fuss amongst quiet, god-fearing Americans.

It’s now generally accepted that this was the work of a BPP affiliate with intelligence connections as part of the COINTELPRO program the FBI was running to disrupt dissidents and perceived threats to the “silent majority”. Thanks to the internets, we can all enjoy it now for it’s cozy little spot in American History.

What will they write about us 20 years from now?