Crisis on Wall Street

Facing the Elephant - complex but a real breakdown of what is actually happening!

Used...our Abused Society: The Unregulated Fracas

Nobody "strolls down" and takes a photo when they know it kinda captures what is going on today. Yesterday returning from the food store I noted this banner strung up across the entrance to the yacht dealer - harbor below my windows. First thing that went bada bing! in my mind was that this banner must have been created by the same folks that brought us the bush campaign! Putting a positive humorous face on a sleazy reality.

There are people down there today looking. I should prepare postcards and go down and stroll around passing out handouts -- Hallo! these "featured boats" are the same boats that have sat in the water at their moorings all summer because no one has the extra dollars to "take da boat out'...do you? Hey even I would have loved to have had, a small boat (in my case I would have wanted a sailboat and to learn sailing). However as someone whose salary only achieved in the 30k's at my peak before my health departed (for a mere 2 years or so) - those kinds of expenditures were never in the cards.

Astute informed journalists everywhere today are writing chapter and verse about how deregulation and then the heinous illegal selling of 0 collateral mortgages - for houses at very INFLATED prices to begin with - sold to those who could not afford those houses on one of their good days ... was the off balance Ace of Spades toppling our house of cards. I knew folks who signed up for these mortgages and I even know someone who remortgaged at an unaffordable sum in order to finance his small business. Sale of his home and all he had on the cusp of foreclosure occurred in June of this summer. The saddest worst part of everything including the illegal war is that none of the people responsible for perpetrating these occurrences, is even in a loop to be prosecuted. I am not living with the reality of that very well.

COOKING da Books

TaDa! My new stove (cooker for all my friends in UK). Time to give into the fact that I will NEVER have the moola to finish fixing up my kitchen, and that my 1987 stove is more than half gone, sooo

Today I got my very first - all new, stove with convection, self-cleaning oven, and smooth top surface with five (get that 5 !) burners!!! On sale and free shipping and despite the fact that next year their may be no such store, or manufacturer... well I'd rather do this than get caught later. Pray for me with my extended warranty.

I think between the lines and lies on Wall Street and at Pennsylvania Avenue, we have a rolling dirge proceeding towards another great Depression. If so I wanna at least go out with a new stove before I exit the planet. The totally awe inspiring thing about the events of the past few months is that people just don't seem to understand the balONEy they have been served by fund managers, all along. HeLLoooo out there. 6 into 4 won't go. Pave paradise, put up a parking lot! Our McMansions, Land Yachts and other obscene attempts at having and living the lifestyles of the rich and famous? hmmm could be we are in the death nell

Bridges to Nowhere - Our Infrastructure

Watching C-span - the Senate today, discussing the infrastructure was like diving into a pothole. When I was traveling back and forth from my new home base - to my old home base (in excess of 500 miles each way) - I took advice from a friend and... took an alternate route through the NYC area. Doing so - after doing my usual dyslexic wrong way on one expressway (delaying me well over one hour) - I crossed the Verrazano Narrows bridge for the first time in say twenty years.

I am still here. My car is still in one piece. But...crossing just at dusk after my 20+ miles in the wrong direction on that other expressway...I was faced with lurching towards the bridge siderails without pause for thought - to avoid being side-swiped by a car - swerving to avoid the potholes!! (craters!!) on the bridge. You would only "know" about these potholes if you crossed the bridge regularly... I did try and research my routes before the trips to avoid detours, construction, or major road failures (there is no one site that provides these kinds of information).

Sadly this is only one example of the state of everything - bridges, highways, school buildings. The list is endless and the neglect decades in the making. We surely have jobs for many people - skilled and unskilled - to bring everything back up to standard or code in these areas - as well as huge opportunities in all the environmentally friendly energy industries to get on a right path with our transport modes. **Caveat here - without any further building or use of nuclear power please... we have no space for any more spent plutonium: the safety and condition of all our plants also being a part of, our deteriorated infrastructure (duh?).

However - how are we going to get back to the right paths with fiscal bankruptcy looming large. And we have a bridge to nowhere veep candidate who believes everyone should produce more children. I am worn out. Anyone else feel the same?

http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/page.cfm?id=103