The Treasury Just Gave Away 1/2 Of Everything Produced In This Country Last Year

Wow. We're now up to $7.7 Trillion??? And to top it all off, much of this money is being given away in secrecy with no oversight.

The TARP program is in danger of becoming the largest financial fraud in history....

Here Come The Crashing Pension Plans

As I noted in my September 18th post, the collapsing pension plan will be the next big new story. Florida announced today that their public employee's pension plan has lost 1/4 of it's value. They say that's "pretty good considering". I bet they're telling the truth on that one too. Many corporate plans are already on the verge of collapse.

I suspect that in the next couple of months, we'll see a few of these pension plans' benefits completely frozen (if not wiped out). The big push will then be a push to fund these plans using taxpayer dollars.

So in essence, these plans represent a huge, unfunded, off-the-books liability for taxpayers that will soon be surfacing.

And you thought it was just going to be $700 billion...

DJIA Prediction: 0/1

Well, my DJIA prediction expires tomorrow...and since that's Saturday, I guess it's up today. The DJIA closed today at 8,497.31. On 10/16/2008 when I made the prediction it closed at 8,979.26.

That's only a 481.95 point loss for the last 30 days.

Truly, I'm at a loss. Could my predictive powers be so bad? Or is it perhaps that the government is manipulating the DJIA and the S&P 500 every time it looks like it's going to tank?

It does seem like every time the market makes some huge drop (like 11/13/2008's -554.11 drop) it makes a remarkable close up the next day (11/14/2008's 324.88 jump). Hmmm.

Could it be bargain hunters? Or could it be the Treasury/FED monster propping up the dead?

Either way, you heard it here first.

Fidel Castro Is Laughing At Us From His Death Bed....

All the years we've had that embargo against him for nationalizing all the 'capitalist' assets in Cuba.

And here we are doing it to ourselves. Soon, the Federal Government will own all the banks, the Washington Metro System, the auto industry, the airline industry, the hospitals....Ad nauseam Maybe Henry Paulson should bring in some of Castro's economics advisors. I bet they could give him some pointers.

Volvo Probably Has Some Sales Going On Right Now

If you're interested. Last month, Volvo only sold 3,717 cars in the entire US. Maybe the economic slowdown is disproportionally impacting yuppies.


But the economy is fundamentally sound (repeat 3x).