From nymag.com comes this diary of a female 24-year-old New Yorker making the best of her 18 months of unemployment insurance:
DAY ONE
Noon: Finally wake up and realize that it’s only noon. Automatically type into SeamlessWeb to order the usual brunch. It’s just too rainy to leave the apartment. Since getting laid off (okay it’s been [...]

For your amusement, here’s Bernanke a couple of years ago doing his best to downplay our problems:

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To the dismay of many a fair-minded observer, Bernanke the Fool has been nominated for another term as Fed chairman. My comment is, so long as there is a Fed, who cares who runs it? The chairman, like the [...]

Graphite here. Mike has asked me to join up as a guest blogger, and since I’ve always loved the spirited mix of finance, politics, and righteous anger of The Sovereign Speculator, I’m happy to come aboard.
If you needed another sign that this deflationary crash is just getting started, take a look at this blog post [...]

Got this from Zero Hedge, an excellent new blog.
Takeaways:
The debt must be written down.
Ancient Babylon had better economic models than our Nobel laureates.
Our politicians’ constituents are not the voters, but the bankers, who are parasites.
Obama’s economic team is the same crew that raped Russia in the ’90s and they will support an oligarchy [...]

This is why I love America:
 

 
Thanks to Mish for sharing the link.

When I started this blog in early August, I was living near the equator in a city overlooking the Pacific, having packed up and shipped out of New York just after Bear Stearns blew up.  18 weeks ago, the Dow was solidly over 11,000, the 30-year bond was 4.6%, gold was $900, oil was $120 [...]

Mises Foundation founder Lew Rockwell interviewed blogger Mike “Mish” Shedlock on his podcast series:
Link here.
Topics include bailouts, ’stimulus’ plans, the benefits of deflation, and Mish’s campaigns to end bailouts and abolish the Fed.
Mish is really pushing hard politically. I’m 100% behind him, but I worry a bit about how the gangsters might respond to him [...]

The Journal has a story about a venture-funded alternative lender called On Deck Capital that extends credit to small businesses, many of whom don’t qualify for bank loans at the moment. Interest is high, at 18+ percent, but that sounds about right considering the risks of lending to small companies in this environment.
This business model [...]

If you haven’t read this book:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Watch this video, a lecture by G. Edward Griffin:

Click here to watch.

The essence of why bailouts will only deepen our problems is that real credit cannot be created out of thin air. This counterfeit operation is what caused the bubble to begin with, and by trying to put out a fire with gasoline, Bernanke, Congress and Obama are going to burn down the whole city.
Frank Shostak, [...]