I still maintain, and have yet to read any serious study (although a book has just been published - the title escapes me) that the costs of the war in Iraq are mainly to blame for this. The subprime mortgage mess & massive defaults are just icing on the cake. In Glenn Greenwald's column a month ago he wrote about how the defense budget currently accounts for 66% of all Federal expenditures when the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan are factored in.

By all accounts, the costs have been far understated by the Pentagon - just as they were in Vietnam - and we've seen the same kinds of results: inflation without accompanying wage increases and higher employment, i.e. stagflation.

The cause is obvious to me: low interest rates, huge deficits as we print up lots of money, and hand it right to the defense industry. More nominal dollars just means the real value is falling.

I could see George W. Bush sitting in the Oval Office exuberantly praising this course of action in his stumbling English:

"Well, if we're out of money... why don't... why don't we just print more? I mean, we're the government, right? We got the treasury just across the street from here. I saw it on a tour once!"

You have all the sophisticated currency traders around the world looking at the books and saying, "Dang. Let's dump these greenbacks, PRONTO." And with the death of fiscal responsibility the whole thing starts to unravel: they kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

As I see it, this is only really a "crisis" because of two factors: 1. It's an Election year. 2. The Bush Administration is notorious for keeping the game of hot potato going. Maybe it's a longstanding trait of George W. Bush's personality: going back to the days where his dad's buddies would always bail him out (Arbusto, Harken Energy, etc.). This amateur never really wants to sit down and deal with a difficult issue. But I digress...

The consequences of #1 above are that everyone is going to continuously spin this eight ways from Sunday.

The consequences of #2 above are that it's going to take a new presidential administration before anyone does the sensible thing of allocating all these bad loans on the books, and auctioning off the bad loans at a fire sale loss - like the S&L firesale in the '80's. Everybody learns a lesson, and we move forward, just like we did after the S&L bailouts, Long Term Capital, etc.

It's not going to be the end of the world. And it's not going to be another depression.

Although I could be wrong... but it seems to me, this economy is big enough to absorb the subprime meltdown without more than a hiccup. I guess we'll find out.

The "X" factor I forgot to mention above: how much bad economic data has the Bush Administration kept buried from the public? Only the People who brought you the Blacked Out 9/11 Report, WMD's in Iraq, and the true cost of the "Reconstruction" know for sure...

You mean the Mayans? They were the ones with calenders.

You'd think the current high price of oil would be enough to start convincing politicians & their constituents to move more public money to improving mass-transit options, and better city planning.

Actually, you'd think this would've been the case for a couple years now. But no. I understand the hope: that once again we'll have cheap gas... just as soon as "the war is over." But seriously, after seeing the growing consumption numbers for China and India, is this a realistic possibility? And even if it is, we're better off with less reliance on gasoline, more efficient transportation, less money and land wasted on roads, higher property values, less automobile pollution...

I look at my old hometown, Metro-Detroit. Any discussion of installing light rail is D.O.A., evem with gas prices above $3.30/gallon. People just don't get it. They'll whine and complain about gas prices, traffic, and construction, yet when it comes to passing a millage for a bus system, they piss themselves in anger. I guess the public needs to hire better lobbyists. Voting doesn't seem to get the job done anymore.

...they love to get outside the Beltway and kick back. They seem so relaxed and chill when they can be themselves. It's a pity those mean folks in the establishment can't just let John be himself all the time!

I could see myself there too, just hanging out and chillin' with everybody! I bet John's "famous" ribs are delicious. Imagine a busy politician having the time to come up with an original recipe all his own!

It makes me feel so warm and fuzzy, just like heavily-edited, politically-motivated "amateur" video of a presidential candidate carefully targeted to my 20-something age demographic should.

Tina Fey, Will Ferrell. Blah. These are people that are "supposed to be" funny. Their jokes are humorous... "in theory."

Nobody seems to get that but me - although to be fair, the latest Will Farell disaster Semi-Pro bombed. Why do we run all our truly funny, subversive comedians off the air? Norm MacDonald? Toast. Dave Chappelle? Gone. I suppose this is nothing really new. Lenny Bruce suffered from the same thing.

Being HARMLESS AND DUMB is the only way to get ahead these days. Maybe it always had, I don't know. It seems to be overwhelming though. SNL didn't win any awards until they realized this and purged their cast of any and all real talent.

I thought the whole point of the effect was that people BELIEVED they were taking an effective drug. If you know Airborne is nothing but an ineffective mix of vitamins and carbon dioxide fizz, how could it possibly still have an effect on you?

If you just need to stuff something -anything- in your mouth because you don't feel well, why not try some Tic-Tacs? Just tell yourself they are helping, and save some of your hard-earned money.