but if you watched the debate on CNN, there were some stark changes in "approval" that the male/female audience (very small) registered when Palin said "maverick" or talked about Irag. What I expected to see, but did not see, (since so many of use seemed to recoil at those barracuda teeth) was her approval drop as she recited fact free talking points with that Stepford wife smile assaulting everyone in the audience.

Hopefully the ordinary viewers in America found that as repulsive as most people here did.

I was kind of hoping someone would point out that her comment in the debate that insinuated the East Coast was just a bunch of those elitist types that the "mavericks" don't have time for is sort of at odds with her claim to read the New York Times.

How about some real gotcha journalism - ask her which columnist she reads first. Should be an easy question, even if she only reads on Sunday.

I've been wondering myself when China would start to evolve. Those workers aren't going to keep toiling away so cheaply for ever, and they might even start to get more proficient at making quality goods. I remember when "Made in Japan" meant you were getting low quality stuff on the cheap. That didn't last long, but then the Japanese seemed to be obsessively driven to improve. I'm a little doubtful that China will go so fast on the quality side, but on wages I bet they rise even faster.

Have you read of any signs of labor costs rising yet?

If they were willing to invade Iraq, why were they not willing to pass legislation to undo all of the terrible things the Dems singlehandedly did? Why did we not even hear a peep about this from them? Right up until the shit storm started, Republicans were telling us the fundamentals were fine. Are they complicit too OR completely ignorant?

The gulf between rich and poor looks more extreme and involves far more people than what we see in the US. The numbers of people we having living at the very lowest rungs (in boxes on city streets) is probably nothing compared to the number in China. You just don't see them on the streets in the modernized cities of course, but rather in rural villages with astonishingly primitive living conditions- like a third world country. And they just finished a spacewalk that some of those people probably don't even know happened.

There are so many people that the competition for resources can only get more fierce, and that can only lead to conflict. Industry needs lots of water and so do crops, so sooner or later somebody gets told "no water for you". Then what?

• greed

• some collective "irrational exuberance" in the belief that home prices can increase faster than wages for ever

• a little bit of outright criminal behavior (some loans and bond ratings)

• lax enforcement of existing regulations

• a dangerous environment from gutted regulations

• foolishness on the part of existing home owners using their homes as ATM's to live beyond their means

• naive first time home buyers taking on more than they could handle

The last item is way below the others in my mind when it comes to true culpability. BUT the people in the business are far and away much more culpable for every action they took. Those people have the training (for some, MBAs and PhDs from the best schools in the nation) that says they are qualified to work in the finance field and exercise fiduciary responsibility for the money they oversee. If they had done their jobs, this problem would have been so much smaller in size that it would have been a single item on 60 Minutes or Nightline instead of the biggest financial crisis in 7 decades, requiring international efforts to try to undo the damage.

Two (or many) wrongs don't make a right, so it is just so disgusting to me see the least culpable people in this whole mess get singled out for blame.

I say present them with a massive tax bill, but give them an out - a huge tax credit for meaningful investment in alternative energy research and/or implementation of actual projects. Give them a choice, either pay a really big bill to Uncle Sam or build solar and wind farms and sell the energy to the utilities. Their choice. I bet shareholders would prefer to collect for a few decades on the proceeds from a couple of windfarms and a couple of solar plants in the south west than to just write the mother of all tax bills to the IRS.

I'm in agreement with you on that. It sounds like exactly what is needed to provide a force that slightly discourages (but still allows) trading for the sake of trading (gambling) versus the buy and hold strategy that long term investors are always told is the way to go. What we have now leans towards casino night that provides ridiculous rewards to a few (like hedge funds). What we need is an investment environment that rewards long term investors who support successful companies with long term plans.

I couldn't care less about smart people who discover ways to game the system to syphon off cash. Some people claim they are essential to an efficient market by making the flow of capital more agile.

I say bullshit.

There is no way that any company with meaningful plans requires a market that supports traders who are able to make trades in milliseconds to respond to some fluctuation in price. There is no way their company could even make any decisions in response to this hyperactive trading. The only reason such hyperagile trading is needed is so some day trader can make easy money. Nice for him, but not the least bit essential or helpful to the longterm economic health of this country.

I say tax the shit out of them.