Really?

Do some of the new posters (welcome trolls, I guess) are going to propose that true unregulated free markets are the 'right' choice? Are they somehow inherently more robust and imbued with magic logic that makes them able to withstand a piece of 'misguided' legislation (like the community reinvestment program), could you explain how that would actually work?

Do the fools who claim regulations are bad think that regulations that constrained or limited people's ability to capitalize on their greed are the root cause all of these problems? Do they not see the actual greed itself as the root of the problem? And perhaps the lack of regulations that prevented greedy people at every stage of the game from following their greediest impulses without any limitations whatsoever?

Or maybe it is just when that 'greed' is the desire of a poor minority borrower to buy a house that is truly wicked. Shame on them for thinking that the American dream might be something that they should aspire to. I guess it just doesn't really apply to them, those filthy greedy bastards.

If I miss checking in on Salon for a day or two, HTWW is the one column that I check up on all the archives to see what I missed from Andrew and the other regulars (and irregulars).

Keep up the good work, there is a lot to talk about now and down the road. I love having a place to come to read about and spout off about these ideas and happenings.

In late October my software company had their best quarter, ever. Then 3 weeks later they did layoffs - about 1% of the world wide workforce (but all of the layoffs were in North America, none in the India or China offices). I guess they are dong pre-emptive cost cutting since Q4 is probably going to take a nose dive. They cut someone on the "high priority-high profile project" that I work on, and he was a reliable, productive employee. I am too, but I guess I could just as easily be the next one to get the axe. I did the following in expectation that the next round of layoffs might include me:

• reduced my 401k contribution from 16% to 1%

• reviewed my budget, and cut back my spending - I just flat out stopped spending money, so Peggy won't be seeing me at the mall

• delayed my purchase of a new sofa yet another month (my current one is a hand-me-down that we got from my college roommate's family in 1983, so you know I am kind of cheap)

• delayed my purchase of either a PS3 or laptop indefinitely

I hope I don't sound too ignorant of other people's suffering, I know I have it pretty damn good all things considered. I am just saying that I am a single guy who is making significant changes in my lifestyle since I expect to be feeling some pain soon too.

I totally agree that people can do enormous good by eating less animal-based protein (for their health and the environment), but this quote is total BS:

One hog farm with 50,000 pigs in France produces more waste than the entire city of Los Angeles...

LA has a population of about 3.8 million people. If 10% of them commute 30 miles in cars at 20 mpg, that uses 570,000 gallons of gas each day. If each person produces one pound of waste per day, that means 3.8 million pounds of waste per day.

Please. The pig farm would be like the worst neighbor you could ever imagine, but is not even close to a fraction of the waste that LA produces.

If a guy who knows how to build stuff looses his job, he could be put back to work a lot more quickly if some of the new jobs are in infrastructure. He might not want to gamble on getting retrained to be a teacher or nurse, just to compete with everybody else who would be going to the only place that has good prospects in the near future.

So instead of accepting that

In addition, if the past century of congressional pork-barrel methods is any precedent, infrastructural spending typically resists coherent national planning or larger cost-benefit analyses.

is how it will probably turn out, since that has too often been the case in the past.

How about we try standing up for own damn self interests and actually demand that our elected officials get it right for a change? These are extraordinary times, and maybe we as citizens need to act just a little bit extraordinary and actually demand that our elected officials do an extraordinary job to make things better. They might even listen since business as usual clearly won't work.