————-
Very good points, only ~5 minutes long. Well worth the watch.

I remembered this thing today as I was sending in my vehicle registration along with a letter that they continue to tax me to the wrong district.
Took me like an hour to find it.

Subprime ‘crisis’: FAQs (revised & updated) | vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from Europe’s leading economists
Let’s start with the facts: On Thursday 9 August 2007 the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Trading Desk (the “Desk”) injected $24 billion into the U.S. banking system. This was done in two equal size operations, one at 8:25am and a second 70 minutes later at 9:35am.1 On Friday 10 August 2007, the Desk was in the market three times (8:25am, 10:55am, and 1:50pm) putting in a total of $38 billion dollars. By early this week, things seemed to have returned to normal with injections of $2 billion on Monday and no action at all on Tuesday.

The Fed’s operations came on the heels of two even larger injections by the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt. On Thursday morning the ECB in Frankfurt Germany had put nearly €95 billion ($130 billion) into European financial institutions, followed by a somewhat smaller operation of €61 billion ($83.6 billion) on Friday. Things continued to seem unsettled in Europe after the weekend, as the ECB added €47.7 billion ($65.3 billion) on Monday (13 August), and then in two separate operations put €25 billion ($34.2 billion) into the European banking system on Tuesday.

Subprime woes have moved far beyond the mortgage industry. Already, at least five hedge funds have blown up. The latest worry is that a recent slump in the markets for corporate loans and junk bonds will deepen, jeopardizing the financing of leveraged buyouts, a big profit driver for investment banks. What’s more, fears are growing that banks may be on the hook for some of the $300 billion in loan commitments they’ve made for buyouts already in the pipeline. The mood has gone so somber that derivatives traders are betting that bonds issued by major investment banks will tumble to near junk territory. Goldman Sachs Group (GS) and Lehman Brothers (LEH) are being seen as no more creditworthy than casino operator Caesars Entertainment, according to an analysis of derivatives trades by Moody’s Credit Strategies Group.
businessweek

From Cab Driver to Drug Dealer, From Sex Shop to to Sushi, Goldman Sachs to Government - here’s how they all earn a buck.

So, it’s that time of year again, folks. Deer hunting season (rifle, archery is beyond the scope of this document) has opened again in Virginia on November 13th.

Here’s more information on licensing, restrictions, etc. Link to licenses and restrictions,etc.

I am stoked! I’m taking vacation next week and you’d better believe that at some point, if I can manage to wake up one day, I’m hitting the woods and slinging some lead.

When President Bill Clinton raised taxes in 1993, the unemployment rate dropped, from 6.9 to 6.1 percent, and kept falling each of the next seven years. When President Bush cut taxes in 2001, the unemployment rate rose, from 4.7 to 5.8 percent, then drifted to 6 percent last year when taxes were cut again.

It has become conventional wisdom in Washington that rising tax burdens crush labor markets. Bush castigated his political opponents last week for “that old policy of tax and spend” that would be “the enemy of job creation.”

Yet an examination of historical tax levels and unemployment rates reveals no obvious correlation.

“The fact of the matter is, we have much higher rates of employment today than we did in 1954, but our level of taxation is considerably higher,” said Gary Burtless, a labor economist at the Brookings Institution. “You simply can’t look at total taxation to find employment levels.”

Washington Post

Provide by the Cato Institute.

On 8 of the 10 key economic variables examined, the American economy performed better during the Reagan years than during the pre- and post-Reagan years.

* Real economic growth averaged 3.2 percent during the Reagan years versus 2.8 percent during the Ford-Carter years and 2.1 percent during the Bush-Clinton years.
* Real median family income grew by $4,000 during the Reagan period after experiencing no growth in the pre-Reagan years; it experienced a loss of almost $1,500 in the post-Reagan years.
* Interest rates, inflation, and unemployment fell faster under Reagan than they did immediately before or after his presidency.
* The only economic variable that was worse in the Reagan period than in both the pre- and post-Reagan years was the savings rate, which fell rapidly in the 1980s. The productivity rate was higher in the pre-Reagan years but much lower in the post-Reagan years.

…
A major element of Reaganomics, in addition to the tax cuts, was sound money–a policy the nation had not followed since the late 1960s. The Federal Reserve’s policy of sweating out inflation took place with the explicit approval of the Reagan administration, even though that policy contributed to the deep recession of 1981-82 and the unexpectedly large and immediate fall in inflation was a major factor in the budget deficit explosion in the early 1980s.

Full report.