What else is new?

Wall Street banks have had profitable quarters. JPMorgan Chase reported $3.6 billion in profit (more than $1 billion per month). Goldman Sachs was only slightly behind, at $3.2 billion. These profits supposedly came from “trading.” I asked a friend who has worked in the money business how this was possible. “For someone to make money trading, there has to be someone on the other side of every trade who is losing money. Where does each bank find someone who can lose $1 billion every month?”

He explained that “carry trade” would be a more accurate description of what they’re doing. Because of the Collapse of 2008 financial reforms, the big investment banks are able to borrow money from the U.S. government at 0 percent interest. Then they can turn around and buy short-term bonds that pay 2 or 3 percent annual interest. Now they’re making 2 percent on whatever they borrowed. They can use leverage to increase this number, by pledging some of the bonds that they’ve already bought as collateral on additional bonds.

I asked if they were taking any risk in order to earn this return. “If interest rates went up to 20 percent, even though the bonds are short-term, the price of the bond could fall enough to make the trade a money-loser.” (Though since the banks are too big to fail, they would simply be bailed out with additional taxpayer funds.)

What kind of bonds are they buying? Are they investing the money in American business? “No, they are mostly buying Treasuries.” So the money is just being shuffled from one Federal bank account to another, with each Wall Street bank skimming off $1 billion per month for itself? “Pretty much.”

[An more old-fashioned way of making supranormal returns is insider trading, which was perfectly legal until the Crash of 1929 (history). The New York Times ran a story yesterday on Raj Rajaratnam, a hedge fund manager who invested heavily in inside information. Rolling Stone published "Wall Street's Naked Swindle" on October 14. The story is much more sensational and entertaining than anything from the Times. It covers a guy who spent $1.7 million on out-of-the-money put options on Bear Stearns on March 11, 2008. The options would become worthless on March 20, just 9 days later, unless Bear Stearns basically went bust. Bear Stearns collapsed the next day and the guy made a $270 million profit. He has never been identified by the SEC.]

British Airways passengers will have to pay to choose their seats before they travel from October, the airline says. The charges will affect those seeking to ensure they sit together on a flight and people with a preference for window, aisle or emergency exit seats. People will pay from 7 October. Prices range from £10 per person for European economy flights, to £60 for long haul trips in business class.

BA said it would "give customers more control over their seating options".

The airline currently allows passengers to reserve seats in the 24 hours prior to departure. The new charge - aimed at passengers wanting to reserve seats earlier than this - will be £20 on long-haul economy or short flights in business class, while a seat in an emergency exit row will cost £50.

This can be booked between 10 and four days before take-off.

A BA spokeswoman said: "Customers frequently request specific seats, but in the past we've only been able to confirm them 24 hours in advance or on the day. "We know people want to secure them in advance and have real control over their flying experience. This will allow them to do that."

Parents who install a leading brand of software to monitor their kids' online activities may be unwittingly allowing the company to read their children's chat messages — and sell the marketing data gathered.

Software sold under the Sentry and FamilySafe brands can read private chats conducted through Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other services, and send back data on what kids are saying about such things as movies, music or video games. The information is then offered to businesses seeking ways to tailor their marketing messages to kids.

"This scares me more than anything I have seen using monitoring technology," said Parry Aftab, a child-safety advocate. "You don't put children's personal information at risk."

The company that sells the software insists it is not putting kids' information at risk, since the program does not record children's names or addresses. But the software knows how old they are because parents customize its features to be more or less permissive, depending on age.

Five other makers of parental-control software contacted by The Associated Press, including McAfee Inc. and Symantec Corp., said they do not sell chat data to advertisers.

One competitor, CyberPatrol LLC, said it would never consider such an arrangement. "That's pretty much confidential information," said Barbara Rose, the company's vice president of marketing. "As a parent, I would have a problem with them targeting youngsters."

The software brands in question are developed by EchoMetrix Inc., a company based in Syosset, N.Y.

In June, EchoMetrix unveiled a separate data-mining service called Pulse that taps into the data gathered by Sentry software to give businesses a glimpse of youth chatter online. While other services read publicly available teen chatter, Pulse also can read private chats. It gathers information from instant messages, blogs, social networking sites, forums and chat rooms.

EchoMetrix CEO Jeff Greene said the company complies with U.S. privacy laws and does not collect any identifiable information.

"We never know the name of the kid — it's bobby37 on the house computer," Greene said.

What Pulse will reveal is how "bobby37" and other teens feel about upcoming movies, computer games or clothing trends. Such information can help advertisers craft their marketing messages as buzz builds about a product.

Days before "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" opened in theaters on July 15, teen chatter about the movie spiked across the Internet with largely positive reactions.

"Cool" popped up as one of the most heavily used words in teen chats, blogs, forums and on Twitter. The upbeat comments gathered by Pulse foreshadowed a strong opening for the Warner Bros. film.

Parents who don't want the company to share their child's information to businesses can check a box to opt out.

But that option can be found only by visiting the company's Web site, accessible through a control panel that appears after the program has been installed. It was not in the agreement contained in the Sentry Total Home Protection program The Associated Press downloaded and installed Friday.

According to the agreement, the software passes along data to "trusted partners." Confidentiality agreements prohibit those clients from sharing the information with others.

In recognition of federal privacy laws that restrict the collection of data on kids under 13, the agreement states that the company has "a parent's permission to share the information if the user is a child under age 13."

Tech site CNet ranks the EchoMetrix software as one of the three best for parental control. Sales figures were not available.

The Sentry and FamilySafe brands include parental-control software such as Sentry Total Family Protection, Sentry Basic, Sentry Lite and FamilySafe (SentryPC is made by a different company and has no ties with EchoMetrix).

The Lite version is free. Others range from $20 to download and $10 a year for monitoring, to about $48 a year, divided into monthly payments.

The same company also offers software under the brands of partner entities, such as AmberWatch Lookout.

AmberWatch Foundation, a child-protection nonprofit group that licenses its brand to EchoMetrix, said information gathered through the AmberWatch-branded software is not shared with advertisers.

Practically speaking, few people ever read the fine print before they click on a button to agree to the licensing agreement. "Unless it's upfront in neon letters, parents don't know," Aftab said.

EchoMetrix, formerly known as SearchHelp, said companies that have tested the chat data using Pulse include News Corp.'s Fox Broadcasting and Dreamworks SKG Inc. Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures recently signed on.

None of those companies would comment when contacted by the AP.

EchoMetrix has been losing money. Its liabilities exceeded its assets by nearly $25 million as of June 30, according to a regulatory filing that said there is "substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern."

To get the marketing data, companies put in keywords, such as the name of a new product, and specify a date range, into Pulse. They get a "word cloud" display of the most commonly used words, as well as snippets of actual chats. Pulse can slice data by age groups, region and even the instant-messaging program used.

Pulse also tracked buzz for Microsoft Corp.'s "Natal," a forthcoming Xbox motion-sensor device that replaces the traditional button-based controller. Microsoft is not a client of Pulse, but EchoMetrix used "Natal" to illustrate how its data can benefit marketers.

Greene said children's conversations about Natal were focused on its price and availability, which suggested that Microsoft should assure teens that there will be enough stock and that ordering ahead can lock in a price.

Competing data-mining companies such as J.D. Power Web Intelligence, a unit of quality ratings firm J.D. Power and Associates, also trolls the Internet for consumer chats. But Vice President Chase Parker said the company does not read any data that's password-protected, such as the instant message sessions that EchoMetrix collects for advertisers.

Suresh Vittal, principal analyst at Forrester Research, said EchoMetrix might have to make its disclosures more apparent to parents.

"Are we in the safeguarding-the-children business or are we in the business of selling data to other people?" he said. If it's the latter, "it should all be done transparently and with the knowledge of the customer."

1. If you were designing your own superhero costume, how would you accessorize?
a. Cape
b. Scarf
c. Sidekick
d. Gun
e. Stack of fliers saying you are a superhero


2. What part of Canada would you most like to sleep with?
a. Victoria
b. Regina
c. Moosejaw
d. Calgary
e. Prince Edward Island



3. Burrito is to Chimichanga as
a. Jonathan Silverman is to Matthew Broderick
b. Gary Busey is to Nick Nolte
c. Paul Rieser is to Richard Lewis
d. Kelsey Grammar is to anyone else with an enormous freaking forehead


4. What's the worst thing you can say to a mugger?
a. Mom?
b. Don't forget to check my other shoe.
c. I don't think you're man enough to fire that gun
d. Now that you mention it, there may be something in my rectum


5. Your butler tells you that your yacht cleaner will take two hours longer than expected. What do you do?
a. Shoot them both in the face.
b. Shoot just the yacht cleaner in the face, cause hey, it's not your butler's fault.


6. You fall into a space-time portal and land in Hitler's 7th birthday party. What do you do?
a. Devote the rest of your life to mentoring him, so that he'll grow to be a right and just member of society.
b. Molest the shit out of him.

1. You just got change, and you have a Canadian penny. What do you do?

a. Demand a real penny, damn it, not one of these cheap knock-offs

b. Check with those nearby to see if you really are in Canada, and if so, find out why

c. Swallow it, quick, before they find you

d. Unwrap it and eat the chocolate


2. You find an eclair in your sock drawer. You:

a. Put on a pair of socks

b. Put on the eclair

c. Look for the other eclair, cause there must be a pair

d. Pinch yourself cuz you must be dreaming


3. What can I say to God to get into heaven?

a. Do you have any idea who I am?

b. I just need to get in for a minute I want to see if my friends are there.

c. I can make your life very difficult

d. Come on god, be cool, man, be cool


4. If you were a tree, where would you go out to eat?

a. Miracle-Gro Casino Sunday Morning Champagne Brunch Buffet

b. Taco Bell because trees always seem to be broke

c. Tree food court at the tree mall

d. Red Lobster

e. Anything off the trunk of a $1000-a-night tree hooker


5. You catch your lover in bed with C-3P0. You:

a. Congratulate the better man.

b. Ask for a C-3some-0.

c. Get really C-3P.O.'ed.

d. Ask him to autograph the VCR.

e. May as well watch, because it's hard to picture how this goes down

I am so pissed off about the pharma companies. There is a Latisse spot may appear to be just another by-the-numbers pharma spot, but in fact it's the greatest bad pharma spot ever. Let's count the ways:

1) "The first and only approved FDA treatment for inadequate and not enough lashes," "also known as hypotrichosis."
Hypotrichosis has all the makings of a fake illness: enough of a medical basis to sound real (it's a condition of "no hair growth") and yet vague enough to invite creative interpretation. In December, the same month the FDA approved Latisse, someone at Allergan--the company that makes the drug--repeatedly tried to alter the Wikipedia entry of hypotrichosis to include eyelash hypotrichosis. Fortunately, Wikipedia moderators caught the changes and removed them (here and here).

2) Brooke Shields as spokesperson
In case it wasn't perfectly clear that eyelash hypotrichosis is a fiction, we're asked to believe that Brooke Shields--a woman with well over 30 years in modeling--isn't pretty enough without this new drug for her lashes.

3) "May cause eyelid skin darkening, which may be reversible, and there is potential for increased brown iris pigmentation, which is likely permanent."
Also "itchy eyes and eye redness" and, though the commercial never says it, the active ingredient in Latisse is also linked to optic nerve damage and blindness. Ok, so you get longer, dark lashes, but your eyes might turn brown, itchy, and useless.

4) "Full results in 12 to 16 weeks" and "If discontinued, lashes will gradually return to their previous appearance."
So you have to wait four months for this stuff to work and as soon as you stop, you're back to your old bald lids. It's worth noting that the message about discontinuing Latisse appears only as text on screen at the same time that the voice-over lists side effects. The makers of this commercial are hoping to cram the drawbacks in as little space as possible to free you, the consumer, from reflection.

5) "Find a doctor at Latisse.com."
Gee, I wonder what those doctors will think of Latisse.... Perhaps this serves a useful purpose, though: any dermatologist on here is probably one you'd want to avoid.

1. Fine: This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

2. Five Minutes: If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the football before helping around the house.

3. Go Ahead: This is a dare, not permission. Don't Do It!

4. A Loud Sigh: This is actually a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing. (Refer quickly to No 9 for the meaning of nothing.)

5. That's Okay: This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. That's okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

6. Thanks: A woman is thanking you, do not question, or faint. Just say you're welcome. (I want to add a clause here - This is true, unless she says 'Thanks a lot', which is PURE sarcasm and she is not thanking you at all. DO NOT say 'you're welcome' - that will bring on No. 7).

7. Whatever: Is a woman's way of saying, "F-- YOU!"

8. Don't worry about it, I got it: Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking 'What's wrong?' For the woman's response refer to No. 4.

9. Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in "Fine".

10. We: read as I. You are not included in plan making. We (I) made plans for something.

US firm apologizes over use of murdered couple’s photo

AN AMERICAN company has been forced to apologize after using a picture of murdered honeymooners Ben and Catherine Mullany in an online advertising campaign.

An image of the couple, who were shot dead in Antigua last summer, was used by the US firm MyDishBiz alongside in an area of its website featuring testimonials from satisfied customers.

The company last night apologized to the couple’s family, and said it had “not knowingly included the picture” on its site.

But its appearance has been criticized by Welsh Secretary Peter Hain as “diabolical”, while a friend of the family described it as “like some kind of terrible joke”.

Ben and Catherine, both 31 and from Rhos, near Pontardawe in the Swansea Valley, were shot dead in a bungled robbery at their holiday bungalow on the Caribbean island of Antigua on July 27 last year.

It was the last day of their honeymoon.

Catherine died instantly from head wounds while Ben died a week later having been transferred in a coma to Morriston Hospital in Swansea.

The picture used on the American website showed a smiling Ben and Catherine, and was accompanied by text suggesting the pair were “Frank and Mary from New York”, complete with a gushing testimonial purportedly from them about MyDishBiz.

The picture had in fact been taken in the run up to the couple’s wedding in the Swansea Valley a year ago this weekend.

The image of newly qualified GP Catherine and trainee physiotherapist Ben, an ex-soldier had apparently been downloaded from an internet tribute to them, and paired with the bogus testimonial.

The testimonial said: “We have made $1,000 alone with your MyDishBiz internet business opportunity.

“We are very happy with this program. This is the best opportunity we’ve ever seen online. Thanks again.”

The company has now issued a humble apology and has blamed either a disgruntled ex-employee or someone “with a warped sense of humor”.

Mr Hain, who is the MP of the murdered couple’s family, said: “This is diabolical.

“It may have been a mistake but it should never have happened.

“The couple’s memory should be cherished not abused.”

Ben and Catherine’s family in Pontardawe are said to be “upset” that the photograph is being used with a false identity.

And a friend of the Mullanys said yesterday: “It sounds like some kind of terrible joke or prank in which someone has gone to the trouble of downloading the photo from the internet and putting words alongside it.

“The company may not have known what was going on but surely there should have been more checks done on something like this before it went out?”

Internet company MyDishBiz based in Wintersville, Ohio, yesterday confirmed it has now removed the offending photograph and sent apologies to Ben and Catherine’s families.

A spokesman said: “We are trying to track down who sent the testimonial and picture for inclusion on our website.

“It may have been a disgruntled affiliate or someone who has a very warped sense of humor.”

“Deepest apologies are extended to the families of the victims.

“Our company did not knowingly include the picture of the deceased on our website.”

Two Antiguan men – Avie Howell, 18, and Kaniel Martin, 21 – are due to stand trial on the holiday island later this year charged with murdering the newlywed couple.

And a third defendant, Georgette Aaron, who has been charged with perverting the course of justice by trying to help Martin and Howell, will stand trial alongside them.

Aaron, 32, had also been charged with being an accessory to murder, robbery after the fact and conspiracy to make a false statement but those charges were withdrawn.

She is accused of receiving, harboring, maintaining and comforting Martin and Howell.

Tourism on Antigua has been badly hit since news of the Mullany murders swept around the world following their brutal killing.

The size of the police force on the island has been increased considerably since the Mullany murders and efforts are still being made to modernize detective and forensic work.

Sting nabs sticky-fingered JFK airport workers going through luggage

A sting captured by security cameras nabbed two sticky-fingered airport workers who swiped electronics planted by authorities, officials said.

Brian Burton, 27, and Antwon Simmons, 26, stole a laptop and cell phone from the decoy luggage as it moved through Kennedy Airport, Port Authority officials said.

"When air travelers check their luggage with an airline, there is an implicit trust that their bags and their contents will meet them at their destination," said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. "The defendants are accused of betraying that trust."

Burton, an officer with the Transportation Security Administration, was videotaped July 7 pilfering through the Miami-bound suitcase in an airport screening room while Simmons, a baggage handler, looked on.

The thieves also switched the luggage tags, hoping to conceal their handiwork, officials said.

The suitcase was a trap set by the Transportation Security Administration and Delta Air Lines.

They stuffed the luggage with a lap top, an iPod and two cell phones, prosecutors said.

The pilfering pair - who had been on cops' radar, a source said - took the bait, failing the so-called integrity test.

Burton, of Queens, and Simmons, of Brooklyn, were awaiting arraignment last night on charges of grand larceny, possession of stolen property and falsifying business records.

They face up to four years in prison if convicted.

There are no words in the thesaurus of insult that quite do justice to the UK Border Agency and the minister for borders and immigration, Phil Woolas.

So let's just agree that new rules barring artists from visiting this country and so enriching our culture are some of the most contemptible ever devised, even by this narrow-minded apology for a government.

A few weeks ago I commented on the shameful treatment received at Gatwick airport by the Canadian singer Allison Crowe and two band members who were fingerprinted, held in cells then sent home under new laws that mean that artists have to submit to a set of expensive and time-consuming procedures to get their visa and further restrictions on their movements while they are here.

Now news comes from the Ledbury Poetry Festival, which is under way, that three poets who were due to appear have been barred from entering Britain. There could no more depressing example of the way in which this government's populist obsession with immigration damages artistic life.

Dorothea Rosa Herliany, according to the festival, is one of the most important poets writing in Indonesia today. She is a feminist, note the Muslim society in which she works, and has eight volumes of poetry to her name. Currently resident for a short time in Germany, she received this crushingly dim response to her application for a visa.

"You have provided an invitation to participate in the Ledbury Poetry Festival in the UK, however you have failed to provide any documents showing the funds available to you or demonstrating your current circumstances in Germany. I note that you only arrived in Germany in April 09, and have limited leave to remain until 30/07/09. I am therefore not satisfied on the balance of probabilities that you are a genuine visitor, that you intend to leave the UK at the end of your visit."

The festival only learned about the ban two weeks ago and did not have the time to make representations on her behalf. In the event she was given a visa for the day after she was due to appear. The only possible course for Woolas and the UK Borders Agency is to make an apology to Herliany and to the people who attend the festival, but we shouldn't hold our breath because there is clearly some kind of campaign against poets with strange sounding names and of Muslim origin who want to come to this country.

Also barred were Hassan Najmi and Ouidad (Widad) Benmoussa, two Moroccan poets who were due to appear today for an event entitled Moroccan Food and Poetry. The festival press officer, Simon Steven, outlines their credentials. "Hassan Najmi has published four collections of poems, one novel and two books of essays. He was president of the Moroccan Union of Writers from 1998 to 2005 and is presently director-general of the book and publications department of Morocco's Ministry of Culture. Ouidad Benmoussa has published two collections, including Between Two Clouds in 2006. Her first collection, The Imminent Root (2001), established her as a poet to watch."

Both were messed around by the agency that handles applications in a way that must shame anyone who cares about Britain's reputation abroad. It is a wretched irony that Margaret Obank and Samuel Shimon (who were to host the Moroccan poets) have been invited to Morocco for a literary festival this summer and they won't need visas.

Steven said, "This is like holding a dinner party and finding you have a bouncer on the door who is barring guests." Joan Bakewell, who is chair of the National Campaign for the Arts, emailed me yesterday with this comment. "I am shocked by what has happened at Ledbury. The NCA has laboured long and hard with the Home Office explaining repeatedly and in the greatest detail how much the arts are international and depend on the exchange of artists to fuel the great appetite people now have for work that sustains the human spirits.

For such worthwhile and peaceful events to be snarled up by slow-moving and inappropriate bureaucracies is a failure of values and competence."

We need to hear from Woolas, or his boss, Alan Johnson. It's time these nasty and absurd restrictions were lifted.

Anyone who has ever had cats knows how difficult it can be to get them to do anything they don't already want to do. But it seems that the house cats themselves have had distinctly less trouble getting humans to do their bidding, according to a report published in the July 14th issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.

The rather crafty felines motivate people to fill their food dishes by sending something of a mixed signal: an urgent cry or meowing sound embedded within an otherwise pleasant purr. The result is a call that humans generally find annoyingly difficult to ignore.

"The embedding of a cry within a call that we normally associate with contentment is quite a subtle means of eliciting a response," said Karen McComb of the University of Sussex. "Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing, which is likely to get cats ejected from the bedroom." She suggests that this form of cat communication sends a subliminal sort of message, tapping into an inherent sensitivity that humans and other mammals have to cues relevant in the context of nurturing their offspring.

McComb said that she was inspired by her own cat, who consistently wakes her up in the mornings with a very insistent purr. She learned in talking with other cat owners that some of their cats too had mastered the same manipulative trick. As a scientist who already studied vocal communication in mammals, from elephants to lions, she decided to get to the bottom of it.

It turned out that wasn't so easy to do. The cats were perfectly willing to use their coercive cries in private, but when strangers came around they tended to clam right up. Her team therefore had to train cat owners to record their own cats' cries.

In a series of playback experiments with those calls, they found that humans judged the purrs recorded while cats were actively seeking food as more urgent and less pleasant than those made in other contexts, even if they had never had a cat themselves.

"We found that the crucial factor determining the urgency and pleasantness ratings that purrs received was an unusual high-frequency element—reminiscent of a cry or meow—embedded within the naturally low-pitched purr," McComb said. "Human participants in our experiments judged purrs with high levels of this element to be particularly urgent and unpleasant." When the team re-synthesised the recorded purrs to remove the embedded cry, leaving all else unchanged, the urgency ratings for those calls decreased significantly.

McComb said she thinks this cry occurs at a low level in cats' normal purring, "but we think that cats learn to dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans." In fact, not all cats use this form of purring at all, she said, noting that it seems to most often develop in cats that have a one-on-one relationship with their owners rather than those living in large households, where their purrs might get overlooked by poorly trained people.

In those instances, she said, cats seem to find it more effective to stick to the standard meow.

Lesson 1

Go to the grocery store.
Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
Go home.
Pick up the paper.
Read it for the last time.


Lesson 2

Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their:
Methods of discipline.
Lack of patience.
Appallingly low tolerance levels.
Allowing their children to run wild.
Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior.
Enjoy it, because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.


Lesson 3

To discover how the nights will feel...
Walk around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly.
At 10PM, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.
Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.
Set the alarm for 3AM.
As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink.
Go to bed at 2:45AM.
Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.
Sing songs in the dark until 4AM.
Get up. Make breakfast. Keep this up for 5 years.
Look cheerful.


Lesson 4

Can you stand the mess children make? To find out...
Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.
Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
Stick your fingers in the flower bed.
Then rub them on the clean walls.
Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?


Lesson 5

Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.
Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.
Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.
Time allowed for this - all morning.


Lesson 6

Take an egg carton. Using a pair of scissors and a jar of paint, turn it into an alligator.
Now take the tube from a roll of toilet paper. Using only Scotch tape and a piece of aluminum foil, turn it into an attractive Christmas candle.
Last, take a milk carton, a ping-pong ball, and an empty packet of Cocoa Puffs.
Make an exact replica of the Eiffel Tower.


Lesson 7

Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don't think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that.
Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.
Leave it there.
Get a dime. Stick it in the cassette player.
Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat.
Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.
There. Perfect.


Lesson 8

Get ready to go out.
Wait outside the bathroom for half an hour.
Go out the front door.
Come in again. Go out.
Come back in.
Go out again.
Walk down the front path.
Walk back up it.
Walk down it again.
Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes.
Stop, inspect minutely, and ask at least 6 questions about every cigarette butt, piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue, and dead insect along the way.
Retrace your steps.
Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbors come out and stare at you.
Give up and go back into the house.
You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.


Lesson 9

Repeat everything at least (if not more than) five times.


Lesson 10

Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full- grown goat is excellent).
If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat.
Buy your week's groceries without letting the goats out of your sight.
Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.
Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.


Lesson 11

Hollow out a melon.
Make a small hole in the side.
Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.
Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the
swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.
Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.
Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.
You are now ready to feed a nine-month old baby.


Lesson 12

Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street, Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV for at least five years.


Lesson 13

Move to the tropics. Find or make a compost pile. Dig down about halfway and stick your nose in it. Do this 3-5 times a day for at least two years.


Lesson 14

Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying "mommy" repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each "mommy"; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years.
You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.


Lesson 15

Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the "mommy" tape made from Lesson 14 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

I must not be the only person who bitches about the state of air travel. I estimate that 99% of all people who travel will say that air travel sucks. The other 1% travel first class or have no sense of what air travel should be. I will give you an example. After a lot of funfair, Clear blue program was rolled out to mass populous at $99 per year with the promises of no lines and fast service. With your shoes on. So I didn’t sign up. I am that dumb. I will stand with the unwashed masses in the general queue while the clear blue line has no people in it. And I think that was the problem. No one signed up. No wait, people did sign up, but they didn’t get to keep their shoes on because the company that was manufacturing the device that blows the puff of air and then does the analysis – GE – didn’t actually say that you get to keep your shoes on. So after some time in the pilot program, TSA approved the use of those machines with Clear Blue system only to shut it down a couple of days ago. I am thinking because no one signed up.

The program was targeted at frequent fliers and people who didn’t want to wait at the queue with the unwashed masses. The problem is that the frequent flyers already did have the gold status and didn’t need to wait with the unwashed masses. So that’s about 75% of targeted audience for Clear Blue. The other 25% could not possibly sustain the cost of running the program at the current cost level and everyone who cared knew that they would raise the prices. And they did. Almost doubling it. That was the final straw that broke the air puffing camel. With no customers it was pretty evident that the end was near.

But I wasn’t expecting the program to just shut doesn overnight like it did. Literally overnight, the program closed, releasing its staff. The CEO resigned in March. That was another sign of things to come.

I’ll give you another example. I was flying recently from La Guardia in NYC to Chicago on United Airlines. I checked in online and didn’t have any luggage. My flight was scheduled for departure at 8.15pm. I was at the airport at 6pm. The flight was cancelled. Why? No one was able to give me a straight answer, but I think it was because there wasn’t enough passengers to justify flying. I was rebooked on a flight leaving at 7 pm. Great! The flight was supposed to leave at 7.00pm and land in Chicago at 8.45 local time, so a 2 ¾ hours flight. We landed at 8pm local time. Now Why would you list the flight time of 2 ¾ hours I the flight is only 1 ¾ hours? I’ll tell you why. On the way back, my flight from Chicago to Newark on United was scheduled for 6.15pm. Only it was 1 ¾ hours delayed. But, we boarded the plane, left the gate and sat on the tarmac for 1 ¾ hours. When we got to Newark, the flight arrived on time. And it left on time because it left the gate on time in Chicago. No explanation was given to why we are sitting in a tin can for 1 ¾ hours. They are probably watching me now because I dared to ask.

Another thing that bugs me is why there is so much document checking required when flying. You present your boarding pass with your id to the security guy before you get to present to another guy who checks it before you go through the metal detector and then you get it checked again after you went through. Once you are done there, you get to the gate and they check it again to let you on the gate jetty. Then there is a random security check where a TSA agent gets to check it again. Why? I just gave it to the gate agent to check. Then the stewardess checks it again. WTF? So there are possible 6 times that you have to give your boarding card and id to 6 different people just so you can get a pleasure of being charged for a drink. There is no need for the guy to check it after you pass the metal detector. Nor there is a need for the stewardess to check it. There is no need for random security check right after the gate agent checked it. Pointless. And why do I need to give my id to the person checking the boarding passes before you give it a TSA guy who checks it again 20 yards behind the first guy. Unless you can sneak into the walkway through the building walls there is no way that someone can get though without authorization. And do they not trust the Gate agent to check the ids that’s why they are doing random security checks? The problem, I think, is that a lot of these people have been hired after 9.11 and now there is not much use for them, but because they are government employees it’s hard to get rid of them.

The final question for now. Behind United check in desks at La Guardia, there were TSA agents. Why? There are only 3 people checking in people. And there are 3 TSA agents standing there observing. Why? Waste.

The UK government's official anti-terror law watchdog says that the thousands of people are being stopped and searched by the police under counter-terrorism powers simply to provide a racial balance in official statistics.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jun/17/stop-search-terror-law-met

Terror law used to stop thousands 'just to balance racial statistics'

Thousands of people are being stopped and searched by the police under counter-terrorism powers simply to provide a racial balance in official statistics, the government's official anti-terror law watchdog has revealed.

Lord Carlile said in his annual report that he has got "ample anecdotal evidence", adding that it was "totally wrong" and an invasion of civil liberties to stop and search people simply to racially balance the statistics.

"I can well understand the concerns of the police that they should be free from allegations of prejudice," he said. "But it is not a good use of precious resources if they waste them on self-evidently unmerited searches."

The official reviewer of counter-terrorist legislation said there was little or no evidence that the use of section 44 stop-and-search powers by the police can prevent an act of terrorism.

"Whilst arrests for other crime have followed searches under the section, none of the many thousands of searches has ever resulted in a conviction for a terrorism offence. Its utility has been questioned publicly and privately by senior Metropolitan police staff with wide experience of terrorism policing," said Carlile.

He added that such searches were stopping between 8,000-10,000 people a month.

Under the Terrorism Act 2000, the "section 44 stops" allow the police to search anyone in a designated area without suspicion that an offence has occurred. But Carlile is critical of the use of the powers used by the Met police, saying he felt "a sense of frustration" that the force did not limit its section 44 authorisations to some boroughs or parts of boroughs but used them across its entire area.

"I cannot see a justification for the whole of the Greater London area being covered permanently. The intention of the section was not to place London under permanent special search powers."

None of the many thousands of searches had ever led to a conviction for a terrorist offence, he said. He noted, too, that the damage done to community relations was "undoubtedly considerable".

Examples of poor, or unnecessary use, of section 44 abounded. "I have evidence of cases where the person stopped is so obviously far from any known terrorism profile that, realistically, there is not the slightest possibility of him/her being a terrorist, and no other feature to justify the stop."

The Met has announced a review of how it uses section 44 powers. And the home secretary, Alan Johnson, is to issue fresh guidance to the police, warning that counter-terrorism must not be used to stop people taking photographs of on-duty officers.

Carlile uses his annual report to endorse complaints from professional and amateur photographers that counter-terror powers are being used to threaten prosecution if pictures are taken of officers on duty.

He said the power was only intended to cover images likely to be of use to a terrorist: "It is inexcusable for police officers ever to use this provision to interfere with the rights of individuals to take photographs." The police had to come to terms with the increased scrutiny of their activities by the public, afforded by equipment such as video-enabled mobile phones. "Police officers who use force or threaten force in this context run the real risk of being prosecuted themselves for one or more of several possible criminal and disciplinary offences," he warned.

He mentioned an incident in which two Austrian tourists were rebuked by officers for photographing Walthamstow bus station, in east London.

Once, the idiots were just the fools gawping in through the windows. Now they've entered the building. You can hear them everywhere. They use the word " cool" . It is their favourite word. The idiot does not think about what it is saying. Thinking is rubbish. And rubbish isn't cool. Stuff & shit is cool. The idiots are self-regarding consumer slaves, oblivious to the paradox of their uniform individuality. They sculpt their hair to casual perfection, they wear their waistbands below their balls, they babble into hand-held twit machines about that cool email of the woman being bummed by a wolf. Their cool friend made it. He's an idiot too. Welcome to the age of stupidity. Hail to the rise of the idiots.

We're supposed to take heart in the fact that the Treasury Department's bank "stress tests" didn't come out worse. No, our biggest banks aren't insolvent, exactly. In fact, enough cash was printed to guarantee that they should be able to survive the rest of the recession. Worst case, with a little late-night printing and lending by the central bank, even the worst of them - like Citibank - should be able to hobble through. Our Treasury Department wants us to be reassured.

True enough, as long as banks are understood by many as fueling the economy, this should be good news. By this logic, banks disperse the capital that allows businesses to do their business. As so many have explained to me, it all starts with the banks. Banks lend businesses money, and then those businesses turn it into something real - like products, salaries, or innovation.

Sorry, but that's just not true. Labor might make money, but money doesn't make labor. And while we can certainly point to the fact that assembly lines and mixing boards cost money, neither are required as the first step in creating a car company or a musical act. Yes, in a well-functioning economy, good production yields income, part of which goes to making production better. A great company dedicates part of its winnings to R&D.

But the notion that enterprise and production starts with banking is just another artifact of Renaissance-era currency monopolies. Back before the first central banks, production and yield actually created money. (That's what all this hoopla about complementary currency is about.) Money was not lent into existence by a bank. Instead, farmers brought their grain to town and received receipts for the grain. These receipts served as the local currency. Currency was worked into existence. There was as much money as there was grain.

The problem with this scheme was that people got too wealthy - especially in comparison with the feudal lords and fledgling monarchy, who had always been used to getting rich, well, by being rich. So they went and made all the grain-based currencies illegal, and forced everyone to use coin of the realm - central currency. While this coin was better for long distance trade and collecting taxes, it was lousy for local transactions. People lost their ability to live off the land, took jobs with early corporations, got poor, less fed, and eventually the economic downturn in Europe led to a plague that killed half the population. This isn't economic interpretation - it's just fact.

Eventually, with only half the population to deal with, Europe's new economic scheme proved basically sufficient to the task. And we got the rules that have - in one form or another - defined economics to this day: people don't make money, banks do. The chief function of money is for money to make money - not for it to be used for successful transactions.

But today we may be smart enough, information may travel around fast enough, for many of us to realize just how transparent a fraud we're witnessing unfold before us today - how the bailouts of AIG were really funding Goldman Sachs, how intimately involved are bankers - Rubin or Paulson, are with Treasury chiefs like, er, Paulson and Rubin. How government and banking are one and the same, both after the same centralization of authority, both inextricably linked with the biases of lending-based wealth schemes, and both utterly incapable of serving as the source of anything.

Long time ago, when GW was still president and Obama was only a sparkle in the votes eye, the news about the Iraq and how many solders were dying there were as abundand as the money that flowed in Washington DC's veins. Now that Obama is actually the President, I ask you this - when was the last time you heard anything about Iraq? Did you notice that more than 80 solders dies in Iraq in February. Is this the change you were looking for?

So you think youve cut your spending? Here are some ideas you probably havent thought of.

These are extreme times. Do they call for extreme measures?

There's no question that widespread layoffs, shrinking retirement accounts and rising prices have families buckling down financially. But are they thinking of everything they can? Should they be cutting back in ways that might never have occurred to them?

Even if families have enough savings to live on for the next few months, or even years, the future seems scarier now than it once did," says Carl Johnson, a Peterborough, N.H., financial adviser.

So what's a family to do? Here are four unorthodox strategies for saving money. People have already managed to save by following at least one of these strategies.

Enroll Your Kids in a Virtual School
One way to cut your family's education costs is to enroll the children in virtual public schools.

Though not available in all states, a number of companies have started virtual schools that conduct elementary- and high-school classes online. Students take the classes at home, usually tuition free. Funding for the programs typically comes from the state.

K12 Inc., based in Herndon, Va., operates virtual public schools in 21 states. Its Web site, www.k12.com, shows where. K12 gives each of its high-school students his or her own computer -- in a family with more than one grade-school student enrolled, the kids may have to share -- and subsidizes the Internet connections. Its curriculum includes Advanced Placement classes.

Mary Ann Ridenour's daughter, Anna Marie, 15, and son, Aaron, 17, have been attending Ohio Connections Academy, run by Baltimore-based Connections Academy, since 2003. The children previously attended private school, and Ms. Ridenour estimates she is saving $7,000 to $10,000 a year per child by switching to the virtual school. The local public schools, she says, weren't challenging enough. The family also saves on clothing, doctors' bills and food, she says. Her stay-at-home kids feel no peer pressure to buy the latest in clothes and gear, rarely get sick and eat lunch at home.

Susan Fancher, vice president of marketing for Connections Academy, says virtual school works for many students, but it's not right for all. Students work with teachers online, but many also have learning coaches -- usually a parent who serves as a face-to-face resource and helps the student stay on track. "This often means families make sacrifices for students so they can be there every day," she says. The company's Web site, www.connectionsacademy.com, lists the states where its classes are available.

Go Back to Bartering
Barter is back, thanks to Web sites that make it easier to match up people wanting to exchange specific goods and services. For families, barter Web sites offer an innovative way to get a new video game, plumbing repairs or even a vacation rental without cash.

"Its back to the cave, where the earliest form of commerce was barter," says Michael Satz, chief executive of the recently launched barter Web site BarterQuest.com. Each trading partner determines what is a fair exchange, he says. Barter especially makes sense for parents, because their children constantly require new things, and for students who are always short of cash, says Mr. Satz.

BarterBee.com allows consumers to trade CDs, DVDs and games. Craigslist.com has a barter section, too. Bill Brady, who is semiretired in Boca Raton, Fla., is using Craigslist to barter an informal time share for his West Palm Beach, Fla., one-bedroom penthouse.

Bartering does have its challenges. It's not always simple to find an interested partner for the other half of your trade, even on the Web, and a certain amount of trust is required from each party. Bartered goods and most services are considered taxable revenue, too, and must be reported to the Internal Revenue Service in the year in which they are obtained, says George Papadopoulos, a Novi, Mich., financial adviser and certified public accountant.

You can improve your chances if you focus on an equitable trade, are upfront and detailed with barter terms and are willing to get creative, experts say.

Tiffany Gentry, an out-of-work executive assistant in New York, is looking on Craigslist.com for someone who can train her in office-productivity software programs like QuickBooks and Photoshop. In return, she is willing to give English lessons or assistance in organizing and cleaning. "It's a great to time to increase my skills," she says, "and I didn't want to spend money on a class."

Cut Out the Extras for a Month
If you're willing to make some sacrifices, declare a "want-free" month, says Ramsey Bova, a Lexington, Ky., financial adviser. Want-free months refer to a one-month period in which a family only spends money on necessities such as bills, food and shelter.

"The purpose is to witness how much money we are wasting on items that provide no real benefit," says Ms. Bova. Although the challenge might feel extreme at times, it could be critical for families who don't have adequate emergency funds stashed away. (Ms. Bova recommends about 12 months of emergency savings during tough economic times.)

The challenge might be harder for a larger family, but planning can make it doable. Ms. Bova's clients Angela and Rick Conner, who have three children under the age of 3, saved a few hundred dollars during their want-free month by cutting out fast-food stops while running errands, and avoiding restaurants in general.

"It was nice to know there is more we can do to stretch the budget if we need to," says Ms. Conner, who adds that the experience has helped change the family's spending habits permanently. The family no longer buys reserves of groceries, for instance, unless there is a sale item or they have coupons.

Jeb Collier, a New Bern, N.C.-based financial adviser, says a "want-free" month will only work if families do it right. "If they only go half-way, the exercise is moot," says Mr. Collier. A half-hearted attempt, he says, could be thinking that a "necessity" is whatever falls within current spending habits. He says the biggest challenge is being honest about what is a "necessity." Participants also might come out of the exercise like someone coming off a diet, and binge to make up for what they missed, he says.

Stop Supporting Adult Kids
"One of the hardest expenses to cut out is assistance to adult children," says Morris Armstrong, a Danbury, Conn., financial adviser. If a son or daughter is counting on parents to help pay rent, health-care bills, or get an education, suddenly stopping that support could throw the child's life into financial chaos. Some advisers have seen parents helping more in recent years as adult children carry large loan payments and face possible layoffs.

But while it's a difficult move, ending assistance to adult children may be necessary for parents who only have a few more working years of their own in which to rack up savings for retirement, or who have seen their savings dwindle due to the market turmoil.

Cutting financial ties may help parents feel a greater sense of security in their later years. It may also allow them to help their children again when times improve.

It's best to break the news in person, says Atlanta psychologist Mary Gresham. "It's a bad move if you do it suddenly without notice and you are breaking a promise you made to your child," she says. Dr. Gresham says the ramifications depend on how the situation is handled. In the worst case, she says, "the relationship is broken."

Despite recent gains in the stock market, portfolios remain badly damaged by the market performance of the past 18 months. With jobs still falling away at a rapid clip, the recession is still a serious concern and policymakers are scrambling to implement expensive and complex solutions.

As we wade through these difficult times, how should you think about your own financial situation? A good starting point is to remember what Kipling wrote: Keep your head about you as everyone is losing theirs.

It's a great temptation in times such as these to think things will never get better. But if history shows us anything, things do eventually improve. In fact, judging by the standards of past economic shocks, this recession is getting long in the tooth. The average recession since World War II has lasted 11 months, and the longest was 16 months in 1981-82. Our current crisis is 15 months old.

Also, hints of bottoming are starting to surface. Oil prices have begun to rise, indicating some increased demand. China is importing aluminum again. In addition, the stimulus plan will start to kick in later this year, creating jobs and, perhaps, helping soothe some of the enormous fears in the marketplace.

So, there are definitely brighter times ahead. Until then, here are some strategies to help you keep your head about you: five things that you definitely should do and five things you definitely should not do, as you weigh how to protect and build your assets.

Let's start with the five things you should definitely do:

1. Reduce Your Expensive Debt
Too many of us overextended ourselves during the past decade with credit cards and other debt. These bills now hang over people like the Sword of Damocles.

The first order of business is to reduce this expensive debt, even before saving for retirement or investing in the stock market. One smart strategy is to take advantage of much lower gasoline prices. One year ago, gas cost more than $4 a gallon in much of the country. Today, it's less than half that. You should devote the money you save to eliminating your credit-card debt.

2. Get On a Budget
Thrift is the new black. That means getting on a budget, measuring exactly what you spend and looking for ways to save money. Perhaps you are eating out more than you appreciate or spending too much on a cup of coffee. Budgeting is a lost discipline for many people and one that should be rediscovered.

There are several free Web sites, such as Mint.com, Quicken.com and Wesabe.com, that can help you sort out your spending and give you a sense of where you can save money.

You upload password information for your credit cards and other accounts, and the sites aggregate and sort the data, so you can see how much you're spending on, say, groceries, eating out and movies. You can then track your spending habits over time and make adjustments to save money.

What's more, some of these sites, notably Wesabe, also have active communities discussing various budgeting issues. If you are just getting started on developing budgeting discipline, talking with others who are doing the same can help make it easier.

3. Guard Against Inflation
Currently, inflation is a relative nonissue, and most commentators -- not to mention the Federal Reserve -- believe that it won't become a problem anytime soon.

Yet, many things are taking place that could raise the specter of inflation in rapid order.

For starters, the federal government is spending money like a drunken sailor. There's the nearly $800 billion stimulus program, a proposed budget of $4 trillion (up from $3 trillion in the previous year) and hundreds of billions more in bank, real-estate and credit-rescue packages. On top of that, short-term interest rates, set by the Fed, are essentially at zero and quite low in other countries as well.

All of which is like so much kindling waiting for a spark. Once that spark hits, growth and inflation could come roaring back to life.

For that reason, it's smart to have a portion of your fixed-income investments in Treasury inflation-protected securities, or TIPS. These bonds are backed by the U.S. government, like normal Treasurys, but also have built-in protections that boost returns to account for inflation.

Another inflation-hedging strategy is to invest in commodities. When growth resumes, demand for oil, copper and other commodities will rise, making their prices increase. A warning, though: Given the volatility of commodities, financial planners recommend that investors have no more than 5% to 10% of their portfolio in this sector.

4. Have a Stock-Market Strategy
Despite the recent sprint in share prices, investors remain leery of the stock market. It will take more than a four-week rally to soothe the pain caused by the stock market since it tumbled from its late-2007 highs. When so much doubt surrounds the stock market, it's usually a time to think about investing in equities. Despite the horrid pain most of us have suffered in the market during the past 18 months, stocks, like the economy, will not remain down forever.

That doesn't mean going whole-hog into the market, however. Consider coming at stocks first through your retirement account. For many of us, that account has a longer time horizon and built-in tax efficiencies, and often comes with a corporate match -- which is essentially free money.

Outside of your retirement account, be sure to maintain a diversified approach among stocks, bonds and cash. A good rule of thumb is to use your age as the percentage of assets you should have in safer bond investments. Thus, if you are 50, you would be split 50-50 between stocks and bonds. If you want to be more conservative, you'd carve back some of the stock exposure and leave it in cash.

Even with the recent runup in stocks, you still might have a larger-than-usual chunk of your assets in bonds these days, because bonds did well last year and have remained solid this year. If that's the case, rebalancing toward stocks makes sense, especially with their prices so low.

5. Preserve What You Have
One of the lessons of the past few years is that the stock market and your home are not ATMs. They are assets that can rise and fall. Having a strategy to preserve your gains is prudent in these challenging times.

Along with diversification of assets -- stocks, bonds, cash -- maintain diversification in the stock market, as well. Buy broad, low-fee index funds, rather than individual stocks, to lower your exposure to risk.

And maintain a rainy-day fund in safer places, such as TIPS, certificates of deposit or highly rated municipal or corporate bonds. A good rule of thumb is to have a reserve of six months' earnings in case of a job loss.

So, what should you definitely not do?

1. Don't Bury Your Money in the Backyard
With things the way they are, it's tempting to simply opt out altogether. Fear of financial-system failure, the uncertain nature of the stock market and just a sense of foreboding have people thinking that it's smarter to keep their money in the backyard, a mattress or an empty can.

But it really isn't. The bank-insurance system works for holdings under $250,000. I know because my bank once failed, and the transfer of assets was seamless. So, at least keep your cash in certificates of deposit earning some sort of return. An overabundance of fear and caution can cost you money; don't let that happen to you.

2. Don't Chase Returns
This is a great temptation in any market, but especially so today. Bonds had a great run last year, but some analysts believe they may just be the next bubble waiting to burst.

In short, don't double down on an asset that has had such a tremendous run. You are likely coming to the game too late, since most of the gains have already been made. That can skew your portfolio too sharply in a single direction, making you vulnerable to a decline in previously hot asset groups.

Look at it this way. In the past few years, the temptation to chase returns led people to buy too many houses, invest too heavily in a soaring stock market and aggressively bid up oil. All of it ended badly.

3. Don't Abandon Diversification
There's a great desire now to stay safe by holding only cash or only Treasurys. This kind of behavior is really just the same as chasing performance. Be disciplined. Stick to a diversified strategy and rebalance your holdings every year to reduce your exposure to the high-fliers.

4. Don't Stop Saving for Retirement
In times of turmoil, we tend to focus on what's right in front of us: the current bills, the savings account and what the day will bring. But we are all still going to want to retire at some point, so that means remaining disciplined about saving for retirement.

Employer 401(k) programs remain a good vehicle, even if the stock market has smacked their holdings. These programs allow you to invest money tax-deferred, and many companies, as noted, provide a corporate matching program.

Rather than ignoring your account statements, as many of us have done, take a look at them and make sure that your holdings are diversified and balanced. Ignoring your savings -- or discontinuing them -- will come back to haunt you when you want to leave off working and relax on the beach.

5. Don't Ignore Common Sense
Much heartbreak in the recent past has stemmed from an ignorance of common sense. Fraudsters promising overabundant returns snookered many investors. Some people viewed housing and the stock markets as never-can-lose gambits. Others spent far more than they had.

Personal finance, at its heart, boils down to common sense. You have to eliminate your high-cost debt and get on a budget. You must save for retirement. And you need to make sure that you own a home you can afford and enjoy, as opposed to seeing it as a get-rich-quick scheme.

In short: Be prudent, save money, invest wisely. Getting back to these very basics will help all of us rebuild our portfolios and set sail for a better day.

Banks should wake up and realize whos moey this is
Bank of America Corp. is raising interest rates on as many as four million U.S. credit-card customers who carry a balance, becoming the latest bank to crack down on people who don't pay off their bill every month.
Starting with June account statements, any credit-card customer who carries a balance and has an interest rate below 10% will see his or her rate jump into double-digit territory. A company spokeswoman declined to provide an exact number, saying the changes would affect less than 10% of the bank's card customers in the U.S. The bank has 70 million card customers world-wide, but doesn't break out the number of customers who are in the U.S. "It impacts a small portion of our cardholders," said Betty Reiss, the spokeswoman.
The bank's move follows similar rate increases that other banks, including Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., and American Express Co. have implemented in recent months. The banks, facing rising delinquencies, blame the economic turmoil. Many have been tightening the screws on people with less-than-perfect credit, but now they're pinching a broader range of customers who have good credit records, but carry a balance.

On Tuesday, Tamara Smith of Burlington, Vt., got a notice from Bank of America that her 7.9% rate will increase to nearly 13%. She immediately called the bank and opted out of the change. That means she keeps the 7.9% rate on her roughly $2,000 balance, but can't use the card for new purchases without having the higher rate apply to her entire balance.
So Ms. Smith is shopping around for another card. And while she has found a 0% promotional rate from Citi, she's planning to open a credit card with her local credit union instead. "I just don't have any assurance that Citibank won't pull the same thing," said the 51-year-old co-owner of a computer-software company.
The rate increases come as many Americans are losing their jobs and losing easy access to other forms of credit, like home-equity loans. That makes millions of cardholders even more dependent on their credit cards to get by.
The Federal Reserve and other bank regulators passed rules in December that would limit banks' ability to raise credit-card interest rates. But that doesn't start until July 2010.
Now, Congress is considering separate bills that would impose stronger restrictions on banks much sooner. Last week, the Senate Banking Committee approved its version of the legislation, which is waiting for a full Senate vote. A House subcommittee passed similar legislation last week.
The banking industry has said that the new federal rules and the proposed legislation will restrict its ability to manage risk and will force issuers to be stingier with credit and promotional offers. In a presentation to investors in February, Chase executives laid out various strategies they were exploring to deal with the new regulatory environment, including implementing annual service fees, shortening the duration of introductory interest rates and offering higher interest rates for new customers.
Bank of America said it started notifying customers of the rate increases last week. "The increase on these accounts reflects the current economic conditions where our cost of providing credit has significantly increased," Ms. Reiss said. The average annual percentage rate on the affected accounts is 8.5%.
Consumer advocates see another motive. The banks "want to mess with people before they can't," said Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, a consumer advocacy group in Washington, D.C. "Every day they can earn income at a higher interest rate is more profits for them."
Credit.com, an educational credit Web site, started hearing from customers complaining about Bank of America's rate change on Saturday, said spokeswoman Emily Peters. She advises customers to pay off their balances, if possible, but keep the card open since closing the accounts could hurt their credit scores. "The best possible option would be to leave the card dormant and use it every six months" to prevent the issuer from closing down the account, she said.
In January, Chase Card Services changed the terms for thousands of customers who had low interest rates but were carrying a balance. In Chase's case, customers had to agree to pay at least 5% of their balances every month instead of the previous 2%. If they couldn't meet the higher minimum payment requirement, they would have to give up their promotional rate and accept a higher one instead.
Chase's change sparked a number of class-action lawsuits from angry consumers who had taken advantage of the bank's promotional offers. Separately, Citi and American Express raised the regular interest rates by two to three percentage points across many of their cardholders last fall.
In some cases, banks are offering carrots to get customers to pay down their balances. In February, for example, American Express offered select customers a $300 AmEx prepaid gift card if they pay off their balances and close their accounts.
Sandra Frye of Phillips, Wis., said the recent tightening by banks has prompted her to pay off her balances more quickly. "I won't be adding to the economy because I'm going to pay these guys off and get them out of my hair forever," said the 66-year-old. Ms. Frye, an adult home-care provider, said Bank of America notified her that it was going to raise her variable rate to 13.74% from 9.74%. She is in the process of transferring her $1,700 balance on the card to a credit card with Wells Fargo & Co. offering her a promotional rate of 0%.

The Rising Price Of Credit
As banks face higher costs, they're repricing more customers' accounts. Here's what to consider:
Higher rates typically affect customers who carry a balance.
Customers should be able to reject the higher rates -- although they may have to close the account or stop using the card.
New federal rules will limit rate increases -- but only starting in July 2010.

The United Arab Emirates is considering legislation that would criminalize publication of anything that would "harm the economy." Already, the local press is pulling back from their coverage of the steep decline in Dubai property values and the rise in deportations, voluntary departure, and abandonment of unsaleable assets, such as cars. Instead of moving toward greater transparency, the emirates seem to be moving in the other direction. A new draft media law would make it a crime to damage the country’s reputation or economy, punishable by fines of up to 1 million dirhams (about $272,000). Some say it is already having a chilling effect on reporting about the crisis. Last month, local newspapers reported that Dubai was canceling 1,500 work visas every day, citing unnamed government officials. Asked about the number, Humaid bin Dimas, a spokesman for Dubai’s Labor Ministry, said he would not confirm or deny it and refused to comment further. Some say the true figure is much higher. “At the moment there is a readiness to believe the worst,” said Simon Williams, HSBC bank’s chief economist in Dubai. “And the limits on data make it difficult to counter the rumors.”
-----i cant beleive we didnt bomb them yet-----

Say hello to the new boss....... Same as the old boss......

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/01/obama-to-fight.html


The incoming Obama administration will vigorously defend congressional legislation immunizing U.S. telecommunication companies from lawsuits about their participation in the Bush administration's domestic spy program.

That was the assessment Thursday by Eric Holder, President-elect Barack Obama's choice for attorney general, who made the statement during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. A court challenge questioning the legality of the legislation is pending in U.S. District Court in San Francisco -- where the judge in the case wanted to know what the Obama administration's position was.

"The duty of the Justice Department is to defend statutes that have been passed by Congress," Holder told Sen. Orin Hatch (R-Utah), who asked whether the Obama administration would continue the legal fight to uphold the legislation that the Electronic Frontier Foundation is seeking to overturn.

"Unless there are compelling reasons, I don't think we would reverse course," Holder added.

At a San Francisco hearing in EFF's case last month, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker wondered aloud whether the incoming Obama administration would continue to defend the legislation, which passed in July. Obama opposed immunity but voted for it because it was included in a new spy bill that gave the Bush administration broad warrantless-surveillance powers.

"We are going to have a new attorney general," Walker said from the bench, wondering whether he should delay a decision, pending guidance from Obama. "Why shouldn't the court wait to see what the new attorney general will do?"

The EFF is also accusing the nation's telecoms of funneling Americans' electronic communications to the Bush administration without warrants in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Holder's comments came the same day a secret federal appeals court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, released a declassified opinion (.pdf) approving 2007 legislation that gave the government broad powers to eavesdrop on international communications — even those in the United States — without warrants.

The court, hearing a challenge to the Protect America Act from a telecommunications company it did not name, said the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was not breached because the right to be free from unreasonable searches did not apply to foreign intelligence gathering.

The August 2007 Protect America Act expired six months after its passage and was revived as part of the immunity legislation Holder addressed Thursday. The secret court's opinion did not address the Bush administration's once-secret eavesdropping program — which was not authorized by Congress — initiated in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks.

The Justice Department lauded the opinion, which was rendered in August but just released Thursday after it was declassified. "The Court of Review upheld the lawfulness of the directives, concluding that the surveillance at issue fell within the foreign-intelligence exception to the warrant requirement and was otherwise reasonable under the Fourth Amendment," the department said.

The immunity legislation at issue was crafted after Walker had refused to dismiss the lawsuit EFF brought in 2006 against AT&T, accusing the telco of violating its customers' civil liberties. At the time, Walker's initial decision allowing the case to go forward was idling on appeal before the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — which dismissed the case as moot after President Bush signed the immunity bill.

All of the nation's leading telecommunication companies have been added to the litigation — the merits of which have never been decided.

The Bush administration had argued that the original case should be dismissed on the grounds that it threatened to expose government secrets, a legal privilege judges routinely rubber-stamp. The EFF, in a bid to revive the lawsuit, challenged the immunity legislation on the grounds that Congress was prohibited from legalizing what the EFF termed was unconstitutional activity by the telecommunication companies.

Walker's decision on the immunity legislation is pending.