Sorry few links to other blogs tonight, I am badly behind, with packing to get out of town AND having to reorganize stuff for painters!
Pandas fly to Taiwan from China BBC
Government buildings emit more CO2 than all of Kenya Guardian
Blood from mosquito traps Finnish suspect AFP
Buffeted “quants” are still in demand Reuters
Foreign Automakers in the U.S. Cut Back New York Times
Regulator Let IndyMac Backdate Capital, Treasury Says Bloomberg (hat tip reader Steve). Which begs the question: who else has gotten a regulatory wink and nod in trying to put lipstick on piggy bank financials?
Insurance Deals Spread Pain of U.S. Defaults World-Wide Wall Street Journal. This story has gotten a little attention in the blogosphere, but perilous little (until now) in the MSM. Key section:
… synthetic-CDO deals are poised to trigger a massive transfer of wealth from investors such as Parkes to hedge funds and the trading units of big U.S. investment banks. By various estimates, the amount of money set to change hands could be anywhere from tens of billions to hundreds of billions of dollars.
What the story does mention that the products were marketed heavily overseas, what it does not mention is that the synthetic CDOs were typically against a large group of names, say 100. Payment was triggered if defaults exceeded a certain level. The lists contained names that sounded solid to foreigners, like Citigroup, GM, but were anything but. Some have alleged that the lists were deliberately seeded with famous names that had reasonable odds of failure.
Madoff investor warned its clients Financial Times. But they still put client money with Madoff and collected fees!
More retailers fighting for survival Indpendent
ZIRP and the exchange rate…and other macro variables Menzie Chinn, Econbrowser
Fool Him Twice: Jerome Fisher Long or Short Capital
Antidote du jour:
Anonymous 
Posts
If kawaii has positive natural selection value, a wallaby in a Hello Kitty t-shirt will be the last surviving mammal; otters have too much dignity to pay that kind of price.