Links 3/6/09

Horses tamed earlier than thought BBC

RailCorp targets rogue iPhone app ZDNet Australia

‘Undesirable’ evolution can be reversed in fish, Stony Brook University scientists show ScienceCodex

Oil Funds Can’t Buy Fannie Bonds Moscow Times (hat tip reader Nivethan) and Russia says no to the Agencies …Brad Setser

Bill Seeks $500 Billion for FDIC Fund Wall Street Journal (hat tip readers Steve A and Dwight)

`Siren Song’ Treasury Rally to Reverse on Sales Flood, Merrill Lynch Says Bloomberg

How the Fund can help save the world economy Ted Truman, Financial Times

Secret conversation between Volker and Geithner Bruce Krasting

Fed won’t say who helped by AIG rescue Reuters

Undisclosed Losses at Merrill Lynch Lead to a Trading Inquiry New York Times. This bears out a theory of Michael Lewis’, that the top executives at the big Wall Street firms really do not understand what is going on in the trading operations.

The Big Dither Paul Krugman

Darth Wall Street Thwarting Debtors With Credit Swaps Bloomberg (hat tip reader M&M)

Also, please consider making a donation to the folks at ML Implode-o-Meter, who are defending a lawsuit launched by one of the companies in the seller-funded-downpayment-assistance business, trying to squelch ML’s coverage of the dubious practices in this area. It’s proof of a sort of the growing influence of blogs, but nevertheless, defending a suit costs real money. Read the background and how to help here.

Antidote du jour. The first is a newborn baby lemur in France, one of only 17 Madascar lemurs living in captivity (hat tip reader Timothy). The second is in response to a request from doc holiday (not exactly on target, but I hope close enough for now). I am afraid I do not have a spider yet for MyLessThanPrimeBeef, but this link from Warren might do in the meantime.


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5 comments

  1. Swedish Lex

    Is propping up the FDIC a budget item or outside the budget and only expensed when/if called upon?

  2. fresno dan

    Ok, based on your recommendation, I donated 50$ to Mortgage Implode (I do read them occasionaly and they are pretty good).
    Thats one small amout of money, but one giant leap for accountability
    I have to say, who designs PayPal? Fill out all the information and find out besides entering 50$, I had to hit some obscure button – and because I didn’t do that, had to re-enter all that crap over. At my age! I don’t have teenage fingers! and I get cranky when I have to do things twice…and than I ramble….

  3. Anonymous

    Yves,

    I don’t know how it’d be done (coding-wise, or if there is an existing method), but it seems like there must be an easy way to create a field (similar to a comment/contact field on any website), which would help you keep a tally of LINKS submitted for consideration. Basically, a comment field like this one, with extra inputs for “Submitter’s Name, Article Title, Source/Publisher, url link, Submitter’s brief comment.” The field title’s could be tinkered with to automatically not appear (submitter comments) and/or be relabeled (hat tips.)

    As administrator, you’d be able to browse and launch from this ‘private’ list, and have the option to select a ‘box’ beside each worthy link, making it visible to the public. If there isn’t an easily way to make this altered comment forum into a regular post with a little click, you could always just copy/paste the html text (usually viewable/accessible at the edit/preview stage of posting) of the vetted links into a new blog post.

    That sounds a bit more difficult than I bet it’d be, certainly easier than filtering through emails and comments, then hunting again to assign hat tips.

    A better worded explanation (or visual mock-up/sketch) might be worth briefly posting, to see if any html/rss-savvy readers can cook something up, or at least point you in the right direction.

  4. BDBlue

    Given how depressing the economic news is, including the continuing fantasy-based bank bailout program of the Obama Administration, I’ve decided to focus on the antidote today. Lemurs!

    Via Science Daily, new studies show these little guys stress out over newborn infants because that’s when predators usually attack. See Lemurs: Secret Social Drama Among Humanity’s Distant Cousins. Kind of like how I stress out whenever a new bailout is born, it’s an invitation for the predators to attack.

  5. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

    Thanks Yves.

    Now, about the second photo. You know I love cats. In fact, I have a peaceful coexistence agreement with a cat in my, er, his house. But as a member of People Against Unethical Treatment of Vegetables, Plants and Pebbles (littlepebble, that’s my potter name), I must protest this barbarity: a blade of grass was being chewed to death while still alive. And like I told those viscious vegetarians, put yourself in a vegetable’s position and imagine what a horrible death it is to suffer…to die like that – chewed to death in some human’s or some cat’s mouth. And lest someone doubt me, I refer them to that wonderful book, The Autobiography Of A Yogi, where some guy who once won a Nobel prize in physics, which by the way should be abolished, but that’s for another post…in any case, where was I, oh, some guy named Bose demonstrated that plants have feelings too. I mean, if you have ever watched that movie, “What the Bloop Is This All About…” you’d know that even water and ice have feelings too.

    So, in any case, I have to say that the second photo, as much as I adore cats, went beyond the boundaries of decency.

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