(Editor's note:  Ok, we have a winner! Out of the entries received, I am going with jfromga's pick.  Sorry no prize..hrmm, maybe in the future I should hold a contest? Anyways, congratulations jfromga!)

For anyone whose read my pieces in the past, knows that I hold a certain disdain towards former Reagan White House OMB Associate Director/conservative-libertarian Ayn Rand acolyte Larry Kudlow.  It's nothing personal against the guy, it's his ideas and economic policy objectives that I find fault with.  For the past couple of months, he's been going on about this is the "Goldilocks economy."  Essentially, that we're worrying about nothing because one bad economic indicator is being offset by a good one (mind you, he's often just used productivity as that one).  Well today, despite his claims that all is almost well, we got some news that just proves Larry Kudlow wrong!

Do you remember the proposed $7500 tax credit in the new housing bill for first time home buyers?  Well, turns out it is really an interest free loan, and not a true credit.  More on this below.

A moment of personal indulgence/explanation before I begin today to explain the sometimes mercurial way I leap from one topic to another.  I guess my "mode" is to scan through a large amount of information and lock onto something that interests me.  It stems from my "conative nature" (which I know practically no one but myself has ever heard of), Kathy Kolbe’s Conation Theory (the four flavors of human will, appearing in different proportions in different people like the suits of a bridge hand.  Check out her bestseller from long ago, Conation, The Link Between Who We Are and How We Perfom).  

I figure myself for a KCI (Kolbe Connative Index TM) score of 6392 (the order of the categories is: Fact Finder, Follow Thru, Quick Start (the creative, quirky aspect), Implementer; each person must score from 1-10 in each category, each person’s score must add up to 20, that means we all are "exposed," or not fully operational, in about half the conative space; sorry, I realize this mini-exposition is absurd and impossible to understand but I had to get it out.  

As rising gas prices, sub-prime mortgages, and nascent credit card disaster impose severe hardships on over 90% of Americans, public discourse focuses on the energy crisis, global warming, alternative fuels, bailouts, interest rates and the attendant economic woes.  As the economic, political, and cultural elites hypothesize over the causes and solutions to the nations problems, they deliberately ignore the real problem which has been the shift over the last 40 years from a Keynesian to a free market economic model.  Whereas Keynesian economic theory embraces the principle of some redistribution of wealth and a major role for government to provide basic programs and services, free market economics embraces the principle that the market should make all economic decisions and government should not interfere and distort the natural priorities attained otherwise.

This has been an interesting week for financial discussions.  Some of the comments in this diary and this one and this one and probably others got me thinking about our psychology in how we approach difficult times.  Some of us tend to remain irrationally over-optimistic that things will get better, while others more despair that things are so bad we really don't have any good options left.  And simply agreeing on the diagnosis of what's wrong, let alone what to do about it, can be more difficult than it may first appear.

I want to offer some ideas of potential actions, including some pretty extreme ones, that could be taken to show (or perhaps reassure) that things are not so bad that we are backed into a corner with no room to maneuver.  We're a wealthy country and have a host of options.  The question, I argue, is still more what do we want to do and less what are circumstances forcing us to do.

According to the Bush "administration," the number of homeless Americans dropped about 30 percent from 2005 to 2007. The Bushies have a facially plausible explanation, but I'm dubious. Do any Kossacks have the expertise to separate the information from the propaganda?

Details after the jump.

But my life just got even more disjointed and surreal. I've been in the position of trying to make it on $466 per month in unemployment--which first of all caused me to default on June's and this month's mortgage payments. Monday morning I had to go to the post office to pick up a certified letter from my lender on my delinquency. It says they're prepared to initiate foreclosure proceedings.

After nearly a year in the sausage factory, H.R. 3221 has cleared both houses and is headed for the White House.

But the bill, now known as a housing bill under the title of the Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008 Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008   American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008 Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, didn't start that way:

By the way, the procedural history of H.R. 3221 is fascinating. If you have no life, that is. Did you know that the bill started off as an energy bill, passed the House in August 2007, but never passed in the Senate? It later had most of its provisions shoehorned into H.R. 6 (the "Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007") which was passed in December of last year. That left the mostly hollowed-out shell of H.R. 3221 available for use as a housing bill.

Why do that? Because the original H.R. 3221 contained things like renewable energy tax credits, which means it was technically a tax bill, which the Constitution says must originate in the House. But the Senate had a package of housing provisions, among which were tax measures, but which couldn't be brought forth as an original bill in that chamber. With a bill in their hands that had been originated in and passed by the House that was a tax bill, they could add their provisions as amendments, removing all the energy-related stuff that had passed in H.R. 6, anyway.

And that's at least part of the story of how the " New Direction for Energy Independence, National Security, and Consumer Protection Act" became the "Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2007," which became the "Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008" when the Senate amended it, and then became the "American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008" when the House amended the Senate's amendments.

I sh*t you not. At least I don't think so.

It's been a remarkable saga, one including seven cloture votes, which may be a record for a single piece of legislation. But despite the weeks on end spent shepherding this thing through Congress, few people are entirely clear even on what exactly is in this bill. This thing was a textbook trip through the sausage factory, and we're going to have to take a look back at it, post-game, to figure out exactly how it was cobbled together and why. Reactions to its passage have been everything from sighs of relief at the "rescue" of distressed homeowners (and not a few mortgage industry powerhouses, in all likelihood), to distress at the sighs of relief from shareholders and executives at those mortgage industry powerhouses, who -- had the "free market" had its way -- might actually have had to weather a beating serious enough to sink them forever.

This bill had it all, in terms of procedural maneuvering, interplay between the various turning gears of the government and the market, public and private interests, and even basic questions of competing theories of governance.

But the game's over, and all indications are that the Bush White House has abandoned its veto threats and the bill will be signed -- though you never know with these guys, they could come up with something new and veto it just to make the Congress spend its last week in session dealing with that instead of anything else. In the coming days and weeks, we'll take a look back at the game film, and see just what went into this particular piece of sausage. And if we're lucky, we can use it as a teaching case for preparing a corps of legislative watchers for greater involvement and effectiveness in steering the work of the next Congress and the next administration.

Mr. Market engaged in a world-wide sell off of stocks in the first half of 2008.  The Dow Jones Wilshire Global Total Market Index, which tracks nearly 13,000 stocks in 61 countries, including virtually every exchange-listed stock in the United States, slumped 10.72% in the first half.  Market Watch columnist John Prestbo described the first half as "the bloodbath that engulfed the world's stock markets."  

http://tinyurl.com/...

U.S. stocks lost 10.92%
Developed markets other than the United States lost 9.93%
Emerging markets fell 14.48%.

As John McCain himself has said, the Republican Party has been acting like a drunken sailor. Recently, President Bush joked about it.  It is obvious from their callous disregard of the damage done by their binge drinking, that both of these men are still in denial.  Their unquenchable thirst for oil profits have left them with greedy hearts and unrepentant souls.  While they laugh about the housing market, millions of families face foreclosure.  They came into office with a robust and healthy middle class and they have feasted on these trusting citizens.  As a result, their friends have become mega rich and the middle class has disappeared into the ranks of the homeless.  The latest video shows us that the Republicans are still in denial about the damage done by their gluttony.  They still resist any efforts to regulate or control their appetites for wealth and power.  They need the 12 steps.  They need an intervention.

"Never believe anything until it has been officially denied."
 - Otto Von Bismark

 Otto may have been one of history's great bastards, but he was also a Machiavellian genius when it came to modern politics.
 For instance, on March 10, Bear Stearns denied rumors that they were having a liquidity problem. On March 15, Bear Stearns was effectively bankrupt.
 On February 7, 2002, WorldCom denied rumors that it was about to go bankrupt. On July 19, WorldCom went bankrupt.

 This pattern gets repeated almost every single year like clockwork. Which is why the news today is more worrying than normal.

I looked a little rough, coming from deep in the Cascade Mountains only an hour before.  My boots were caked with mud and I had a three-day growth of beard.  My sweatpants were stained to the knee, and I was wearing a shirt I had slept in.  A sweat stained cap covered my matted hair.  That is to say, I looked like them, this young couple and their son, except that I was on vacation, and they were in the midst of their daily lives, sitting on a corner near the Fred Meyer store.

The couple was about my age, maybe a little younger, and had a boy with them who was perhaps 7 or 8 years old.  I had just finished stuffing my face (as only an American can), wolfing down a giant burrito from Taco Del Mar, and contentedly sipping my Diet Pepsi, driving out of the parking lot when I first spotted them.

Almost instantly, I was pissed off.  Sure, everyone’s seen street people before, in fact, we seem to be seeing more of them all the time these days, but my emotions suddenly stirred with the appearance of this family, one of thousands that we routinely ignore, as though the mere avoidance of eye contact somehow gets us off the hook.

From The National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights, a non-partisan movement working to ensure that our courts protect and preserve equal justice, fairness, and opportunity.

A recent ruling from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals endorsed a controversial building regulation that bans observant Jews from posting mezuzot—literally translated as "door posts"—on their apartment doors.

The imbroglio started in 2004 when the board of Shoreline Towers in Chicago passed a hallway regulation that banned residents from placing outside their apartments: "[m]ats, boots, shoes, carts or objects of any sort." Lynne Bloch, who was on the board and chaired the very committee that authored the rules, sued Shoreline Towers after they used her rule as justification for repeatedly removing her mezuzah.

The latest polls are out, and Obama's now in the lead in Nevada, according to Rasmussen -- Obama 42, McCain 40.

Nevada's five electoral votes went to Bush twice -- and due to the close nature of those contests, Nevada missed opportunities to put Al Gore or John Kerry into the White House.

But the GOP never faced the sort of headwinds they're facing now in Nevada.  The Rasmussen poll's no fluke -- the Silver State's chances of going blue in November are higher than ever.

On a day in which the entire American economy seems to be collapsing; when government officials don't know what next steps to take to bail out the mortgage, banking and housing industries;  when our Judicary Committee in the people's branch has caved to politics and opposes the rule of law; I thought we should take a moment to forget about the clowns in the beltway and remember a day, a time, a period in our lives when things were a bit simpler and pay tribute to a real clown who passed away earlier this month.  

For those of us who haven't heard, Bozo the Clown has passed.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

DENVER - Last week, I appeared on Fox News to discuss the inflammatory comments by Phil Gramm (John McCain's top economic advisor) and how those comments really epitomize the Republican Party's country clubbish, let-them-eat-cake outlook on the economy.

Greed Homeowners + Greedy Lenders = Tax Payer Bailouts

Once again taxpayers are cleaning up a financial mess because an institution is too big to fail.  I am becoming quite disgusted that the only people taking responsibility for our current state of affairs seem to be the American taxpayers as generously volunteered by our elected officials.

Homeowners, irresponsible lenders, those who turned these bogus mortgages into securities, and  complete lack of functioning government regulations all share pretty equal portions of the blame.

NY Times Story Here