If the job is spending money, who you gonna call?  

The federal government. 

Sarah Palin received a barrage of boos from the crowd when she dropped the puck at last night's Flyers opener.  And honestly, who didn't see that coming?   

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said political leaders are discussing the idea of closing the world's financial markets while they ``rewrite the rules of international finance.''  

Pentagon officials have prepared a new estimate for defense spending that is $450 billion more over the next five years than previously announced figures.  

At any other time, what happened in the U.S. Justice Department last week would have been big news.

At any other time, when internal reports by Justice Department call for more investigation into a case of unethical, if not criminal, conduct on the part of lawmakers and the White House, the administration would have a lot of explaining to do. 

The G7 group of nations have formulated an "aggressive" plan to counter the global economic crisis, they said last night. 

Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, said the G7 finance ministers "finalised an aggressive action plan to address the turmoil in the global financial markets and the stresses in our financial institutions". 

"It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe in it".

- George Carlin 

The U.S. is on the verge of a revolutionary paradigm shift as not only is the finance system faltering but the old energy economy of fossil fuels has become too expensive and dangerous due to primarily to its carbon emissions.  

from Crikey ….. 

CBA rips off customers whilst devouring rivals 

Crikey founder Stephen Mayne writes: 

Less than a week after the federal government offered an $85 billion bailout to insurance giant AIG, the company held a week-long retreat for its executives at the luxury St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, Calif., running up a tab of $440,000, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said today at the opening of a House committee hearing about the near-failure of the insurance giant.

Showing a photograph of the resort, Waxman said the executives spent $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 for the spa.

An attack on Iran, which Israeli and Bush administration officials appear set to carry out if Iranian uranium enrichment is not halted, would ignite a regional war in the Middle East and lead to economic collapse and political upheaval in the United States.  

For all the talk about Afghanistan being the "right war," and with both Obama and McCain insisting that they want to send thousands of additional US forces there, our British allies have let the camel, so to speak, out of the bag.  

Businessmen or manufacturers can either be genuine free enterprisers or statists. They can either make their way on the free market or seek special government favours & privileges. They choose according to their individual preferences & values. But bankers are inherently inclined toward statism. 

Murray N. Rothbard

 

In his fascinating Iraq war account Generation Kill, Evan Wright describes his experiences as a reporter embedded in one of the first Marine units to invade Iraq in 2003.  

In 2003, Donald Rumsfeld estimated a war with Iraq would cost $60 billion.

Five years later, the cost of Iraq war operations is over 10 times that figure. And by the time the war is finished, it will be 50 times that much.  

What's behind the ballooning dollar signs?  

In the Queen's speech this autumn Gordon Brown's government will announce a scheme to institute a database of every telephone call, email, and act of online usage by every resident of the UK. It will propose that this information will be gathered, stored, and "made accessible" to the security and law enforcement agencies, local councils, and "other public bodies".