Recently Gaddafi made a statement regarding the protesters in Libya and how they have fallin under the influence of al-Qaeda stating that "Their ages are 17. They give them pills at night, they put hallucinatory pills in their drinks, their milk, their coffee, their Nescafe." Wow. All I can think of to say is wow.

Morning "News" Shows

In the morning while I am getting ready for work, I usually turn on some morning news show for about 10 minutes while I eat a bowl of cereal. I then religiously proceed to get angry at the fact that there is never any news being reported on these news shows. I don't have cable so I am limited to The Today Show, The Early Show and Good Morning America. Flipping back and forth between the three, desperately searching for some sort of real news I am bombarded with stories like "TV anchor reveals heartbreak of infertility", "William and Kate: sign the royal guest book", "Lindsay Lohan could be jailbird...again", "Lady Gaga's Condom Inspired Outfit" and "Finally! Burgers and Fries that are good for you". When I get to work I then go to a couple of online news outlets like Reuters BBC and The Wall Street Journal only to discover that there really were news worthy things which happened in the world like "Oil surges to $120 a barrel", "Rebels tighten grip on Libya as western cities fall", "GM first profitable year since 2004" and "Assange loses extradition fight". So why is it that the morning news is nothing more than one fluff piece after another? Is this really what americans prefer? If so, this is really a sad reflection of our myopic interest.

Kahn Academy: Banking System

I just finished the Kahn Academy series on the banking system. I thought it was a good overview of the banking system using a historical method to inform the viewer.
The one thing I didn't care for was the way Sal represents the modern banking system. For example in video 22 Fractional Reserve Banking 1, he starts off with the modern bank receiving 10 gold peices, then magically lending out 90 federal reserve notes. This might have worked fine before we got off the gold standard and when banks still printed their own notes but that is not the case now. I think it would be much clearer to say the bank received 100 dollars from depositors then lent out 90. Anyway, I still think it is a good series and worth watching.

Federal Debt Part II

Because of all the attention the federal debt has been receiving lately, I thought I would share some of my thoughts and research on the issue. (click text to follow link).