...they wore a coat and tie.

And this makes sense because...these criminals are very much more interested in APPEARANCES than REALITY.

How can a coward like George W. Bush sleep at night, knowing he is liable to be prosecuted any day or week now? I have one idea: He's got his own pardon sitting in his pocket--backdated. He has either pardoned HIMSELF, or he got Cheney to do it when he turned over the Presidential duties to Uncle Dick while undergoing that famous colonoscopy.

These cowards aren't brave enough to NOT cover EVERY angle. Not if the vast library of their past behavior is any indication.

That's what happens EVERY time you impeach a chief executive.

Maybe they're right. We should just let George W. Bush go his merry way. We don't want to experience what Illinois just put themselves through, now, do we?

In his well-distilled and explanatory post here. It's always hard to get the gist of any story these days, especially financial ones, and I'm sure glad Josh is thinking mightily on these matters.

The only conclusion I can provide as an answer to Josh's question is this: It's not missing yet, but what WILL be missing is money, from YOUR wallet. As in, a devaluation of the currency, hopefully by enough of a fraction that will not be noticed outright. It worked for Reagan and Poppy Bush when they had to bail out the S&Ls in the Wild and Whacky '80s. To me, the real question is this: Where did all that money GO?

More seriously, if the banks are suffering from a crisis of confidence, or solvency, or both, I'd like to remind Josh that all U.S. banks, if not worldwide, operate on a very slim margin of loans to assets-on-hand. It's all one giant Ponzi scheme, in a lot of ways. Money is only created these days, under the Fed system, when money is loaned out. The banks are allowed to state as assets TEN TIMES what they 'hold in the vaults', so to speak, and in general practice it gets a lot more than that.

So the problem is this: Why did this crisis happen NOW? What is it that's so especially toxic about an asset a bank has swapped for? Even if it's worthless, the bank still has, by law, a ten-to-one ratio of ability to lend money and thereby make interest profits, and stay in business.

Something's missing, all right.

Americans living on unemployment checks at highest level since tracking started in 1967.

Wow. Heckuva job, George. You done broke the whole damn deal.

We can only hope so.

I couldn't have said it better myself, so I'm sure glad SOMEBODY did. This one's from The Olde Turk himself:

If we could house hundreds of thousands of Germans, including thousands of Nazi officers and SS members behind barbed wire fences in rural America (and very near populations overwhelmingly German-American I might add) in the 1940s, I think we can manage to keep a few hundred terrorists safely away from the populace in a SuperMax facility or high security American prison.

The ability of some Americans to be incredibly blood-thirsty assholes on the one hand and afraid of the thought of these two-bit criminals in a SuperMax being held in this country is astounding.

But then again, George Bush was President for two terms and may have even won once.

Far be it from me to be about the only person to mention this that I know of.

Politico tells me that John Boehner has issued orders to his Republicant minions in the House to vote against President Obama's stimulus package.

Let 'em.

It's called political jiu-jitsu, and Obama is the World Champeen, baby. Before this is all over, the only Americans voting for Republicants will be Bush's dead-enders.