Full Swing October

For those of you who have been asking, my schedule for this week has already been posted here.

I don't have much to say today, except to direct you once again to This American Life who return with another "Frightening Show on the Economy" they say. I'm ten minutes in and it's already amazing.

Oh, and the bill to make the Credit Default Swap market, a huge reason why everything went over the cliff and has been falling since, an unregulated industry, passed 95-0 in 2000 in the Senate. Yeah, nobody's hands are clean in that regulatory aspect.

"If your back door is open in a dangerous neighborhood, the first thing you want to do is close it. Now you could argue that people would break windows, but the first thing you do is close it."

And to be a little positive, somebody snuck in section of the bill that allows whoever's controlling the money (Paulson, I would think, specifically) to purchase stock of the failing companies directly rather than buying off largely useless paper. This would be an actual positive option, in my opinion. It gives the government direct control over the companies, in that if the government gets a significant stake in the company, it can control the hiring and firing of those controlling it. Pretty cool, huh? Since the MSBs are largely worthless and the companies are not for the most part, this would be a lot better deal and potential for return for taxpayers. Also, it lets the companies to lay in the bed they made.