Another day

Another dollar's worth of wtfs....

An Army of Giant Rats Unearth Landmines in Africa

People Locked in Tiny Cages, Crying in Pain: What I Saw and Heard When the LAPD Threw Me in Jail for Exercising My Right to Protest the Oligarchy Don't believe the PR. There was nothing peaceful or professional about the LAPD's attack on Occupy LA -- or the way detainees were later treated.

Pelosi Puts The Kibosh On GOP Payroll Tax Cut Strategy

Killing the Euro

The 45 Most Powerful Images Of 2011

Up is down

Does anyone else find this strange?

The number of European countries doing away with border checks expanded by nine early on Friday morning. Most of those joined were behind the Iron Curtain just 20 years ago.

Europe just got bigger. At one minute after midnight local time on early Friday morning, border controls vanished for nine more European Union members, many of them former members of the Soviet Bloc. Fireworks, cheers, music and speeches throughout the morning welcomed the expansion, which means that travelers can move from the far corners of Estonia all the way to the Atlantic coast in Portugal without once encountering a border guard.

Europe is becoming united, more peaceful, and the Euro is rising in value while the U.S. is building walls, becoming warlike and thuggish, and the dollar is in free fall. We just need to avoid getting a leader that gives rambling incoherent speeches, has an elite private army, and although democratically elected, gathers all powers to himself in order to protect our freedoms.... oh shit.

At least Bush doesn't have a toothbrush moustache...

New economic indicator?

Model wants to be paid in Euros, not dollars:

New York, NY (CNS) - Leggy Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen has recently admitted that she won't work for dollars and prefers to get paid in Euros instead. The 27-year-old beauty insists that the U.S. currency is too weak for her to accept as payment for her work.

According to Bloomberg news, Bundchen's manager Patricia said: "Contracts starting now are more attractive in euros because we don't know what will happen to the dollar."

Bundchen has already taken steps in assuring her paychecks come in the right currency. It has been reported that she has asked current employer Procter and Gamble, where she is the face for Pantene hair products, to pay her in Euros.

Forbes magazine lists Bundchen as the highest-earning model in the world.

Most recently, the American dollar has plummeted to its lowest ever last week against other currencies, including the euro, Canadian dollar, and Chinese yuan. It is also the cheapest in 26 years against the British pound.

Does the horse stamp out amounts or something?

Update: Think Progress says the report is false.

Update: The BBC says it's true.

How can you restore confidence when the dollar and house prices are tanking?

Bet you retail's counted-on-to-keep-in-the-black Christmas spending spree will be a dud, too:

The dollar has fallen to yet another all-time low against the euro, after further weak US economic data.

Figures showed that US consumer confidence has fallen to a near two-year low, while house prices have seen the sharpest drop in 16 years.

Analysts said the data boosted expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates still further.

In early trading on Wednesday, the euro hit a high of $1.4162, before pulling back to $1.4131 by 2230 GMT.

'Anti-dollar momentum'

The Fed cut US interest rates to 4.75% from 5.25% last week, in a move aimed at restoring confidence in both the housing and financial markets.

And then this by Max Fraad Wolff of The Asia Times:

New data for September are available now - after all, it is September now. These data suggest rising prices led by surging oil, wheat, gold and foreign-currency prices. Not to worry, the Fed will monitor that while pumping money into banks and slashing rates to prevent the economic downturn that has already arrived!

In early August it was clear that foreclosures were spiking, markets were boiling over and panic was rife. Bernanke decided that it was time to sound the all-clear with a cautionary note on inflation risks. After all, oil was a whopping and scary US$70 a barrel back then. Now it has settled down to $82, and so the worry has lifted?

Food costs - especially wheat - have surged in the month since the Fed worried about inflation. I guess that is why we are now worried about financial-market conditions. Across the one month and one week between the meetings, the broadest US stock-market index, S&P500, went from 1,476.71 to Monday's close of 1,476.65. This must have been the radical deterioration that caused the about-face!

Bernanke is ideally focused on inflation-fighting, price stability and economic growth. It would seem he is concerned about bank demands for liquidity and equity-market indices. I am not saying there is anything wrong with that. I am saying the talk, the action and the statements are not anywhere near to being on the same page.

[snip]

The truth is that Tuesday's reassurance and logic are as frightening as the logic and all-clear sounded on August 7. Buckling under Wall Street pressure and slashing rates help stock prices. The way and timing in which the discount rate was cut - twice now - attack market shorts and artificially push up stock prices.

Thus it will be seen as genius by those you hear on TV, radio, and many newspapers. I am concerned that the Fed acted late, is confused about where we are in the calendar year, pays no mind to its recent statements, and is acting to head off future economic trouble that everyone else knows is already here.

Now... just exactly how do I go about changing my dollars into Euros?

Saddam signed his own death warrant

When he decided to shift from the U.S. dollar to the Euro when selling his oil.


(via whig at Cannablog)

We went to war for control of oil and to stay the sole superpower. But we already knew that.....

Update 5/8: Via Sorghum Crow, this video of Robert Newman and his hilarious yet stunning History of Oil: