General linkiness

[unixronin]

Cotton candy is a glass.

Chris Christie sets a reporter to rights for calling him confrontational (via rosencrantz23).

The SR-71 flight manual is now available online.  (Well, OK, it will be again in a couple of days after they rebuild their database, which crashed under the traffic load.)

A back-of-the-envelope estimate of the scale of the BP Deepwater Horizons well plume, based on some simple analysis and deduction, via Examiner.com.

And last but not least, the Agonist on financial crashes, "algo trading", and the financial markets.  Did you know banks could borrow money from the Fed at 0% interest, then invest it straight back into Treasury bills at 3.5%?  Do the math, and remember whose pocket that bond interest ultimately comes out of.  But wait!  It gets better!  If there's a deficit — and when isn't there a deficit these days? — the Fed has to de facto borrow the money to pay off those T-bills when they come due.  (I wonder what interest rate the Fed pays on the money...?)

Comments

[lebo-superman.livejournal.com]

Who was it, Rothchild (?) who said, "Give me control of a country's money supply, and I care not who makes it's laws." (or something like that). Now we see what he meant. Besides borrowing money to actually spend, the bankers have our government paying interest TWICE on the same money. No wonder that even when we reduce spending the deficit grows. grrrr.

Besides which, when the Fed prints paper money, it all costs exactly the same to print no matter what numbers they put on it, but they sell it to the government at the face value. Since we know they make a profit on even the $1 bills, the profit on the $100's & $500's really keeps them in business!