While listening to Meet the Press yesterday a scary statistic was thrown out that 50% of the mortgages in the country would be underwater by the end of next year. Doing a little digging found that Karen Weaver of Deutsche Bank published this in a report issues last week. An underwater mortgage is a loan whose principle exceeds the property value which it was borrowed on.

On September 11, 2009 I was on the 50th Floor of WTC 2. The previous January I had moved to this office from 94 WTC 1. If I hadn't moved, I would have died that morning, most of the morning Coffee klatch I chatted with, did. Those of us who walked out of the building this morning are largely forgotten these days. We go about our daily lives, only occasionally remembering with a quick intake of breath.

Bloomberg is reporting that the dollar's role as a reserve currency should be reduced to protect emerging markets from the "confidence game" of financial speculation.

Capitalism: A Love Story - is the new propaganda flick from Michael Moore which was shown at the Venice Film Festival yesterday.

The federal government needs to hire more than a quarter of a million workers for mission critical jobs over the next 3 years the Washington Post reports, based on a study by The Partnership for Public Service.
This figure represents a combination of Baby Boomers scheduled to retire and aggressive new hiring for the challenges that the Obama administration is looking to take on.

Scientists in Israel have successfully demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence. Dan Frumkin lead author of a paper published in the journal of Forensic Science indicates that you could "Engineer a crime scene....

The Progressive (You can guess where they are coming from) has an interesting article about the pentagon looking to gain authority over the 400,000 or so national guard and reservists across the country and grant the president and sec defense the ability to mobilize troops domestically.

Canadian mathematicians have modeled a Zombie outbreak and what the best approach for avoiding a Dawn of the Dead style apocalypse.

AirForceTimes has an interesting article about how Uncle Hugo is po'd that we are leasing 7 military bases in Columbia. It ignores the question why are we increasing our military presence in Columbia but since its a military publication I assume that falls under "Ours is not to reason why...."

Its a good thing that we have a president who is looking to stop US military expansion and intrusion around the world.