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Odds 'n Sods:
Coutrtesy of SHTF.com, and also recommended by SurvivalBlog reader KB, comes
this article about Zimbabwe from The
Economist: How
to stay alive
when it all runs out
o o o
Zuke in Iraq sent us this one: Two
Bear Stearns hedge funds are now worth
nearly nothing. We read further details in The
Daily
Reckoning: "Last week, all three rating agencies - Moody's, Standard
and Poor's, and Fitch - announced downgrades of subprime linked debt. And this
week, Bear Stearns said investors in one of its hedge funds that bought CDOs
on a
leveraged basis would get none of their money back. They were wiped out, said
the letter reported by Bloomberg, buying Triple-A bonds. Just how subprime CDOs,
suspicious byproducts of a disreputable industry, came to be rated AAA is a story
worth telling, but today we will stick to the news. Bear went on to say that
while investors in one of its two endangered funds had been wiped out, investors
in the other fund could breathe a sigh of relief - they had only lost 91% of
their
money." (OBTW, I consider The
Daily
Reckoning a "must read." Subscriptions to the e-newsletter are
free.)
o o o
Rourke recommended this
interview of Comptroller David Walker, head of the GAO, on 60
Minutes. Walker gives some dire warnings. "I would argue that
the most serious threat to the United States is not someone hiding in a cave
in Afghanistan or Pakistan but our own fiscal irresponsibility,"
o o o
From NewsMax: Experts Agree: Major Terror Threats Loom
