McClatchy has a look at the “plan”: Will latest bailout plan work? No one actually knows

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration swung for the fences Friday with an unprecedented bailout of the financial sector that will cost taxpayers “hundreds of billions of dollars.” It jolted markets back to life for the day, but questions remained about whether the bold effort would actually work.

Truth is, no one knows. America and its financial markets haven’t been down this road before.
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Congressional leaders from both parties agreed to work through the weekend to craft legislation that would authorize the Bush administration’s plan to buy up all of the mortgage-backed securities at the root of the problem and get them off the books of banks and other lenders.

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MSNBC has “the happy news” on how the Secretary of the Treasury and Chairman of the Federal Reserve System are scaring Congress into approving a deal that would absorb all of the liabilities of the mortgage mess they helped to create and saving the financial sector from the risks that control capitalism.

The BBC has an interesting article, Viewpoints: Where now for capitalism?, that provides the thoughts on what is going on from a diverse group of individuals, including a majority of people Americans have never heard of, and thus, very different perspectives.

Using the Titanic metaphor that seems popular at the moment, it sounds to me like they are shutting the water-tight doors to protect the crew and first class passengers by making this a problem for “the lower classes”, i.e. the foolish group that works for a living, pays its taxes, and received none of the benefits this mess created as it took aim at the iceberg.

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What has a mechanical grasshopper, a coffin, and costs more than $1.8 million?

On CBS it is: New Clock Tells Time, But Evokes Mortality

The “Corpus clock” is the brainchild of inventor John Taylor, who used his own money to build it, in part to pay homage to the genius of John Harrison, the Englishman who in 1725 invented the “grasshopper” escapement – a mechanical device that helps regulate a clock’s movement.

Making a visual pun on the grasshopper image, Taylor has designed a fantasy version of a grasshopper at the top of the clock face, and uses this beast – with its long needle teeth and barbed tail – as an integral part of the clockworks.

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It wasn’t just pet food or powdered formula, as the BBC reports: Mass recall of China milk produce

Shop shelves in China and elsewhere are being cleared of popular dairy products after tests found contamination in regular milk as well as baby formula.

Inspectors found that 10% of liquid milk from three of China’s dairies was tainted with melamine.

Singapore banned the import and sale of all Chinese milk products after some were removed from stores in Hong Kong.

The scandal first came to light in milk powder that killed four infants and sickened more than 6,000 others.

Suppliers are suspected of diluting milk to cut costs, then adding melamine to make it appear higher in protein.

Melamine is an industrial chemical normally used in plastics, and is banned from food stuffs.
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It’ll be double rations of grog all around in the galley as ye throw the pasta and pesto down your gullet for the final day of Pasta Week, on Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Arr…
Belay that! ‘T’would be better done by swilling lambrusco directly from the flask!
Arr…

Faster Than Falling Food

Nom Nom Nom Nom!

[Editor: If you look behind this grey kitten’s right ear you will see a splash of cat food. She managed to intercept it as it fell from the spoon towards the dish.

Friday Ark