Echidne of the Snakes is absolutely, positively, unequivocally correct when she identifies what is happening as a crisis of trust in her post, Restoring Confidence in the Markets.

The people, institutions, companies, et al. that have money no longer trust those who don’t and want to borrow. This is why even the massive infusions of cash by the Fed aren’t having any real effect.  The rate drop has had no effect.

People have been talking about problems with the mortgage and housing industry for years and the people at the top have been berating the truth-tellers as Chicken Littles.  The people in the government have been lying about the real condition of the economy, and then when they could no longer hide the problems, they shifted to panic.  Well, they got their panic, but they don’t know how to deal with it.

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Nukes & Spooks writes that a New report questions data-mining as counter-terror tool.

I have been complaining for years about this approach for gathering intelligence, my first mention on this site was in December of 2005, but earlier than that in comments other places and using exactly the same analogy that the National Research Council uses in this report: a needle in a haystack.

They keep dumping “hay” on the stack [sucking up data] which makes it more unlikely you’ll ever find the “needle” [usable intelligence]. We need less data and more people looking. Data-mining uses up resources that could be used more effectively to actually increase our ability to find what we need.

Position: 17.1 N 111.8 W [10 PM CDT 0300 UTC].
Movement: Northwest [300°] near 9 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 135 mph [220 kph].
Wind Gusts: 160 mph.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 145 miles [230 km].
Hurricane Wind Radius: 35 miles [55 km].
Minimum central pressure: 948 mb.

It is 420 miles [675 km] South-Southwest of the tip of Baja California.

This is an Eastern Pacific Storm, but Baja is my old stamping ground.

Here’s the link for NOAA’s latest satellite images.

[For the latest information click on the storm symbol, or go to the CATEGORIES drop-down box below the CALENDAR and select “Hurricanes” for all of the posts related to storms on this site.]