AP has a map here (interactive flash) on local economic conditions; my home county (DuPage) has (in the last two years) seen unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies double, and we’re nowhere near the bottom.  Check it out.

Michael Lewis, one of my all-time favorite writers on Wall Street and high-end finance, has a Vanity Fair article on the fall of AIG that I thoroughly recommend.

And yet the A.I.G. F.P. traders left behind, much as they despise him personally, refuse to believe Cassano was engaged in any kind of fraud. The problem is that they knew him. And they ( Read more... )

The rise and fall of Fordlandia, Henry Ford’s rubber plantation in Brazil in the 1920s and 1930s.

“Bring Your Gun To Church Day” in Louisville.  Check your ammo at the door.

Cornish Pasty flavored potato chips, which has to be one of the least expected ones I every could think of.   And a domestic quarrel using Cheetos as a weapon on both sides in ( Read more... )

Very frustrating day on a lot of accounts.  More after the cut.
( Read the rest of this entry » )

The big items of getting the taxes out and getting a pile of documents out for the refinance to the lender is over with; I don’t, at present, have a scanner that can handle legal-sized paper, and I killed a lot of time trying to figure a clever way around that. My clever ways all sucked, and Susan ended up taking it over to Office Depot for ( Read more... )

Home today, loaded down with getting the fricking taxes out (this is my latest to do them in a while) and a big set of documents turned around for the lenders.  There were some ugly surprises in the lender’s last set of questions last night, including ‘have you fixed your chipped and peeling paint yet’ and ’so where’s the explanation about the ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/03/scenes_from_the_recession.html

The Boston.com site regularly has fantastic setups of news photos done with LARGE versions of the originals; this one is about the effects of the recession on the world.

During all of the thrash over the refinancing, it was interesting to revisit the ‘value’ of the house in the market:


( Read more... )

• The whole energy-efficient mortgage stuff is done and in the hands of the lenders.   I expect to hear from them early next week.  Some last minute changes had to be done with the proposal because at the last, certain things didn’t have enough bang-for-the-buck and had to replaced with others.  The fallout: storm/screen doors for the front door and ( Read more... )