Today's quote:

"To me, it doesn't matter if your scapegoats are the Jews, the homosexuals, the male sex, the Masons, the Jesuits, the Welfare Parasites, the Power Elite, the female sex, the vegetarians, or the Communist Party. To the extent that you need a scapegoat, you simply have not got your brain programmed to work as an efficient problem-solving machine." – Robert Anton Wilson

I love that quote, even if it is only 99% accurate (I DESPISE political special interest groups - well, what can be done with a hardcore Libertarian?)

So let's engage our problem solving machine... but before I move on... Do you know what today is? Today is the 60th anniversary of the Korean War. Keep that in mind when thinking about Iraq and Afghanistan...

I was speaking with the Mad Scientist the other day. He had an interesting thought on the potential cause of the shipping and rail decline/bond yield curve/gold and silver:

Perhaps the CDS's backing B.P.'s bonds are causing fits with the banks - especially the European banks. He read my post about my thought that something bigger than AIG was in the offing and thought this was more likely than a default by Italy.

I thought that was one of the smarter thoughts someone shared with me in a while. There is simply no way that B.P. does not default on those bonds if the GOM Well cannot be capped (though I think B.P. will survive, MUST survive if Obama is survive and eventually his team will get that, that does not mean its stockholders or bondholders necessarily have to survive).

The number of guarantees and cross-guarnatees on CDS's of B.P.'s debt is just mind-boggling. Those banks are already very, very sick... In any event, it is a h*ll of a coincidence.