07-12-2012

If you haven't been following the spectacular train wreck of Jesse Jackson Jr., It's been pretty interesting.   If you remember, he's being investigated by the Congressional Ethics Committee for trying to buy Obama's Senate Seat.   The NYT has a pretty good article on it. 

The UN is finalizing it's Arms treaty regulating weapons transfers worldwide.  This is a pretty bold initiative. 

In a disappointing turn of events at Penn State, it looks like the president of the university and coach Paterno concealed facts about the abuse. 

In a sign that the banking crisis has taken legs, Brazil has slashed interest rates.   Brazil is in South America, not Europe....  (In case you are confused....)

There's still a lot of killing in the corners of the world where we don't care about.  Myanmar is still in the midst of an unofficial civil war.  Human rights groups are pretty upset with the Obama administration now.  Why?  We're warming our relations with them. 

We talked several months ago about how the euro is going to be devalued to parity with the dollar.  The Guardian's website has a great article on how that's happening now.   The euro hitting parity with the dollar will kill manufacturing here.  Our goods won't be cheaper than anyone else's.   "Jobs will come back!" say some...  "Not fast enough" is my response.  The country will need several quarters to retool shuttered factories.   Call centers coming back from India et al...  don't really provide a livable wage. 


Zerohedge has a good piece on it too. 

Graph source; BofAML  (and Zerohedge)