Mergers and acquisitions at 15 year low

I guess companies are hunkering down and are very risk averse. I would have thought that with the downturn that there would be quite a bit of consolidation. Not happening. Maybe companies can't get the loans for mergers/acquisitions? Maybe they are purely in survival mode? Interesting though.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/32594269

Learn to be a serf

http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2009/08/fed-official-real-us-unemployment-rate.html

No inflation for now

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/08/misguided-worries-about-inflation.html

More on how the US has become a banana republic

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200905/imf-advice

From this confluence of campaign finance, personal connections, and ideology there flowed, in just the past decade, a river of deregulatory policies that is, in hindsight, astonishing:
• insistence on free movement of capital across borders;
• the repeal of Depression-era regulations separating commercial and investment banking;
• a congressional ban on the regulation of credit-default swaps;
• major increases in the amount of leverage allowed to investment banks;
• a light (dare I say invisible?) hand at the Securities and Exchange Commission in its regulatory enforcement;
• an international agreement to allow banks to measure their own riskiness;
• and an intentional failure to update regulations so as to keep up with the tremendous pace of financial innovation.

GDP decline is getting worse, not better

2nd Quarter GDP numbers are absolutely horrid. Governments (city, state, federal) are spending money they don't have to prop it up. Absolutely terrible numbers.

http://market-ticker.org/archives/1276-GDP-Uuuuggghhhh.html