and a Happy New Year…

Happy New Year to all of our Readers and Friends!

Hope all of you have a wonderful party to attend or have an evening planned with your family and friends!  Drive SOBER and be safe tonight!

The caveman’s wish for the new year:

In 2009, Economy Will Depend on Unlocking Credit

Three casualties of the financial crisis: Lehman Brothers Holdings filed for bankruptcy protection in September; both Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual were sold to JPMorgan Chase.

“Credit, the disposition of one man to trust another, is singularly varying,” Walter Bagehot, the financial journalist, wrote 135 years ago. “In England, after a great calamity, everybody is suspicious of everybody; as soon as that calamity is forgotten, everybody again confides in everybody.”

 

He might have been describing modern-day Wall Street, where trust — and credit — are in short supply.

The financial crisis began in the credit markets, and eventually it will end there. But as the financial industry rounds out one of the most wrenching years in its history, bankers and policy makers are struggling to see the way out of this mess. Despite triage by Washington and trillions of dollars of taxpayers’ money, credit is not flowing nearly as much as many had hoped.

The problem, as Mr. Bagehot observed, is trust — or rather, the lack of it. Even after receiving millions, in some cases billions, of dollars from the government, banks are reluctant to lend money. Crucial parts of the financial system have stopped functioning. The exuberance of the boom, which led bankers to make loans to people who could not repay them, has given way to a seemingly intractable fear of making any loans at all.

No Mug? Drug Makers Cut Out Goodies for Doctors

Dr. Jeffrey F. Caren, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, has collected more than 1,200 free pens from drug companies.

To Lehman Brothers, Linen ’n Things and the blank VHS tape, add another American institution that expired in 2008: drug company trinkets.

Damn It Caveman!

Today I started moving my things into ‘our’ house, used to be my wife’s house.  We decided her house is bigger than my old cave and mine is in a great spot to rent it.  Sounds pretty boring huh?  Well I thought it would be too.  BUT you see two days ago I took my wife over to my house to look at all the things I wanted to bring over, and she asked that I please just take it to a Christian Service Center or a place like it and not bring it into her house. I thought to myself FAT CHANCE!  I didn’t mention it again, until today when me and my buddies started showing up with truck loads of my things.

Foreclosure at the Mall

The local mall probably isn’t going to turn into a ghost town, but business sure isn’t great for mall owners these days.

Forget those 50-percent-off signs. This winter you are likely to see a new sign at your local mall: “Going Out of Business.” And that means big trouble for mall owners already struggling to survive.

The nation’s shopping center owners are facing a recessionary double whammy: consumers who are spending less and real estate investors who are holding back money used to finance their operations.

Expert finds Arizona boy not competent to be tried for murder in deaths of father, 2nd man

Without counsel or another adult present, an 8-year-old boy confessed to shooting his father and his father’s friend in a videotaped police interrogation.

A psychologist found a 9-year-old murder suspect incompetent to stand trial and determined the boy’s age and intelligence keep him from understanding the premeditated murder charges he faces, the boy’s defense lawyer said.

Defiant Ill. governor fills Obama’s Senate seat

U. S Rep. Bobby Rush speaks after Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich announces his choice of former Ill. Attorney General Roland Burris, right, to fill President-elect Barack Obama's U.S. Senate seat Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2008 in Chicago.

CHICAGO – A defiant Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Tuesday named a black political trailblazer to Barack Obama‘s Senate seat, a surprise move that put the governor’s opponents in the uncomfortable position of trying to block his choice from becoming the Senate’s only black member. Blagojevich’s appointment of former state Attorney General Roland Burris injected race into the drama surrounding the embattled governor, who repeatedly sought to distance his selection from charges that he tried to sell the seat to the highest bidder.

‘Santa’ Shooter’s Secrets

 

COVINA, Calif. —  When Roxanne Jauregui heard on Christmas Day that there had been a horrible shooting on her best friend’s street in Covina, she picked up her cell phone and called her soul mate of 30 years to get some firsthand details.