Ahira's Hangar

...very glad I'm on Av's good side...

...now to see if cho, Niggle, and Irian can get on the respective characters "good" sides...

(not holding out much hope re: the cho/uKulwa relationship so far)

Still no internet at home.

Supposedly this is because of hurricane Ike.

Ike crashed a bunch of internet service providers, etc. down in Texas. This made other parts of the internet and other providers get overwhelmed and crash in turn.

Big parts of the internet in the Great Lakes area is supposedly down.

The internet outages are following the same track of Ike itself - Texas on up into Michigan.

What fun, Duchess. Sorry....

Re the US financial meltdown: There's a difference between an investment bank (which Lehman Bros, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, et al. are) and a regular ol' bank. Any money you give to an investment bank is *not* federally guaranteed, because -- aha! -- they *invest* your money in stocks or mutual funds or what-have-you, and of course you could lose it all if the stock or whatever tanks.

So if you have $$ in a regular ol' bank, the FDIC insures you, up to $100,000 per depositor (*not* per account). There's a similar agency that guarantees deposits in savings & loans -- the FSLIC -- and one for credit unions, too. Bottom line is that nobody loses money if a regular ol' bank goes under.

But Lehman, et al., don't have regular checking and savings accounts anyhow. They sell shares in mutual funds, or individual stocks, or other cutesy vehicles for taking chances with your finances. None of that is secured.

A bank like Bank of America and/or Wachovia has several divisions. They have their regular ol' deposit accounts, which are federally insured, and then they have another division that works like Lehman, et al. -- selling investment thingums (thinga? ) that aren't federally insured. So when you hear that BofA is thinking of buying Merrill Lynch, I suspect it's BofA's investment division that's planning to take over Merrill Lynch.

I work in the Securities Group of our law firm, and we have some of this week's players as clients (altho none of my lawyers has been directly involved). It's been a rockin' and rollin' few days here.

All that said...I agree with you, Duchess. All of this has been driven by greed, and by a US economic policy that has been encouraging us consumers to spend our way out of the country's troubles while sending jobs overseas and picking fights with other nations, instead of investing in infrastructure improvements and encouraging companies to keep their workers. In some ways I kind of hope the US financial system *does* implode. I'll lose retirement money if it happens...but we need to be jolted back to reality.

(And this is what happens to me when the Tank is down...)

I drove the miata down to pick up parts in South San Francisco and the hard top was off because we were adjusting the racing harnesses so it was a great drive and then I got alot of sizing up looks from all the latino boys in the warehouse as they watched me whip into the parking lot, unharness myself and go in and hug Jonathan. I am sure they all gave him the spanish inquisition after I left.

--A

We do have a thread on the economic situation and the huge bailouts the US governments is handing out - 900 billion before today, as much as another trillion today on top of that. So maybe Ali and I can move the financial stuff down there.

(The current affairs forum here is very civil and calm. More like friends chatting over tea than the cut throat stuff over at the Tank. No one needs to avoid or be afriad of our forum. )

Yesterday I was sick again , so did not get a chance to do very much.

Today I am running errands and stuff like that. My husband and older son are working out in Dexter on the apartment building we've owned for years. It is a couple of blocks from the Dexter Cider Mill, so they have promised to bring home some fresh apple cider.

I went out to breakfast with my younger son at the Coney Island down in town - they have great breakfasts. Then I dropped him off st the high school, as the soccer team is gathering to do some work on the new soccer field (fertilizing, etc).

I then went shopping for baking supplies. I bought four different kinds of flour, and some other items so I can bake lots of different breads. They only had the flours in five pound bags, so I will have to pour them into tupperware containers and label them and seal them up, so we do not get pantry bugs.

I have bread baking now (yes, Menolly - I will post the recipe. ).

I am about to walk across the street to the orchard/farm stand and buy some fresh corn and veggies for dinner.

My husband has sworn he will be home in time for dinner out on the deck followed by going to the dollar movies so we can see Mummy 3. We wanted to go last weekend, but the weather was so rotten we did nto leave our house for anything but work and groceries.