Random Blog Post: Nor-Easter Edition

As we on the East Coast dig out from last night's snow (and the ensuing panic some folks here go through...amazing!) some links to recent articles that I've found of interest.

Money Honey:

Some Essential Reading on the current financial crisis, from my favorite blog, JD Roth's Get Rich Slowly

For you visual learners, The Crisis of Credit Visualized

I also found this quote from a recent post on The New Yorker's website 'disturbing' to say the least (and, yes, friends do call me The King of the Understatement):

Many of the country’s biggest banks are in deep trouble — many are technically insolvent, or “upside down,” as they say in the household-mortgage sector — but have not yet been forced to reckon fully with their insolvency. I heard a senior Administration official remark that seventy-five per cent of the country’s banks are probably upside down.....

Tell me again what's wrong with Nationalization? And how that's worse than throwing good money after bad over and over again like we're doing now?

The Baltimore Sun's Jay Hancock on Why The Dow Doesn't Matter.

And speaking of that, even though the Market took a dive today, amazingly enough there are still companies whose stock is now double what it was in 1996 (Obviously someone has to gas up and get something to eat at Mickey D's and the gas station before picking up that computer at Wal-Mart).

Around the Globe

This wonderful primer "How to Write about Africa" by Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainaina, also echos many of the ways other People of Color have been written about by 'mainstream' writers. (Make sure you show how Africans have music and rhythm deep in their souls, and eat things no other humans eat....Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation...Establish early on that your liberalism is impeccable, and mention near the beginning how much you love Africa, how you fell in love with the place and can’t live without her.... Hmm...where have I heard something like THAT before?)

Of course, all this madness has ended now that we're in the Age of Obama, right?

And speaking of The President

Zadie Smith shows she is not only a wonderful novelist, but also an amazing critic and essayist. Her take on Obama and being "double-voiced" (as so many of us are) if flat out extraordinary.


And I'm also very happy to post this Coming Poetic Attraction for Samiya Bashir's Gospel. You GO! Gurl....