I've been having issues with FireFox 3 font rendering. I've not been too happy of a camper after I upgraded from FF 2.0. Here's some notes I've been keeping: FireFox 3 Upgrade Notes.

Today felt like Monday². We're getting started on a program again that was delayed due to budgetary constraints. I must be getting old. (No I am old!) Anytime I put down something for a couple of weeks, it's like I haven't looked at it for a year. The code would not compile for reasons unknown. I ended up fixing the problem and just gave up trying to figure out why it compiled three weeks ago and then stopped compiling as of today. Then, from some strange reason a column was dropped in a table. The script  in VSS had not changed; I have no idea why the column just disappeared. It was just spooky (or yucky, depending on your point of view.)

Our Congress went through a scripted failure of the Great Wall Street Bail Out today. (You don't think the politicians will let $100M donors just disappear do you?) We'll watch as a few less vulnerable members change their vote, after they see the nefarious light of day. Every body says WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING. (The by-line is IT MUST BE BIG AND EXPENSIVE.) It's all scripted. Wall Street doesn't have to fret. A few banks will go under, but not the best connected. Just in case you want to call me a toxic Oklahoma hick, I'm fairly well lined up with the thinking of Nouriel Roubini. Anyway, for those of you working in declining industries, like high finance, hedge funds or automobile manufacturing, fear not, our government will protect your industries' inefficiencies. The cost of the Chrysler bail out comes to mind: The Chrysler Bail-Out Bust and Perhaps, It’s Time to Play Offense (search for Bailout Nation).

Folks, it's awful, but in a capitalist system, you can lose your money. It happens. Nothing is risk free in our system. The "wheels" will tell you that inflation will eat up simple savings, that you have to invest in the stock market. Unfortunately, for them, the "wheels" are coming off. Everything you've heard in the last ten years assumes the stock market will never go down. Believe me, it always goes down, usually when we least expect it.

The reason the stock market hasn't gone down the last ten years revolves around one word: credit. Credit has fueled this entire debacle. It's not the kind of credit you are used to thinking about. Homes and credit cards and cars. Nope, they'll get blamed as the royal cause of it all. But they are not. The problem is credit given to the United States Government. It's grossly inflated deficit spending. It's banks effectively printing money by leveraging themselve up to ratios of 50 or 60 to 1, instead of 12 or14 to 1. It's a current account deficit with countries like China. We buy too much from China and we don't sell them enough in return. So the current account balance gets out of whack. China has a lot of dollars and a lot of political representation in Washington. They've also financed our credit explosion to a great degree. Couple that with a devaluing dollar that makes it seem like our real estate is booming (thanks to banks leveraging themselve up) and we have the perfect storm. It's not hard, or complicated. It's simple. And now the banks that sold the crooked debt instruments to each other recognize that it was just paper. Nothing more than paper. So they don't want to deal with each other. And now we will get to bail them out, or we are told the earth as we know it will be swallowed up whole, never to return to it's good old self.