Asshat of the day award goes to Terry Savage, a columnist for the Chicago Sun Times, who yelled at some little girls who were giving away free beverages at their lemonade stand, ostensibly offending Savage’s perception of how to run a proper lemonade business.

“No!” I exclaimed from the back seat. “That’s not the spirit of giving. You can only really give when you give something you own. They’re giving away their parents’ things — the lemonade, cups, candy. It’s not theirs to give.”

I pushed the button to roll down the window and stuck my head out to set them straight.

“You must charge something for the lemonade,” I explained. “That’s the whole point of a lemonade stand. You figure out your costs — how much the lemonade costs, and the cups — and then you charge a little more than what it costs you, so you can make money. Then you can buy more stuff, and make more lemonade, and sell it and make more money.”

You can’t blame Savage…she is just a cog in the wheel of a larger market.  BP was just trying to make more lemonade in the Gulf after all, right?

Free lemonade stands aren’t what’s wrong with America, it’s asshats like Terry Savage who yell at little girls from the air conditioned comfort of her BP-Oil chugging SUV.

There is no ‘free’ lemonade :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Terry Savage.

The M3 money supply in the United States is contracting at an accelerating rate that now matches the average decline seen from 1929 to 1933, despite near zero interest rates and the biggest fiscal blitz in history.

“It’s frightening,” said Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research. “The plunge in M3 has no precedent since the Great Depression. The dominant reason for this is that regulators across the world are pressing banks to raise capital asset ratios and to shrink their risk assets. This is why the US is not recovering properly,” he said.

Larry Summers, President Barack Obama’s top economic adviser, has asked Congress to “grit its teeth” and approve a fresh fiscal boost of $200bn to keep growth on track. “We are nearly 8m jobs short of normal employment. For millions of Americans the economic emergency grinds on,” he said.

David Rosenberg from Gluskin Sheff said the White House appears to have reversed course just weeks after Mr Obama vowed to rein in a budget deficit of $1.5 trillion (9.4pc of GDP) this year and set up a commission to target cuts. “You truly cannot make this stuff up. The US governnment is freaked out about the prospect of a double-dip,” he said.

The White House request is a tacit admission that the economy is already losing thrust and may stall later this year as stimulus from the original $800bn package starts to fade.

via US money supply plunges at 1930s pace as Obama eyes fresh stimulus – Telegraph.

When I read this article about BP defending its response to the Gulf Oil spill, for some reason my mind went to the scene in “A Few Good Men” when Colonel Jessep (played by Jack Nicholson), gives his famous “You can’t handle the truth” speech:

BP, for all of their pompous arrogance, is just like Colonel Jessep.  Replace a few words in that speech with words like Oil, and it might as well be BP’s position right now.

There are over 5,000 offshore oil rigs.  Forget the “accidents”…what happens when Terrorists, or North Korea or…worse… starts torpedoing them?

Think Progress » BP Runs Full-Page Ads In Major Newspapers Defending Its Oil Spill Response: ‘We Have Taken Full Responsibility’.

In the meantime, the company plans this “Top Kill”. Who better to explain it, than Bill Nye the Science Guy?

Last month, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the regulator in charge of the futures markets, approved the applications of the Cantor Futures Exchange and Media Derivatives (MDEX), to serve as contract markets to trade futures in the media market.

Now the CFTC is holding hearings to discuss whether the commission should approve Cantor’s and MDEX’s first contracts involving futures and options based on the opening weekend revenues for the film “Takers,” a movie about bank robbers starring the hip-hop music star Tip Harris (T.I.), and Hayden Christensen (whiny Darth Vader).

These “synthetic contracts” allow traders to bet on the amount of money the movie would make. If the movie makes more or less money than the initial revenue level set by the contract, one side would collect money and the other would lose money. These would be so-called synthetic contracts, meaning that the traders would not own the revenues they were betting on, so they would be purely speculative.

This is all I have to say about this whole idea:

Movie Time at the C.F.T.C. Draws Heated Debate – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.com.

“We didn’t truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market,” says Brooksley Born, the head of an obscure federal regulatory agency — the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country’s key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis.

“They were totally opposed to it,” Born says. “That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?”

Now, with many of the same men who shut down Born in key positions in the Obama administration, The Warning reveals the complicated politics that led to this crisis and what it may say about current attempts to prevent the next one.

FRONTLINE: the warning: watch the full program online | PBS.

Panera launched a new nonprofit store in Clayton Missouri called St. Louis Bread Company Cares that has the same menu as its other 1,400 Panera locations. But the prices are a little different – there aren’t any.

Instead, customers are told to donate what they want for a meal, whether it’s the full suggested price, a penny or $100.

The pilot restaurant is run by a nonprofit foundation. If it can sustain itself financially, Panera will expand the model around the country within months. It all depends on whether customers will abide by the motto that hangs above the deli counter: “Take what you need, leave your fair share.”

Non-Profit Panera Restaurant: Pay What You Want At Pilot Location

A new report estimates that currently 68 adults under age 65 die every day because they don’t have adequate health insurance coverage.

That’s over 2000 Americans every month, almost as many as were killed on 9/11.

9/11 is happening every month.

(but only if you’re under 65)

Because those over 65 qualify for our wildly popular single-payer socialized-medicine program, Medicare.

Sure, you can challenge the numbers, but let’s say it’s greatly exaggerated. What if it’s half that?

What if it’s only a quarter?

Hell, what if only ONE American under the age of 65 dies each month from lack of health insurance? Is that acceptable?

NO FUCKING WAY.

I encourage you to share this with your friends, neighbors, followers, parents, uncles, aunts, pundits, naysayers, doom-and-gloomers, eternal optimists, Senators and Representatives.

9/11. Every Single Month.

Deaths Rising for Lack of Insurance, Study Finds – Prescriptions Blog – NYTimes.com.

About a year ago I wrote a post called “Keynesian Economics is like Prescribing Crack for Coke Addicts“.  Obama’s $700 billion Stimulus package had just been signed, with pretty much all of the Republicans voting against it.

At the time, I really didn’t know if it would work.  Keynes’ economic theories had never been fully tested in this type of a crisis scenario…and we were certainly in one.  So here we are a year later….did it work?

First of all, a bit of a clarification:  The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed by Barack Obama is “the stimulus.”  This is the money that went to fund road projects and pay firemen.  It’s been called “the stimulus package” or “The recovery act”, and every Republican (except 3) voted AGAINST it.  The Recovery Act contained the following provisions:

1. Financial assistance to states that were about to fire scores of workers, from firefighters to police officers to teachers, as well as an extension of unemployment benefits and generous COBRA health insurance subsidies.
2. Spending on new infrastructure and manufacturing: those newly smoothed roads and highways on your commute to work, along with spending on transit and green energy technology.
3. The largest middle class tax cut in American history — $288 billion in tax relief which, I might add, every Republican (save for three) voted against.

Unfortunately many Americans confuse the stimulus package with “the bailout”.  TARP.  The $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program signed by George W. Bush.   Hundreds of banks received money from this program…a few have repaid…many have not.

A recent CNN poll showed that 54% of Americans think the stimulus has helped bankers and investors.  Obama is losing the PR battle, because Americans think that the Stimulus and the Bailout are the same:  They’re Not.   While there is much to complain about TARP, the Recovery Act appears to be working.   Wall Street seems to think so:

Okay…but that’s just Wall Street…what about jobs?

Looks  pretty good there too.   Okay..but these numbers might be fudged.  How about GDP?  That’s the real pulse of the economy, right?

So does this mean that Keynes is vindicated?   That supply-side economics is dead?   That Adam Smith’s invisible hand has vanished?

I don’t know the answer…I’m just a piano player.  But I do know that it looks like we may have dodged a very big bullet…for now.  For more on this, visit:  Bob Cesca: Happy Anniversary, Recovery Act.

“Every time the reform seems less likely that it will happen, the entire group trades higher,” said Perry, who has advised his clients to buy shares of Wellcare Health Plans Inc. (WCG), recently up 1.3% to $36.74, and Humana Inc. (HUM), up 1% to $42.26.

Among the other recent gainers in the sector, Aetna rose 2.7% to $32.65, Cigna Corp. (CI) added 2.3% to $36.41 and Well Point Inc. (WLP) gained 2.7% to $58.07. Meanwhile, UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH) added 1.6% to $30.99.

Insurance Stocks Soar on News of Lieberman’s Obstructionism | CommonDreams.org.