awakened

An act of meditation is actually an act of faith -- of faith in your spirit, in your own potential. Faith is the basis of meditation. Not of faith in something outside you -- a metaphysical buddha, an unattainable ideal, or someone else's words. The faith is in yourself, in your own "buddha-nature." You too can be a buddha, an awakened being that lives and responds in a wise, creative, and compassionate way.

~ Martine Batchelor, "Meditation for Life"

$7.8 trillion. That's $7.8 TRILLION.

Any attempt to comprehend the current economic situation in the United States requires a willing suspension of disbelief never even remotely imagined by science fiction writers. The size and scope of the federal government's bailout numbers are genuinely frightening. The U.S. Treasury's eagerness to print money on this scale cannot be sustained without causing massive harm to U.S. taxpayers in the years ahead.

This is the horrific mess that George Bush and his incompetent goons have left behind for Barack Obama. Sure, there's delicious (but disturbing) irony in seeing the wholesale socialization of America's economy occur during the watch of "free market," laissez faire Republican hypocrites, but there's no joy in seeing the comeuppance of greedy GOP jerks. Everyone is now doomed to suffer the terrible consequences of the the New Gilded Age of the Bush era.



Michael Ramirez / Creator's Syndicate


U.S. Details $800 Billion Loan Plans
By Edmund L. Andrews, The New York Times, November 26, 2008

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve and the Treasury announced $800 billion in new lending programs . . . sending a message that they would print as much money as needed to revive the nation’s crippled banking system.

The gargantuan efforts — one to finance loans for consumers, and a bigger one to push down home mortgage rates — were the latest but probably not the last of the federal government’s initiatives to absorb the shocks that began with losses on subprime mortgages and have spread to every corner of the economy.

In the last year, the government has assumed about $7.8 trillion in direct and indirect financial obligations. That is equal to about half the size of the nation’s entire economy and far eclipses the $700 billion that Congress authorized for the Treasury’s financial rescue plan.

Those obligations include about $1.4 trillion that has already been committed to loans, capital infusions to banks and the rescues of firms like Bear Stearns and the American International Group, the troubled insurance conglomerate. But they also include additional trillions in government guarantees on mortgages, bank deposits, commercial loans and money market funds. . . .

The long-term risks are enormous but difficult to estimate. They begin with the danger of a new surge of inflation, at least after the economy comes out of its current downturn. Beyond that, taxpayers will have to pick up the losses from loans that default or guarantees that have to be made good.

But the most troublesome unknowns are how the maze of protections for investors and consumers will change economic and political behavior in the future. . . .

~ Full story here

mist

Body impermanent like spring mist;
mind insubstantial like empty sky;
thoughts unestablished like breezes in space.
Think about these three points over and over.

-Adept Godrakpa, "Hermit of Go Cliffs"