The Chinese and U.S. stock markets felt some big losses today–almost 9% in China and 3% state-side. These are the kind of losses that you hear about every 5 to 10 years. But is it over, or just beginning?

In December, I predicted that the stock market “may be able to maintain its speculative climb in to insanity for a month or two, but sooner or later things are going to come down.” I believe they are now on their way. If I’m right, then we may see a few turbulent swings up and down, but the trend itself will be all downward.

The reason, summarized by Mike Whitney in The Second Great Depression, is this:

December’s figures indicate that foreign investment is drying up and the world is no longer eager to purchase America’s lavish debt. The only thing the Federal Reserve can do is raise interest rates to attract foreign capital or let the dollar fall in value. The problem, of course, is that if the Fed raises rates, the real estate market will collapse even faster which will strangle consumer spending and shrivel GDP. In other words, we are at the brink of two separate but related crises; an economic crisis and a currency crisis. That means that the unsuspecting American people are likely to be ground between the two mill-wheels of hyperinflation and shrinking growth.

As the saying goes, we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. As I mentioned in my first article, diversify in to gold and foreign currency if you have the resources. It’s going to be a wild ride, gravity and all.

I wrote last month about my approval of and involvement in the effort to impeach Bush and Cheney. There was some discussion in the comments about the legality of impeachment—in other words, what law or laws, specifically, had been broken in order to merit the ousting of our president.

While I still believe that the issue does not necessarily hinge on what law has been broken (a “misdemeanor” is all it takes), it was worth reading this detailed list of offenses and their corresponding laws that the president and vice president have broken.

The constitution clearly gives congress the power to impeach at their discretion: “Section 4. The President, Vice President and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

If we, as a people, can permit so many “crimes and misdemeanors” at the top of our society to go unpunished, how can we honor and maintain the rule of law here “below”?

Update: Truthout has an article that summarizes past impeachable offenses, including Andrew Jackson:

unmindful of the harmony and courtesies which ought to exist and be maintained between the executive and legislative branches

This is pretty funny.

I have a quizzical look behind the big smile on my face. I’m not sure what the point was, but I guess some things are just for fun.

I wrote earlier to let readers know about the availability of Libyan internet domains. There were a lot of open domains available at that time. There are still a good many to go, too. Taking on a $150 domain is a bit of a risk, however, so I hope you’ll consider the pros and cons before you act. I also hope that all of you who already took the plunge have had success.

A couple of weeks ago, I sold the “HO.LY” domain for $1,000 on ebay. While I don’t expect to get the same price for some of my other .ly domains, it’s been a valuable business experience as I’ve taken the “plunge” myself.

Some Thoughts on Domain Sales

Soon after my original post, someone accused me of being a bad person for snatching up the domains that I did and then re-selling them. I didn’t expect this reaction to be honest, although after some reflection, I can see why some people might be grumpy or upset. Perhaps it seems like easy and undeserved money when a domain sells above its registrar fee.

But grumpiness aside, the “mark-up” on ebay is profit taken for providing a service. It was actually a risk on my part to buy $750 worth of domains. I really didn’t know what they were worth—and neither did some of the appraisers I went to, for that matter. My service was to take a risk upon myself in order to find someone who would be happy to pay more than the $150 registrar fee for the domain. And as it turns out, someone in Florida was just the person. I’d like to think that without me, this fellow wouldn’t have been presented with the option of buying HO.LY and therefore may not have gotten the domain he wanted in the end.

I’ll continue to experiment with domain sales and other possibly profitable ventures. I’ll post about anything that comes up. And let me know if you have any ideas too, eh?

Another article on CNN caught my attention: Scientists dubious of quantum computer claims. A Canadian company claims to have made a single-purpose quantum computational device (i.e. not a true turing-complete computer, I suppose). They did their first public demonstration via a live T.V., claiming that the machine is too sensitive to be transported for an in situ demo.

This reminds me of that scam a few years back when someone claimed to have invented a “zero-point” communications device. They did a public demonstration proving that the device could wirelessly transmit enormous amounts of data across a river back in the 90s. It turned out that the inventor had secretly connected an under-water cable across the river.

Anyway, I don’t know if this quantum computer is for real or not, but I found this quote amusing:

He said all the evidence the company has indicates that the device is performing quantum computations, but he acknowledged there is some uncertainty.

Uncertainty indeed.

CNN Money is reporting that the U.S. Mint has begun circulating $1 coins. Canada did that quite some time ago and I think it worked out well. We’ll have to watch and see what the rest of America thinks

I was thinking about the other recent news about U.S. coins, too, and came up with a fun tagline: “U.S. Mint: We don’t make cents any more.”

Well, that’s not true yet. But it’s still pretty crazy how you can make a profit by hoarding the raw metal material in pennies and nickels.

Here’s a javascript drag-and-drop tree similar to the DHTML Goodies one, but based heavily on the nicely designed mooTools library. I built this tree as a part of my work at FamilyLearn.

Plug: If you’d like to take a peek at what we’re doing, check out our new iMemoryBook publishing platform.

Features of DraggableTree

• Drag-and-drop rearranging of any standard UL list
• In-place editing of nodes
• Easily mark certain nodes as non-editable or non-copyable (default is editable and copyable).

Enjoy!

Demo is here.

In a response to the claims made by Screw Loose Change (a “debunking” of Loose Change), “Mike, 30, from NJ” wrote an open letter a day or two ago. Mike is a 9/11 first responder whose life has pretty much been trashed because for two years he wouldn’t shut up about what he saw, heard and felt in the WTC towers. A few highlights:

There were explosions. There were flashes. There was molten metal running down the I-beams of the basement levels like lava flows. I’ve never seen anything like it. Yes, planes hit the buildings- anybody who says otherwise is a moron. But the explosions- the rapid, symmetrical, sequential explosions- they happened.

We were in the basement, helping a man who had been struck by pieces of flying concrete and rebar, and there was one of the huge steel and concrete support pillars with an 8 foot section blown out of the center of it. We looked around and there were other support columns that were the same. We spoke about it right then and there… we were discussing as we were carrying this man, saying “how could someone have rigged all these explosives?”.

Just before the collapses, a series of deep, below ground explosions, then numerous explosions in the buildings upper floors. Then we ran. We felt the same deep explosions before the second collapse. This was not just the planes. THE BUILDINGS WERE RIGGED.

There was a 20 second countdown over the radios, there were bright flashes up and down the sides of building 7, you could see them through the windows…and it collapsed. We all knew it was intentionally pulled… they told us! There was no question about it until a day or so later when the news was reporting that it had collapsed due to fire. We kept wondering when they were going to correct the news reports. Eventually, it became “official story”.

While I recognize that this is nearly an anonymous source (”Mike”), I think it is worth publishing. His story can be corroborated with many other sources. His letter appears genuine. He has reason to want to remain anonymous given the treatment he’s had for having stuck to his story. I think he’s for real, and if I’m right in that judgment call, I support him and wish him well.

From my coworker, Paul:

So I re-installed linux on my computer at home last night. I’m ready to buy a Mac.

Update: Yup.