My goodness, there are so many interesting things happening in the financial world! I gave up playing video games a few years ago, but in terms of excitement and entertainment value, I may have found a replacement—just read the financial blogs and news of late.

I wish it weren’t all bad news, however, because I do feel for the poor and middle class who are losing out during this crisis. On the other hand, I have no qualms about the lost fortunes of the greedy and unwise investors who are also “suffering”. With each boom that goes bust, we are a little closer to abolishing the federal reserve and returning to sound money that will enable the poor and working class to save their wealth and to prosper.

So rumor has it that Citibank may be in trouble. They are closing the window on “outgoing capital” for their customers. Most notably, from LeMetropoleCafe:

• Here’s a story that’s flown under the radar. Citibank is in serious trouble. You probably already knew that, given the fact the banks’ been begging for billions from SWFs. But did you know that in late December Citibank quietly announced a restriction on wire transfers? The bank told customers that outgoing wire transfers from the banks accounts would be limited to just US$2k per day. Hmm.
• But wait. There’s more. Last week, under the guise of responding to a wave of fraud from automated cash machines, Citi also announced a limit on cash withdrawls from its ATMs in New York City. And you thought the money in your bank account was yours.
• There could be a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this. But the simplest explanation is almost always the best. Citibank is in desperate need of its capital. The best way to keep your customers money is to prevent them from taking it out of the bank. It’s a kind of low-level, mild-mannered capital control.
• How has the Treasury managed the Citi crisis differently than the way the Bank of England managed Northern Rock? And what will the end result be for Citi? Stay tuned.

And this on the heels of a $15 billion write-down from Merrill-Lynch, a nearly bankrupt Countrywide Financial, and gold at $900 per ounce. And the credit-rating agency, Moody’s, has issued a warning to the US government that unless it gets its financial house in order, it will downgrade the government’s investment grade rating.

Whew! I think Goldman-Sachs and Morgan Stanley are right about a recession. If this gets you feeling “depressed”, may I suggest a remedy?

I was walking home from school this morning and happened across today’s newspaper headline: “US Begins Airstrikes Against Sunni Militants”. And I felt angry. I thought, “Why do we have to propagandize this war by characterizing these particular Sunnis as militant, all while we are the ones who have begun attacking from the air?” I started to re-characterize the headline as I continued my walk:

“Christian Militants Begin Airstrike on Muslim Homeland”, or “American Emperialists Seek to Crush Muslim Resistance in Iraq”…

Once I touched on the “American” adjective in my musings, I started to think about our history as a nation. Two-hundred years ago, there was another empire that sought to expand its borders and protect its interests through force: the British. I wonder what their headlines would have sounded like?

“American Terrorists Sabotage British Trade Routes”, or maybe “British Warships Squelch Rebel Uprising in American Colonies”

With such a noble history of throwing off the chains of our oppressors, why can’t we see from the eyes of Iraqis? If we could do that, we would see right through the propaganda we are fed in the news.

So it didn’t go as hoped—Ron Paul came in fifth place (although there is some speculation that there were some electronic voting shenanigans that could have been in play, as well as some obvious miscounts that did not favor Dr. Paul). The big upset is on the Democratic side—that Hillary came from a 10 point loss to a 3 point lead. What happened?

I wonder if independents in NH had lost so much confidence in the Republican candidates that they went to the Democrat side and voted for pro-war Hillary. (Obama is moderately pro-war, although he seems to be a little more reluctant than Hillary). The Republican party really is in shambles. Even political reporter Josh Marshall doesn’t know what to make of it.

Update: I’m starting to really wonder if there was some vote fraud going on after all. If you would like a recount (as I would), there is a recount chipin project we can donate to (sponsored by the unstoppable Granny Warriors):

One of the requirements for our typesetting engine at MemoryPress.com is the ability to use images within a document such that the text flows around each image. This has been done before in several TeX macro packages, but the only one available for Plain TeX (or eplain) was figflow. FigFlow almost did the job, but had two shortcomings in our case:

1. Images that had to be carried over to the following page could not appear in the first paragraph of that page,
2. Images could only appear on ONE side of a paragraph at a time.

As I learned about TeX itself (in order to overcome the first obstacle), I began to see a way that it might be possible to enhance FigFlow to allow figures on BOTH sides of a paragraph. The “way” turned out to be much longer and more difficult than I thought, but it turns out that it is possible using a dash of “parshape” macro and several tablespoons of hacking. Click on the image to the left to see an example page from a PDF document.

The TeX source code for the macros that make this possible is available in this zip file. This is version 0.5.

The old blog just got a new face and a new name. I don’t write much about Ruby on Rails specifically any more (although there will likely be further posts on the subject), and my leanings lately have been toward politics.

The change in focus seemed to merit a fresh visual arrangement, so welcome to the new look, and officially the “InquiryLabs” blog.

Note: Comments are working again. My hosting company had a server crash about a month ago that somehow disabled the spam filter. The net effect was that I ignored all 1800 unflitered comments until today. I deleted all but 6 (nearly all of the comments were spam) and restored the Spam Karma plugin that seemed to do a pretty good job of filtering input. Let me know by email if you notice anything set up incorrectly (such as your comments not getting through, for example). Thanks!

Here’s a tribute to my wife that I made from our video footage. You’re awesome, Kelty! Thanks for teaching me a bit too

P.S. The video is also available directly on youtube here.