The restaurant here called "The Reef" can feed you anything from breakfast to hamburgers to pizza. The people are very friendly and it is just west of the Hewanorra runway. Since it is always an easterly wind, we only see the take-offs and there are about 5 each day but the best one is the Virgin Airways 747 heavy leaving about 5 pm.

Crooks Are Pervasive From Banking to Bailout-Commentary

From the recent banking quarterly reports to the front page of the NYT/Business, the article “Bank Profits Appear Out of Thin Air”. The banking and investment house crooks are still gaming John Q. Public.
The article refers to Bank of America’s fraudulent earnings scheme of booking a $2.2 billion gain that falsely increases value of the Merrill Lynch’s assets recently acquired. BofA decided to give themselves a phony profit bump by raising the value of Merrill assets to prices significantly higher than Merrill kept them.

But it wasn’t only the banksters at BofA pulling this nonsense; All the cool kids were doing it:

• Goldman Sachs and the disappearing month of December
• JPMorgan’s profit was due to repricing the value of its falling bonds
• Citigroup also used the bond trick.

Barry Ritholtz http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/ comments, “Instead of receivership and liquidation, we rewarded these cretins with your grandchildren’s lunch money. It is idiocy on a grand scale, beyond my feeble imagination."

Home Sweet Home

There is everything that I need here with a full kitchen including a microwave. If I really want store-bought meals I could go over to the Reef Restaurant where the kiteboarders are.
But I'm content here with my cornbread and chili, shrimp and grits, and Hungarian goulash. Now I'm making myself hungry again.

Schwarzenegger and the California Budget-Commentary

There is always more than any single or simple reason for significant changes like moving for a beautiful climate.
After the wonderful Governor Schwarzenegger fell into bed with that bunch of spendthrift California legislators and thought they were going to tax me to cover that $42 billion worth of profligate spending making it the highest taxing state in the union, I said the hell with that – I’m outta here.
John and Ken at radio KFI have covered this much better than I and you can even hear their on-air rants here: http://www.kfiam640.com/pages/johnandkenshow/
If you’re a Californian, don’t put up with your representation – they’re mostly crooks!
Notable Quote: "It is said that married men live longer ….In fact, it only seems that way."

Best Kiteboarding On The Island

These kiteboarders are just west of the cottage about a quarter of a mile away. A Frenchman named Frank that worked there turned me on to the new cottages I'm at now. Frank will be back in December and Sebastian and his friend Maria from Spain are holding down the fort in the meantime.

From Outside Peering In-Commentary

So now you have bought some equities in the past month and some of the big banks have been reporting a profitable quarter, huh? Well the Dow has begun to flatten out from its 30% rise…
The “stress tests’ for banks are as bogus as their implementation. Do you really think that the 10 examiners assigned are sufficiently adequate to dig into the complex world wide CDS’s that Citi owns? Ha ha ha.
The Financial times reports that rising unemployment has been at a rate to invalidate the tests even under the Treasury’s “adverse scenario” model. Now they are going to interpret the results more stringently. The Treasury has declined to comment. Dr. Nouriel Roubini, chairman of RGE Monitor observes “The stress test results are meaningless as actual data are already running worse than the worst case scenario.”

New Digs - Moving To Anse La Sable

I found the coolest spot to move to! It's about a half mile from Hewanorra Int'l Airport...I can walk it. And it's about a mile into Vieux Fort - I go grocery shopping there on Saturday's. I spent a week in town finding my way around and where a good place to set up housekeeping would be. The landlord is from Grenada by way of England/Germany/USA and is very knoledgeable about most everything. I have run a test of video visiting and we'll have to try Skype soon.

Life In Town - Way Too Many People

My first stop was a hillside hotel in town (Vieux Fort) to get my bearings and find a permanent residence. A bar and eatery was right next door and quite good.

Leaving PA Snow For Warmer Climes

Easter and the eggs are all frozen in the snowbank - did you ever try to find white on white even if they have little purple lines. My plane to MIA is leaving tomorrow and I'm gonna go warm up in St. Lucia for a couple of months.