A Grab-bag of good readin’

DEBT
Informationclearninghouse has an exchange between Mike Whitney and economist, Michael Hudson, on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and the Modern Debt Peonage we find ourselves in. Don’t miss this article. An excerpt:

In a nutshell, debt peonage is the other side of the coin in a rentier economy. The negative equity we are seeing today is a key component of debt peonage. It forces debt peons to spend their lives trying to work their way out of debt. The more desperate they get, the more risks they take, and the deeper they end up.

OIL SANDS

Oilsands Boys and Their Toys. Calgary FFWD Weekly’s profile of two lads in Fort Mac. Sleds, trucks, Mustangs, tattoos and quads. And lots of debt.

ENVIRONMENT
Ontario’s Wealth, Canada’s Future. I am all for the valuation of ecological services. Without the Bow River, Calgary would have to pipeline its water from the Athabasca :). The David Suzuki Foundation performed an economic valuation of Ontario’s greenbelt, and pegs the benefits at $3,571 per hectare annually.

ECONOMY
HR World: 25 Careers to pursue in a recession.

FRICKIN’ CONSPIRACIES
Hindustan Times: Shiva the destroyer presides over CERN’s big bang mockup. Photo. I’m not sure what will happen tomorrow, when the hadron collider is fired up. Is it a stargate? Will we wake up inside an alternate universe full of Schroedinger LOLcats or something? Either way, CERN is where booga-booga and science collide. It’s a fricken conspiracy!

SECRET WEAPONS
Propaganda Matrix: WTF is the secret killing machine in Iraq all about? Bob Woodward, assistant managing editard at the Washington Post, appeared on Larry King Live recently to hawk his new book, Plan of Attack. It’s so secret, he can’t talk about it, or people will get killed. That’s a great way to move books.

CNN has the goods:

The dramatic drop in violence in Iraq is due in large part to a secret program the U.S. military has used to kill terrorists, according to a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward. The program — which Woodward compares to the World War II era Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb — must remain secret for now or it would “get people killed,” Woodward said Monday on CNN’s Larry King Live.

You can see the interview on YouTube, and there’s even another interview with William Arkin (also of the Washington post), on black budget direct energy weapons. Crazy stuff.