How many? How far? No more? What’s the limit? From the LA Times:

So far this year, the federal government has put upnearly $30 billion to avert a major financial default by the investment bank Bear Stearns Cos.; committed to investing as much as $200 billion in preferred stock of the loss-plagued finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and at least $5 billion in their mortgage securities; and agreed to provide an emergency loan of $85 billion to American International Group Inc. in return for an ownership stake of as much as 80% in the stricken insurance giant.

Sarah Palin has already indicated she’s disappointed with the federal government’s need to bail out another financial institution. At first blush, I’m in that line of thinking.

And where does it end? The federal government, by way of President Carter and Congress already handed $1.2 billion in federal loan guarantees to Chrysler in the form of the Chrysler Loan Guarantee Act of 1979.

History tell us that, generally, bailouts are busts.

CBS News asks the very pointed and appropriate question: then who bails out Uncle Sam?

We all know that: you and me.

And in the meantime, everything affects everything else. This is one huge, horrible Chain of Consequences.

One consequence, from the Financial Times.com:

The panic in world credit markets reached historic intensity on Wednesday, prompting a flight to safety of the kind not seen since the second world war.

Barometers of financial stress hit record peaks across the world. Yields on short-term US Treasuries hit their lowest level since the London Blitz, while gold had its biggest one-day gain ever in dollar terms. Lending between banks, in effect, stopped.

In Russia:

Russia was facing one of the biggest tests of its market economy on Wednesday after it was forced to close its two main stock exchanges to halt a rout that has led to the steepest declines since the August 1998 crisis.

And this shall change, Dear Readers. Day to day.

Be prepared. As I have written, many times (to include the Pygmalion Effect), this can be a True Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.

The markets, I am convinced, are not about Reality but about Thought. What do people think will happen?

Further, do what I call The Logical Extension: combine these current economic times with an Obama Presidency, where this nation will return to the philosophy of Tax and Spend. And massive regulation. The government potentially running the American stock market.

And we have never, ever, taxed or spent ourselves out of economic woes.

Your thoughts?

In the meantime I’ve had to blog whilst either at work (man, is that an issue in and of itself!) or at my wife’s house. During the past two weekends: nada, mang. To say that I’ve been in some sort of withdrawal status is an understatement.

But moreover, I’ve had to resurrect my huge desktop unit. Custom built by Sundance Computers in Auburn (Anybody in the Fornicalia Sierra Foothills area? I’d sure as hell recommend their wonderful, comprehensive and caring service, though I’m not sure they’d be sufficiently impressed with my Hard Astarboard personal recommendation.), it sat for a number of years and thusly had some issues with loading software, dust, etc. I took it back to Sundance and they added a second 400-gig hard drive, another 512 into RAM, though I left the motherboard and processor alone.

Spoiled by the 17″ HP display, I went with Chris’s recommendation for a flatscreen and trusted his taste. He ordered a 22″ Viewsonic VA2226w for me and, I must admit, I’m very pleased with his choice. That’s how much I trust this business.

In any event, I’m Back In Bidness at home but am only now able to divert attention to blogging. Because I’m hosted by Blogger, I was able to pre-schedule a couple of posts up to Sunday. But that’s when things changed.

My wife was stung by what us mountain knuckle-draggers in Fornicalia commonly call a Meat Bee (which is actually a yellowjacket) this past Sunday, directly into an already-open wound on her foot. For the first few seconds, little happened. Then, she doubled over in pain. I removed the stinger a short time later and the pain was such that it remained a continuous “10” for an hour — to the point where I had to transport her to an ER 35 minutes away.

The pain came in waves, and we waited seven hours to be seen. The triage nurse had to take various kids ahead of us who had either broken bones or other more serious events. It became almost a joke — the automatic doors would open and a set of parents would carry or wheel in a small child (or in one case, an infant) and we knew we were bumped back. I can’t blame the parents or the ER or the staff. It’s the nature of triage itself. But it was certainly eminently frustrating. Especially considering my wife’s pain abated little. It was frustrating to see her damned near continuously writhing in pain, to the point where she cried out loud and tears flowed down her cheeks. A very nice nurse knew of the situation and kept checking on us. But with only one Triage nurse, three ER nurses and two doctors on duty, they did the best they could. We simply had to understand.

One injection of dilaudid later, and a prescription for hydrocodone (essentially, morphine), my wife began to experience little pain, but sordid hallucinations. She wanted to get into her truck and drive to work. I spent Monday and Tuesday keeping her in the house, calmed, medicated. The pain lessened. I blew two days’ leave from work. But I couldn’t let her drive.

I finally was able to slink down to Auburn in order to pick up my updated desktop confuser, new flatscreen, and log back into my internet host. The modem works, for whatever reason, quicker in the laptop than on my updated desktop — whereas before I could whip out 54.9kbps on the laptop modem, the best I can acquire on this desktop is 49.1kbps. Hey, nothing like a couple steps backwards on the internet!

I should probably simply count my blessings: my wife feels better, the meds are working (d’ya think??), my computer computes (though I still have to reload every damned bit of software again and again), the screen is nice, my desk is cleaned of dust and lint and, perhaps most importantly, I’d kept my copy of Windows XP and DON’T have to trust Vista.

I suppose this is a long way of saying: I’m back blogging.

In the meantime, I’ve not had time to access any media source whatsoever. And I apologize for not accessing any of My Dear Readers’ blogs. What the hell’s been happening?