And the joke is on us.

Click the photo to link up with this Bloomberg story.

Foreign Banks Tapped Fed’s Secret Lifeline Most at Crisis Peak
By Bradley Keoun and Craig Torres - Apr 1, 2011 1:53 PM ET

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s two-year fight to shield crisis-squeezed banks from the stigma of revealing their public loans protected a lender to local governments in Belgium, a Japanese fishing-cooperative financier and a company part-owned by the Central Bank of Libya.

The bad news of course is that the money you have ..... worth less.

Click the chart to link to a long, rambling but interesting David Galland piece with some history of Nuclear Power that I had never heard before.

In November of 1955 C. Northcote Parkinson published a fairly short, and whimsical ... I'm trying to suck you into reading the thing here ... essay for The Economist which began as follows,

"It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."

Those words quickly became known/famous as "Parkinson's Law"

I was disappointed to discover "Parkinson's Law" having in the late 90's thought to have discovered and expressed this idea so perfectly myself ..... as follows,

"Crap expands to fill available space."

I called it "Roany's Rule".

I live in a relatively small house on a pretty big lot with my little packrat of a Wiffer, three boys, two weiners and an aussie.

And as you might expect, it is jam packed with crap.

I could easily afford two or three times the house that I have now, and as a matter of fact, we own three hundred or so front feet on the river only about a half a mile from here, along with a full blown set of plans for a house about twice the size of the one I'm writing from now and three fairly old but probably still good quotes to build it.

I have not built it ... yet ... for two reasons;

1.  Cheap bastard ... the thought that I'm upside down about a hundred and twenty five grand the instant I turn the key irritates me to no end.

2.  I'm not completely certain that I want any more crap.

So anyway, I'm sitting here last night pondering the fact of my being a cheap bastard along with my lack of appetite for more crap, when it all came clear.

Roany's Rule ..... Ok Ok ..... Parkinson's Law.

The simple reason you never, ever, under any set of circumstances, ever ... never ......... neverever ... raise taxes.

Government expands to consume available income.

From the USDA's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

From Business Insider Clusterstock Chart of the Day

From Calculated Risk

From the Telegraph UK.

As always, click on the photo to link up to the entire piece. 

Goggles banned at school swimming lessons

Children have been banned from wearing goggles during school swimming lessons for fears they could hurt themselves.

Pen-pushers have slapped the ban on the swimming aids amid "fears" a pair could "snap" onto a child's face too hard, injuring them.

I could go on and on and on and ........ for days.

 From Statfor Global Intelligence, the single best source for international news analysis anywhere ..... bar none.

Your Navy is certainly keeping busy.

Betcha we could sell half of it and take a big damn bite out of the national debt.

All morning long, I kept getting the same email, with the same link, over and over again.

Nearly every one of the minions who take The Wall Street Journal online, knowing that I enjoy James Taranto's ongoing taunt of the New York Times and their star columnist Paul Krugman, felt compelled to give me a heads up on this morning's Best of the Web column at WSJ.com.

As though I hadn't already been up and skulking my favorite sites for hours.

I suppose it would be ungracious (ingracious?) one of those for sure ... maybe both, not to thank each and every one of you for thinking about our site.

And because it seems very important to you that we spread the word on this issue, and more importantly, because I was going to do it anyway, here we go.

First, from Taranto's post linking to the original article at The Telegraph

Great Moments in Socialized Medicine 
First the bad news. "The National Health Service is today condemned over its inhumane treatment of elderly patients in an official report that finds hospitals are failing to meet 'even the most basic standards of care' for the over-65s," ... 

Now the good news: "In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We've all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false," according to Paul Krugman, star columnist at the New York Times.

Oops, but there's more bad news: The New York Times has been known to publish out-and-out falsehoods on its opinion pages, including under Krugman's byline.

Good news: This could be one of those instances in which he's telling the truth. Bad news: We wouldn't bet on it.

Now the full story.

As always, the photo links to the entire peice.

Recommended

NHS shamed over callous treatment of elderly

The National Health Service is today condemned over its inhumane treatment of elderly patients in an official report that finds hospitals are failing to meet “even the most basic standards of care” for the over-65s.

By Martin Beckford, Health Correspondent 

Business Insider is on a roll this week with a second excellent slide show.

As always, click the photo to link to the entire piece.

Again, way double highly recommended.

I'll let the Department of Labor explain the Davis-Bacon Act  A.K.A. the "prevailing wage " law back there at the gear.

I'll admit it, I had to look it up.

From Business Insider, quick, easy and a revelation.

As alway, clicking on the photo will link you to the entire piece.

Way double highly recommended.

That's a very nice suit ..... seriously.