The US government has gone from being the biggest player in the mortgage market to being just about the only player. Per recent reports sent by an alert reader, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae now finance 80% of all mortgages, and the FHA guarnatees another 10%, so these entities now come close to having mortgage finance all to themselves.
From the Tristate observer…..
“According to the May 1, 2008 CCC inventory report there are oÂÂnly 24.1 million bushels of wheat in inventory, so after this sale there will be oÂÂnly 2.7 million bushels of wheat left the entire CCC inventory,” warned Matlack. “Our concern is not that we are using the remainder of our strategic grain reserves for humanitarian relief. AAM fully supports the action and all humanitarian food relief. Our concern is that the U.S. has nothing else in our emergency food pantry. There is no cheese, no butter, no dry milk powder, no grains or anything else left in reserve. The oÂÂnly thing left in the entire CCC inventory will be 2.7 million bushels of wheat which is about enough wheat to make ½ of a loaf of bread for each of the 300 million people in America.”
A draft law in Liaoning province makes it an obligation for adult children to contact or visit their parents regularly.
It is the first legislation of its kind in the country.
The province’s standing committee of the people’s congress recently released the draft – Regulation on Protection of Rights and Interests of the Aged – to seek public opinion.
It is expected to become law by the end of the year.
An article says if children do not live with their parents, they should “often send greetings or go home to visit them”.
* In 2004 the typical family spent more than 18 percent of its income on debt payments, while 12.2% of families spent more than 40% of their income on debt payments.
* Nearly half of all credit card holders have missed payments in the last year.
* 15 million Americans use a payday lender each month, borrowing at eye-popping APRs: 35 states allow APRs of more than 300%.
* In the Rocky Mountain West (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming), the median APR of state usury limits increased from 36% in 1965 to 521% in 2007.
* A household with income under $13,000 spends, on average, $645 a year on lottery tickets, about 9 percent of all income.
* In the Texas Lottery, 18- to 24-year-old players spend a median $50 per month on lottery play, the highest level among all age groups.
I know I do not speak for the entire editorial staff, but I confess a sense of startlement at reading this post. I really ought to check on the various incidents in this story more thoroughly. If they are largely true as presented, as I suspect they are, it would do me well to wake up and realize that quite real, legal persecution of Christians is not just happening far away across the ocean where everything is strange and exotic. Canada is not so far away.
Johnny Jackson, a 10-year-old American boy from South Carolina, died at home on Sunday from “dry drowning” more than an hour after going swimming and walking home with his mother. The sad event highlights a little known danger that parents and child carers should be aware of, that drowning can kill hours after being submersed in water.
Johnny’s mother, Cassandra Jackson, told NBC News in a story broadcast on the TODAY show on Thursday that:
“I’ve never known a child could walk around, talk, speak and their lungs be filled with water.”
This week’s poem of the week is A.E Housmen’s Here Dead We Lie.
The city of Washington has decided that since they can’t catch criminals they are going to try to control the movements of everyone going into certain neighborhoods. Lawdog lets them have it with both barrels.
Robert Kennedy’s 1948 Reports from Palestine is this week’s essay of the week.