Spillcam continues the SAW horror show. Below you can see remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) sawing away at the pipe in the start of the next attempt to stop the leak, known as a LMRP, or Lower Marine Riser Package.
In the Senate's rush to get home for a two week vacation they left one piece of business unfinished.
For the last few weeks 15 million or more unemployed Americans along with some of the Democratic Senators have been working diligently to get the Tax Extenders bill passed by the end of the month. Senator Harry Reid, the Senate Majority leader, has even went as far as to make threatening statements about not recessing for the holiday unless this bill was passed. I am sorry to report that the Senator has recessed the present session for the two week holiday without taking the issue into hand.
What this means is that long-term unemployed people will stop being eligible for extensions once their current extension expires. The impact of this will be immediate.
But now with the Senate on recess and not back until June 7th, basically nothing more can happen until then at the earliest. And by mid-June, we're already going to have seen 300,000 people run out of unemployment benefits.
Discussion of the economic crisis in Europe has been largely confined to Greece and how it effects the Euro. All that changed this week.
It all started with the Spanish banks at the start of the week.
CajaMurcia, Caja Granada, Sa Nostra, and Caixa are joining together in a SIP (System of Integrated Protection), which will combine bank reserves and result in a firm worth €100 billion, according to Cotizalia.
This comes after yesterday's announcement that four banks, Cajastur, Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo, Caja Extremadura, and Caja Cantabria were merging under a similar agreement.
All of this started with the weekend's €530 million bailout of CajaSur, and is sure to continue as Spain tries to sure up its banking sector under IMF pressure.
Sudden mergers of major banks, following a major bank bailout, is very suspicious. The markets noticed, and two days later the Spain's central bank was forced to act.
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!
This weeks film is The Prize. An 8 part series adapted from Daniel Yergin's Pultizer Prize winning Epic History of Global oil.
Contained within are dirty tricks, monopolies, Machiavellian business tactics, the break-up of Standard oil, wars, the CIA, coups and the general dictation of the oil economy. This exceptional PBS documentary is politically neutral and shows what happens when the world chases black gold. It's also a great study for any major sector corporate industry.
This is a work for serious minds that want to right this ship of state. But his book reads, for an economist or the inclined, like an in depth tell all about the Hollywood producer studio star system machinations would read for a movie fan. The free market free traders should be very afraid that you read it.
"By allowing persistent declines in the money supply and in the price level, the Federal Reserve of the late 1920s and 1930s greatly destabilized the U.S. economy and the economies of many other nations as well.
- Federal Reserve Governor, Ben Bernanke, 2004
Ben Bernanke, Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman, and most other economists out there agree that the reason the Great Depression was so deep and destructive was that the Federal Reserve failed to keep the money supply from shrinking. I'm a little more skeptical, but I agree that it would be impossible for an economy to grow without a growing supply of money in a debt-based monetary system.
That's why this news article should be extremely distressing.
The stock of money fell from $14.2 trillion to $13.9 trillion in the three months to April, amounting to an annual rate of contraction of 9.6pc. The assets of insitutional money market funds fell at a 37pc rate, the sharpest drop ever.
"It’s frightening," said Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research. "The plunge in M3 has no precedent since the Great Depression. The dominant reason for this is that regulators across the world are pressing banks to raise capital asset ratios and to shrink their risk assets. This is why the US is not recovering properly," he said.
As our political and financial leaders are using every tool at their disposal to jump-start the economy, there are fewer and fewer dollars in circulation. That's not a prescription for a growing economy. It's a prescription for economic disaster.
This is a graphic of the near shore oil spread, just for today. Most people are aware there is now a second plume of oil. A plume is not a leak, although it could imply one, more a plume describes the shape and character of spilled oil.
This newly discovered oil plume is 22 miles long, 6 miles wide and 3300 feet deep. In other words, the oil on the surface, goes all the way down to over half a mile. The thickest area of the goo is at 1300 feet. It is drifting towards Mobile Alabama like the 1950's horror film, The Blob, but this horror show is real.
A 2nd estimate of Q1 2010 GDP was released Friday and the advanced report is 3.0%. Here is the Q1 2010 advance GDP estimate, where GDP was reported 3.2%. From the 2nd revision report, consumer spending (PCE) dropped from it's initial estimate and the trade deficit widened.
It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy! 
This is a graphic of the near shore oil spread, just for today. Most people are aware there is now a
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