Wednesday--

We got relief from the heat.  Oh, did we!!  We didn't get out of the 70s yesterday and won't today.  And we should get more rain.  The same pattern that brought a train of snow storms hardly a day between last winter is now bringing rain in a similar pattern.

Not really unexpected given how abnormally warm the weather has been up there.  The only surprise was the source of the story--the Japan Times.

I am sure the decision to reverse the layoffs (while requiring the works to train their own foreign replacements to receive their severance pay) was not out of the goodness of their black little hearts.

Charles Hugh Smith answers the implied question behind my question of how many ways our banking fraudsters can find to screw everyone (individual and group) out of how much.  We have optimized our system for them to continue to screw everyone and the financial rewards puts a premium on their continued ingenuity in devising new schemes to grab as much as they can.  As long as the system is so organized to optimize their predation it will continue and will be bounded only by human cupidity and inventiveness--in other words not bounded at all.