March 10

 Snow this morning--light but fairly steady. We aren't going anywhere till sometime next week so we can sit and enjoy the view out the windows. 

This article on CNBC says that American families are reaching a "breaking point" as the credit card balances increased by a bit more than 18% from 2021  to the end of 2022--something over $600billion. As what has become normal over the last couple or so decades 60% of us are living paycheck to paycheck and many are using credit cards to pay for necessities like rent and food. My own assessment: if people are so strapped they have to use their credit cards to pay for food they are already at a breaking point and just don't know it yet.

I like this Montreal judge. I don't think the case should have been prosecuted at all, even if the middle finger had been accompanied by a finger across the throat gesture. The judge didn't buy it and the prosecutor asked for a not-guilty verdict of the case they were prosecuting.

Norfolk Southern has had another derailment--in Alabama this time. Short train in a wooded area so no injuries or property damage. That make, I think, 5 in the last month. The CEO testified yesterday before a Senate committee giving some innocuous and totally meaningless answers to questions about company responsibility and plans for compensating the residents of East Palestine and how they plan to address the safety issues the crash (and others) raise. I have other thoughts as well. It seems to me that our infrastructure (rail, air, roads, electric, and others)simply hasn't been maintained to withstand what used to be normal and isn't designed to deal with the extreme weather we have experienced over the last couple of decades. Michigan is getting more snow than we are and they have already had electrical outages affecting more than 100K.

On the testimony offered by the executives of Norfolk Southern Erin Brockovich has a good assessment. I'll boil it down: apologies and vague promises of help for the community, both of which are worth their weight in gold, and no promise to support a bi-partisan bill to regulate the industry.

Just saw a Washington Post headline on Naked Capitalism which proclaimed that our efforts to arm Ukraine is revealing cracks in our "manufacturing might." I won't link because I can't get the article because the Washington Post is paywalled. However I liked the comment on the teaser: There is no manufacturing might. We cannot make complete systems of anything without global components.