Friday 10 Spot

Good to be back at my desk after a week of traveling, but its already Friday, and I am heading East to beat the heat and enjoy some R&R.

Here are some things that will be keeping me company on the beach and in the hammock this weekend :

• Keynes rescues France and Germany; Club Med lost (Telegraph) Crass Keynesianism has done its job. A blast of fiscal stimulus and “cash-for-clunker” schemes have lifted France and Germany from the depths of recession

• No “Mission Accomplished” for the Fed (Barrons) In the statement following the just-concluded meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, the panel found signs “economic activity is leveling out” — better than the suggestions “that the pace of economic contraction is slowing” seen after the June 24 confab. That’s a far sight from any notion of real improvement in the economy.

• Financial Media Coup d’Etat (Wall St Cheat Sheet) The Information Age has been forging a coup d’etat on the Old World Order in financial media. Television personalities cannot escape their dismal track record as it’s posted in real-time by hordes of bloggers. However, we didn’t always have this level of transparency, and we have hardly reached the Holy Land where all “experts” are held completely accountable for their picks.

• How Americans Got into a Credit-Card Mess (Time) Americans long, sordid history with borrowed money.

• 12 Economic Bubbles That May Burst (Business Pundit)

• Contrary indicator, or merely a sign of the times?  6 Ways to Fend Off Debt Collectors Whether or not you owe money, the law protects you from abusive practices (Kiplinger’s Personal Finance)

• Cheney Uncloaks His Frustration With Bush (Washington Post) ‘Statute of Limitations Has Expired’ on Many Secrets, Former Vice President Says; In his first few months after leaving office, former vice president Richard B. Cheney threw himself into public combat against the “far left” agenda of the new commander in chief. More private reflections, as his memoir takes shape in slashing longhand on legal pads, have opened a second front against Cheney’s White House partner of eight years, George W. Bush.

• Drug Compound That Kills Cancer Stem Cells Identified (Bloomberg)

• The surprising links between anger and time perception (The British Psychological Society)  people with an angrier temperament are more likely to think of themselves as moving through time, than to think of time as moving towards them.

• Did the Universe Just Happen? (The Atlantic) Atoms, electrons, and quarks consist ultimately of bits—binary units of information, like those that are the currency of computation in a personal computer or a pocket calculator.  Might the behavior of those bits, and thus of the entire universe, be governed by a single programming rule?

What did I miss worth reading . . . ?