Stolen Bread at Whole Foods

Infinite Markup?

Why is Whole Foods selling stolen bread? (and for so much, too).

And isn't announcing it to the world rather brazen?

The explanation, for fellow dyslexics, bad spellers and/or Emily Litella fans (Gilda Radner's old SNL character): that would actually be "stollen bread," a Christmas specialty (guess who celebrates Chanukah?).

"Treason Toy?" What's a "Treason Toy??"

It's a Bit Like "Soviet Jewelry" *

I'm noodling with a (darker) blog post tentatively titled "Wall Street's Financial Treason," so my ears perked up when I thought I heard someone say "treason toy" at this morning's office meeting.

They did, kind of: they were making an announcement about a holiday fundraiser called "Trees 'N Toys."

*Old-time Saturday Night Live fans will recognize this as the title of an Emily Litella (Gilda Radner) bit whereby she confuses "Soviet Jewry" and "Soviet jewelry."

"First Rock From the Sun"

My Own "Emily Litella" Moment

"First Rock From the Sun" --that's what the tiny headline, at the bottom of The New York Times science section, read the other day.

"Holy $#%@!," I thought.

I didn't know we had a space probe studying the Sun.

And if we did, and it brought something back, why is it such a tiny headline?

And how is that even possible, given that the sun is made up of superheated gases, not rocks?? (or so my 8th grade science teacher always said).

The explanation, it turns out, is that the headline is a play on the old TV show "Third Rock from the Sun."

The "first rock from the Sun" would be Mercury, and the story was referring to new photos of its surface taken by a NASA probe.

As Emily Litella always used to say, "Never mind . . . ."

No, Not THAT QE II!!

First, the Trial Balloons

What is all this fuss I hear about the Supreme Court decision on a "deaf" penalty? It's terrible! Deaf people have enough problems as it is!

--Befuddled spinster Emily Litella, one of Gilda Radner's several characters on the original Saturday Night Live.

Emily Litella comes to mind as the murmuring about QE II is getting louder.

No, not that QE II (pictured above).

Rather, they're talking about another round of quantitative easing by The Federal Reserve.

Because the Fed has already lowered interest rates to zero, its remaining weapon to stimulate an apparently flagging economy is to simply print more money (the fancy name for this is "quantitative easing").

In practice, that's accomplished by buying up new U. S. debt -- debt which the government has been more than happy to issue lately.

First broached on the blogosphere perhaps a month ago, the drumbeat in the MSM (main stream media) is growing discernibly louder the last 10 days or so.

P.S.: Growing up in the Twin Cities, I was confused by why everyone was making such a commotion over the West Bank. By age 8 or so, I finally figured out they were referring to the one in the Middle East.

I thought they were referring to the one across the Mississippi from the East Bank of the University of Minnesota.