Odds ‘n Sods:

Coutrtesy of SHTF.com, and also recommended by SurvivalBlog reader KB, comes this article about Zimbabwe from The Economist: How to stay alive when it all runs out

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Zuke in Iraq sent us this one: Two Bear Stearns hedge funds are now worth nearly nothing. We read further details in The Daily Reckoning: “Last week, all three rating agencies – Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s, and Fitch – announced downgrades of subprime linked debt. And this week, Bear Stearns said investors in one of its hedge funds that bought CDOs on a
leveraged basis would get none of their money back. They were wiped out, said the letter reported by Bloomberg, buying Triple-A bonds. Just how subprime CDOs, suspicious byproducts of a disreputable industry, came to be rated AAA is a story worth telling, but today we will stick to the news. Bear went on to say that while investors in one of its two endangered funds had been wiped out, investors in the other fund could breathe a sigh of relief – they had only lost 91% of their money.” (OBTW, I consider The Daily Reckoning a “must read.” Subscriptions to the e-newsletter are free.)

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Rourke recommended this interview of Comptroller David Walker, head of the GAO, on 60 Minutes. Walker gives some dire warnings. “I would argue that the most serious threat to the United States is not someone hiding in a cave in Afghanistan or Pakistan but our own fiscal irresponsibility,”

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From NewsMax: Experts Agree: Major Terror Threats Loom