Odds ‘n Sods:

Reader RH says: “I have been collecting Foxfire books for some 20 years now. I was so happy to find Foxfire.org! These books have so much important information from the past for our future, lest we forget.”

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Tina in the Philippines sent us this article: Iligan folk seek St. Michael help, also bear arms. Tina’s comment: “A real big surprise for me, cause I’ve been asking around about the gun laws here, and generally understand that its very restrictive. So many various permits are needed, and separate permits if you want to transport your gun to the range, and even then, for a good chunk of the year, guns are banned from the streets because politicians tend to get shot. Guns aren’t practical or usable for self defense, with laws like this. I hope there’ll be positive effects from what happens in Iligan when the fighting stops.”

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Cyberiot recommended a piece of insightful economic commentary by James Quinn, posted over at The Prudent Bear: The Great Consumer Crash of 2009

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Terry B. In Upstate New York flagged a piece of commentary by The Mogambo Guru: The new silver – made with paper. Terry’s comment: “This article explains why it’s important to own actual physical silver, not a piece of paper promising silver.”

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There is now talk that the pending bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may force the breakup of the organizations into numerous regional privatized organizations. If this happens it will very likely push up mortgage interest rates. And this in turn, will further exacerbate the collapse of residential real estate prices in the US. To my mind, this represents a huge “lose-lose”. Not only will it balloon the cost of the Mother Of All Bailouts (MOAB), but it will also make the impending depression deeper and last longer. (And to add insult to injury, the cost of the bailout will be extracted from our wallets. The Fannie and Freddie debaclesare indicative that the global credit market is indeed badly broken. It will be many years until global liquidity is restored, and I’m certain that there will be be plenty of pain in the interim.