So there’s a lot of yammering out there about OWS, and what it means, or doesn’t mean, and even some opinions that OWS protestors are less grateful than a panhandler, and perhaps more immoral, too, since they are capable, presumably, of working…but aren’t even looking.

What does OWS mean to me? This:

And: This:

Will’s Sign at Occupy Times Square, quote by Conor Friedersdorf from John Grace on Vimeo.

Read more about the genesis of the quote in the Atlantic.

And what’s that sign all about? Listen to this Planet Money podcast.

When you’re finished, head back here and let me know: Are you angry about this too?

Observed:

No comment required, really.

The single most common misconception about [the Texas governor] is that he has been running a large state for the past six years. Texas has what is known in political science circles as “the weak-governor system.” You may think this is just a Texas brag, but our weak-governor system is a lot weaker than anybody else’s.* Although the governor does have the power to call out the militia in case of an Indian uprising, by constitutional arrangement, the governor of Texas is actually the fifth most powerful statewide office: behind lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller, and land commissioner but ahead of agriculture commissioner and railroad commissioner.

Via “The Marketplace Morning Report:”

JEREMY HOBSON: Global stock markets are still excited about what the Federal Reserve said yesterday afternoon. That interest rates for banks that borrow from the Fed will remain near zero percent for the next two years. That’s the Fed’s way of influencing the rates we pay for everything from student loans to mortgages.

Keeping rates that low for that long is unprecedented and making such a bold statement… carries its own risks…

Via “This American Life:”

Alan Greenspan: The FOMC stands prepared to maintain a highly accommodative stance of policy for as long as needed to promote satisfactory economic performance.

Adam Davidson: You might not believe me, but that little statement, that is central banker’s speak for, hey, global pool of money, screw you.

Alex Blumberg: Come on, that’s not what he said.

Adam Davidson: It is. I speak central banker. Believe me, that’s what he said. What he is technically saying is he’s going to keep the fed funds rate– that’s when you hear, the fed interest rate– at the absurdly low level of 1%.

And that sends a message to every investor in the world, you are not going to make any money at all on US Treasury bonds for a very long time. Go somewhere else. We can’t help you.

And so the global pool of money– which does speak central banker. They understood what he was saying– they looked around for some low-risk high-return investment. And among the many things they put their money into, there was this one thing that they fell in love with. To get it, they called Wall Street, a guy like this.

Mike Francis: My name is Mike Francis. During the beginning of the mortgage implosion, I was an employee, executive director at Morgan Stanley on the residential mortgage trading desk.

Adam Davidson: Mike was one link in a chain that connected the global pool of money to its new favorite investment, residential mortgages, the US housing market, and guys like Clarence Nathan. Think how attractive a mortgage loan is to that $70 trillion pool of money.

Remember, they’re desperate to get any kind of interest return. They want to beat that miserable 1% interest Greenspan is offering them. And here are these homeowners paying 5%, 9% to borrow money from some bank. So what if the global pool could get in on that action?

Pretty sure if John Rawls asserts a good economy should benefit this at the bottom at least as much as those at the top (latest booms haven’t), then he would also assert that working our way out of a downturn should inconvenience those at the top at least as much as those on the bottom.

Via NPR:

Raising the debt ceiling “simply authorizes Treasury to pay the bills Congress chose to incur when it passed years worth of spending increases and tax cuts that are now law.”

So Congress voted for programs and tax cuts and now is whining about the bill coming due.

See also: Government, drowning in bathtub.

Today is our last full day in the house on Marblehead. I’ve lived in that home longer than any other. Tomorrow begins our new adventure. Thursday we alight in our new home.

I just finished my first trilogy in years. I haven’t read this much in…years. See what going on FBbatical can do for you? Time to begin a new series. Or book. Or maybe I will finish “Heart of Darkness.”

And there are other endings and beginnings that seem apparent through the fog of uncertainty. Those, however, will have to wait for the clear light of another day.

I don’t know how people can hear stories like This American Life’s Game Changer:

PROLOGUE.
Host Ira Glass tells the stories of two professors, each making a calculation that no one had made before. One gets acclaim. One ends up out of a job. The first, Terry Engelder, a geologist at Penn State, was estimating the amount of natural gas that’s recoverable from the Marcellus shale, a giant rock formation that’s under Pennsylvania and several other Eastern states. The second, Conrad “Dan” Volz, at the University of Pittsburg, estimated how much toxic crap—chemicals and pollution from gas exploration—might be getting into water supplies. (6 1/2 minutes)

ACT ONE. YOU’VE GOT SHALE.
Producer Sarah Koenig continues the story Terry Engelder and Dan Volz, their rival calculations about natural gas in Pennsylvania, and how each was treated by his university. She explains how Pennsylvania’s universities, politicans and industry have united to develop natural gas. Other states have been more cautious. (26 1/2 minutes)
ACT TWO. GROUND WAR.

Sarah takes us to Mt. Pleasant, PA, where a gas exploration company called Range Resources has leased 95% of the township’s land. This led to a standoff between Mt. Pleasant and Range, starting with zoning disputes and ending in a full scale PR war—a war in which the town was seriously outgunned. (23 1/2 minutes)

Or a report like On the Media’s “Hot Coffee“:

We all think we know the story of the woman who spilled McDonald’s coffee on herself and then sued the fast food chain for millions.  But in the new HBO documentary “Hot Coffee”, filmmaker Susan Saladoff shows how the media got the story all wrong, and often demonizes civil litigation, using phrases like “frivolous lawsuit” and “jackpot justice.”  She says the distortion of civil cases is part of a big PR push to discourage people from suing big business.

And not be concerned about the concentration of corporate power and influence in our country.

• Being on FBbatical leaves me more time for reading. Actual reading. Like, “His Majesty’s Dragon,” and “The Jade Throne.”
• I’m also enjoying reading “The Hobbit” to Emma. I think she’s enjoying it too.
• Finally: Affogato. That is all.
• No – one more thing: Affogato.

Absolutely ecstatic to find out that our possible new home will be in Mike McCaul’s district. I thought I was leaving good old CD10 behind.

Also – absolutely chicken shit of the GOP to stop at just five districts in Travis County. Why not 10?