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Integrity Bank of Alpharetta, GA has failed, the 10th in the US this year.  It’s not surprising, both that the bank failed, and that it’s in Alpharetta.  (I’ve been there.)  The FDIC estimates it will take $250 - $350 million to cover that for which it is responsible .

I’ve just come back from I.O.U.S.A. the movie, which has been called the “Inconvenient Truth” for the economy.  It was quite good, and was followed by a “Town Hall” meeting held in Nebraska  that was simulcast to the theatre after the movie.

The movie itself definitely took a page from “An Inconvenient Truth”, all the way down to having a graph that skyrockets upward out of control.  It’s unfortunate that they could do that - the numbers behind the graph were quite real, and the projections are also accurate and based on official government numbers.  (That means that they’re likely actually worse than what we’re shown!)  Read more for the full review.

Read more

Over at reuters.com, they’ve got an article detailing how the US will see the largest jump in food prices since 1990.  They don’t expect it to be better next year, either.

Hot on the heels of today’s news of rampant inflation, I thought I’d take the opportunity to post the trailer for “I.O.U.S.A.”.  It’s being called the “Inconvenient Truth” for the economy.  The movie seems to continue where David Walker’s excellent 60 Minutes interview left off - that the U.S. is broke and has been for some time, is borrowing at an incredible rate, and has trillions of unfunded government promises, and no amount of taxation will fix the problem.  You can get tickets for Thursday’s showing at FathomEvents.com.  It’s a one-night showing on Thursday night.

Here’s the trailer:

From the article at Reuters: “Wholesale prices took another unexpectedly steep jump in July and shot up at the fastest year-on-year rate in 27 years, according to a government report on Tuesday that was certain to fan fears about a potential surge in inflation.”  The Yahoo! News version of the article mentions that the price rise was more than twice what was expected over all (1.2 percent rise versus 0.5 percent expected), and more than three times higher for “core prices” (ie, excluding food and energy), with that rise being 0.7 percent when 0.2 percent was expected.  Economists are “now saying” that it looks like price increases are being passed along to consumers.  For those of us who aren’t economists, and who actually live in the real world, this has been in evidence for some time!

It seems that by 2010, any and all license plates on all vehicles entering the island of Manhattan (I guess they don’t care about the rest of the boroughs?) will have their license plates scanned and compared to a “secret terrorist database”.  No other details are given as to how this will work, where this “terrorist database” comes from, how one gets added to, or subtracted from, the database.  The Police Commissioner does say that the records are expunged “after 30 days”, but 30 days after what?  After the completion of the comparison?  After the initial scan?  As the reporter points out, this brings NYC (well, one borough, anyway) that much closer to imitating London, the most widely-surveilled city on the planet.

F. William Engdahl has an excellent opinion piece about how Treasury Secretary Paulson has completely lost control of the economy (though I tend to think he never had it).

I meant to report this earlier (I’m on vacation), but the Federal Debt Ceiling (how much the Federal Government can borrow by law) was recently raised to 10.65 TRILLION dollars (for the sixth time during Bush’s presidency!) .  It was raised as a part of the mortgage bailout package that Congress passed recently and Bush signed into law, as reported on the Couric & Co blog at CBS.com (and several other sources).