From Iceland to Italy, world markets feeling The Pinch

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are both reporting today on the effects of the American credit crisis on European soil. It seems as though Monopoly Europe has just been released. More on the flip side.

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The Treasury Secretary’s New Hat

What a week it’s been. The $700,000,000,000 “bailout” or “rescue” package, the McCain/Obama debate, and now word that Citi Group has bought Wachovia has given the news networks just about reason enough to be 24-hour. As usual, though, Past & Prologue will try to dig through the noise. Today, the New York Times and Washington [...]

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Wanted: Contractors to help buy ‘distressed assets’

Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are reporting today that the Treasury’s bailout plan is pushing forward through Congress. The plan is not without its detractors, however. See the flip side for a quick rundown and some irresponsible predictions…

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An early autumn stroll down Boardwalk and Park Place

$700 billion + $85 billion + $200 billion = the amount of money the federal government has launched into the nation’s financial system over the last two weeks. The Treasury and the Federal Reserve are playing Monopoly, buying up all the real-estate it can: $29 billion worth of Bear Sterns (so Goldman Sachs could buy [...]

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T-minus 44 Days and Counting…

The fate of the world will be decided in less than seven weeks – McCain/Palin or Obama/Biden – the fat is in the fire, it would seem. Past and Prologue is slowly coming back to life, so be on the lookout for increasingly frequent, random updates concerning all things Election 2008, end-of-year government procurement, [...]

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Coasting Guards

The US Coast Guard has been the focal point of many scrutinous eyes as of late. The highly anticipated and highly funded program, Integrated Deepwater System Program (Deepwater) is a 25-year, $24 billion program to integrate and modernize the fleet of aircraft, ships, logistics and command systems of the US Coast Guard. This program was [...]

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FDA In Need of Immediate Attention

The Food and Drug Administration is so understaffed that, at its current pace, the agency would need at least 27 years to inspect every foreign medical device plant that exports to the United States, 13 years to check every foreign drug plant and 1,900 years to examine every foreign food plant, according to government investigators.
This [...]

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Burning Nabokov

Ron Rosenbaum’s article “Dmitri’s Choice” in Slate questions the nature of ownership in dealing with intellectual property, specifically literary works.  Vladimir Nabokov supposedly asked his literary executor to destroy any unfinished works surviving after his own death.  On July 2, 1977, the author of Lolita (1955) passed away leaving a body of unfinished writings, thus, [...]

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Eye in the Sky

Today, our friends over at the Washington Times picked up on a story first broke by the U.K.’s Guardian concerning a plan to link FBI biometric data with data collected by the Brits. The British federal law enforcement has voiced openly their privacy concerns over such a system and I doubt it will be [...]

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Passports Get a Little Shinier

The New Year has ushered in a great many news items: Porn Stars in Malaysia and kitchen fires doused by oversized underwear. For some of the more capable and interested shiny-object readers, I submit a Washington Post article about new passports soon to be offered by the State Department. These passports will come [...]

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Breaking: Bhutto is Dead

Multiple sources have now confirmed that former Pakistani Prime Minister Bhutto is dead. Apparently shot at close range before a suicide attack which injured her further. The attack is believed to be carried out by supporters of Musharraf. We’ll be following this story throughout the day and updating this thread.
Further:
Bhutto [...]

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Next Generation Identification

Biometrics is the buzz in identification technology these days. Saturday, the Washington Post reported on a $1 billion project, called Next Generation Identification, being shopped around by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to build the worlds “largest computer database of peoples’ physical characteristics.” The FBI already houses one of the largest databases of biometric, [...]

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Happy Holidays

We hope you’re enjoying the holiday season. We’ll be back on Wednesday with loads of fresh content for you to digest.

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11-0 Everybody Wave The Wheat

Rock Chalk!

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We’re Back!

After an unexpected hiatus, this blog will be returning to regular content. We’re excited, and hope you are too. Watch this space for regular updates, and thanks for hanging with us.

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