opinion

The use of medical masks in Japan has reached absurd levels. In my own area of Aichi, there are no reports of swine flu yet, but nevertheless most shops have sold out of masks. Mask-maker stocks are even soaring.

Good article at space.com about this: Future of Commercial Spaceflight Uncertain, But Promising I like this quote at the end:

Witt contends that what's needed is creativity, innovation and a long reach...all which has been missing from national space policy for decades. "As America focuses on bailing out everyone who is on the brink of failure, thank God we have places where failure is still an option in order for innovation to be realized," Witt believes.

From space.com:

Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic firm will make use of the WhiteKnightTwo/SpaceShipTwo launch system – now under development at Scaled Composites in Mojave, California – to loft paying customers at $200,000 a seat on suborbital treks departing from Spaceport America.

$200,000 ... hm ... that's a bit too much for me. But I wish them every possible success!

I got this story off a link found at the lewrockwell.com blog. I love this story:

I brought five ounces (140 grams) of old-fashioned black gunpowder to San Francisco airport. I also brought along a boarding pass for United flight 720 to Denver that I had created at home, in an computer art program. TSA agents accepted the boarding pass. They also took no notice at all of the gunpowder. ...

There's a really good article by Robert Higgs online at the Independent Institute where he discusses excess reserves that American banks currently are keeping and the impact this could have on the money supply once they start lending again. He notes:

At matters now stand, by far the greater threat is rapid inflation, notwithstanding the ongoing recession.

According to Nikkei Net, the yen will probably range between 87 and 92 yen to the dollar this week. Trading will again be thin, and large fluctuations are possible. There is still a strong sense that the yen could appreciate considerably, especially as more negative data appears about the American economy. The initial jobless claims report on 12/31 might be important, as well as the ISM Manufacturing PMI due out on 1/2.

From Karen de Coster at Taki Mag:

Years of credit bubble-ignited consumer excesses in America have produced one aftermath that is markedly tragic—the professional child consumer. Children learn, from a very early age, that life is enabled by money because it is money that buys them all the stuff they want to own. Kids have become professional consumers. They covet so they buy, courtesy of parents who are financial slaves to their children’s infantile impulses.

From Bloomberg:

Japan should write-off its holdings of Treasuries because the U.S. government will struggle to finance increasing debt levels needed to dig the economy out of recession, said Akio Mikuni, president of credit ratings agency Mikuni & Co. The dollar may lose as much as 40 percent of its value to 50 yen or 60 yen from the current spot rate of 90.40 today in Tokyo unless Japan takes “drastic measures” to help bail out the U.S. economy, Mikuni said.

I have to look at the space station as another vast government program, in other words with very skeptical eyes. Still, I do like the way it is now going to be fueling the commercial space industry. Note it's the failure of the space shuttle program that is doing this.