Black Monday? Or the Monday Bump? UPDATED

With second biggest bank failure in U.S. history Friday (IndyMac) and huge troubles with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae surfacing over the weekend, today's financial markets should be interesting. Will the markets rise based on calming assurance of the Fed's Freddie and Fannie bailout plan? Or will the Wall Street Journal's prediction: Investors Jumping Ship and Running for the Exits come true? Time will tell.

According to Bank Implode here are the 8 banks that have failed so far:

Metropolitan Savings Bank, Pittsburgh, PA, total assets $15.8 million.
Netbank, Alpharetta, GA, total assets $2.5 billion.
Miami Valley Bank, Lakeview, OH, total assets $86.7 million.
Douglass National Bank, Kansas City, MO, total assets $58.5 million.
Hume Bank, Hume, MO, total assets $18.7 million.
ANB Financial, Bentonville, AR, total assets $2.1 billion.
First Integrity Bank, NA, Staples, MN, total assets $54.7 million.
IndyMac Bank, F.S.B., Pasadena, CA, $32.01 billion.

The site also lists failed credit unions and lending institutions.

The FDIC has 50 billion dollars set aside for failed banks. The IndyMac failure alone just wiped out ten percent of the total FDIC insurance fund.

Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac are on ice so thin a straw would break it. Freddie and Fannie own or guarantee $5.2 trillion of U.S. home mortgages. That’s about half the outstanding mortgages in the United States. And in an AP story today,

"AP: US Government Says Other Financial Companies Will be On Their Own"

"The U.S. government is signaling it won't throw a lifeline to struggling financial companies — except for mortgage linchpins Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — marking a shift to a new and potentially more volatile phase of the credit crisis."

You know that financial times are bad when the talking pundits on weekend cable shows plead for Americans not to run on the banks Monday morning.

Is your bank safe? Now you can find out. Here is a site that rates banks and credit unions.

"Bankrate.com's Safe & Sound® service is a proprietary system designed to provide information on the relative financial strength and stability of U.S. commercial banks, savings institutions and credit unions. The system employs a series of twenty-two tests to measure the capital adequacy, asset quality, profitability, and liquidity (CAEL) of each rated financial institution. Individual performance levels are determined from publicly available regulatory filings and are compared to asset-size peer norms, industry standards and key absolute benchmarks. Combined results form the basis for our Composite CAEL and Star Ratings, which are described below. When possible, the system also produces a report that provides a detailed explanation of our findings, for each rated financial institution."

I am assuming that the ratings have been done in the recent past and may not reflect immediate conditions, but if your bank rated a "2 stars" in the recent past it is a sure bet that today's financial situation is not helping it climb up to a 5 star rating.

Add here is a site that lists imploded and about to implode banks. Find out if your bank is one of them.

In my opinion there are no longer any safe paper financial investments. Invest in commodities, not paper but hard goods, and you can't go wrong. Buy hard good you will use anyway. With food in short supply and about to get shorter, fuel costs rising, droughts increasing, and your right to drill a well on your own land under attack, I'd say invest in food, shelter, and water.

----------------------update---------------------
Nice to know I am not totally off base here:
'Unmitigated Disaster'

July 14 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Treasury Department's plan to shore up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is an ``unmitigated disaster'' and the largest U.S. mortgage lenders are ``basically insolvent,'' according to investor Jim Rogers.
Taxpayers will be saddled with debt if Congress approves U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's request for the authority to buy unlimited stakes in and lend to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Rogers said in a Bloomberg Television interview. The chairman of Rogers Holdings, who in 2006 correctly predicted oil would reach $100 a barrel and gold $1,000 an ounce, also said the commodities bull market has a ``long way to go.'' [snip]

Education section:
FYI: pundit and TPTB-speak:

TPTB = The Powers That Be
Food Insecurity = Hunger
Writedown = Loss

Doom: what's your apocalypse tolerance?

A comedy show, taking a madcap look at what we are facing these days

...McKeag isn't just kidding when he tells us the end of the world is nigh, our days are numbered and that we'd better get ready. But he's also gone a step further by asking how bad things have to get before we individually decide we've got no choice but to pack up and leave. Think stuff like SARS, the Kelowna forest fires, Iraq and Iran, solar flares and their connection to hurricanes and tsunamis, looming pandemics, drug-resistant bugs, terrorism, climate change, impending economic collapse, water shortages,... you name it -- and you begin to get the picture, McKeag says."

Bees dying, bats dropping, oceans gasping, ice melting, jellyfish exploding, food shortaging, hospitals filling, satellites falling, dollar devaluing, people shooting, seeds banking, earth drying...I could go on here. But I think it's obvious...things are bad.

chart caption: "But for systemic intervention and manipulations by the Federal Reserve, it appears we might be contemplating a collapsed U.S. banking system and a looming deflationary great depression that could have dwarfed the bad times of the 1930s." Pardon me, but isn't it a good idea for the Federal Reserve to actually have some cash...on reserve? Living on borrowed money means the economy is living on borrowed time. What's the FDIC response? Post new rules on
"Processing Deposit Accounts in a Bank Failure." Have you stuffed your mattress yet?

And what's with food lately? Hmmm, glad they thought ahead and created the Svalbard Seed Bank, so at least some folks will have food. Later. When there isn't any.

Food prices spiraling upward
Bulgaria faces massive grain shortage
Food shortage in Venezuela
Nepal: Household Food Stocks Down to Half in 38 Districts
Food inflation surges by 18 percent in January
China scrambles to ensure food supplies after snow
Vietnam: Severe cold affects rice crops, cattle in the north
Food is an issue worldwide
And in Haiti...they are eating mud

So what's a happy-go-lucky Georgia gal to do? First, accept Jesus as payment for our sins, the only hope for this life and for eternity. Then, being a pragmatic doomsayer, use the rapidly devaluing dollar to buy real items. Commodities Now! Things that will be useful in the short term and in the mid-term. Things I would likely buy anyway, but would be more expensive later because the dollar will not be worth much: a kerosene lamp or two (with extra wicks,) a new two burner propane Coleman InstaStart stove, thanks to ebay, food in cans, bulk grains, and dried food thanks to the Dollar Store, a sturdy used mountain bike needing no repairs, a pump, and a lock thanks to the local thrift shop, draw water, get the first aid kit ready.

Christians will be saved from the day of wrath but goodness, things are already pretty bad and likely to get worse, and we haven't been raptured yet. Remember how fast society crumbled after Katrina? How cold 46,000 folks got in Grand Junction last night? Or the 80,000 total in Maine? The end times are happening now. So here we go:

Repent! The end is near.

Today is a good day

The heron is back, I am enjoying watching him hunt for fish. He's stalking around the pond's edges, standing with neck outstretched, darting his beak into the cold water when he sees a glimmer of a fish.

My cats are playing in the bedroom right now. Though "Crabby Abby" as my landlord calls her, only knows how to growl. So it sounds like a slaughter with Abby screaming and howling while things are bumping around and lamps crash. Initially I thought she was in distress (who wouldn't with all that caterwauling) but there she is, on her back, exposed belly, and all 4 paws in the air, dangling them toward Bert. OK, have fun, Crabby Abby.

Canada's Globe & Mail reports "Food prices have been surging for two years. The FAO food price index has climbed 40 per cent this year, on top of 9 per cent in 2006." Yah, I am feeling it at the grocery store. Aren't you? Particularly with bread and cereals. Ouch. And what's up with the 40% increase? Yikes.

The pony is walking around just outside my window, I hear the leaves crunching as he noses for grass under the fall blow down. There are a lot of birds scrambling around near him, looking, too. I have a bird feeder hanging off my deck stocked with lots of seed but the birds will not come to partake. I can't figure out why. It's been up a month, and I am getting ready to empty it and try another kind of seed. It's the same feeder I had in Maine and the birds all flocked to it there, even though, like here, the deck was in the middle of the yard away from the tree line. The hummingbirds came this summer to the same hummingbird feeder I had, just not the finches and brethren. Hmmm, I have a mystery to solve. Left, my feeder in Maine, where it was more successful in attracting boids.

I am having fun doing another collage. I'll post it when it's done. At heart I'm just a fifth grade gal cutting and gluing and pasting and laying glitter glue over stuff and flipping through magazines oohing and ahing before ripping pages out. I might not make sophisticated art, but I have fun.