What Caught My Eye Today

Is it just me or does the economy seem to be dominating the headlines these days?

Wall Street - The misery worsened on Wall Street, with stocks piling on losses late in the session and bringing the two-day decline in the Dow Jones industrials to more than 875 points amid escalating worries about credit markets and the financial sector. The Dow lost more than 500 points and all the major indexes slid more than 5%. The Standard & Poor's 500 index saw its first close below 1,000 in 5 years. That's a shame. Maybe a different perspective would help put these losses in a better light. The market's paper loss for the session came to about $700 billion, as measured by the Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 Composite Index, which tracks 5,000 U.S. based companies' stocks. So far this month, the loss has come to about $2.2 trillion. Nope, I guess not.

Iceland - Now if you think things are bad in the U.S., think again. Iceland is on the brink of becoming the first "national bankruptcy" of the global financial meltdown. Dude, how does any entire country go bankrupt? Iceland has formidable international reach because of an outsized banking sector. The strategy gave Icelanders one of the world's highest per capita incomes. But now they are watching helplessly as their economy implodes — their currency losing almost half its value, and their heavily exposed banks collapsing under the weight of debts incurred by lending in the boom times. The country's top four banks now hold foreign liabilities in excess of $100 billion, debts that dwarf Iceland's gross domestic product of $14 billion. Oh, that's how. Well, now we know don't we. A full-blown collapse of Iceland's financial system would send shock waves across Europe, given the heavy investment by Icelandic banks and companies across the continent. Now that would be bad, because right now things are going so well in Europe.

2008 Presidential Race - As we go to press, the second presidential debate is airing. I'll give you an update on that tomorrow. For now, guess who made the headlines yet again? Yup, Governor Sarah Palin. For someone who doesn't like talking to the press, she sure is providing lots of material for the media. Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin tells audiences the election is about the "truthfulness and judgment" needed to be president. But the Alaska governor often stretches the truth herself. Find me a politician who doesn't. I guess what makes Palin so newsworthy, is the grand scale upon which she chooses to broadcast her interpretation of "truthfulness and judgment". She has exaggerated the nature of Barack Obama's personal ties to a former 1960s radical and falsely claimed the Democratic presidential candidate plans to raise most people's taxes. Seriously, who actually believed that an 8 year old Obama was hanging out with radicals? She suggests Obama was disrespectful of U.S. soldiers when he said U.S. troops in Afghanistan were just "air-raiding villages and killing civilians." The partial quote is misleading. The Illinois senator said once, in August 2007, when pressing to send more troops to Afghanistan: "We've got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops" so they aren't just "air-raiding villages and killing civilians." Well sure, if you're going to nit-pick a sound bite by providing the full context in which it was made, of course Palin is going to get screwed. Palin also pushed back against an Obama TV ad suggesting McCain's health care plan would force employers to drop coverage for millions. "Every middle class American family will have a $5,000 credit, tax credit, to buy the health care coverage that you choose and Barack Obama's calling that a tax," Palin said. Economists project McCain's plan would lead 20 million people to lose employer-sponsored insurance, while 21 million people would gain coverage through the individual market. So let me see if I've got this straight. When all is said and done, McCain's plan would result in a net gain of 1 million people with health care coverage. Of course, that doesn't mean that the folks who lose there employer-sponsored insurance will be able to get comparable coverage with their $5,000 credit, but if you listen carefully, McCain never said that it would.

One last story that has nothing to do with politics or the economy. I figure we could use a little break.

Nepal - Hindu and Buddhist priests chanted sacred hymns and cascaded flowers and grains of rice over a 3-year-old girl who was appointed a living goddess in Nepal. So like does this gig come with benefits? Wrapped in red silk and adorned with red flowers in her hair, Matani Shakya received approval from the priests and President Ram Baran Yadav in a centuries-old tradition. The new "kumari" or living goddess, was carried from her parents' home to an ancient palatial temple in the heart of the Nepali capital, Katmandu, where she will live until she reaches puberty and loses her divine status. Puberty really is a pain in the butt, ain't it? A panel of judges conducted a series of ancient ceremonies to select the goddess from several 2- to 4-year-old girls. The judges read the candidates' horoscopes and check each one for physical imperfections. The living goddess must have perfect hair, eyes, teeth and skin with no scars, and should not be afraid of the dark. As a final test, the living goddess must spend a night alone in a room among the heads of ritually slaughtered goats and buffaloes without showing fear. Wow. This is like totally harder than the American Idol auditions. Having passed all the tests, the child will stay in almost complete isolation at the temple, and will be allowed to return to her family only at the onset of menstruation when a new goddess will be named to replace her. Critics say the tradition violates both international and Nepalese laws on child rights. The girls often struggle to readjust to normal lives after they return home. Nepalese folklore holds that men who marry a former kumari will die young, and so many girls remain unmarried and face a life of hardship. Hey, no one said being a goddess was easy.