This was one of our earliest posts.

We grabbed the idea from an email that went viral back in 2008 and still comes around occasionally today.

We bring it back with the news that the city of Detroit has been taken over by the state of Michigan whose Governor Rick Snyder has appointed a financial manager under Michigan law to manage the city of Detroit's finances in an effort to avoid the alternative of banktuptcy.

How is this possible ??? 

August 6, 1945

    Detroit                                  Hiroshima

2009

Must be John Engler's fault !!!

That's an inside joke there.

You see, John Engler was a former Republican governor that Michigan Democrats used to like to blame for everything they could imagine not including "global warming/climate change" only because they had yet to imagine "global warming/climated change" while absolutely refusing to address responsibility for any problems they might have had a little something to do with creating their own selves.

Sort of like what we have going around here nowadays at the national level.

From Syracuse University's Trac Report program via Chris Martinson (sort of) and The Economic Populist (moreso).

All three pieces are very good and worth the time.

Criminal Prosecutions for Financial Institution Fraud Continue to Fall

Federal prosecutions for financial institution fraud have continued their downward slide despite the financial troubles reported in this sector. The latest available data from the Justice Department show that during the first eleven months of FY 2011 the government reported 1,251 new prosecutions were filed. If this activity continues at the same pace, the annual total of prosecutions will be 1,365 for this fiscal year, down 28.6 percent from their numbers of just five years ago and less than half the level prevalent a decade ago.

Table 1: Criminal Financial Institution Fraud Prosecutions

I'm thinking that the Obama/Democrat excuse here should be that the failed policies of the Bush Administration and it's mismanagement of the Justice Department among other agencies has forced him to continue this deficit of prosecutions.

Having sent this through to my faithful sidekick Garth, he came up with the following article:

Can Microbes Help Stem the BP Oil-Spill Disaster?

Good stuff and pretty easy reading, recommended.