Yesterday I covered the end of Indymac Bancorp's mortgage operation and today we see another sign that our banking system is collapsing, namely the current push by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to privatize banking oversight.

Congress should consider giving the Fed power to set standards for capital liquidity holdings and risk management for investment banks, Bernanke said.

Indymac Bancorp, a long time favored to fail entry on Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter has finally gone to the great foreclosure auction in the sky.

 Unlike Bear Stearns being swept under J.P. Morgan's rug or Countrywide being swept under Bank of America's there doesn't appear to be anyone with an appetite for Indymac's toxic stew of funny money mortgages ...

   The first ever cowtography diary inspired a good bit of rumbling from the herd of Kossacks who’ve too long labored in a world of pootie only diaries. Continuing the trend tonight we’ll make the jump from restless rumination to a full throttle stampede ...

   So without further introduction ... send in the cows!

 I saw this little tidbit this morning - a $15M National Rifle Association ad blitz against Obama, and I've had my fill.

 There are in excess of two hundred million guns in this country and they're pretty evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. Why does the NRA think it speaks for all gun owners? It doesn't, but voices on our side of the aisle are muted and disorganized. We can change that.

    We’ve seen several trends shaping up in vehicles lately:

    Chrysler, Ford, and GM are going to end up one Frankenparts survivor after the tidal wave of economic problems swamps their sales; this could happen as soon as the end of the year. A big component of this is that the lion’s share of their profit has come from big trucks and SUVs ... which are doomed with $4/gallon gas and that number is not standing still.

    Kossack dotcommodity did a wonderful roundup of hybrid and electric vehicles. Unfortunately most of them are never going to see production for reasons I’ll describe below the fold. In short, to you electric/hybrid vehicle builders: Ur Doin’ It Wrong!

 This site has been the subjected to far too many pootie diaries ... so without further introduction I bring you cowtography.

  I've been watching the banking system pretty closely since last August when the two Bear Stearns hedge funds collapsed, triggering a freeze in various credit markets. Since then there have been a stream of "unprecedented this" and "unexpected that", all of which add up to what some are calling the Greater Depression heading right at us at full steam.

  Now I am just a crazy guy sitting in a coffee shop, so maybe we'd better let the bankers speak for themselves ...

I've periodically written about my health care disaster over the last year - both as One Brave Kossack and as myself.

I recently relocated to Massachusetts and while things are much better here in terms of access, the assclown squad is still in charge of policy for mASS Health and they've kept me waiting two and a half days with a migraine ...

  I’ve been watching the Republicans closely for the last several years and of all the areas in which they fail to execute this whole "normal sex" thing is the one that most often has me cringing. They seem fascinated by the topic, but unable to negotiate mutually agreeable activities with their committed partners, or they’re serial monogamists with disgraceful transition periods, or in more notable cases they’re downright deviant.

 So, for the benefit of all Republicans everywhere I’m going to take a poke at a guide to normal sex so they’ll know it when they see it 

  Shelburne Falls, formerly known as Salmon Falls, is a geological wonderland made accessible by a flood control dam built on the site. The Deerfield river splits the village of Shelburne and the village of Buckland at this location, with the Bridge of Flowers connecting them, and the many glacial potholes are reachable with a mix of sneaking and scrambling in all but the highest water conditions.

  I spent a good bit of time in the area this spring and have managed one or two serviceable photographs over the months I was there ...

  When those of us from the west here the name "Massachusetts" we automatically think of the great east coast megalopolis that stretches from Boston to Washington, D.C., but the western part of the state is dramatically different, full of small mountain towns and rushing brooks. The whole area reminds me of a sort of moist Colorado with a strange accent, and today’s trip completed that picture for me.

  This being said, lets have a look around Chesterfield Gorge ...

 I’ve made a new female friend in western Massachusetts and her personal fascination is waterfall hunting. She has Joseph Bushee’s marvelous Waterfalls of Massachusetts - An Explorers Guide to 55 Natural Scenic Wonders, but she has the worst sense of direction of anyone I know. Many of them had eluded her until we combined her passion with my Garmin eTrex GPS and survey experience.

  We’ve visited Turner’s Falls, Shelburne Falls, Sluice Brook Falls, Gunn Brook Falls, Roaring Falls, Doane Falls, Royalston Falls, Spirit Falls ... but the most visually dramatic also happens to be the most easily reachable – Chapel Falls in Ashfield.

   Mount Monadnock rises 2,000’ above the surrounding terrain of New Hampshire. The uppermost 300’ of this 3,165’ peak are above the tree line, an artificial tree line that exists due to the loss of topsoil there after farmers in the region set fire to the mountain to clear it of wolves during the early 1800s.

  I’ve climbed this one three times in the past five days, summiting twice, getting caught up in the rescue of a hiker with a broken ankle the other time,  and I’m going back this weekend with a female friend and we’re going to try another route together. I thought I’d share a look around the place for those not lucky enough to have visited the world’s second most climbed peak after Mount Fuji.

So I'm wide awake at 2:30 and cruising around DailyKos to see how I can make 2008 even more miserable for Republicans, when what should I find but an ad for "executive male escorts".

I thought it would be some sort of Kossack snark, but nope, we got real live sex worker advertising right here on DailyKos ... check it out below the fold.

 We've all known for a long time the dollar was sliding badly - some of that gas pump pain you feel is declining oil production but an equally large slice of it comes from the fact that, after circulation, the dollar is pretty much suitable for wiping compared to where it stood four years ago.

 Today I found an article on Stoneleigh and Ilargi's marvelous blog The Automatic Earth that indicates there are similar issues at work inside the Eurozone. Words escape me to describe how ugly this could get. I've been saying that a lot lately, but this time I really mean it.

 Last August a pair of Bear Stearns hedge funds came apart and when we got a peek inside they were worth $0.10 on the dollar. After that things began to come apart - Asset Backed Corporate Paper (ABCP) froze solid, monoline insurers had been horsing around backing Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) and other financial "innovation", mortgage, auto loan, and credit card payments went badly sideways as the housing bubble collapsed, and other, more arcane failures were afoot.

 We lost Bear Stearns, the fifth largest investment bank, right before the end of first quarter. Today we see Lehman Brothers, the fourth largest bank, about to follow along behind, and it won't be long before this gets loose in "the real economy".

A tornado struck a boyscout camp near Little Sioux, Iowa, not far from Omaha, Nebraska. There are at least forty folks injured and four dead. It is feared to be much worse; the scouts and adults were in tents, the few buildings on the camp property had no basements, and from the damage it sounds like this was an F3 sized tornado.

http://www.cnn.com/...

 CommonGoodBank.com is a bank that is forming here in western Massachusetts with a charter that will involve operations based on democratic principles - every depositor will have a say in what happens to the profits.

 Farmerchuck and I are working with them to get financing set up for customers who need an outdoor wood boiler system and you guys can help us out - just go to their site and sign up as a future depositor, indicating that you'd be interested in using such a bank if there were one if your area.