“Governments have failed to rein in the size of banks sufficiently 12 months after the collpase of Lehman Brothers triggered a meltdown, Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz has warned.

Joseph Stiglitz warns banking problems are bigger than pre-Lehman
Joseph Stiglitz warns banking problems are bigger than pre-Lehman

Mr Stiglitz, who is former chief economist at the World Bank, told Bloomberg News that “in the US and many other countries, the too-big-to-fail banks have become even bigger.

“The problems are worse than they were in 2007 before the crisis.”"

“Do I have to pay State or local sales tax on the amount of the CARS program credit?

MAYBE. The question of whether a consumer must pay State or local sales tax on the amount of the CARS program credit depends on the sales tax law of each State or locality. Consumers should review the law of their respective States or consult a tax advisor to answer this question.”

Regarding economics, Robert Reich’s latest piece, http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2009/09/continuing-disaster-of-wall-street-one.html says the same thing regarding the banking industry in more detail,

“Let’s be clear: The Street today is up to the same tricks it was playing before its near-death experience. Derivatives, derivatives of derivatives, fancy-dance trading schemes, high-risk bets. “Our model really never changed, we’ve said very consistently that our business model remained the same,” says Goldman Sach’s chief financial officer.

The only difference now is that the Street’s biggest banks know for sure they’ll be bailed out by the federal government.”

“The mega-bailout of Wall Street accomplished little. The only big winners have been top bank executives and traders, whose pay packages are once again in the stratosphere.”

Yet without substantial reform, the nation and the world will almost certainly be plunged into the same crisis or worse at some point in the not-too-distant future.”

In Portland, the 40-year climate action plan was recently released, but there is no way to implement it.

Frankly, the feedback I receive from conversations among community organizers is that there isn’t enough bite to a 40-year plan, people think they can put off rapid adaptation until some future date.

With the release of Bright Neighbor 3.0 this November, we have outlined a general 4-year plan (open to feedback!) that any person, group, or organization can adopt when they choose to finally get some dirt under their fingernails and really get into the game.

Our new release is taking the Bright Neighbor system nation-wide, with the ability to track the successes, progress, and even failures for neighborhoods, streets, organizations, and business / government. We are incorporating metrics tools and measurements to quantify community efforts for status reports. These will be useful for tracking carbon measurements and other categories automatically generated with self-reported actions.

One neighborhood or group will be able to track their progress towards relocalization as compared to other neighborhoods. These reports will be useful to show community progress towards the suggestions and guidance outlined in the 4-year Bright Neighbor plan.

So there are plenty of people hard at work on things, no matter how dire the situation seems.

Chin up Lucinda! There’s a lot to rally behind!