Nassim Taleb, author of the Black Swan, discusses the sort of reverse Darwinism at place in the Obama (and Bush) administrations. Those who did the right thing are punished with higher taxes, banks that did the wrong thing get bailed out, those who didn’t see the financial crisis coming (Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, etc.) get high level jobs and those who did (Peter Schiff, Niall Ferguson, Dean Baker) are ignored. It’s all the government doing what they do best: punishing success and rewarding failure.

As of today, few things would be less appealing in your portfolio then dollars. As the Federal Reserve pours liquid-ity into the economy through TARP, stimulus and bailouts, and the Federal Government runs record deficits, interest rates stay artificially low. Depressingly low. In fact, a quick surf of Bankrate.com tells me the highest yielding money market account currently available (MMA) is 1.81%, while the average yield comes in at a whopping 1.113%. (1) That means if a person has $20,000 of hard earned money stuffed away in a MMA, he or she will earn roughly $30/month in taxed income. Nice.

Like the title says:

Real GDP has retreated 0.7% in the second quarter of 2009. The national unemployment rate ticked up to 9.8% in September, from 9.7% in August, the highest since 1983. The underemployment rate has climbed to 17%, the highest in 16 years of counting the metric. The dollar is down 10% to a basket of currencies off the March highs. Once again, during this tumultuous time, in an epic struggle to scrape by and preserve wealth, one question rings in our ears: how is the current economic climate affecting pretty girls? (1) (2)

Sometimes there’s just nothing to say. There is simply no way to put into words how ridiculous it is that Barack Obama, some nine months after he became president has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. This is, after all, the same guy that is escalating the war in Afghanistan! I think it would make more sense if they gave him the Nobel War Prize.

Gold bullion futures touched a record high $1,045 in yesterday’s trading session in New York. If you believe in stock indexes breaking through resistance points, this may be just that for bullion.

Penn and Teller take on the United States’ ridiculous tax code in their hilarious show Bullsh*t. If only they could make the IRS magically disappear:

According to estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, 47% of U.S. households are projected to owe zero federal income tax in 2009. (1) Is this good, bad, or inconsequential?

If only your average politician had this kind of integrity: