I read this article and thought wow.... when you add up these numbers it's amazing how much money was potentially lost.... because of a small glitch... which was practically neglected.

And I'll bet there are other stories like this out there....

Read this article on how the Pentagon lost oodles of $$ over the years.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30456930/ 

Anyone think this is pretty wild??

A huge company that the american government gave billions and billions of dollars to in order that they could be "bailed out".

This company was about to issue huge bonuses out.... totalling somewhere in the 165 million dollar range. Bonuses for what?

A company that was about to faulter can now give it's own millions of dollars in bonuses in money that was "given" to them in order that they can continue to do business (and better business at that).

While many people worldwide live in the reality of this new economic frontier it seems that some of these corporations do not. It's not bad enough that in some cases corporations were pretty much gambling with people's money.... life savings in some cases... with little regard for those people's well being that they could make increasingly larger profit margins.... but now they've gotta reward themselves with more dough.

So as many have lost it all or near all... these guys should have bonuses after begging for billions and billions of $$..

Nice.

CNN : AIG's insistence on bonuses raises ire in Washington

I think OPEC have realized just a little bit of what their consumers have experienced... a steep decline in monetary value.

Consumers have had their gas/energy prices spike incredibly high leaving their pockets drier... and OPEC has had their oil devalued by about %50 of where it peaked.

Although, products never go down for the consumer as fast as oil prices do... and while there's that convenience  excuse about the delay in pricing due to the refining process... they forget that part when the wind blows a little and they jack the price of oil again.

All of this financial crumbling is creating panic (of course) and panic is not causing any positive results.

One thing that I've been thinking for quite some time is that all of these huge Corps have forgotten some simple principles that people like Henry Ford seemed to understand.

That you're growth really has to be in sync with the consumers of your product. Otherwise, you ain't selling cause no one's buyin'.

And in this global market, to have balance, there has to be syncronicity amongst growth as a whole.... and there has to be such a thing as reasonable growth or healthy growth when speaking of profit margin.

But.... i'm just some guy who's told you his $0.02... not some high roller who just gambled billions and lost them in "investments". So what do I know....

Here's the International Herald Tribune article on OPEC.