The appearance that this was all an inside job is overwhelming. AIG was nothing more than a conduit for huge capital flows to the same old suspects, with no reason or explanation.

Eleven American International Group Inc. employees who got "retention" bonuses of $1 million or more last week no longer work there, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo reported.

The diamond invention—the creation of the idea that diamonds are rare and valuable, and are essential signs of esteem—is a relatively recent development in the history of the diamond trade.

The Open Virtualization Format Toolkit provides a set of Eclipse plug-ins, as well as a standard Java API to help you create virtual appliance packages in the new standards-based format, the Open Virtualization Format.

My favorite cranky person, The Angry Economist, weighs in on The Failout. His premise is

The problem here is simple: credit is scarce because nobody wants to lend and nobody wants to buy. Why not? Because the Federal Government is threatening to borrow and spend a TRILLION DOLLARS.

Not that the billions of losses are causing CEOs to lower the year-end bonuses they give out. They are giving out 20 billion dollars of bonuses this year, something Obama rightly calls shameful.

There's a lot of blame to go around. But, when we were shoveling out TARP money, wouldn't it have been nice to put in some provisions to something out of these knuckleheads? The folks with bad mortgages paid when their houses were foreclosed. I'm paying my part of the $700 billion, and I'm still waiting for my pound of flesh out of the bankers.