Interesting editorial on the Citigroup deal from the normally free-market Journal.

Quoted: Investors seem delighted that Abu Dhabi is injecting $7.5 billion into Citigroup, bidding up stocks in general on new confidence that the mortgage solvency crisis might ease. We hate to spoil the party, but it strikes us as unfortunate, if not a tragedy

Quoted: When they go to war, most governments try to be fiscally conservative. They institute austerity programs that require less spending at home and they raise taxes. President Bush spent more at home (following the Reagan economic model) and cut taxes. Then he borrowed money to fight the Iraq war - borrowed it by selling Treasury bills to other countries.
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In the last few years I've heard people say that, well, you can't really blame the President for the price of gasoline. After all, it's those nasty Arabs that are raising the price. Recently I've clarified the issue for myself: you really can blame the president for the price of gasoline. His policies and actions have lead to the decline of the dollar. And the decline of the dollar is why gasoline at the pump costs what it does.

Quoted: If the real return on the US dollar is high versus other currencies then worldwide money savers will always prefer the US dollar, despite much higher nominal interest rates for some currencies (Venezuela, Russia, Brazil,… yield more than 10 % , yet the real rates - adjusted for inflation - have been much smaller than for the US dollar over the latest years).
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the weak US and European economies lead to an extremely strong capital flow into Asian, Russian, Latin American and even African economies thus strengthening the demand for worldwide commodities.

This is an interesting rationalization for why ever increasing wealth doesn't necessarily buy ever increasing happiness.

Quoted: The trouble is, choice is not all it's cracked up to be. Studies show that people like selecting from among maybe half a dozen kinds of pasta at the grocery store but find 27 choices overwhelming, leaving them chronically on edge that they could have chosen a better one than they did

Wow. I remember when I first visited Seattle in 1999, we'd go to Canada to save money.

Quoted: The Canadian dollar moved decisively above 99 cents US Thursday morning, coming within a hair's breadth of parity against the faltering American dollar for the first time since November 1976.

Cool. I want one.

Quoted: America's little-used $2 bill, which occasionally turns up in birthday cards and souvenir drawers, is on a roll.