AddieStan

Just posted at The New York Times online edition : Fed Raises Key Rate to Highest Level in 5 Years By VIKAS BAJAJ Published: May 10, 2006 The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rates to 5 percent today, from 4.75 percent, and said that it may need to raise borrowing costs further in the coming months to contain inflation. [...] The Fed, whose chairman Ben S. Bernanke recently told Congress that policy makers might take a break in an effort so it can gather and analyze more economic data, was more equivocal today about its inclinations but tried to leave its options open. To understand exactly what that means, your blogstress suggests you check out this post from the Mogambo -- the favorite writer of your cybertrix's foxy friend, Glenn Kellis of Ob:Blog. Mogambo on today's move by the Fed: The Federal Reserve is still increasing Total Fed Credit, which increases credit in the banks, which increases loans, which increases the money supply, which increases prices, ...

In Newark, New Jersey, the largest city in your blogstress's home state -- and the nation's second poorest, according to The New York Times -- change has trumped prejudice with the election of Corey Booker as mayor, withstanding homophobic, anti-semitic and anti-intellectual goading from Newark's longtime mayor and godfather, Sharpe James. In an attempt to exploit against Baker, a Rhodes scholar, prejudices he presumed to be common among the city's denizens, Newark's 20-year leader had accused the Baptist, African-American and apparently heterosexual Baker of being Jewish, gay and not black enough. Kudos to the good people of Newark for not buying into this basest of appeals. The 37-year-old Booker, whose record of political accomplishment is thin, has quite a job ahead of him in a city blighted by poverty, corruption and a 40-percent high-school drop-out rate. But Newark is truly one of the nation's great cities -- full of beautiful buildings, active church...

From the BBC we learn: France is holding Europe's first national day of remembrance for the victims of slavery. [...] But the president [Jacques Chirac] says he is not just looking to the past. He has promised to fight modern forms of slavery, allowing companies that knowingly use forced labour anywhere in the world to be prosecuted in French courts. Cities across France will hold ceremonies and activities to mark the day. The city of Nantes on the Atlantic coast, where many of France's slave ships originated, will hold a moment of silence. The French, as demonstrated by recent unrest in immigrant neighborhoods, have yet to fulfill their self-proclaimed destiny as an egalitarian society. However, it's hard to imagine a measure such as France's day of remembrance making its way into the American culture, n'est-ce pas ?