Senate Passes American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008
Follow up to July 23, 2008 posting on the House passage of H.R. 3221, on July 26 the Senate passed the bill, which now goes to the President for signature.
CBS/AP: "Congress approved mortgage relief for 400,000 struggling homeowners Saturday as part of an election-year housing plan that also aims to calm jittery financial markets and bolster the sagging economy. President Bush said he would sign it promptly, despite reservations."
The bill "establishes the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), an independent agency, to oversee Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks. Empowers FHFA with broad supervisory and regulatory powers over the operations, activities, corporate governance, safety and soundness, and mission of the GSEs [government-sponsored enterprises]. Provides new and more flexible authority to establish minimum and risk-based capital requirements."

Banks Curtailing Business Loans in Response to Economic Forces
New York Times, July 28, 2008 Worried Banks Sharply Reduce Business Loans
Federal Reserve Board Current Survey: "The April 2008 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices addressed changes in the supply of, and demand for, bank loans to businesses and households over the past three months. Special questions in the survey queried banks about changes in terms on home equity lines of credit and about their student loan programs. This article is based on responses from 56 domestic banks and 21 U.S. branches and agencies of foreign banks.
In the April survey, domestic and foreign institutions reported having further tightened their lending standards and terms on a broad range of loan categories over the previous three months. The net fractions of domestic banks reporting tighter lending standards were close to, or above, historical highs for nearly all loan categories in the survey. Compared with the January survey, the net fractions of banks that tightened lending standards increased significantly for consumer and commercial and industrial (C&I) loans. Demand for bank loans from both businesses and households reportedly weakened further, on net, over the past three months, although by less than had been the case over the previous survey period." Full report | Table 1 | Table 2 | Chart data |

Reading: Online vs Print Debate Reasonates With Educators, Librarians, Employers
New York Times, July 27, 2008: Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?: "Few who believe in the potential of the Web deny the value of books. But they argue that it is unrealistic to expect all children to read “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Pride and Prejudice” for fun. And those who prefer staring at a television or mashing buttons on a game console, they say, can still benefit from reading on the Internet. In fact, some literacy experts say that online reading skills will help children fare better when they begin looking for digital-age jobs...Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author’s vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends." See also this accompanying graphic illustrating online vs. print reading skills

The Changing Nature of the U.S. Balance of Payments
Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York on July 27 released The Changing Nature of the U.S. Balance of Payments, the latest article in its series Current Issues in Economics and Finance.
Authors Rebecca Hellerstein and Cédric Tille show that earnings on cross-border investments represent an increasingly large share of the gross flows between the United States and other nations. As the authors explain, the value of cross-border financial holdings has soared with the increased integration of world financial markets. Between 1982 and 2006, the value of foreign assets held by U.S. investors tripled from 32 percent of GDP to 106 percent. Similarly, the value of assets held by foreign investors in the United States increased sixfold from 22 percent of GDP to 123 percent.
This rise in cross-border financial holdings has entailed significant increases in dividend and interest earnings. As a share of gross income from the rest of the world, U.S. earnings on foreign assets virtually doubled between 1970 and 2007, rising from 17 percent to 32 percent. Over the same period, earnings by foreign investors in the United States claimed an increasing share of U.S. gross payments to other nations, advancing from 9 percent to 23 percent. Full Report (PDF; 324 KB)

According to the Food and Drug Administration, butter and milk have zero grams of trans fat per serving. Basically, trans fat is made when manufacturers add hydrogen to vegetable oil--a process called hydrogenation. Hydrogenation increases the shelf life and flavor stability of foods containing these fats. See table of foods: http://www.fda.gov/FDAC/features/2003/503_fats.html

The University of Kentucky paid $1.2 million on July 25 to buy Lexington's Northside public library branch building at auction. The old branch will remain open as a library until about two weeks before the grand opening of the new branch at 11 a.m. on September 12.
http://www.kentucky.com/181/story/471170.html

Future of For-Profit Kentucky Law School Hangs on Library Plans
Back in February we covered the improbable tale of the improbably-named American Justice School of Law — a non-ABA-accredited, for-profit law school in Paducah, Kentucky. American Justice had been sued by it students for fraud, resulting in a settlement whereby the owners of the for-profit school transferred ownership to an investor group headed by a physician named Laxmaiah Manchikanti.
At the time, Dr. Manchikanti told the Law Blog that the purchase would prove prescient if he could win the school ABA accreditation. (The main reason behind the students’ lawsuit was the school’s failure to win accreditation. In Kentucky, graduates of non-accredited schools can’t take the bar.) His plan? Professors and books. “There were some deficiencies with the staff, and the law library was inadequate,” said the doctor. “It didn’t have enough books. . .we’re going to invest heavy amounts in the library.”
In the interim, the school has gained a new name, Barkley School of Law, and a new dean, Larry Putt, but not a new library, at least yet, according to the ABA Journal. School spokesman Ray Lane told the Paducah Sun that classes will be canceled if the new $5 million library and the renovation of a classroom building are not completed in the next two months. Classes will resume next year, however, after completion of the construction projects that are planned with the goal of winning ABA accreditation, Lane said.
WSJ Law Blog July 28, 2008

July 29 is the birthday of the poet Stanley Kunitz, (books by this author) born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1905. He attended Harvard University, where he wanted to teach in the English department, but he was told that Anglo-Saxon students wouldn't want to be taught by a Jew. He said, "That almost broke my heart. And I think in the end it probably did me a great favor because it prevented me from becoming a completely preoccupied scholar." He went on to work as a farmer, and he served in WWII when his conscientious objector status was denied.
Stanley Kunitz published his first book of poetry when he was 25, called Intellectual Things (1930), and he continued to write and publish for 75 years. In 2000, he published The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz, and that same year he was named poet laureate of the United States, when he was 95 years old. He died at age 100.
Stanley Kunitz said, "Poetry is inseparable from my life force, and that began very early. It was a great gift, and it has sustained me through the years, and the losses that have attended those years." He said, "The poem comes in the form of a blessing, like the rapture breaking through on the mind."
The Writer’s Almanac