Federal Reserve Board Approves Applications of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to Become Bank Holding Companies
News release: The Federal Reserve Board on Sunday approved, pending a statutory five-day antitrust waiting period, the applications of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to become bank holding companies. To provide increased liquidity support to these firms as they transition to managing their funding within a bank holding company structure, the Federal Reserve Board authorized the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to extend credit to the U.S. broker-dealer subsidiaries of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley against all types of collateral that may be pledged at the Federal Reserve's primary credit facility for depository institutions or at the existing Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF); the Federal Reserve has also made these collateral arrangements available to the broker-dealer subsidiary of Merrill Lynch. In addition, the Board also authorized the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to extend credit to the London-based broker-dealer subsidiaries of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch against collateral that would be eligible to be pledged at the PDCF."
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Novel of the week: Indignation by Philip Roth
An “electric tale” from a talented writer
Author of the week: Sherry Jones
Her first novel, The Jewel of Medina, was yanked by U.S. publishers for fear it would incite violence. The novel has been picked up by European publishers and will be released in the U.S. The Week, September 26, 2008

Facts about $1 dollar bills They make up about 45% of currency production, and their
life span is 21 months. http://www.moneyfactory.gov/document.cfm/18/2230

On the dollar, the number thirteen, symbolizing the 13 original colonies, shows up 13 times:
13 total letters/digits in both 1776 (4) and its Roman Numeral equivalent MDCCLXXVI (9)
13 stars above the eagle
13 steps on the Pyramid
13 letters in ANNUIT COEPTIS
13 letters in E PLURIBUS UNUM
13 vertical bars on the shield
13 horizontal stripes at the top of the shield
13 leaves on the olive branch
13 berries on the olive branch
13 arrows
13 instances of the letter N
13 berries on the front of bill
13 elements on either side of the base of Washington's portrait (8 leaves, 5 berries)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_one-dollar_bill

Official Heraldry of the United States
The Great Seal of the United States
History of the Great Seal
US Heraldic Legislation
Arms of US Agencies
The US Army's Institute of Heraldry
http://www.heraldica.org/topics/usa/usheroff.htm

The two Michigan men who lost a lawsuit against Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. haven't given up on publishing a book version of the popular Harry Potter Lexicon Web site.
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080915/NEWS05/809150374/1007/news

A Federal Perspective on Health Care Policy and Costs
CBO: Presentation to the Center for Public Health, Stanford University: A Federal Perspective on Health Care Policy and Costs, Peter Orszag Director, September 16, 2008.

Tulane Law School is facing an awkward scenario. A professor-written law review article suggesting that the Louisiana Supreme Court justices tend to decide cases in favor of litigants and lawyers who contribute to their campaigns contained “numerous errors,” according to a recent letter of apology sent to the Louisiana Supremes by Tulane Dean Lawrence Ponoroff. WSJ Law Blog September 18, 2008

Sanction can mean either approval or disapproval.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sanction

To your health
Steam vegetables all or some of the cooking time—see recipe for fingerling potatoes at following link: http://www.oprah.com/recipe/food/recipessides/food_20020916_potatoes

On September 21, 1937 The Hobbit was published with a printing of 1,500 copies. A few years earlier, a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, a man named J.R.R. Tolkien, was grading papers and he turned one of those papers over and wrote, "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit." He didn't really know what that meant, or what a hobbit was. But in the next few years, he drew a map of the sort of world he thought a hobbit would live in, and then he started to write a story about a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins. Tolkien only managed to finish the story because he was encouraged by friends. It was passed around and eventually got to the publishing house of Allen & Unwin. Mr. Unwin gave it to his 10-year-old son, told him he would pay him a few pennies in exchange for reading it and giving him a report, and the boy was so enthusiastic that Allen & Unwin agreed to publish it
On September 21, 1970 the first modern op-ed page appeared in The New York Times. People sometimes think that "op-ed" stands for "opinion-editorial," but it actually stands for "opposite the editorial page." Op-eds began in the 1920s, but they were forums for newspapers' columnists, not for outside writers. The modern op-ed was created by New York Times journalist John Bertram Oakes. Oakes received a commentary letter that he thought was excellent, but it was too long to print as a letter to the editor, and it couldn't be published in the op-ed page since it wasn't by a columnist. So he got the idea for an op-ed page that would include outside opinions.
On September 22, 1862 President Lincoln declared the Emancipation Proclamation, one of the most important executive orders in American history. It announced that slaves in rebel states were free as of January 1, 1863.
On September 22, 1961 President John F. Kennedy signed the bill that created the Peace Corps.
The Writer’s Almanac