This is Your Brain on Drugs - Japanese version

Remember the old public service announcement showing someone making eggs for breakfast and telling you how the frying egg was like your brain on drugs? Well, I guess that particular metaphor did not translate into Japanese culture. They prefer more athletic eggs. Watch.

International Financial Meltdown

Are you depressed yet? Do you somehow think that these stopgap measures are going to solve the essential problem facing international markets? It won't.

The essential problem is a lack of trust in the value of securities. That failure of trust is based on the perception of corruption in those markets. It is also based on the perception that securities markets have been flying too high with these weird new financial instruments that no one can understand.

All of Wall Street has been on a money drunk. Now comes the hangover.

Let's Hunt Them Down ...

Who are these losers who are handing the United States and its allies these financial disasters? Who invented these new types of securities?

Let's hunt them down and take every penny they have. And all their houses, even if they don't know how many of them there are.

With the rescue of our allies in this affair, the political cover enjoyed by these nameless financial elites will be ripped apart. Europe and Japan will want blood.

And they will get it.

Fugimori Gets No Respect

What is it with the Peruvians? Fugimori, their old President, was the ONLY ONE who broke the back of the Shining Path, a terror group that had been plaguing Peru for two decades. They even stormed the Japanese embassy in Lima, which Fugimori brought to a successful end. And, in case that weren't enough, Fugimori also brought double-digit inflation under control.

So now he wants to come back to Peru and they want to arrest him. In any other country, he would be a welcomed hero. Sure, he tried to extend his Presidential term. OK, he's an egomaniac. All those types are. But give the guy his due: he sure did a lot for Peruvians. And this is the thanks he gets.