WebCogitoStop. Stay. Think.

Had I a little more time right now, I’d write a snarky post making fun of the worst excesses of political correctness. The commenters say it all.

Exactly one week ago today, DMagazine owner Wick Allison wondered whether Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher was right in saying there wouldn’t be any inflation in the neat future. I commented that I agreed with Fisher that there was a lot of money on the sidelines.  I wanted to include a figure, but I couldn’t find one.  Until today.

The Wall Street Journal claims that

Nonfinancial companies were sitting on about $8.4 trillion in cash as of the end of March, or about 7% of all company assets, the highest level since 1963. Even before its [$1.5 Billion] bond issue, IBM had $12.3 billion in cash and short-term investments, which accounted for about 12% of all its assets.

That’s 8 1/2 Trillion, with a T. Sitting on the sidelines, waiting.  We need to end this uncertainty, and get back to the business of making money.

Obama ready to show mortgage holders some love

Rumors are running wild from Washington to Wall Street that the Obama administration is about to order government-controlled lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive a portion of the mortgage debt of millions of Americans who owe more than what their homes are worth. An estimated 15 million U.S. mortgages – one in five – are underwater with negative equity of some $800 billion. Recall that on Christmas Eve 2009, the Treasury Department waived a $400 billion limit on financial assistance to Fannie and Freddie, pledging unlimited help.

The move, if it happens, would be a stunning political and economic bombshell less than 100 days before a midterm election in which Democrats are currently expected to suffer massive, if not historic losses. The key date to watch is August 17 when the Treasury Department holds a much-hyped meeting on the future of Fannie and Freddie.

What is happening is that the president’s approval ratings are continuing to erode, as are Democratic election polls. Democrats are in real danger of losing the House and almost losing the Senate. The mortgage Hail Mary would be a last-gasp effort to prevent this from happening and to save the Obama agenda. The political calculation is that the number of grateful Americans would be greater than those offended that they — and their children and their grandchildren — would be paying for someone else’s mortgage woes.

After selling a bumper stack of 1.5 million copies in just 48 hours, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is officially the fastest selling strategy game of all time.

According to Blizzard, StarCraft II had already managed to rack up over a million sales in its first day alone, making it the best-selling PC game of the year in just 24 hours. Blizzard says it compiled the figures using a combination of public data, reports from distribution partners and its own internal company records.

GM's Electric Lemon

Quantifying just how much taxpayer money will have been wasted on the hastily developed Volt is no easy feat. Start with the $50 billion bailout (without which none of this would have been necessary), add $240 million in Energy Department grants doled out to G.M. last summer, $150 million in federal money to the Volt’s Korean battery supplier, up to $1.5 billion in tax breaks for purchasers and other consumer incentives, and some significant portion of the $14 billion loan G.M. got in 2008 for “retooling” its plants, and you’ve got some idea of how much taxpayer cash is built into every Volt.

2 Luxury cars getting the boot

A luxury car valued at £1.2m ($1.8m) was clamped outside Harrods in central London after being illegally parked. The Koenigsegg CCXR and a £350,000 Lamborghini Murcielago LP670-4 SuperVeloce were both clamped on the afternoon of 22 July.   Kensington and Chelsea Council said the light-blue vehicles were in serious contravention of parking rules.

Both the cars are very rare with the Swedish-made Koenigsegg being one of only six ever made.

Wired Magazine has an insightful article with Fred Brooks, author of The Mythical Man-Month (i.e., you can’t always speed up an overdue software project by adding more programmers).  In it, the man behind the most successful IBM mainframe ever is asked his greatest technological achievement. His response? Enabling lowercase letters.

A woman took her ailing mom to see an American Idol concert in Massachusetts but was mistreated by employees who were less than willing to accommodate her mom’s special needs. The next day she took to Twitter, fired off a couple complaints and spurred Live Nation to make things right.

Psychologists Alexander Kranjec, Matt Lehet, Bianca Bromberger and Anjan Chatterjee showed 268 images of player tackles to 12 soccer players for half a second each; 134 of the pictures were mirror images of the other 134.  ”The key finding was that more fouls (66.5 vs. 63.3 – a statistically significant difference) were judged to have occurred when assessing the images in which movement was captured in a leftward direction than when assessing the same images mirror-reversed and therefore featuring implied rightward motion,” writes the BPS Digest.  Read the full study here.

In something of a developing story, there seems to be a jinx concerning the former Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger in the 2010 South Africa World Cup.

First, Jagger was in the stadium besides Bill Clinton supporting the U.S side when the American lost to Ghana in the round of 16.

Then, Jagger threw his support behind his native England, only to see them lose 4-1 to rival Germany.

AS a result, he joined the world bandwagon in cheering for Brazil (supposedly out of affection for his half-brazilian son), then saw (caused?) them to suffer the biggest upset of the World Cup so far, falling to the Netherlands 2-1.

As of this writing, Mick Jagger has been shown in the stands of the Argentina-Germany game. No word yet on who he is jin– supporting.