As understood by an anonymous commentator over at the Cunning Realist:

At this point it seems the sack of flour in my pantry has out performed my stock portfolio in the last 6 months.

What do you see in the future? The FDIC sees bank failures:

Federal bank regulators plan to increase staffing 60 percent in coming months to handle an anticipated surge in troubled financial institutions.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. wants to add 140 workers to bring staff levels to 360 workers in the division that handles bank failures, John Bovenzi, the agency's chief operating officer, said Tuesday.

"We want to make sure that we're prepared," Bovenzi said, adding that most of the hires will be temporary and based in Dallas.

There have been five bank failures since February 2007 following an uneventful more than two-year stretch. The last time the agency was hit hard with failures was during the 1990-1991 recession, when 502 banks failed in three years.

A soothing reminder: banks fail, and it's not the end of the world. Unless it's your bank that fails, of course.

The Big Picture points us to an eye-opening chart by Bill King that illustrates the extent of borrowing by financial institutions at the Fed Discount Window.

Note how the rush for cash from Bernanke and Co. literally dwarfs the S&L crisis from the 80s, and appears to be on its way to doubling the infusion of cash that the fed released after 9/11 to keep the American economy on track.

So we're headed to more inflation, right? Well, that's an interesting debate, and an upcoming post I have planned will take a look at the arguments between the inflationists and the deflationists.

Which, to be honest, I find far more interesting and relevant than almost anything the presidential candidates are saying at the moment.

Do CDOs and SIVs have your head spinning? Although it's a bit heavy on vulgarities (consider that a disclaimer) and it gets a bit more into the details than many people might care to go, this brief slideshow does a good job illustrating (no pun intended) the great fraud known as the financial services sector, circa 2005-2007.