Fifteen Fabulously Freaky Links for.... Wednesday

I kinda screwed the order up here, I try to do the crucial finance and economics stuff first then finish out with the fun stuff.  You're gonna have to hunt and peck here, but you should be able to sift through these 15.

• Paul Krugman on "QE2" (quantitative easing, round 2).  Why are Krugman's jet-lagged thoughts better than my regular ones??? From his New York Times blog
• Journalist Teri Buhl updates us on John Paulson.  From Forbes
• Hoover Dam being "renovated".  This has a decent story to it, but the best aspect of this is the pictures.  24 pictures in all, click on the little red arrow to go thru all 24. Pictures here. From Stephen Fried of Parade magazine.  Hat tip to EconomistMom blog.
• Numbers on the amount of money large banks have spent lobbying politicians for their votes.  In other words---buying votes. From opensecrets.org
• Warren Buffett proves once again he is not the kindly Grandpa or kindly Uncle we used to think of him as.  From ZeroHedge blog
• Blake Griffin (the college basketball standout from the University of Oklahoma) ready to play again for the Los Angeles Clippers after recovering from a bad knee injury last year.  From LA Times
• A nice color coded map of America showing the amount of poverty in different regions of America. Worth a glance. From mint.com , with a hat tip to ZeroHedge blog
• Interesting graph relating to stock market volume from ZeroHedge.  Short read and highly recommended
• A CFTC official criticizing HFTs and saying flash crashes are becoming a prevalent problem.  Highly recommended. Taken from ZeroHedge, original story from Reuters
• Update on SIGTARP from Neil Barofsky.  Highly Recommended. From ZeroHedge blog
• William Black and L. Randall Wray on Housing foreclosures.  Highly Recommended.  From Huffington Post blog
• Wife of Nobel Prize Winner (Liu Xiaobo) who is imprisoned by the Chinese government for asking for Democracy in China, speaks out from the internet.  Liu Xia (the wife) is also currently under house arrest by Chinese officials' dictate. From USAToday newspaper
• U.S airline passengers sometimes book tickets with major airlines (such as Continental or Delta Air) only to find out later after booking the flight that they are flying a more dangerous regional airline, with poor safety records or using turboprop aircraft.  Highly Recommended if you fly commercial airlines.  Story by John Hughs of Bloomberg
• China supplies products to Iran the western democracies will not.  But Iran pays China a premium price, and often the Chinese products are of inferior quality. From the Los Angeles Times
• No eye candy today guys, sorry.  How about some Neil Young???  This is from his "Le Noise" album.  A great Christmas gift for any Rock 'n' Roll fans you know.  This cut is called "Walk With Me".  After you listen to this you'll be ready to kick ass on your Wednesday. The album is from Warner Bros. Records.