Funny Money: Private Eyes ... Who's Watching?

In other news... Paul Wolfowitz is leaving the World Bank. He said he's excited to spend more time haunting the dreams of little Dutch children.

In a sign of social progress, Michael Baroody, nominee to lead the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), received a $150,000 departing payment from his former employer, the National Association of Manufacturers, members of whom are -- or, rather, were -- the CPSC's targets... Remember when parting gifts were just like wine or a board game? We've come so far.

New York State has filed suit against Dell for failing to provide adequate customer support. I dunno, every time Dell Financial Services has called my house during dinner to try to phish for my credit information, they've been quite supportive of my request to "stick their exploding batteries where the sun don't shine."

Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard reported strong earnings after raising the cost of replacement printer ink to $32 million a cartridge and announcing a deal to license its pretexting technology. Jerks.

Thomson bought Reuters for $17.2 billion. More big buying big. Reminds me of when T-Rex was bought by Brontosaurus Equity Partners using leveraged debt and meteor avoidance technology. Hope this era turns out the same!!

Amazon.com will begin offering music without copy-protection. Oh good, I was so tired of people making money off their creations. It'll be so much better when only trust-funders can be artists. Really, we don't have enough music about partying, superficiality, and BMWs. Really. We don't.