The changes in the bill were quantifiable. The initial proposal from the Treasury Department ran three pages; the latest version exceeds 450.

Revised Bailout Bill Awaits Senate Vote Tonight - NYTimes.com

Under pressure from banks and legislators, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued an interpretation of an accounting standard that could make it easier for banks to report smaller losses, or perhaps even profits, when they announce results for the third quarter, which ended Tuesday.

Mark-to-market is another piece of the puzzle. This came up in the Enron fiasco a few years back and as usual, the feds grossly overreacted and as usual, it had unintended consequences.

What I've concluded about our financial system in the wake of this whole mess is that it is far more complex than anyone can really understand. In consequence, the myriad knobs that regulate it must be turned very slowly, over time with careful monitoring on the effects on the system. Instead, what we have is congress twisting all the knobs at once and the system gyrating wildly as a result.

S.E.C. Move May Relax Asset Rule - NYTimes.com

And as for moose-hunting, he said, it is no worse than what French women used to do long before there was a Louis Vuitton. “When women of Louis XV’s court would hunt wild boars with their knives, it wasn’t less violent or bloody than killing a moose with a scope-mounted rifle,” he said.

Memo From Paris - Gazing at America, the French Still See a Wild Frontier - NYTimes.com

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) announces that Flight 4 of the Falcon 1 launch vehicle has successfully launched and achieved Earth orbit. With this key milestone, Falcon 1 becomes the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to orbit the Earth.

"This is a great day for SpaceX and the culmination of an enormous amount of work by a great team," said Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX. "The data shows we achieved a super precise orbit insertion—middle of the bull's-eye — and then went on to coast and restart the second stage, which was icing on the cake."

Falcon 1 Reaches Orbit!

Europe's unmanned space cargo vehicle successfully reentered the atmosphere over the south Pacific Ocean Sept. 29, breaking up into dozens of fragments that fell into the ocean along a pre-selected path that had been cleared of maritime traffic, European Space Agency (ESA) officials said.

SPACE.com -- European Spaceship's Death Plunge Caught on Film

Video showing the destructive re-entry of Jules Verne ATV at the end of a successful mission to the International Space Station. The re-entry took place over an uninhabited area of the Pacific Ocean after two deorbit burns.

A manmade shooting star. Strangely beautiful.

ESA Portal - Jules Verne re-entry video

JPMorgan Chase & Co., the third- biggest U.S. bank by assets, agreed to acquire the deposits of Washington Mutual Inc. as the thrift was seized by regulators in the biggest bank failure in U.S. history.

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

One of the many concerns expressed on Capitol Hill this week about the Treasury Department’s $700 billion rescue plan was how to keep the Wall Street firms that helped to create the crisis from making a killing if they are hired to help contain it.

William H. Gross, the manager of the country’s largest bond mutual fund, has a solution for that: He is offering to do it free.

“We have a large and brilliant staff that can analyze and has analyzed subprime mortgages that can help the Treasury out,” Mr. Gross, the co-chief investment officer for Pacific Investment Management Company, said Tuesday in an interview at the company’s headquarters here. “And I’d even be willing to say that if the Treasury wanted to use our help, it would come, you know, free and clear as long as every other firm would do the same.”

Managing the Bailout - He’d Do It for Nothing - NYTimes.com

PERSONAL HISTORY about the writer’s years as an aspiring composer in San Francisco. In 1972, several months after he graduated from Harvard and completed one of his first musical compositions (“Heavy Metal”), the writer and his new wife, Hawley, moved to the San Francisco Bay area. The writer’s plan was to live as a proletarian worker by day and an avant-garde composer at night.

This was a great read, too bad the New Yorker can't be bothered to put it's content online.

Personal History: Sonic Youth: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a temporary ban on short sales of 799 financial stocks on Friday, a move against traders who have sought to profit from the financial crisis by betting against bank shares.

S.E.C. Temporarily Blocks Short Sales of Financial Stocks - NYTimes.com