This is the last picture shot from the back seat of a moving car in downtown L.A. you're going to get.   Promise.

Squatters have taken over the Park Lane mansions owned by the Duke of Westminster. [Telegraph].  As readers of these pages well know, the 1904 associations in this story are plentiful, as it was the 2nd Duke of Westminster ("Bendor") Hugh Grosvenor, (1879-1953) who, among other things, outed his brother-in-law William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp (1872-1938), thus forcing the Earl into exile.  Both men had sons born in 1904; the Duke's son died as a child, and the Earl's son, Hugh Lygon, is said to have been the model for Sebastian in Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, with his father the Earl the model for the character of Lord Marchmain, also in exile but for a matter of a different nature.

One of the squatters, a 24 year old busker calling himself "Worrisome Ankle Trout," says of the current (the 6th) Duke's property that he has stayed in nicer squats.  Meanwhile every seven minutes another house in England goes into foreclosure. 

On this side of the Atlantic, it is reported that Merrill Lynch paid out billions of dollars in bonuses to its employees in advance of the firm's sale to B of A, which then received billions in a taxpayer bail-out.  None of which helped the plight of millions of Americans who have lost or are at risk of losing their homes in these difficult times [Financial Times].

I think it's important to remember that our current situation is in large measure the legacy of the economic policies of Reagan and Thatcher and if you don't agree, I recommend again David Harvey's A Brief History of Neoliberalism.
 
In other news, the Chinese government  has sentenced to death two of its country's businessmen involved in the tainted milk scandal which killed six infants and sickened many others.  Now I realize we aren't supposed to approve of the Chinese and their undemocratic ways, but in terms of how they deal with wayward businessmen whose actions harm the welfare of the people, I confess I find something to admire.