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The Next Financial Disaster?.

Reuters: Fannie Mae in Deal to Increase Its Capital. Embattled mortgage finance company Fannie Mae agreed to keep billions of dollars more cash on hand while it corrects accounting problems, its government regulator said on Monday.

This comes after a report of major financial oddities, and it's not enough. Fannie Mae is a quasi-governmental corporation that counts on -- but has not earned -- the backing of taxpayers. If the accounting has been rigged in some ways, as it seems to have been, it may well be worse under the covers than we know.

If Fannie Mae and/or its sibling, Freddie Mac, gets into serious trouble, we could all be heading for big trouble. We're talking trillions of dollars here, and maybe the health of the overall economy if a failure cascades as it might.

See also (reg req) Gretchen Morgenson's column with some background that will infuriate you. [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
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DIY public infrastructure. As a way to ease into the DIY-IT subject du jour, I want to give a quick (and unpaid) plug to my friends at Sputnik, who have grown way past the WiFi access point business (and original ideas) that got them going almost three years ago. Last week they announced the Sputnik Control Center (which Daily Wireless explains in linky detail). Also SputnikNet, which provides Sputnik hosting for control centers, over the Net.

Being good guys, Sputnik is also involved in the deployment of SocalFreeNet in San Diego, which is one of the countless cities that are deploying public wi-fi, usually in partnership with local business and public-spiritied associations of techies. (I wrote about the New York deployment last year in Linux Journal).

Well, it seems one city wants to rise above the rest...

[Doc Searls' IT Garage - News, ideas and real world stories about how IT folks solve their own problems]
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A Computer In Every Classroom. Schools are spending a fortune on technology in the hopes of gaining relevance with Generation I. Bad news--they've already lost. [kuro5hin.org]
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iMacs Are Less Expensive Than A DIY PC [MacSlash]
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