That's a lot of good stuff to read!  I haven't finished yet, but fwiw Econbrowser has a new post this morning about stocks and housing, and I found this pretty scary/amazing:

http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=1561

This is good stuff and economics made somewhat interesting too!  Love the Vonnegut article, I wish he would be giving a fireside chat every week on the tele.  

Question - What, if any significance is there to the simultaneous drop in the dollar and the rise in oil?   Does the fact that oil is priced in dollars mean that the price rise is not as significant to the economy?    

The Dollar index closed out 2003 at a tad above 85. That was just before Oil started its rise in price. Today the Dollar index stands at just above 85.

What simultaneous drop in the dollar were you talking about?

The Dollar index dropped dramatically in 2002 and 2003 while the price of oil rose only slightly. Since then the price of oil has rose dramatically while the dollar index has muved, up and down, in a very narrow range.

Ron Patterson

Trust me, I could be totally wrong about what I am seeing.  But, I was looking at the graph above $USD dollar index which looks like in '02 a dollar index of 120 dropping in '06  to 85 or so.   Then in the graph figure 1: Real price of oil starting '02 or slightly before there is a rise from 50ish to 100ish.  
More economic reading at "the mess that greenspan made"

http://themessthatgreenspanmade.blogspot.com/2006/10/not-sustainable.html

Quoting Dr. Kurt Richebacher. "At around 80 years old, he still knows how to blast a Federal Reserve Chairman and, having been around so long and having seen so much, he takes great issue with what he's witnessed in the U.S. economy in the last couple decades."

Has Mr. Greenspan ever realized that he has turned the U.S. economy into a bubble economy? Who else among former and present policymakers and top economists on Wall Street has realized this? Some certainly have. In Japan, even policymakers frankly used this word in public. But in America, everybody painstakingly avoids this admission.

In order to eschew mentioning the dirty word, a new definition has come into general use. U.S. economic growth is neither "bubble driven" nor "debt driven"; it is "asset driven." It is a term especially invented for the American public to convey the good feeling that the U.S. economy is creating assets, while in reality, with its consumer borrowing-and-spending binge, it is consuming its capital, reflected in falling investment and soaring foreign indebtedness.

Has Mr. Greenspan ever realized that he has turned the U.S. economy into a bubble economy?

Realized? What do you mean realized?

His entire 20-year stint as Fed chief was spent carefully making it reality. That's all he's done, breaking it down brick by brick.

When are we going to get rid of the silly delusion that the Fed exists for the benefit of the American people?

Abolish it.