Here's a clip from Frontline's The Warning, focusing in on former CFTC chair Brooksley Born's attempts in vain to regulate derivatives during the Greenspan Era. For more background, see "Credit Crisis Cassandra," in the Washington Post last May.

Face it: Men are dogs. And the current CFTC chair, Gary Gensler, is just a little mutt, not the kind of shepherd that's needed. Born, on the other hand, was one tough and prescient bitch.

Waiter, there's a bomb in my soup!: Atomic scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer (left) and Senator Warren Magnuson chew the fat at the U.S. Senate restaurant in December 1945. (photo by George Skadding, courtesy of Life magazine)

A new GAO audit shows that the amount of unpaid restaurant tabs at the Senate's private eatery increased by nearly 50 percent in 2008 from the previous year.

Do the results of the audit of the restaurant's revolving fund mean it was a bad year for the senators or for exclusive Capitol Hill restaurant's waiters and waitresses? Part of the perks of being a senator is that you, your colleagues, ex-senators, and "certain Senate officials" can set up "customer accounts."

The accounts receivable numbers are small — $74,701 in 2008, compared with $50,914 in 2007 — but what the hell. Just because the nation's taking on a record deficit is no reason for the senators to put off paying their tabs.

If it makes you feel any better — though why should it, unless you're investor and you see a long-term jackpot — the Las Vegas Strip's Bellagio and Mirage casinos are themselves in trouble because their highly leveraged owner MGM is about to crap out.

There's just no place to run to. After months of getting bailed out by the public, the banking industry is making the public bail out of their homes at a record rate in the U.S.

Foreclosure filings broke records in April, 32 percent higher nationally than in April 2008. One in every 374 housing units in the U.S. got the bad news just last month.

It doesn't matter that repossessions by banks fell to their lowest since March 2008 — that's only because emergency laws and decrees have imposed delays and moratoriums. There will be a "corresponding spike" in repossessions (called REOs), says the CEO of RealtyTrac, which reports these figures.

In Vegas, the house wins, and the person loses. No surprise there, but the numbers are still shocking:

But like everything else in Vegas, that's an illusion because the repossessions are sure to come. What seemed like one of your safer bets — being able to stay in your homes — looks riskier and riskier.

At least Vegas's real houses — the casinos — have a brighter outlook: Gregory Pepin predicts this morning on Seeking Alpha that if MGM "makes it through the crisis without going bankrupt, long term growth is very attractive."

In sum, he says, "a vicious cycle may unfold much as it has in the nation's housing market." Hall paints this grim scenario:

Displaying wit not usually seen from the skilled but serious troops at Bloomberg News, columnist David Reilly warns today about taking the current stock rally too seriously.

"While hot air got markets off the ground, it isn't enough to sustain them," Reilly writes. Here's his Seinfeld angle:

It's "temporary magic," Reilly says, and "investors should be on guard."

One big reason for worry, despite the optimistic chatter, is something that Reilly mentions only briefly: the looming problem of widespread delinquent payments on credit cards. We've been told to buy, because it will supposedly help the economy. But we could be buying more trouble.

NYU economist Nouriel Roubini notes that U.S. credit card defaults are at a 20-year high. One of "party-boy economist" Roubini's "spotlight issues" on his lively RGE Monitor is bannered "U.S. Credit Card Delinquencies At Record Highs: Same Dynamics As Mortgages?"

Also see this earlier Financial Times (U.K.) piece: "US credit card delinquencies at record high."

Back to Reilly's piece: Among the things he's worrying about is that "American Express Co. reported higher delinquency rates for credit cards in February."

Even without the Seinfeld riff, and despite his consigning the grim credit-card news to only a brief mention, Reilly makes other good points and provides a well-reasoned instant history and analysis of the recession. Worth reading from the beginning to the end.

Looking for ways to weather the recession — just in case Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is wrong — you might want to heed the two suggestions dispensed by the New York Times in separate stories on Friday the 13th to just throw in the towel.

In "Thoughts on Walking Away from Your Home Loan," Ron Lieber makes a doomsday scenario sound almost, well, painless. Don't qualify for the Obama plan? Not enough income to pay your loans? Can't refinance?

So just stop paying. As Lieber says:

And don't fret too much about it. Though he's writing for the "Your Money" column, Lieber exhibits about as little faith in financial planners as one could possibly have:

Meanwhile, don't worry about setting a bad example for your kids, because here's another workaround for their future: Tell them to forget about college for at least a year. In another Friday the 13th piece, Jonathan D. Glater wrote, in "Delaying College for a Year Could Have Benefits," that even if Congress okays Obama's expanded college-aid plans, they won't take effect until a year from this July. So he says:

Actually, the latter idea (delaying college) makes sense — even in good times, many Europeans and Aussies take a year to travel after they graduate from high school instead of rushing off to college to become investment bankers. Many U.S. baby boomers would have done the same thing (the year-off thing) if they hadn't been threatened with the draft during the Vietnam War.

Now, with no draft, no jobs, no home, no prospects, why not take a year off? Maybe Bernanke will be right and you can resume your dreams next year.

Lost amid the buzz on the president's budget was a piece of extremely bad news at home and abroad, if the predictors at Moody's are correct.

Budget this, budget that. Yes, Barack Obama's budget is a historic event. But his job keeps getting tougher and tougher. From yesterday's Wall Street Journal, "Moody's: Worse to Come on Subprime":

We're not just talking about homes. We're also talking about companies, as the Telegraph (U.K.)'s Edmund Conway reports in "Moody's predicts default rate will exceed peaks hit in Great Depression":

Nice job, Conway, on writing an end-of-the-world story.