This week, erm fortnight, maybe month… Look, things aren't going so well. I just can't seem to get it together, so just read this, and could you possibly spare a tenner?:

• Reaching people on the internet — The Oatmeal:
  
• How Much Are Banks Exposed to Subprime? More than we Think — Wolf Richter: One of the collapsed small lenders, Summit Financial Corp, when it filed for bankruptcy on March 23, disclosed that it owed Bank of America $77 million. This loan was secured by the auto loans Summit had extended to subprime customers, who’re now defaulting in large numbers. In the bankruptcy documents, BofA alleged that Summit had repossessed many of these cars without writing down the bad loans, thus under-reporting the losses and misrepresenting the value of the collateral (the loans). This allowed Summit to borrow more from BofA to fund more subprime loans, BofA said. Summit is just a tiny lender and doesn’t really matter. But there are a whole slew of these nonbank lenders, specializing in auto loans, revolving consumer loans, payday loans, and mortgages. Some of these nonbank lenders specialize in “deep subprime.” And some of these lenders are fairly large. Since the Financial Crisis, big banks have mostly avoided subprime lending. Instead, they’re lending to the companies that then provide financing to subprime customers. And BofA is finding out just how much risk it was taking with its loan to Summit that was secured by now defaulting auto loans that were secured by cars that, once repossessed, are worth only a fraction of the loan value when they’re sold at auction.
• Status: perpetually broke — Jake Likes Onions:
  
• Everything wrong with Theresa May's ridiculous assertion that we should feel proud of the Balfour Declaration — Robert Fisk, the Independent: So let’s remember what this document actually said in 1917: “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” The obvious lie in this single sentence – a charter for “refugeedom” if ever there was one – is that while Britain would support a Jewish “homeland”, the majority of the population (700,000 Arabs as opposed to 60,000 Jews, according to Hanan Ashrawi) are not regarded as having a “homeland” at all – but merely referred to as “existing non-Jewish communities”. They are not even called Arabs or Muslims – which most of them were – but as just “communities” which “exist”. And which of course might be persuaded one day to exist somewhere else. We can forget that Balfour and his chums admitted within months that they didn’t intend to give the Arabs any attention. They certainly didn’t get any. Within just over 30 years, Israel itself was created and the Palestinian tragedy began. And in this, Theresa May takes “pride”.
• The Murray Goulburn dilemma – co-operatives are dying out but they’re still needed — Michael Duffy in the Conversation: Co-operatives such as Murray Goulburn have gone to private equity markets but this has diluted their co-operative structure while creating other problems such as conflict between producers and investors. This is exemplified by the current investor class action. Co-operatives also struggle with banks who are reluctant to lend as they do not understand or even distrust the co-operative structure. Some also argue that increasingly globalised free trade and excess production has depressed agricultural prices which impacts the market power of farmer co-operatives to hold out for a good price. Regulators also have an interest in transforming co-operative structures into the corporate form for ease of regulation.