Went to a small mall yesterday. Not something I'd normally do two days before Christmas, but I'm getting on a plane today and realized my jeans have a hole in them.

So off I went to the underground parking beneath my closest Gap store. As I'm pulling through, I notice smoke coming out of the front left wheel well of a Mini Cooper.

So I pull over to the side and yell for the rent-a-cops who were directing traffic by the entrance. A few of them come over and stand there staring. Slowly a couple of others arrive. Now there are six of us, five rent-a-cops and me, staring at black acrid smoke coming out of the wheel well. My CERT training kicks in, I look at them, ask if they called the fire department. Yeah, one of them says, dispatch is calling them.

I ask if there's anything else they are going to do.

No. They're supposed to call the fire department and keep people out of the area. "The area" apparently being defined as the parking spot occupied by said Mini Cooper because people are coming and going all around as the area fills with smoke.

I walk to my car, which is still sitting there 20 feet away, open the trunk, get my little automotive fire extinguisher, pull the safety and let fly around the tire and into the wheel, as well as into the front grille, where some additional smoke is now emerging.

They continue to look around.

Eventually one of them asks me for some identification and information "in case there's a problem." I tell him I'll be happy to provide it to the fire department when they arrive. He shuts up.

Fire department eventually show up, determine there are no hot spots remaining, and leave a note on the guys windshield suggesting that he not drive it until it is checked out.

In retrospect, the big mistake was not walking 30 feet to a fire extinguisher that was mounted on the wall instead of using my own. Didn't notice it until after the fact, but they're required to be in spaces like that, so I should have known.

And yeah, I stopped and got a new one on the way home. $10.

Let it be recorded here that the earliest Google entry using the term "YOUplanet" to describe what Time Magazine just latched onto was on this blog. So there.

Just had a burger at one of my favorite local spots. I've known this place for more than a decade. Despite being a fast-food kind of place, the key employees have been there as long as I've been going and the owner pretty clearly does everything "above board" and "by the book."

He had CNBC going on his two TVs, and reacted pretty harshly when a headline flashed up noting "inflation tame."

"How can inflation be tame when gas is still at almost $3?" he asked. "Every supplier I've got is hitting me with delivery surcharges, fuel surcharges, insurance surcharges, you name it!"

"Well, do you really believe the government numbers?"

To this I got a response -- one to which I as a new business owner now relate -- about how useless virtually everything coming out of the government is. Talk about all the taxes he pays, what they're supposed to provide him and his employees, and what the real benefits he gets are worth. (Hint, he and his employees don't see any.)

So, if my friend at the burger joint is any indication, inflation is a lot less tame than the statisticians in their TV bubble think it is. And people know it. At least Frank the hamburger man does.

Over on Minyanville, John Succo and Scott Reamer have often made the case that what drives financial markets -- and to a larger degree all markets -- is ultimately people's desire for risk. The argument continues that markets peak out when people have taken on as much risk as they can afford, often in the form of debt ("leverage") or other obligations beyond their ability to pay for them.

If that's true, then watching people's appetite for risk is something worth doing. There have been several datapoints this week:

• Schwab just sent me a rather cryptic email, telling me that I am now eligible to trade cash secured equity puts online in any accounts for which I am approved for long-option trading, including IRAs.
  Great. Now I have new ways of taking risks that may or may not be well understood and for which I have never asked. (I know the limits of my understanding, and deal only with long puts and calls, by my own choice, and NEVER in my retirement accounts.) Sounds like a neat way to get people to take more risk and drum up more commissions. The standard disclaimer about reviewing the "Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options" is there in tiny print.
• Mortgage Insurance is now tax deductible. Not only is the fed encouraging people to take on huge mortgages through their encouragement of laxer and laxer lending standards, now the government has decided that those people who can't take a "normal" morgage shouldn't have to bear the burden that typically comes with such highly-levered loans. At some point in the future, those of us who can actually reasonably afford our living arrangements will be asked to bail out the defaults that this government handout brings about.
• The idiot on iamfacingforeclosure.com has decided that the solution to his problems is figuring out how to borrow another $50,000 to put into some "sweet deals" which will save him. I am increasingly convinced that his behavior will mark the bottom. When he throws in the towel, it's time to buy.
• The risks that come with all this are becoming more apparent. Two subprime lenders, Ownit of California and Sebring Capital of Dallas have both gone under in the past week.
• On one of the talk radio stations I occasionally listen to, more than half of the advertising is still for dubious mortgage finance outfits or for get-rich quick real estate scams.

More to come, I'm sure.

-btc