WHAT COULD GO WRONG? So America has a President Goldman Sachs, Italy has a Prime Minister Goldman Sachs, and the European Central Bank will now be headed by a former Goldman Sachs banker.

#OCCUPYFAIL: CONVENIENTLY ENOUGH, #OWS HAS THAT MUCH MONEY IN THE BANK: Occupy Wall Street costs local businesses $479,400!

UH OH: Thailand Floods Cause World Hard Drive Shortage.

On the other hand, the price for the G-Drive Slim is only up by 5 bucks. I ordered a second one a couple of weeks ago and paid $89.99. Now it’s $94.10.

UPDATE: Reader Jeff Cook writes: “Just had a desktop locally built that included two WD 1 TB hard drives. The guy who built it said they were going up roughly 10 bucks/day and that it was gonna get a worse. Put in the order on a Thursday and on Friday they had already gone up.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: And reader Kim Sommer writes: “I’m at Best Buy. They had an ad in today’s paper for a Seagate 1TB desktop hard drive for $54.99. Not in the shelf. Not available to order. Not even a bait and switch since there was nothing to switch to.”

CHARLIE MARTIN: Tomorrow’s Climate “Briefing”, Popcorn Advised.

MICKEY KAUS: “Was a representative of the Obama administration ‘literally sitting in the room’ for recent UAW/GM negotiations—as a newsletter to members of a UAW local said. Or was the union report just a ‘misprint,’ as an official of the local now claims?”

TODAY ONLY SALE: Firefly: The Complete Series, on Blu-Ray and DVD. (Bumped, because hey, it’s Firefly.).

POLL: WHO WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE READ TO YOUR CHILDREN?

AT AMAZON, pre-Black Friday deals on Computers and Software.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Police arrest Chapel Hill protesters who occupied vacant business.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Occupy Portland Cleared Out: Onlooker Taunts “The Whole World is Laughing!” Heh.

WHAT BILL GATES THINKS ABOUT DRUG COMPANIES.

Says Gates: “If you 15 years ago had said, ‘How important are vaccines to these various businesses?’ They would have said, “You know, our drug businesses are going to do so well. And vaccines are so tough, particularly because of liability issues.’”

But vaccines, Gates argues, “actually have more impact on health than all the new drugs.” And the pharmaceutical businesses didn’t do as well as expected. For Pfizer, for instance, a big bet on a Lipitor follow-up went down in flames when the drug turned out to increase, not decrease, the death rate. But now Pfizer is betting big on a vaccine, called Prevnar, against the pneumococcus bacteria. After Lipitor loses patent protection, Prevnar may well be the company’s top seller.

Read the whole thing.

IS IT TIME FOR a renewed Tea Party PR push? Well, maybe. But they say when your opponent is committing suicide, you should keep your mouth shut.

CHINA: China’s most famous dissident artist, Ai Weiwei, speaks out about the ordeal of his Detention.

HMM: A Romney/McDonnell 2012 Presidential Ticket Is (Practically) a Done Deal.

AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Men’s Shoes. I’m surprised to see ice cleats at #2.

NANCY PELOSI VS. JON STEWART.

CONNECTICUT POWER OUTAGE: Blame the regulators. “But the politicians keep hyperventilating for publicity, overlooking that every aspect of the outage — from tree trimming to the number of repair crews to the general reliability of the power grid to the lavish salaries of power company executives — has always been subject to the jurisdiction of the state regulatory commission, recently renamed the Public Utility Regulatory Authority. That is, CL&P and all other utilities can hardly do anything without state government’s review and approval. Regulation may have been inadequate, but Connecticut’s elected officials always have had primary responsibility here. If CL&P hasn’t done a good job, then state government hasn’t supervised the company well either.”

ANN ALTHOUSE: Huntsman shouldn’t complain, as he’s getting more questions than Thaddeus McCotter got, even though McCotter was much more interesting, and doing no worse in the polls.

Related: “That clip was so satisfying that I need a cigarette!”

WHY WASHINGTON SUCKS AT VENTURE CAPITAL: Before Solyndra, a long history of failed government energy projects. “Some economists, executives and financiers — as well as Energy Secretary Steven Chu — argue that the government must play a role because certain technologies have non-financial benefits, such as producing fewer greenhouse gas emissions or easing U.S. reliance on foreign oil. The semiconductor industry is often held up as a model of how government money can help build a new type of economy. But others argue that the history of government attempts to reach for the holy grail of new energy technology — a history that features both political parties — is not inspiring.”

This story is worth reading, but when you read between the lines it also seems like an effort to spread the blame around and do political damage control on Solyndra. But Solyndra isn’t just a case of bad judgment. The thing to remember is that the Solyndra deal was known to be a bad one for the government at the time, was gone ahead with anyway at the behest of the White House, and funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into the pocket of a major Obama donor.

BURT RUTAN IS UP TO SOMETHING COOL. “The engineer told the Experimental Aviation Association he is tinkering with a design influenced to some extent by the lakes and rivers of Idaho, where he now lives after spending more than 40 years in the Mojave Desert. He also mentioned being influenced by the unusual Russian air/watercraft, like the MD-160 Lun-class ekranoplan, he saw shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union.”

#OCCUPYFAIL: Woman Raped At #OccupyPhiladelphia.

MORE ON THE POYNTER/ROMENESKO SAGA, HERE AND HERE.

Plus this: “Turns out that just before Jim Romenesko’s bosses at Poynter decided the way he attributed his sources for them for 12 years suddenly violated their rules, they tried to get him to agree not to take ads on his future website.” Hmm.

Meanwhile, how many people will visit a Romenesko-free Poynter site? Dozens, I’m sure.

YES. NEXT QUESTION? Is a soy-based diet “cruel and unusual?”

SO I’M NOT SURE WHETHER TO FILE THIS UNDER “HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE” OR “HOUSING BUBBLE UPDATE.” Animal McMansion: Students Trade Dorm for Suburban Luxury.

While students at other colleges cram into shoebox-size dorm rooms, Ms. Alarab, a management major, and Ms. Foster, who is studying applied math, come home from midterms to chill out under the stars in a curvaceous swimming pool and an adjoining Jacuzzi behind the rapidly depreciating McMansion that they have rented for a song.

Here in Merced, a city in the heart of the San Joaquin Valley and one of the country’s hardest hit by home foreclosures, the downturn in the real estate market has presented an unusual housing opportunity for thousands of college students. Facing a shortage of dorm space, they are moving into hundreds of luxurious homes in overbuilt planned communities. . . .

The finances of subdivision life are compelling: the university estimates yearly on-campus room and board at $13,720 a year, compared with roughly $7,000 off-campus. Sprawl rats sharing a McMansion — with each getting a bedroom and often a private bath — pay $200 to $350 a month each, depending on the amenities.

Gurbir Dhillon, a senior majoring in molecular cell biology, pays $70 more than his four housemates each month for the privilege of having what they enviously call “the penthouse suite” — a princely boudoir with a whirlpool tub worthy of Caesars Palace and a huge walk-in closet, which Mr. Dhillon has filled with baseball caps and T-shirts.

Or maybe it’s just a sign that today’s students know a good opportunity when they see one.

#OCCUPYFAIL: Court Rejects Occupy Sacramento’s Challenge to Ordinance Barring Park Use Between 11 pm and 5 am.