Ho Ho Ho and Happy Holidays! It's Christmas, the time of layoffs, of getting kicked out of your home and watching television commercials reminding you of all the stuff you cannot afford. It is surely a time of torture through Christmas music. Your kids need shoes and you can't find a job. Seasons Greetings! You better watch out and better not cry, below are stories that....

Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Glory to the Newborn King, we have Bank of America stealing a widow husband's ashes off the mantle.

When Mimi Ash arrived at her mountain chalet here for a weekend ski trip, she discovered that someone had broken into the home and changed the locks.

When she finally got into the house, it was empty. All of her possessions were gone: furniture, her son’s ski medals, winter clothes and family photos. Also missing was a wooden box, its top inscribed with the words “Together Forever,” that contained the ashes of her late husband, Robert.

The culprit, Ms. Ash soon learned, was not a burglar but her bank. According to a federal lawsuit filed in October by Ms. Ash, Bank of America had wrongfully foreclosed on her house and thrown out her belongings, without alerting Ms. Ash beforehand.

The United States International Trade Commission released a report on China's intellectual property rights infringement against U.S. firms. To no surprise, the report describes how China's refuses, isn't capable to either enforce U.S. intellectual property rights and in some cases, outright steals them.

Infringement of intellectual property rights (IPR) in China reduces market opportunities and undermines the profitability of U.S. firms when sales of their products and technologies are undercut by competition from illegal, lower-cost imitations.

To make matters worse, the Chinese courts are a hydra of rules and for small companies it is simply too expensive to try to do anything about the latest rip off.

China also enacted indigenous intellectual property policies, which is a glorified way of requiring advanced R&D be done locally in order to be recognized. Imagine (the good news for U.S. workers), if the United States required all advanced R&D to be done locally and by Americans to be considered valid. That's what China is doing.

“Indigenous innovation” policies, which promote the development, commercialization, and purchase of Chinese products and technologies, may also be disadvantaging U.S. and other foreign firms and creating new barriers to foreign direct investment (FDI) and exports to China.

It seems the only thing most Republicans know about economics is the price of propaganda to get job killing corporate and special agendas through Congress. This time is a winner, winner, chicken dinner. For a $2 buck derivatives bet you can blame the poor and middle class.

Ya know the housing bubble, all of those derivatives, the sub-prime disaster, credit default swaps that caused financial Armageddon? Oops, not so, say four Republicans on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Panel. They hate truth so much, they are going to write their own report, a tale of spin built upon the weave of woe. Call it Goldisachs in Kansas, or My Pet Scapegoat, but do not call it anything founded in economic theory and financial statistical reality.

The four Republicans appointed to the commission investigating the root causes of the financial crisis plan to bypass the bipartisan panel and release their own report Wednesday, according to people familiar with the commission's work.

The Republicans, led by the commission's vice chairman, former congressman and chair of the House Ways and Means Committee Bill Thomas, will likely focus their report on the explosive growth of subprime mortgages and the heavy role played by the federal government in pushing mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase and insure them. They'll also likely focus on the Community Reinvestment Act, a 1977 law that encourages banks to lend to underserved communities, these people said.