It appears that Paramount and Dreamworks are going HD DVD.
This is a switch for Paramount, which had supported both.
There are really two reasons for this, HD-DVD is a lot cheaper, $299 vs $499, and there are more HD-DVD players in the US (not counting the Blu-Ray drives on the Sony PS3, but who wants to play a DVD on a game system that doesn’t even have a remote>).
I have to say, this is a damn find lede.
Blowing up the Lab on Wall Street
By Richard BookstaberLooks like Wall Street’s mad scientists have blown up the lab again. The subprime mess that is cutting so wide a swath through financial markets can be traced to the alchemy of creating collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) compounded by the enormous amount of leverage applied by big hedge funds. CDOs are derivatives — synthetic financial instruments derived from another asset.
His point is that Wall Street has created instruments so leveraged, and so removed from reality that people are literally spending billions on nothing at all.
The cause for this, to me anyway, Mr. Bookstaber* does not make this point, is that the systematic dismantling of the FDR era banking and securities regulations have allowed this to happen.
It’s human nature to go for a quick buck, and to believe that the good times never end, and the deregulation of banking and securities has had this predictable result.
*Isn’t that name almost Dickensian in character?
Finally, the American Psychological Association come out against torture.
The American Psychological Association has ruled that psychologists can no longer be associated with several interrogation techniques that have been used against terrorism prisoners in US custody. The methods are immoral, psychologically damaging and counterproductive in eliciting useful information, they say.
Psychologists who witness interrogators using mock executions, simulated drowning, sexual and religious humiliation, stress positions or sleep deprivation are required to intervene to stop such abuse. They must report the activities to superiors and report the involvement of any other psychologists to the association. It may strip those professionals of their memberships.
I’m not sure whether to be heartened that they have taken action, or to be depressed that it’s taken 5 years for them to reach the obvious conclusion that waterboarding, chaining people in excruciating positions, subjecting them to heat and cold, etc. is a bad thing psychologically.
This actually may have significance, because in a number of US states, membership in the APA is required to hold a license.
CNN has a story on how the Subprime* meltdown is Subprime hitting high-end homes.
I think that the story is fairly “cry me a river”, for rich people, but there is an interesting graphic.
The idea here is that Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac cannot fund home loans over $417K, so these so-called “Jumbo” loans carry a larger interest rate.
While Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac are the largest mortgage resellers, it’s not their size, or their ability to negotiate a good deal that gets the lower rate (at least not most of it).
It’s that both of them are GSE (Government Sponsored Entities), chartered by the federal government.
What this means is that while they are private corporations, and owned by shareholders, and both have publicly traded shares, there is the implication, and only the implication, that in the event that they were to become insolvent, then the government would bail them out.
Most of the difference in rates between conforming and jumbo loans is simply this fact, and all of the change relative to one another in the past few months is due to this implicit government guarantee of payment.
This gap has gone from about 0.2% to about 0.7% because people have little confidence in private financial markets, and this appears to be continuing and accellerating.
*As I’ve said before, it’s not just Subprime
Elvira Arellano, who has been claiming sanctuary in a church for about a year has been arrested.
I understand that a number of people on either side of the issue will either see her as a victim of a system that would separate her from her son, or as a law breaker hiding behind that same son. (Truth be told, I’m on the harsher side of this)
The bigger picture has nothing to do with immigration or children. It has to do with the fact that federal, state, and local authorities allowed a church to grant her sanctuary.
The idea of Church as sanctuary from law enforcement is a throwback to established religions in Europe, and something that the founding fathers specifically wanted to eliminate.
I would argue that when a church wants to claim “sanctuary” society, and law enforcement in particular, is under a specific obligation to seize that person with all deliberate speed.
Ben Bernanke has now said that his concern is market stability, and not inflation.
It happens that it looks like the inflation numbers that he works with are completely bogus:
One of the “secrets” to Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan’s success as Fed chairman, was that he successfully pushed for adjustments to the consumer price index (CPI) to lower the reported inflation rate.
Right now, we are generally reporting an inflation rate of less than 3%.
There has been an agreement between the Fed and the government to understate inflation for some time. The justification is that it makes everyone look good, and allows for stealth cuts for entitlements.
The Christian Science Monitor has an article on the US Air Force looking at developing a mach 6+ hypersonic missile.
Though they bury the lede, they do get to the point:
“The [Air Force] today is looking for ways to become more relevant in the global war on terrorism beyond the smart bombs and the unmanned aerial vehicles it’s already providing mainly in support of ground (counterinsurgency) operations,” writes Guy Ben-Ari, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, in an e-mail.
In the fight against terrorism, the US’s most-wanted, such as Mr. bin Laden, are essentially moving targets. If bin Laden wants to have a meeting with his top lieutenants, for example, it will be called at the last minute and be short, intelligence officials say. That leaves the US military a small window in which to strike, posing a challenge to commanders and intelligence officials at the Air Force, which often oversees such operations. One option is to have missile assets in the area of the target already, perhaps by basing a bomber squadron in that region. Last year, when the Air Force zeroed in on a building where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was meeting, it was able to get two F-16C Fighting Falcon jets near the target in time to get Mr. Zarqawi, considered the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
This is about the USAF creating a weapon intended for assassination in order to gain more relevance in what looks to be the dominant mode of conflict in the next few decades.
Well, it looks like the someone gets what the RIAA is, and they’ve filed a class action suit claiming:
I would argue that all of these accusations are to be accurate, and that there is a significant benefit to society if the RIAA, and it’s equally evil twin, the MPAA, are properly labeled as the racketeers that they truly are.
They are protection operations that prey on those too weak to defend themselves, doing things like trying to browbeat a 10 year old (see article), etc.
A monetary judgment would be nice, but I want to see jail time.
The Fortune magazine editor at large asks the question that we should all be asking, “Why does Wall Street always get bailed out?“
His answer is I think in some ways inadequate. It’s more than protecting the financial system. After all, if it were just about that, some of the people behind this debacle would be kicked off Wall Street for life.
It’s about the fact that central bankers feel a need to protect “people like us”.
The subprime-mortgage-market meltdown is a classic example of the way small fry get devoured, but the whales of Wall Street get rescued. Here’s the deal: People with crummy credit who took out mortgages are being allowed to fail in record numbers. The mortgage companies that made those loans are being allowed to fail.
…
But the world’s central banks aren’t letting the big guys fail. Think of it as the Escape of the Enablers. The reason this is happening, of course, is the same reason that the Fed orchestrated a bailout of the infamous Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund a decade ago-and about 20 years ago didn’t close some of the nation’s biggest banks, even though they were effectively insolvent because unrealized losses had wiped out their capital.
It’s the “too big to fail” syndrome. In a world in which big players make incredibly large and complex deals with one another – that’s what derivatives are – regulators don’t dare let a big or important institution fail for fear that the collapse of one would lead to “cascading failures,” and other institutions wouldn’t be able to collect what the collapsed institution owed them.
….
Sure, we know that Ben and the boys will always bail out the biggies. And none of us – I think, anyway – wants the world’s financial system to implode. But I’d feel a lot better if the Street had to pay a serious price to its rescuers–say, having to fork over a big equity stake and pay a loan-shark interest rate. That way taxpayers, who are picking up the tab for the rescue, would get paid bigtime for taking on bigtime risk.
Dean Baker correctly criticizes the New York Times for mischaracterizing the nature of immigration in this article.
The Times claims that poor immigrants find far more in the way of barriers than do the rich, and rightly notes that while poor immigrants may run across the borders, “The United States much more severely restricts the flows of highly educated immigrants than less-educated immigrants, it just uses different mechanisms. In the case of highly educated immigrants, the government at least partially enforces laws that prohibit employers from hiring immigrants at wages that are lower than what citizens would be willing to work for. There are no newspapers, hospitals, universities, or law firms that bring in large numbers of undocumented professionals and pay them half of the prevailing wage in their occupation. Such an institution would almost certainly be shut down, with the employers facing prosecution.“
This is not entirely accurate either. While the poor may be smuggled across borders in the back of 18 wheelers, and the more well to do will fly in, which makes the trek for the former easier, the divide is not between rich and poor, but between workers, and “professionals”.
Programmers, engineers, and nurses (which kind of eliminates your hospital example) are routinely replaced by lower paid H1b/L1 workers, and these visas are also used to lower wages in the fields.
The divide is that people who draw up this policy (Lawyers, Economists, and other Academicians), those who belong to professions that they might want their children to go into (Doctors), and those who are needed to cheer lead these policies (Journalists), are protected.
It’s about protecting, “People like us”, more than it is about rich and poor.
Stephen Biddle, who appears (quick Google) to be one of the more reality oriented members of the foreign policy establishment, though he worked on the current “surge” policy with Petraeus, is suggesting that a British from Iraq will be ugly and violent, with Shiite forces attacking them on the way out in order to create bragging rights that they “pushed the British out”?
If what he says is true, and I am not convinced, these people already largely control Basra, and there are very real advantages to facilitating the UK exit, it’s irrelevant, because it will be a factor whenever the troops pull out.
We cannot fix what was broken in Iraq.
Well, it appears that Michigan will move up its primary to January 15.
That pushes New Hampshire to January 8, and Iowa likely to 2007. This is out of hand.
This is an artifact of the movement, which really got rolling in 1988, to create “super Tuesdays”. The original purpose was to nominate a Southerner (remember Good Ole Boy Michael “Scooter” Dukakkis nominated in 1988?), but it has served to render any primary outside of the first month following Iowa irrelevant.
This is a VERY good OP/ED in the New York Times, The War as We Saw It, written by recent Iraq war vets in the 82nd Airborne. Their point is that , “Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence.”
You may recall that I posted about how Japan’s request for the F-22 constituted a major change in their until now pacifist military posture.
I also sent a letter to the editor to Aviation Week and Space Technology about this, since it was in response to their article.
It just got published in AW&ST. Woot!
Update, if you have a subscription, it’s the 3rd letter down here.
Ya mother’s calling from Yenta Tones.
Good stuff.
Well, it appears that the US Air Force will be requiring a fixed price bid in for their new tanker program.
Seeing as how Boeing and Aribus are going at it hammer and tongs about this, you want to get a large number of aircraft bid out at a fixed price before you make the award.
The Pentagon has it right here.
As a result of Bush sanctions against Venezuela, including the denial of spares on the F-16 fleet, Chávez has moved toward acquiring Russian equipment.
Now, he is purchasing a large quantity of Dragunov sniper rifles.
The Dragunov is a derived for the AK-47 with a scope, and while it underperforms designed from scratch sniper rifles, it is simple, more accurate than an assault rifle, and more powerful (it uses a full rifle round). Realistic use is out to about 600m according to wiki.
“Sales like this, and other sales of military equipment and arms to Venezuela, don’t seem consistent with Venezuela’s needs,” David J. Kramer, deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said by telephone.
“It does raise questions about their ultimate use,” he added. “We’re not sure what their purpose would be.”
It took me 5 seconds to realize that this is intended to for a number of things:
Of course, I’m not a blithering idiot Bush administration official, so I can spot the obvious.
Mark Joyce, the Americas editor for Jane’s Country Risk, part of Jane’s Information Group, said that a purchase of thousands of sniper rifles would fit with the continuing military reorganization in Venezuela under Mr. Chávez.
The changes emphasize large civilian reserve forces, which bypass the traditional military chain of command and report directly to Mr. Chávez and could become the core of a domestic guerrilla force if Venezuela were invaded.
Not sure what it means, except that perhaps the two countries are far closer than when it was the USSR across the border.
…
The exercises take place against a backdrop of mounting rivalry between the West, and Russia and China for influence over Central Asia, a strategic region that has huge oil, gas and mineral resources.
That being said, I think that much of the world is looking for some sort of return to a bipolar world.
The Serbian Government is calling to reinsert its troops back into Kosovo. You know, the folks who committed genocide?
Enough is enough. I know that the Russians will veto any UN resolution giving Kosovo independence, but this does not prevent the US, UK, France, etc. from recognizing the nation.
It should be remembered the Serbian authorities are not victims, but rather perpetrators of unspeakable acts, and because of this, they lack any moral claim over the region.
I commented on it briefly, and the stocks recovered, the Murdoch Dow ending down only 15 points, after being down more than 300 points.
Well, now I know why: the Fed cut the discount rate by 50 basis points. An surprise half a percent rate cut has a way of getting people to buy stocks.
I don’t think that it will mean much in the long term. As Nouriel Roubini says, “Given the serious insolvency – rather than just illiquidity– among many economic agents (many mortgage-burdened households, dozens of mortgage lenders, homebuilders, some hedge funds and financial institutions, some distressed corporates) a formal 25bps cut will not make much of the difference as you cannot solve an insolvency problem by throwing liquidity at it.“