Month: March 2008

Well, That Was Quick

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So I’m doing a a google on ERISA and healthcare, and there was a sponsored ad, a link to this:

Quote:

Bear Stearns Stock

Date Started: March 17, 2008

Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP is investigating possible ERISA violations by the Bear Stearns Companies Inc. relating to the Employees Stock Ownership Plan (“ESOP”).

The investigation comes after JPMorgan Chase & Co. announced it is purchasing Bear Sterns for $2 per share, 90 percent less than the 85-year-old firm’s market value last week. The investigation is looking into whether fiduciaries of the Company’s ESOP knew or should have known that Bear Stearns concealed its exposure to risky collateralized debt obligations, sub-prime mortgages and other poor-quality securities. If fiduciaries did not exhibit due diligence in protecting the ESOP participant’s investments in Company stock and were aware of the extremely high-risk investments the company made, plan fiduciaries could be found in violation of ERISA laws.

Concerning possible ERISA violations, Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro is looking at whether or not Bear Stearns continued to offer and hold company stock in the ESOP when it was no longer prudent to do so, and if the company failed to take action to sell Bear Stearns stock or otherwise protect the plan’s assets in light of the company’s risky business strategies and deteriorating financial condition.

In a company press release on March 16, 2008, the company announced that JPMorgan would acquire Bear Stearns and stocks could be transferred from Bear Stearns to JPMorgan based on the closing numbers from March 15, 2008. Bear Stearns stock tumbled from $30.00 per share on March 14 to $4.81 at closing on Monday, March 17, 2008.

If you have information concerning this investigation you can sign up to join the investigation, or contact Hagens Berman at 206/623-7292 or via e-mail at info@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.

Well, that was quick.

Cramming for My Drug Test

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Well, Purim starts Thursday night, and so Sharon*, got us our favorite hamentashen†.

Mine is mohn, a sweet poppy-seed filling, so I were I to have to pee in a cup in the next couple of days, I’m sure that I’d show metabolites of opiates right now.

Homey don’t do that stuff no more, though as to the use of legal intoxicants, such as that marvelous output of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, I’ll be doing some of that.

The rabbinic ruling on Purim is that one should drink enough that they confuse Hamen (the villain of the story) and Mordehai (the hero of the story), though I won’t be taking it that far.

In any case, my Sharon* will most certainly be driving.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
†A three sided stuffed pastry eaten as a part of the celebration.

Lunch Meeting at Work.

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I got free food, but I still hate meetings with a passion.

Basically, we’ve got a lot of work, and we look to have more coming in.

Most of the discussion was on profits and bonuses, which don’t really involve me, because I am a contractor.

One interesting thing is that our division does a lot of internal work for other divisions, but doesn’t get credited for the profits derived from the plan.

I guess that one of those problems with profit sharing plans is identifying whose profit it is.

Additionally, they went over a controversy over some work involving wfrom Italy being brought here (see here, here, here, here, here, and here), but this part of the discussion was pretty low key, just a quick rundown of the bullet point arguments.

Obviously as per any industry that regulation heavy, there was some discussion of politics and the election, but it was fairly low key, mostly in terms of uncertainty in the market.

Wish that it hadn’t been Domino’s pizza. It’s OK, if you ask for ½ the normal amount of sauce, but the Domino’s owner is still a right wing turd.

Economics Update

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First, news of the stupid, Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight has reduced the reserve capital requirements for the GSEs, so Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be able to loan another 200 billion out.

The problem is blow back from too much leverage, so you are allowing more leverage?

There are people walking away from their homes now because they realize that it will be 10+ years before they have any equity at all in their homes, and you want more exposure to the 2nd and 3rd largest borrowers in the world?

BTW one of the interesting points about yesterday’s rate cuts was that the dollar strengthened, which really runs counter to the normal motion. The analysts say that this was because it indicated that the Fed was really going to keep the economy out of recession.

Well, that lasted about 24 hours (here and here)

Of course no bit of economic news is complete without the performance art/low humor known as a press release from one of the monoliner insurers, in this case
Ambac claiming that it had “no material exposure” to the Bear Stearns debacle.

Yeah, sure. I may not be an economist, but I know weasel words when I hear them.

BTW, one of the CEOs of the big 3 auto makers are expecting sales to be poor this year. Such insight. That must be why they get paid 7 figures a year plus bonus.

Mortgage application volume fell 2.9% last week. No one is lending, and no one is buying.

Finally, we have Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers conducting a fire sale on some of their dicier oinvestments fire sale on debt associated with leveraged buy-outs and private equity deals.

This is considered a good thing, which locally, it is. If you pump radioactive waste out of your basement, into the town reservoir, you are doing better personally.

Confirmed: DNI Michael McConnel is a Patholigical Liar

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That was always the question, was he lying for the policy purposes of Bush and His Evil Minions™, or simply because he is a liar

It’s now confirmed that he lies because he has some problems. Seriously.

This time he is doing it about a myth that has been debunked on Snopes, specifically he claimed in a speech that he “heard the tape” of the exchange in which an officer on an aircraft carrier demanded that a lighthouse change course.

In truth the Navy debunked this a decade ago.

Regulation Fuels Competition In Euro Broadband

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So now, the New York Times finally notices that the rest of the industrial world is beating our brains out in boradband.

It’s very simple. If you don’t regulate in a market with high barriers to entry, it is more profitable for the incumbent to work on keeping, and raising, those barriers to entry. It’s more profitable than attempting to build a better cheaper product.

The US have given thousands in subsidies to the incumbent telcos, and done nothing by way of regulation, and as a result we have 2nd rate service (hi Comcast users):

Ms. Reding emphasized her determination to encourage greater competition in the market and to give regulators the power to force “functional separation” — obliging the owners of telecommunications networks to free the networks from their operating divisions.

Word up on Ms. Reding.

OK, Legitimate Issue on the MI Revote, NOT Stonewalling

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In discussing a possible revote, I noted that I thought that objections being raised by the Obama campaign were a specious attempt to stone wall.

I’ve finally come across some of the specific issues that they have with a revote, and they are in fact quite valid.

One question is who do you allow to vote. Unlike a lot of other states, Michigan has an open primary, which means that you can choose which ballot you want when you walk into the polling area, regardless of party affiliation.

To quote Chairman Kaga, “As Memory Serves”, there were a lot of Democrats who chose to vote for Mittmentum, because they thought that he would be particularly weak in the general.

So, there is now an issue regarding what to do with the people who voted on the Republican ticket.

This is a completely legitimate issue.

My preferred solution would be to simply allow only people who were registered Democrats as of the date of the first election to participate in any revote, regardless of which ballot they took in January. I think that open primaries create too much mischief, particularly in this instance.

In any case, this issue has a number of possible solutions, and it cuts to the very core of any possible revote, so it is a very valid concern, and needs to be addressed to the satisfaction of both campaigns.

Me bad on calling it stonewalling

‘State secrets’ privilege fuels surveillance bill battle – Yahoo! News

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In the discussion of the House FISA bill, I’ve frequently discussed the telco immunity, it also represents a a significant change to the much abused state secrets privilige.

It now requires that evidence be presented to the judge, though not the litigants.

This is important because the state secrets privilege has been rotten to its core from its first use, which the Supreme Court heard as U.S. v. Reynolds, that had no actual state secrets involved.

The government just lied to the court in claiming that the B-29 involved in a crashwas on a secret mission, when the aircraft was not on a secret mission.

They simply did not want to admit that the crash was caused by grossly negligent maintenance.

The state secrets privilege should be abolished.

New Jersey Entering Personal Mandate Health Insurance

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We are moving towards some sort of single payer system in the US. Personally, I favor a NHS, but your milage may vary.

The reason that we are seeing personal mandates right now is because ERISA, passed in 1974, pretty much prohibits most other sorts of action.

The best short term solution is to remove the preemption clause of that law, because in addition to preventing meaningful healthcare reform, it provides a ‘get out of jail free’ card to the worst actors in the insurance business.

XM360 Gun for MCS Variant of the Future Combat System

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While I think that the entire manned vehicle portion of the Future Combat System is a waste*, there are some technologies that look to be interesting from a military perspective.

Case in point, the lightweight XM360 120mm gun for the MCS (Tank) variant of the FCS-MGV†.

It’s about a ton lighter than the 120mm gun used on the Abrams, with significant reductions in recoil, both due to a more effective recoil system, and because it uses a muzzle break that is compatible with sabot rounds.

It achieves the weight savings through a high strength steel barrell with a composite wrapping to keep tension on the barrel, and by using largely titanium components in the recoil assembly, much like the lightweight towed M777 155mm howitzer.

Of interest, the gun is also capable of indirect fire out to 12 km, which would be an improvement on M256 used on the Abrams, which does not have this capability.

Image courtesy of Wiki.

*Full disclosure, I worked on the Future Recovery and Maintenance Vehicle, FRMV, “wrecker” variant from 2003-2006 at United Defense (later BAE Systems after the Carlyle Group sold me to buy Dunkin Donuts).
†Future Combat Systems-Manned Ground Vehicle. These are the ones that are the tanks and APCs. As opposed to the various unnmanned vehicles, etc. that form the full FCS.

Mo Tanker, Mo Tanker, Mo Tanker

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I think that I missed a couple of things from the March 10 Aviation Week issue that I need to address now, specifically some rather telling comments in the “Hometown Hubris” article.

Interesting stuff:

  • IBoeing’s proposal was, “far too risky and expensive”. The 767-200LRF “Frankentanker” used the, “767-200 airframe; over-wing exits from the -300; floors, doors and structurally enhanced wings from the -300F; a cockpit, tail section and flaps from the -400ER, a completely new and not yet produced configuration.
    • By comparision, the A-330 proposal was nearly identical to the Australia tanker currently in test.
  • Boeing felt that, “Air Force purchase of tankers capable of hauling large amounts of cargo could jeopardize Boeing’s already tenuous C-17 production line”.
    • It’s worth noting that Boeing has already purchased long lead C-17 items for 10 airframes in the expectation of more orders.
  • Boeing did consider the 777, and considered pitching both the 767 and 777, but decided on pitching just the 767. There are claims that someone “discouraged” submittal on the 777, but no name or time are given.
  • The U.S. requirements were similar to Australia’s. The Australian defense forces wanted a tanker that could refuel 3+ fighters, and carry maintenance crew and spares to a distant Pacific airport. The smaller airports of Europe and the Middle East were not as important in their scenarios.
    • The 767 could not do this. You would need a 2nd freighter to carry crew and spares.

Now I get it. They pitched the 767, and not the 777 because they thought that the latter would compete with the C-17.

Additionally, to the degree that there was a short field requirement, the 777’s short field performance is lacking, with its wing optimized toward the cruise efficiency end of the spectrum,

Note, the boom is not rocket science. McDonnell Douglas developed their own in the 1970s, and Airbus is testing theirs for Australia as as I write.

THIS Was in the CORNER??????

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Talk about signs of the Apocalypse, when Charles Murray, the bigot who wrote The Bell Curve, posted on the Corner Blog of the National Review, a Magazine that never failed out to speak out in favor of bigotry and racist policies until it was too late to make a difference, just described Barack Obama’s speech as, “just plain flat out brilliant”.

You know, if I was hoping for the Rapture, I’d be looking this as a bigger sign than anything happening in Israel.

BTW, the speech is below, and it is remarkable (37:39):