It’s politicians, it appears. (At around 4:00)
Have I mentioned lately that Jon Stewart is a f$#@ing genius?
Month: September 2009
People Who You Cannot Trust
Are They Selling Your Child’s Data to Junk Food Makers or a Child Sex Ring?The publishers of the software known as nannyware:
A software product sold to protect children from predators, cyberbullying, and visiting inappropriate Web sites is also collecting information about what the kids are saying, and its publisher is selling that data–in aggregate form–to other companies for marketing purposes.
In an interview, Echometrix CEO Jeffrey Greene said that the company doesn’t collect or report the names or any identifying information about the children. “We never, ever, ever can identify who the kid is who is saying it. In fact, we don’t have any information about the individual child,” he said.
Yeah, sure, as has been noted with Netflix, bits apparently innocuous data frequently make it trivial to identify a user.
In the case of Netflix, by knowing a couple of their video likes and dislikes, you could extract their entire video rental history with a probability of 28 standard deviations (99.87% probability, or a bout 1 in 800)
You know, if this were video rental data from adults, as opposed to conversations online by children, this would be illegal.
Two Rafales Down Over Mediterranean
It sounds like it was a mid-air collision during a training mission, though that is just my take on a sketchy description.
They were from the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle’s air wing, though it’s not clear if they were flying from the Chuck.
1 Pilot has been recovered, the other is still missing.
The Term is Pump and Dump
Happy, happy, joy, joy, the ratio of insiders selling stock to insiders buying stock has
fallen to only 40.6:1 seller:buyer.
At the end of August, it was 61.8:1, but even with the improvement, a lot of folks are getting the f#$@ out of Dodge.
This is what happens when the Federal reserve’s prescription for a financial crisis is to print money for banks to buy stock, which drives the price up, and the insiders are selling stock just as fast as they can.
At the rate that this is going, the smart investment won’t be gold, it will be ammunition and canned goods.
Glenn Beck: Objectively Pro-Slavery
Olbermann’s worst persons….And I got nothing to add:
AIDS Vaccine Achieves 1/3 Protection
They have been testing an AIDS vaccine, actually a combination of 2 failed AIDS vaccines in Thailand, and it appears that it has a 32% effectiveness rate.
That may not seem like much, but typically, you start to see reductions in outbreaks once you hit this level, and this is the first vaccine that has shown any effect ever.
Of course, we can now expect the vaccine manufacturers to price it at a high enough price so that people in Thailand won’t be able to afford the vaccine.
Economics Update
Click image for full size
Unemployment Graph Pr0n Courtesy of Calculated Risk
Exhaustion Rate Graph Pr0n Courtesy of zero hedge
Initial claims for unemployment fell this week again, down 21K to 530K, but that’s because unemployment claims from last week were revised to 551. The first count was 545K, so the apples to apples delta is 15K, not 21K (I love how it always seems to work out this way).
The 4 week moving average fell too, 553.5K, down from 546.5K, and continuing claims fell 123K, to 6.138m from last weeks 6,261m.
Note, however, that continuing claims do not count folks who are on extended benefits, or who have exhausted benefits, and that the exhaustion rate has hit a new record, with 52.40% of all people filing for unemployment exhausting their benefits before they find another job.
In real estate, existing home sales fell for the first time in 5 months, and we are hearing dire warnings about a shadow inventory of 7 million foreclosures which have yet to hit the market, either because the lenders are hip deep in foreclosures, and the process is proceeding slowly, or because they are holding off to avoid selling into a down market.
The down housing market has been good for treasuries, with prices rising, and yields falling, as people flock to their relative safety.
The quest for safety has investors running back to dollars, driving the greenback up, and pushing oil down below $66/bbl (!).
Someone is not believing in recovery here.
Massachusetts Senate Update
The Massachusetts Republican Party just filed for an injunction against Paul Kirk’s appointment to the US Senate.
The issue is that under the state constitution, laws do not take effect for 90 days unless they are declared “emergency laws,” as Governor Patrick has.
No clue as to the finer constitutional points here.
[update]
The judge has not granted an ex parte restraining order, which would immedieatly stay the restraining order, which implies the court expects arguments and motions to be done well before the formal Friday appointment and/or that the Republicans have little or no case.
Oopsie!
Well, it looks like Republican Jihad against Acorn may have uninended consequences.
You see, in order to avoid an unconstitutional bill of attainder in their quest to punish Acorn for registering black people to vote being taken in by a right Gonzo videographer, the bill was drafted broadly.
“How broadly,” you ask?
The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to “any organization” that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.
In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) picked up on the legislative overreach and asked the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) to sift through its database to find which contractors might be caught in the ACORN net.
Lockheed Martin and Northrop Gumman both popped up quickly, with 20 fraud cases between them, and the longer list is a Who’s Who of weapons manufacturers and defense contractors.
Needless to say, I don’t expect anyone to enforce it against anyone but Acorn, but this does sound a bit unfortunate.
Looks Like the Tobin tax is Gaining Currency*
The Tobin tax, basically a small tax (typically less than ¼%) on financial transactions to discourage rampant speculation and high frequency trading, is moving into the Overton window, and leaving the realm of “you’re nuts,” and entering the realm of “serious people can discuss this.”
2 Weeks ago, Peer Steinbrück, Germany’s finance minister, called for just such a tax, and today an OP/Ed he wrote calling for an 0.05% tax to, noting that German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier also supports this policy.
Personally, I’d much rather see the tax rate closer to ¼% than his proposal of 1/20%, but it’s a good start.
According to his numbers, revenues would amount to, “$690bn a year, or about 1.4 per cent of world GDP,” which, while nowhere near covering the bailout by taxpayers to the banks, AIG alone has sucked about 1/3 of that out of taxpayers, and total spending on the just the TARP is over $700 billion, does have the effect of making bankers feel the pain, and it also makes risky high frequency trading operations economically nonviable.
BTW, it’s not just the Krauts who are beginning to look at this seriously. Adair Turner, chair of the Financial Services Authority in the UK, is calling for the same thing:
So Mr. Turner is proposing a few changes, none of which would make the bankers very happy. Tax financial transactions. Increase capital requirements. Shrink the financial industry, which, at its peak, accounted for roughly 11 percent of the British economy. Only then, he argues, can banks’ excessive profits — and bankers’ pay — be curtailed.
I would also note that Turner has also explicitly stated that the size of the financial industry needs to be reduced because, “The City [the London equivalent of Wall Street] takes too much from British society and gives back too little. It has grown too big and too powerful.”
It’s interesting that this discussion has moved from “crazy people” like Dean Baker, who, we should note, was 100% correct on spotting the real estate bubble, and put his money where his mouth was, selling his condo and going to renting in 2004, though he has recently purchased a detached house to movers and shakers.
And not a moment too soon.
*Pun not intended.
Kennedy Replacement Named
Former Kennedy aide and DNC chairman Paul Kirk was appointed to serve as Senator by Governor Deval Patrick.
He has announced that he will not run in the special election.
So, the Dems have cloture, so long as Senator Byrd keeps breathing.
From the Depart of Unbelievably F$#@ing Stupid Ideas
I give you the conversion of a training grenade into an MP3 player.
Unless you are someone who really likes getting body cavity searches and trips to Guantanamo Bay, this is not the gadget for you.
You Know the Downturn is Severe When
The manufacturer of the AK-47, OAO Izhmash, is filing for bankruptcy.
If there was anything out there that I thought would be a growth industry……
Another Claude Raines Moment: Banker Salaries
I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!
US Bank CEO Pay Dwarfs Rest of the World: Study
I am stunned that suggestion that the geniuses at Wall Street might somehow be overpaid:
Jiang, chairman of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, made just $234,700 in 2008. That’s less than 2 percent of the $19.6 million awarded to Jamie Dimon, chief executive of the world’s fourth-largest bank, JPMorgan Chase
…
“The U.S. executive pay levels have always dwarfed pay for companies elsewhere in the world,” said Sarah Anderson, a fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies, which is critical of Wall Street, and co-author of the recent study “America’s Bailout Barons.”
“They have claimed it is impossible to recruit people without paying such compensation. Yet, if you look at the pay levels in Europe and in a lot of Asian countries, somehow they manage to find people who can run major global firms while making a fraction of what they make in the U.S.,” she said.
Great googly moogly: Why don’t we just outsource bank presidents to China.
Coup Conspirators in Honduras Up Pressure
In addition to the police shooting a man dead, state security forces have surrounded the embassy where Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has taken refuge after slipping back into the country.
While Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been out front in all this, all we’ve heard from Obama is crickets.
With one simple step, a freeze on money transfers back to Honduras from expats, we’d have Zelaya back in office for the 2½ months remaining in his term.
US inaction has the effect of legitimizing coups against leaders who are unfriendly to Wall Street, and I’m wondering if that is a feature, rather than a bug.
Barney Frank Can Go Cheney Himself
Generally, I like the guy, but this is crap.
In addition to excising the requirement that banks offer “plain vanilla” mortgages and credit cards, you know, products which the consumer can actually understand enough to comparison shop for, the bill removes, “securities, commodities, investment and general insurance products; accountants and tax preparers; real estate brokers and agents; lawyers; auto dealers; communications providers; and providers of retirement and pension plans,” from the scope of the proposed consumer protection agency.
Great googly moogly! When you look at industries that confuse and abuse consumers as their primary means of profit, you have most of them in between the quotation marks.
And if you want a couple more, how about,”retailers who have credit or layaway plans and auto dealers who offer loans to buy vehicles,” because used car dealers and “Rent-A-Center” have done so well in doing right by the consumer.
Unsurprisingly, the poster child for regulatory capture, Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner, expressed support for weakening the bill.
Yes, I know sausage making, but it’s damn depressing.
The Worst Web Site Ever
Carly Fiorina’s site for her bid to be the next Senator from California.
You know, you would figure that maybe the site’s design would be a little more tech savvy for a former head of HP, but then you realize that it’s….well….Carly.
If there is a better example of a destructive and dishonest empty suit out there, I’d be hard pressed to find it.
Dead Bank Walking
It looks like another local bank has a few weeks/months to live.
First Mariner Bank has agreed to a cease and desist order from regulators requiring that they end “unsafe and unsound practices.”
Generally, it’s less than 2 weeks from when I hear of such a notice until the bank hits the BFF list.
House Moving on LGBT Job Protection Bill
The House Labor Committee is looking at a bill which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to protected classes under the civil rights laws.
About damn time. It passed in the house in 2007, but wilted under a Bush veto threat.
The cynic in me wonders how Obama’s people are going to try to knife it this time around, because they have gone out of their way to knife the LGBT community on almost every other level, because they found morality inconvenient in their quest for bipartisanship.
Economics Update
The big news today is that Fed’s Open Market Committee has issued its regular statement (here), though the cartoons are just ducky.
They left their benchmark interest rate unchanged, but issued a rather positive statement about how things are getting better, and that they would be phasing out their purchases of mortgage backed securities:
To provide support to mortgage lending and housing markets and to improve overall conditions in private credit markets, the Federal Reserve will purchase a total of $1.25 trillion of agency mortgage-backed securities and up to $200 billion of agency debt. The Committee will gradually slow the pace of these purchases in order to promote a smooth transition in markets and anticipates that they will be executed by the end of the first quarter of 2010.
(emphasis mine)
Their announcement that the purchase program will be terminating in about 6 months has increased demand for Treasuries, driving their yields down today, but over the past week, before their announcement, mortgage rates have fallen below 5% for the 30 year fixed (!), pushing mortgage applications are up.
I don’t think that the low mortgage rates, or the level of mortgage apps will remain where it is for long, now that the Fed is shutting down its program to bid the rates down.
Meanwhile, in the only non-corrupt petro-state on earth, the Norwegian Central Bank has kept deposit rates at 1.25%.
I’m not sure what this means for real estate, though because the US and the rest of the world seem to be going in separate directions, with Manhattan rents dropping 8% over the previous year, and the Paris, France office market showing signs of a real revival.
It confuses the hell out of me.
In any case we do have some numbers heading in the same direction, with the European manufacturing and services industries index rising to 50.8, with any number above 50 being expansion, and US seen vehicle miles driven, as reported by the DOT are up too.
On the flip side, we have credit card defaults hitting 11.49%, in August, up almost a full percent from July’s 10.52%, the 25 biggest US retailers looking to cut back on holiday hiring, and mass layoffs in August rose to 2,690 with 259,307 people losing their jobs.
In energy and currency, oil fell on rising inventories, and the dollar remained near yesterday’s lows.