But I’m an engineer, so a lot of the rest of you may not understand why I think that the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) diamond coatings on tools is neat.
It’s been “just around the corner” for some time, and the fact that we are seeing a commercial application (F-35 wing skin cutting), with tool life increasing by a factor of is interesting.
I’m wondering if we’re going to start seeing CVD diamond on heat sinks, as it’s the most thermally conductive substance on earth.
Shabbos is coming up, followed by the two Yom Tovim for the first two days of Pesach, and since my Orthodox mother-in-law is here for the holidays, no use of computers…or cars…or light switches for the duration.
That being said, let me give both of my readers a piece of advice. If you take it, you will never regret it.
Buy kosher for Passover Coca Cola!
You can identify it by looking at the lid. They are typically yellow, though not always, but the non KFP stuff will simply have an OU on the lid (A U inside the O, a symbol of the Orthodox Union kosher cert), while the KFP stuff will have an OU-P on the lid (-P for Passover).
It is 100% cane sugar, none of that Corn Syrup crap.
Why am I not surprised.
This time though, it wasn’t to spy on political opponents find terrorists, and it wasn’t to torture children gain important intelligence.
This time, it was to make sure that children did not get medical care, because the insurance companies contribute to Republicans.
The Bush administration’s limits on expansions of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) are unlawful, according to Congress’s investigative arm.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) unlawfully bypassed congressional review when it issued a directive to states in August alerting them that federal authorities would seek to restrict raising the income eligibility level for the program, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded in a report issued Thursday.
**Sigh**
It now appears that Petraeus has had a plan of a massive US offensive in Basra for some time, and Nouri al-Maliki, fearful of the political blow-back from US operations there, launched his own campaign last month.
The last three paras reveal that the politics here are Byzantine:
Bush administration suspicions of al-Maliki’s intentions could not have been eased by the fact that a delegation of pro-government parties traveled to Iran to ask the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to negotiate a ceasefire with the Mahdi Army. That ploy move, which did result in a tenuous ceasefire, raised the possibility that al-Maliki intended from the beginning that the outcome of the Basra operation would be a new agreement that would prevent the deployment of U.S. and British troops to fight the Mahdi Army during the summer.
Bush administration officials have been asserting that the most important thing about the Basra operation is that al-Maliki is now convinced that Iran is really an enemy rather than a friend. But al-Maliki’s Apr. 7 interview with CNN’s Robertson made it clear that he has not budged from his position that his government’s interests lie in an accord between Iran and the United States — not in taking sides against Iran.
“We will always reject the idea of any side using Iraq as a launching pad for its attack on others,” said al-Maliki. “We reject Iran using Iraq to attack the U.S., and at the same time we reject the idea of the U.S. using Iraq to attack Iran…”
Why the hell are we in there again?
The former CEO of Fannie Mae has has agreed to pay $24.7 million for stock manipulation. In total for the executives in question, it’s $31.4 million.
No. When you steal that money from that many people, which is what the stock/earnings manipulation did to the shareholders, you should go to jail for a very long time.
Any answer to my question?
U.S. Begins Erecting Wall in Sadr City
By MICHAEL R. GORDONBAGHDAD — Trying to stem the infiltration of militia fighters, American forces have begun to build a massive concrete wall that will partition Sadr City, the densely populated Shiite neighborhood in the Iraqi capital.
The construction, which began Tuesday night, is intended to turn the southern quarter of Sadr City near the international Green Zone into a protected enclave, secured by Iraqi and American forces, where the Iraqi government can undertake reconstruction efforts.
This is what passes for moral leadership under Bush and His Evil Minions™.
I want my country back.
The rebels in Nigeria’s delta region just bombed an oil pipeline, and in response, oil hit $117/bbl before settling at $116.69.
In addtion to lower levels of employment, hours worked by those still employed are also down, so there are fewer people doing less work to produce goods and services.
Both Citi and AT&T are announcing big layoffs because of losses (Citi), and “increased competitive pressure (AT&T).
It’s a recession already.
The Fed just auctioned off about $25 billion for non-magic beans, as a part of its ongoing Wall St. bailout.
Yesterdya, I talked about new home sales falling, today, it’s existing home sales falling 13%, but north of the Border in Canada, which has generally had a better regulated loan market.
Finally, a picture, courtesy of Paul Krugman showing the increase in the LIBOR-OIS spread since this all started:
The second image is actually a bit scarier, because it shows a longer time frame, and it shows that the spread is completely outside of historical norms.
Her take-down of Camille Paglia should be read by every person in the world.
All 6+ billion.
Tracing Paglia’s intellectual ancestry is a telling exercise; she’s the lineal descendant of Ayn Rand, who in turn was a student of William Graham Sumner, one of the early American sociologists and an enormously successful popularzier of social Darwinism. Sumner was in turn a disciple of Herbert Spencer, that splendid nineteenth-century kook. Because Paglia reasserts ideas so ingrained in our thinking, she has become popular by reaffirming common prejudices.
Go read.
I miss Molly. She was the best thing to come out of Texas since….maybe ever, and both my kids were born there.
Alfred Lord, the CEO of Sallie Mae*, is saying that Sallie is looking at a potential “train wreck” in student loans, because no one is buying their repackaged debt, and because federal law has reduced the subsides
This is a good thing. The student loan business is a racket. It costs both the student and the taxpayer more than direct loans from the government.
These loans have special protections, they are not dischargeable by bankruptcy, and the juxtaposition of subsidies and government guaranties to the lenders make it a truly parasitic part of the financial system.
I should note that, God help me, I actually agree with David Frum’s position that the student loan/grant process is, and creates unconscionable costs to higher ed, because there is a federally maintained never-never land loan plan, which cushions the effects of inflation.
Where he and I differ is that he suggests, or at least strongly implies support for, ending the program with no replacement†, while I think that the government has sufficient power as lender for student loans to enforce some realistic price controls.‡
*Sallie is not a Government Sponsored Entity (GSE) like Fannie and Freddie. It was, but it found the student loan market so lucrative that it successfully lobbied Congress to privatize in 2004, which is why the name sounds like s GSE’s name.
†Something he would love as a former fellow atthe racist Manhattan institute. It would mean that his children would have a student body much more comfortable to him.
‡Oh yeah, while you are at it, do something about the inflation in college text books too.
I’m not sure why, but it seems to be my day for quoting Martin Hutchinson, this time on inflation, where he points out that without the Bureau of Labor Statistics adjustments, inflation would be around 9%, which means that prices double every 8 years. (Use the law of 72 for quick figuring)
I noted this two weeks ago, and further noted that the mainstream press is beginning to note this too.
I think that correcting this would be a good thing. The only advantages to understating inflation are to collect more revenues from bracket creep, and to reduce benefits pegged to the CPI.
The downsides are legion:
In terms of actual inflation, I think that we get out of the credit crunch. If dollars are devalued, which is what inflation is, then repaying loans in those constant dollars becomes easier.
Furthermore, even while home prices decline in real terms, because of the devalued dollar, fewer will be “under water”, which means fewer foreclosures, neighborhood blight, and “jingle mail”.
We have a good news-bad news situation.
On the bad news side, we have Mugabe sending the state security apparatus to do violence to and to otherwise intimidate the electorate, reports of a humanitarian crisis, what appears to be a
wafe of refugees fleeing the country, and credible reports of
vote theft in the legislative elections.
On the brighter side, it appears that the Chinese arms shipment to Mugabe won’t be unloaded anytime soon, as you have impound orders from banks against the ship, US pressure to prevent offloading of the cargo, dock workers refusing to offload the cargo, and indications that the even the Chinese are backing down on the shipment.
Sane people know that when you get dumped by the Chinese, it’s game over.
Also, it appears that military leaders, and not Mugabe are increasingly making the day to day decisions in Zimbabwe, though it indicates how bad thing are when a slow motion coup d’etat is considered progress.
It also appears that the ANC is firmly turning against Thabo Mbeki’s policy of favoring Mugabe.
In more mixed news, Tsvangirai is appealing for UN intervention, which, as is often the case in such things probably will not make things any better.
I’m not sure that there is a real “vision” for my blog, except to provide for the 5-6% of personal posts that I want to put in my eponymous newsletter.
That being said, I think that my most consistent vision, after being a fighting liberal, is that I am an economic bear, and a pro-regulation one at that.
Martin Hutchinson, writing in the Asia Times, manages to distill much of what is going on right now. He calls it The degradation of accounting.
Basically, it comes down to the fact that any number of people have a vested interest, at least in the short term, of not using accounting that reflects the situation out in meat space.
THE BEAR’S LAIR
The degradation of accounting
By Martin HutchinsonFair value accounting, by which debt and equity securities on a company’s balance sheet are “marked to market” – written up or down to their market price – has been hyped by accountants and regulators as the epitome of modern financial reporting, enabling investors to gain a completely true picture of their investment’s financial position.
Indeed, Gerald White of the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute, speaking at an American Enterprise Institute conference on Tuesday, believes it should be applied to all items on the balance sheet, not just financial instruments. There is just one problem: in the turbulence of the past nine months, it has completely failed to
work and has indeed shown itself to be pro-cyclical, encouraging economically foolish behavior in both up and down cycles.
He notes that this is a change from when he was in B-School in the 1970s, when frequently assets such as real estate were on the balance sheet at a value close to what they were in the 1920s.
While having undervalued assets on a balance sheet is an issue in the old system, it’s also clear that the current system of accounting is less accurate, and it is less accurate in a potentially catestrophic way:
The new accounting standard FAS157, propounded in September 2006 and coming into effect for fiscal years beginning in 2008, codifies this trend but does not materially alter it. Its most startling feature for a layman is that it allows companies to mark-to-market assets for which there is no market. Financial assets are divided into three “levels” according to their degree of marketability. Level 1 assets are those for which a ready market exists, Level 2 assets are those for which a market exists for comparable securities and Level 3 assets are those for which no market exists, which are to be valued by use of mathematical models.
(emphasis mine)
He makes the note that this is why we have an insolvency crisis, not just a liquidity crisis.
It will take 5 minutes to read, and you should send it to every financial regulator you know.
Well, it appears that at the debates, Charlie Gibson echoed the latest right wing talking point/lie, that recent cuts in the capital gains tax rate have increased revenues, and that tax increases cut revenues. (I must have missed this because I found the debates too painful to watch).
This, along with the assertion that people making $200,000/year (the top 3%) are somehow middle class show why one should not put innumerate idiots in positions of authority in journalism.
Saying that tax cuts in capital gains increase revenue is like saying that running a year long sale in a store will increase profits.
What does happen is that one the eve of a change in the capital gains tax, you have accelerated (in the case of a future tax increase) or deferred (in the case of a future tax cut) profit taking. This is a one time per tax change effect.
It’s exactly like a store sale. It produces a temporary effect, and any attempt to use it to guide long term fiscal policy is dishonest.
Unfortunately, it’s hit the big time, with Fortune Magazine declaring that it has hit “the big time”, so it appears that much like new math, new Coke, sequels the Rocky, mortgage backed securities, and Astroturf, we will be seeing a lot of this.
The idea is that the government issues a limited number of carbon credits, basically permission to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and since there are fewer credits issued than would be actually needed, a “robust market” would be established where, because they can make money on these markets, carbon emitters would, through the magic of the profit motive, cut emissions.
You see, this market, with its highly compensated traders, and the complex investment vehicles that come with them, constitutes an unparalleled opportunity to create innovation.
Well, that’s the first problem. That’s what Alan Greenspan said about mortgage backed securities and credit default swaps, but it’s supposed to work just fine with combating global warming.
The second problem is that any regime for this is going to be difficult. You have to decide how many credits are issued, and who issues them, and how to regulate the market so you don’t have a lone trader bankrupting a multi-billion dollar company.
The most basic problem however, is that this is a tax on carbon.
Because your goal is to reduce carbon emissions, the number of credits issued must necessarily be lower than what the market really wants, at least a bit, which costs every business participating in it.
Only this tax goes to the polluters, at least the ones who manage to improve efficiencies or game the system by getting excess credits, and to the Bear Stearns types, who would leverage one of my farts if they could find a way.
If you are going to put a tax on pollution, then just tax that pollution, and let the government collect the monies, as opposed to the polluters and their parasites, and spend it on something other than multi million dollar executive compensation.
It’s spring, and cheap employers minds turn to using immigration to depress wages.
So, we see two articles regarding employers having problems finding workers because the H-1B (employees in specialty occupations), and H2B (seasonal employees) visa limits.
So we have hand wringing reports of high tech firms being unable to grow because of H1B limits, and, “Carnival operators in Alaska, landscapers in Pennsylvania and sugarcane processors in Louisiana” complaining of the same with regards to H2B.
The late Milton Friedman called the H1B a “just another government subsidy“, and he was right.
What’s more, it is a subsidy that works like a reverse Robin, taking from the poor and giving to the rich.
If you cannot find an employee in this moribund economy, you are not offering enough in wages and benefits.
Not only that, in the case of H1B visas in particular, it exacerbates any shortage (and there isn’t one, it’s just that people flee the profession in question) by dissuading people from entering these fields of study.
In the world of neat stuff for the tech geek, we have an entry from the folks at the University of Dayton Research Institute, who have developed a technique to apply layers of ceramics to metal in the same manner as an oyster creates a pearl.
While ceramic coatings are fairly common this is a room temperature normal atmospheric pressure process, and should be effective in reducing wear and corrosion.
It appears that this was driven by a better understanding of the lowly bivalve, which does not extract CaCO3 from seawater, but instead, “that oysters use blood cells to deposit crystals that form shell and pearl”.
This does appear to be a triumph of defense procurement.
$600 million is the price tag for the upgrade on the Gripen, where they replace the RM 12 (F404 derivative) with a GE F414G, giving about 25% more thrust, strengthen and relocate the landing gear, add more fuel, add two hard points for weapons carriage, and offer an AESA radar (though the radar seems to be an extra cost option).
While not quite as extensive as the F/A-18 C/D to F/A-18 E/F upgrade, the fuselage and wing profiles are nearly unchanged, the fact that they are doing this upgrade for something around the cost of a dozen aircraft is amazing.
My emotions mirror Bill Sweetman’s:
The whole deal cost the Swedish government – are you sitting down? – the equivalent of $600 million. That’s a little over half what the US will spend in one year on putting radios and plush carpets in the Presidential helicopter, and about the same as one year’s R&D on F-22 upgrades. And we wonder why we can’t afford our defense needs.
I’ve been invited to speak at next week’s event in Linkoping, and will take the opportunity to ask the Swedes how they did it.
In terms of economic indicators, we have 4 today, one up, and three down.
FWIW, the Jobless claims are noisy, but overall the numbers are trending up, and the LEI typically does not mean anything until you get three in a row.
The Dollar hit a new low vs. the Euro, $1.5982:€.
As an aside, I spend a fair amount of time on currency, because I believe that it will be the final nail in the proverbial coffin, much like it was in the Asian and Argentine financial crises.
In banking, investment and otherwise, we have
Merrilly Lynch announcing a $6.5 billion write down and massive layoffs.
Across the pond, we have the Bank of England announcing that it had three times as many bids for its cash auction as it was offering, implying that credit is still pretty frozen, and the prospect of massive bank failures in Germany as a result of the subprime crisis, which truth be told extends well into the prime mortgages too.
Finally, in another sign of the apocalypse, my predictions regarding the countrywide sale, that Bank of America was throwing good money after bad, appear to be coming true, as , “Continued credit deterioration at Countrywide Financial Corp. could raise concern among investors about the final sale price of the mortgage lender to Bank of America Corp., a Lehman Brothers analyst said Thursday.”
I really haven’t followed the story closely, but there appears to be an interesting development.
There are now indications that the 16 year old bride, the girl who allegedly made the phone call to authorities which resulted in the court order, may not exist.
It appears that authorities have been able to locate the girl, and the day after the raid, a similar call was made regarding another FLDS compound in Arizona.
This may make criminal prosecutions difficult.
