Author: Matthew G. Saroff

More on the Spam Factory Shut Down

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I’ve been thinking about the case of MyColo Corp., which got shut down, and about 2/3 of all spam stopped.

Think about this: one server farm, operated by one bad actor, was, at least in the short term, responsible for the majority of the spam on the internet.

In the world of internet spam, phishing, and other bits of the dark side, a remarkably small number of people, possibly fewer in number than the fingers on Rahm Emanuel’s hand, are responsible for most of it.

This problem is thus more manageable than I would have thought.

Sanity in IP: Lego Trademark Edition

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Here is some sanity on trademark:

Lego has failed in its bid to register the shape of its play bricks as trade marks. A European court said that the brick shape was functional and that it had to be that shape to operate as it did, so could not be registered as a trade mark.

The Court of First Instance (CFI) of the European Communities backed a 2004 decision of the EU’s trade marks office the Office for the Harmonisation of the Internal Market (OHIM) to cancel Lego’s trade mark registration.

You heard right….The Lego Corporation was trying to trademark a brick.

Free at Last! Thank God Almighty, We are Free at Last!

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McColo Corp. has been pulled off the internet.

It’s connectivity providers have disconnected it.

So, you don’t know McColo Corp.?

The servers are operated by McColo Corp., which these experts say has emerged as a major U.S. hosting service for international firms and syndicates that are involved in everything from the remote management of millions of compromised computers to the sale of counterfeit pharmaceuticals and designer goods, fake security products and child pornography via email.

But the company’s web site was not accessible today, when two Internet providers cut off MoColo’s connectivity to the Internet, security experts said. Immediately after McColo was unplugged, security companies charted a precipitous drop in spam volumes worldwide. E-mail security firm IronPort said spam levels fell by roughly 66 percent as of Tuesday evening.

(emphasis mine)

Hallelujah!!!!

Who is Brooksley Born?

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Funny name, but she is a serious regulator. In the late 1990s, she was head of the CFTC, and she warned that the unregulated CDS market was a disaster waiting to happen. For this she was vociferously attacked, and now Bloomberg news has an article about how she has been vindicated.

And who went after her for attempting to regulate Credit Default Swaps (CDS)?

Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan and Larry Summers, who the very serious people inside the beltway are suggesting would be a perfect Secretary of the Treasury.

It’s Worse Than a Crime, It’s a Mistake

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To quote Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, there are reports that Democrats in the Senate, and Barack Obama, are now scrambling to find a way to do let Joe Lieberman keep hisposition as Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

You know the old saying, better to be inside the tent pissing out, than outside pissing in, but Joe Liberman will be in the tent, and he will continue to piss inward.

Joe has been acting out of vindictiveness and ego ever since his Presidential bid crashed and burned in 2004, and his primary loss in 2006 only made this worse.

He does not care about policy, all he cares about is puffing himself up and hurting those who he believes have slighted him.

There is now a report on Rollcall (paid subscription required) that strongly implies that Obama is making calls in support of Lieberman.

If true, and this could be (I hope it is) some sort of head fake, it does now bode well with regard to how Obama, or the Senate Democrats intend to govern.

It feeds straight into the meme that Democrats are wimps. If they don’t stand up for themselves, how can we expect them to stand up for us.

Economics Update

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Weekly initial unemployment claims are at 516,000, up from 484,000, well above the estimate of 479,000, and the highest number since 2 weeks after the 911 attacks.

With the caveat that weekly unemployment figures have a lot of noise, I would like to segue to a much noisier indicator, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, when fell below 8,000, though it rallied and ended up for the day.

Yean, I know, stock gyrations are really completely noise, but crossing 8K is a big deal for the markets, even if the Dow ended the day up 500+ points.

A better indicator of what is going on in the world is the fact that Germany is now officially in a recession, having experience two consecutive quarters of negative growth.

Calculated Risk’s regular post of credit crisis indicators, a very useful collection of interest rates and interest rate spreads really did not do much today.

That being days, CR does have a nice chart of spreads between 30 Year corporate bonds and treasuries, and it is not pretty:

Of course if you want to be scared, the fact that foreclosures are up 25% year over year, and that Ranieri’s Franklin Bank has filed chapter 7 (liquidation).

They are the 3rd largest lender to fail this year.

Speaking of failures, there is already General Motors, and Goldman Sachs has suspended its rating of the auto maker, which is a polite way of saying, “Absent a bailout, it’s done.”

In the meantime, oil rose at the end of the day, along with the rising Dow, which indicates that oil traders are complete morons who trade on chicken entrails and other spooky omens.

The dollar was mixed today.

George W. Bush Can Kiss My Shiny Metal Ass

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Well, it now appears that the lamest lame duck since Nixon announced his resignation 18 hours hence is now warning about the dangers of over regulation of a free market economy.

It appears that he is concerned that the G-20 meeting will result in calls for additional regulation to keep the Harvard Business School types from raping the general public.

So, George W. Bush, a man who was born on 3rd base, and thought that he had hit a home run,* can kiss my shiny metal ass.

*Yes, I know that I am mixing my metaphors. So sue me.

Election Updates

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Well, Mark Begich just took an 814 vote lead over Stevens. I guess those folks who said that the late votes would break for him were right.

This is probably a relief for Senate Republican leaders, who were just served notice by Senator James Demint (R-SC) that he would move to expell him from the Republican caucus.

In Minnesota, the Secretary of State has laid out the process for a recount:

Secretary of State Mark Ritchie announced the formation of a five-person statewide canvassing board today that will oversee the mandatory recount in the U. S. Senate race. Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson and Ramsey County Chief Judge Kathleen Gearin, along with two other judges, will join Ritchie on the panel.

He appears to be doing all the right things, though Norm Coleman and His Evil Minions&trade are doing their level best to cast him as the 2nd coming of Katherine Harris.

IMF Holding Over 300,000 People Hostage

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This is yet another example as to why the IMF is fundamentally an evil and criminal organization that needs to be shut down:

However, the board will not in practice approve the loan until Iceland resolves a conflict with European governments over how foreign savers will be compensated for billions of dollars in losses suffered on their deposits in Icelandic banks, mainly at Landsbanki’s Icesave unit.

Translation, “We will make the loan, but all the money has to go to foreign creditors.”

I may have not given the IMF enough credit earlier.

I thought that they would treat Icenlanders better, because they are white, but not it appears that they are treating Icelanders like N*gg*rs.

I expect a deal for a Russian naval base, along with a Kremlin loan, in the next few months.

Why Do People Hire Michael Barone?

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In a just world, people would leave when he walked into the room, because anyone who would say this:

A roomful of academics erupted in angry boos Tuesday morning after political analyst Michael Barone said journalists trashed Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republicans’ vice presidential nominee, because “she did not abort her Down syndrome baby.”

Is not a functioning member of humanity.

He later claimed that it was a joke, which makes it worse, because if he actually believes that, he is sick, and if it’s a joke, he’s just evil.

News Flash: UK Bankers Are Evil Too

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OK, not really news, but the news that following the Bank of England’s surprise 150 basis point (1.5%) rate cut, banks have continued to increase the interest rates of credit cards.

There is some relief in discovering that it’s not just US bankers. Still, how about taking a few hundred, sending them to Gitmo, and keeping them in solitary until the courts rule, because they are doing more damage to the economy than Osama bin Laden could even imagine.

Good Prank

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Well, it looks like a bunch of pranksters created a phony New York Times, and handed it out in major cities:

The Associated Press reported that copies of the spoof paper were also handed out in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, and that the pranksters — who included a film promoter, three unnamed Times employees and Steven Lambert, an art professor — financed the paper with small online contributions and created the paper to urge President-elect Barack Obama to keep his campaign promise

The usual suspects for organizing this are the Yes Men, and there is a web page, which, at least for me, is not that Firefox friendly.

The Exiled on Larry Summers

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In addition to the War Nerd, pretty much everything from The Exiled Online is pretty amaxing stuff, and I highly recommend it.

Case in point, Mark Ames review of the life and times of Lawrence Summers:

  • In 1991 he authored a memo calling Africa “Under Pulluted.”
  • 1n 1982 he worked on Reagan’s council of economic advisers helping to deregulate banking.
  • In 1990, his policies for economic shock therapy in Lithuania literally had citizens of the Baltic republic killing themselves at twice the rate of other recently liberalized nations, which had the Lithuanians voting the Communists back into power in 1992.
  • His role in corruption, along with protege Andrei Schleifer, in the “liberalization” of the Russian economy.

Let’s be clear here, in any sane place, and Washington, DC is apparently not a sane place, not only would this man not be considered for a public position, but just on the basis of his calling Africa, “Under Polluted”, he would be shunned from polite society.

The man is a corrupt and incompetent ideologue, and the idea that he is being considered as Secretary of the Treasure, and that he was Secretary of the Treasury, leaves me stunned.

Not the Onion, But an Incredible Simulation

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Power Line’s John Hinderaker wrote, and I’m not linking to his post, but rather to Steve Benen’s post on Washington Monthly, because any page views that Hinderaker gets will just encourage him:

Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn’t raise his standards, he will exceed Bush’s total before he is inaugurated.

I’m sure that someone from The Onion read this, and had to check and see if someone on their staff had actually written it.