Regardless of what happens today, Obama will have picked up a few EVs over the past 2 years.
Author: Matthew G. Saroff
I’m Beginning to Like France’s Nicolas Sarkozy
Because as opposed to simply pleading with banks to take bailout money and eventually lend to real people, Sarkosy ally, and French Prime Minister Francois Fillon has said that they will seize the banks and fire their management if they don’t stop hoarding cash.
I’m not sure if seizing the banks is the right course, but threatening, as opposed to cajoling, the banks is.
More IP Insanity
Berlin public transportation company BVG and Netherlands Dutch Rail have banned iPhone applications that give users schedule data (see also here).
By “banned” we mean pulled off of iTunes, because they claim that the programs violate their copyright on their transit schedules:
The application – which locates users via their mobile telephone network, tells them which BVG metro stops they can find nearby and helps plan timely routes – is popular with users, but not BVG. The company contacted Witt three weeks ago, telling him the program violated their copyright and demanding he remove it from iTunes. The decision has raised user hackles on internet forums, the paper reported.
I can think of no better example of how IP laws have become insane.
The idea that transit companies would assert property rights over their schedules is completely delusional.
Economics Update
Well, it looks like the credit crunch is thawing a bit, as the dollar LIBOR and the TED Spread have both dropped over the past few days.
Of course, banks are still not lending to anyone other than each other, though.
Yesterday, I mentioned the ISM’s manufacturing index falling. Well today, it’s the full report from the Commerce Department, with factory orders falling 2.5%, seasonally adjusted, which was more than 3 times the predicted number.
In the mean time, the dollar fell the most against the euro since 1999, 2.7%, which is kind of odd, since the stock market was up strongly, in what I call the “No More Bush Rally”.
I think that this is all election arbitrage, kind of a financial rain dance, as is today’s bump in oil prices.
In any case, I would expect that the ECB will be cutting rates soon, which should further buttress the dollar, as their producer price inflation numbers came in below expectations.
Still, we are not out of the woods, as evidenced by soaring bankruptcies in October.
The Law is a Fool
Well, it appears that police arrested 12 people, and cited them for indecent exposure, at the annual naked pumpkin run, in which the participants, “wearing nothing but pumpkins on their heads”, run through a mall.
While I think that stupidity should be a punishable offense, it now appears that if convicted, the defendants will be required to register as sex offenders.
This is nuts, and the police are nuts for charging them as such, particularly since they could have cited them for public indecency, which does not require registration.
While they are at it, perhaps they should fix the law in Colorado, because streaking is a class I misdemeanor, and public indecency is a class I petty offense, which does not require registration, so having sex in public is better in the eyes of the law than simply being naked.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
The Federal Reserve has hired Michael Alix with the responsibility of assessing the risk and soundness of institutions.
He was, “The chief risk officer of Bear Stearns from 2006 until 2008.”
I have made comments now and again….OK, nearly continuously….That one of the problems with Wall Street is that there is no accountability for the big players.
This like making Typhoid Mary chief cook on the Titanic.
There is an entire generation of mostly Ivy League trained investment banking types who should be banned from the securities business for life plus 800 years.
Madelyn Dunham’s Vote Will Count
Should have posted earlier on this, but since Barack Obama’s grandmother postmarked her ballot before her death it will count.
Of course, if Hawaii is not going Republican any time soon.
Ok, So I’m In Line to Vote, and Blogging From My Phone
Because Maryland does not have early voting.
I wasn’t there when polls opened, because it’s my mom’s Yarzheit,* so I was at Shul to say Kaddish.
In all liklihood, mom would have appreciated the voting more than the Kaddish.
I will vote straight Democrat, not crooked Republican, and I will vot yes on Question 1, allowing for early voting, but no on Question 2, slot parlors.
I don’t think that it will raise much money, and that it is a give away to the race tracks.
Additionally, I think that it is very bad policy to rely too heavily on “sin taxes” and related revenues for too much of the budget. It makes people think that taxes are punishment, when they are dues to live in our society.
The line is pretty long, and someone said that when the polls opened, the line snaked through the parking lot.
In any case, thank God that this election will be over in a few hours.
*Anniversary of her death in the Jewish Lunar Calendar.
A prayer said by mourners and people observing Yarzheit. Interestingly enough, it’s in the now almost dead language of Aramaic, as opposed to most of the prayer book, which is in Hebrew. The languages are very similar though, with most of the differences being in the pronunciation of vowels. You need to have at least 10 people praying together to say
So I won’t have to go through this crap to vote again.
Watch This All the Way Through
Seriously….Watch it all the way through.
This is wicked good.
Economics Update
Well, the idea the economies have decoupled is once more giving the lie by the India central bank cutting its interest rate by 50 basis points, the Australia central bank cut its benchmark interest rate by 75 basis points, and South Korea announcing an $11 billion stimulus package.
Of course, those are just the official actions, on the level of the financial markets, we have a number of German property funds freezing redemptions, and because they are heavily into UK real estate, “German funds have been among the most active in snapping up City of London and West End properties this year,” this does not bode well for either the UK or German financial systems.
When we finally get to the United states, we have Institute for Supply Management’s its manufacturing index falling to 38.9 in from 43.5 last month, the lowest reading since . It was the lowest reading since September 1982.
Additionally, construction spending in September fell 0.3%, which is better than the 0.8% expected, but Lehman’s collapse probably came late enough not to move that number much.
The October construction number will be positively grim, because it runs on credit, which is still nearly non-existent.
Speaking of credit, it appears that the LIBOR and other interest rates are down, indicating some loosening of credit. (see also here)
On the other hand it appears that while banks are slightly less reticent to lend to each other, they are still tightening lending to everyone else, according to a Fed survey of lending practices.
I don’t blame them, after all Iceland Bank Swaps are losing 97¢ on the dollar.
All this news has pushed oil prices lower, which is no surprise.
My Condolences to the Obama Family
On the loss of their Grandmother and Great Grandmother, Madelyn Dunham.
Well, This is Just Freaktacular…..
More on the Jury mishugas in the Ted Stevens corruption trial:
The juror who was dismissed from the criminal trial of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) to attend the funeral of her father in California admitted Monday that her father had not died, and that she went to California to attend a horse race.
This is truly the weird political season.
Arrest Hank Paulson Now
First, Hank Paulson pays twice market value for bank shares in the bailout package, and now we find out that the recipients of the Tresury dole will be spending lavishly on dividends
The 33 banks signed up so far plan to pay shareholders about $7 billion this quarter. Companies generally try to pay consistent dividends and, at the present pace, those dividends will consume 52 percent of the Treasury’s investment over the initial three-year term.
Paulson knows this, and he has the power to stop this, and he is not.
I we can’t find a law he broke explicitly, declare him an enemy combatant, and send him to Gitmo, because he’s done more damage to the US in the past 8 weeks than Osama bin Laden has done in his entire life.
The Syrian ClusterF&%$
Well, it now looks like there was Syrian foreknowledge and support of the raid, only they were told that it would be a snatch and grab, and it turned into a John Wayne shootout:
In the time-honoured tradition of covert US operations in the Middle East, this one seems to have gone spectacularly wrong. The Syrians, who had agreed to turn a blind eye to a supposedly quiet “snatch and grab” raid, could not keep the lid on a firefight in which so many people had died.
So it appears that they Syrians were expecting a quiet op, and they got a bunch of citizens killed in the process.
I’m sure that this will make them much more likely to support such an operation in the future.
Tony Blair Granted Broad Patent in the UK
Business Method, patent 11,346,823:
Brief: How to f$@k up a Country and create a Police State.
It is believed that George W. Bush is filing a challenge, claiming prior art.*
*Not actual news, I just riffed on an inspired comment in El Reg suggesting that Labour should patent the business method.
Not Enough Bullets: Scotland Edition
Specifically, the Royal Bank of Scotland, which just received a £20 billion bailout from the British government, but still intends to pay bonuses to the people who screwed up the bank in the first place:
The bank has set aside £1.79bn to cover “staff costs” – including discretionary bonuses – at its investment banking division for the first six months of the year alone. The same division caused a £5.9bn writedown that wiped out the bank’s profits for the same period.
The last ‘graph in the article says it all:
Banking sources privately acknowledge that the sight of these bonus accruals may provoke anger. They concede the industry’s pay and bonus regime is under unprecedented strain as it fails to reflect profitability, asset writedowns or share price declines.
The idea that you give people bonuses who lose you money is not, “Unprecedented Strain”, it is insanity.
The State of Our Auto Industry
It has been reported that the Treasury Department has refused to use bailout money to fund a merger of GM and Chrysler.
Interestingly enough, Ford’s response to the current collapse of auto sales is that it’s going to try and make cars that people want to buy, and then sell them.
You know, Ford’s plan is so crazy, it might just work…Or perhaps it’s just some sort of socialism doomed to fail.
Oto Melara Unveils Guided Gun System
The ubiquitious, at least in Italian defense procurement, Oto Melara showed a 76mm rapid fire guided gun system at Euronavale.
It’s intended to be used for, among other things, anti-ship missile defense, using a beam riding sub munition for point defense.
Dassault Looks at Rafale as Satellite Launcher
This is actually fairly well trodden ground, with an F-15 launching an anti-satellite weapon in the 1980s, and concepts using a MiG-31 to launch microsats in the past few years.
What looks like fuel tanks under the wings are actually solid rocket boosters, which is a bit of a change from earlier configurations.
While the F-15 did successfully intercept a satellite (that was still putting out good scientific data…oops), nothing has come of this otherwise.
VASIMR Plasma Drive Hits Rated Power in Bench Test
I’ve mentioned the technology before, and now it appears that the VASIMR plasma drive has hit a major milestone in the lab. The first stage (helicon) of the system has hit its rated 30 KW power.
Thrust levels are relatively low, though they are high compared to something like Ion, around 10N in low ISP mode, and in the 100mN range in high ISP mode.
The developer of this technology, Ad Astra Rocket Company, hopes to get a space-rated model to the ISS in the next few years to validate performance in space.
Picture pr0n:
Lab picture
VASIMR Space Craft Concept
I believe that the spacecraft shown uses nuclear power for propulsion requirements.