That Mark Penn is a self important, greedy, incompetent asshole who should never hold a job again (Details the knives out for him in the Clinton campaign).
His “skip 10 primaries strategies” had to be one of the stupidest campaign strategies ever.
Mark Penn is an overpaid jerk.
This time it’s upper executives at Washington Mutual, with CEO Kerry Killinger rating a $3.65 million on a base salary of $1 million bonus according to the board, after WaMu had lost $1.87 billion in q4 of 2007.
To Mr. Killinger’s credit, though not that of the board, he turned down his bonus in 2007.
The Scandinavian airline SAS: is saying that its MD-80s would still be cheaper to operate, even if the cost of fuel doubled.
It doesn’t make a whole bunch of sense, given that the cost of oil is at an all time high, until you look at this quote:
n its newly-released annual report SAS Group says the effect of capital costs means the MD-80 is SKr5-10 million ($0.8-1.6 million) more profitable to the carrier than newer aircraft.
Capital costs for the type are SKr20 million lower, more than offsetting the SKr10-15 million in higher fuel and maintenance costs.
…
n its newly-released annual report SAS Group says the effect of capital costs means the MD-80 is SKr5-10 million ($0.8-1.6 million) more profitable to the carrier than newer aircraft.
Capital costs for the type are SKr20 million lower, more than offsetting the SKr10-15 million in higher fuel and maintenance costs.
(emphasis mine)
This is interesting not from an aviation perspective, but from a larger economic one.
It implies one of two things:
The first reason is simply not credible. If it were, we’d all still be flying DC-3s, or at least upgrades 707s and DC-8s, since they take people to the same places just as fast.
That leaves reasons two or three, or reasons two and three.
From a macroeconomic standpoint, however, it’s reason 2, the cost of capital, that is most interesting.
This may very well be a major capital purchase that is being delayed because the capital markets have frozen up. That the increased risk premium that has resulted from the credit crunch simply make it too expensive to upgrade to better equipment.
That is how a credit crunch creates a recession, which makes the credit crunch worse.
Citadel Broadcasting, which owns her station, KSFO, had declined to renew Malanie Morgan’s contract, see here and
here.
I wish that it was a sign that there are going to be limits to how scummy you can be, but a more likely reason is that they were trying to save cash.
Citadel is losing money hand over fist, and is also cutting extensively at their Chicago station, WLS, in what is described as bloodbath.
Bond insurer MBIA is circling the toiled, and management is getting bonuses and pay raises.
The system or remunerating senior executives in the US is broken.
They cut prices on Vista.
People really hate this OS…a lot.
With the increases in corn prices, largely driven by the ethanol boom, and too many producers, so we are now seeing the shakeout.
That being said, corn based biofuel, at least corn based ethanol, is really not a great proposition to begin with.
Well, this shold be very interesting.
My guess is that Andrew Cuomo is going to be much more aggressive than the FCC.
He’s following Spitzer’s lead, and the consumer protection laws in NY are more aggressive than the FCC’s power at this time.
Two hedge funds have increased their stake in the NY Times company to 19%, and they are agitating for 4 of the 13 seats on the board of directors. (The other 9 seats are controlled by the Sulzberger family by virtue of the two tiered stock structure).
I think that this is the first stage of an assault on the two tiered stock structure.
The strategy of the hedge funds could fall into one of three categories:
I think that the last one is least likely.
Yep, their update, Vista SP 1, breaks antivirus and firewall programs, in addition to putting some machines into an endless reboot loop.
A major update to Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system could leave computers vulnerable to hackers and malware as the service pack prevents several widely used antivirus programs from operating, the company said.
The list of security products that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 blocks includes Zone Alarm Security Suite 7.1, Trend Micro Internet Security 2008, and BitDefender 10. It also blocks the 2008 version of the Jiangmin antivirus product.
I don’t know of anyone who is using Vista who does not regret it.
The FTC has finally gotten off of its duff, and filed an antitrust complaint against Cephalon for payments to generic drug makers not to make a generic version of Provigil.
Unfortunately with the Roberts/Scalito court, I’m pretty sure that at least 4 of the justices are in big pharma’s pocket.
And so goes the technological war between BitTorrent and Comcast. A coalition of BitTorrent software providers are developing an encryption technology to allow the connections to be obscured.
What Comcast does not realize is that BitTorrent is the canary in the coal mine. Any issues that they create are an artifact of a network that is heading towards inadequacy, and they need to fix it.
Well, it looks like the nail in the coffin of my prediction regarding the format wars (see also here, here, here, here, here, and here), has been driven, we have reports that Toshiba will be ending production of HD-DVD players.
For my next prediction, George W. Bush will not be impeached.
If only my predilection towards erroneous prognostication worked that way.
The US Marines have had two programs to upgrade their nearly Vietnam era helicopters.
The upgrades are known as the UH-1Y and the AH-1Z.
In addition to changes to avionics, these also involve upgrades to the engines and rotor systems.
It now appears tatt the the final 40 deliveries will be completely new airframes, as opposed to rebuilds.
From a FMS (foreign military sales) perspective, this means that Bell will be able to sell new build AH-1 helicopters with 4 bladed rotors, and modern T700 engines.
This is good news for Bell, which makes the AH-1 Cobra, and bad news for Boeing, which makes the AH-64 Apache, which is much larger and much more expensive to purchase and operate.
Much of the utility in an attack helo is in its sensors and fire control systems, and the AH-1Z will be very close to the AH-64 in those capabilities, as well as in weapons load, though it will not carry the hideously expensive Longbow radar system.
The Thai government has basically signed with the Swedes for the backbone of their air force moving forward.
They have purchased, “six JAS 39C/D gripen swing-role fighters, a Saab 340 Erieye airborne early warning & control (AEW&C) aircraft, a Saab 340 transport aircraft, and an air defense command & control system from Sweden.”
Sweden is actually doing a good job staking out the bottom of the current aerospace market, giving capabilities close to those of the big guys for less.
Well, it looks like we’ll have to choose between the folks who poisoned Prince William Sound, and the average American driver, because we have a threat from Chavez to cut off oil shipments over Exxon lawsuit filed in London.
How a company based in the US files suit in the UK, over actions taken in Venezuela is beyond me.
FWIW, Venezuelan oil is not fungible. It’s a “sour” crude, and refineries have to be set up to refine it, so this would be a hole in the world oil supply.
Netflix goes exclusively Blu-Ray for high def.
Boy, did I get this one wrong.
Well, it appears that EBay may have screwed the pooch with its recent changes in fees and feedback policy, and its competitors are doing its level best to exploit the current dissatisfaction.
Competitor sites are seeing their business increase by more than 50%, though when one looks at the numbers (less than 10,000 auctions), they are at this point a drop in the bucket compared to EBay.
One wonders if this will blow over, or if EBay will modify its changes in the coming days.
Dr. Krugman comments on the redefinition of high speed internet penetration. It’s now considered complete in a zipcode if one person gets over 200 kb/s.
So Bush is declaring “Mission Accomplished” on broadband, which is, once again, a lie.
However, I disagree with Krugman on the problem.
It’s not, “the failure of US policy to create effective competition”, it is a lack of regulation.
The incumbent providers are not spending money on upgrading the infrastructure because it is not to their business advantage to upgrade the infrastructure.
It is more profitable, and requires less capital, to put up barriers to other entrants into the field.
Europe and Japan with their state owned telecommunications monopolies, and their highly regulated wireless infrastructure are kicking our butt, because the market does not work in this area.
I didn’t have a dog in the hunt, I am a Redskins fan, though my wife is bumming. My congratulations to the NY Giants.
However, I don’t think that this is the greatest upset ever. That honor still goes to Joe Namath and the Jets in Super Bowl III.
My favorite ad was the dancing lizards.
Your favorite ads below.