Beret

Speechless.

langer: A weekend bombshell from Philip Greenspun:

Wall Street banks have had profitable quarters. JPMorgan Chase reported $3.6 billion in profit (more than $1 billion per month). Goldman Sachs was only slightly behind, at $3.2 billion. These profits supposedly came from “trading.” I asked a friend who has worked in the money business how this was possible. “For someone to make money trading, there has to be someone on the other side of every trade who is losing money. Where does each bank find someone who can lose $1 billion every month?”

He explained that “carry trade” would be a more accurate description of what they’re doing. Because of the Collapse of 2008 financial reforms, the big investment banks are able to borrow money from the U.S. government at 0 percent interest. Then they can turn around and buy short-term bonds that pay 2 or 3 percent annual interest. Now they’re making 2 percent on whatever they borrowed. They can use leverage to increase this number, by pledging some of the bonds that they’ve already bought as collateral on additional bonds.

I asked if they were taking any risk in order to earn this return. “If interest rates went up to 20 percent, even though the bonds are short-term, the price of the bond could fall enough to make the trade a money-loser.” (Though since the banks are too big to fail, they would simply be bailed out with additional taxpayer funds.)

What kind of bonds are they buying? Are they investing the money in American business? “No, they are mostly buying Treasuries.” So the money is just being shuffled from one Federal bank account to another, with each Wall Street bank skimming off $1 billion per month for itself? “Pretty much.”

(via Jason Kottke)

Study: Bush Tax Cuts Cost More Than Twice As Much As Dems’ Health-Care Bill (via CAKE)

“In short, the evidence available to date does not make a strong case that restricting malpractice liability would have a significant effect, either positive or negative, on economic efficiency. Thus, choices about specific proposals may hinge more on their implications for equity—in particular, on their effects on health care providers, patients injured through malpractice, and users of the health care system in general.”

Limiting Tort Liability for Medical Malpractice, Congressional Budget Office (2004).

squashed:

Tort reform, the crown jewel of the Republican’s healthcare plan, won’t actually save money. The tort is far from perfect—but it’s not responsible for the cost problem.

One crime solved for every 1,000 CCTV cameras, senior officer claims

A senior Scotland Yard officer, Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville, warned police must do more to head off a crisis in public confidence over the use of surveillance cameras. DCI Neville said officers need to improve their results to make captured images count against criminals. He said there are more than a million CCTV cameras in London and the Government has spent £500 million on the crime-fighting equipment. But he admitted just 1,000 crimes were solved in 2008 using CCTV images as officers fail to make the most of potentially vital evidence.
…
David Davis, the former shadow home secretary said it is ”entirely unsurprising” that the report highlights some shortcomings of CCTV. ”It should provoke a major and long overdue rethink on where the Home Office crime prevention budget is being spent,” he said. ”CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness. It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security.

Rusty Childress and the False Class Consciousness of the Minutemen

Rusty is the owner of Childress Automall in Phoenix - and one of the big financial backers of the anti-immigrant movement in Arizona. He pumped money into Arizona’s racist so-called “Protect Arizona Now” Proposition 200, which passed in November 2004, denying vital services to immigrants. Since Prop 200’s passage, he continues to be one of the sugar daddies of the anti-immigration movement.

I’ve noticed that guys with Alienware gear appear more likely to have girls that are out of their league. This confused me for a while, but then enlightenment struck me. Alienware stuff is just a symptom of being very rich (and having bad taste in tech) The women can be explained away in a similar fashion.

</bitter observations>

Today's dubious idea: temporarily loosen regulation

squashed:

While I think extending unemployment and reforming healthcare will do a lot to soften the pinch of the recession, private industry will probably have to pull us out of it. And, since the large businesses have no interest in expanding until we’re through this, a lot of that expansion will likely come from innovative small business. A lot of people are getting to the point where they need income anyway they can get it. Perhaps that means making things to sell online or at a farmer’s market. Perhaps that means creating a service people didn’t know they wanted.

Unfortunately, the knowledge barriers to setting up your own business without running afoul of a variety of laws are relatively high. What are the rules about payroll? Should you incorporate? How do you do it? How long do you need to retain records? Where and how can you advertise? How can you dispose of waste? How much do you have to pay your employees? How do you have to document them? What licenses do you need to have?

Most of these rules are, in general, fairly good rules. But we may be at a point where we wouldn’t mind if somebody inadvertently broke a few of them if they created a few jobs and expanded the economy. Could we, for two to four years or so, create a general policy of not enforcing certain laws and regulations against businesses under a certain size that make goodfaith errors in complying with some of these laws? At the end of the period, enforcement would go back to normal. Is this a terrible idea?

[emphasis added]

Yes, that is a terrible idea.

We have this thing called deregulation, it made our utilities absolutely awful. Temporary deregulation for business won’t be good for the rest of us either; and I have little faith that regulation would actually be reinstated.

A much better solution that would create a positive business and labor climate would be to provide resources to people wanting to start their own business. Classes, counseling and legal guidance on how to plan and start a business would foster more sustainable and lasting growth.

Loosening regulation may cause a temporary flood of activity, but an enormous proportion of businesses would fail due to poor management.

As for the detrimental effect on workers it would cause, andrewfmorrison said it best.

The working class has gotten screwed enough already without a loosening of labor laws.

ps: Is figuring out minimum wage so complex that it’s a barrier to innovation? No it isn’t. There’s no excuse not to pay your workers a living wage, much less minimum wage.

I am disappoint.

I just met some rich kid who claims to be a hacker and spent $45,000 on his alienware desktop. (he has an alienware laptop too)

He was telling me about how a faster computer makes it easer to hack. (he “hacked” his school in seconds, woo rainbow tables) He alo writes silly OMG HAX file deletion “viruses” in VB. His favorite virus is called “taz & tweety” D:

Video reveals G20 police assault on Ian Tomlinson moments before he died | UK news | guardian.co.uk

brilliantology:

Exclusive footage obtained by the Guardian shows Ian Tomlinson, who died during G20 protests in London, was attacked from behind by baton–wielding police officer.

gooneruk:

Jesus, this is one of those videos that makes you question everything that you believe police are capable of. I have an intense distrust of the police in general, and I’m a firm believer that they will whitewash absolutely anything that they can get away with.

Thankfully, we now live in an age where the public is armed with methods of collecting evidence wherever they go. This is the power of the public, and it should be used in cases like these, to hold the authorities to account.

This really frightens me, especially when you couple it with the official version of what happened. I’m not going to launch into a great big tinfoil-hatted essay about the state of things, and go all Orwellian on the matter, but…

I hope this gets a lot of reblogs (Brits, do your duty!), because this is absolutely disgusting and the authorities should not be allowed to bury it.

What makes it even worse is that they accused the protesters of attacking him.

Bastards.

You know you're in Nob Hill when

the public ashtrays have cigar butts.

The S&P 500 ‘70 - ‘09

Sustainable growth does not look like that.

“There are two markets. One has been sold to us as long-term: “Put your money in 401(k)s, put your money in pensions, and just leave it there. Don’t worry about it, it’s all doing fine.” Then there’s this other market, this real market, that’s occurring in the back room, where giant piles of money are going in and out and people are trading them and it’s transactional and it’s fast, but it’s dangerous, it’s ethically dubious, and it hurts that long-term market. It feels like we are capitalizing your adventure — and that it is a game that you know is going on, but that you go on television as a financial network and pretend isn’t happening.”

Jon Stewart to Jim Cramer (part 2, ~3:20), slightly edited from a raw transcript for clarity.

Played 10 times [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

16. Flames, by Billy Collins on The Best Cigarette.

This creates a nice mental image and provides a bit of silence before the last song.

My mom and I went to see him read at St. John’s College in Santa Fe this year. He didn’t read this poem AFAIK; but we had arrived late. We had a good time regardless. There was a girl and one of her friends stalled out on the narrow road to St. John’s. She was trying to learn to drive a stick and was surprised that the road was busy in the late afternoon. All around St. John’s are houses with for sale signs on them. Huge multi-million dollar houses and for sale signs by Sotheby’s and other big names.

On our way back, Mom tried to find the place she had lived at when she was in massage school. It was gone, we saw so many new houses replacing the old ones; new houses with chicken wire and plywood. She was devastated at all the new construction, she got a bit teary and said she never wanted to drive on that road again when she realized that she couldn’t find the house she stayed at.

We witnessed someone trying to drive a stretch limo down Canyon Road, a one way street, I was happy to see its occupants being heckled by locals.

The complete Billy Collins album also available here (Creative Commons BY-NC-ND)