Vote With Your Feet

Arianna Huffington posts a fine idea for the new year:

If you bank with one of the big four banks - switch banks.



I doubt the banks will smart too hard - but given the high quality of service you're likely to find at a local credit union, what are you doing in a huge bank anyway?

Heath Care: The End Of The Beginning

In the confused dialog of what passed vs. what ought to have passed in the Senate - I've found two items I'd highlight.

Nate Silver (of FiveThirtyEight.com) and Marcy Wheeler (at Emptywheel) are going at it hammer and tongs over whether the Senate Health Care bill is or is not the apocalypse.

Unlike virtually everything you are likely to see on network - this is a discussion of people who are data driven and committed to having an informative debate.

Nate: Postscript

Marcy: “Affordable” Health Care

Nate: The Senate's Bill Helps Working Families

Marcy: Why Can’t Bill Supporters Say “Affordable”?

Nate: Health Insurance and the Family Budget: Highly Affordable for Some, More Affordable for All

I have great respect for these two bloggers - and a written back and forth can do a lot to clarify an otherwise very murky landscape.

---

The other item is just the observation from a blog I wish I could remember (it'll come to me)...

This nonsense coming out of the right to run on "repealing ObamaCare" makes for a good demo, but puts the GOP in the unenviable position of telling America that they want to restore recission. That the GOP wants people to be disqualified for pre-existing conditions.

Of course the GOP does not want that - or at least those in the GOP that want that are smart enough to know they cannot say that. So they will have to say they will keep the good parts of ObamaCare and just remove the bad parts - which is a much harder soundbite to serve or swallow.

Securitized Snake Oil Is Still Snake Oil

Yves Smith is as scathing as ever, discussing deceptive selling practices of the big firms:

Goldman is trying to diffuse the increasingly harsh light being turned on its dubious practices in the collateralized debt obligation market, with the wattage turned up considerably last week by a story in the New York Times that described how a synthetic CDO program called Abacus was the means by which Goldman famously went “net short” subprime. We’ve mentioned Abacus repeatedly because AIG wrote guarantees on at least some of the Abacus trades.

One of the things that has been frustrating in watching this debate is the peculiar propensity of quite a few observers to defend Goldman and its brethren, and to argue, effectively, caveat emptor. Contrary to the fantasies of libertarians, that is not in fact how markets, particularly securities markets, operate. In virtually every market in the world, when someone represents his wares as being sound and safe and they turn out to be “bad” and dangerous, the seller is considered to have some responsibility for the damage. Remember those Pintos that turned into fireballs when rear-ended? The pets that died from pet food laced with melamine from China? No one suggested that the buyers of those products were at fault.

I’m deliberately using extreme examples, but as we proceed, you will see they are not unreasonable. Those products did not fail by design (well, the faults of the Pinto were known and left uncorrected). By contrast, Goldman wanted its Abacus trades to fail.

I've wondered before about the limits to which a strategy of profitable failure could be pushed. (For example, could a firm obtain multiple Credit Default Swaps for the same bad bond and receive multiple payouts?)

I mean - what is the difference between the Abacus CDO scheme and a boilerplate pump-and-dump stock scheme?

(H/t DailyCurator.com)

Cassano? WaPo has your email

Ahh, the wonderful durability of the computer record...

E-mails inside AIG reveal executives struggling with growing crisis

(Via DailyCurator.com)

Next time, just kill yourself in private - okay?

To Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

I get that you're a screwed-up, lonely young man. But how sad do you need to get to you fall in with terrorists?

And how depressed do you have to be to let them talk you into offing yourself and trying to take a plane load of people with you?

Using a bomb - that you smuggle onboard in your underwear?

I mean, how lonely do you have to get to think Yes - that looks like a better option?

And then to top it off you suck at the bombing thing. Specifically, you fail to successfully detonate your underwear.

So not only are your family disappointed and shamed forever, not only are you facing (if you are lucky) a lifetime in prison but you're going to go into prison with the world laughing at your internet posts and with the prison monicker "the underwear bomber"

Dude... next time just buy a copy of Final Exit or go see a shrink, eh?

Yeesh.

A for-pay model to stop corruption

(Via Newshoggers)

Graft and corruption have both a demand and a supply side.
-Shaffi Mather

You have to love this man.



Here's a guy that brought a for profit, self supporting, ambulance service to India as a response to inadequate public service.

Now he's using a business model to go after a more pervasive problem.

In the modern day world where time is premium and [the] battle for subsistence is unimaginably tough, the hapless common man simply gives in and pays the bribe just to get on with life.

A group of us have been working on a pilot basis to address individual instances of demands for bribes for common services or entitlements. And in all 42 cases where we pushed back such demands using existing and legitimate tools like the Right To Information Act, video, audio, or peer pressure we have successfully obtained whatever our clients set out to achieve without actually paying a bribe and with the cost of these tools being substantially lower than the bribe demanded.

I believe that these tools that worked in these 42 pilot cases can be consolidated in standard processes in a BPO kind of environment and made available on web, call center and franchise physical offices - for a fee - to serve anyone confronted with a demand for a bribe.

The target market is as tempting as it can get. It can be worth up to 1 trillion dollars being paid in bribes being paid every year or equal to India's GDP and it is an absolutely virgin market.

I propose to explore this idea further. To examine the potential of creating for a for-profit, fee-based BPO service to stop bribes and prevent corruption.

You have to root for this guy - but you hope he sets a good amount of his budget aside for personal and site security.

As he puts it in the video: I just have to get through the initial days where I don't get...eliminated.

Here's to ya, man. The market is huge, the margins are ripe for plucking.

What a great f-ing idea.

What'd we tank on? and What'd we miss?

Once again Foreign Policy magazine gives us the 10 worst predictions of 2009

Noteworthy items include:

1) "Energy Bill: Not..
"I do know this. At the end of this first year of Congress, there will be an energy bill on the president's desk."
—Rahm Emanuel on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, April 19, 2009

3) The swine flu is coming!
"While the precise impact of the fall resurgence of 2009-H1N1 influenza is impossible to predict, a plausible scenario is that the epidemic could: produce infection of 30-50% of the U.S. population this fall and winter, ... lead to as many as 1.8 million U.S. hospital admissions during the epidemic, ... [and] cause between 30,000 and 90,000 deaths in the United States."
—Report to the President on U.S. Preparations for the 2009-H1N1 Influenza, President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, Aug. 7, 2009

(as an aside, I invite you to reconcile this NYT article with this CDC update)

5) Krauthammer is still an idiot.
Chris Wallace: "Best guess: Will the president end up giving McChrystal the troops he wants, or will he change the war strategy?"
Charles Krauthammer: "I think he doesn't and McChrystal resigns."
—Fox News Sunday, Sept. 27, 2009

7) Honduras: Fail
"I'm very pleased to announce that we've had a breakthrough in negotiations in Honduras. I want to congratulate the people of Honduras as well as President Zelaya and Mr. Micheletti for reaching an historic agreement.... I cannot think of another example of a country in Latin America that having suffered a rupture of its democratic and constitutional order overcame such a crisis through negotiation and dialogue."
—U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Oct. 30, 2009

Meh.

And FP gives us the top 10 Stories we missed in 2009

Here are two notables:

1) The Northwest Passage Opens For Business
The mythic Northwest Passage still captures imaginations, but this September, two German vessels made history by becoming the first commercial ships to travel from East Asia to Western Europe via the northeast passage between Russia and the Arctic. Ice previously made the route impassable, but thanks to rising global temperatures, it's now a cakewalk. "There was virtually no ice on most of the route," Capt. Valeriy Durov told the BBC. "Twenty years ago, when I worked in the eastern part of the Arctic, I couldn't even imagine something like this."

and

7) Dead Man Gets Passport
A GAO investigator managed to obtain four genuine U.S. passports using fake names and fraudulent documents. In one case, he used the Social Security number of a man who had died in 1965. In another, he used the Social Security number of a fictitious 5-year-old child created for a previous investigation, along with an ID showing that he was 53 years old. The investigator then used one of the fake passports to buy a plane ticket, obtain a boarding pass, and make it through a security checkpoint at a major U.S. airport. (When presented with the results of the GAO investigation, the State Department agreed that there was a "major vulnerability" in the passport issuance process and agreed to study the matter.)

Double Meh.

Watching the watchers

You gotta be kidding me. Insurgents have been able to tap into video feeds of US surveillance drones.

Here's Danger Room:

Using cheap, downloadable programs like SkyGrabber, militants were apparently able to watch and record the video feed — and potentially be tipped off when U.S. and coalition forces are stalking them. The $26 software was originally designed to let users download movies and songs off of the internet. Turns out, the program lets you nab Predator drone feeds just as easily as pirated copies of The Hangover.

And here’s the real scandal: Military officials have known about this potential vulnerability since the Bosnia campaign. That was over 10 years ago.

How is this possible? Witness the foresight of the US Army:

The Army drones are the most vulnerable to interception, because they broadcast their feeds unencrypted and in every direction. Retrofitting the hand-held Raven UAVs will take “at least two years,” Col. Gregory Gonzalez tells Hoffman. Locking up the Army’s other drones may take even longer.

Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.

Butterfly effect, magnetar edition

Phil Plait has a great post about a one centimeter shift occurring in a magnetar star 50,000 light years away.

Yeah, I know: small, far away - Why do I care?

Because a one centimeter star-quake on a magnetar (even one 50,000 light years away) creates a wave of energy:

This enormous wave of fierce energy was so powerful it actually partially ionized the Earth’s upper atmosphere, and it made the Earth’s magnetic field ring like a bell. Several satellites were actually blinded by the event.

This thing is almost on the opposite side of the galaxy - and a ripple on its surface can blind our satellites. Dr. Plait goes on to point out that we have magnetars as close as 7,000 light years and that similar events occurring at that distance would turn the bulk of our orbital hardware into potato chips.

That's just freaky.

Rooting for Penelope

I've posted before about the trials and tribulations of Ms. Penelope Trunk - this holiday, it sounds like she's on a pace to outdo herself:

Last week, in addition to being lost at work, I was lost trying to cope with the farmer ending our engagement. So I flipped a grilled cheese with my bare hand instead of the hand holding the spatula: Insane pain. I drove myself to the emergency room, and they said I was actually at risk of going into shock behind the wheel. Okay. So it was bad enough that they gave me vicodin.

I don't deny following her blog to shocked and appalled - but I have a great deal of sympathy for this person. Given her background, I doubt I would be anywhere near functional. And she keeps trying. Then she relates her experience with candor that informs without pretense.

Reading her posts you don't get

GUESS what happened??!!

rather, you get-

Here is what happened.

That she not only keeps trying but keeps writing is nothing short of amazing.

You might show up for the trainwreck - but you're going to leave with something more tangible and worthwhile.

WSJ to CitiBank: "You was robbed!!"

And CitiBank says "Nuh uh"

Curiously, and impressively - the WSJ is opting for Yeah huh!

Read CJR's recap

-or hit the WSJ directly (subs. required)

The decade of the facade

Franch Rich vents his spleen about Tiger Woods and the uncritical acceptance of eyewash:

Tiger Woods, Person of the Year

AS we say farewell to a dreadful year and decade, this much we can agree upon: The person of the year is not Ben Bernanke, no matter how insistently Time magazine tries to hype him into its pantheon. The Fed chairman was just as big a schnook as every other magical thinker in Washington and on Wall Street who believed that housing prices would go up in perpetuity to support an economy leveraged past the hilt. Unlike most of the others, it was Bernanke’s job to be ahead of the curve. Yet as recently as June of last year he could be found minimizing the possibility of a substantial economic downturn. And now we’re supposed to applaud him for putting his finger in the dike after disaster struck? This is defining American leadership down.

If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us, Bernanke included, have been so easily bamboozled.

Worth a read.

Fade to Black

(Via Ms. No-H and J)

Rather gripping video of the jobless rate over time, plotted on a US map by county

View it full screen or view the original site:



Yeeg.

Obligatory post on global warming

Provoked only by the utter dipsh!t I had to sit and listen to this morning.

*Sigh* Yes, the world is warming. No, it's not a giant conspiracy

• How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic
• Anti Global Heating claims - a reasonably thorough debunking
• Pretending the climate email leak isn't a crisis won't make it go away

And because it made me laugh - here's the kind of evidence you would need to convince me of some kind of conspiracy going on.

(H/t to Bad Science)
Late edit: added that third link. Whoops.

I am so glad I am not this guy

Coding Horror has just had one of those moments we pretend only happen to other people.

Here's what happened:

1. The server experienced routine hard drive failure.
2. Because of the hard drive failure, the virtual machine image hosting [Coding Horror's] blog was corrupted.
3. Because the [Coding Horror] blog was hosted in a virtual machine, the standard daily backup procedures at the host were unable to ever back it up.
4. Because I am an idiot, I didn't have my own (recent) backups of Coding Horror. Man, I wish I had read some good blog entries on backup strategies!
5. Because there were no good backups, there was catastrophic data loss. Fin, draw curtain, exeunt stage left.

Note to self: do some test file restores from Carbonite - and get E to do some as well.

Ow. That hurts just thinking about it.

Also: He links to a fairly solid post stating the elusive (yet obvious) truth about backups. Backups can only get you halfway.

Meeting equipment

Next time you're in a meeting and have working speakers - try these websites on for size:

• instantrimshot.com
• sadtrombone.com
• instantcrickets.com
  

 No, they're not brilliant - but thanks to the interweb - they're never far away when you need them.

The Price of Empathy

Enjoyment at work is largely dependent on the people around you. They're happy - you're happy.

Mind you, I'm talking about genuine happiness here - not that faux cheer corp types use to mask their inner demons. I used to work with a guy who was so deleriously positive about everything - I wondered if he was unstable (he was).

If the people around you are miserable, it becomes exponentially more difficult to be happy about anything. Misery may love company - but it seems to prefer miserable company.

Which brings me to The Prince of Darkness. TPoD is an occasional client of mine with a amazingly bleak outlook on the world. If I'm being fair - I'd say that they came by this honestly. CorpWorld can do untold damage to your psyche, and I'm guessing TPoD is the product of eating many a sh!t sandwich while being paid a good wage.

I'm sure that does different things to different people - but in the case of TPoD they appear to have had all their optimism surgically removed and replaced with a black hole that only affects enthusiasm. I dread all meetings with this person.

And not because of their knee-jerk pessimism, but because they are generally well informed and I'm afraid their outlook might be justified. With the current financial climate being what it is - CorpWorld morale is at an all time low. Being around TPoD is a reminder that somewhere in the CorpWorld Castle, people you will never meet could destroy you without a second thought.

TPoD delights in illustrating the many pointless tasks of CorpWorld. Again, this wouldn't be so demoralizing if they didn't have a point.

Anyone who thinks there isn't a shocking amount of waste in the private sector hasn't been looking very hard. They should talk to TPoD. Their war stories run the gamut of Fortune 500 f____-ups:

Inflexible procedure, inconsistent procedure, silo'ed production, silo'ed waterfalls in parallel, dependent silo'ed waterfalls in parallel, unsynchronized dependent silo'ed waterfalls in parallel without change management, groupthink, I think, Don't think, duplicate documentation, incomplete documentation, dated documentation, no documentation mascarading as agile development, pilot projects without goals or desired ROI, projects based on the (still incomplete) pilot project without goals or desired ROI, factions, anti-factions, neophytes, free-agents, charlatans, tyrants, rabbits, sheep, and the ever-present specter of corporate death.

And that's just the warm up act. TPoD can spin real world stories for each of these that would drive the Dali Lama into a week-long bender.

Worse, they can re-cast your perception of your work product as the least essential part of a pointless and doomed exercise. They have a comeback for everything.

"But I want to help." You are not helping. You are merely dragging out this part of the process.

"We'll get more done if we just work." No, we won't. Everything we do will be reversed in the approval process.

"What if we get their buy in first?" They don't want buy in. They want to reverse whatever we recommend.

"How does that make sense?" Because it is consistent with how everything else is done around here.

You come out of every meeting with TPoD feeling like you should immediately call your account rep and demand they send a rescue team to get you. Like you won't survive a collision with the full tonnage of corporate stupid coming your way.

With the meeting's over, you're left with some menial to-do. Something that will inspire a sense of futility all out of proportion with the scant minutes it takes to complete. Why am I even doing this? What's the point?

If you're lucky, you'll have a different project to focus on to snap you out of it. If not, you'll end the day with TPoD's cynicsm ringing in your ears, following you home - making you wonder if you've completely wasted the years you've spent here.

I've never met anyone who quite matches the soul-sucking pessimism of TPoD. A worldview unblemished by concepts like hope or progress. Things suck, but they pay me.

I was naive a lot longer than I should have been, and I suppose there is value in a parallax with undiluted pessimism.

But I just can't give into that worldview.

Sure, things do suck, but they don't have to.

I just wish I didn't have regular contact with those who believe otherwise.

Paul Volcker: Wake up gentlemen

This is a beautiful thing to read:

Here's Volcker responding to the WSJ's Future of Finance Initiative proposals:

I heard an awful lot of particulars here that I agree with to some degree, but my overall impression is that you have not come anywhere near close enough to responding with necessary vigor or structural changes to the crisis that we have had.

If it is really true that financial weaknesses brought us to the brink of a great depression that would have ended your livelihood and destroyed a lot of the global economy, then let me explain.

You concluded with financial-services executives showing cultural sensitivity and responsible leadership. Well, I have been around the financial markets for 60 years, and how many responsible financial leaders have we heard speaking against the huge compensation practices?

Every day I hear financial leaders saying that they are necessary and desirable, they are wonderful and they are God's work. Has there been one financial leader to stand out and say that maybe this is excessive and that maybe we should get together privately to think about some restraint?

I hear about these wonderful innovations in the financial markets, and they sure as hell need a lot of innovation. I can tell you of two—credit-default swaps and collateralized debt obligations—which took us right to the brink of disaster. Were they wonderful innovations that we want to create more of?

You want boards of directors to be informed about all of these innovative new products and to understand them, but I do not know what boards of directors you are talking about. I have been on boards of directors, and the chance that they are going to understand these products that you are dishing out, or that you are going to want to explain it to them, quite frankly, is nil.

I mean: Wake up, gentlemen. I can only say that your response is inadequate. I wish that somebody would give me some shred of neutral evidence about the relationship between financial innovation recently and the growth of the economy, just one shred of information.

Volcker's take on financial "innovation?" the only financial innovation he can think of that improved society was the ATM.

Love it.


(H/t CJR)

Ice cream for freaks

Wondering what Bernie Madoff is up to these days? Here's a bit from the Wall Street Journal.

Some of Mr. Madoff's fellow inmates suspect he has money hidden somewhere and try to cozy up to him in hopes of learning its location. But correctional officers keep a close watch on Mr. Madoff and don't allow groups to crowd around him.

I'll bet.

(H/t to CJR)

Plutocracy

Here's a string of happy stories about where we are now, how we got here, and why we're unlikely to ever leave:

Citigroup is doing great. Really. No, don't look at the collasal tax break the government just gave them.

Why? because if do look you might realize that if Citi had to follow existing tax law they would have to go out and raise more capital. Why are they low on capital? Because they paid back the loans the taxpayers gave them. Make sense? Not really.

Financial firms argue that a 70 year old law is too old to apply to them - and the SEC buys it.

I'm wondering how old the property tax laws are in my neighborhood - maybe I could try this crap on my local government. Anyone care to give odds? Read the whole thing, if only for the guest appearance by everybody's favorite vampire squid.

Ginnie? You're starting to remind me of Fannie and Freddie

Yes, another federally backed entity enabled the creation and securitization of crappy loans. What else is new?

A group of old, white guys has decided the status quo should not be altered.

Or rather, it should be altered - but only in a way that most benefits their financial backers and least benefits the people they claim to work for.

We may live here - but it's for damn sure somebody else owns the place.

(H/t as ever, to CJR)

Taibbi on Obama

and it ain't pretty.

Here's my pick for the nut 'graph:

There's no other way to say it: Barack Obama, a once-in-a-generation political talent whose graceful conquest of America's racial dragons en route to the White House inspired the entire world, has for some reason allowed his presidency to be hijacked by sniveling, low-rent shitheads. Instead of reining in Wall Street, Obama has allowed himself to be seduced by it, leaving even his erstwhile campaign adviser, ex-Fed chief Paul Volcker, concerned about a "moral hazard" creeping over his administration.

Fields of Athenry

Further proof (as if any was needed) that I am completely losing my mind.

Exhibit #435 - Driving home in perhaps the most domestic vehicle possible while screaming along to The Dropkick Murphys like I was some kind of drunken Irish patriot (when I am none of those things).

Lowes.com: Fail

Cooks Illustrated is one of those odd-duck magazines I can't seem to quit. The founder and editor, Christopher Kimball, is barking mad yet manages to oversee the publication of an engaging guide to the art and science of cooking.

And they review kitchen gear - the kitchen's traditional gateway drug for men.

Their reviews are right in line with my philosophy of gear - function over form, ease of use over style.

So what the hell does this have to do with Lowes?

Well, this month's issue reviews kitchen fire extinguishers and - having recently watched the mushroom-cloud detonation of a grease fire on Mythbusters - I figured I'd take them up on their advice.

Cooks Illustrated recommends the Kidde 10-B:C Kitchen Fire Extinguisher and even recommends a vendor - Lowes.com

It's less than twenty bucks and (serendipity!) I have two gift certificates to Lowes courtesy of my mother. The fact that there isn't a Lowes anywhere near where I live is beside the point. I have the interweb!!

Sadly - Lowe's website experience can be summarized as "there's no there, there."

CI gives me the item number, so I can instantly display the product I want (Item #: 121309)

Huzzah!

Only the website doesn't offer me an option to put this item in my cart.

Odd.

And it's telling me the nearest Lowes store doesn't carry this item. Why do I care? This is the interweb!!. The site's giving me a dropdown filled with other stores I can pick from.

They can't really expect me to...

But they do. I cannot buy this product from their website, unless I can select a store that stocks it. I blink through seven of the nearest stores, the nearest of which is hours away from my home. None of them carry this item.

So I can't put it in my cart and buy it. They list the product on their website and (last I checked) there is a vast and vibrant shipping industry in this country - yet Lowes not only wants me to road trip to their store, they want me to manually locate which of their hundreds of locations actually stocks this item.

Each store selection helpfully supplements this process with the equivalent of: Wrong! Guess again! after each selection.


As doing this for all stores in my region seems insane, I call their 800 number. After a suitably annoying IVR tree, I get connected with a rep. She verifies that, yes indeedy, there isn't a store near me that stocks this item - but she will check to see if there is a shipping option.

She asks for my name, address, and phone number to do this. Lowes will (get this) call me back within 24 hours.

Okay, I realize I'm spoiled by online vendors that ship products directly - but does Lowes really think that an online shopping experience that is shackled to the local inventory of their stores is what consumers want?

I don't care if the stores nearest me have this product - I went to a website so Lowes could find the item and ship it to me. The voodoo of whether it came from down the block or across the nation, I'll leave to their software. Just sell me the damn item.

But no, I have to call them and then wait for a call back.

When they do call back (predictably) I'm not around and they leave a message with E. They'll ship the item to my home but there's a UPS charge of $45. For a product they're selling for less than $20.

In other words - we don't want to sell you this item.

I realize that there's serious infrastructure issue in getting stores to pass inventory to each other for these kinds of sales - but cripes, they built the website to make it easy for me to find products I want only to discover they won't sell them to me.

Rrrgh!

Thirty seconds later, I discover that Amazon will connect me to a vendor in North Carolina that will ship the same extinguisher to me for $34 including shipping.

Way to go, Lowes. You should have just told me you don't have the item at all - I'd still be buying from someone else, but I'd at least feel inclined to give your site another shot.

538 does 2010 WC

I knew there was a reason I liked this guy.

FiveThirtyEight.com's Tom Schaller runs the numbers on the 2010 World Cup draw.

Nice crunchy analysis of who's favored to do well.

Downer: He's thinking we only have a 48% chance to advance out of our group.

Go Bucky

Somewhere, I am sure my former crim law professor is laughing his @ss off.

I mean - like all thinking people - I hate Duke's basketball team, but somehow this failure seems extra special.

You rah rah, baby.