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CNBC just claimed that the United States is bankrupt today. What the heck else would you call it, and what kind of idiot hasn't ALREADY stampeded?

Dead?

Not dead, but struggling to convince folks it isn't about to file for bankruptcy.

If I grow my own organically, I know what is in it.

Find me a credible source showing any significant number of deaths caused by marijuana as the primary source.

Prescription drugs kill more people annually than cannabis.

Let me say that again so you understand. Legally prescribed drugs, ones that are LEGAL by definition kill more people each year than marijuana.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/28281668/

http://drugwarfacts.org/cms/?q=node/30

According to CNBC, there are over 15,000 applications in the iPhone store: http://www.cnbc.com/id/28691281/site/14081545

I'll accept that the number that have been denied is not "small" compared to that if you can provide more than 1,000 apps that have been rejected permanently. That would be about 6%. I think that's a fair "small."

We know Steve is going to die, someday. As much as we'd probably like to put him in some cryogenic container, thaw him out every few years when products start to suck ass -- we know he's going do die AT SOME POINT. Why is this blowing up to be such a freakish crazy thing? So he's turning over the keynotes to someone else!? How about he's turning THIS one over to someone else. Will he still headline his own events, that Apple throws? Probably. How about WWDC? Come on. I don't blame them for pulling out of macworld: http://www.joelesler.net/finshake/Blog/Entries/2008/12/16_Apple_pulls_out_of_MacWorld%2C_OH_NOEZ.html But CNBC said it best, IMO: http://www.cnbc.com/id/28265938

There are lots of problems in the financial system that have nothing to do with computers. If anything, computers have brought these problems to light.
You see a lot of this pointed out on Jim Cramer's show "Mad Money", http://madmoney.cnbc.com/
Most of our problems have to do with the lack of transparency in financial systems on supposedly public traded companies. As Cramer pointed out, "How can you have these levels of fiction after Sarbone-Oxley?" Moreover, with the recent Ponzi scheme uncovered, it makes you wonder just how interested is the SEC in maintaining the integrity of the financial system? That and allowing the short sellers to destroy the banks, leaving the tax payer to bail out the investors in order to preserve the financial system.
Thank god, we have the best form of government money can buy. Unfortunately, it even works to preserve the status quo when the original players are bankrupt. Nothing new here, after all, Japan's emperor was able to maintain control long after he had been defeated.
I am sure the US empire will survive this minor setback. The Hessian empire was bankrupt for hundreds of years before it ultimately collapsed. Maybe we can drag this on until the next Ice Age or until we poison all life to extinction, so who cares about the messes in the meantime?

Agreed. Taxpayers shouldn't be backing ANY cars. Period. Not even green cars. Doing so is just more social engineering and and interference in the free market.

On the other hand, after 7.5 trillion dollars in bailouts over the last few months(*), we're clearly no longer a free-market capitalism engine. With direct overnment investments in corporations, we're both a corporate welfare and a - by the rawest definition of the term - socialist system.

So the question is - do 7.5 trillion dollars worth of a bad idea justify a few hundred million dollars more worth of free ideas? Because some assholes screwed the system over and ignored the fundemental foundation of our systems once, do we justify doing it forever now? Or do we say "that wasn't right,e ven though it was done and this isn't right and shouldnt' be done, either"?

(*) http://www.cnbc.com/id/27719011)

China and Russia. We're going to have to do something once our credit rating gets updated and our economic inertia burns out.

It's not getting any better.

Just because I hate making blanket assertions:
From coverage of a Ben Bernanke talk last year.
Original stats from NBER

Recessions of the 20th Century
Date Range & Duration (In months)
Sept. 1902-Aug. 1904 23
May 1907-June 1908 13
Jan. 1910-Jan. 1912 24
Jan. 1913-Dec. 1914 23
Aug. 1918-March 1919 7
Jan. 1920-July 1921 18
May 1923-July 1924 14
Oct. 1926-Nov. 1927 13
Aug. 1929-March 1933 43
May 1937-June 1938 13
Feb. 1945-Oct. 1945 8
Nov. 1948-Oct. 1949 11
July 1953-May 1954 10
Aug. 1957-April 1958 8
April 1960-Feb. 1961 10
Dec. 1969-Nov. 1970 11
Nov. 1973-March 1975 16
Jan. 1980-July 1980 6
July 1981-Nov. 1982 16
July 1990-March 1991 8
March 2001-Nov. 2001 8

On September 10, 2001 Rumsfeld announced that the Pentagon couldn't account for $2.3 trillion. They don't really need the bailout.

Rep. Brad Sherman from California has mentioned that the bailout will be used to buy assets from foreign banks (such as China and Saudi Arabia). Banks in the US will just keep getting absorbed by the larger banks, such as Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

CNBC is also reporting this morning that they will both be nationalized today or this weekend! They'll basically be used to launder money to foreign banks as a payoff. This is the last looting of the American people by foreigners. That's why the government stopped reporting statistics a few months ago on foreign investment inside the US.

Welcome to freedom, comrade!

There is also talk of shutting down the international markets and creating a new Bretton Woods type deal. Don't think for a second that this new Bretton Woods deal wasn't already written and waiting for this crisis to occur.

Odds for Palin becoming Pres., ~1/6 according to this guy at CNBC

Feeling Lucky? The Odds of a President Palin
http://www.cnbc.com/id/26738380/site/14081545

About the same odds of surviving one round of Russian roulette.

Oil is still over $100 a barrel in the US. It's been well over $45 a barrel for some time now.

Germany gets 6% from wind. And the us uses 10x as much electricity.

And the US is 30x as large.

Space is not a problem for wind.

Thats 800,000mills. At current prices this will take 28trillion dollars to install

Let's check that, but not with numbers you've just made up.

The USA uses 7x the electricity of Germany, meaning it would need 20%/6%*7 = 23x as many wind turbines. Germany had 22,000MW installed at the end of last year, so the USA would need 516,000MW.

Pickens is planning on spending about $10B for 4,000MW, or about $2.5M/MW. $2.5M/MW * 516,000MW = $1,300,000M = $1.3T = 2% of what you claimed.

So it's pretty clear you don't know what the hell you're talking about, but I bet you Pickens does.

The real problem is that a 200MW farm takes 20 square kilometers. So to fill that 20% need it would cover around a quarter of texas.

At 20km^2 per 200MW, we'd need 516,000MW/200MW*20km^2 = 51,600km^2 of the USA's 9,800,000km^2 of land, or 0.5%.

Space is not a problem for wind.

When was the first contact between Icahn and Microsoft regarding the yahoo takeover bid?

Exactly when did Icahn start buying yahoo shares?

Who complained to the justice department over the yahoo/google deal?

Who approached in relation to the MS/Yahoo takeover bid?

What exactly is the quid pro quo in Icahn helping out Microsoft on the acquisition?


"I do believe the following -- that this company, yahoo!, is a very strategic and important acquisition for microsoft"

"The only way, you know, that microsoft can compete in the long run with google is to have yahoo!"

"once you've don an alternative deal and given the search to Microsoft, you don't need Microsoft to buy you anymore"

"How closely are you in communication, carl, with microsoft's management?"

"Well, you know, I really -- I wouldn't say closely and I wouldn't want to talk about it anyway, you know? .. Certainly. I do talk to them, you know, occasionally and maybe more than occasionally on the yahoo! Side"

Global production of crude can't possibly exceed refinery capacity by the 2 million barrel per day. Where would the 2 billion barrels, each day, every day, be going? Or are you arguing that potential production exceeds refinery capacity?

While not many new refineries have been built in recent years, the capacity of existing refineries has been increased quite a bit. Refinery capacity is fine.

What's not fine is oil field capacity. It turns out the Saudis have been lying about how much more oil they can pump. Welcome to your future, Mad Max.

It's not just Google that's doing this. CNBC and the Wall Street Journal also started providing free real-time quotes today. MSN Money has been doing this for a while.

Granted, some of these require a subscription (MSN, WSJ)--a point noted by the submitter--but all of these services appear to be free-as-in-beer. I don't think a subscription is that big a deal; YMMV.

From what I can tell, CNBC doesn't mention either a subscription or a daily/monthly limit; I admit I haven't looked at their service in detail though.

Assuming Google quotes NASDAQ directly, the difference is that Yahoo! quotes ECNs instead as the managing editor over at CNBC explains:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/24927068/site/14081545/

This has a wide range of implications, mainly how exchanges charge for their data. This will probably help NASDAQ to continue to put more pressure on the NYSE. It may be a good step though as I'd like to see the futures exchanges allow for their data services to be more freely available.

It also helps to empower the individual investor as the gap between the institutions and in the individuals closes. This can have unintended consequences though in terms of volatility as the retail money may get more fidgety with this more timely data. Either way, it should be interesting to watch this develop.

Clearwire already has done a private test of WiMax and trust me, it works http://www.cnbc.com/id/22563616. And rumor is, they will have WiMax up and running in one or more markets before the end of the year. Still some issues with WiMax, but certainly coming along nicely.

Huh?

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15837281?q=yhoo

Their current PE is not 35, but 52.65. Do the math 2007 earnings was 0.52, and current stock price is 27.38. That makes a PE of 52.65! WAY WAY overpriced.

Their earnings growth has typically been 50% year over year so you could argue that now is an average price. BUT here is the problem.

In the past two years their earnings has contracted, meaning that 50 PE is overvalued. And their 2008 earnings is about the same as last years. Thus their PEG is 0... In other words you are overpaying for a stock!

Yahoo is dead from a fiscal perspective! They just don't know it. Its another AOL, Netscape, etc... Need I continue?

BTW the big problem of Yahoo is that it tries to be everything to everybody and that is not what people want. If Google is an example they are a point to find things, not be things. Yahoo is a point to be things, not find things and that is wrong.

"-millions of people are getting their homes foreclosed"
As pointed out elsewhere in these threads, 1% of America's over 113,000,000 households are already in the foreclosure process. Mean household size is about 3 people. This crisis will last many more months, and get worse before it starts getting better. We're already at 3*113M, and those millions will grow.

"-millions more are always 6 weeks paychecks from losing their homes"

I'd say that the millions of Americans spending over half their income on housing would be homeless if they lost over 10% of their incomes.

"-income has shrunk over the past 25 years"

It's surprisingly hard to find year by year stats on "real income". But what I could find in documentation showed that during the 2000s, real income has shrunk. And that includes the incomes of people at the top, which has grown.

"-But that [bs stock price] high was built on a bubble inflated by money lent from the Fed (taxpayers)"

I'm not going to bother working up the stats for that one. The Bear Stearns stock price was based on its expected profits, like any stock. Those profits were derived from the real estate bubble, which was derived from the artifically low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve, both in the inflation of prices from the increased credit and from the more complex "instruments" (bets on increases) derived from them. That's why Bear Stearns was in danger of collapsing, when the credit dried up. If you need citations to explain that to you, you're not going to understand them.

"-Bear Stearns (and its shareholders, brokers and execs) raked in so many $BILLIONS over the past 10-20 years running the way that eventually ran out, that it was totally worth the price of doing business when its shares collapsed"

Bear Stearns hit the wall with a 61% profit drop at the end of last year, which cost it a few $billion at the end, its first loss in 83 years. Well, in just 2003Q4 the BS profits were over $288M, or over $1.15B in just one annualized year, fairly early in the bubble. As BS started to decline with the bubble that had sustained it, it's profit could still drop to over $361M, even though dropping by a third, still an annualized profit of about $1.5B - while declining. If you look at 7 years where its profits were well over $1.5B average a year, that's over $10B in profits. Even a possible $3B loss is worth it to make over $7B in net profit on it.

"-(much of which ultimately came from the Fed - taxpayers)"

The banks loan money retail that they get wholesale from the Federal Reserve, which is backed by the Federal government. Which is paid by taxpayers. The Federal Reserve loaned JP Morgan extra money to buy out Bear Stearns and prop it up.

"-since your [GP]lies (FYI, he posted 52wk high and low stock price.)"

I don't know what that challenge is supposed to mean. But Before I do any more work to cite the facts I offered, I want to see you accept them. Because I expect you wont. You want to find fault with my "presentation". What's really a problem for you is that you are all too happy to accept the good news about the economy, but the bad news shocks you too much. You want to dislike the messenger, and reject their message. Which makes you a completely typical American.

Which is why we're in such deep trouble.

In that case everyone's going to hell!

Lets see ..

(1)genetic modification - everyone from the biotech industry
(2) human experimentations - sadists
(3) polluting the environment - everyone who drives a car; nuclear power plant owners; electricity consumers
(4) social injustice - anyone earning more than 100K p.a. and not making a tax deductible donation (St. Peter will have to check with the IRS)
(5) causing poverty - some from the list above; politicians
(6) financial gluttony - anybody who is the subject of CNBC's American Greed
(7) taking drugs - hippies

Anyone I missed?

>If Yahoo can effectively prove that the 62% premium offered by Microsoft undervalues the company, then they are on good ground. And indeed, in the past 52 weeks, they have been over that, so that is in their favor. In fact, right now they are trading fairly high post-Microsoft offer, which is also a good thing for them.

If you are going to talk financial, then please talk about valuation and not share price. The reality is that the valuation of Yahoo has gone down because the earnings has gone down.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15837281?q=yhoo

Earnings at Yahoo were at a high point in 2005, and they missed by 1 cent. So if you see a higher share price then you see a higher earnings. And the reality is that Yahoo could not make its case in front of a lawyer. Right now Microsoft is offering a PE valuation of around 65. Putting this into share price valuation of 2005 it means the share price was 37.7. And that ladies and gentleman was the share price of Yahoo at its high point. In other words Microsoft is being completely fair and a court would see that as well.

Guys... Eisner proclaiming the strike over is just part of a PR effort to attempt to pressure writers to vote for the strike proposals by creating the wide expectation that the strike is over, that it's a done deal. That way, if the writers turn the proposal down, people feel let down.

The strike is NOT over.

If you watch the video where Eisner insists the strike to be over, he says quietly at the end that he is really just passing on a rumor. He also points out that the writers have to vote on the offer. He says the writers would be "insane" not to take it, but he also previously had stated that the entire strike was "insanity" so he's not the most unbiased person on this.

The strike is not over until the full WGA membership votes on the proposal. They may do so, but they may not. The terms of the contract proposal have not even been seen by the writers, so there's no way to know right now what's going to happen.

If you don't believe me, may I recommend this post by Joss Wheden, or this one, or this one.

W

Not much in the way of detail though:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/23057002

This seems to be missing so here it is: http://www.cnbc.com/id/23057002/

I saw a very interesting chart this morning on CNBC. Last year, the PS3 lead demand with the Wii and Xbox slightly behind it. This year, the demand for a Wii is FOUR TIMES demand for both competing systems combined. I believe this is the link to the relevent piece. http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=608260302&play=1#

See the sibling post below parent . . . this figure is way low for modern processors. There's a reason that there aren't many upstart processor manufacturers. The fabs are expensive and require significant expertise to work out all the fiddly problems that tend to crop up when dealing with a 65 nm process.

Take, for example, the recent $2.5 Billion Intel plant in China.

New customers or not, we can all agree that Carlos Slim is pretty well off either ways, as he has surpassed Bill Gate' fortune

Yet the Yahoo developers keep on trying to tell the rest of the world how to create web sites, or how HTML should look, etc.

The Yahoo developers should first build credibility by getting their own house in order before they try to instruct others how to do their job.

Rumor has it walmart will have the toshiba A2 hd-dvd for $98 on black friday

http://www.cnbc.com/id/21581845

The interview is available at

http://www.cnbc.com/id/20426036/site/14081545/

Don't forget that CNBC is a venture between NBC and... Microsoft. Go to the CNBC page and see where you end up.

No, it isn't. MSNBC is a joint-venture between NBC and Microsoft (that's what the MS stands for). CNBC isn't. However, the CNBC and MSN Money websites were merged.

Don't forget that CNBC is a venture between NBC and... Microsoft. Go to the CNBC page and see where you end up.

Where they planning on using passport for the XboX online? I would imagine so, it really pisses me off when I run in to a site that uses passport or even worse forces you to get a passport account. A good example is CNBC's website which now forces old accounts to "upgrade" to a passport account.

<laugh>While they claim to have invented XML</laugh> .. their white paper seems to be a description of their future bastardization plans. "..The loosely coupled XML-based Microsoft .NET programming model introduces the concept of creating XML-based Web Services.." - methinks i've seen too many other loosely coupled M$ standard "interpretations" (Unicode, Dynamic DNS, Java)

Seems more to me that M$ will do for the internet what NetBios did for networking .. create bad substandards that generate a lot of noise, confusion, and traffic - and then hopefully everybody forgets about them .. (if we all ignore them long enough will they ever go away?)

.je
"microsoft.net .. now I can watch my machine helplessly die from anywhere in the world .."

Hmm... would it not make more sense for AOL go with the obvious choice: a set-top box based on Linux? TiVo has shown the multimedia possibilities, and Mozilla is much further along on Linux than on BeOS (the last time I checked BeOs was still on R11). Further, if AOL chooses Linux they don't have to pay a cent compared with the $275 Million + they would have to pay for Be.

-rt-

No no no... that's certainly not true. The page you reference does imply that Intel owns ARM.. but it fact it just licenses the rights to manufacture the StrongARM processor from ARM.

Check out Hoovers company report on ARM Holdings on Microsoft Investor and CNBC

-rt-

Less than 10%? I CHALLENGE you to back this

From Hoovers: Microsoft investor and CNBC: Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is advancing on archrival Intel. The company ranks #2 in the microprocessor market (after Intel) with about 10% of sales. However, it has grabbed about 60% of the market for sub-$1,000 PCs.

It's not proof but it's close enough for me for now. I know I have heard they have about a 7% market share in the domestic US, and about a 15% market share outside the US, but I can't find a link just now. Spitfire will likely change that for Q3, and I think that the 30% target is doable once Dresden starts pumping 'em out.

-rt-

CNBC just announced on the air that the AOL/Time-Warner announcement will be one of the topics of discussion on their show The Edge this evening at 6 pm EST. I didn't find a mailto: link to send them questions. Combining the Slashdot Effect with the CNBC Effect on this issue would be an interesting experiment.

CNBC just announced on the air that the AOL/Time-Warner announcement will be one of the topics of discussion on their show The Edge this evening at 6 pm EST. I didn't find a mailto: link to send them questions. Combining the Slashdot Effect with the CNBC Effect on this issue would be an interesting experiment.

Disclaimer: Although I work for one of the biggest smart card makers in the world and the inventor of Java Card (Java on smart card), as far as I know AmEx is not using our cards.

As for Blue, Frost and Sullivan's analysis is a good place to start. Personally, I think it is a good thing: get consumers used to idea of smart cards and making everything free at first really helps. And if they use Java Card based smart card, they'll be able to roll out new features in the future. Besides, free card, free reader and 0% APR are hard to beat (unless they start cutting checks, I guess). At least I've applied for the Blue card.

Linux support probably can be found at: http://www.linuxnet.com/ (I say probably because AmEX is highly likely to use one of the well known readers, much of them supported by MUSCLE project)

As for security: much of the first 40 posting I've read are either wrong or misinformed. I'd recommed that you read some smart card introduction before posting here:

Smart card industry association: http://www.scia.org/

Smart card forum: http://www.smartcrd.com/

Java Card (but lots of general smart card info) http://members.xoom.com/javacard/

-----
More misc.: AmEx are working on a web page: www.blueamex.com (www.blueamex.net, too)

Danny (shameless ad: Java Card was invented here: www.cyberflex.slb.com)

Um, that is right now. Tune in to watch special sauce.

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