It's true that everything is dual use. A spoon can be used to gouge out an eye. However it has a low "blowback quotient."
I define the blowback quotient as follows: ACWC is the "Ability to Cause Widespread Casualties." Range is 1 (nearly unable to cause harm) to 10 (causes catastrophic loss of life) EU is the "Ease of Use." Range is 1 (Any moron can use it) to 10 (Virtually impossible to use)
Blowback quotient = function of ACWC / EU
A spoon has a low ACWC, but it has a high ease of use. So its blowback quotient is low. A gun has a moderate ACWC and it too has a high ease of use. A moderate blowback quotient. A highly transmissible fatal virus has a high ACWC and a low ease of use. Until someone publishes the steps to make it so that a graduate student can create a batch and have it exponentially propagate through the population. A very high blowback quotient.
I think they need to look at something like a "blowback quotient" before putting something like this out there.
I always wondered why women stopped being fertile in middle age, yet live longer than men, if their only (evolutionary) purpose is to squeeze out progeny. So obviously, evolution has indicated something more for them. That something is probably assisting the health of the herd, allowing more members to thrive and procreate, assisting the herd in making decisions that increase its health and/or numbers.
The same would apply to males who become decrepit yet hold on for decades.
When understanding human evolution, one has to look at the human in terms of the herd or pack (pack is probably a better description), and not just standing alone.
Say I give you a papercut. You'll be in a "not insignificant" amount of pain.. in fact, you'll probably curse me all day long. But it's not exactly a "significant" amount of pain either.. it's not like you're curled up on the floor begging for somebody, anybody, to put you out of your misery
But the people who took on loans that they couldn't repay, nope, they had nothing to do with it at all and aren't burdened with any sense of responsibility whatsoever.
It's not that I don't fault the bankers and their idiocy, but no one ever blames the mcdonalds employee for buying a $500,000 house either.
Historically, banks would not allow you to take out a loan that you wouldn't be able to repay. For the Boomers generation, it was tough to get a home loan, and on top of that, they would do a proctosigmoidoscopy on your finances to make sure that you would certainly be able to pay.
Our parents believed this, they taught it to us. Then there was a titanic, albeit quiet, paradigm shift. Suddenly, banks were telling you, "Heck yeah! You can totally borrow that much! In fact, borrow more! If it doesn't work out, you can just flip the house for a tidy profit!"
I do fault the borrowers of course. But I fault the financial sector more. And I fault the politicians most of all. They are the regulators. We elect them to create the infrastructure in which business and the economy can thrive, and our standard of living can grow. They have been totally corrupted by the money and power available to them. And the voters seem to be totally asleep at the switch.
1) "Once again, the Puppets on Capitol Hill are about to slam the Muppets on Main Street. The country still hasn’t recovered from the Wall Street-induced financial cataclysm of 2008, yet Congress is preparing to enact the Orwellian ”JOBS Act”—a bill that should in fact be called the “Return Fraud to Wall Street in One Easy Step Act.” The bill will undo some of the most important reforms placed on Wall Street in a generation." Slate link
2) "In fact, one could say this law is not just a sweeping piece of deregulation that will have an increase in securities fraud as an accidental, ancillary consequence. No, this law actually appears to have been specifically written to encourage fraud in the stock markets." Rolling Stone (Taibbi) link
3) “Simply, the JOBS Act will make funding more accessible for startups by allowing non-accredited investors to participate in the funding rounds, and this alone, I believe will be the main factor driving the increase in new companies being founded. And with new companies comes the need to hire staff. Without a doubt, this will help the current unemployment rate,” said Tanya Prive, founder of Rock The Post, a social networking platform for entrepreneurs to fund and swap resources." Forbes link
4) "It is self-defeating for us to say this because as criminologists and anti-fraud specialists we would have job security for life if this bill was adopted. It is literally composed of the wish list in regard to fraud-friendly provisions that those intent on cheating have been dreaming about and salivating to achieve for decades. This bill will kill millions of jobs because financial frauds are weapons of mass financial destruction. It will start an international fraud-friendly deregulation race to the bottom and will become the basis for further criminogenic U.S. Congressional actions." Huffington Post Link
5) "Amy Borrus, a spokeswoman for the Council of Institutional Investors, an investor watchdog group, said small companies — the focus of the new bill’s relaxed regulations — are particularly prone to fraud and accounting scandals. Senators did add some investor protections, but not enough, she said." New York Times link
So... we might be looking at a jump (bubble?) in the stock market. I don't quite know what to make of it yet, but the initial reviews seem to be pointing to such a thing. Investigate and plan accordingly (and try not to lose your shirts).
Bad loans were the core of the housing bubble. To understand the reason behind it all, you've gotta ask yourself one question: "Why would lenders make loans that are unlikely to be repaid?" Answering that question leads to the answer behind the bubble. It was a bubble in supposedly AAA-rated mortgage debt.
Here's how it worked: 1) Securitization of mortgages into MBS (mortgage-backed securities). 2) Banks made money from selling the loans to securitizers and getting them off their books, not keeping them and collecting interest. 3) Demand for these securities skyrocketed, as they were thought to be safe and reliable income streams. 3) This led to the utter deterioration of loan quality, as banks basically just needed to get warm bodies to make loans to, create the loan and sell it. You started seeing things like NINJA loans (No Income No Job or Assets - NINJA) and option ARM loans made to risky borrowers. All included in securities rated AAA. 4) Investment companies bought these loans, ratings agencies stamped a AAA rating on them and the securities were then sold off. Buyers hungry for safe and reliable high interest returns couldn't get enough of it. Thus a bubble was formed.
Basically, for mortgage originators, it was like printing monopoly money, and then turning it in for actual currency. When borrowers started defaulting en masse, the whole house of cards came tumbling down.
The vendors push the failure risk onto the consumer. X number of failures/compromises is going to be miserable for the individual, but the corporation is able to keep making a net profit from it. Until the cost of failure becomes significant for the corporation, outweighing the benefits from using the online system, they'll stay with their current business model.
There ought to be a security-related certification, along the lines of CMMI Level X, for websites that want to put sensitive information online. A group goes in and audits the network and the office, does penetration testing, and gives you a rating based on corporate practices, user knowledge and potential and actual weaknesses.
Before these sites feel like they can put up my social security number and health records behind passwords like admin/admin, or allow contractors to download entire social security databases and leave them on USB drives or laptops which can be/are stolen, they should first obtain some minimum level of security-related competence certification.
There are one-way encryption methods (for example, MD5, SHA1) which only allow you to encrypt a string, but not decrypt it. There are also two-way encryption schemes (allows encryption and decryption), like AES Encryption. If I had to store data which could identify users or credit card information, I would look into two-way encryption mechanisms (those which can be both encrypted and decrypted).
The theory behind these algorithms is quite involved, but the programming interfaces to use them are very simple. A developer should take 60 minutes to learn about them, first out of respect for the users, and second, to avoid ending up in the news.
Oh, by the way, it was an e-Machine. That company and the big box retailer should be ashamed of themselves (as if the people who make such decisions are capable of such a feeling) for selling a Vista computer with 512 MB of RAM. For 500 dollars. It'll help the bottom line of the computer repair department, but the people who buy that crap are going to be the ones who can least afford to shovel money at it.
I know a blue collar guy who dutifully went to a big box store and bought a computer for his family. Five hundred dollars. A very significant sum of money to him. And the computer was crippled out of the box. Windows Vista running on 512 MB RAM. Outrageous. He would have to have spent another 300 dollars getting the computer fixed because when he brought it to me, it was not booting. It had been completely overrun with viruses as evidenced by his descriptions of the constant popups. Until it finally wouldn't boot. That's what forcing poorer folks to buy computers for schooling their kids would lead to. And 15 dollars for a usable computer? I've never, ever heard of such a thing. The minimal used computer I've ever seen was at least 200-300 dollars. Again, probably needing significant tuning. Computers are not turnkey appliances to most people.
PS: I fixed the fellow's computer for free. Reset it to factory spec. Put in an extra gig of RAM (Vista wound up stably using 800 MB of RAM, well above the original 512). Uninstalled the crashing virus scanner that came with it and installed a reliable one. Patched it. Verified it had a working firewall. Created non-admin user accounts. Adjusted the display (no video card) so it wouldn't use too much memory. Wrote a 10 page document on how to keep the thing running well and what pitfalls to avoid. He and his family have been very happy with it since. But wait until the power supply fails in a couple of years.
Everything can be changed and it is not normal human nature to be violent. Humans are a social species evolutionarily produced to work together not just by thinking of it but by the normal flow of hormones and brain chemicals, humans are wired to be a social species. Of course genetic defects occur in the wiring, psychopaths and narcissists as examples, from them stems the bulk of human on human violence.
And they're also wired to form up into tribes or packs. Like wolves. Throughout the ages, they've competed bitterly with other tribes/packs. It's been a life and death struggle for resources they need to survive. This instinct is as normal and natural as any other typical human instinct. Of course, if it gets out of hand, you get world war. Tribalism has been around for as long as humans have been around. And it's been evolutionarily beneficial as evidenced by its existence to this very day, everywhere you look.
Now, in socially complex, diverse and technologically advanced civilizations, this can lead to trouble if aggressive tribalism is stoked by leaders for their own purposes. But it has its benefits too, as in successful cultures identifying themselves and trying to preserve themselves.
Humans are not bonobos, chimpanzees, orangutans or gorillas. They are humans. With all of their strengths and weaknesses and foibles.
"FOR a brief, heady period in the history of autism spectrum diagnosis, in the late ’90s, I had Asperger syndrome.
I exhibited a “qualified impairment in social interaction,” specifically “failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level” (I had few friends) and a “lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people” (I spent a lot of time by myself in my room reading novels and listening to music, and when I did hang out with other kids I often tried to speak like an E. M. Forster narrator, annoying them). I exhibited an “encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus” (I memorized poems and spent a lot of time playing the guitar and writing terrible poems and novels).
The biggest single problem with the diagnostic criteria applied to me is this: You can be highly perceptive with regard to social interaction, as a child or adolescent, and still be a spectacular social failure. This is particularly true if you’re bad at sports or nervous or weird-looking.
But my experience can’t be unique. Under the rules in place today, any nerd, any withdrawn, bookish kid, can have Asperger syndrome."
Patterns repeat in the universe, from the atomic level to the interstellar level. The hurricanes swirl like the galaxies swirl. The interstellar dust clouds share the same shapes as storm clouds. Predator species devour prey species. So, personally, I'm not too keen on alerting what might be the equivalent of an interstellar ichthyosaur to our presence. Or a similarly ferocious space-going Roman-esque civilization. Blasting out "Hi! We're here!" in the middle of the universe is probably as imprudent as doing so in the midst of a predator-rich jungle or savanna at night.
There is the danger of flailing. But as you say, these are professional NASCAR drivers. However, I'd think putting one's hands on one's thighs would be best. Crossing one's hands over one's sternum with the airbag, might result in additional chest compression right over the heart. Elbows tucked into the sides, hands on thighs, seems to me the best route for a non-helmeted driver in an air bag-equipped vehicle. Here are some crash-test dummy videos, with airbag.
"But on Thursday, almost three years after stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending.
“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,” he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform"
Self-regulation was an experiment that failed. Government however is currently under the control of bought politicians. So any attempts to put some effective regulation in place will be halfhearted at best, and subject to constant undermining from the inside. November 2012 hopefully will bring some changes and some sanity restored to government and its regulatory bodies.
“Politicians are like diapers, they both need changing regularly and for the same reason.”
The same reason you don't want an entrenched imperial presidency is the same reason you don't want an entrenched, imperial Congress.
Who advised this kid to go to a jury trial? This was extraordinarily bad legal advice. He could avoided jail time, deportation, everything. Now, guilty on all charges. Wow. What a bad decision to go to trial. But - more money for the defense attorney.
People say that a white gang that kills a black guy terrorizes the black community. And that's probably true.
But you know what? A black gang that goes into a white neighborhood and kills a white guy terrorizes the white community.
Of course - intent matters. And I welcome stronger penalties for violent crimes. But not applying them equally to minorities that terrorize white communities is simply not equal protection.
Opinions like this are written from the perspective of a buyout company which is solely interested in maximizing share price.
Say you've got a company worth 10 million dollars. You have 1 million shares, each worth 10 dollars. Corporate raider comes in, strips out all "non-performing" assets like R&D, internal HR, IT, offshores programming, closes and consolidates stores. Voila! Now you've got a company (for a short period of time) that's worth 20 million since it has no drains on its "profit centers". Sell the company. Profit!
Private equity companies operate along similar lines. They'll buy a company take it private, "optimize" it, and resell it. As if they're any better business managers than the actual manager. In general, they're not. What they are good at is the leveraged buyout, field strip, and resell.
These types of activities result in healthy profits for the takeover artists, and jobs lost for the actual workers.
It's like harvesting the organs of a person while they're still alive in order to minimize the drains on ingested food. After you're done, they're going to be in very tough shape for any kind of long term existence. But by golly, food isn't being wasted on any of those useless organs.
Google is doing what companies used to do. They're going to become even more of a juggernaut.
Slashdot Mirror
Our political system is Kang vs. Kodos.
It's true that everything is dual use. A spoon can be used to gouge out an eye. However it has a low "blowback quotient."
I define the blowback quotient as follows:
ACWC is the "Ability to Cause Widespread Casualties." Range is 1 (nearly unable to cause harm) to 10 (causes catastrophic loss of life)
EU is the "Ease of Use." Range is 1 (Any moron can use it) to 10 (Virtually impossible to use)
Blowback quotient = function of ACWC / EU
A spoon has a low ACWC, but it has a high ease of use. So its blowback quotient is low.
A gun has a moderate ACWC and it too has a high ease of use. A moderate blowback quotient.
A highly transmissible fatal virus has a high ACWC and a low ease of use. Until someone publishes the steps to make it so that a graduate student can create a batch and have it exponentially propagate through the population. A very high blowback quotient.
I think they need to look at something like a "blowback quotient" before putting something like this out there.
Woohoo! Space Pet Rock!
Two words: Spinoff technologies.
I always wondered why women stopped being fertile in middle age, yet live longer than men, if their only (evolutionary) purpose is to squeeze out progeny. So obviously, evolution has indicated something more for them. That something is probably assisting the health of the herd, allowing more members to thrive and procreate, assisting the herd in making decisions that increase its health and/or numbers.
The same would apply to males who become decrepit yet hold on for decades.
When understanding human evolution, one has to look at the human in terms of the herd or pack (pack is probably a better description), and not just standing alone.
Speak for yourself, buddy.
Historically, banks would not allow you to take out a loan that you wouldn't be able to repay. For the Boomers generation, it was tough to get a home loan, and on top of that, they would do a proctosigmoidoscopy on your finances to make sure that you would certainly be able to pay.
Our parents believed this, they taught it to us. Then there was a titanic, albeit quiet, paradigm shift. Suddenly, banks were telling you, "Heck yeah! You can totally borrow that much! In fact, borrow more! If it doesn't work out, you can just flip the house for a tidy profit!"
I do fault the borrowers of course. But I fault the financial sector more. And I fault the politicians most of all. They are the regulators. We elect them to create the infrastructure in which business and the economy can thrive, and our standard of living can grow. They have been totally corrupted by the money and power available to them. And the voters seem to be totally asleep at the switch.
The recently enacted JOBS Act:
1) "Once again, the Puppets on Capitol Hill are about to slam the Muppets on Main Street. The country still hasn’t recovered from the Wall Street-induced financial cataclysm of 2008, yet Congress is preparing to enact the Orwellian ”JOBS Act”—a bill that should in fact be called the “Return Fraud to Wall Street in One Easy Step Act.” The bill will undo some of the most important reforms placed on Wall Street in a generation."
Slate link
2) "In fact, one could say this law is not just a sweeping piece of deregulation that will have an increase in securities fraud as an accidental, ancillary consequence. No, this law actually appears to have been specifically written to encourage fraud in the stock markets."
Rolling Stone (Taibbi) link
3) “Simply, the JOBS Act will make funding more accessible for startups by allowing non-accredited investors to participate in the funding rounds, and this alone, I believe will be the main factor driving the increase in new companies being founded. And with new companies comes the need to hire staff. Without a doubt, this will help the current unemployment rate,” said Tanya Prive, founder of Rock The Post, a social networking platform for entrepreneurs to fund and swap resources."
Forbes link
4) "It is self-defeating for us to say this because as criminologists and anti-fraud specialists we would have job security for life if this bill was adopted. It is literally composed of the wish list in regard to fraud-friendly provisions that those intent on cheating have been dreaming about and salivating to achieve for decades. This bill will kill millions of jobs because financial frauds are weapons of mass financial destruction. It will start an international fraud-friendly deregulation race to the bottom and will become the basis for further criminogenic U.S. Congressional actions."
Huffington Post Link
5) "Amy Borrus, a spokeswoman for the Council of Institutional Investors, an investor watchdog group, said small companies — the focus of the new bill’s relaxed regulations — are particularly prone to fraud and accounting scandals. Senators did add some investor protections, but not enough, she said."
New York Times link
So... we might be looking at a jump (bubble?) in the stock market. I don't quite know what to make of it yet, but the initial reviews seem to be pointing to such a thing. Investigate and plan accordingly (and try not to lose your shirts).
Bad loans were the core of the housing bubble. To understand the reason behind it all, you've gotta ask yourself one question: "Why would lenders make loans that are unlikely to be repaid?" Answering that question leads to the answer behind the bubble. It was a bubble in supposedly AAA-rated mortgage debt.
Here's how it worked:
1) Securitization of mortgages into MBS (mortgage-backed securities).
2) Banks made money from selling the loans to securitizers and getting them off their books, not keeping them and collecting interest.
3) Demand for these securities skyrocketed, as they were thought to be safe and reliable income streams.
3) This led to the utter deterioration of loan quality, as banks basically just needed to get warm bodies to make loans to, create the loan and sell it. You started seeing things like NINJA loans (No Income No Job or Assets - NINJA) and option ARM loans made to risky borrowers. All included in securities rated AAA.
4) Investment companies bought these loans, ratings agencies stamped a AAA rating on them and the securities were then sold off. Buyers hungry for safe and reliable high interest returns couldn't get enough of it. Thus a bubble was formed.
Basically, for mortgage originators, it was like printing monopoly money, and then turning it in for actual currency. When borrowers started defaulting en masse, the whole house of cards came tumbling down.
Reading recommendations:
1) The Economist magazine cover story, "House of Cards", from 2003. Check out the multiple links to the separate sub-stories that make up the issue under the "In this special report" heading.
Viewing recommendations:
1) The Inside Job - Oscar-winning documentary on the financial crisis.
2) William K. Black interviewed on Bill Moyers.
The vendors push the failure risk onto the consumer. X number of failures/compromises is going to be miserable for the individual, but the corporation is able to keep making a net profit from it. Until the cost of failure becomes significant for the corporation, outweighing the benefits from using the online system, they'll stay with their current business model.
This is true of any consumer product.
There ought to be a security-related certification, along the lines of CMMI Level X, for websites that want to put sensitive information online. A group goes in and audits the network and the office, does penetration testing, and gives you a rating based on corporate practices, user knowledge and potential and actual weaknesses.
Before these sites feel like they can put up my social security number and health records behind passwords like admin/admin, or allow contractors to download entire social security databases and leave them on USB drives or laptops which can be/are stolen, they should first obtain some minimum level of security-related competence certification.
What it may have looked like from inside the cockpit.
There are one-way encryption methods (for example, MD5, SHA1) which only allow you to encrypt a string, but not decrypt it. There are also two-way encryption schemes (allows encryption and decryption), like AES Encryption. If I had to store data which could identify users or credit card information, I would look into two-way encryption mechanisms (those which can be both encrypted and decrypted).
More info on using AES to store credit card info.
The theory behind these algorithms is quite involved, but the programming interfaces to use them are very simple. A developer should take 60 minutes to learn about them, first out of respect for the users, and second, to avoid ending up in the news.
Oh, by the way, it was an e-Machine. That company and the big box retailer should be ashamed of themselves (as if the people who make such decisions are capable of such a feeling) for selling a Vista computer with 512 MB of RAM. For 500 dollars. It'll help the bottom line of the computer repair department, but the people who buy that crap are going to be the ones who can least afford to shovel money at it.
I know a blue collar guy who dutifully went to a big box store and bought a computer for his family. Five hundred dollars. A very significant sum of money to him. And the computer was crippled out of the box. Windows Vista running on 512 MB RAM. Outrageous. He would have to have spent another 300 dollars getting the computer fixed because when he brought it to me, it was not booting. It had been completely overrun with viruses as evidenced by his descriptions of the constant popups. Until it finally wouldn't boot. That's what forcing poorer folks to buy computers for schooling their kids would lead to. And 15 dollars for a usable computer? I've never, ever heard of such a thing. The minimal used computer I've ever seen was at least 200-300 dollars. Again, probably needing significant tuning. Computers are not turnkey appliances to most people.
PS: I fixed the fellow's computer for free. Reset it to factory spec. Put in an extra gig of RAM (Vista wound up stably using 800 MB of RAM, well above the original 512). Uninstalled the crashing virus scanner that came with it and installed a reliable one. Patched it. Verified it had a working firewall. Created non-admin user accounts. Adjusted the display (no video card) so it wouldn't use too much memory. Wrote a 10 page document on how to keep the thing running well and what pitfalls to avoid. He and his family have been very happy with it since. But wait until the power supply fails in a couple of years.
And they're also wired to form up into tribes or packs. Like wolves. Throughout the ages, they've competed bitterly with other tribes/packs. It's been a life and death struggle for resources they need to survive. This instinct is as normal and natural as any other typical human instinct. Of course, if it gets out of hand, you get world war. Tribalism has been around for as long as humans have been around. And it's been evolutionarily beneficial as evidenced by its existence to this very day, everywhere you look.
Now, in socially complex, diverse and technologically advanced civilizations, this can lead to trouble if aggressive tribalism is stoked by leaders for their own purposes. But it has its benefits too, as in successful cultures identifying themselves and trying to preserve themselves.
Humans are not bonobos, chimpanzees, orangutans or gorillas. They are humans. With all of their strengths and weaknesses and foibles.
I Had Asperger Syndrome. Briefly.
By BENJAMIN NUGENT
New York Times
Published: January 31, 2012
"FOR a brief, heady period in the history of autism spectrum diagnosis, in the late ’90s, I had Asperger syndrome.
I exhibited a “qualified impairment in social interaction,” specifically “failure to develop peer relationships appropriate to developmental level” (I had few friends) and a “lack of spontaneous seeking to share enjoyment, interests, or achievements with other people” (I spent a lot of time by myself in my room reading novels and listening to music, and when I did hang out with other kids I often tried to speak like an E. M. Forster narrator, annoying them). I exhibited an “encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus” (I memorized poems and spent a lot of time playing the guitar and writing terrible poems and novels).
The biggest single problem with the diagnostic criteria applied to me is this: You can be highly perceptive with regard to social interaction, as a child or adolescent, and still be a spectacular social failure. This is particularly true if you’re bad at sports or nervous or weird-looking.
But my experience can’t be unique. Under the rules in place today, any nerd, any withdrawn, bookish kid, can have Asperger syndrome."
Patterns repeat in the universe, from the atomic level to the interstellar level. The hurricanes swirl like the galaxies swirl. The interstellar dust clouds share the same shapes as storm clouds. Predator species devour prey species. So, personally, I'm not too keen on alerting what might be the equivalent of an interstellar ichthyosaur to our presence. Or a similarly ferocious space-going Roman-esque civilization. Blasting out "Hi! We're here!" in the middle of the universe is probably as imprudent as doing so in the midst of a predator-rich jungle or savanna at night.
There is the danger of flailing. But as you say, these are professional NASCAR drivers. However, I'd think putting one's hands on one's thighs would be best. Crossing one's hands over one's sternum with the airbag, might result in additional chest compression right over the heart. Elbows tucked into the sides, hands on thighs, seems to me the best route for a non-helmeted driver in an air bag-equipped vehicle. Here are some crash-test dummy videos, with airbag.
Here's the Danica Patrick video with her putting her hands on her helmet prior to impact.
Greenspan himself said:
"But on Thursday, almost three years after stepping down as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending.
“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,” he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform"
New York Times Link
Self-regulation was an experiment that failed. Government however is currently under the control of bought politicians. So any attempts to put some effective regulation in place will be halfhearted at best, and subject to constant undermining from the inside. November 2012 hopefully will bring some changes and some sanity restored to government and its regulatory bodies.
“Politicians are like diapers, they both need changing regularly and for the same reason.”
The same reason you don't want an entrenched imperial presidency is the same reason you don't want an entrenched, imperial Congress.
Who advised this kid to go to a jury trial? This was extraordinarily bad legal advice. He could avoided jail time, deportation, everything. Now, guilty on all charges. Wow. What a bad decision to go to trial. But - more money for the defense attorney.
People say that a white gang that kills a black guy terrorizes the black community. And that's probably true.
But you know what? A black gang that goes into a white neighborhood and kills a white guy terrorizes the white community.
Of course - intent matters. And I welcome stronger penalties for violent crimes. But not applying them equally to minorities that terrorize white communities is simply not equal protection.
Opinions like this are written from the perspective of a buyout company which is solely interested in maximizing share price.
Say you've got a company worth 10 million dollars. You have 1 million shares, each worth 10 dollars. Corporate raider comes in, strips out all "non-performing" assets like R&D, internal HR, IT, offshores programming, closes and consolidates stores. Voila! Now you've got a company (for a short period of time) that's worth 20 million since it has no drains on its "profit centers". Sell the company. Profit!
Private equity companies operate along similar lines. They'll buy a company take it private, "optimize" it, and resell it. As if they're any better business managers than the actual manager. In general, they're not. What they are good at is the leveraged buyout, field strip, and resell.
These types of activities result in healthy profits for the takeover artists, and jobs lost for the actual workers.
It's like harvesting the organs of a person while they're still alive in order to minimize the drains on ingested food. After you're done, they're going to be in very tough shape for any kind of long term existence. But by golly, food isn't being wasted on any of those useless organs.
Google is doing what companies used to do. They're going to become even more of a juggernaut.
This, on the other hand, is the way private equity execs dream of doing it.
"Government of the highest bidder, by the highest bidder, for the highest bidder."