Yes government has the power to do a lot of bad stuff.
However that doesn't mean they were the prime actors here. Not at all.
FAR MORE of that toxic sludge was sold to private investors (aided by a corrupt ratings process) than ever went to F&F. If it was just F&F Lehmann and Wachovia and Countrywide and Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns etc etc etc would still be in business and TARP and TARF would not have been necessary at all.
Then there was the whole thing about CDS, naked CDS, and the entire deal with ratings agencies (which still are rotten to the core BTW), SIVs and all the multifarious derivatives based on them that F&F had absolutely nothing to do with.
Trying to blame this on government is about as naive as is imaginable.
Unregulated derivatives are at the root of this crash. What is scary to me is that nobody is seriously considering regulating OTC derivatives. It means we are wide open to future episodes because the root causes are still in place.
Poppycock. The reason the system blew up is that private lenders were selling MBS securities via unregulated private conduits. Because of this GSE's lost the ability to monitor and control mortgage originators. This contributed to a decline in underwriting standards and was a major cause of the financial crisis.
The default rate of these mortgages is FAR greater than anything F&F participated in.
If we define NPE as not including inventors the only issue is that it restricts the inventor from selling all rights to the invention to the NPE. He could still retain his invention and engage an NPE for a piece of the action.
Your ideas miss the point of the paper which is that the patent system is flooded by junk making it less than worthless. And it has gotten to the point where it is unfixable.
If we are to have patents (and I think we will) the criteria for issuance needs to be limited to actual serious inventions that are the result of real work. Not baloney like UI features, business process, software etc.
Perhaps less (maybe much less) than 1% of what is issued today falls into that category.
Secondly there needs to be a real review process where objections to issuance can be filed by persons outside the patent office.
Finally infringement suits by NPEs need to be banned.
This human mind is long known to be superb at pattern detection. To the point where it often detects patterns that are not there. Shapes in clouds, patterns in random stock market behavior. Attributions of control of nature by gods.
Why should these false positives not also exist in analysis of behavior by individuals as well?
Conspiratorial thinking is just one of the many examples of human false positive pattern extraction.
HP is a total wreck of a company. Blowing billions on WTF acquisitions and going through CEOs like shit through a goose, not to mention a completely ineffective board of directors.
They used to be great. Their products were a dream of quality. I still have a personal collection of their to-die-for calculators. When the shuttle was first launched the astronauts were issued HP-41s in case they had computer problems or to aid in running experiments.
Slashdot Mirror
Along with that look at this:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1924831
It points out that mortgage securitization has failed every time it has been tried.
Yes government has the power to do a lot of bad stuff.
However that doesn't mean they were the prime actors here. Not at all.
FAR MORE of that toxic sludge was sold to private investors (aided by a corrupt ratings process) than ever went to F&F. If it was just F&F Lehmann and Wachovia and Countrywide and Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns etc etc etc would still be in business and TARP and TARF would not have been necessary at all.
Then there was the whole thing about CDS, naked CDS, and the entire deal with ratings agencies (which still are rotten to the core BTW), SIVs and all the multifarious derivatives based on them that F&F had absolutely nothing to do with.
Trying to blame this on government is about as naive as is imaginable.
Unregulated derivatives are at the root of this crash. What is scary to me is that nobody is seriously considering regulating OTC derivatives. It means we are wide open to future episodes because the root causes are still in place.
Poppycock. The reason the system blew up is that private lenders were selling MBS securities via unregulated private conduits. Because of this GSE's lost the ability to monitor and control mortgage originators. This contributed to a decline in underwriting standards and was a major cause of the financial crisis.
The default rate of these mortgages is FAR greater than anything F&F participated in.
During the run up to the crash the balance sheets of Freddie and Fannie actually shrunk because they could not compete with the private lenders.
Not only that, but F&F don't resell mortgages, so any bad loans don't destabilize the rest of the financial system.
The idea that they had anything to do with this is flat out preposterous.
In the 1990's there was a suggestion that over the counter derivatives (CDS, MBS included) be regulated by the then head of the CFTC, Brooksley Born.
This got slapped down hard by Greenspan, Summers, Rubin etc.
Regulated derivatives like options are far less profitable and far more transparent so of course the issuers of the OTC derivatives don't want that.
Regulation is still needed. People in the industry will tell you that the games are still going on.
Investment banks don't rate their own products.
They pay ratings companies to rate them.
Do you see the difference?
If you do please let me know what it is.
Look on the back. There is a switch that sets the scale for use with Murdoch related stuff.
There are a variety of workarounds for that problem.
Some I've seen are:
1. Browser plugin.
2. Bookmarket
3. Use of console to enter Javascript
http://superuser.com/questions/405877/is-there-a-browser-extension-that-bypasses-restrictions-of-pasting-passwords
In other words you were insecure.
To a reasonable approximation there are only 10,000 passwords.
I only have to have a password stronger than yours.
The best thing to get a jump start would be to find out what texts are going to be used for his courses and to start on them.
Apple Records actually sued Apple Computer over that and won....
You left out force field and warp drive.
If I had mod points.....
Amazon is really getting to be a pain when it comes to e-books. I was never a fan of the idea but there are clearly grades of evil here.
If we define NPE as not including inventors the only issue is that it restricts the inventor from selling all rights to the invention to the NPE. He could still retain his invention and engage an NPE for a piece of the action.
It seems to me this law allows that.
After all corps are people too. And we certainly have reason to believe they are breaking laws.
I have a drill press in my garage for dealing with such defective equipment.
No, I am right. It was ink cartridges. Here's a citation from the WSJ.
http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Courses/Ec100C/newink.htm
HP was using the razor/razor blade model where you give away the printer and make the profit on the carts.
It was the case that on special the printers were selling for less than the carts.
Your ideas miss the point of the paper which is that the patent system is flooded by junk making it less than worthless. And it has gotten to the point where it is unfixable.
If we are to have patents (and I think we will) the criteria for issuance needs to be limited to actual serious inventions that are the result of real work. Not baloney like UI features, business process, software etc.
Perhaps less (maybe much less) than 1% of what is issued today falls into that category.
Secondly there needs to be a real review process where objections to issuance can be filed by persons outside the patent office.
Finally infringement suits by NPEs need to be banned.
This human mind is long known to be superb at pattern detection. To the point where it often detects patterns that are not there. Shapes in clouds, patterns in random stock market behavior. Attributions of control of nature by gods.
Why should these false positives not also exist in analysis of behavior by individuals as well?
Conspiratorial thinking is just one of the many examples of human false positive pattern extraction.
Ah interesting. 5 years ago HP DID make 2/3's of its profit from ink cartridges.
It appears that they managed to screw even that up and now their ink cartridge business is in trouble.
So no it isn't ignorance. It's due to overestimating this turd of a company.
HP is a total wreck of a company. Blowing billions on WTF acquisitions and going through CEOs like shit through a goose, not to mention a completely ineffective board of directors.
They used to be great. Their products were a dream of quality. I still have a personal collection of their to-die-for calculators. When the shuttle was first launched the astronauts were issued HP-41s in case they had computer problems or to aid in running experiments.
http://hpinspace.wordpress.com/category/hp-41/
Now they are nothing. They get most of their income from ink cartridges.
It started with Carly who gutted their R&D.
It is not going to stop in the foreseeable future.
RIP HP
No, HBO has not been stealing. The bought the TV rights from the author in 2007.
http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/HBO
Which is about double what the effective tax rate is currently.