But Wall Street didn't get the approx 1 Trillion $ in bailout money into their pockets. They got big bonuses, granted, but the reason that there's a financial black hole is that the Trillion $ was previously lent to buy houses for people who can't repay.
And now the housing bubble is deflating, the money is evaporating. The pay to Wall St represented (like) 2% of the problem. The real problem is that the housing market is larger than the US government.
But the 'winners' (if you can call people who are/were living in over-expensive houses) are distributed widely.
Suppose there were 10Million people each overpaying 50k for a house (both under-estimates) - that's 500Billion right there. No Wall St firm made that 500B, it was lent by banks into structures (which were completely mis-rated by the rating agencies), and now the money is just GONE.
I created EeeDora back in Dec-2007, precisely because I wanted Fedora on my EeePC. It's really minimal - but only Fedora 8 at the moment.
Fedora 10 has the WiFi drivers integrated, and I've been working (albeit v. slowly) on getting everything 'packaged' (rather than the bulk unpacking of stuff that I concocted to get the job done quickly in 2007).
I think that Eeedora 10 (or, more likely 11, soon) will have the LXDE desktop - since it's so efficient, though there's also a Fedora-Lite distribution being pulled together that's got more of the 'real' Fedora guys involved.
I had no idea that the homepage had gone down - my apologies - I'll see whether I can do something about that...
Strange - I went to Japan 3 weeks ago (for the New Year) and they didn't require any fingerprints.
On returning to the US (I have a visa), I was required to give a full '10-card', plus a photo. That's up from just giving two first-fingers earlier in the year.
Bad example. Treasury rates have fallen. The mark-to-market value of your hypothetical bond would be something like $105.
A better example would be a corporate bond, where it's true that values have fallen dramatically. But then 'formerly solid' corporates (eg: GM & Ford, Bear & Lehman) are now revealing how risky they really are. The market isn't necessarily wrong in lowering the prices : risk premia have gone up for everything.
I might accept your argument for accrual accounting if the money funding the asset purchase was also long-term (match funded), since then the accounting artifacts wouldn't matter so much. But, basically the whole credit crisis has been caused by a fundamental funding mis-match : investors were funding 30-year mortgages using 3-month money (with the additional assumption that houses would continue to rise in value at 4% p.a. ad infinitum).
Different twist : Your stand against patents would be better served by the following :
Since the company is pre-IPO, the patentable IP issue will be HUGE in their minds (and the minds of the bankers, etc). So you're currently very valuable. Demand (and get in writing) pre-IPO stock.
Later, when you sell the stock, donate half to the EFF. The EFF will be able to undermine many more than your one, solitary patent.
I'm no supporter of Microsoft, but I have to point out that they didn't set out to patent item #3.
Patents list claims which each build on each other - the real meat of what they would sue for is in the later bits (which build on the broad points earlier up the list).
The broad claims near the top of the list are not the target of the patent - it's the really specific stuff near the bottom which are the 'novel claims'.
Slashdot Mirror
But Wall Street didn't get the approx 1 Trillion $ in bailout money into their pockets. They got big bonuses, granted, but the reason that there's a financial black hole is that the Trillion $ was previously lent to buy houses for people who can't repay.
And now the housing bubble is deflating, the money is evaporating. The pay to Wall St represented (like) 2% of the problem. The real problem is that the housing market is larger than the US government.
But the 'winners' (if you can call people who are/were living in over-expensive houses) are distributed widely.
Suppose there were 10Million people each overpaying 50k for a house (both under-estimates) - that's 500Billion right there. No Wall St firm made that 500B, it was lent by banks into structures (which were completely mis-rated by the rating agencies), and now the money is just GONE.
Thanks for the Reference!
I created EeeDora back in Dec-2007, precisely because I wanted Fedora on my EeePC. It's really minimal - but only Fedora 8 at the moment.
Fedora 10 has the WiFi drivers integrated, and I've been working (albeit v. slowly) on getting everything 'packaged' (rather than the bulk unpacking of stuff that I concocted to get the job done quickly in 2007).
I think that Eeedora 10 (or, more likely 11, soon) will have the LXDE desktop - since it's so efficient, though there's also a Fedora-Lite distribution being pulled together that's got more of the 'real' Fedora guys involved.
I had no idea that the homepage had gone down - my apologies - I'll see whether I can do something about that...
Strange - I went to Japan 3 weeks ago (for the New Year) and they didn't require any fingerprints.
On returning to the US (I have a visa), I was required to give a full '10-card', plus a photo. That's up from just giving two first-fingers earlier in the year.
Bad example. Treasury rates have fallen. The mark-to-market value of your hypothetical bond would be something like $105.
A better example would be a corporate bond, where it's true that values have fallen dramatically. But then 'formerly solid' corporates (eg: GM & Ford, Bear & Lehman) are now revealing how risky they really are. The market isn't necessarily wrong in lowering the prices : risk premia have gone up for everything.
I might accept your argument for accrual accounting if the money funding the asset purchase was also long-term (match funded), since then the accounting artifacts wouldn't matter so much. But, basically the whole credit crisis has been caused by a fundamental funding mis-match : investors were funding 30-year mortgages using 3-month money (with the additional assumption that houses would continue to rise in value at 4% p.a. ad infinitum).
Something had to break.
Different twist : Your stand against patents would be better served by the following :
Since the company is pre-IPO, the patentable IP issue will be HUGE in their minds (and the minds of the bankers, etc). So you're currently very valuable. Demand (and get in writing) pre-IPO stock.
Later, when you sell the stock, donate half to the EFF. The EFF will be able to undermine many more than your one, solitary patent.
I'm no supporter of Microsoft, but I have to point out that they didn't set out to patent item #3.
Patents list claims which each build on each other - the real meat of what they would sue for is in the later bits (which build on the broad points earlier up the list).
The broad claims near the top of the list are not the target of the patent - it's the really specific stuff near the bottom which are the 'novel claims'.