IBM is a monopoly. There are no other competitors in the mainframe business. IBM just doesnt make the OS they make the hardware as well. They essentially broke every other competitors back by either pricing them out or buying them up. They became the defacto big iron supplier in the world and abused said position every time anyone came out with better faster or cheaper hardware than them, history has repeated itself.
This position allows them to dictate the market place and pretty much kill off invention and improvement.
The pc market place is full of competitors duking it out to make a buck and gain your business as a hardware supplier.
The mainframe you have a choice for both the OS and hardware it is IBM or...
There are plenty of other competitors in the large scale computing environment that compete quite well with IBM mainframes. And plenty of companies migrating to those competitors every year. IBM offers a stellar product with outstanding service, but that comes at an extremely high price. Many of its customers are not willing to continue paying that high price, so they migrate to other solutions. Just as Apple can dictate to the OSX marketplace, but not the entire desktop marketplace, IBM can dictate to the mainframe marketplace but not the entire large scale computing marketplace.
Other competitors left the mainframe hardware marketplace because they did not want to invest the kind of money IBM was willing to. IBM's large systems division had a vision of where mainframes could go and they bet the farm on it. Through the '90s and the early part of this decade IBM introduced innovation after innovation for mainframes that left their competitors in the dust. Far from stifling innovation they led it.
And don't make the absurd statement that Apple has a monopoly on Macs unless you're willing to call BMW a monopoly because they're the only company that can build BMWs.
BMW is to other luxury auto makers as IBM mainframes are to other large scale computing solutions. IBM does not hold a monopoly on large scale computing solutions. There are plenty of companies that offer Linux and/or Unix solutions that compete nicely with mainframes. And every year there are an increasing number of companies that choose to migrate from mainframes to Linux/Unix. IBM is not necessarily a loser in these migrations, since it's one of the leading competitors in the large scale Unix market. You can even hire IBM to manage the migration.
Surely a study like this is not funded by the organic food industry?
Not sure why the organic food industry would have an interest in funding a study like this. Maybe you're assuming that organic!=junk food. This isn't the case, as there are plenty of companies producing organic junk food, such as chocolate, high fat ice cream and deep fried snacks like potato and corn chips. Consuming organic food doesn't guarantee a healthy diet, that's still up to the individual.
Many people purchase Photoshop for considerably less than $1000. My niece is in a graphic design program, and she purchased a new copy of the student edition of Photoshop for $200. Four years ago my daughter, then in high school, purchased a copy of Photoshop from Ebay for about $100.
Just one of many things that in no way affect your job performance but will disqualify you from many jobs.
Actually I would disagree. I dare say that a person's credit history might be an excellent way to look at how a person manages their tasks/duties.
Here is a list of things I can think of that you could deduce from looking at this sort of a list:
1) Can the person manage regular things coming in and out?
2) Can the person plan and control themselves to stay in control of things?
3) Has the person got enough wits to be able to manage tight situations as they arise here and there?
Thoughts?
Most potential employers checking credit scores don't give applicants an opportunity to explain their situations. 60% of bankruptcies are due to medical expenses. Are all those people who have bad credit scores because they or someone close to them was ill unable to:
Manage regular things coming in and out?
Plan and control themselves to stay in control of things?
Have enough wits to be able to manage tight situations as they arise here and there?
As this article points out, for musicians the alternatives are not just go it alone or sign with a record label. New business models are developing that permit musicians to raise money directly from investors and still maintain ownership of their copyrights and master recordings. While there may still be a place for the major record labels in the future, it's going to be a lot smaller than it is today.
I don't think ball point pens had to much to do with the decline of cursive. I went to elementary school in the 1960s, and we learned cursive writing with ball point pens. It was a graded subject through 5th grade, and by the end of 5th grade almost everyone in the class could write good to excellent cursive. Legible cursive writing was expected not only in school, but on many jobs.
Will be two bit local prosecutors going after local adolescent girls who photoshop their own and their friends' heads onto images of the naked bodies of older women.
Under the covers Tivoli Directory Server, an LDAP server, uses IBM's DB2 as a data store. It's basically a relational database that's been optimized for use by an LDAP server.
Everyone knows that advances in medical treatment can only come from profit motivated companies that can patent their treatment and then charge what the market will bear. It defies logic that an institution and its associated researchers would be motivated to advance knowledge and reduce suffering without being able to extract every last cent from desperate patients and their families.
Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.
When I look at that statement in the context of the entire speech, it expresses at most an aspiration or desire that her kind of experience would make her a better judge. She didn't assert that whites are an inferior race relative to some other group or that they should be denied equal rights or relegated to second-class citizenship.
I don't think it's racist. She didn't assert that whites are an inferior race relative to some other group or that they should be denied equal rights or relegated to second-class citizenship. I think Daniel Larison of American Conservative summed it up nicely.
The...quote expresses at most an aspiration or desire that her kind of experience would make her a better judge. Suppose for a moment that a conservative Catholic man in a similar position said that he hoped that the richness of his religious tradition would inform and shape his judgments that would more often than not help him to make better judgments than someone without that background. Such a person might reasonably and legitimately claim this. No doubt there would be a comparable freak-out in certain circles on the left that theocracy was on the march, while conservatives would declare it outrageous (indeed, the imposition of a religious test!) that anyone would object to a statement about the importance of the man's faith to his formation and thinking. She is not asserting that Latinas are naturally superior judges, nor is she even saying that they are necessarily better on account of their experiences, but that she hopes that they would be. One might almost think that her recognition that impartiality is something to be pursued, but that it is never fully achievable, would be considered a refreshingly honest admission that judges have biases and are shaped by their past experiences. For a moment, imagine a pious Christian who expressed a similar hope that his faith would make him a better judge than an unbeliever. No doubt this would raise the hackles of all kinds of people, but it would no more make him a religious fanatic than Sotomayor's rather mild comments make her a 'racialist.'
I don't know if it was the 30,000 complaints that prompted action or the one complaint from one of the most senior members of the US senate. The week before the FTC acted Senator Chuck Schumer of NY received one too many of these calls and started seeing what could be done about it. One pissed off senior senator carries more weight than 30,000 pissed off normal people. Maybe the FTC was going to act on this problem this week, but I can't help but think Schumer prompted them to act sooner than they would have.
Do antibiotics wipe out everything in person's gut, or is there enough left over that people get recolonized with the same set of microbes they had before taking the antibiotics? Also, are the bacteria that might influence weight gain susceptible to common antibiotics that wipe out most other bacteria in the gut? The summary had a link to an article on the fat bacteria, and it contained the following.
"The issue, then was to determine which came first: the fat, or the bacteria. To find out, the lab took mice that had never been exposed to any bacteria, whose guts were totally germ-free. Half of them got bacteria taken from skinny mice. The other half got bacteria from fat mice."
"Both groups put on body fat. But the mice that received bacteria from obese donors gained more fat over the course of the experiment."
In two hundred years no major court ruling in the US has found fractional reserve banking illegal or unconstitutional. If you're waiting for such an event you'll be tilting at windmills for the rest of your life. The biggest political opponents of the federal reserve have all the political power of house cats. Ron Paul has a snow ball's chance in Brazil of getting elected to anything more significant than a congressional seat. Face it, we live in a world of fiat currency, every single significant economic system in the world is based on fiat currency. The transition to full reserve banking would lead to an economic contraction the likes of which we've never seen. What we're experiencing now would be mild next to it.
These private non-bank lenders enjoyed a regulatory gap, allowing them to be regulated by 50 different state banking supervisors instead of the federal government. And mortgage brokers, who also weren't subject to federal regulation or the CRA, originated most of the subprime loans.
And why did those loans cause a contraction in the money supply when they weren't paid? That only happens because of government backed fractional reserve lending. The situation has been entirely initiated by government intervention. Unconstitutional government intervention at that, being the formation of the fed.
By the way: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Barack+Obama+Citibank+CRA
Since the vast majority of loans that created this crisis were not CRA related, I'm at a loss to understand why you continue to focus on CRA loans. CRA loans do not have an excessive default rate, unlike the very creative sub prime mortgages created by non-CRA financial institutions, like Countrywide. Here's what the president of the Bank of America had to say on the subject.
"I've seen a disturbing trend among some market observers, who are trying to lay primary blame for our current troubles on CRA. I think itâ(TM)s fair to say that in many cases CRA lending standards fell victim to the same market pressures and overconfidence we saw in other sectors of the mortgage markets. In that regard, political pressure to expand homeownership did become one of many contributing factors as the housing bubble grew. But the charge that CRA lending was the primary or foundational cause of our housing crisis is not only unfair, it's not true."
"Some quick history. CRA was passed in 1977 to require banks to make loans in the same neighborhoods where they collected deposits, including low-to-moderate income neighborhoods. There's no mandate to make risky loans, or to abandon sound lending principles."
"Many reports and investigations, including a Fed report in 2000 and our own experience over the past 30 years, have found that CRA lending can be profitable, and need not be overly risky. The riskiest subprime lending of the past ten years didn't have anything to do with CRA, in fact, 75% of high-priced loans made by mortgage companies and bank affiliates in recent years were not covered by CRA."
Other than as a historical footnote, I fail to see what the link to Obama's involvement with an anti-discrimination lawsuit has to do with today's financial crisis. The court case says absolutely nothing about the CRA. It is a suit against Citibank for discrimination in loan practices. Did that lawsuit lead to people who could not afford a mortgage getting mortgages? Or did it lead to Citibank offering mortgages to people who weren't as profitable to loan to but were capable of handling a mortgage? None of the links offer any evidence that bad mortgages were made as a result of the lawsuit.
This is a direct result of the 2004 loosening of regulations that restricted their debt-to-net-capital ratio to 15 to 1. After 2004 this became 30 to 1, setting these institutions up for the economic meltdown in 2007 and 2008.
... and yet for any private citizen, a debt-to-net-capital ratio of more than 1:1 is called bankruptcy, which you may avoid if you manage to keep making your payments. What is it that allows lending institutions such ratios? Regulation, that's what. Without law on their side to make their loan created money acceptable as payment of debt and taxes, without laws that allow them to operate with levels of debt that we all know are foolish and irresponsible if taken on by an individual, none of this financial collapse could have happened.
Good regulation is what prevents financial organizations from becoming too leveraged. Banks push
It's not just a matter of resources, it's also a matter of time. Legislation may be drafted over a period of weeks or months, but people and companies have years to find loop holes. It's not surprising that given enough time loop holes can be found in most legislation.
The Community Reinvestment Act required lending institutions to make loans that would ultimately not be repaid. How any of this could be seriously accepted as the result of a lack of regulation is one of the most outstanding achievements of propagandists of all time.
The CRA required no such thing. CRA loans have traditionally had a low default rate. Local community banks have had very good experiences with CRA mortgages.
More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.
Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.
Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the CRA.
Mortgage brokers, investment banks and finance companies like now defunct New Century and Countrywide are not subject to CRA. Only banks and thrifts are required to follow CRA regulations.
These private non-bank lenders enjoyed a regulatory gap, allowing them to be regulated by 50 different state banking supervisors instead of the federal government. And mortgage brokers, who also weren't subject to federal regulation or the CRA, originated most of the subprime loans.
Both Fannie and Freddie were under pressure to purchase increasingly risky bundles of mortgages, or originators such as Countrywide would stop doing business with them. Investment banks like Lehman Bros and Merill Lynch were willing to buy all the bad mortgages these originators were willing to sell, eliminating the need to go to Fannie and Freddie.
Between 2004 and 2006, when subprime lending was exploding, Fannie and Freddie went from holding a high of 48 percent of the subprime loans that were sold into the secondary market to holding about 24 percent, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance, a specialty publication. One reason is that Fannie and Freddie were subject to tougher standards than many of the unregulated players in the private sector who weakened lending standards, most of whom have gone bankrupt or are now in deep trouble.
During those same explosive three years, private investment banks - not Fannie and Freddie - dominated the mortgage loans that were packaged and sold into the secondary mortgage market. In 2005 and 2006, the private sector securitized almost two thirds of all U.S. mortgages, supplanting Fannie and Freddie.
Investment banks were able to acquire too many of these bundles of mortgages because they were permitted to take on so much debt. This is a direct result of the 2004 loosening of regulations that restricted their debt-to-net-capital ratio to 15 to 1. After 2004 this became 30 to 1, setting these institutions up for the economic meltdown in 2007 and 2008. This is one example of many where either a lack of regulation or a loosening of existing regulations lead to the problems we're seeing today.
"Bike's are a great transportation solution for a lot of people, but they're not for everyone. There are many people that just can't ride a bike because of various physical limitations. Maintaining what you consider a reasonable 15 mph is beyond a lot of people."
Maintaining 15 mph is not very hard. Sure, there's people who can't, but I can sustain 20, and I'm... let's go with "portly".
Your performance on a bike is not necessarily reflective of the population at large.
I'm familiar with riding on bikes. It's one of my favorite activities. I ride thousands of miles per year on a bike. I do at least one self supported long distance bike tour per year. I'm fitter than most people my age (53), and I average about 16-18 mph on open rural roads. My average drops considerably in urban areas where there're a lot of stop lights/signs. Throw in a big hill or two or a strong headwind and average speed drops considerably. I find maintaining 20 mph for any sustained period doable but not something I particularly enjoy doing. When I ride on large group rides, say something like the annual Seattle to Portland group ride with 9000+ riders, I find I go faster than a considerable portion of the other riders, and I'm not knocking myself out.
Most people, even if they enjoyed riding a bike when younger find it progressively more difficult to do as they move into the 50's. These days I ride a recumbent because I can no longer ride an upright due to problems in my shoulders and arms. This is a problem that hits a significant portion of people who give up riding bikes. I know nearly as many people who have given up riding because of physical problems as those still riding. Aching hips, knees, and backs become progressively more common. You might be surprised at the percentage of the population afflicted with these sorts of things. If it weren't for recumbents I probably wouldn't be riding a bike.
"It's wider than a bike and the back could be painted a bright fluorescent color, making it quite visible to motorists."
So, the width is a disadvantage, obviously. I can wear bright flourescent colors, and if they don't see me, they're not looking that way; bigger won't help.
I think bigger does help for visibility. A larger area of bright color is more likely to catch people's eyes. Hell, larger all by itself is more visible. Plus, with a bike you have to carry a special bright jacket or shirt just for use on the bike. Unless you like wearing that sort of thing when you're out and about. I've got a nice bright lime colored jacket, but I really don't feel like wearing it except while riding a bike.
"Its seat has a full length back, which can offer a bit of comfort if you have to spend time in traffic."
Which on a bike, you don't.
You're experience commuting in urban areas is different than mine if you don't have to spend any time in traffic.
Bike's are a great transportation solution for a lot of people, but they're not for everyone. There are many people that just can't ride a bike because of various physical limitations. Maintaining what you consider a reasonable 15 mph is beyond a lot of people.
Depending on a person's needs and preferences, this vehicle could offer a number of advantages over a bike.
It's wider than a bike and the back could be painted a bright fluorescent color, making it quite visible to motorists.
It's got a full windshield and roof offering some protection from the sun, wind and weather.
And your bike can take how many passengers? The passenger and the driver are side by side, which should make conversation easy.
Its seat has a full length back, which can offer a bit of comfort if you have to spend time in traffic.
Do medications count as medical treatments? Such as how statins do not lower your risk of death? Which is not surprising because cholesterol is a symptom not a cause.
I'd be interested why you conclude that. This abastract and this article, and quite a few other sources, offer good evidence that statins lower the risk of death in the general population.
Let's go with Wikipedia's definition of Occam's Razor, which states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. As long as we're misusing Occam, we may as well throw in the quote from Einstein, "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
Economic considerations make a large difference in considering what actions the Obama administration has taken in regard to GM. In December, Bush authorized $13 billion in aid. It certainly wasn't for love of the UAW that drove him, and there's no reason to assume it was the primary motivation for the Obama administration either.
It's reasonable to assume that economic considerations drove Obama and his economic advisors to delay a GM bankruptcy until it could be executed with as little disruption to the economy as possible. Through the fall, estimates I was seeing of job losses from a GM bankruptcy ranged from half a million up. Ford Motor Company said last fall that if GM went bankrupt it may force them into bankruptcy due to shared suppliers being under stress. Toyota said a GM bankruptcy would adversely affect its North American operations. There is no other industrial corporation in the US whose bankruptcy could be as massively disruptive. The economy doesn't need massively disruptive at this point. If they go bankrupt the government needs a plan to make sure it's as minimally disruptive to the economy as possible. The money loaned to GM bought time to do that. And the new chief executive GM was forced to take from the Obama administration appears to be preparing everyone for a structured bankruptcy.
So, what other company has the Obama administration permitted to fail that would have as significant an impact as GM's failure?
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IBM is a monopoly. There are no other competitors in the mainframe business. IBM just doesnt make the OS they make the hardware as well. They essentially broke every other competitors back by either pricing them out or buying them up. They became the defacto big iron supplier in the world and abused said position every time anyone came out with better faster or cheaper hardware than them, history has repeated itself. This position allows them to dictate the market place and pretty much kill off invention and improvement. The pc market place is full of competitors duking it out to make a buck and gain your business as a hardware supplier. The mainframe you have a choice for both the OS and hardware it is IBM or ...
There are plenty of other competitors in the large scale computing environment that compete quite well with IBM mainframes. And plenty of companies migrating to those competitors every year. IBM offers a stellar product with outstanding service, but that comes at an extremely high price. Many of its customers are not willing to continue paying that high price, so they migrate to other solutions. Just as Apple can dictate to the OSX marketplace, but not the entire desktop marketplace, IBM can dictate to the mainframe marketplace but not the entire large scale computing marketplace. Other competitors left the mainframe hardware marketplace because they did not want to invest the kind of money IBM was willing to. IBM's large systems division had a vision of where mainframes could go and they bet the farm on it. Through the '90s and the early part of this decade IBM introduced innovation after innovation for mainframes that left their competitors in the dust. Far from stifling innovation they led it.
And don't make the absurd statement that Apple has a monopoly on Macs unless you're willing to call BMW a monopoly because they're the only company that can build BMWs.
BMW is to other luxury auto makers as IBM mainframes are to other large scale computing solutions. IBM does not hold a monopoly on large scale computing solutions. There are plenty of companies that offer Linux and/or Unix solutions that compete nicely with mainframes. And every year there are an increasing number of companies that choose to migrate from mainframes to Linux/Unix. IBM is not necessarily a loser in these migrations, since it's one of the leading competitors in the large scale Unix market. You can even hire IBM to manage the migration.
Surely a study like this is not funded by the organic food industry?
Not sure why the organic food industry would have an interest in funding a study like this. Maybe you're assuming that organic!=junk food. This isn't the case, as there are plenty of companies producing organic junk food, such as chocolate, high fat ice cream and deep fried snacks like potato and corn chips. Consuming organic food doesn't guarantee a healthy diet, that's still up to the individual.
Many people purchase Photoshop for considerably less than $1000. My niece is in a graphic design program, and she purchased a new copy of the student edition of Photoshop for $200. Four years ago my daughter, then in high school, purchased a copy of Photoshop from Ebay for about $100.
Just one of many things that in no way affect your job performance but will disqualify you from many jobs.
Actually I would disagree. I dare say that a person's credit history might be an excellent way to look at how a person manages their tasks/duties. Here is a list of things I can think of that you could deduce from looking at this sort of a list: 1) Can the person manage regular things coming in and out? 2) Can the person plan and control themselves to stay in control of things? 3) Has the person got enough wits to be able to manage tight situations as they arise here and there? Thoughts?
Most potential employers checking credit scores don't give applicants an opportunity to explain their situations. 60% of bankruptcies are due to medical expenses. Are all those people who have bad credit scores because they or someone close to them was ill unable to:
Or are they just the victim of really bad luck?
As this article points out, for musicians the alternatives are not just go it alone or sign with a record label. New business models are developing that permit musicians to raise money directly from investors and still maintain ownership of their copyrights and master recordings. While there may still be a place for the major record labels in the future, it's going to be a lot smaller than it is today.
I don't think ball point pens had to much to do with the decline of cursive. I went to elementary school in the 1960s, and we learned cursive writing with ball point pens. It was a graded subject through 5th grade, and by the end of 5th grade almost everyone in the class could write good to excellent cursive. Legible cursive writing was expected not only in school, but on many jobs.
Will be two bit local prosecutors going after local adolescent girls who photoshop their own and their friends' heads onto images of the naked bodies of older women.
Under the covers Tivoli Directory Server, an LDAP server, uses IBM's DB2 as a data store. It's basically a relational database that's been optimized for use by an LDAP server.
It's not just doctors, I think many people hate technology unless its benefits are obvious and it's as easy to use as a refrigerator.
Everyone knows that advances in medical treatment can only come from profit motivated companies that can patent their treatment and then charge what the market will bear. It defies logic that an institution and its associated researchers would be motivated to advance knowledge and reduce suffering without being able to extract every last cent from desperate patients and their families.
Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.
When I look at that statement in the context of the entire speech, it expresses at most an aspiration or desire that her kind of experience would make her a better judge. She didn't assert that whites are an inferior race relative to some other group or that they should be denied equal rights or relegated to second-class citizenship.
The...quote expresses at most an aspiration or desire that her kind of experience would make her a better judge. Suppose for a moment that a conservative Catholic man in a similar position said that he hoped that the richness of his religious tradition would inform and shape his judgments that would more often than not help him to make better judgments than someone without that background. Such a person might reasonably and legitimately claim this. No doubt there would be a comparable freak-out in certain circles on the left that theocracy was on the march, while conservatives would declare it outrageous (indeed, the imposition of a religious test!) that anyone would object to a statement about the importance of the man's faith to his formation and thinking. She is not asserting that Latinas are naturally superior judges, nor is she even saying that they are necessarily better on account of their experiences, but that she hopes that they would be. One might almost think that her recognition that impartiality is something to be pursued, but that it is never fully achievable, would be considered a refreshingly honest admission that judges have biases and are shaped by their past experiences. For a moment, imagine a pious Christian who expressed a similar hope that his faith would make him a better judge than an unbeliever. No doubt this would raise the hackles of all kinds of people, but it would no more make him a religious fanatic than Sotomayor's rather mild comments make her a 'racialist.'
I don't know if it was the 30,000 complaints that prompted action or the one complaint from one of the most senior members of the US senate. The week before the FTC acted Senator Chuck Schumer of NY received one too many of these calls and started seeing what could be done about it. One pissed off senior senator carries more weight than 30,000 pissed off normal people. Maybe the FTC was going to act on this problem this week, but I can't help but think Schumer prompted them to act sooner than they would have.
Do antibiotics wipe out everything in person's gut, or is there enough left over that people get recolonized with the same set of microbes they had before taking the antibiotics? Also, are the bacteria that might influence weight gain susceptible to common antibiotics that wipe out most other bacteria in the gut? The summary had a link to an article on the fat bacteria, and it contained the following.
"The issue, then was to determine which came first: the fat, or the bacteria. To find out, the lab took mice that had never been exposed to any bacteria, whose guts were totally germ-free. Half of them got bacteria taken from skinny mice. The other half got bacteria from fat mice."
"Both groups put on body fat. But the mice that received bacteria from obese donors gained more fat over the course of the experiment."
In two hundred years no major court ruling in the US has found fractional reserve banking illegal or unconstitutional. If you're waiting for such an event you'll be tilting at windmills for the rest of your life. The biggest political opponents of the federal reserve have all the political power of house cats. Ron Paul has a snow ball's chance in Brazil of getting elected to anything more significant than a congressional seat. Face it, we live in a world of fiat currency, every single significant economic system in the world is based on fiat currency. The transition to full reserve banking would lead to an economic contraction the likes of which we've never seen. What we're experiencing now would be mild next to it.
These private non-bank lenders enjoyed a regulatory gap, allowing them to be regulated by 50 different state banking supervisors instead of the federal government. And mortgage brokers, who also weren't subject to federal regulation or the CRA, originated most of the subprime loans.
And why did those loans cause a contraction in the money supply when they weren't paid? That only happens because of government backed fractional reserve lending. The situation has been entirely initiated by government intervention. Unconstitutional government intervention at that, being the formation of the fed. By the way: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Barack+Obama+Citibank+CRA
Since the vast majority of loans that created this crisis were not CRA related, I'm at a loss to understand why you continue to focus on CRA loans. CRA loans do not have an excessive default rate, unlike the very creative sub prime mortgages created by non-CRA financial institutions, like Countrywide. Here's what the president of the Bank of America had to say on the subject.
"I've seen a disturbing trend among some market observers, who are trying to lay primary blame for our current troubles on CRA. I think itâ(TM)s fair to say that in many cases CRA lending standards fell victim to the same market pressures and overconfidence we saw in other sectors of the mortgage markets. In that regard, political pressure to expand homeownership did become one of many contributing factors as the housing bubble grew. But the charge that CRA lending was the primary or foundational cause of our housing crisis is not only unfair, it's not true."
"Some quick history. CRA was passed in 1977 to require banks to make loans in the same neighborhoods where they collected deposits, including low-to-moderate income neighborhoods. There's no mandate to make risky loans, or to abandon sound lending principles."
"Many reports and investigations, including a Fed report in 2000 and our own experience over the past 30 years, have found that CRA lending can be profitable, and need not be overly risky. The riskiest subprime lending of the past ten years didn't have anything to do with CRA, in fact, 75% of high-priced loans made by mortgage companies and bank affiliates in recent years were not covered by CRA."
Other than as a historical footnote, I fail to see what the link to Obama's involvement with an anti-discrimination lawsuit has to do with today's financial crisis. The court case says absolutely nothing about the CRA. It is a suit against Citibank for discrimination in loan practices. Did that lawsuit lead to people who could not afford a mortgage getting mortgages? Or did it lead to Citibank offering mortgages to people who weren't as profitable to loan to but were capable of handling a mortgage? None of the links offer any evidence that bad mortgages were made as a result of the lawsuit.
This is a direct result of the 2004 loosening of regulations that restricted their debt-to-net-capital ratio to 15 to 1. After 2004 this became 30 to 1, setting these institutions up for the economic meltdown in 2007 and 2008.
... and yet for any private citizen, a debt-to-net-capital ratio of more than 1:1 is called bankruptcy, which you may avoid if you manage to keep making your payments. What is it that allows lending institutions such ratios? Regulation, that's what. Without law on their side to make their loan created money acceptable as payment of debt and taxes, without laws that allow them to operate with levels of debt that we all know are foolish and irresponsible if taken on by an individual, none of this financial collapse could have happened.
Good regulation is what prevents financial organizations from becoming too leveraged. Banks push
It's not just a matter of resources, it's also a matter of time. Legislation may be drafted over a period of weeks or months, but people and companies have years to find loop holes. It's not surprising that given enough time loop holes can be found in most legislation.
The Community Reinvestment Act required lending institutions to make loans that would ultimately not be repaid. How any of this could be seriously accepted as the result of a lack of regulation is one of the most outstanding achievements of propagandists of all time.
The CRA required no such thing. CRA loans have traditionally had a low default rate. Local community banks have had very good experiences with CRA mortgages.
Mortgage brokers, investment banks and finance companies like now defunct New Century and Countrywide are not subject to CRA. Only banks and thrifts are required to follow CRA regulations.
These private non-bank lenders enjoyed a regulatory gap, allowing them to be regulated by 50 different state banking supervisors instead of the federal government. And mortgage brokers, who also weren't subject to federal regulation or the CRA, originated most of the subprime loans.
Both Fannie and Freddie were under pressure to purchase increasingly risky bundles of mortgages, or originators such as Countrywide would stop doing business with them. Investment banks like Lehman Bros and Merill Lynch were willing to buy all the bad mortgages these originators were willing to sell, eliminating the need to go to Fannie and Freddie.
Between 2004 and 2006, when subprime lending was exploding, Fannie and Freddie went from holding a high of 48 percent of the subprime loans that were sold into the secondary market to holding about 24 percent, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance, a specialty publication. One reason is that Fannie and Freddie were subject to tougher standards than many of the unregulated players in the private sector who weakened lending standards, most of whom have gone bankrupt or are now in deep trouble.
During those same explosive three years, private investment banks - not Fannie and Freddie - dominated the mortgage loans that were packaged and sold into the secondary mortgage market. In 2005 and 2006, the private sector securitized almost two thirds of all U.S. mortgages, supplanting Fannie and Freddie.
Investment banks were able to acquire too many of these bundles of mortgages because they were permitted to take on so much debt. This is a direct result of the 2004 loosening of regulations that restricted their debt-to-net-capital ratio to 15 to 1. After 2004 this became 30 to 1, setting these institutions up for the economic meltdown in 2007 and 2008. This is one example of many where either a lack of regulation or a loosening of existing regulations lead to the problems we're seeing today.
"Bike's are a great transportation solution for a lot of people, but they're not for everyone. There are many people that just can't ride a bike because of various physical limitations. Maintaining what you consider a reasonable 15 mph is beyond a lot of people."
Maintaining 15 mph is not very hard. Sure, there's people who can't, but I can sustain 20, and I'm... let's go with "portly".
Your performance on a bike is not necessarily reflective of the population at large.
I'm familiar with riding on bikes. It's one of my favorite activities. I ride thousands of miles per year on a bike. I do at least one self supported long distance bike tour per year. I'm fitter than most people my age (53), and I average about 16-18 mph on open rural roads. My average drops considerably in urban areas where there're a lot of stop lights/signs. Throw in a big hill or two or a strong headwind and average speed drops considerably. I find maintaining 20 mph for any sustained period doable but not something I particularly enjoy doing. When I ride on large group rides, say something like the annual Seattle to Portland group ride with 9000+ riders, I find I go faster than a considerable portion of the other riders, and I'm not knocking myself out.
Most people, even if they enjoyed riding a bike when younger find it progressively more difficult to do as they move into the 50's. These days I ride a recumbent because I can no longer ride an upright due to problems in my shoulders and arms. This is a problem that hits a significant portion of people who give up riding bikes. I know nearly as many people who have given up riding because of physical problems as those still riding. Aching hips, knees, and backs become progressively more common. You might be surprised at the percentage of the population afflicted with these sorts of things. If it weren't for recumbents I probably wouldn't be riding a bike.
"It's wider than a bike and the back could be painted a bright fluorescent color, making it quite visible to motorists."
So, the width is a disadvantage, obviously. I can wear bright flourescent colors, and if they don't see me, they're not looking that way; bigger won't help.
I think bigger does help for visibility. A larger area of bright color is more likely to catch people's eyes. Hell, larger all by itself is more visible. Plus, with a bike you have to carry a special bright jacket or shirt just for use on the bike. Unless you like wearing that sort of thing when you're out and about. I've got a nice bright lime colored jacket, but I really don't feel like wearing it except while riding a bike.
"Its seat has a full length back, which can offer a bit of comfort if you have to spend time in traffic."
Which on a bike, you don't.
You're experience commuting in urban areas is different than mine if you don't have to spend any time in traffic.
Depending on a person's needs and preferences, this vehicle could offer a number of advantages over a bike.
It's wider than a bike and the back could be painted a bright fluorescent color, making it quite visible to motorists.
It's got a full windshield and roof offering some protection from the sun, wind and weather.
And your bike can take how many passengers? The passenger and the driver are side by side, which should make conversation easy.
Its seat has a full length back, which can offer a bit of comfort if you have to spend time in traffic.
This would be the most obvious starting shot. But it sounds like this could be awfully expensive in lawyer fees.
The only ones smiling at the end of all this will be the lawyers.
Do medications count as medical treatments? Such as how statins do not lower your risk of death? Which is not surprising because cholesterol is a symptom not a cause.
I'd be interested why you conclude that. This abastract and this article, and quite a few other sources, offer good evidence that statins lower the risk of death in the general population.
Despite the objection of Kennedy the Cape Cod wind farm is moving forward.
Let's go with Wikipedia's definition of Occam's Razor, which states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. As long as we're misusing Occam, we may as well throw in the quote from Einstein, "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."
Economic considerations make a large difference in considering what actions the Obama administration has taken in regard to GM. In December, Bush authorized $13 billion in aid. It certainly wasn't for love of the UAW that drove him, and there's no reason to assume it was the primary motivation for the Obama administration either.
It's reasonable to assume that economic considerations drove Obama and his economic advisors to delay a GM bankruptcy until it could be executed with as little disruption to the economy as possible. Through the fall, estimates I was seeing of job losses from a GM bankruptcy ranged from half a million up. Ford Motor Company said last fall that if GM went bankrupt it may force them into bankruptcy due to shared suppliers being under stress. Toyota said a GM bankruptcy would adversely affect its North American operations. There is no other industrial corporation in the US whose bankruptcy could be as massively disruptive. The economy doesn't need massively disruptive at this point. If they go bankrupt the government needs a plan to make sure it's as minimally disruptive to the economy as possible. The money loaned to GM bought time to do that. And the new chief executive GM was forced to take from the Obama administration appears to be preparing everyone for a structured bankruptcy.
So, what other company has the Obama administration permitted to fail that would have as significant an impact as GM's failure?