The shuttle was designed to land at the Van, which is further north then Florida. In order to reach that far north they had to go with a delta wing. This meant that the wings were heaver, the flight path was steeper, and the reentry was faster.
And the shuttle never took off / landed there anyways. Sigh.
It’s not that RedBox doesn’t want to carry classic and foreign films, it that boxes are limited to a couple of dozen titles. They, physically, have to carry fewer films then the local Blockbuster location and much less then Netflix – which is the size of a warehouse.
If you can only carry 100 titles, you are going to carry the top 100, focus on rapid turnover, and squeeze costs – which for some people is exactly what they are looking for.
He was on a ETF desk, which is supposed to be a low risk, low margin place. The only way to make a profit on those desk is to squeze out every penny and make it up on volume. Such a desk can very easily be dealing with billions and yet only have exposure of less then a million - if it's run the way it supposed to.
Prior to working on the trading desk they worked in operations. While Operations may be the kissing cousin of IT, it is not exactly the same. But in either case, (Leeson or Adoboli) knew what would trigger the compliance office (In those days “Risk Management” tended not a separate department).
In Lesson case, he was head of both trading and operations (which is a no-no - but it was Singapore – a small desk – why can’t one person do both jobs?). So on side he present it as a error account and on the other a client account (loss not to the firm.)
And as somebody who has worked in a similar posistion (Operations / Risk managment) - it's hard. Give me a simple and clear rules with a robust report, and I know it can be gamed. Traders tend to be optimizers. Be careful when you play magic or poker against them. They will test every last loophole and push every last inch.
Good risk management requires human judgment and subjectivity. Alas, the money and the fame goes to the traders who earn the money, not the referrers that keep people safe.
You can’t disprove a negative statement.
I can’t prove that vaccines don’t cause autism – there are exceptions.
I can’t prove that unicorns don’t exist – They are shy. All we can say about both is that there is no positive proof about either.
One has not been able to "choose" the lender since the great depression. Banks face 2 issues. The first is that they need to be solvent. i.e. more assets then loans. The 2nd is liquidly. When banks run into problems they need to sell assets – such as your home loan. Here’s why.
I am going to use the movie “It’s a Wonder Life”. Lots of real work banking issues in that film. George Bailey, owner of a small bank, has a problem. He has a lot of short term loans (i.e. customer savings that can be withdrawn at any time) and lots of long term assets (i.e. home loans). When there is a run on the bank (customer’s withdrawal their savings) or the assets collapse (bad loans) Uncle Billy had to go the big bank and pledge his assets for cash.
This only kind of solved the issue. They have liquidity, but now they are leveraged to the hilt. Another bank run and their dead. The wise choice would be to become smaller and deleverage – but they can only do that if they can get rid of the home loans. Back then mortgages carried provisos that let the bank call in your home loan with 60 days notice. Fun!
The good news is that if your loan is sold to Vinnie the Loanshark he has to follow all of the rules in the mortgage contract and the various banking laws. Bad customer service yes – but now broken legs and no new fees.
You want to have the post office open your mail and assign a value? I guess that is one way to make up for the revenue shortfall and get Saturday deliveries back again.
"For that very reason, this sounds like a good place for the terms of the bankruptcy to require opting in, rather than opting out."
This makes no sense? Why would anybody op in for more marketing?
On a side note, Borders in in bankruptcy. That means the judge gets to void any contract they like and sell any asset they like - like marketing lists. If we want to address this, it needs to be addressed at the Federal level.
When park rangers are driving they are on duty, thus the goverment cover's any issues that might come up. And the Fed Goverment "self insures". i.e. they don't pay a private insurance company to pool their risk - they just write a check.
So we have a expensive capital good laying around doing nothing most of the time – car batteries.
We have a variable energy source (wind or solar, take your pick) which do not necessary correlate to peak energy usage. If one were to run solely off of these 2, energy companies would have to invest in a lot of batteries, unless
Also, one could delay additional investments into the power grid by levering out the usage, where the energy Is coming from, etc. This assumes you don’t lose too much energy by taking electricity out of the battery again.
Yes, Brazil does have a lot going for it. I have been impressed with the way it has been growing for the past 10 years. Lula got a lot of things right. However, manufacturing has been lagging.
That being said, no, having good business plan is not sufficient. If regulations add 5% to 10% (to pull a number out of thin air) to a product and there are other countries that have political stability and lower regulations. It’s hard to make a business case when you are fighting an uphill battle. One has to have an edge in that case - let us say to avoid tariffs or a collection of staff that can’t be easily replicated (Embraer).
And now we come to the Dutch Disease – a disease of the rich. Right now Brazil is suffering from a overvalued currency. A big reason it is suffering is because it’s growing and it’s exports a lot of raw materials. That is going to add another 10% to 30% to any IPad that is being exported. That number is not pulled out of thin air.
So, according to the article, China is dropping production by 4 million. The article implies that Foxcom’s Brazilian plant will pick up the slack. I doubt it’s for export out of the local tariff zone. What is the local demand?
Overvalued Brazilian Real – Discourages exports. Highly regulated employment market Very slow court system (to settle contract disputes) Highly complex tax system (most complex one in the Americas)
Brazil is getting better, but I can’t see Apple exporting IPads from Brazil to the US / Europe.
I will second Surt’s post about the finical risk the CEO is taking.
In this case it is also “just go away” money. Do you want your CEO fighting a long battle (with board members, in public, in proxy fights, in court etc?). What about a grey area? Did he sexually harass sufficient to get fired – or only enough to get a slap on the wrist? How had with a CEO stay and fight to keep their job that pays millions? Just dangle a large severance package and the problem goes away.
I don’t have any issue with any one particular severance package – but 4 in 3 years – that is begging to look sloopy.
There are 2 issues with what you are saying. There are pros & cons with everything –so I am just point this out:
Profits, waste, etc. are based on accounting numbers which can be gained. Want to increase short term profits – decrease the deprecation of assets. Want to increase long term profits – borrow lots of money, invest in high risk projects, etc. This is why a lot of people favor equity based (Stock options, restricted shares, etc.). The value is being assigned by somebody outside the company.
Secondly, who is setting the marks? Should the marks be easy or hard? In down markets boards rarely blame the CEOs. In good markets (a rising tide will lift all ships) then tend to credit the CEO and not dumb luck. Now, this is true for equity compensation as well.)
What they are talking about is a continues manufacturing process. It just means that they can get a good production run. I am sure they will cut down the 1km^2 into something more reasonable.
It’s the same for LCD screens. They come off these huge glass sheets. The cut out the defective parts and then figure out what to turn into to. (A couple large TVs, many small TVs, or lots of phone screens.)
Matters not. That just means that the cost per student should be the same as it was 100 years ago after adjusting for salary inflation. If you need to teach twice as many kids, you hire twice as many teachers, and when you divide it by the number of students, your cost is the same.
It does matter - and you touch on it in your first point. But it is not just underpaying part time faculty. It’s about finding good teachers. The cost of teachers have increased.
For an example, take an accountant who is trying to decide if they should go into teaching.
For top line accountants, productive has risen massively in the past 30 years. Thank you computers! Where once one needed 4 accountants – you only need 1. As a result, salaries for those in public practice have doubled or tripled. This can be temping.
Universities can offer other perks then pay – tenure, light teaching load, not having to work 100 hours during tax season, etc. But they offered those same perks 30 years ago – so they have to bump up the salary.
And we can generalize. Other industries have been able to leverage the brain power of their employers, become more productive, and offer higher pay. I know it does not feel it, but wage levels have increased over the past 20 years.
The solution can’t be solely to double the number of teachers. It’s a supply / demand problem. Qualified teachers tend to be bright intelligent people – who can and will be pouched by the private sector. There are 2 solutions. First, increase productive (More students per teacher? Khan’s Academy? I don’t know). Accounting wages have increased by a factor of 3, prodcutive has increased by a factor of 4, so oeverall cost goes down. Not happening in education. Or, increase pay to get a sufficient number of teachers.
Productivity matters. It is what drives real wages in the long run. And because wages are a high proportion of a college degree (or at least higher than most industries), and the underlying real wage of the workers have increased, the cost of college education has increased faster than inflation.
They make scotch tape on a continues machine. It just keep coming and coming – then it’s rolled onto the tub, sliced (but only because they want it to be manageable – they could keep on going) and cut (one industrial roll equals scores of scores of retail rolls.)
They do. They make scotch tape on a continues machine. It just keep coming and coming – then it’s rolled onto the tub, sliced (but only because they want it to be manageable – they could keep on going) and cut (one industrial roll equals scores of scores of retail rolls.)
Matters not. That just means that the cost per student should be the same as it was 100 years ago after adjusting for salary inflation. If you need to teach twice as many kids, you hire twice as many teachers, and when you divide it by the number of students, your cost is the same.
It does matter - and you touch on it in your first point. But it is not just underpaying part time faculty. It’s about finding good teachers. The cost of teachers have increased.
For an example, take an accountant who is trying to decide if they should go into teaching.
For top line accountants, productive has risen massively in the past 30 years. Thank you computers! Where once one needed 4 accountants – you only need 1. As a result, salaries for those in public practice have doubled or tripled. This can be temping.
Universities can offer other perks then pay – tenure, light teaching load, not having to work 100 hours during tax season, etc. But they offered those same perks 30 years ago – so they have to bump up the salary.
And we can generalize. Other industries have been able to leverage the brain power of their employers, become more productive, and offer higher pay. I know it does not feel it, but wage levels have increased over the past 20 years.
The solution can’t be solely to double the number of teachers. It’s a supply / demand problem. Qualified teachers tend to be bright intelligent people – who can and will be pouched by the private sector. There are 2 solutions. First, increase productive (More students per teacher? Khan’s Academy? I don’t know). Or, increase pay to get a sufficient number of teachers.
Productivity matters. It is what drives real wages in the long run. And because wages are a high proportion of a college degree (or at least higher than most industries), and the underlying real wage of the workers have increased, the cost of college education has increased faster than inflation.
If it were just the withdrawal of state funding (which is true) then state schools tuition would be rising faster then private schools. Which is not true.
Productivity: Productive of professors have been rising slower than the average employee. The same professor teaches about the same number of students as they did 20 or even 100 years ago.
Research: Professors & Universities are judged by the original research that they do – teaching at most are secondary. Undergraduates tend to subsides this research – at least indirectly. They get grad students instead of professors for teachers. I think research is very important – I just dislike the ungrads subsides it.
Worth: The value of a college degree has gone up. One used to have a lot of good paying carrers open to you if one did not have a college degree. Today, less so. Why subsides something that people are willing to go deeply into debt when budgets are tight? (I know the answer, alas the public and politicians do not. California, which once had the best state university system, now spends more on prisons. Sigh.)
I don't think it would make much difference in terms of people buying houses. I mean, the owner is going to have to pay the wealth tax no matter what. It might be the owner / occupier or it may be the owner / landlord. If it is a landlord then they will just pass the wealth tax onto the renter in the form of higher rents. They may not be able to pass the whole thing, but they will pass on most of it.
Wealth Tax is based on how much stuff you have. Think property tax. The bigger (in $$) the property, the more taxes you pay. It does not matter if you made money on the property.
Capital Gains is not a wealth tax. You only pay after you recognize (i.e. sold) the property.
The difference in these 2 types of taxes can have a huge impact.
First, all productive assets are wealth. Factories, land, etc. (We can then discuses if gold, big homes, fancy cars, and artwork is a productive asset, but that is for another time). So, you are taxing productive assets - which reduces their value. People will be less interested in investing in long term projects because it will be worth less.
If you do the math, because you are paying taxes every year, anything involving capital because much more expensive. It's very hard to invest in that climate. A wealth tax discourages investments and thus future growth.
Look at France that has one. Everybody who is looking at long term stuff moves it out of France.
Slashdot Mirror
The wings, as designed, were a poor choice.
The shuttle was designed to land at the Van, which is further north then Florida. In order to reach that far north they had to go with a delta wing. This meant that the wings were heaver, the flight path was steeper, and the reentry was faster.
And the shuttle never took off / landed there anyways. Sigh.
It’s not that RedBox doesn’t want to carry classic and foreign films, it that boxes are limited to a couple of dozen titles. They, physically, have to carry fewer films then the local Blockbuster location and much less then Netflix – which is the size of a warehouse.
If you can only carry 100 titles, you are going to carry the top 100, focus on rapid turnover, and squeeze costs – which for some people is exactly what they are looking for.
He was on a ETF desk, which is supposed to be a low risk, low margin place. The only way to make a profit on those desk is to squeze out every penny and make it up on volume. Such a desk can very easily be dealing with billions and yet only have exposure of less then a million - if it's run the way it supposed to.
Prior to working on the trading desk they worked in operations. While Operations may be the kissing cousin of IT, it is not exactly the same. But in either case, (Leeson or Adoboli) knew what would trigger the compliance office (In those days “Risk Management” tended not a separate department).
In Lesson case, he was head of both trading and operations (which is a no-no - but it was Singapore – a small desk – why can’t one person do both jobs?). So on side he present it as a error account and on the other a client account (loss not to the firm.)
And as somebody who has worked in a similar posistion (Operations / Risk managment) - it's hard. Give me a simple and clear rules with a robust report, and I know it can be gamed. Traders tend to be optimizers. Be careful when you play magic or poker against them. They will test every last loophole and push every last inch.
Good risk management requires human judgment and subjectivity. Alas, the money and the fame goes to the traders who earn the money, not the referrers that keep people safe.
You can’t disprove a negative statement.
I can’t prove that vaccines don’t cause autism – there are exceptions.
I can’t prove that unicorns don’t exist – They are shy.
All we can say about both is that there is no positive proof about either.
I think one commentator said that the protest crowed were the most overeducated underemployed protesters she had ever meet.
One has not been able to "choose" the lender since the great depression. Banks face 2 issues. The first is that they need to be solvent. i.e. more assets then loans. The 2nd is liquidly. When banks run into problems they need to sell assets – such as your home loan. Here’s why.
I am going to use the movie “It’s a Wonder Life”. Lots of real work banking issues in that film. George Bailey, owner of a small bank, has a problem. He has a lot of short term loans (i.e. customer savings that can be withdrawn at any time) and lots of long term assets (i.e. home loans). When there is a run on the bank (customer’s withdrawal their savings) or the assets collapse (bad loans) Uncle Billy had to go the big bank and pledge his assets for cash.
This only kind of solved the issue. They have liquidity, but now they are leveraged to the hilt. Another bank run and their dead. The wise choice would be to become smaller and deleverage – but they can only do that if they can get rid of the home loans. Back then mortgages carried provisos that let the bank call in your home loan with 60 days notice. Fun!
The good news is that if your loan is sold to Vinnie the Loanshark he has to follow all of the rules in the mortgage contract and the various banking laws. Bad customer service yes – but now broken legs and no new fees.
You want to have the post office open your mail and assign a value? I guess that is one way to make up for the revenue shortfall and get Saturday deliveries back again.
"For that very reason, this sounds like a good place for the terms of the bankruptcy to require opting in, rather than opting out."
This makes no sense? Why would anybody op in for more marketing?
On a side note, Borders in in bankruptcy. That means the judge gets to void any contract they like and sell any asset they like - like marketing lists. If we want to address this, it needs to be addressed at the Federal level.
On the other hand, the peace prize can be given to hundards. (2007, Al Gore & the mbembers of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
When park rangers are driving they are on duty, thus the goverment cover's any issues that might come up. And the Fed Goverment "self insures". i.e. they don't pay a private insurance company to pool their risk - they just write a check.
Rhode Island does not require auto insurance. Others let you self insure.
By the way, what is a "Federal Road"? - and are they not goverened by state laws - not national ones?
So we have a expensive capital good laying around doing nothing most of the time – car batteries.
We have a variable energy source (wind or solar, take your pick) which do not necessary correlate to peak energy usage. If one were to run solely off of these 2, energy companies would have to invest in a lot of batteries, unless
Also, one could delay additional investments into the power grid by levering out the usage, where the energy Is coming from, etc. This assumes you don’t lose too much energy by taking electricity out of the battery again.
Yes, Brazil does have a lot going for it. I have been impressed with the way it has been growing for the past 10 years. Lula got a lot of things right. However, manufacturing has been lagging.
That being said, no, having good business plan is not sufficient. If regulations add 5% to 10% (to pull a number out of thin air) to a product and there are other countries that have political stability and lower regulations. It’s hard to make a business case when you are fighting an uphill battle. One has to have an edge in that case - let us say to avoid tariffs or a collection of staff that can’t be easily replicated (Embraer).
And now we come to the Dutch Disease – a disease of the rich. Right now Brazil is suffering from a overvalued currency. A big reason it is suffering is because it’s growing and it’s exports a lot of raw materials. That is going to add another 10% to 30% to any IPad that is being exported. That number is not pulled out of thin air.
So, according to the article, China is dropping production by 4 million. The article implies that Foxcom’s Brazilian plant will pick up the slack. I doubt it’s for export out of the local tariff zone. What is the local demand?
Overvalued Brazilian Real – Discourages exports.
Highly regulated employment market
Very slow court system (to settle contract disputes)
Highly complex tax system (most complex one in the Americas)
Brazil is getting better, but I can’t see Apple exporting IPads from Brazil to the US / Europe.
I will second Surt’s post about the finical risk the CEO is taking.
In this case it is also “just go away” money. Do you want your CEO fighting a long battle (with board members, in public, in proxy fights, in court etc?). What about a grey area? Did he sexually harass sufficient to get fired – or only enough to get a slap on the wrist? How had with a CEO stay and fight to keep their job that pays millions? Just dangle a large severance package and the problem goes away.
I don’t have any issue with any one particular severance package – but 4 in 3 years – that is begging to look sloopy.
There are 2 issues with what you are saying. There are pros & cons with everything –so I am just point this out:
Profits, waste, etc. are based on accounting numbers which can be gained. Want to increase short term profits – decrease the deprecation of assets. Want to increase long term profits – borrow lots of money, invest in high risk projects, etc. This is why a lot of people favor equity based (Stock options, restricted shares, etc.). The value is being assigned by somebody outside the company.
Secondly, who is setting the marks? Should the marks be easy or hard? In down markets boards rarely blame the CEOs. In good markets (a rising tide will lift all ships) then tend to credit the CEO and not dumb luck. Now, this is true for equity compensation as well.)
What they are talking about is a continues manufacturing process. It just means that they can get a good production run. I am sure they will cut down the 1km^2 into something more reasonable.
It’s the same for LCD screens. They come off these huge glass sheets. The cut out the defective parts and then figure out what to turn into to. (A couple large TVs, many small TVs, or lots of phone screens.)
It does matter - and you touch on it in your first point. But it is not just underpaying part time faculty. It’s about finding good teachers. The cost of teachers have increased.
For an example, take an accountant who is trying to decide if they should go into teaching.
For top line accountants, productive has risen massively in the past 30 years. Thank you computers! Where once one needed 4 accountants – you only need 1. As a result, salaries for those in public practice have doubled or tripled. This can be temping.
Universities can offer other perks then pay – tenure, light teaching load, not having to work 100 hours during tax season, etc. But they offered those same perks 30 years ago – so they have to bump up the salary.
And we can generalize. Other industries have been able to leverage the brain power of their employers, become more productive, and offer higher pay. I know it does not feel it, but wage levels have increased over the past 20 years.
The solution can’t be solely to double the number of teachers. It’s a supply / demand problem. Qualified teachers tend to be bright intelligent people – who can and will be pouched by the private sector. There are 2 solutions. First, increase productive (More students per teacher? Khan’s Academy? I don’t know). Accounting wages have increased by a factor of 3, prodcutive has increased by a factor of 4, so oeverall cost goes down. Not happening in education. Or, increase pay to get a sufficient number of teachers.
Productivity matters. It is what drives real wages in the long run. And because wages are a high proportion of a college degree (or at least higher than most industries), and the underlying real wage of the workers have increased, the cost of college education has increased faster than inflation.
They make scotch tape on a continues machine. It just keep coming and coming – then it’s rolled onto the tub, sliced (but only because they want it to be manageable – they could keep on going) and cut (one industrial roll equals scores of scores of retail rolls.)
They do. They make scotch tape on a continues machine. It just keep coming and coming – then it’s rolled onto the tub, sliced (but only because they want it to be manageable – they could keep on going) and cut (one industrial roll equals scores of scores of retail rolls.)
It does matter - and you touch on it in your first point. But it is not just underpaying part time faculty. It’s about finding good teachers. The cost of teachers have increased.
For an example, take an accountant who is trying to decide if they should go into teaching.
For top line accountants, productive has risen massively in the past 30 years. Thank you computers! Where once one needed 4 accountants – you only need 1. As a result, salaries for those in public practice have doubled or tripled. This can be temping.
Universities can offer other perks then pay – tenure, light teaching load, not having to work 100 hours during tax season, etc. But they offered those same perks 30 years ago – so they have to bump up the salary.
And we can generalize. Other industries have been able to leverage the brain power of their employers, become more productive, and offer higher pay. I know it does not feel it, but wage levels have increased over the past 20 years.
The solution can’t be solely to double the number of teachers. It’s a supply / demand problem. Qualified teachers tend to be bright intelligent people – who can and will be pouched by the private sector. There are 2 solutions. First, increase productive (More students per teacher? Khan’s Academy? I don’t know). Or, increase pay to get a sufficient number of teachers.
Productivity matters. It is what drives real wages in the long run. And because wages are a high proportion of a college degree (or at least higher than most industries), and the underlying real wage of the workers have increased, the cost of college education has increased faster than inflation.
No, the cost of education is increasing.
If it were just the withdrawal of state funding (which is true) then state schools tuition would be rising faster then private schools. Which is not true.
Fun with numbers! Education inflation numbers, broken down by public, private, teacher pay, buildings, etc.
http://www.commonfund.org/CommonfundInstitute/HEPI/Pages/default.aspx
I think there are 3 reasons:
Productivity: Productive of professors have been rising slower than the average employee. The same professor teaches about the same number of students as they did 20 or even 100 years ago.
Research: Professors & Universities are judged by the original research that they do – teaching at most are secondary. Undergraduates tend to subsides this research – at least indirectly. They get grad students instead of professors for teachers. I think research is very important – I just dislike the ungrads subsides it.
Worth: The value of a college degree has gone up. One used to have a lot of good paying carrers open to you if one did not have a college degree. Today, less so. Why subsides something that people are willing to go deeply into debt when budgets are tight? (I know the answer, alas the public and politicians do not. California, which once had the best state university system, now spends more on prisons. Sigh.)
I don't think it would make much difference in terms of people buying houses. I mean, the owner is going to have to pay the wealth tax no matter what. It might be the owner / occupier or it may be the owner / landlord. If it is a landlord then they will just pass the wealth tax onto the renter in the form of higher rents. They may not be able to pass the whole thing, but they will pass on most of it.
Wealth Tax is based on how much stuff you have. Think property tax. The bigger (in $$) the property, the more taxes you pay. It does not matter if you made money on the property.
Capital Gains is not a wealth tax. You only pay after you recognize (i.e. sold) the property.
The difference in these 2 types of taxes can have a huge impact.
First, all productive assets are wealth. Factories, land, etc. (We can then discuses if gold, big homes, fancy cars, and artwork is a productive asset, but that is for another time). So, you are taxing productive assets - which reduces their value. People will be less interested in investing in long term projects because it will be worth less.
If you do the math, because you are paying taxes every year, anything involving capital because much more expensive. It's very hard to invest in that climate. A wealth tax discourages investments and thus future growth.
Look at France that has one. Everybody who is looking at long term stuff moves it out of France.