Best arrest photo ever
Bob Morris @ Jan 27th 2008 20:04 - Category: Unfiled ;
Archive for January 27th, 2008
Out of control
Bob Morris @ Jan 27th 2008 17:29 - Category: Credit crisis ;
French president Nicolas Sarkozy on the recent financial crisis, including the SocGen rogue trader.
“We must stop with this system that has gone haywire and that has lost track of its aim.”
It appears to be time to… inject a bit of common sense into all these systems.”
Sarkozy is right wing, no leftie reformist. Legendary investor Warren Buffett says financial derivatives are WMDs. Bill Gross of giant bond management firm Pimco believes stronger governmental regulation is needed and will be forthcoming.
Sustainable carbon sequestration
Bob Morris @ Jan 27th 2008 14:39 - Category: Climate change ;
Biochar, a promising new technique.
Podcasts and plane flights
Bob Morris @ Jan 27th 2008 11:06 - Category: Unfiled Tags: Podcasts;
We just got back from a pleasant week in Tucson visiting Sue’s parents. Plane flights go much faster with an iPod, especially when it’s loaded with podcasts.
Among my favorite podcasts:
Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code. The former MTV VJ and major force behind podcasting continues to have one of the best podcasts. Music, tech talk, and more. Thrill to his current adventures with TSA at airports where he always gets pulled aside.
Steve Gibson. Security Now. This security expert (and author of disk saver program Spinrite) makes encryption and computer vulnerabilities understandable to the non-geek public, not a simple task.
Inside Renewable Energy. From RenewableEnergyAccess. Current news and interviews on all aspects of renewable energy.
Also, Democracy Now, Rocketboom, Treehugger Radio, This Week in Tech, Grist Environmental, and Bill Gross of Pimco.
All these podcasts are on iTunes. Whatever your interests, there’s probably a podcast about it.
Christian anarchy
Bob Morris @ Jan 27th 2008 07:37 - Category: Unfiled ;
Greg Boyd is the senior pastor of an evangelical megachurch. He also thinks the modern church has subverted the original message of Christianity, opposes Huckabee’s call to amend the Constitution, and defines himself as a Christian anarchist.
It’s not appropriate for Kingdom people to either support or revolt against governments. This gives them too much credit. Rather, following the example of Jesus, we should ignore them as much as possible, put up with them as much as we need to, and stay focused on living out the radical Kingdom.
In a time when the Left can too often pigeonhole all evangelicals as right wingers, it’s good to realize there is a growing movement of progressive evangelicals.
What a bizarre financial week
Bob Morris @ Jan 27th 2008 00:18 - Category: Credit crisis ;
What a week. A French bank discovers $7bn in losses due to a rogue trader and starts to unwind the trades. This tanks the European markets. The Fed, not knowing what happened, panics and does an emergency three quarter point rate cut. The US markets open sharply down, then recover most of the loss.
The next day the NY insurance regulator mets with embattled bond insurers and says maybe a rescue could be possible. The Dow responds with a monster rally, one of the largest ever.
The next day the insurance regulator says, hmmm, maybe it’ll take longer than we thought. He was thinking $15bn would do it but other, more accurate estimates of the amount needed to prop up the bond insurers range from $120-200bn, making this only something a government could do.
The markets slid most of the rest of the week.
The Fed’s panic rate cut made them look really stupid. Plenty of financial blogs and websites questioned why the Fed was bailing out the stock market as that is not their mandate. Just who is in control, the Fed or the banks?
Maybe no one. That’s who. We have a vast, unregulated shadow banking system, trillions of dollars in opaque debt-backed securities, and a comatose, compliant regulatory environment. Huge sums of money flow across borders effortlessly. A financial butterfly flaps its wings, triggering a hurricane someplace else.
And I suspect we’ve only just begun. In great danger there can be great opportunity, true, but there will also be carnage. The bond insurers can not be allowed to fail, the repercussions would be too severe, spilling out into the economic world at large. Stay tuned.
