Our cat Bandit likes to snooze in unusual places and in unusual positions. Here she happily naps halfway under the bed.

No Comments »

And makes quite good sense in doing so.

No Comments »

FutureJacked nails it about the current stock market rally.

Enjoy this latest positive mood swing as expressed in the markets. This is a fantastic gift for those who still need time to prepare their fiscal affairs for a severe downturn.

The “fundamentals” still haven’t changed. No one can prevent the coming debt storm and derivatives implosion that is churning our way. But suckers rallies can be fierce and the force of the government’s bully pulpit and media cheerleading can convince many that “the worst is over”.

Enjoy this final month or so. Something wicked is coming.

Something that will have broad effects outside of the stock market too.

No Comments »

Yes, Obama tacked too hard to the Right recently, and may have lost support and cred in doing so. Then again, who else will they vote for? It’s the usual cynical calculation, play to the faithful on the edges during the primary, then move to the center in the general election. (Hillary would have done precisely the same. McCain is doing the same.)

So now presumably Obama will be getting negative on McCain, as will McCain on him, and the final months of the campaign will be one enormous mud-sling.

All of this is entirely predictable. Anyone who is surprised, shouldn’t be. Like Huffington Post, apparently.

What was HuffPo thinking, printing a hit piece on Obama by a Republican insider working for the McCain campaign? It was skillfully done though, playing up the weepy liberal angle, oh how Obama has disappointed us. Maybe that’s why they printed it, liberals sometimes do love to weep and be filled with angst, don’t they?

Obama is, and always has been, a centrist politician. The presidential campaign is now entering the guns and thunder phase. Again, this is entirely predictable.

7 Comments »

That’s enough power for ten homes. Much larger tests are planned. The kites use the much faster moving wind higher up, and thus are more efficient. Plus they fall slowly if the wind stops.

The always amazing Treehugger has more. Check Laddermill, the website of inventor Wubbo Ockels for lots of technical explanations, demo software, images, and more.

From the Laddermill Introduction Page

The Laddermill consists of a series of wings or kites all connected to a cable that forms a huge loop. Like the wings of an aeroplane will the wind cause an upward lift force to the wings. By changing the attitude of the wing (angle of attack with respect to the wind) can the lift force be made larger or smaller.

The wings on one side of the cable loop are all placed such that they produce the maximum lift force, while the wings on the other side of the loop will give a much smaller lift that in fact is just sufficient to support their own weight and the weight of the cable.

The result is a large difference in force between the two ends at the ground. When the cable loop is guided around a wheel on the ground the force difference will drive the wheel. By connecting the wheel to a generator electricity will be produced.

The wind energy aloft has thus been transferred to electricity on the ground.

No Comments »

Global organized crime has grown exponentially the past few decades primarily due to globalization and the collapse of Communism. When states fail or weaken, it provides a huge opening for organized crime to flourish. Among other things, they like wars. Chaos provides cover, the troops want prostitutes, and smuggling abounds.

Over and over again McMafia shows how states and crime are often intertwined. The Japanese real estate hyper-boom was fueled by corporations with access to lots of cheap cash who wanted to develop land where people were already living. Many didn’t want to move. Enter the Yakuza gangsters who forced people, often violently, from their homes at the behest of some of Japan’s largest corporations.

He sees the political-criminal nexus in China as all pervasive, with administrators of their police state engaging in massive corruption with the criminal underworld. Did you know there are entire towns in China where the primary industry is making bootleg cigarettes? Counterfeiting money is out-sourced to North Korea. He doesn’t think China will survive intact under such pressure. Neither do I.

The huge driver of organized crime is drugs. The consumers are primarily from Western countries and without their ravenous consumption, much organized crime would cease. It’s that simple. He favors legalization.

Amazon has a short video of Glenny discussing how Dubai is the money laundering capital of the planet. They don’t care where the money comes from or where it goes. Which neatly emphasizes the central thesis of McMafia, that globalization has greatly helped the spread of crime and national governments - the ones that aren’t openly complicit, that is - are often quite powerless to stop it.

Another thread in the book is that the birth of organized crime cartels is often due to poverty and discrimination. A particularly exploited group with no future finds that crime is a way, maybe the only way, out.

In the 1930’s, soon-to-be legendary organizer Saul Alinsky was working as a sociologist investigating the root causes of juvenile delinquency and crime.

He was assigned to research the causes of juvenile delinquency in Chicago’s tough “Back-of-the-Yards” neighborhood. In order to study gang behavior from the inside, Alinsky ingratiated himself with Al Capone’s crowd, and came to realize that criminal behavior was a symptom of poverty and powerlessness.

The Back-of-the-Yards neighborhood, setting of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, was an immense slum in the shadows of Chicago’s giant Union Stockyards, one of the largest factory complexes ever created. Its inhabitants were poor; they had no rights and no job security. In the course of one year, wages were cut three times. As Alinsky watched and decided that he could no longer stand by as a silent observer. He believed that widespread poverty left America open to the influence of demagogues and that the only antidote was active, widespread participation in the political process. Alinsky envisioned an “organization of organizations,” comprised of all sectors of the community - youth committees, small businesses, labor unions and, most influential of all, the Catholic Church.

He pulled it off. Back of the Yards was the birth of community organizing and an antidote to organized crime. So maybe that’s the lesson. People with something to do with their lives, who feel like they have power, aren’t nearly as likely to become criminals. But shaft a group of people continually, give them no hope, then don’t be surprised when they decide to get rich quick or die trying. And they sure don’t exist in a void, either.

From an interview with Alinsky.

Another thing you’ve got to remember about Capone is that he didn’t spring out of a vacuum. The Capone gang was actually a public utility; it supplied what the people wanted and demanded. The man in the street wanted girls: Capone gave him girls. He wanted booze during Prohibition: Capone gave him booze. He wanted to bet on a horse: Capone let him bet. It all operated according to the old laws of supply and demand, and if there weren’t people who wanted the services provided by the gangsters, the gangsters wouldn’t be in business. Everybody owned stock in the Capone mob; in a way, he was a public benefactor. I remember one time when he arrived at his box seat in Dyche Stadium for a Northwestern football game on Boy Scout Day and 8000 scouts got up in the stands and screamed in cadence, “Yea, yea, Big Al. Yea, yea, Big Al.” Capone didn’t create the corruption, he just grew fat on it, as did the political parties, the police and the overall municipal economy.

No Comments »

From an interview between Maria Bartiromo and Merrill CEO John Thain. This is the section that has financial blogs incredulous.

Bartiromo: Will you need to raise additional capital?

John Thain: …Unless you tell me where asset prices are going to go over the next six to twelve months, I can’t answer that question.

Bartiromo: So you’re not going to say categorically — you’re not going to put yourself in that corner again?

Thain: Well, no… If the world stays the way it is, if asset values don’t decline, we will definitely not need to raise more capital.

Gosh, how could the billions in toxic garbage that Merrill has on the books at inflated values ever drop further in price? Bonus points will be given for correctly answering how many times Thain has previously said Merrill won’t need to raise more money.

2 Comments »

Paul Kedrosky crunched the data and has it in map format. The cities are in a wide swath from Texas northeast to western New York. Interestingly, none are on the coasts or in the West and only a couple in the South.

Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan are the worst hit by far yet you never hear much about them except maybe for how Detroit is hurting. (I lived in Michigan for a while. When the economy catches a cold, Detroit goes to intensive care.) For those three states, it’s not a question of “if” a recession is coming. It already came.

No Comments »