Some longer reads for your weekend pleasure:
• The twilight of the central banker ( Economist)
• 10 Reasons Countries Fall Apart (Foreign Policy)
• ‘A Perfect and Beautiful Machine’: What Darwin’s Theory of Evolution Reveals About Artificial Intelligence (The Atlantic)
• The American War Racket (Daily Rekoning)
• The Long History of the Espresso Machine (Smithsonian Mag)
• The Measured Man (The Atlantic)
• Decision time for China (Times Literary Supplement)
• Was Columbus secretly a Jew? (CNN)
• Edvard Munch: the ghosts of vampires and victims (Guradian)
• The False Allure Of Group Selection (Edge)
What are you reading?
In a Shift, Chinese Exporters Cling to Dollars
Source: WSJ
Category: Financial Press
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
A couple of interesting posts on the relationship between MSFT and it’s hardware partners. I think they are both spot on.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/microsoft-and-oems-new-game-new-rules/5180?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zdnet%2FBott+%28ZDNet+Ed+Bott%27s+Microsoft+Report%29
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/bring-on-the-pablet-why-i-am-bullish-about-microsofts-surface/13071?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zdnet%2Fmicrosoft+%28ZDNet+All+About+Microsoft%29
“Was Columbus secretly a Jew?”
Ah “the Cavuto! Is it a real question? Or are we just picking 10 things about Columbus that were “Jewish”. This goes under “Was Hitler Jewish?”
If Columbus was Jewish, maybe that would be of some interest for some readers, but speculating whether he is Jewish belongs in the journal of wasteful speculations.
A fairly big story on the tech front I don’t think Barry linked to: Apple’s securing an injunction preventing Samsumg from selling two of it’s latest computer products, a tablet and phone, in the US.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-29/apple-wins-order-blocking-u-s-sales-of-samsung-s-nexus.html
As I speculated to a fanboi friend, this victory may have unforeseen negative long term consequences for Apple by driving Samsung closer to MSFT.
Samsung has considerable hardware and marketing muscle. It’s machines hardware is generally on a par with Apple’s. And, Samsung has been selling the hell out of it’s Android phones, beating Apple in sales worldwide, even though it is only one of many Android manufacturers.
While it makes nice PC hardware, we so far haven’t seen the announcement of any nifty Windows 8 tablets or laptops from Samsung. It’s certainly capable of making something like the Surface. Similarly, it has made some pretty high quality Wndows phones, but they weren’t particularly exciting or heavily marketed. Now, it has more incentive to push into that area.
Windows PC’s and phones won’t necessarily be subject to the same patent problems as Samsung’s Android ones. The Windows Phone and Windows 8 interfaces are completely different from anything Apple makes (and, as the Woz said, the phone interface was superior). And, as MSFT has been making tablets, albeit not popular ones, for a over a decade, it would be hard for Apple to claim that Apple has some patent applying to all tablet. It’s also not that hard to make something that isn’t an iPad clone if you work at it.
An interesting post on predicting the future:
http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2012/06/predicting-the-future/
~~~
BR: I saw that this week, and tagged it for a future post. It is excellent
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson: ” Too little property rights” Tea party meme?
James Madison: “property is indispensible to liberty”. I saw
Too much concern for “property rights” in US lead to the secessions in 1860, and 150 years ago this week Lee drove McClellan away from Richmond because people were property.
“But what’s new? War is a racket. Always has been. Major Gen. Smedley D. Butler”. In 1930′s it was bandits threatening US bank interests in central America.
War on terror/bandits pillages 5% plus of US GDP near thrice other nations’ burden, up from <3% of GDP when deficits were evaporating.
Racket (Ike's military industry complex) to the tune of $28T since it became permanent in 1950. Stiglitz could probably get better than my back of the envelop of my senators whacky reply as to why we must spend for thousands of failed F-35's………………..
The Measured Man from the Atlantic is excellent. Thanks, Barry.
I have been following the goings-on around cable TV network AMC (AMCX):
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=amcx
Outside of its zombie series The Walking Dead, AMC generates low to modest ratings, yet it has been demanding higher carriage rates from cable and satellite TV operators. Now, this weekend, it risks losing DISH Network and AT&T as customers. I had thought about shorting the stock (it hit a high of 46 in March and is at 35.55 now), but as we all know, shorting is very risky with theoretically infinite losses. Still, it is an interesting stock to watch if the price goes down further and if the company can patch up its carrier relationships, as each of these have material impact on earnings.
Anybody have an opinion on AMCX or other stocks that are interesting from a trading perspective?
From the CNN article article about Columbus:
Whoa, talk about tendentious — roughly the equivalent of a Lakota Sioux expressing his grand passion to ‘liberate New York from the Wasicus [non-Native Americans].’
Don’t attempt to learn history from the Mainstream Media!
The American War Racket
What does it cost to keep these zombies fed? Giraldi continues:
Uncle Sam will spend $3.796 trillion in 2012 compared with $1.863 trillion in 2001
—
And much of it to service the debt . . . according to CBO’s January baseline budget outlook for 2012-2022, we will spend over $600 billion in 2022 on this alone, compared to $227 billion for 2011. What . . . a . . . drag . . .
June 29, 2012
For Uninsured in Texas, Supreme Court Ruling Adds to Uncertainty
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
PASADENA, Tex. — In an ordinary world, Josh Hebert would have accepted the raises his employer offered.
But in the extraordinary world of the uninsured, he has not only turned down the pay increases at the bank where he works, but has twice asked for a pay cut — so that he and his wife’s ill 7-year-old daughter can qualify for government-sponsored children’s health insurance.
By keeping his income low, he and his wife, Kyla, are able to ensure that their daughter continues to have health coverage. The parents remain uninsured themselves, like thousands of others in this working-class refinery town outside Houston. Thirty-three percent of the population here lacks medical insurance.
Nearby in Houston, hours after the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday upheld the core provisions of President Obama’s health care overhaul, Luis Duran hardly paid attention. He and his wife sifted through medical documents stuffed in a paper bag, evidence of his ordeal to survive cancer without health insurance.
…
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/us/for-uninsured-in-texas-ruling-adds-uncertainty.html
For Uninsured in Texas, Supreme Court Ruling Adds to Uncertainty
Because Katie remains undiagnosed for mitochondrial disease, one of her specialists has ordered a genetics test costing $17,000. The children’s program declined to pay for the procedure, but an appeal is pending. The day after the ruling on Friday, Mrs. Hebert took her daughter to an occupational therapy appointment, and when they returned home, they walked past Katie’s IV pole at the bottom of the stairs.
—
Following up on the previous post, anyone experiencing this kind of uncertainty, heartbreak, and stress day in an day out because of these types of issues will undergo a radical transformation on how they look at health care in this country.
Kathy Watson certainly changed some of her views:
“Cancer patient Kathy Watson voted Republican in 2008 and believes the government has no right telling Americans to get health insurance. Nonetheless, she says she’d be dead if it weren’t for President Barack Obama’s health care law.”
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/18/fate_of_uninsurables_hinges_on_supreme_court/
I love to see the Mel Brooks skit on “was Columbus secretly a Jew”:)
i just wanted to pass this along ’cause i thought it was interesting:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2166589/The-oldest-biggest-asteroid-crater-discovered-Greenland–suggesting-huge-impact-billion-years-ago.html
“A 100 kilometre-wide crater has been found in Greenland, the result of a massive asteroid impact a billion years before any other known collision on Earth.
The previously oldest known crater on Earth formed two billion years ago and the chances of finding an even older impact were thought to be astronomically low.
Now, a team of scientists from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) in Copenhagen, Cardiff University in Wales, Lund University in Sweden and the Institute of Planetary Science in Moscow has upset these odds.”
maximum wage to go along with the minimum wage? why not?
might be more of a maximum wage that can be deducted from employers taxes? and why do we need to have management talent be paid hundred’s of times more than those they manage? and then not show much in the way of results?
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/07/france-pushing-for-a-maximum-wage-will-others-follow.html
jojo, do we know what the bank’s health care plan looks like? my wife works for very sizable company. but their health care plan is essentially we will give $75 to see a doctor. thats it. nothing after that. it might be a case that if the father made to much, they no longer qualified, and teh banks plan wouldnt; cover it
@
“Cancer patient Kathy Watson voted Republican in 2008 and believes the government has no right telling Americans to get health insurance. Nonetheless, she says she’d be dead if it weren’t for President Barack Obama’s health care law.”
“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.”
Voltaire
Can we treat dead-beat firms who borrow money from the US Government or the Federal Reserve and then don’t repay it like this?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-02/teacher-s-wages-garnished-as-u-s-goes-after-loan-default.html
I’m thinking of companies like Solyndra, AIG, and too many others too count.
maybe we should do that with companies that dont pay taxes, but still get tax dollars?
rd Says:
“Can we treat dead-beat firms who borrow money from the US Government or the Federal Reserve and then don’t repay it like this? … http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-02/teacher-s-wages-garnished-as-u-s-goes-after-loan-default.html … I’m thinking of companies like Solyndra, AIG, and too many others too count.”
Let’s not get confused interpreting Citizens United.
SCOTUS ruled corporations = people and money = speech. It did not rule people = corporations or speech = money. Citizens United gave corporations more rights with less responsibility than people. Corporations are only accountable to shareholders (although that, too, is a joke). In effect, SCOTUS informed us the U.S. Constitution enables corporations to buy, own and sell the U.S. government. That ruling has been extended to include state and local governments. Is it a difficult leap of logic to envision Goldman Sachs buying its way onto a ballot and electing itself POTUS?