3/30/09
"Well, here's your problem right here..."
From Wikiped(1):
GhostNet is the name given to a recently-discovered, large-scale hacking or possible electronic spying operation, based mainly in the People's Republic of China, which has infiltrated at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries. Computer systems which would normally be expected to have high levels of security protection have been compromised, including many belonging to banks, embassies, foreign ministries, and other government offices around the world, as well as the Dalai Lama's Tibetan exile centers in India, Brussels, London, and New York City....
The system disseminates malware to selected recipients via computer code attached to stolen emails and addresses, thereby expanding the network by allowing more computers to be infected. Once infected, a computer can be controlled or inspected by its hackers. The malware even has the ability to turn on the camera and audio-recording functions of an infected computer, enabling monitors to see and hear what goes on in a room.
Researchers also believe they have found evidence of real world actions taken by government officials from the People's Republic of China, as a result of information obtained via the 'GhostNet'; including Beijing officials making a call to a diplomat discouraging a visit with the Dalai Lama, after that person had received an email invitation (from the Dalai Lama's representatives) to do so, and a woman on her way to Tibet being stopped by Chinese intelligence officers and shown transcripts of her online conversations
While a report from researchers at Cambridge University says they believe that the Chinese government is behind the attacks, the researchers from the University of Toronto stated they could not conclude that the Chinese government was responsible for the spy network, and noted alternative possibilities such as an operation run by private citizens in China for profit or for patriotic reasons, or intelligence agencies from other countries such as Russia or the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. The Chinese government has denied any involvement, stating that China "strictly forbids any cyber crime".
Yikes! Makes Storm Botnet seem like a pile of puke.
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(1) 11:03 CDT 3/30/09 edition
img via
Do only twits tweet?
For my part, I can't quite decide whether what they are describing is a good or a bad thing. On the one hand, a bunch of talking heads spouting back and forth to one another while limited to 140 characters or less seems like the perfect way to add complexity and nuance to our political discourse. On the other hand, why can't wealthy conservatives buy influence anymore?
Freedom: A brand in decline
Time was, a little bit of catchy jingoism all but guaranteed big profits. Nowadays, freedom doesn't sell:
In an earlier and more cynical time I'd have thought that what was really going on here was that freedom was a brand that could't pay for shelf space. I'd have envisioned a future in which the building became known as Freedom Tower by Citi.
Times have changed. The country has changed. I've changed. I have been the change I was to have become.
And so it seems to me that this change of name is a real change signifying real change. This is a new day in which entirely new empty gestures will be needed.
"We've referred to the primary building planned for the site as One World Trade Center -- its legal name and street address -- for almost two years now, as well as using the name the Freedom Tower," said Stephen Sigmund, a spokesman for the Port Authority, in a statement released to CNN. "Many will always refer to it as the Freedom Tower, but as the building moves out of the planning stage and into full construction and leasing, we believe that going forward it is most practical to market the building as One World Trade Center."
Ten of the building's planned 108 above-ground floors have been built.
"The fact is, more than $3 billion of public money is invested in that building, and, as a public agency, we have the responsibility to make sure it is completed and that we utilize the best strategy to make certain it is fully occupied," Sigmund added. |CNN|
In an earlier and more cynical time I'd have thought that what was really going on here was that freedom was a brand that could't pay for shelf space. I'd have envisioned a future in which the building became known as Freedom Tower by Citi.
Times have changed. The country has changed. I've changed. I have been the change I was to have become.
And so it seems to me that this change of name is a real change signifying real change. This is a new day in which entirely new empty gestures will be needed.
3/27/09
On the subject of desired gadgets
I covet the THUNDER POWER 1000 and am working to acquire one for the big bad grad union. From the description:
Deafening! This megaphone will clear the streets and rattle the windows! The ThunderPower 1000 is designed for military and crowd control applications and has an extremely durable metal construction. It has an auxiliary jack so you can easily plug in your MP3 player, microphone or other external device to sing along with, talk over music or make sound effects. |source|
Emphasis added.
Can you even begin to imagine the power and the glory that would accrue to an organization with such a megaphone? Why, we could be just like the marines who took out Noreiga!
I've got goosebumps.
3/26/09
... I want one so bad ...
Even more than the Tesla Roadster, I want the Model S Electric Sedan:
UPDATE: ... definitely a gadget.
UPDATE: ... definitely a gadget.
Morning in America means class war and coffee
I thought this segment was pretty remarkable:
The odd thing about the position Brzezinski stakes out here is his avowed ignorance of the uses to which vast fortunes might be put. He can't really be ignorant of the fact that wealth is a form of power, can he? Surely not. Which I take to indicate that he has some agenda which he thinks is served by not acknowledging that fact. In most contexts I'd assume that the unspoken agenda is to preserve the privileges of the owning class, but that interpretation doesn't seem plausible here.
Adding: Perhaps Brzezinski's agenda has been revealed here:
The odd thing about the position Brzezinski stakes out here is his avowed ignorance of the uses to which vast fortunes might be put. He can't really be ignorant of the fact that wealth is a form of power, can he? Surely not. Which I take to indicate that he has some agenda which he thinks is served by not acknowledging that fact. In most contexts I'd assume that the unspoken agenda is to preserve the privileges of the owning class, but that interpretation doesn't seem plausible here.
Adding: Perhaps Brzezinski's agenda has been revealed here:
...the left’s agenda goes considerably beyond a black helicopter-based global monetary system. The ultimate aim is to establish a Star Trek-style post-capitalist society in which there’s no currency whatsoever. |Yglesias|
3/25/09
A question of etiquette
Wednesday is trash day in my neighborhood, so when I walked out the door this morning I wasn't surprised to see that the street was lined with trash cans. What did surprise me was the fellow who drove up in an SUV, parked illegally, then pulled a hefty bag out of the back of the truck and dropped it into an already overfilled receptacle.
After he drove off I was tempted to walk over and check to see if he had left a body. I didn't, though, because it seemed to me that examining the contents of my neighbor's trash can would be unthinkingly impolite. What say you all?
After he drove off I was tempted to walk over and check to see if he had left a body. I didn't, though, because it seemed to me that examining the contents of my neighbor's trash can would be unthinkingly impolite. What say you all?
Ask a stupid question
Chuck Todd gets an honorable mention for worst question. The worst thing about Todd's question, it seems to me, wasn't its incoherence, but was rather that insofar as there was a coherent thought there, Todd was trying to toss a softball, but screwed it up so badly that he utterly failed to earn any ass kissing credits whatsoever.
Nobody, though, could live down to the standard set by Jennifer Loven. Recently private corporations have done bad things in the area of finance, Mr. President. How, then, do you justify seeking more power for government in the area of finance?
What?
3/24/09
Will the Geitner plan work? Understanding Krugman's objection
It depends on what you mean by work. As Krugman noted on his blog today, the official administration line is that the Geitner put is just one piece of a larger strategy. A problem, according to Krugman, is that nobody knows what the other pieces are.
But let's back up for a second. What does the Geitner plan do, why does Krugman think that it won't work?
Geitner's plan, basically, is to create investment groups with government backing to purchase toxic assets from distressed banks. The downside risk of those investments will be guaranteed by the government, which means that buyers will have an incentive to overpay compared to current market prices. The idea is that this will get the toxic assets off of the banks' books at a price which will restore the banks to liquidity.
Krugman's critique of the plan is a little difficult to suss out. In his column this week, he wrote:
On his blog, Krugman gives a more complete diagnosis:
One of Krugman's points is that the housing bubble really was a bubble and that this means that the banks investments in mortgage securities really were bad investments. And what this means is that government can't arrest the fall in the price of those securities merely by buying some of them. They can't, in other words, put a stop to the panic because there isn't a panic to put a stop to.
It follows from this that the banks are, as things stand at the moment, insolvent. This is because the asset side of their balance sheets are heavily loaded with these mortgage securities, and those securities have very little value. The banks have managed to stumble along by pretending that the securities are worth more than they are, but nobody really believes that. If those assets were fairly valued, then the banks would obviously be insolvent and would fail.
As an aside, this is the context in which to understand the Congressional GOP's push to return to "mark to market" accounting rules. The idea is to change the laws to let the banks put mortgage securities on the balance sheet for the value they expect to sell them for in the future, rather than for the value that they could earn today. This would make the balance sheets look healthy, sure, but is ostrich accounting of the worst sort. Pretending that these securities are worth something would allow current managers to justify their bonuses, but it wouldn't solve the underlying problem.
Returning to Geitner's plan, the idea is to pull the troubled assets off the books. Why won't that work? This segment from last night's NewsHour may shed some light:
Krugman's argument, I think, is this. Banks, the troubled ones at any rate, have more bad assets on their books than the Geitner plan will purchase. If the plan is to work, it must do so by establishing a price floor for those assets which is sufficient to ensure solvency. But, given the incentives of the Geitner plan, the price paid for assets is likely to be higher than the market would otherwise bear. At the same time, the plan will give us information about what those assets are worth. But once we know what those assets are worth, then banks will be forced to honestly report their value on their balance sheets. The banks are currently reporting those assets as being worth something like sixty cents on the dollar, even though the market price is more likely to be something like thirty cents. But then bob's your uncle, because at those prices many banks will turn out to be insolvent.
Which brings us full circle to the seemingly unknown other parts of the plan. The total losses on mortgage securities in the U.S. is estimated to be something like $4 trillion. The Geitner plan will cover something like $1 trillion of those losses. The Fed's announcement of quantitative easing means that they'll buy up another trillion or so of mortgage paper. Some losses have already been addressed by capital infusions. But all of that still leaves something close to $2 trillion in losses for the banks to absorb. Can they do it? I guess we'll find out.
Adding: Yes, I know that I spelled Geithner's name wrong.
But let's back up for a second. What does the Geitner plan do, why does Krugman think that it won't work?
Geitner's plan, basically, is to create investment groups with government backing to purchase toxic assets from distressed banks. The downside risk of those investments will be guaranteed by the government, which means that buyers will have an incentive to overpay compared to current market prices. The idea is that this will get the toxic assets off of the banks' books at a price which will restore the banks to liquidity.
Krugman's critique of the plan is a little difficult to suss out. In his column this week, he wrote:
But the real problem with this plan is that it won’t work. Yes, troubled assets may be somewhat undervalued. But the fact is that financial executives literally bet their banks on the belief that there was no housing bubble, and the related belief that unprecedented levels of household debt were no problem. They lost that bet. And no amount of financial hocus-pocus — for that is what the Geithner plan amounts to — will change that fact. |Krugman|
On his blog, Krugman gives a more complete diagnosis:
Start with the question: how do banks fail? A bank, broadly defined, is any institution that borrows short and lends long. Like any leveraged investor, a bank can fail if it has made bad investments — if the value of its assets falls below the value of its liabilities, bye bye bank.
But banks can also fail even if they haven’t been bad investors: if, for some reason, many of those they’ve borrowed from (e.g., but not only, depositors) demand their money back at once, the bank can be forced to sell assets at fire sale prices, so that assets that would have been worth more than liabilities in normal conditions end up not being enough to cover the bank’s debts. And this opens up the possibility of a self-fulfilling panic: people may demand their money back, not because they think the bank has made bad investments, but simply because they think other people will demand their money back.
Bank runs can be contagious; partly that’s for psychological reasons, partly because banks tend to invest in similar assets, so one bank’s fire sale depresses another bank’s net worth.
So now we have a bank crisis. Is it the result of fundamentally bad investment, or is it because of a self-fulfilling panic?
If you think it’s just a panic, then the government can pull a magic trick: by stepping in to buy the assets banks are selling, it can make banks look solvent again, and end the run. Yippee! And sometimes that really does work.
But if you think that the banks really, really have made lousy investments, this won’t work at all; it will simply be a waste of taxpayer money. To keep the banks operating, you need to provide a real backstop — you need to guarantee their debts, and seize ownership of those banks that don’t have enough assets to cover their debts; that’s the Swedish solution, it’s what we eventually did with our own S&Ls. |Krugman|
One of Krugman's points is that the housing bubble really was a bubble and that this means that the banks investments in mortgage securities really were bad investments. And what this means is that government can't arrest the fall in the price of those securities merely by buying some of them. They can't, in other words, put a stop to the panic because there isn't a panic to put a stop to.
It follows from this that the banks are, as things stand at the moment, insolvent. This is because the asset side of their balance sheets are heavily loaded with these mortgage securities, and those securities have very little value. The banks have managed to stumble along by pretending that the securities are worth more than they are, but nobody really believes that. If those assets were fairly valued, then the banks would obviously be insolvent and would fail.
As an aside, this is the context in which to understand the Congressional GOP's push to return to "mark to market" accounting rules. The idea is to change the laws to let the banks put mortgage securities on the balance sheet for the value they expect to sell them for in the future, rather than for the value that they could earn today. This would make the balance sheets look healthy, sure, but is ostrich accounting of the worst sort. Pretending that these securities are worth something would allow current managers to justify their bonuses, but it wouldn't solve the underlying problem.
Returning to Geitner's plan, the idea is to pull the troubled assets off the books. Why won't that work? This segment from last night's NewsHour may shed some light:
Krugman's argument, I think, is this. Banks, the troubled ones at any rate, have more bad assets on their books than the Geitner plan will purchase. If the plan is to work, it must do so by establishing a price floor for those assets which is sufficient to ensure solvency. But, given the incentives of the Geitner plan, the price paid for assets is likely to be higher than the market would otherwise bear. At the same time, the plan will give us information about what those assets are worth. But once we know what those assets are worth, then banks will be forced to honestly report their value on their balance sheets. The banks are currently reporting those assets as being worth something like sixty cents on the dollar, even though the market price is more likely to be something like thirty cents. But then bob's your uncle, because at those prices many banks will turn out to be insolvent.
Which brings us full circle to the seemingly unknown other parts of the plan. The total losses on mortgage securities in the U.S. is estimated to be something like $4 trillion. The Geitner plan will cover something like $1 trillion of those losses. The Fed's announcement of quantitative easing means that they'll buy up another trillion or so of mortgage paper. Some losses have already been addressed by capital infusions. But all of that still leaves something close to $2 trillion in losses for the banks to absorb. Can they do it? I guess we'll find out.
Adding: Yes, I know that I spelled Geithner's name wrong.
3/22/09
With threats of peace on the horizon, Brit Hume raises the alarm
Don't know about you, but whenever I see Brit Hume talk about war three little words run through my head. Vice Presidential Material.
I mean, he's got the gravitas of Cheney, the telegenic magic of Fred Thompson, and the bug eyed bellicosity Phil Gramm. Plus all kinds of other great old white dude qualities. Just look how certain he is! And unwavering! Why, with a man like that near the helm, scylla and charybdis wouldn't know what hit 'em!
3/20/09
it's too much heat/let's go to beach/and meet some cheeeick
It's satisfying to know that, no matter where I go in Austin this SXSW week, I will stumble upon great free music and, if I play my cards right, free beer and BBQ. No matter where I go on the radio dial, too, I'll get live coverage of SXSW music performances. Most of the main radio stations in town are doing this, including the NPR station, KUT.
Tonight I discovered K'Naan, Somali-born hip-hop artist who claims that American hip-hop, despite it's merits, lacks street cred as L.A. streets cannot compare to Mogadishu streets. And the guy learned English listening to American hip-hop.Take a listen to a live set from SXSW.
The NPR site also has the Decemberists performing their new album The Hazards of Love in its entirety.
3/18/09
The best an the brightest
Via Talking Points Memo I've been reading Joseph St. Denis's response to congressional inquiries about the shenanigans in A.I.G.'s financial products division. Joseph St. Denis was the chief accountant of the division, and resigned in September 2007 because he had been denied access to the process by which the firm's super credit default swaps were valuated. TPM is all over this story, but here's a snippet from the letter that jumped out at me:
This was the first time Mr. Cassano had expressed criticism of any of my close working relationships with FSD or OAP. As previously noted, during my evaluation with Mi. Cassano in June of 2007 two months earlier, Mr. Cassano had told me that I was "doing a great job," and that I should "work closely with [AIG]." He also volunteered during this meeting in June 2007,which was also attended by William Kolbert, that he had "no desire to be promoted, because it would separate [him] from the money," and that AIG's corporate management was "scared to death" of him'
3/16/09
I'm Montressor, son!
Earlier in the semester my classes read "The Cask of Amontillado" by Poe. It's a class favorite and we've been returning to the story now and again.
Today one of my students sent me a link to Flocabulary's hip-hop version of the story. I believe I may now have to show this to my class. The video is funny but not that great; however, I love how it insinuates Poe murdering Baudelaire.
3/12/09
Gadgets
As I work to come to terms with my gadget problem, I find that I need boundaries but am unable to define them for myself. The difficulty is that the border between gadgets and non-gadgets is a little fuzzy. Which brings me to my question. Are the following examples of gadgets? Please explain your answers.
- stereo
- microwave
- car
- foreman grill
- charcoal grill
- DVR
- trash compactor
- toilet
- flashlight
- smart phone
- television
Kansas in the (historical comparisons) news
Also, will Steele beat the Roberts' record for shortest RNC Chairmanship ever? Matt Cooper discovered that the current record holder appears to be Sen. Pat Roberts' (R-KS) dad, C. Wesley Roberts, who was chairman for four months in 1953 before a reporter discovered he'd collected a $10,000 commission on the sale of a hospital the state of Kansas owned. Good times. I wonder if Steele can top it. |TPM|
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