Here’s a little clip about the Grid Computing facility that nabs and stores the data from the CERN Hadron Collider project. Having forgotten 99% of my college physics math I still do not understand why it takes such massive power to analyze data from particles so small that, if they were dollars, you could pay off the US national debt with a grain of sand worth of them.
Former treasury secretary Paul O’Neill served from 2001-2002 when he resigned from the Bush Administration. O’Neill’s business acumen is almost legendary as he was the executive that led multinational Alcoa in a case study still used at Harvard Business School as an example of inspired corporate leadership.
O’Neill’s concerned about the economy though he’s correctly suggesting that the current issues pale when compared to the massive – some 43 trillion – in unfunded liabilities congress and the president have smilingly absorbed over the last few decades. O’Neill suggests that if we don’t get our financial house in order soon we are in for trouble that makes today’s problems look like a walk in the park.
O’Neill has offered what seems to me the most elegant solution by far to the current crisis. He suggests that the Government take two simple steps, the first of which is the same under the current bailout plan which is to value the toxic paper assets. His second step is to have the government guarantee the asset values rather than buy the assets themselves. This brilliancy *immediately* solves the two key problems in this crisis: first, it means the Government does NOT need to borrow 700,000,000,000 from … you and me. Second, it creates a market for the distressed assets because the Government value guarantee means that investment capital will flow to buy these formerly toxic assets because they have a floor value along with possible extra upside. In this scenario you’d see investors band together to buy books of real estate which the Govt would guarantee but the investors would have incentive to improve and resell at a profit. In that scenario, replayed throughout the economy, we’d see Government intervention and more importantly Government *obligation* limited, allowing the free market to work, money to flow, etc.
Why is O’Neill seeing what Paulson can’t see? Probably because Paulson, Bernanke, and congress are both mired in the type of thinking that got us into all this in the first place. Namely that the massive global economy can sustain dramatic levels of financial derivative manipulations and Government manipulation without a huge raft of unintended consequences.
Washington does not understand why taxpayers are so angry about the bailout. Some pundits are calling this ignorance, but I think to the extent *anybody* can predict things taxpayers know pretty much what is going on here, and realize there is major hardship ahead whether or not the bailout moves forward as proposed, as a modified bailout, or does not happen at all. Some of this is already reflected in the stagnant broader markets we’ve seen for the past few years, and some reflected today in the Dow’s drop of about 700 at the close. But this is not a meltdown, suggesting to me that the rumors of total market meltdowns have been at least somewhat exaggerated.
Paul Samuelson noted today in an excellent article that we are basically seeing the bankruptcy of modern economics:
Our leaders are making up their responses from day to day because old ideas of how the economy works have failed them. These ideas were not necessarily wrong, but they’re grievously inadequate at the moment
The American experiment was spawned in large part as a revolution against military-inspired spending taxation from Britain. Few today realize that the taxation levels of the 1770’s were so tiny by today’s standards that they would not raise a modern eyebrow, let alone spawn any kind of spending revolution.
Over the past 230 years times have changed and we now expect Government to tax us at what the founders would have seen as enormous and totally unacceptable rates, and spend *even more* than they take in, leading to a deficit so large it is in my view of greater economic concern – far greater – than the current recession (which will be getting a lot worse, bailout or not).
What would restore most taxpayer’s confidence? Massive Government spending *cuts*, not massive Government spending as proposed in the bailout.
For most of the modern era Washington’s response to problems has been massive debt spending, pushing problems forward to future generations who’ll have to pay down our debt. The Bailout was a similar response unless you accept the optimistic notion that all of that 700 billion will come back after the toxic assets were sold off by the Government. Most likely based on my take some but not all will come back.
Wen Jiabao is the Premier of China, making him one of the most influential international figures of this generation. Today on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS – one of the best shows on TV, we are hearing from Wen Jiabao on several topics of extreme relevance to the global community.
I can’t compliment Zakaria enough for a journalistic style that does two things I’d argue are necessary to get *access to people* while at the same time getting real rather than canned insights. First, he’s polite, which gets access and creates a relaxed atmosphere where real dialog can take place. Second, he asks the *big* questions in a way that brings us real insights into the thinking patterns of the key political and thought leaders he interviews.
Rather than summarize things here I want to link to CNN’s GPS page where I think they will post the interview, because anybody with an interest in where things are going should be paying very close attention.
Much of the current debate in this country about China (as well as many things) takes a sort of cartoon form, where people are stuck on oversimplifying a handful of complex talking points like China’s economic relationship to the USA and China’s Tibet policy (which in my view could largely be solved by shifting treatment of Tibet to an autonomous region like Hong Kong, a relationship that is working fairly well).
Asked about the prevailing economic philosophy who did Wen Jiabao quote? None other than Adam Smith, suggesting that the free hand of capitalism should be balanced by Government regulations to keep things fair and orderly (FYI he’s right that Smith was an advocate of some regulation and application of “morality” to free markets – a historical point often lost in debates here over free market virtues).
What’s Wen Jiabao reading? Stoic Marcus Aurelius apparently is one of his favorite philosophers, a thoughtful but sometimes ruthless Roman emperor who advocated social responsibility and internal progressive social reforms even as he persecuted wars and treated some dissenters ruthlessly.
Like most Americans I’m angry and confused about how suddenly a crisis of economically biblical proportions has suddently lept to the top of the political agenda. This is especially galling because only a month ago the Bush administration was – pretty much to a person – telling us that the economy was in good shape.
It strains my credulity to think they didn’t know the credit problem pot was about to boil over, and in my cynical moments I think they probably just hoped they could stave off the crisis until Jan 2009.
But hey, I’m to blame and so are you and so are the legions of people who watched real estate rise and fall and foolishly assumed that near-catastrophic devaluations in houses of trillions of dollars would not lead to the enormous problems we now face.
Solutions? As tempted as I am to agree with Ron Paul who is basically arguing for no bailout and letting market forces revalue the whole mess, I’m thinking we need to go ahead with a staged bailout where investment of our tax money is tied to measurable successes in terms of the credit markets. If the Paulson plan is the right answer we do not need to spend $700,000,000,000 before we know it’s working. I think Congress should approve some modest amount for Paulson and tie subsequent spending to *immediate* market improvements. I want the banks and others (including individual mortgate holders) who will benefit from the bailout to *make major changes* and *absorb major risks* that it seems the current plan simply passes along to future taxpayers aka “our children”. If I understand Paulson and Bernanke correctly they’d say this type of partial bailout plan won’t do enough to work – that we need to restore corporate confidence to the extent they loosen up credit and re-oil the engine of US economic prosperity. That may be true, but I’m not convinced anybody can reasonably predict how any of this will shake out. Clearly these clever boys totally and miserably failed to predict this problem would happen in the first place, so it’s tempting to apply the “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me” rule and ask for a whole new game with new players.
Congratulations are in order for startup company Yammer , which just won the very prestigious TechCrunch 50 startup competition in Silicon Valley. Over 1000 companies applied and 52 were chosen to present at no charge to a very distinguished group of corporate and media digital luminaries such as Marissa Mayer, Mark Cuban, Don Dodge, Robert Scoble, Mark Andreessen, and many other major corporate decision makers and online influencers.
Is is sour grapes that I think they’ve picked a dud here? No – Matt Ingram Agrees and he is ALWAYS mostly right. Our not-yet-launched Retirement startup was rejected – perhaps because we really were offering a great business model in our demo presentation but no new technologies. Frankly I was impressed watching several of the presentations. The programming side of things seemed very inspired as people had created elaborate game worlds, powerful photo grouping software, a collaborative music mixing environment (BoJam), and several more clever innovations with online technologies. For this reason I was very surprised to see the judges rate Yammer so highly.
Yammer is a fine idea and application, but it seems to simply be a modification of the Twitter idea for company use. As far as I can tell is very unlikely to do the two things it needs to succeed: Replace people’s use of Twitter, including a Twitter than could easily be modified to do the same thing as Yammer, and be used in place of other company messaging systems that can simply copy this layout, use a modified twitter, develop their own, etc. IBM’s not going to start Yammering and small companies are going to Twitter.
So, as with many of the amazing technologies presented at TechCrunch there appears to be little revenue to be had.
No, this isn’t just sour grapes for being one of the 950 or so TechCrunch LOSERs (we actually could have presented in the “Demo Pit” at the show but opted out of that due to cost and time). My thinking is that the best course of action now is to bring the *existing* tool sets to bear against old problems in existing businesses. We don’t need a new travel *application*, but we certainly need better ways for people to research trips without too much advertising pollution or misleading information.
Then again, when I look at the most hyped of the startups, Ashton Kutcher’s BlahGirls I wonder if I’m just hopelessly…. i mean … like … Blah Blah Blah!… in the wrong business.
Update: Google Chrome is now available. I’m only starting to test it but it seems very, very fast, intuitive, and impressive.
——– earlier ———–
Google will soon launch an internet browser in what promises to be one of the most significant online developments in some time. Based on the comic book intro they’ve used to warm up users to the new application, Google Chrome will effectively turn the browser into an operating system. Perhaps the most significant change is that Chrome will open new tabbed windows for each application it runs (much like MS Windows). This feature should help isolate problems during browsing and Google says it will create a superior environment for running the many embedded applications that are now part of a typical browsing session. I’m not clear yet if this is fundamentally different from opening several internet explorer or FireFox browser windows which is also fairly typical.
In any case Google’s entry into the browser market is likely to shake up the online landscape, where only FireFox and Microsoft IE Explorer have any significant market share at about 20% for FF and about 79% for Microsoft IE. Google promotions of Firefox have been largely responsible for it’s success, so it’ll be interesting to watch how this move affects the browser equation.
Browser software does not monetize directly, but since it is the gateway to the internet it’s a key part of the online revenue equation. Were it not for the antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft it is almost certain that MS would have a much greater search market share as they could have made it much more difficult for users to change their search choices and could have taken advantage of the integration of the browser and the Windows operating system. Thanks to the rules imposed in the Microsoft lawsuits and Google’s superior search, Google has been eating Microsoft’s search lunch for years. This move, unless it backfires, will consolidate Google’s search dominance at the expense of MS and to a much lesser extent Firefox, which is an open source non-profit but also makes tens of millions each year from Google search revenues which are likely to diminish as people move to Google Chrome.
I don’t understand why people have so much interest in things like the latest Bigfoot hoax, or in Bigfoot stories at all. These things are kind of fun, but unless I’m mistaken people really are curious to know if the “creature” in the pictures is bigfoot.
It’s not. There is little compelling evidence for the existence of any Bigfoot Bigfeet? Bigfoots? anywhere on earth, and when you combine the lack of evidence with the number of people who love to perpetrate bigfoot hoaxes and the mythology of bigfoot you get … sightings!
The Georgia / Palo Alto bigfoot stuff Is so obviously a hoax I’m not clear why this has struck such a chord, but maybe we are all tired from international tensions and Olympics? Olympic bigfoots? Hey, Michael Phelps has Bigfoot feet, right? It’s not even a good hoax in my opinion though these clowns are getting an unbelievable amount of internet buzz and press interest, so I guess maybe this *is* a good Bigfoot hoax?
First of all, the guys who dreamed up the hoax are *bigfoot hunters*. Even if you are gullible enough to think there is quality evidence that a real bigfoot like creature exists, what are the chances the “body” would be found by true believers?
Oh, and if they really did find it would they stuff it in a box in a pose that makes it hard to tell what the heck is going on? Ummmm no, they would have good pictures and bring in a doctor to examine the creature….unless of course they were perpetrating a hoax, in which case they would do exactly as they have done.
So, if this is such nonsense why am I bothering to write about it? Because “Bigfoot” has become a key search term and I’m curious how this blog post will rank for the term “Bigfoot” and “bigfoot hoax”.
Wow, once again for interesting stories about sex, lies, and videotape you need look no further than your computer screen. Here’s the interesting scoop that is leading to some nastiness in the chattering nonsense of my favorite technology blogOsphere:
After noting on Twitter a nasty debate about “self made” vs “sugar daddied” between online content guys Jason Calacanis and Andrew Baron this popped up:
ValleyWag reports:
The Rocketboom episode neatly explains why the world of online video so resembles film school, a parent-funded enterprise of self-indulgent auteurs with macroambitions viewed by microaudiences (including yours truly). Sony’s deal doesn’t affirm the potential of online video as a means of creative expression; it simply tells us that the rich, despite themselves, can’t help getting richer.
Rocketboom was the early tech news show hosted by Amanda Congdon. Not clear to me how much this hurt the show, but the buzz died way down until Rocketboom was bought by a big player recently.
But it gets more fun/sad/tragic/interesting. Baron’s father, a prominent Texas attorney, is a friend and supporter of John Edwards and some rumors suggest he may have played a role in what appear to be possible hush money payments or at least hush up activities surrounding John Edwards affair with a …. campaign video producer.
So, do all roads lead to low monetizing but highly subsidized online video? Stay tuned for the next video episode – at least as long as we can find some politicians or parents to pay for it.
date: The Medford Mail Tribune is reporting the names of six of the firefighters who died in the Trinity Alps after the worst helicopter crash in firefighting history:
Six of the seven Grayback Forestry Inc. firefighters missing and presumed dead after a helicopter crash Tuesday in the Trinity Alps have been identified. All are from Southern Oregon:
Shawn Blazer, 30, of Medford; imgCounter += 1; aryImgs[imgCounter] = “http://images.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=MM&Date=20080807&Category=NEWS07&ArtNo=808070341&Ref=V2&MaxW=200&MaxH=180&title=1&border=0”; aryCaps[imgCounter] = “<div class=\”caption\”>Scott%20Charleson%2C%2025%2C%20of%20Phoenix </div>”; aryZooms[imgCounter] = “javascript: NewWindow(870,625,window.document.location+’&Template=photos&img=”+imgCounter+”‘)”;
Scott Charleson, 25, of Phoenix;
Matthew Hammer, 23, of Grants Pass;
Edrik Gomez, 19, of Ashland;
Bryan Rich, 29, of Medford;
David Steele, 19, of Ashland.
Grayback released the firefighters’ names and their photos this afternoon. A spokesperson said the identity of the seventh firefighter aboard the aircraft would be released after the family had been notified.
We are still waiting for news on the names of the firefighters who are missing after a chopper crash near Junction City, CA yesterday evening. Most appear to be from Southern Oregon, based in Merlin.
Local news does not have many details about the crash or those now listed as missing. They are just saying one dead, 8 missing, and four injured. Carson Helicopters was the company running the operation.
Joe Duck 