Economy

Here’s a great article about how the banks are doing. I don’t fancy myself an economic analyst, but this was a fairly decent article, with great information if you check out the actual report. Check out the section on the left called “The Feds Report” if you’ve got some time and would like to throw up in your mouth a little. How did your bank fare?

“The government’s long-awaited “stress-test” results have found that 10 of the nation’s 19 largest banks need a total of about $75 billion in new capital to withstand losses if the recession worsened.”

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103914217&ft=1&f=1001

Just looking at random stuff tonight, but this is sad.

Poor girl doesn’t have a chance, 14 and wearing hot pants on Letterman. We all have a good sense of how this ends.

The Genetic Protection in Insurance Coverage Act of 2007 basically says that insurance companies can not discriminate based on genetic information.

I find this concept amazing.

For a second think about insurance companies.

one mississippi.

Insurance companies are a simple exercise. They take individual risk, weigh it against the pool of insured or likely insured and make a decision on how much a person is worth. They figure when a person is most likely to die and how much they need to charge that person in order for them to profi over the life of the policy.

If I were to apply for a new insurance policy they would weigh (no pun intended) all of the negative factors and balance against their pool and give me a monthly payment. This is why actuaries exist, think ‘About Schmidt.’

So, insurance companies have a good baseline of study. A 29 year-old white male with my height and weight with my socio-economic-status should live to be about 70 (give or take 50 years based on modern medicine).

What amazes me is that we have decided the point at which insurance companies can stop gathering information and must start making guesses. Basically, Math (actuarial science) is ok, genetics is not.

How can we possibly make some sort of arbitrary decision on how much knowledge is ok? Why not assail the actual algorithms altogether (that sentence took some work, but it is fun). How can we allow for insurance companies to compile one list of happenings and base a payment but not another?

How can we possibly not agree that more information is better?

It’s a tricky-deal. Should we punish those, by having higher premiums, who are weak? Now I am entering Darwinian zone here, but why shouldn’t the most healthy of our species be rewarded for their superior genes? We’ve been playing that game for, well, a long time. Then, there is that whole euthanasia thing.

Now, what if I were to argue that we don’t really make any decisions? My ability to be fat is a direct result of how I was raised within my genetic disposition. Nature and nurture. If it is a choice, then it is ok for insurance companies to gouge me–ask smokers (and actuaries usually live within these lifestyle factors). But what if I can’t control my weight? By that I mean any disposition or symptom that we show may not be a choice, but in fact may programmed. What if that is really true? (This goes for any kind of disorder in which people make ‘choice’. I am simply picking on myself for expediency.)

I don’t know, it really fascinated me tonight. There was a dude on Colbert who was talking about this. 2 things struck me.

1) He decided he didn’t want to know if he was disposed toward Alzheimer’s.
2) He had a gene that would say he would be bald by an 80% certainty. He has a beautiful healthy swatch of hair.

Anyway, I was amazed that this guy wouldn’t want to know, and, in the context of his argument, it seemed amazingly disarming. He too was drawing a line of should-be-known-knowledge.

This is what I am saying. Either you want to know or you don’t.

The march of rationalism has and will continue to run against an ethics that was born in a previous era (thank you David Harvey). Every time we run from that we rob ourselves of understanding. How can ever knowing more be a bad thing? It might mess up how we look at the world, but there is no value in pretending that known knowledge doesn’t exist.

Like I said, half-formed.

Two final thoughts.

1) Look at how many tags this topic invokes.
2) I looked up the decay/decadence idea from my last post. It comes from the Latin root–as M-W online states (but won’t let me copy and paste off their website [this is particulary interesing in light on the post, why not let me copy from a definition--how is this sacred knowledge?]) from Late Latin decadere to fall, sink.

I keep hearing that Republicans are fiscally conservative and that Democrats are tax and spend liberals. This perception didn’t really jive with my experience – granted it is limited to four presidents. So I started searching the Googles for more information. In my search, I cam across a paper by Steve McGourty about the US National Debt and the Presidents Responsible. It has tremendous insight into the actions of our government as far as spending is concerned. It cuts through the rhetoric and spin, and lays the truth out there in pretty graphs and verbose analysis.

Here is a graph that tells the story of Presidential spending habits since 1938. Where the red line really starts to increase is when Raegan came into office. Republican spending has been out of control since then. And now our GDP is less than our debt. I can’t imagine that is a good thing.

The paper has all kinds of tidbits.

It is interesting to note who controlled Congress versus what party was in the presidency during the seven years that the debt was reduced throughout the terms of Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy. Three times the Democratic Party controlled both Houses of Congress and the Presidency (1948, 1951 & 1961). The other four years all had a mix of control, with Republicans in the White House (1956 & 1957), in charge of Congress (1946 & 1947), but never both. At no time since 1945 when Republicans have been in total charge of both elected branches of government have they ever reduced spending. They talk about it a lot, but they never deliver.

If you are interested in knowing more about our debt, I recommend reading this paper.

My dad is a professor of Finance at Oklahoma State, so he understands what’s going on with all this economic/credit brew-ha-ha.  I’ve been asking him to explain it to me, and he sent me this link to an episode they did on This American Life that explains it all – from the people who got the bad mortgages, to the people who sold them, to the people who bought them, to the people who sliced them up and sold them to the “Global Pool of Money”.  Very well done and very enlightening.  Ira Glass rocks.

http://thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=355

I listened to a couple of minutes of Bush’s economic speech last night. He said two things that caused me to stir. I am paraphrasing, we (the government) expect to get paid back nearly all of the money that we loan. Yeah, right. With words like expect and nearly all, and with no oversight. Puhhhlease. There’s gotta be a loophole in there the size of the US/Mexico border. These golden parachute receivers are getting an angel investor – its like their country died and left them a big inheritance. Oh wait, maybe it did died. I think I’ve been hearing the death rattle for the past eight years.

The other thing he said is that our country is in dire need of this money, we need it now, and we need it without regulation, we can regulate later. I call shenanigans. I know their tricks too well to fall for this one. Why don’t we approve the loan with the stiffest of regulations and deregulate later? It is the same logic, just flipped. Why don’t we tell them that the can have the 477.978832 billion Euros if we get 10% off of our respective mortgage? I’d go for that. Plus they still have to pay the $700 billion back.

What ever the case, just please no more freebies for BushCo. He’s done enough damage. I feel sorry for the next President. They are walking into a world devastated by down home, good ol’ boy, Texas swagger. And that’s hard to walk off. It leaves you tingly and extremely rigged.

I love it when my side is right!

An article that outlines how multiple indicators of economic health have improved with Democratic presidencies and declined with Republican presidencies since WWII.  (Lots of good stats for you academic types.)

Is History Siding With Obama’s Economic Plan?

I thought this was an interesting example of the further weakening US economy.

Deadspin reports that many NBA players are returning to Europe. It has long been assumed that the best talent will continue to come to the US based on the NBA being the premiere league in the world. Of course, economics could change that.

Europe has always been a viable option for marginal NBA players, many college stars have had great careers there, and the locals can play some serious ball.  Could this economic downturn be some sort of tipping point which allows some European leagues to close the gap?

Also, high school senior Brandon Jennings, a consensus top five senior in the 2008 class will being playing in Rome next year. There was a new rule put in place by the NBA last year that dictates a player must wait one year after his class graduates before he can enter the NBA draft. Hear we see the market doing what it does. Instead of playing at the University of Arizona, kid heads to Rome. Maybe he can buy some fat glasses and lose them at the bottom of the Lake of the Ozarks.

For fun, check this out.

That’s what St. Louisians (those from St. Louis) call Anheuser-Busch.

I spent last weekend in St. Louis watching DMB play in the beautiful new Busch Stadium.

The stage was in right-center and they had porta-potties set up in the bullpen, that’s right, I have peed in the visitors bullpen in Busch Stadium.

The point however is that international brewery mega-whatnot InBev is trying to buy AB and those from St. Louis are freaking out a bit. If there is one thing that those strangely named people love more than the Cards is AB. And no matter how you feel about their beer, AB is a great corporate partner for the city. If you’ve ever touristed StL you know that many things are free and most of that is due to the Brewer.

In the past decade AB has slipped from 1st to 3rd in global sales and their attempts to jump on the craft-beer surge have mostly failed. InBev, a Belgium-Brazilian conglomerate (which is fascinating that a Belgium-Brazilian company would have the power to buy-out the once undisputed king, globalization yada yada yada) owns the Beck’s, Stella and Brazilian Brahma brands.

link, if you want more the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a lot of interesting articles and reactions from various actors in the city. It really is quite fascinating to see how people are reacting to the possible cooptation of what is vital to their city identity. Articles from today.

1

2

Wall Street Journal Piece about the rise of InBev.

This is a further consolidation of the great American Breweries, AB, Miller and Coors.

Miller Brewing was bought out by London based South African Brewery (SAB) in 2002, from Phillip-Morris, and Coors is owned by Molson Coors Brewing Co based in Denver.

And SABMiller and Molson Coors actually coordinate US operations:

“On October 9, 2007, SABMiller and Molson Coors Brewing Company announced that they had agreed to combine the U.S. and Puerto Rico operations of their respective subsidiaries, Miller and Coors, in a joint venture.

SABMiller and Molson Coors expect the transaction to generate approximately $500 million in annual cost synergies to be delivered in full by the third full financial year of combined operations. The transaction is expected to be earnings accretive to both companies in the second full financial year of combined operations.

SABMiller and Molson Coors will each have a 50% voting interest in the joint venture and have five representatives each on its Board of Directors. Based on the economic value of the contributed assets, SABMiller will have a 58% economic interest in the joint venture and Molson Coors will have a 42% economic interest.”

Finally, another St. Louis brewery, Schlafley, is a somewhat aggressive micro-brew. Like other micros they have a very environmentally sound mission. I couldn’t get tomatoes b/c they use them from their own garden out back and they weren’t in season yet, and generally they have a goofy menu.

The real point is to read the ramblings of their owner. If you read nothing else read this,

the non sequiturs are quite impressive.

So currently in Dubai there is dwindling of oil reserves, a huge upsurge in international (US) investment, key members of staff who are receiving huge benefits from their positions in office via their deferred multi-million dollar stock option plans, and well, michael jackson.

Tourism in Dubai

About Dubai – Wikipedia Specifically read the Economy and Human Right and Labor sections.

Halliburton in Dubai

Halliburtion quarterly report has some kinks

Could someone please explain to me what the fuck is going on? I mean, you know, besides the obvious.

And, as a payoff for all of this noise, here’s Michael.

and i’ll add one more since i fucked up. (good call liz. way to keep me honest)

Michael is now normal?