Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
<Opinion?>
White House: Washington Post Article 'Flat Wrong'
By Jeff Gannon, 2/4/2005 9:38:46 AM
certainly opinion, or propaganda. jeff gannon has been widely criticized for quoting wholesale from gop press releases, without attribution ( http://mediamatters.org/items/200501280001 ); asking softball questions at press briefings and presidential press conferences ( http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000787908 ); and -- even though he's just a reporter (presumably writing under a pseudonym) for 'talon news', a minor web site associated with another minor website gopusa.com -- he's somehow been given presidential press credentials ( http://mediamatters.org/items/200501280006 ).
http://mediamatters.org/archives/search.html?string=gannon
also try googling: "jeff ganon shill"
jeez, what's all the hooha about. smells like a dead fish to me: all the risk and none of the benefits. (and this doesn't even cover the required purchase of an annuity at retirement.)
The Plan
Participants Would Forfeit Part of Accounts' Profits
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Under the White House Social Security plan, retirees who opt to divert some of their payroll taxes into private accounts would ultimately get to keep only the investment returns that exceed the rate of return that the money would have accrued in the traditional system.
The mechanism, detailed by a senior administration official before President Bush's State of the Union address, would hold down the cost of Bush's plan to introduce private accounts to the Social Security system. But it could come as a surprise to those lawmakers and voters who have thought of these accounts as akin to an Individual Retirement Account or a 401(k) that they could use in its entirety upon retirement.
The plan is more complicated. Under the proposal, workers could invest up to 4 percent of their wages subject to Social Security taxation in a limited assortment of stock, bond and mixed-investment funds. But the government would keep and administer that money. Upon retirement, workers would then be given any money that exceeded inflation-adjusted gains over 3 percent.
That money would augment a guaranteed Social Security benefit that would be reduced by a still-undetermined amount from the currently promised benefit.
In effect, the accounts would work more like a loan from the government, which would have to be paid back upon retirement at an inflation-adjusted 3-percent interest rate, the interest the money would have earned if it had been invested in Treasury bonds, said Peter R. Orszag, a Social Security analyst at the Brookings Institution and former Clinton White House economist.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59136-2005Feb2.html
From lemetropolecafe.com tonight
We now have the largest spec short position since right before the Washington Agreement announcement, after which gold rallied $87 per ounce.
2020 Vision
A CIA report predicts that American global dominance could end in 15 years.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2005, at 2:48 PM PT
Who will be the first politician brave enough to declare publicly that the United States is a declining power and that America's leaders must urgently discuss what to do about it? This prognosis of decline comes not (or not only) from leftist scribes rooting for imperialism's downfall, but from the National Intelligence Council—the "center of strategic thinking" inside the U.S. intelligence community.
The NIC's conclusions are starkly presented in a new 119-page document, "Mapping the Global Future: Report of the National Intelligence Council's 2020 Project." It is unclassified and available on the CIA's Web site. The report has received modest press attention the past couple weeks, mainly for its prediction that, in the year 2020, "political Islam" will still be "a potent force." Only a few stories or columns have taken note of its central conclusion:
The likely emergence of China and India ... as new major global players—similar to the advent of a united Germany in the 19th century and a powerful United States in the early 20th century—will transform the geopolitical landscape with impacts potentially as dramatic as those in the previous two centuries.
In this new world, a mere 15 years away, the United States will remain "an important shaper of the international order"—probably the single most powerful country—but its "relative power position" will have "eroded." The new "arriviste powers"—not only China and India, but also Brazil, Indonesia, and perhaps others—will accelerate this erosion by pursuing "strategies designed to exclude or isolate the United States" in order to "force or cajole" us into playing by their rules.
America's current foreign policy is encouraging this trend, the NIC concluded. "U.S. preoccupation with the war on terrorism is largely irrelevant to the security concerns of most Asians," the report states. The authors don't dismiss the importance of the terror war—far from it. But they do write that a "key question" for the future of America's power and influence is whether U.S. policy-makers "can offer Asian states an appealing vision of regional security and order that will rival and perhaps exceed that offered by China." If not, "U.S. disengagement from what matters to U.S. Asian allies would increase the likelihood that they will climb on Beijing's bandwagon and allow China to create its own regional security that excludes the United States."
To the extent that these new powers seek others to emulate, they may look to the European Union, not the United States, as "a model of global and regional governance."
This shift to a multipolar world "will not be painless," the report goes on, "and will hit the middle classes of the developed world in particular" with further outsourcing of jobs and outflow of capital investment. In short, the NIC's forecast involves not merely a recalibration in the balance of world power, but also—as these things do—a loss of wealth, income, and, in every sense of the word, security.
The trends should already be apparent to anyone who reads a newspaper. Not a day goes by without another story about how we're mortgaging our future to the central banks of China and Japan. The U.S. budget deficit, approaching a half-trillion dollars, is financed by their purchase of Treasury notes. The U.S. trade deficit—much of it amassed by the purchase of Chinese-made goods—now exceeds $3 trillion. Meanwhile, China is displacing the United States all across Asia—in trade, investment, education, culture, and tourism. It's also cutting into the trade markets of Latin America. (China is now Chile's No. 1 export market and Brazil's No. 2 trade partner.) Asian engineering students who might once have gone to MIT or Cal Tech are now going to universities in Beijing.
Meanwhile, as the European Union becomes a coherent entity, the dollar's value against the euro has fallen by one-third in the past two years (one-eighth just since September). As the dollar's rate of return declines, currency investors—including those who have been financing our deficit—begin to diversify their holdings. In China, Japan, Russia, and the Middle East, central bankers have been unloading dollars in favor of euros. The Bush policies that have deepened our debt have endangered the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency.
What is the Bush administration doing to alter course or at least cushion the blow? It's hard to say. During Condoleezza Rice's confirmation hearings last week, Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D–Md., raised some questions about the nexus between international economics and political power. Rice referred him to the secretary of the treasury.
The NIC issued the report a few weeks before Bush’s inaugural address, but it serves to dump still more cold water on the lofty fantasy of America delivering freedom to oppressed people everywhere. In Asia, the report states, "present and future leaders are agnostic on the issue of democracy and are more interested in developing what they perceive to be the most effective model of governance." If the president really wanted to spread freedom and democracy around the planet, he would (among other things) need to present America as that "model of governance"—to show the world, by its example, that free democracies are successful and worth emulating. Yet the NIC report paints a world where fewer and fewer people look to America as a model of anything. We can't sell freedom if we can't sell ourselves.
Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate. He can be reached at war_stories@hotmail.com.
"dollar will be stronger, dow will go up as europeans invest"
strong dollar hasn't been correlated to a rising market for the last two years.
re apple poplarity:
it just amazes me. i was in an apple store the other night, late, just about closing. the lines were to the door. i stopped at the 'genius bar' and asked some info on a powerbook, and then asked if they had one in stock. yes, they did. well, i'd like to buy it then. "oh, i'm sorry, we're about to close."
hunh? 2 minutes before closing, i'm going to drop down $2200 for a powerbook and they refuse to sell it to me? clearly they didn't need my business. (i bought an ibm t42 instead, off the web.)
whoa! that's cheap!
observation: re the inflation of condo prices in calif. if LA is an example, part of this is due to all of the condos built in the area over the last few years - most being "luxury condos". individual condo prices seem to have just doubled or so since 98 ... maybe a bit more.
FWIW, if Firefox gets too cozy with Google, I'll go back to IE. I've seen enough Spyware from Google to know I won't ever trust them.
well, as a regular reader of slashdot, where the geeks go, the geek-google-love-fest is over, and "do no evil" is viewed with skepticism.
[ Google browser ] ... searching functions could be built in to the browser and the search engine might not be Google. This possibility was proven likely when Firefox introduced its browser with a built-in search box. The default engine for the feature turned out to be Google, but it could have been anything."
this has been true for at least 4 years. (well, the first two years, it was a separate search feature on the left sidepanel.) what's missing from the speculation is the simple observation that, once microsoft sees this, they'll do exactly the same thing on internet explorer, but instead will use search.msn.com.
I suspect that this new browser will be an offshoot of the open source Mozilla Firefox browser and Goodger's job will be to ensure a smooth transition. Goodger says he will maintain his ties with the Mozilla.org development team, although others in the community are skeptical.
skeptical for good reason: firefox is open source; google can't own it. if they were to contribute to it, making it far better than msft's browser, then msft has a simple solution: do the same thing. preloading the right plugins and writing extensions (which is very easy) is all that's needed to customize it and give it microsoft specific functionality. (leveraging the os, as they did with i.e.)
If you follow the Google strategy their incursions are leading directly down a path often discussed during the late 1990's -- a browser-centric Internet OS. Netscape hinted about this possibility and Microsoft (MSFT: news, chart, profile) got freaked about it, since it would marginalize its Windows OS.
These concepts are not lost on Google. Think of the potential advertising revenue you can generate when you own the entire desktop environment.
why do people keep saying this? what is google doing that makes it seem like they're trying to be netscape reborn? if ad revenue from owning the desktop were so enormous, why isn't micrsoft cashing in on it?
that said, there *is* possibly a good reason for a google browser, which would be related to a recent patent application of theirs for targeted ads appearing in the browser. after all, in terms of business, they're primarily an ad broker, and they are currently just brokering ads for their own content. (search results.) if they own the browser, they could broker ads for other folks content as well, and move into the yahoo space, without having to become a content aggregator.
nevertheless, it still seems like everything that they're doing isn't geared towards taking over the desktop: its about putting content online that they can host or link to.
This strategy may account for some unusual hires by Google including Rob Pike from Bell labs, one of the development team members for an unusual distributed OS called Plan 9, named for the wacky Ed Wood cult film, "Plan 9 from Outer Space."
While Pike may have been brought in to help the company deal with its internal software used to control tens of thousands of clusters, there is speculation that Google wants to push out onto the desktop.
now this is just outlandish.
And what's to stop them at the operating system level?
um, how long did it take to get apple's os x out the door? and they even started from an existing os (bsd unix).
It could probably get an Apple-like premium for such a machine and load it up with proprietary software too.
lol. this thing is sounding like a conversation that dvorak could have had with larry and sergey at burning man ...
Meanwhile, I expect to see the gbrowser before year's end.
i'd take that bet!
Sequoia Does Stealth Distribution of Google Stock
According to Ann Grimes of the WSJ in a storm in Monday's paper, uber-VC firm Sequoia Capital distributed 27% of its Google shares (now worth >$1-billion) to its LPs back in November and December. While the distribution itself is unsurprising, there is a twist: Sequoia, unlike Kleiner Perkins, didn't disclose the information via SEC 13F filings.
So, how did Sequoia get away with stealth stock distribution? Good question:
It is unclear whether Sequoia should have disclosed its distributions. Sequoia partner Michael Moritz is a Google director, and the venture firm could fall under regulations that require directors to disclose changes in their stock holdings. Kleiner partner John Doerr also is a Google director. A Kleiner spokesman declined to comment.
Alan L. Dye, a securities expert and partner with Hogan & Hartson LLP in Washington, said Sequoia may not have had to disclose the distribution because Mr. Moritz didn't have a "pecuniary interest" in the shares or own them personally. In general, Mr. Dye said, venture-capital firms file the disclosure "as often as not."
However, Michael J. Sullivan, an expert in public-company legal matters with Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin in San Francisco, said it is "common practice" for venture capitalists who are directors to file disclosures after a firm makes a distribution of shares to its own investors, known as limited partners.
Actually it was Steve Jobs that started this whole tech thing off in the first place with the original Apple and that brought on IBM and eventually Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
well, to put it in historical perspective, it was actually xerox (parc) that did it all first - from mac-like computers (the altos) to ethernet to e-mail. but jobs was able to see what xerox management couldn't. (although NeXT was a bit of a stumble.)
but there are times when it does help to have someone visonary running a company. and then there are other times ..
did something happen? that's sure an ugly close on the nikkei.
re ntap trendline: hrm? looks to me to be sub-$30 at this time, no?
is anyone here concerned that the trinq and trin are so high today? or is there something i'm missing?
Is there some rule index funds have to invest that cash the next day?
if its an index fund, isn't the dividend paid to fund owners? how could they invest it?
If rates "explode to the upside", FNM's derivatives and capital issues go away....not so sure higher rates are all that bad for FNM.
hrm. unless the economy is very robust, though, doesn't that spell trouble for the mortgage markets overall?
wasn't this one of the points of stephen roach's recent gloom and doom predictions of 90% chance of armageddon? (not from his regular column; from the coverage of the closed-door talks he gave. was that reposted here?)
Why Harvard Is Bad for Wall Street
Obscure Economic Indicators Part 6: Harvard Business School graduates on Wall Street.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Friday, Nov. 19, 2004, at 2:10 PM PT
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty
The bright young things from Harvard Business School are making their way to Wall Street in droves. Some 26 percent of the HBS class of 2004 took stock-market related jobs, up from 23 percent of the class of 2003. I guess that means it's time to sell.
Consultant Ray Soifer (Harvard MBA, 1965) has been tallying the career paths of fellow HBS alumni for several years, and what he has discovered confirms what every Yalie has always suspected: Harvard is bad for America. (The raw data since 1998 can be seen at the HBS Web site. Click here, pick a year in the left window, and then select "by industry" in the right window. Before 1998, the information was published in an alumni magazine.) Soifer has found that the initial career choices of HBS grads amount to a "rather esoteric but nonetheless generally accurate long-term indicator of the US equity market," he notes in his most recent report.
Make that a contra-indicator. The more Harvard grads on Wall Street, the worse the market does. Soifer counts the proportion of the class that goes into the six categories of jobs that "depend to a large extent on the stock market": investment banking, investment management, sales and trading, venture capital, private equity, or leveraged buyouts. Historically, when fewer than 10 percent of HBS grads go into these fields, it's a signal that stocks are a long-term buy. The figure last fell below 10 percent in the early 1980s, just before the great recent bull run began. The worst year was 1937, when only 1 percent of alums went into the securities industry. For long-term investors, the late '30s turned out to be a great time to buy stocks.
Continue Article
The HBS grads are an even better "sell" warning. Soifer has found that when 30 percent or more of HBS alums throng into the industry, it's a sell signal. In 1987, more than three of every 10 HBS grads rushed to join the crowds playing Liar's Poker—just in time for the crash. In 2000, the year of the market meltdown, 30 percent of HBS grads went to Wall Street. In 2001 and 2002, as 32 percent and 36 percent of HBS grads entered the sector, the malaise continued. HBS students finally got wise in early 2003, as only 23 percent went into the industry. Soifer presciently noted that this 2003 drop was an indicator that the market was about to have a good year, which it did.
Soifer is quick to point out that the data are far from perfect, and that nobody should go long or short on the S & P 500 based solely on their release. But while they might not tell us precisely when the market will turn down or shoot up, the results do tell us something interesting about HBS grads. HBS students have always been the envy of other MBA students (for the higher salaries they command) and of other Harvard students (for the more sumptuous gym and cafeteria they enjoy in their exclusive campus on the far side of the Charles River). But the masters of the case study aren't bold risk-takers. Despite their reputation as future business leaders, they are perpetually just a bit behind the curve. Mother Harvard gives them the tools, connections, vocabulary, and polish to climb the corporate ladder. They take high-paying jobs in consulting, Fortune 500 companies, and on Wall Street rather than striking out on their own.
In the 1990s, for example, going into high-tech was a brilliant move. But as late as 1998, only 11 percent of HBS grads went to work in the exploding field. But then 21 percent of the class of 2000 took a job in high-tech—just in time to get popped when the bubble burst.
Why? HBS grads, like most businesspeople, have short-term time horizons. They go where the money is today, not where it might be three or five years down the road.
And like most businesspeople, they respond to the market. Companies and industries feeling flush will likely increase their efforts to recruit HBS grads, who are prestige hires. And as countless case studies have shown, free-spending and complacency are frequently precursors to a fall. Conversely, when industries and companies are down on their luck or out of fashion, they'll have a much tougher time luring HBS grads. Essentially, the system encourages HBS grads to join fields at the top of their cycle and shun those that are poised for a turnaround.
"You would think that, given the finance they are taught, [HBS alumni] would remember to try to buy low and sell high," said Soifer. "But that's not the way the world works."
Daniel Gross (www.danielgross.net) writes Slate's "Moneybox" column. You can e-mail him at moneybox@slate.com.
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty.
and lets not forget ru-486 ... 3 deaths in 360,000. (although maternal death rate is 12 in 100,000 in the u.s.)
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20041117-113118-4593r.htm
ach, the road to washington is paved with good intentions ...
GOP seeks suspension of RU-486
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Republican lawmakers plan to reintroduce a bill to suspend the sale of RU-486, the abortion pill, and probe the process surrounding its approval now that three U.S. deaths have been linked to the drug.
The measure would ban the drug temporarily while the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, conducts a six-month independent review of the approval process the agency used to declare RU-486 "safe and effective" in 2000.
One of the bill's co-sponsors, Sen.-elect and Rep. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, said questions remain about the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval of RU-486, whose generic name is mifepristone, under a protocol reserved for drugs intended to treat life-threatening diseases.
That decision, he said, which came during the Clinton administration, was "thoroughly political, not scientific."
If the FDA is found to have violated its own rules, the abortion drug would be banned indefinitely, said Mr. DeMint. If not, the suspension would be lifted.
The bill was introduced in November 2003 after the death of Holly Patterson, 18, of Livermore, Calif. She died of a bacterial infection seven days after she took RU-486 to end an unplanned pregnancy that began when she was a minor.
The drug stops a fetus from growing and expels it in a manner similar to a miscarriage.
Chief sponsors of the bill, officially known as the RU-486 Suspension and Review Act, also include Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, Maryland Republican, and Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican.
[...]
"Gold nearing a wave 5 top on the longer trend from 01 ... FYI 450 ish"
u don't think the dollar will make it down to 80?
amazing buy program on sbux took it up $2 and then volume drops off a cliff ...
re BRIEFING.COM
Google's Secret
Google's growth came about because they found a way to change the model for advertising on the internet.
actually, it was yahoo that found the model. (or rather, idealab! which gave birth to goto.com, based on the model, which became overture, which was bought by yahoo, whose ip goog licenses.)
google's secret was to provide complete and relevant results. (old yahoo was relevant; alta vista was overly complete.)
In addition, because Google presents search results based upon how many times the particular link has been clicked on by prior users, instead of the more common relevancy algorithms used in other search engines, the advertisements are often more in-line with what the user is actually looking for.
this is just plain false. google ranks sites according to authority (and other ideas): basically how many relevant links point to it. so does everyone else (now). what was novel was a way of computing that (or a rank approximating that) very fast. clicks don't mean anything (because, of course, goog never sees what's been clicked on the info that was returned).
The Google business model was markedly different from the Yahoo! business model, which was built on the concept of the banner ad.
goog is primarily an ad broker (for its own search service, but probably later other things); yahoo is a content aggregator. just very different things.
but it all comes back to the success of the search engine, because goog wouldn't make much if nobody ever clicked through.
Microsoft's Competitive Advantage
simple. its netscape redux.
If Microsoft places a Search Icon directly on the desktop of every PC ...
or, like on firefox, a search bar on the browser ...
they're certainly going to do it. and they're clearly working on the desktop search (considering the companies they've bought for that purpose).
easily redo a search performed earlier
email search results to another user
accumulate a database of your frequent search topics, with the idea of refining over time the type of results that you are looking for
also likely underway, since its been in opera and firefox in one form or another. (i.e. just have a history for various text fields on web pages previously visted.)
By making their search engine and specific search features apply to a local PC or intranet, something that Google and Yahoo! can never do, Microsoft can make their search engine become the first-choice method of search by habit, rather than by marketing.
goog already has a search appliance for intranets. maybe local pc search can be "integrated". (its not part of the operating system, but could probably be packaged with it.) but for intranet, you need to set up some server(s) for it anyway. (something has to crawl the net and make an index somewhere.) even on your pc, you're gonna have gigabytes of index that are updated continuously ...
In addition, it is possible that Microsoft will alter or reinvent the business model of buying a prominent spot in search results, as Google did.
yahoo still owns it.
However, on this idea, we currently do not have a clear vision of how Microsoft might innovate. Perhaps we will find out tomorrow.
until it becomes as popular as goog, the point is moot: nobody's gonna bid on msft's words. they could always pepper the results with banners and other ads, but it looks like they (and everyone else) are bowing to expectations set by goog of no prominent ads (other than text).
on the other hand, msft is actively pursuing relationships with bloggers as a venue for ads, in return for promoting content and sending viewers - the yahoo model.
http://www.micropersuasion.com/2004/11/msn_to_tempt_bl.html
Conclusions - It Is Possible For Microsoft To Compete
There is no shortage of viewpoints that Microsoft is too late to the party to be a meaningful player in the search engine space, much less become its dominant player.
However, Google has already proven that the search engine space is vulnerable to new approaches.
Certainly the entire function of searching the internet is far from what it could - and should - be. How many times have you searched for something, consumed several hours, and not really found what you were looking for?
In addition, Microsoft essentially used similar tactics as those we listed above to unseat Netscape's Navigator browser from its early dominant position. Why not do it again?
The real question is how much Microsoft wants to exploit its operating system monopoly position to make their search engine the first-choice of users.
We think CEO Steve Ballmer will be willing to push his exploitation efforts as far as he can. HE might even be willing to invoke the wrath of the Justice Department all over again. Why not? He basically has won all prior battles related to antitrust issues. Whatever penalties and adjustments Microsoft has had to make have not significantly hurt them in the long run. Mr. Ballmer may in fact view antitrust problems in the same way that many drivers view speeding tickets: just part of the price of doing business.
In any event, tomorrow's unveiling of the new Microsoft search engine is worth watching. It probably marks a brand new era in the history of the internet.
OT
Also nice to see she found religion and wont let her child watch TV because theres too much sex and violence.. Gee- ya think? Wonder how THAT happened? Isnt that like Timothy Leary saying drugs are bad? : )
well she found religion, but that didn't keep her from a lip lock with brittany spears and christina aguillera on the mtv video awards.
not all of us like to watch the same things on tv as madonna's 7-year-old daughter. just like you probably wouldn't expose her to gibson's passion. (or madonna wouldn't.)
re A Clear Mandate (But Will The Foreign Creditors Go Along)
clear mandate? we'll see. pravda had a story today or yesterday about how bush stole the election via fraud ...
here in the u.s., so far, ken olberman is the only one who's given any coherent treatment to the electoral fraud/irregularities charges:
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/36837
there's a link there to a replay of last night's show and, by popular demand, he's continuing with the topic tonight (msnbc countdown). nader has called for a recount in nh because of perceived irregularities and 6 dems in congress have called for the cbo to investigate.
[...]
There [in Florida], 52 counties tallied their votes using paper ballots that were then optically scanned by machines produced by Diebold, Sequoia, or Election Systems and Software. 29 of those Florida counties had large Democratic majorities among registered voters (as high a ratio as Liberty County— Bristol, Florida and environs— where it’s 88 percent Democrats, 8 percent Republicans) but produced landslides for President Bush. On Countdown, we cited the five biggest surprises (Liberty ended Bush: 1,927; Kerry: 1,070), but did not mention the other 24.
[...]
Interestingly, none of the complaining emailers took issue with the remarkable results out of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. In 29 precincts there, the County’s website shows, we had the most unexpected results in years: more votes than voters.
I’ll repeat that: more votes than voters. 93,000 more votes than voters.
Oops.
Talk about successful get-out-the-vote campaigns! What a triumph for democracy in Fairview Park, twelve miles west of downtown Cleveland. Only 13,342 registered voters there, but they cast 18,472 votes.
[...]
demonization of elderly leeches is already afoot, it seems.
this whole analysis is just 100% wrong wrong wrong. zeev's earlier arguments were correct: if the money that had been contributed had been invested, even in something of minimal return, these discrepencies would not exist, and the couple would appear to come out behind. (at least for the social security calculation.)
in that respect, all this shows is that the gov has mismanaged social security and swindled mr. and mrs. median, and hence the taxpayer.
and of course, the taxpayer being swindled is mr. and mrs. median, pre-retirement.
none of this has *anything* to do with why medicare and social security are gonna go broke when boomers retire. heh. if this argument were true, both programs would always have been cash-flow negative, right?
Mr. and Mrs. Median would get a joint Medicare benefit valued at $283,500, the Urban Institute estimates. That's the present value of the benefit — what it's worth today — not the larger amount the government will actually pay over the years. But the couple would have paid only $43,300 in Medicare taxes (valued in 2004 dollars). Taxpayers lose $240,200 on the deal.
if they paid 43,300, then employers matched that, no? (i am not following the details of the calculation, but assuming that the author isn't trying to obfuscate things by including employer contributions in that 43,000 - otherwise, its really not a fair argument). that amount, accumulated over 45 years, with modest interest, make the "loss" much less than is being presented here.
heck, without looking at possible interest, there's no way these numbers are even remotely adjusted for inflation over 45 years. so of course their contributions from 25 years ago look like a pittance.
But the Medians' good fortune doesn't end there. They also qualify for $22,900 in annual Social Security benefits, which rise annually with inflation. Present value of the Social Security benefit: $326,000. Present value of Social Security taxes paid over a lifetime: $198,000. Net loss to taxpayers: $128,000."
yeah, and how much did they pay into that? (12.4% self employed, while medicare above was only 2.9% self employeed).
yeah i saw the slashdot followup. i got the original from metafilter, which is one of my first stops nowadays.
yeah, further investigation shows that goog image search sux. e.g. doing "zell miller convention" brings up only pix from the 2002 nra convention; "cassini" has nothing from the recent flybys of saturn; "mars rover" has none of the mars photos.
alta vista and yahoo are much better.
S.E.C. Is Said to Examine Stock Pricing by Big Brokers
By JENNY ANDERSON
Published: November 8, 2004
Lable price for stocks they were trading for their customers
The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating about a dozen brokerage firms - including Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Ameritrade, Charles Schwab and E*Trade Financial - on suspicion that they failed to secure the best available price for stocks they were trading for their customers, according to people who have been briefed on the inquiry.
At issue is the way the companies executed trades of Nasdaq-listed securities when the markets opened in the morning, a period of intense trading activity resulting from the backlog of orders since the market's close the previous day.
After examining trading data from the last four years, the investigation found evidence that trades were often processed in ways that favored the firms over their clients, these people said.
Securing the best price is one of the industry's critical obligations to investors. If the investigators' suspicions are confirmed, these practices are not likely to add up to significant costs for individual investors - the difference would be pennies a share traded - but in total they could represent substantial amounts of money for the brokers.
More important, the investigation opens another possible conflict of interest involving the big firms on Wall Street. In the last few years, the financial industry has been jolted by a series of scandals over practices that rewarded company insiders at the expense of ordinary investors.
Brokers have a "best execution" obligation, defined by common law, fraud provisions of the securities acts and market rules to get the best possible price for investors.
The investigation - the first to look at this aspect of trading - can be expected to put executives and traders on notice that regulators are monitoring best-execution practices and could reignite the debate over how trades should be carried out.
continued here
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/08/business/08sec.html?ex=1100581200&en=72cef75ecf054a23&ei=5...
"Maybe some reality will start to leak in."
and add to this the funding request for iraq, social security plans and tax reform plans that (harris says) bush wants to move quickly on, and all of those other promises that have to be wrapped up within 18 months before midterm elections start dominating policy and bush becomes a lame duck.
Dollar expected to fall amid China's rumoured selling
By Steve Johnson in London and Andrew Balls in Washington
Published: November 7 2004 19:43 / Last updated: November 7 2004 19:43
Euro and dollarThe dollar could slide still further, in spite of hitting an all-time low against the euro last week in the wake of George W. Bush's re-election, currency traders have said.
ADVERTISEMENT
The dollar sell-off has resumed amid fears among traders that Mr Bush's victory will bring four more years of widening US budget and current account deficits, heightened geopolitical risks and a policy of "benign neglect" of the dollar.
Many currency traders were taken aback on Friday when the greenback fell in spite of bullish data showing the US economy created 337,000 jobs in October.
"If this can't cause the dollar to strengthen you have to tell me what will. This is a big green light to sell the dollar," said David Bloom, currency analyst at HSBC, as the greenback fell to a nine-year low in trade-weighted terms.
The dollar's fall comes as the Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise US interest rates by a quarter point to 2 per cent when it meets on Wednesday and to signal that it will continue with a measured pace of rate increases.
Speculative traders in Chicago last week racked up the highest number of long-euro, short-dollar contracts on record. Options traders have reported brisk business in euro calls - contracts to buy the euro at a pre-determined rate.
However, the market has been rife with rumours that the latest wave of selling has been led by foreign governments seeking to cut their exposure to US assets.
India and Russia have reportedly been selling US assets, as well as petrodollar-rich Middle Eastern investors.
China, which has $515bn of reserves, was also said to be selling dollars and buying Asian currencies in readiness to switch the renminbi's dollar peg to a basket arrangement, something Chinese officials have increasingly hinted at. Any re-allocation could push the dollar sharply lower and Treasury yields markedly higher.
SEC IS SAID TO EXAMINE STOCK PRICING BY BIG BROKERS /// Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating dozen brokerage firms -- including Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Ameritrade, Charles Schwab and E Trade Financial -- on suspicion they failed to secure best available price for stocks for customers... Developing...
censorship - its not just for china anymore ...
interesting: following up on the discussion yesterday on goog. apparently goog images is now censoring photos on anything related to abu ghraib. (but just goog: not yahoo, alta vista, dogpile, etc ...)
from a link from a discussion on metafilter:
---------------------
Wed Oct 06, 2004 1:37 pm Post subject: Google Images Pulls Abu Ghraib Photos Reply with quote
Google Images http://images.google.com/ has recently removed images from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
Google is the gold standard of search engines, and Google Image Search is the gold standard of image search engines. Searches for Abu Ghraib were usually very fruitful, bringing up the same sickening poses over and over. That is until the last week. Searches for Abu Ghraib now bring up only pictures of the prison *from the outside* and a few photos of the region.
Searches for Lynndie England and Charles Graner bring up next to nothing. Actually in the case of Miss England, they bring up literally nothing!
Google Images are collected by a "bot" that crawls throughout the web. This "bot" is essentially a computer program that associates text and images through amazingly complex software. I am fairly certain that images would have to be censored by hand or the "bot" purposefully "told" to ignore such sites. I am currently looking into the technology that makes Google tick, but it is a bit murky.
In any event the images are missing and no one has the slightest idea why.
In case you would like to try for yourself:
http://images.google.com/images?q=lynndie+england&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=abu+ghraib&btnG=Search
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=charles+graner&btnG=Search
More than a little odd considering the fact that all of the above links would provide images of the Abu Ghraib scandal.
Yes, I realize the pictures can be found on Google and many other websites, but that is not my point. The "go to" website for image searches has apparently decided to axe the images. They may claim bandwidth issues, but they sure do have a lot of porn available. We all know how popular porn is. They may claim to have removed pictures for legal issues, but still have an embarrassing amount of illegal content available.
Google has helped governments filter web results, as has Yahoo! Germany and France received help from Google to filter search results. Yahoo! assisted China in preventing the Chinese people from having free access to information.
Filtering technology exists. It is my opinion that this is being used in the USA and I'm damn mad!
Social Security Reform a Boon for Funds?
Sat Nov 6, 2004 08:57 PM ET
By Herbert Lash
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The bonanza many believe President Bush has handed the mutual fund industry with his plans to reform Social Security may be a mirage, industry leaders said on Friday.
How workers will be allowed to invest some of their payroll taxes in the stock market is far from clear, but there is a presumption it will be windfall for an industry that manages the nest eggs of about 95 million Americans.
The administrative costs for managing accounts that for the most part will hold less than $1,000 in the first year suggests mutual fund companies could easily lose money for at least several years, industry experts said.
"It is not clear that if you have private accounts that this will be a bonanza to the mutual fund industry," said Robert Pozens, chairman of MFS Investment Management in Boston. "If certain design decisions are made, it might turn out to be a very difficult place to make a profit."
Pozens also said he believed Congress might try to guarantee returns for investors, which would slap an obligation on the government the accounts are trying to ease.
Because of the small size of most accounts, it will probably take five years to get the system off the ground and be a size that is reasonable for the private sector, he said.
The Investment Company Institute, the main lobby for the mutual fund industry, has said the transition to personal retirement accounts will require government-sponsored funds.
Mario Gabelli, chairman of Gabelli Asset Management Inc., said mutual funds would be the logical depositary of any decision to create personal retirement accounts for workers.
But he said the costs associated with keeping track of the Social Security accounts will be burdensome for many money managers. "You can't make money on it," he said.
The ICI is also concerned that the public will need to be educated on investing if the retirement accounts are to fly.
"We don't think you can be successful without some sort of investor education. Otherwise young investors might put their money in inappropriate investments," said ICI spokesman John Collins.
[continued]
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=G5C03MEEOGHSMCRBAEOCFFA?type=businessNews&st...
"That only becomes a problem if people out live their "wealth"."
i don't see why that's the case. there are lots of folks who are on defined contribution plans and not defined benefits plans: this *is* their retirement savings.
re Nick Bradbury: Ramblings on Google and the Internet OS
well as an avid goog follower, i have to comment.
I have to give credit to Google for using seemingly simple ideas such as the Google Toolbar to achieve their goals (using IE's ActiveX capabilities to take on Microsoft - you've got to love that).
nothing clever about that. microsoft makes the toolbar and makes it accessible to any developer. its not a great idea per se, its necessary for survival. if microsoft's plan for taking on goog is anything like the plan for taking on netscape, this is how they do it: putting internet search on the desktop with a direct link to search.msn.com. folks won't switch back to goog without further motivation, cuz msft is good at commoditizing these services. there's certainly a big threat to goog search from msft search: netscape redux.
Google has already identified email and digital photos as two of the primary uses of desktop computers, and they've responded with Gmail and (to a much lesser degree, so far) Picasa.
they bought picasa for bloggers, not data storage.
interesting question that i don't have the answer to: how many folks really use web-based email services for all their mail. there's the scary thought that the mail doesn't really belong to you anymore, and that the entire history can never be deleted, can be subpeona'd etc.
Then they release the Google Desktop, which further blurs the line between the web and your desktop by enabling you to search your hard drive using the familiar, simple Google interface.
but again, they're doing this because msft is already doing it. (and there are several other products that actually perform better, since they can also deal with outlook mailboxes, etc.)
What will we see next? GMusic? GDocuments? Others have speculated whether a GBrowser is in the works, although that certainly remains to be seen.
this was refuted.
Regardless, Windows is being marginalized piece by piece, and Microsoft can't stop it. The internet is the next OS, and Google is becoming a primary force behind it.
this is just silly. an OS is the software that manages all of the physical resources, excutes programs, etc. the only real rivals there are apple and linux (both unix variants).
[...] and Google is making it happen...
um, linux is making it happen. and firefox is competing on the browser front. but goog is something different.
now from my own point of view: the goog boyz should stop pretending they're a technology company and come to terms with being an ad broker. what they have is everything that's needed to auction and deliver targeted ads to anything, not just web search. they have everyone's web pages indexed; they have the ads targeted to content; they just need to identify the content in the pages and supply appropriate ads.
like yahoo, without having to become a content aggregator.
the moves against msft, though, look purely defensive wrt a nescape-like attack from them. (however, they could tolerate that if they aren't dependent on search as the only place for targetting ads).
they also seem to be working alot on the web-services side of things (at least, based on who they're hiring). but http://labs.google.com is pretty yawn inducing. although not as bad as http://research.yahoo.com .
"The time for unlimited medicare coverage may need to come to an end."
well, that's a solution, but a politically untenable one. i suspect we'd have canadian healthcare before that happens.
i suspect that the details haven't been discussed because there isn't really a concrete plan out there. although one thing that was clarified in reading an article about this is that "younger workers" means under 55.
speculating with a friend, we came to this conclusion: it probably saves money because, in the end, you end up trading a fixed chunk of money (which you invest) for a percentage of what you'd get monthly when you retire. and with people now living longer, survivor benefits, etc. the first is a whole lot less than the second. hence the short term "hole" while those 55+ continue to collect.
dunno. in those terms, it doesn't sound like a good deal. as a "safety net", i mean. if you're gonna give me something to invest, give it to me outright so it can put it in gold, say.
but i suspect the motives are different. (apparently all three plans that the previous bipartisan commission came up with involved these accounts.) my guess is that they're really there to address what happens when boomers (1) stop contributing to their iras and 401k's after retirement and (2) start withdrawing. (similarly, big pension funds like calpers.) less about "wealth creation" and more about "preventing an implosion".
"It = Wealth creation..."
yes, and the flip side is wealth destruction. as in, say, goog or rimm over the last 3 days.
it all just feels like one more layer to a pyramid scheme: you've already gotten all the middle class invested through ira's and 401k's; now its time to grab the working poor as well.
but how does this fix the ss system in any way? sure, those folks will presumably be getting 1/3 less out of social security ... in 45 years. but how is this proposal saying anything about fixing the problem of those who have already paid in and want to collect sooner? on the face of it, it seems like it just drains $$ from what goes in now, which is what is supposed to support retirees.
the only clue i get to this is from bush's own words: "younger workers" can do this, while those who have retired or will retire soon won't see any cuts. but something has to be done about those in the middle - say 40+. those that aarp likely won't argue for.
anyway, sounds like a big old ponzi scheme to me. i can't get over this: the gov wants to take $$ out of my paycheck and play the market for me. if its an ownership society, heck, give me the money and i'll do it.
the cynical side of my mind (mmm ... i think recently that cynicism has probably invaded both sides) thinks that all those months mlsoft thought he saw greenspan buying stocks has something to do with it. now they're gonna take little deductions from the working class to buy 'em back.
"...where will the Govt come up with the Trillion dollar HOLE that will create in the cash-flow to pay current recipients and also the first wave of Boomers soon to retire?"
well they are talking about that - thats the $1-2T hole, i guess, that they always mention, for the next 10 years. i just don't see why this helps *after* that 10 years ... i suspect the math must change, meaning that "younger" workers now, who'll retire in 10 years, will start getting reduced payments, under the assumption that they've had 10 years putting 1/3 in private accounts and they've been getting 7% returns on those ...
otherwise, i don't see how this fix is a fix: it just creates a permanent hole, even if future payments were reduced by 1/3. it would have to be significantly more than that
"Think about it, a couple billion in steady "SS injections" would add trillions in market cap to the markets..."
i think about it. so its like he's telling me that he wants to take my ss contributions and have the gov play the market for me.
heck, if i'm gonna be exposed to that risk, why not just cut the ss contribution altogether and let me do what i want with it. i promise i'll open an ira
its not like they're gonna mitigate my risk, after all.
so why exactly does this save anyone money or fix the ss problem? i never got that part of the argument. is it that returns on these accounts are better, so you can project deeper cuts into payments on the remaining 2/3?