Tuesday, September 30. 2008
Ahoy matees! While growing up, there was always this question in the back of my mind of, what will I be when I grow up? We all had to take a course on career preparations in high school wasn't very useful. One of the things that we had to do in that course was fill out an electronic questionnaire, and it would give you a list of careers that you may enjoy doing. Mine came back as systems analyst, which is quite possiblely the most glamourous of all careers. However, recently I discovered that there's a career that I thought had become extinct like the dodo bird, pirate. It turns out that piracy in the high seas is still a very viable career path!
Check out this story entitled, " U.S. Warships Close In On Pirates With Soviet Tanks Off Somalia." It seems like pirates these days are after military hardware instead of ye olde dubloons. Awesome.
U.S. warships closed in on a ship carrying a cargo of battle tanks, seized by pirates off the coast of Somalia, after the captain died of a heart attack. The pirates are demanding a $20 million ransom. Somali pirates seized the Faina, a Belize-flagged vessel with a crew of 17 Ukrainians, three Russians and one Latvian, on Sept. 25, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said. It was carrying at least 30 Soviet-designed T-72 tanks to Kenya.
The Faina's Russian captain, Vladimir Kolobkov, died after the pirates seized the ship, Nikolsky said. He added that there are currently about 50 armed pirates on board, and confirmed there are about 20 crew. [...]
``Two big warships are patrolling around us and several planes flew at low altitude overhead, but they didn't hurt us,'' Omar said. ``In case they try to take any military action, we will fight against them until the last one dies.''
The U.S. has several ships in the area shadowing the Faina, which is anchored off the Somali coast near the port city of Hobyo, near two other pirated ships, Lieutenant Nate Christensen said by telephone from Bahrain.
In a statement yesterday, the U.S. Navy said the destroyer USS Howard was within visual range of the ships. Christensen wouldn't say how many naval ships are now in the vicinity or say if any special forces are on board. French naval commandos two weeks ago freed a French yacht that had been taken by Somali pirates.
Anyways, pretty crazy eh? Looks like there are some a lot of unsafe waters out there which are prone to pirate attacks. Who would have thought? Anyone know where to sign up to join the crew of some mighty pirates? Y'arr.
Wednesday, September 24. 2008
So the McCain campaign has been doing very poorly as the gap between him and Obama has now increased to the double digits now. But this can't be good news. Apparently John McCain was scheduled to appear on Letterman, but canceled about an hour before the show started because he was going back to Washington to help save the economy. Turns out that wasn't entirely true, and it looks like McCain snubbed David Letterman.
David Letterman responds in kind:
I know Letterman and Leno tries to be as apolitical as possible on their shows, but Letterman must have been pretty mad judging by this. P.S. Myron, viewer discretion is advised, it does contain a 2 minute appearance of your good friend, Keith Olbermann.
Tuesday, September 16. 2008
Yesterday was an absolutely historic day in the stock markets as two financial titans fell; Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, and Merill Lynch was sold to Bank of America. Panic ensued, and the Dow dropped 500 points. As a recap, this chain of events started with the subprime mortgage meltdown. Greedy banks were basically giving home loans to a lot of people who simply couldn't afford them. Interest rates moved up, and people couldn't keep up with their mortgage payments anymore, so people defaulted on their loans. You multiple this situation a couple million times, and you have this blackhole in the financial markets where a ton of money has disappeared. Now the government is trying to step in and bail out these banks which are failing, which ultimately means the taxpayers are picking up the tab. It's quite a dire situation since America's debt is already huge, and it's only going to get bigger.
There are two main things that really tick me off about this situation.
- It's insanity to give mortgages to people who can't even afford down payments on houses. The outcome is not unpredictable at all, and there were warning signs as early as last year that the financial markets would be in trouble. A lot of this was avoidable.
- People who are financially prudent are being punished for the mistakes of greedy banks, and people who were financially reckless.
This morning I just discovered that one of my stocks in the solar business dropped about 50% in value because they had a business connection to Lehman Brothers, and because Lehman is going bankrupt, the company is going to be losing money. This was quite an unfortunate revelation, and it shows how there's going to be a lot of indirect ways for people to get financially hurt because the large banks are failing.
This morning, Cramer had some dire warnings of other financial organizations that are on the brink of failing as well, such as AIG and Citigroup.
This evening, it looks like the government is bailing out AIG by giving it an $85 billion loan.
You may be asking, why do banks fail? Well, generally this is how it works. You and I deposit our money into the bank, and we assume that money is going to be safe. The bank makes money by loaning that money out to people. Typically a bank might take all of their money, and loan out somewhere between 80-90% of the money it has. They try to loan out as much money as they can because money sitting in their vaults isn't going to generate as much money. This works well in theory, as long as the people you're careful in who you loan money to. There will always be the possibility of bad loans, where someone can't pay back, but you weigh your risks. The problem arises when you have way too many bad loans, and you've basically lost your money. Now when you and I go to the bank to withdraw cash, the bank says, uhhh..... we don't have your money, we lost it. Epic fail for the bank.
There's an excellent 45 frame comic called " The Subprime Primer," that explains exactly how subprime mortgages got us into the mess. Very entertaining to read, and very informative. (Caution: some foul language).
Tuesday, September 9. 2008
In the opening act of the Georgian-Russia War, I was pondering what some of the options that the West had on the table to respond against Russia. Some of the options on the table were laughable in my opinion. For example, one of the ideas pitched was to throw Russia out of the G8, which is a special club for the 8 richest countries in the world. If you were to go back in time, say during World War 2, and you told Hitler, if you invade this country, we'll kick you out of our club.... that hardly sounds like a serious threat.
Anyway, Wired Magazine has an article entitled, " Sacked Air Force Secretary: We Shoulda Sent Jets, Troops to Fight Russia."
Michael Wynne, recently-fired Air Force Secretary, says we should have gone a big step further in siding with Georgia. As in, a World War III-size step. Military.com published Wynne's editorial yesterday:
We could have flown Global Hawks or U-2s on the Russian-Georgian border to signal our watchfulness to the Russians. We could have escorted these assets with the F-22s, which fly at high enough altitude to operate as a defense of unmanned assets, or can operate to defend key assets in Georgia. If the Russians determined to invade, we could have strengthened air defenses of key Georgian positions, provided fighter re-enforcements, and placed Special Forces or Marines on the ground in the national capital.
Given that throughout the entire Cold War, American and Soviet forces were never in a direct fight against each other, it's pretty insane to put American troops in an active war zone against Russia. I think that would qualify as a World War 3 size move. I'm pretty glad they didn't do this.
I really don't see how they could have justified this. For one, the American public is fairly war weary as it is, and America is already bogged down in two wars. I can't see how they could raise support for such actions. Not only that, but Bush's presidency is on its last legs, and he's a lame duck now; he can't really start a new mess and expect the next guy to clean it up.
Anyway, kind of glad that cooler heads have prevailed.
Wednesday, September 3. 2008
With each passing day, it looks like Russia and the West is starting a new cold war. Putin seems intent on bringing back old soviet power. What better way of doing that than stirring up nationalism, and revising history? I saw this article in the Times entitled, " Stalin's mass murders were 'entirely rational' says new Russian textbook praising tyrant."
Stalin acted ‘entirely rationally’ in executing and imprisoning millions of people in the Gulags, a controversial new Russian teaching manual claims.
Fifty-five years after the Soviet dictator died, the latest guide for teachers to promote patriotism among the Russian young said he did what he did to ensure the country’s modernisation.
The manual, titled A History of Russia, 1900-1945, will form the basis of a new state-approved text book for use in schools next year.
It seems to follow an attempt backed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to re-evaluate Stalin’s record in a more positive light.
Critics have taken exception, however, to numerous excerpts, which they say are essentially attempts to whitewash Stalin’s crimes.
In the West, it has been widely accepted that in the 1920s millions were shot, exiled to Siberia, or died of starvation after their land, homes and meagre possessions, were taken to fulfil Stalin’s vision of massive ‘factory farms.’
In the 1930s millions more whom he considered or suspected a threat to the USSR were executed or exiled to Gulag labour camps in remote areas of Siberia or Central Asia, where many also died of disease, malnutrition and exposure.
Historians believe up to 20 million people perished as a result of his actions - more than the six million killed during Hitler’s genocide of the Jews. [...]
The manual informs teachers that the Great Terror of the 1930s came about because Stalin ‘did not know who would deal the next blow, and for that reason he attacked every known group and movement, as well as those who were not his allies or of his mindset.’
It stresses to teachers that ‘it is important to show that Stalin acted in a concrete historical situation’ and that he acted ‘entirely rationally - as the guardian of a system, as a consistent supporter of reshaping the country into an industrialised state.’
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