Quick! What could the following possibly be in reference to?
So those who say that no deal is better than what is going on here are flat wrong. They really don't know anything about how government works and they've never taken a long trip. Maybe they've just gone next door to see the neighbor and watch television.
If you guessed health care, you lose. It's Tim Wirth, head of the United Nations Foundation, former undersecretary of state for global affairs during the Clinton administration, talking about a possible climate change deal with Grist's Amanda Little.
Wirth is reasonably optimistic that a last minute compromise will be hammered out involving concessions on all sides, focusing on the four main areas of dispute -- emissions reductions, financing provisions for the developing world, monitoring and evaluation, and technology transfer. But it won't be a perfect deal, and it certainly won't satisfy the climate activists currently getting tear-gassed by the Danish police.
Obama campaigned on hope and change, but is governing according to the principle that a few incremental steps of progress are better than flat-lining, (or going full-throttle in reverse.) It's probably the only realistic approach, but it sure explains his sagging poll numbers. Because it's very hard to get excited about crumbs when you've been dreaming about cake.
The market intelligence firm iSuppli is predicting that the LED light industry will shrug off the worldwide semiconductor industry decline, and register double-digit revenue growth in 2009 and a "a near doubling in market revenue by 2013."
iSuppli analyst Jagdish Rebello says the "growth is being driven by the rising penetration of LEDs as the lighting source of choice for a myriad of existing lighting applications, including automotive, traffic and street lighting, the backlighting of small LCD displays and keypads in mobile handsets, personal navigation devices, digital picture frames and cameras. The market also is being aided by the emergence of new applications, such as backlighting of large-sized LCDs in televisions, notebooks and computer monitors and personal illumination."
But what about the sheep?
Or perhaps you missed the emergence of flocks of back-lit LED sheep as the latest killer app for the latest, greatest, lightning technology? Korean technology giant Samsung hooked up with some Wales sheepfarmers and produced some fairly stunning demonstrations of what can be done with a heck of a lot of LED lights and some very enthusiastic Australian shepherd dogs.
If I were a sheep, I'd probably be annoyed beyond exasperation by the human-dog cabal that forced me to play the part of a pixel in a game of Pong spread out across a Welsh hillside, but there's no denying the sheer kookiness of as one commentator described it, "farmyard animals playing giant computer games:
For bonus, here's some light news coverage of the viral sensation:
And just to prove it's not all about the sheep, here's some more mesmerizing LED magic, this time from the Bayer headquarters in Leverkusen, Germany.
The Bayer display incorporated 5.6 million LED lights -- suggesting that the solid growth of the LED industry might be at least partially due to massive public relation stunts.
With Christmas one week away, Barry Ritholtz has gone on the warpath against gift cards at The Big Picture, employing rhetoric remarkably similar to that which he usually employs while lambasting bailout-prone politicians and greedy banksters.
Gift cards blow. The straight dope your nephews and nieces and grand kids are too nice to tell you: They hate getting them.
Why? Because they suck.
Nothing says "I am both thoughtless and inconveniencing" like a gift card. They let the recipient know that you couldn't be bothered actually picking out a present, so here is a cash equivalent -- only so much less convenient than the crisp paper kind of cash. And, you can only spend it in one place.
If you can't get them a gift, says Ritholtz, "just give them the damned cash."
Now, before I launch into a defense of gift cards, let me acknowledge that I am fully aware that they are essentially a scam. The creators of gift cards count on the fact that they will be left in drawers, or lost, or incompletely cashed out. What can you buy with that 89 cents remainder left on your card? Nothing good. When you buy a gift card for someone, you are essentially forking over some portion of the purchase price directly to the corporation selling the cards. This is sleazy and underhanded.
However, there are also efficiency gains from properly distributed gift cards. I don't buy into Joel Waldfogel's "Scroogenomics" thesis that decries winter gift-giving for its "billions of dollars in value destruction" as people give each others gifts that they don't want and don't need. But I am all too aware that a 12-year-old boy is a much better judge of what games he wants for his Nintendo DS or Xbox 360 than I am.
So why not just give the boy cash? Surely cash would allow an even more efficient allocation of resources? But cash is inferior, I think, because cash, like it or not, carries with it some assumption of responsibility. You don't want to waste your cash frivolously, or you might feel compelled to save it for some greater goal. You might end up, horror of horrors, being forced to use it to buy some other kid a birthday present! But a gift-card to, say, GameStop, is a ticket to freedom. Go be frivolous! Buy a game! Buy whatever game you want! It's better than money because it comes with an explicit, unignorable directive to use it in a way that gives you pleasure.
If you gave me cash for Christmas, I'd probably save it to pay for groceries. But if you gave me a gift card redeemable at my local bike shop -- I'd be utterly delighted to splurge on new gloves.
The same goes for an iTunes gift card, or a bookstore gift card. Sure, the gift-card issuer is taking its slice off the top, but the combination of a more efficient process of gift-giving along with the direct mandate against fiscal prudence means there is real value in the present.
Maybe I'm biased because my own 12-year-old son has made it clear that he considers gift cards to game stores or bookstores acceptable and desirable. Which is not to say that he would be pleased if that's all that was under the tree on Christmas morning. That would be upsetting and disappointing. He also wants to be surprised, and enjoys having some proof that people understand him and what he wants and can demonstrate that by giving him a cool gift. I certainly would rather pull off such a magic trick than just give him a gift card. But let's not to be so quick to condemn -- and instead appreciate that almost everything has its evolutionarily useful niche, if correctly deployed.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Copenhagen and promptly announced that the U.S. supported the creation of a $100 billion annual fund to help poor countries adapt to climate change. The money would be raised together with other major economies from both public and private sources.
As the Secretary noted, "$100 billion is a lot," and the number matches up with what poor countries have loudly been demanding. But while the last few remaining optimists that anything substantive might be achieved at Copenhagen are calling the news a "bombshell" that could unlock the current stalemate, there appear to be at least two major obstacles to any such progress: China, and the U.S. Congress.
Clinton declared that the fund would be contingent, reported the Washington Post, "on whether the nations gathered here could reach a substantive pact that includes 'transparency' on tracking emissions cuts." But that's precisely what China has steadfastly refused to do all along. It's no wonder that press coverage of the climate talks has become steadily more negative, day by day.
Furthermore, with deficit hawks occupying more and more of the rhetorical high ground in Washington, and President Obama's ability to push his agenda apparently weakening by the day, it is difficult to see where any significant sums of money are going to come from.
Which brings to us the best line delivered so far in Copenhagen, concerning the U.S.'s commitment to meaningful action.
Ladies and gentlemen, introducing standup comedian Hugo Chavez! (From Politico's Glenn Thrush):
"If the climate was a bank they would already have saved it."
At Bloomberg, columnist Joe Mysak has written a quite enlightening article detailing how Pennsylvania municipalities and school districts got themselves into big financial trouble getting played for suckers by bankers selling "synthetic fixed-interest rate" swaps.
It's a complex subject that Mysak explains well, and if you're interested in unraveling the mysteries of interest rate swaps, I'd recommend that you read his full column, instead of my attempting to summarize it into unintelligibility. But the basic gist is simple: The municipalities and school districts were trying to be too clever by half, hoping to save money through financial sleights of hand that ended up costing them far more than if they just issued traditional fixed-rate bonds.
Mysak's column is based on a 78-page report by Pennsylvania's Auditor General, Jack Wagner.
The Pennsylvania Auditor General, Jack Wagner, is no fan of swaps. His report concluded that they are "highly risky and impenetrably complex transactions that, quite simply, amount to gambling with public money." He asked the state to forbid their use, recommended municipalities avoid them "from this day forward," and advised those who did use them to terminate the things immediately.
Just so nobody would misunderstand, Wagner asked the General Assembly to prohibit the state’s municipalities from using swaps "or any of the specific devices and techniques encompassed therein currently in existence or yet to be invented in connection with the issuance of public debt."
Yet to be invented! Take that, financial innovation!
Best line from Mysak, in reference to the fact that the municipalities were ill prepared to deal with the consequences of their financial bets gone wrong:
As the Pennsylvania auditor general pointed out, municipalities rarely budget for financial-instrument catastrophe.
But who does?
John McCain seems to be feeling a bit of buyer's remorse. In 1999, he voted for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that repealed Glass-Steagall -- the 1933 law separating commercial and investment banking activities. His campaign chairman in 2000 was one of the bill's biggest proponents -- the arch-deregulator Phil Gramm. But now McCain wants a do-over. On Wednesday morning, he joined up with Washington Democrat, Sen. Maria Cantwell, to introduce a bill aimed at bringing Glass-Steagall back from the dead.
"I am pleased to be working with Senator Cantwell on this important issue. My reasons for joining this effort are simple -- I want to ensure that we never stick the American taxpayer with another $700 billion -- or even larger -- tab to bailout the financial industry," said Senator John McCain. "If big Wall Street institutions want to take part in risky transactions -- fine. But we should not allow them to do so with federally insured deposits. It is time to put a stop to the taxpayer financed excesses of Wall Street," McCain continued. "No single financial institution should be so big that its failure would bring ruin to our economy and destroy millions of American jobs. This country would be better served if we limit the activities of these financial institutions."
Suddenly, Glass-Steagall seems to have been a good idea after all!
Beginning in 1933, Glass-Steagall established a wall between commercial and investment banking to protect depositor money from being put at risk by Wall Street speculation. For nearly 60 years, this firewall maintained the integrity of the banking system; prevented self-dealing and other financial abuses; and limited stock market speculation. But since its repeal, banks have blended banking and brokerage, using loopholes in the Act and other statutes to market financial products like stocks, mutual funds and underwriting stocks to their consumers at the same time. When these megabanks default under the current system, taxpayers pay for the losses twice over.
Does Cantwell-McCain have a snowball's chance in hell? Both Republicans and Democrats claim to be opposed to "too big to fail" -- here would be one clear way to cut the biggest banks down a notch or two. JPMorgan, for example, would have to divest itself of Bear Stearns. Bank of America would have to disgorge Merrill Lynch. Citigroup would shatter.
But considering how little appetite Congress seems to have for much milder regulatory fare, and how hard the banks would fight any such move, I'd be shocked to see Cantwell-McCain gain any real momentum. Not a single Republican in the House voted for regulatory reform last Friday, and Senate Republicans have hardly demonstrated their own zeal for fundamental change on Wall Street. Congratulations to McCain for realizing the error of his ways, but until we hear the likes of Jim DeMint calling for the return of Glass-Steagal, while standing shoulder to shoulder with Bernie Sanders, let's not get too excited.
A conversation about globalization.
“Raising the Floor” Study: U.S. Lags in Workplace Conditions
GMOs - Friend or Foe? (Foodie Tuesday)
E-Books: Satan or Saviour?