Airline Industry Info

Timmy

Profile here.

Facebook Brain Drain

College students who use Facebook spend less time studying and have lower grade point averages than students who have not signed up for the social networking website, according to a pilot study at one university.

More here.

From the 1st Earth Day (1970)

“By 1985...air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight
reaching the earth by one half”

The 1%'s Rage

here.

Do's and Dont's of Facebook

here.

25 Things I didn't want to know about you.

Links

1. Rage of the rich
2. Liar's Poker...no pun...
3. Life after business school
   

Reflexive Rebound

the famed reflexive rebound that occurs between the down-legs of the secular bear market, as so eloquently referenced in Rule #8 of Bob Farrell’s Market Rules to Remember (it goes like this – “Bear markets have three phases: sharp down, reflexive rebound, and a long fundamental drawn-out decline”). By “reflexive rebound” what is meant is a real bear market rally that can last between four to eight months and have the capacity to rebound between 25% and 50%, as opposed to the countless flashy but not particularly tradable rallies that typically last four to eight weeks and post a 10% to 20% bounce.

full post here.

The NBA's LVP

Who is the NBA's least-valuable-player?

Negative Interest Rates

WITH unemployment rising and the financial system in shambles, it’s hard not to feel negative about the economy right now. The answer to our problems, however, could well be more negativity. But I’m not talking about attitude. I‘m talking about numbers.

NY Times article here.

The Most Remote Place on Earth

Link here.

Weekend Links

1. Giant Spider Robot...Yes the Japanese did it again.
2. Parking Tickets
3. Beer Goggles are a myth?
4. Kids smoking Smarties?
5. The Ethanol Bubble
6. Top 10 Disaster Myths
7. Top 10 ways to save the world from financial cataclysms
8. Examining Talent
9. 9 Words derived from science fiction

Russia...Again

A Russian man survived after downing three bottles of vodka and leaping from a fifth floor balcony - twice.

Finally...

For the comfort and well-being of all customers aboard United flights, we have aligned with other major airlines' seating policies relating to passengers who:

• are unable to fit into a single seat in the ticketed cabin;
• are unable to properly buckle the seatbelt using a single seatbelt extender; and/or
• are unable to put the seat's armrests down when seated.

Full details.

Rap Lyrics Translated

Notorious B.I.G. here.

Healthcare

Surgeons in Russia thought they were going to remove a cancerous tumor from a 28-year-old patient – but instead they found a 5-centimeter tree growing inside his lung.

How the Government Spends Your Money

Enlarge Here

From the Depths of the Internet

1. Over 1,500 farmers in an Indian state committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure
2. Poop Powered Busses in Hershey (No Pun)

Dubai is NOT Where it is At.

"Before I came here, I didn't know anything about Dubai law. I assumed if all these big companies come here, it must be pretty like Canada's or any other liberal democracy's," she says. Nobody told her there is no concept of bankruptcy. If you get into debt and you can't pay, you go to prison."

Full story here.

"On the night of December 31, 2008 alone more than 80 vehicles were found at the airport. "Sixty cars were seized on the first day of this year," director general of Airport Security, Mohammed Bin Thani, told DNA over the phone. On the same day, deputy director of traffic, colonel Saif Mohair Al Mazroui, said they seized 22 cars abandoned at a prohibited area in the airport."

Full story here.

Lehman Does it Again

It's sort of odd that Lehman is "sitting on 500,000 pounds" of yellowcake uranium. Not because it is odd for firms not directly in the business to own an interest in the element. This is quite common actually as uranium futures are actually traded now. What is unusual is that Lehman would seem to have taken physical delivery- a scenario which would imply licensing and a host of regulatory headaches that seem silly when you can trade cash settled futures contracts if you really want to play the metal. In any case, Lehman acquired the stuff "under a matured commodities contract." (Read: The contract expired and they were forced to accept physical delivery). Now they are stuck with a pile of the stuff in Canada- where no one wants it, and in a down market.

Doh.

Story here.

Tax Freedom Day

As of April 13th, the average American has earned enough (including medicare, fica, Social Security, and taxes) to cover their 2009 tax burden. Theoretically, from April 14th and on is when you actually start earning money.

Link.

Facts About Marriage

Take two children, one growing up with married parents in the United States, and one growing up with unmarried parents in Sweden; which child has the higher likelihood of seeing his parents’ relationship break up? Answer: the American kid, because children living with married parents in the United States have a higher probability of experiencing a breakup than do children living with unmarried parents in Sweden. That’s how high our breakup rates are.

Full interview with Book Author here.

Book by Andrew Cherin here.

Spring

Did you know that in 1965 the U.S. Department of Agriculture planted a particular variety of lilac in more than 70 locations around the U.S. Northeast, to detect the onset of spring — in turn to be used to determine the appropriate timing of corn planting and the like? The records the U.S.D.A. have kept show that those same lilacs are blooming as much as two weeks earlier than they did in 1965. April has, in a very real sense, become May.

Book here.

Lobbying

In a remarkable illustration of the power of lobbying in Washington, a study released last week found that a single tax break in 2004 earned companies $220 for every dollar they spent on the issue -- a 22,000 percent rate of return on their investment.

The study by researchers at the University of Kansas underscores the central reason that lobbying has become a $3 billion-a-year industry in Washington: It pays. The $787 billion stimulus act and major spending proposals have ratcheted up the lobbying frenzy further this year, even as President Obama and public-interest groups press for sharper restrictions on the practice.

From Washington Post.

Trivia Question

What and when was the deepest economic collapse in any non-communist, non-wartime, fully industrialized country since the 1930s?

Answer here.

Crime and Illegal Aliens

Reason #1 You Don't Mess With 'Murica

Here.

Top 10 Movies This Summer

Here.

Zappos

Zappos has created a real time map showing what shoe is being bought and where.

Last 6 Books

1. Catcher in the Rye
2. Great Gatsby
3. House of Cards
4. American Psycho
5. The Great Contraction, 1929-1933: Chapter Seven of Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960
6. The Brothers Karamazov
   

A Perishable History

Last week’s post talked about early-20th-century “egg gamblers” who bought eggs cheap in spring in order to sell dear in winter. Their kind of speculation proved not just controversial but also pretty risky, and ultimately doomed. Why?

Egg gamblers won only if they sold off their cold-storage stocks before fresh ones arrived in spring. They faced two major unknowns: housewives who sometimes protested egg “hoarding” with organized boycotts, and hens who might start laying earlier than expected. Because hens are acutely sensitive to shifts in daylight and temperature, all it took was a February thaw to set them off, sending egg prices plummeting.

Poultry farmers, meanwhile, just wanted to know how to get their own flocks to lay more eggs when fresh ones were scarcest and priciest. They knew that some chicken breeds laid a few more winter eggs than others, and that warm housing and a rich diet generally helped. But the most dramatic results came with the flick of a switch — literally. Read more…

The accompanying book.

Oh Those Rapscallions

U Penn, really?

Troubles for the Class of '09

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Where the Buck Stops

The Most Neurotic States

There is much more here on the geographic distribution of other major personality traits. The high conscientious people seem to cluster in the Plains. Openness is strong in the Pacific West, New England, Texas, and Florida. The upper Midwest dominates for extroversion.

Random Links

1. New Yorkers are drinking and urinating in public more...
2. Highest Paid Executives
   

Could Be the Best Board Game Ever

Read more here.

What North Korea Really Looks Like

Two Austrians recently entered the country by train, through a border crossing that has been closed to tourists since 1994, and took these pictures.

Really France?

Almost half of French people believe it is acceptable for workers facing layoffs to lock up their bosses, according to an opinion poll published on Tuesday.

Internet Perusing

That’s according to new research out of the University of Melbourne, which found that Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing (WILB) improves productivity by giving internet-centric workers a chance to refocus their minds between tasks. The increase is startling; workers who spend as much as 20 percent of their office time leisure browsing actually get more work done than workers who don’t.

Prehistoric Debate

Notice the Arrow, bottom right.

1 Trillion Dollars

Read more here.

Sham Pow

Vince Shlomi was arrested in Miami Beach last month after cops say he allegedly hired a hooker, whom he took back to his hotel. According to the arrest affidavit, obtained by The Smoking Gun, Shlomi began kissing the hooker when she allegedly "bit his tongue and would not let go."

Read more here.

Jay Leno

According to the government, GM's Rick Wagoner was forced to resign because of poor performance. That’s embarrassing. You run an organization that loses billions of dollars and then get fired by a guy who heads up an organization that loses trillions of dollars.

US Auto Manufacturers

Liberals and Taxes

Liberals do not consider cheating on taxes to be as morally problematic as conservatives do. This presents an obvious moral quandry [sic] of its own, as, putatively less surprisingly, liberals are more likely than conservatives are to favor greater amounts of taxation and wealth redistribution.

Complete analysis here.

Game Theory in Geithner's Plan

Let's say that I am a bank ("financial institution") with $100 billion in "toxic assets". I have them on my balance sheet at 80 cents on the dollar. The market has them marked at 30 cents. We do not know what the held-to-maturity performance will be, since that requires knowing the future, although for the moment let's assume that they are cash-flowing at the present time.

What I (the bank) do know, however, is that if I sell them at 30 cents I take a monstrous loss - perhaps enough to force me under Tier Capital limits and thus render me subject to an FDIC enforcement action. I therefore will not sell for 30 cents so long as I have any belief whatsoever that the cash flow - or any government subsidy - will exceed that value.

If I, as a "financial institution" can participate as a bidder in these auctions I can foist off my loss onto the taxpayer. Here is how I can rig the game so as to avoid an otherwise-inevitable loss:

• I become a "bidder" and "bid" on my own assets at 75 cents.
• I am providing 5 or 10% of the money. The rest is covered by Treasury, The Fed and the FDIC via guaranteed bond issuance.
• The loan, ex my contribution, is non-recourse. That is, I can lose 5 or 10% of the total portfolio purchased, but nothing more.

Now the "assets" (a passel of CDOs?) turn out to be worthless. I lose 5% of $75 billion, or $3.75 billion that I put up, plus the other nickel on the original mark, but that's all.

The taxpayer gets hosed for the remaining $71.25 billion dollars.

This can and will be done if the "sellers" of these assets are allowed to bid either directly or indirectly as it provides a means for banks to intentionally dump bad assets at a certain loss that is much smaller than their expected realized loss over time, shifting the rest of the loss to the taxpayer.

This program has the potential to shift literally $500 billion or more in losses onto the taxpayer, not through the operation of "bad luck" but rather through what amounts to a bid rigging operation.

Do Men and Women Read Books Differently?

One study says the answer is yes.

A study of reading habits showed almost half of women are 'page turners' who finish a book soon after starting it compared to only 26 per cent of men.

The survey 2,000 adults also found those who take a long time to read books and only managed one or two a year were twice as likely to be male than female.

Men are also more likely to have shelves full of books that have never been opened.

The only similarities between the sexes came among those who have two books on the bedside table at once and who start one book on the middle of reading another, switching easily. Twelve per cent of women were in this category – exactly the same number as men.

How Walkable is Your Address

The White House is 99.
Former Pres. Bush's ranch is a 0.

Find out here.

Outsourced Cheating

The orders keep piling up. A philosophy student needs a paper on Martin Heidegger. A nursing student needs a paper on dying with dignity. An engineering student needs a paper on electric cars.

More here.

Trvial Pursuit

The AIG bonuses now being debated in Congress and everywhere else represent about .001 percent of annual GDP. If a typical Congressman spent that fraction of a 2000 hour work year on the topic, it would consume only about 1 minute of his or her time.

More here.

Grade Inflation

Q: What does a major state university do when test scores on a precalculus math exam for incoming freshmen continue to decline year after year, while at the same time high schoo GPAs of incoming freshmen are going up?

A: If your answer is "make the test easier," go to the head of the class!

Watch a disturbing video on the decline in math skills for college students (click twice on the arrow above), with an explanation for why it has been happening ("reform math"), and some ways to solve the problem (abandon "reform math").

Wall-E

American 15-year-olds rank 24th out of 29 countries in math literacy, and their parents are as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution; roughly 30 to 40 percent believe in each. Their president believes “the jury is still out” on evolution.

More here.

Sarcastic Twist to Default Swaps

This week brought fresh revelations that the Boston Symphony, among many leading organizations, is heavily leveraged in atonal credit swaps, more than the most pessimistic theorists had previously forecast.

Continued here.

Everyone Hates a Public/Private Partnership

The state has decided that all new subdivisions must have through streets linking them with neighboring subdivisions, schools and shopping areas.

Read here.

KYS

Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley suggests AIG executives should take a Japanese approach toward accepting responsibility for the collapse of the insurance giant by resigning or killing themselves.

Read Here.

Mainstream Media

Today, everyone -- including media stars everywhere -- is going to take Stewart's side and all join in the easy mockery of Cramer and CNBC, as though what Stewart is saying is so self-evidently true and what Cramer/CNBC did is so self-evidently wrong. But there's absolutely nothing about Cramer that is unique when it comes to our press corps. The behavior that Jon Stewart so expertly dissected last night is exactly what our press corps in general does -- and, when compelled to do so, they say so and are proud of it.

Kenny Powers

Why Are Diamonds So Expensive

The diamond invention—the creation of the idea that diamonds are rare and valuable, and are essential signs of esteem—is a relatively recent development in the history of the diamond trade.

Circa 1982

Business School

The master’s of business administration, a gateway credential throughout corporate America, is especially coveted on Wall Street; in recent years, top business schools have routinely sent more than 40 percent of their graduates into the world of finance.

But with the economy in disarray and so many financial firms in free fall, analysts, and even educators themselves, are wondering if the way business students are taught may have contributed to the most serious economic crisis in decades.

Everyone Hates Ethanol

Corn ethanol producers -- led by Wesley Clark, the retired general turned chairman of a new biofuels lobbying outfit called Growth Energy -- want the Obama Administration to make their guaranteed market even larger. Recall that the 2007 energy bill requires refiners to mix 36 billion gallons into the gasoline supply by 2022. The quotas, which ratchet up each year, are arbitrary, but evidently no one in Congress wondered what might happen if the economy didn't cooperate...

Americans are unlikely to use enough gas next year to absorb the 13 billion gallons of ethanol that Congress mandated, because current regulations limit the ethanol content in each gallon of gas at 10%. The industry is asking that this cap be lifted to 15% or even 20%. That way, more ethanol can be mixed with less gas, and producers won't end up with a glut that the government does not require anyone to buy.

Daily Show vs. Jim Cramer

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Intro - Brawl Street: Get Ready to Buy Low! And Sell Die

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

15 Strangest College Courses

College is viewed by many people these days as a diploma factory. You show up go to certain classes in a certain order, and eventually receive a diploma. There’s not a lot of love for learning for learning’s sake anymore. But that hasn’t stopped many colleges from offering plenty of quirky unique classes that go over non standard educational topics. A lot of the odd courses we found sound like lots of fun, but with tuition costs skyrocketing is it really worth it to spend thousands of dollars on fun diversions? Read on and decide.

Free Lunch

Reading the Morning News

In the 1930’s, Franklin Roosevelt started his day by reading half a dozen newspapers in bed. Today, you can read the printed front pages of more than a dozen major newspapers from around the world side by side right here on your browser, thanks to a feed from the Newseum.

The Happiest States in the Union

Read the New York Times article here.

What Does $1 Trillion Look Like

1 Million Dollars

1 Trillion Dollars (Notice the same man on the bottom left)

Lincoln vs. Obama

Obama Tax Plan

Mancession Continued

According to Friday's BLS report (Table A-1, Household Data), the U.S. economy has lost 4.464 million jobs since Dec. 2007. Further analysis shows that 72% of the job losses (3.483 million) were jobs held by males, and 22% of the jobs lost (981,000) were jobs held by females (see top chart above). Of the 351,000 decline in February employment (household data), 90% of the job losses were male jobs (315,000), compared to a 37,000 job loss for females (10% of total).

Further, the February unemployment rate for men was 8.8% vs. 7.3% for women, as the 1.5% male-female gap narrowed just slightly from the all-time historical record male-female jobless rate gap of 1.6% in January.

Jetpacks

I came across this lovely article this morning while driving to work (66 was gridlock, so I was not moving).

Nobel Prize Winner Has "Inflation" by the Balls

This is a bull named ‘Inflation’ — named “Inflation” because the beast never stopped growing. There on the left is Nobel Prize winner Friedrich Hayek, who’s got Inflation by the balls. The picture was taken by Australian driller Ron Kitching after Mrs. Kitching objected to the idea of a picture of Hayek on top of Inflation. The picture was taken in 1976.

Interesting Details to the Merck/Schering-Plough Deal.

To all the world, it appears that Merck is buying Schering-Plough. Unless you're a lawyer.

American Demographics

America’s demography tells not one story, but many. People concerned with looking at long-term trends need to familiarize themselves with these realities – and also consider whether these will continue in the coming decades.

Lots of Graphs.

So European

"A former Swiss investment banker admitted in court on Monday that he seduced and blackmailed Germany's wealthiest woman, heiress to the BMW car empire, with secret films of their hotel trysts.

Helg Sgarbi admitted seducing heiress Susanne Klatten and three other wealthy women and persuading them to pay him almost 10 million euros ($12.64 million) with various tales, including one that he had fallen foul of the Italian mafia."

Source: Reuters.

*Update* Pictures.

Big Law Firm's Leverage Problem

Over the last few decades - concurrent with the growth of leverage in the financial system - the business model of most large law firms has developed into one built on leverage as well. It is just a leverage which utilizes people rather than borrowed money. Specifically, since law firms generally bill by the hour (a system whose demise has been predicted for the near future and, in my opinion, always will be), firms increase their profitability by increasing the amount billed in respect of each equity partner. Since there is only so much time in the day, firms have tended to increase the ratio of attorneys per equity partner. Without irony, this ratio is known as..."leverage," and this tendency is how you can read now-horrifying articles like this one, which begins:

Now, in times where there is an easy supply of credit work, this system of leverage works very well for all involved. But when the flow dries up, the firms are left with high fixed costs to be serviced - and the more leveraged the firm is, the harder it is to service those costs with reduced revenue. Sound familiar? It should be no surprise that large law firms have been laying off attorneys in far greater numbers than in previous downturns, with some doomsayers (whom I hope are less accurate than their counterparts with respect to the economy generally) predicting additional firm collapses and permanent changes to the firms' business models. (The one saving grace to the law firm model of leverage is that they can "deleverage" far more easily than banks, as banks can't merely fire their "troubled assets.")

Entire post from The Atlantic can be found here.

Map of Drinking Ages

DC Metro Ad

Economic Value of Popularity

Read the report here.

They find that each extra close friend in high school is associated with earnings that are 2 percent higher later in life after controlling for other factors. While not a huge effect, it does suggest that either that a) the same factors that make you popular in high school help you in a job setting, or b) that high-school friends can do you favors later in life that will earn you higher wages.

Read his caveats as well. I would like to know more about the shape of the distribution. I would think that the most popular people achieve only mediocre results, whereas the very high earners are either loners (but not necessarily "unpopular" in the sense of being disliked) or had above-average popularity but not extreme popularity. Too much popularity too early produces the feeling that other things will come easily, too easily.

Map of Recession

Party

When keeping it real, goes wrong.

From The Internet

1. Why paying for grades is good.
2. Iceland's bankruptcy.
3. Why hasn't NBA free-throw shooting improved.
   

From the Internet

1. America's Worst Intersections
2. February Economic Summary in Graphs

Corporate Taxes

National Debt

The Suspense is Over

The only real detail Obama has given regarding his policies.

Sign of the Times

A man's unfortunate accident.

Women Rescue Iceland

The 2nd paragraph is where it gets interesting.

George Mason Homecoming Queen

Get it Girl/Guy.

Nutrition Update

This is why you're fat.

Market Economy

Perfect example of the substitution effect. Goodbye morning coffee.

Madoff Commentary 2007

Then vs. Now

Flight 1549 Update

BAC employees can keep flight 1549 refunds.

Not until after BAC asked for the refund back.

How The World Almost Came to an End

LiveLeak has caught a scary moment of previously undisclosed insight by Paul Kanjorski where he reveals some facts that have not been captured by the media previously. At 2 minutes and 20 seconds in the video below, Democratic Representative Kanjorski explains how the Federal Reserve told Congress members about a "tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the United States, to the tune of $550 billion dollars." According to Kanjorski, this electronic transfer occurred over the period of an hour or two. And it gets worse. Kanjorski paraphrases the following disclosure by Bernanke and Paulson:

On Thursday (Sept 18), at 11am the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the U.S., to the tune of $550 billion was being drawn out in the matter of an hour or two. The Treasury opened up its window to help and pumped a $105 billion in the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic out there.

If they had not done that, their estimation is that by 2pm that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the U.S., would have collapsed the entire economy of the U.S., and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed. It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it.

We are no better off today than we were 3 months ago because we have a decrease in the equity positions of banks because other assets are going sour by the moment.

Interestingly, Kanjorski, and likely more and more Democrats, are starting to shift to the camp that more time is needed to make a correct decision this time (which may explain Geithner's decision to postpone the "bank-rescue" announcement by one day to Tuesday), instead of rushing into another half-baked plan. Very scary stuff.

A Happy Banking Tale

Interesting piece here by Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein about a relatively small North Carolina bank called Citizens South, which avoided bad loans, has remained profitable, and then applied for and won $20.5 million in TARP bailout funds.

A few weeks ago, while reading a newspaper article, Price came up with an ingenious plan for how to use it.

The article was about the reluctance of people to buy a house in the current market, and what kinds of incentives had been used successfully by builders and bankers to get them to close a deal. Two stood out: lower rates and the waiving of closing costs. And that got Price to thinking: What if Citizens were to use its federal bailout money to offer below-market mortgage rates with no closing costs to consumers who would buy a house, or a house lot, from builders and developers who had borrowed money from Citizens?

Price asked some of his loan officers to check with the builders and developers, who not surprisingly were excited enough about the project to be willing to chip in some money to help cover a portion of the forgone closing costs. So last week, Citizens launched its marketing campaign for the $20.5 million program, in collaboration with its builder-developer customers, offering 30-year loans with an initial teaser rate of 3.5 percent for the first two years, rising to a fixed 5.5 percent rate (the current market rate) for the balance of the loan.

“As we see it, it’s a win-win-win situation all round,” Price explained to me.

Pearlstein is particularly impressed that Price’s total pay package last year was just $456,146, a rounding error for most of the eight banking kings who came to talk to Congress. This leads Pearlstein to deliver a zesty kicker to his column:

So here’s a question the House Financial Services Committee might put to the Titans of Finance: How is it that Kim Price, a community banker with an undergraduate degree from Appalachian State University, a tiny executive staff, and a pay package that you would consider insulting, somehow managed to come up with a more creative use for his government bailout money than any of you?

Michael Lewis Commentary

"...We’ve all been hearing a lot lately about the dangers of testosterone. A preposterous idea is gaining traction: that the problem with Wall Street is that it is run exclusively by men. News flash: Wall Street always has been run exclusively by men. If this crisis is worse than previous ones it may be because, for the first time in financial history, women were let in. Remember Erin Callan, Zoe Cruz, Sallie Krawcheck?"

Source: Bloomberg

Historical Perspective

Irving Fisher: from The Economist

Quote of the Day

How would Adam Smith fix the present mess? Sorry, but it is fixed already. The answer to a decline in the value of speculative assets is to pay less for them. Job done.

~P.J. O'Rourke

Cartoons

Clean Your Computer Screen

Excellent and very efficient way to clean your computer screen.

True Hollywood Stories: The Muppets

Top 20 Muppet Stories.

Louis CK

The Flu Mystery

Why the flu flourishes in the Winter.

In Defense of Wall St.

1. Stop Being So Mean To Bankers.
2. Gretchen Morgenson, Please Step Down From Your High Horse.
   

Madoff Client List

If you invested in Bernie Madoff's funds, you probably already know you've lost pretty much all of your money. However, by the grace of God, the client list for Madoff's has been made public for your viewing pleasure.

Anticipating Future Correlations

Interview with Nobel Prize winner and Economist at NYU Robert Engle.

Stimulus Broken Down

Source: Washington Post

How Much Does it Cost to Apologize for Porn?

Despite NBC banning sexually explicit ad content from the Super Bowl broadcast, Comcast customers in parts of Tuscon were exposed to about 30 seconds of a pornographic film which interrupted Comcast’s Super Bowl coverage on Sunday.

The company is paying each of its affected customer a $10 refund.

This begs the question: How did they decide $10 was the correct amount?

Furthermore, if $10 is Comcast’s estimation of the damage 30 seconds of porn incurred on the average viewer, should it have paid more to families watching the game with small children, or since the porn clip interrupted the game right after Larry Fitzgerald’s last touchdown in the game, Cardinals Fans?

And most important, what about the people who enjoy porn? Should they send back the refund, or perhaps with an extra dollar or two?

Been There

The "Man-Cession"

According to today's BLS Labor Report, the gap between the male jobless rate (8.3%) and female jobless rate (6.7%) widened to 1.6%, which is the largest male-female jobless rate gap in BLS history (back to 1948).

Say Hello to My Little Friend

Record Breaking Mammary Glands.

Google Earth's Impact

In case you were wondering, it was a van that hit the deer.

Cartoons

Too Big to Fail

The Magic of Financial Engineering

From the Depths of the Internet

1. Cattle that are named and treated with a "more personal touch" can increase milk yields by up to 500 pints a year.
2. Extremely interesting look into the American consumer. (If you haven't heard of Mint.com, check it out. A very easy, informative, and secure way to maintain your personal finances.)
3. Top 10 most worthless currencies of all time.
   

The More You Know...

The IRS hold music is main stream classical. I was blessed with pieces from Mozart and Tchaikovsky. It really did help to keep me call for the upcoming battle for information with an IRS representative.

*Update*: Virginia Tax Office had the instrumental Pretty Ricky beat, Yes Sirrr.

Virginia Tax > IRS

Whammy

It puts the lotion in the basket.

Unfounded Rumor

BofA is [supposedly] asking the 22 BofA employees that were traveling on biz down to Charlotte when their US Air flight went down into the Hudson River to repay the ticket price that US Air is refunding to them.

So, go down in a plane on biz and you owe your firm the $450 ticket refund check. Nice to know.

Winter Bites Mayor Bloomberg

A Staten Island groundhog "inexplicably" started noshin' on Mayor Bloomberg.

And You Thought Your 401k Was Losing Value

Can I reverse this process with my bank account's zeros?

Capital One: What's In Your Wallet

Customized credit cards, not exactly true.

Cruel & Unusual

Defining Cruel & Unusual When Offender is 13

According to court papers and a report from the Equal Justice Initiative, which now represents Mr. Sullivan, there are only eight people in the world who are serving sentences of life without parole for crimes they committed when they were 13. All are in the United States.

And there are only two people in that group whose crimes did not involve a killing. Both are in Flo-rida.

Menstrual Site for Men

That’s how PMSBuddy.com pitches itself. To wit:

PMSBuddy.com is a free service created with a single goal in mind: to keep you aware of when your wife, girlfriend, mother, sister, daughter, or any other women in your life are closing in on “that time of the month” - when things can get intense for what may seem to be no reason at all.

Note that they are smart enough to not include “employees” in the list of women to keep an eye on.

The Eureka Hunt

Why do good ideas come to us when they do?
The New Yorker: July 28, 2008

"...The resulting studies, published in 2004 and 2006, found that people who solved puzzles with insight activated a specific subset of cortical areas. Although the answer seemed to appear out of nowhere, the mind was carefully preparing itself for the breakthrough. The suddenness of the insight is preceded by a burst of brain activity. A small fold of tissue on the surface of the right hemisphere, the anterior superior temporal gyrus (aSTG), becomes unusually active in the second before the insight. Once the brain is sufficiently focused on the problem, the cortex needs to relax, to seek out the more remote association in the right hemisphere that will provide the insight. As Kounios sees it, the insight process is an act of cognitive deliberation transformed by accidental, serendipitous connections..."

Mortgage Meltdown V2

Negative Equity Properties & the Risk of Foreclosure:

Will Borrowers Walk Away or Wait for Appreciation to Return?

• In Massachusetts only 6% did so in a 1992-2007 study
• But the situation is far worse today with 18% of all loans having negative equity and another 23% are nearly so
• LTV (loan to value) averages 66% nationally with 10 states at 75% plus
  
• Nevada and Michigan, negative equity borrowers exceed 80%

Coming Wave of Option ARMs (adjustable rate mortgages):

From 2009-2011, an estimated $1.88b in option ARMs will recast

Breakdown

• $80mm in Q4 2008
• $575mm total for 2008
• $804mm total for 2009

Specific Cases:

Countrywide

• 72% of borrowers were making lest than full interest payments
• 83% received loans with little or no documentation

Wachovia

• 45% of $122b in their loan portfolio consist of option ARM loans

Mortgage Payments Will Rise by 50% in 2010 and Double by 2011: