Author: Serkadis

This post is part of the IT Innovation series, sponsored by Sun & Intel. Read more at ITInnovation.com.
Of course, the content of this post consists entirely of the thoughts and opinions of the author.

As many of our readers already know, we’ve been producing several topical conversations on a variety of subjects via the Insight Community, and we’d like to introduce our newly sponsored site, IT Innovation, brought to you by Sun Microsystems and Intel. (You may have missed the subtle new ‘IT Innovation’ link added to the top of our page.) First and foremost, the goal of this effort for us here at Techdirt is to create interesting and useful content for our readers in the realm of server hardware and datacenter management.

We’ll be covering trends in datacenters and skills for IT managers — and asking the Insight Community for its input on generating relevant insights for future conversations. And as with any natural conversation, we’re not 100% sure where the topics will lead because the ideas will develop and evolve as we discuss them. But we’ll start with current trends, as well as far off predictions, advice and tips for IT managers, business tools, and try to delve deeper into the subjects that resonate with the community participants. If you’re already a member of the Insight Community, you can contribute your thoughts on the datacenter upgrade process. If you’re not already a member, you can join now.

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Filed under: SUV, Government/Legal, Safety, Ford

According to The Detroit News, the Supreme Court has let stand a ruling that Ford Motor Company is at fault for a 2002 rollover crash involving a 1997 Ford Explorer and the Dearborn, MI-based automaker must pay $55 million in punitive damages. Benetta Buell-Wilson’s Explorer rolled over four-and-a-half times after she swerved to avoid debris. When the roof collapsed on her neck, it severed her spinal cord and left her paralyzed.

Ford unsuccessfully argued that it shouldn’t be punished due to the fact that the Explorer complied with federal safety standards when it was built. Buell-Wilson was originally awarded $369 million in damages, but a pair of California courts cut down the total value of damages to $82.6 million.

[Source: The Detroit News]

REPORT: Ford loses appeal in rollover case, must pay $55M originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dennis Gartman surely talks a good game and makes great T.V.

Yet his trading newsletter has always been pretty vague, and his trading record uncertain as a result.

Not anymore.

The Globe and Mail tears into Gartman’s horrible performance year to date, as measured by abysmal performance of his exchange-traded fund ‘Horizons AlphaPro Gartman ETF’.

Vox: The fund launch was well-timed, coming as it did just as stocks were about to start one of the greatest runs of all time. Mr. Gartman’s investors, though, are down. The units, sold to investors for $10 a few months ago, closed at $9.12 on Friday, giving the ETF a market cap of about $52.5-million.

Now, we have to be fair: For starters, about 50 cents of the purchase price was eaten up in underwriting fees. We can’t blame Mr. Gartman for that.

And the net asset value of the fund is, as of the most recent calculation, $9.35. So while investors are down about 9 per cent, Mr. Gartman’s picks have only cost them 3 per cent.

But the market is up 30 per cent since the fund launched. What’s up with that? Mr. Gartman didn’t get back to me, but the people at Horizons AlphaPro tell me the fund is intended to be market neutral, meaning it won’t move with the market. Why? Because it’s long and short, and supposedly constructed in such a way that the market’s performance has no net effect on the returns. The only thing that does have an effect, in theory, is the manager’s skill. It may be early days, but Mr. Gartman’s performance has been found wanting.

He’s expected to return between 6 and 12 per cent regardless of the market. Eight months in, he’s nowhere near that. And by the way, I don’t see any mention of market neutral in the prospectus, and I don’t recall Mr. Gartman being a market-neutral enthusiast, although he hedges many of his trades.

Read the whole Gartman take-down here.

(Via The Big Picture)

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See Also:

• Gartman: Here’s Why Credit Card Delinquencies Fell To 1.1%
• Gartman: Of Course Geithner Deserves Blame For The Bailouts
• Gartman: Want To "Fix" The Trade Deficit? Bring On A Full-Fledged Depression

Today is World Aids day and, as you would expect, many web companies are showing their support for the cause. Google didn’t go the usual route and sport a doodle to mark the occasion. Instead, it shows a message below the search box with a link to a Google.org page with more information. Twitter went even further by partnering with well-known organization (RED) and turned the site literally red. The organization also set up a Facebook page encouraging users to spread the info amongst their friends.
 
Of the three, Twitter is definitely the most involved dedicating the entire homepage to the campaign. The page has switched from its usual blue hues replacing them with the striking red color associated with the (RED) campaign. It only shows up when you’re not logged into the service but even if you don’t see the design you’re bound to notice the #red hashtag which flooded the service.

The hashtag is now the top trending topic on Twitter and the service is encouraging users to include it in their messages to spread the word. As an interesting touch, the text in the messages which use it will actually turn red, from the usual black, to make them stand out.

(RED) also set up the twitter.com/joinred account to provide more information to interested users and the account is already provin… (read more)

According to the National Retail Federation, retail sales over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend were $41.2 billion, up slightly from a year ago, while about 195 million consumers shopped, up from 172 million last year.

Meanwhile, Coremetrics says the average online shopper spent 35% more on Black Friday vs. a year ago, while robust sales were predicted for Cyber Monday.

Against that backdrop, you might expect Howard Davidowitz of Davidowitz & Associates to backtrack from some of the bearishness he’s professed on Tech Ticker (and elsewhere) in the past year. But you’d be wrong.

“The consumer is in worse shape since I was here last” in August, Davidowitz says, citing the following:

• Unemployment has exploded: “We’ve lost a ton of jobs since I was here last,” Davidowitz says, noting the “real” unemployment rate is 17.5%. “That’s an astounding number.”
• Housing continues to sink: “The consumers’ biggest asset is down trillions” in value while “foreclosures are exploding” and a huge percentage have negative equity — 23% according to CoreLogic.
• Record numbers of consumer bankruptcies: The American consumer has “never been further behind…never defaulted more” on mortgages, student loans, auto loans, and credit card bills, he says.
• Poverty on the Rise: One in eight Americans and one in four children are receiving food stamps, as The NYT reported this weekend.

“A lot of people were out on Black Friday — you’re always going to spend some money because it’s Christmas,” he says. “[But] the consumer continues to get dramatically worse.”

Davidowitz predicts “the noise will be taken out” about “strong” Black Friday sales in the coming weeks and a sobering reality will settle in: “People will look a stores closing and a rash of bankruptcies after Christmas. People will start to look at this and say ‘wow, this is terrible,’” he says.

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See Also:

• Goldmanites Buying Handguns To Protect Against Angry Public (GS)
• Morgan Stanley: Here Comes A Brutal 2010

Filed under: Etc.

When it isn’t unusual to get into five or six different cars a month, you realize you spend a lot of time figuring out how, and how many ways, one can shift the gears in an automatic or double-clutch car. Where is the shifter? How many settings does the shifter have? How do I get into manual shift mode? Once there, how does it work? Are there paddle shifters as well? Do the paddle shifters move with the wheel or not? And so on…

Road & Track surveyed a number of automakers about how they set up their manual shifting modes. Some require you to push the lever forward to upshift, while for others that’s a downshift, and a couple demand you move the lever side-to-side. The 13 makers examined all have their reasons, the loose consensus being that the forward-for-downshift bunch is modeled after driving dynamics, the forward-for-upshift bunch based on intuitiveness and customer feedback.

At least two makers have two cars that use different shifting methods. And if not for Subaru, Audi, and Porsche there’d be a nice way to classify the forward-for-upshift crowd as being for buyers who aren’t into sporting driving. As far as we’re concerned, forward should be for downshifts, and single-function paddles should be mounted on the wheel, not the column. But you can tell us what you think in the comments.

[Source: Road & Track]

Push Me, Pull You: R&T investigates the comings and goings of gear changes originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The October delinquent loan balance of $32.55 billion is a 504% increase from the $5.39 in October 2008. Additionally, RealPoint presents a scenario in which the delinquencies in June 2010 would hit $65 billion (8.3% total delinquency rate): a doubling from the most recent level and unprecedented pain for any form of CRE exposure.

In October 2009, the delinquent unpaid balance for CMBS increased slightly to $32.55 billion from $31.73 billion a month prior. Such delinquent unpaid balance is up an astounding 504% from one-year ago (when only $5.39 billion of delinquent balance was reported for October 2008), and is now over 14 times the low point of $2.21 billion in March 2007. An increase in four of five delinquent loan categories was noted in September, with a decline experienced in the 60-day bucket. Despite such decline, the distressed 90+-day, Foreclosure and REO categories grew in aggregate for the 23rd straight month – up by $2.36 billion (12%) from the previous month and over $18.77 billion (572%) in the past year (up from only $3.283 billion in October 2008).

Read the whole post at Zero Hedge >>

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See Also:

• Albany Woman Closes Down Successful Cafe To Pursue Opportunities In Distressed Commercial Real Estate
• With Cheap Rents And Vacancies, Manhattan Is About To Be Overrun With 7-Elevens
• Relentless Worsening In Commercial Real Estate Delinquencies

The Verizon Samsung Omnia 2 is expected to show up in stores on the 2nd of December, which we will remind our readers is simply tomorrow.  The feature-packed smartphone seems to have a look distinctive from its overseas counterpart, appearing rounder and dare I say, a but more manly.

The device will cost $199.99 after a $100 rebate with a 2-year contract.

See more at PhoneArena, who are promising a full review soon, here.

After 17 years of inaction, North Korea has suddenly removed two zeroes from its currency value due to rampant inflation.

Korea Times: A North Korean foreign trading official based in China reportedly said the reclusive state set the exchange rate as 100 to 1 and accordingly, the old denomination of 1,000 won is replaced by the new 10 won.

According to North Korea’s fixed exchange rate before the revaluation, a U.S. dollar was equivalent to 135 North Korean won.

“Black markets in Pyongyang have turned chaotic as people rushed to convert the local currency into Chinese yuan or the U.S. dollar,” the official was quoted as saying by Yonhap News.

Here’s why, from an older article:

World Focus: The official rate for the North Korean won is 142 per U.S. dollar, but due to severe inflation since the mid-1990’s, the black market rate is over 3000 KPW to $1.

You know something is wrong when North Korean regulaton is forced to face economic reality.

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See Also:

• China Has More Idle Steel Capacity Than Japanese And Korean Production Combined
• Korea’s Surprise GDP Growth Could Slam The Dollar
• How North Korea Captured Current TV’s Reporters

Filed under: Europe, Government/Legal, Lamborghini

The Lamborghini Gallardo LP560-4 Polizia is a very capable police cruiser that just happens to also be an extremely desirable Italian exotic. How many police cruisers can go 200 mph while toting a vital organ in its specially made refrigerated storage? While Lambo and the Italian State Police thought of all kinds of neat amenities to make the LP560-4 the perfect cruiser, they neglected to install an idiot detection device and now they’re paying the ultimate price.

One of two Gallardo LP560-4 Polizias is ready for the scrap heap after a careless Seat Ibiza driver pulled out of a gas station without first looking for $200,000 police car. The undoubtedly surprised driver of the Gallardo swerved to avoid the oblivious one and smashed into a row of parked cars. The wedge-like Gallardo hit the cars so hard that one vehicle actually ended up on top (see above) of the ultimate Pig-mobile, crushing the front end. Luckily, the police officer and his passenger were unhurt in the incident. Ironically, the police issue Gallardo was on its way home from a safe driving seminar when the accident occurred.

What a bummer. The cop driving the car was one of 20 officers specially trained to handle the Gallardo’s awesome V10 power. Now that the world’s neatest police cruiser is scrap-worthy, he’ll likely have to go back to driving a Fiat. Thanks for the tips, everyone!!

[Source: Guardian | Image: YouReporter.IT]

REPORT: Lamborghini Gallardo cop car crashes in Italy thanks to careless driver originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What, you’re worried about the mutant Ukraine black lung epidemic, and the continued tension with Russia? Forget about it. Morgan Stanley recommends you keep buying Ukraine.

——-

We believe that Ukraine external debt is likely to remain volatile in the short term; however, we do not anticipate an extreme credit event in the sovereign sector. Although we cannot rule out further upward pressure on yields and spreads in the coming three months, we still see value on a medium-term basis, particularly at the long end of the curve.

Strategy implications

• Short-end attractive on a medium-term basis. The short-end of the curve (i.e. 1-2Y sector of bonds and CDS, around 17% yield and 2,100bp CDS spread respectively) seems to overestimate the effective probability of default, and looks attractive, in our view. Diminished liquidity towards year-end and uncertainty related to next year’s presidential elections could keep this sector under pressure, however, and we would see further sell-offs as an opportunity to either enter or increase exposure.

• Extend duration from belly for more attractive risk/reward. Investors exposed to the belly of the curve (3-5Y) should extend the duration of their portfolio, as the 3-10Y sector of the curve has disinverted considerably since the peak of the crisis (Chart 1), and longer bonds offer an attractive combination of cash reduction and duration increase. The former feature would protect portfolios from unexpected extreme credit events (very low probability), while investors would benefit from the latter if the market were to recover in the medium term (our baseline scenario). The cheapness of Naftogaz 9.5% 2014 represent an additional weight to this part of the sovereign curve, in our view (more below).

• Bond-CDS basis to narrow. The bond-CDS basis is still trading at notably high levels (i.e., around 350bp at the 5Y sector), as investors have used this asset class to hedge against broader country risk and specific corporate transactions (i.e., Naftogaz restructuring). We expect the bond-CDS basis to converge towards long-term fair levels (about 50bp) in the medium term (Chart 2).

• Favour Naftogaz 2014. Naftogaz 9.5% 2014 (issued during the recent restructuring) has suffered lately and its yield spread over Ukraine 2013 has increased from 175bp to 240bp. Although the market is likely to take some time to digest the USD1.6 billion issue, we consider it attractive at the current spread over the sovereign, particularly considering the potential technical bid once the bond enters the main EM bond indices early next year. In fact, we favour Naftogaz 2014 to the respective sovereign bond. 

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See Also:

• Ukraine Flu Death Toll Hits 400
• Ukraine Black Lung Epidemic Kills 12 In A Single Day
• The Emerging Ukraine-Russia Energy Crisis

We’ve recently seen efforts to ramp up the system of “pre-settlement” letters as a way to “profit” off of file sharing. The scheme works by having a company that either holds the copyrights to certain works or has merely licensed them for this purpose put those files online and then see who is downloading them. That’s the simplest version (though, of questionable legality since if the copyright holder itself is putting the content online, you can raise questions about whether or not the sharing is really unauthorized). Some others in the space don’t actually put their content online themselves, but try to find IP addresses of those who are sharing the content, and then sending those users “pre-settlement” letters, in the hopes that many people just pay up, rather than fighting the letters (or, more likely, ignoring them).

Of course, one of the big problems with such a system is that those sending such letters have very little incentive (if any) to actually verify that unauthorized file sharing has happened. They want to cast as wide a net as possible and send out as many letters as possible to as many people as possible. It’s a pure numbers game. And, for that reason, plenty of false positives are identified. Now, plenty of people reasonably point out that IP addresses are not indicative of individuals, and there are problems with relying solely on IP addresses — but those problems become even bigger when you’re dealing with folks who don’t understand how BitTorrent actually works. That activity leads to claims of copyright infringement by networked laser printers.

Over at Freedom to Tinker, computer science professor Mike Freedman discusses how the popular CoralCDN has been getting hundreds of pre-settlement letters because one of these companies doesn’t seem to do even the slightest verification of whether or not an IP address is actually involved in sharing content, and misinterprets the data it has received (despite the self-supported claim that “The information in this notification is accurate”). Of course, since the “punishment” for such things is slight to non-existent, the company in question (in this case, “Video Protection Alliance”) has no incentive to improve its process. But it presents a real cost to Freedman, who helps run CoralCDN:

Our personal experience with DMCA takedown notices is that network operators are suitably afraid of litigation. Many will pull network access from machines as soon as a complaint is received, without any further verification or demonstrative network logs. In fact, many operators also sought “proof” that we weren’t running BitTorrent or engaging in file sharing before they were willing to restore access. We’ll leave the discussion about how we might prove such a negative to another day, but one can point to the chilling effect that such notices have had, when users are immediately considered guilty and must prove their innocence.

At some point, shouldn’t we start to consider serious sanctions against those issuing not just bogus DMCA takedown notices, but then also using such notices to demand “pre-settlement” payments from individuals who may not realize their legal rights and may just pay up?

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Good Senate Risk Commentary you may have missed –

has Nassim Taleb VaR videos of congress testimony

and Rick Bookstaber’s VaR testimony link << read Rick’s pdf (quick read)

plus this thought from Nick Gogerty – .

.. My own opinion is that the best way to measure financial risk is to assume it is a function of concentration of opinion or belief. The more people, models, institutions etc. all believe the same thing to be true the greater the risk. .

Gogerty concludes –

My own opinion is that the greatest current systemic risks outstanding are:

• The dollar as safe currency, example last years lesson via the flight to quality leads to the maginot line behavior of today as the USD is now the darling of the carry trade.
• Basel II implementations leading to a “unified” framework for global banking risk.

read it all >>  Nick Gogerty’s Designing Better Futures

Canada’s third quarter GDP growth has come in way below expectations, at just a 0.4% annualized rate.

This is far worse than the Bank of Canada prediction for 2% annualized growth.

It’s also well below the U.S.’s 2.8% annualized rate during the same quarter.

What was the largest factor in the weak Canadian GDP number? A massive spike in imports.

The Star: The 0.1 per cent headline growth number – 0.4 per cent at the annualized rate – was driven by domestic demand but was weaker than the 1 per cent most economists predicted, weighed down by a strong Canadian dollar and shriveled by weak exports.

Perhaps a stronger Canadian dollar isn’t always a good thing for Canada, and conversely a weak U.S. dollar isn’t always a bad thing for the U.S..

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See Also:

• David Rosenberg: America’s Screwed, But I’m A Huge Canada Bull
• Canada Offers Cash To Electric Car Buyers
• Canada An Even Bigger Polluter Than We Are

Filed under: Etc., Hirings/Firings/Layoffs, Tata

Three years ago the retirement age for Tata’s holding company was upped to 75. Although Ratan Tata is only 71, there is no obvious successor to take his place at the head of India’s global conglomerate, so the search has begun for the leader of the next act.

Whoever that person is will take the conductor’s baton and guide an orchestra of 98 companies and 357,000 workers. He or she will also need to deal with the twin anchors of Jaguar-Land Rover debt and Corus Steel debt, both of which were brought on by economic freefall after top-of-the-market acquisitions.

At this point it looks like the CEO spot will be taken by someone outside the Tata family for only the second time in the history of the company. And while Ratan Tata has said “It would certainly be easier if [my successor] were an Indian national,” he is open to filling the position with a foreigner. The company has three years to conclude, with Tata expected to step down in 2012.

[Source: Times Online | Photo: INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images]

Global search reportedly on to find successor for Ratan Tata originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 07:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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RBS Research today put out its 2010 Top Themes and Trades report.

Inside, there’s a great writeup about the bank’s outlook on the Federal Reserve, Treasuries, and private credit:

RBS: Most open to challenge is the idea that supply drives bond yields higher next year. The US budget deficit could perhaps hit USD1.6 trillion, in FY 2010, even worse than consensus expectations as tax receipts lag income growth in the early stages of a recovery, spending rises as more of the stimulus package kicks in, and the Fed is done buying (Treasuries at least).

The debt time bomb is indeed ticking and must be defused by fiscal restraint. But for calendar 2010, demand should comfortably keep pace with supply. Sovereign issuance fills the void of low private sector borrowing as private credit demand remains subdued. Foreign central banks have increased their Treasury purchases over the last two years and are important. But the biggest swing factor is likely to be commercial banks, sitting on vast amounts of vault cash and reserves at the Fed, and households where Treasuries are near historic lows in terms of share of household assets.

If private credit demands remain weak in the first half of next year, as we expect, banks will continue to be ‘investors’ rather than lenders. Their preferred habitat is likely to be the belly of the curve, centred on the 5 year zone. The Fed being on hold for much of 2010 is likely to cause a rolling flattening of the curve in which successively longer maturities fall toward the Fed Funds rate. 2s have just completed such a move and 5s are next in line to outperform. Unleveraged investors should overweight 5s and leveraged investors should be long the body of the 2s5s10s butterfly.

(Photo via Flickr user timlewisnm)

TopThemesTrades_Dec09 –

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See Also:

• RBS And HBOS Got Secret £62 Billion Loan From The Bank Of England During The Crisis
• RBS Shares Tank After Regulators Demand More Asset Sales (RBS)
• Protesters Storm Royal Bank Of Scotland (RBS)

Japan never seems to lose faith in easy-money.

Despite the fact that throwing easy money at their economy has failed to revive their economy in a sustainable fashion for two decades, Japan’s central bank today decided in an emergency meeting to open the money spigot wide open.

Sure they are fighting massive deflation, but perhaps they should just let the deflation happen. This kind of thinking would have saved them two decades of stagnation.

WSJ: The Bank of Japan will lend up to 10 trillion yen (about $116 billion) in three-month funds at the 0.1% policy rate, accepting Japanese government bonds, corporate bonds, commercial paper and loans on deeds as collateral.

The new facility should “further enhance easy monetary conditions” and is designed to “encourage a further decline in longer term interest rates,” the BOJ said in a statement. The central bank said it was important to act now to help pull the economy out of deflation, and vowed to cooperate with the government to try to revive the economy.

The BOJ’s board members voted unanimously to leave the unsecured overnight call loan rate at a rock-bottom 0.1%, where it has been since December.

Read more here.

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See Also:

• Japan Preparing To Launch Quantitative Easing; What Are Three Lost Decades Among Hyperdeflationary Friends?
• With Dollar At 14-Year Low Against Yen, Japan Raises Hints Of Dramatic Intervention
• Japan: Deflation Is Roaring Again, A Double-Dip Back On The Table