Author: Serkadis

David Rosenberg evidently agrees with Meredith Whitney that you should be pessimistic about housing.

He takes a look at the recent data in this morning’s Breakfast With Dave note.

The NAHB housing index dropped two points to 15 in March despite government
resources that have been expended to put a floor under the residential real
estate market.  This attests to the view that the problems to the sector are more
secular in nature than they are cyclical.

Of major concern was the slide in the homebuyer traffic index, from 12 to 10 in
March — during the era of the green shoots last spring and summer, this
component surged from 13 to 17.  Only three other times in history has this
measure been this low. 

Prospects for sale activity over the next six months also declined two points to
24 in March and this subindex leads new home sales by six months with a 76%
correlation.  

The S&P 500 homebuilding group has managed to rally 17% so far this year or a
1,400bps outperformance vis-à-vis the overall market.  There is scant a sector
that deserves such status when one takes the fundamental housing backdrop
into consideration.  

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Good News And Bad News Found In February Housing Starts
• Rampant Mortgage Delinquencies Splashing Cold Water On Housing Rescue Efforts
• Meredith Whitney: Housing Will Surely Double Dip, And Banks Will See DRAMATIC Writedowns

North America and Europe have just gotten their cut-up versions (qjnet/playstation-3/yakuza-3-riddled-with-cut-content-missing-more-than-a-dozen-sub-missions.html) of Yakuza 3, while the Japanese are already looking at Yakuza 4. It seems that Sega isn’t letting the franchise take a breather because the next

Filed under: Motorsports, Marketing/Advertising, Subaru, Racing

Of all the fictitious captains of industry and superheroes ever to grace the silver screen, Tony Stark’s got to be one of our favorites. Why? Well aside from flying around the world in his super-suit and kickin’ terrorist butt, he’s also a hardcore car guy. Just look at the Audi R8, Saleen S7 and the poor old Shelby Cobra he nearly ruined in the first episode. Now the sequel is almost upon us, and Tony is taking to the track in a Stark Industries-sponsored single-seater. (See for yourself in the trailer after the jump.) But though the company and its eponymous chief may be fictitious, that won’t stop them from actually sponsoring a real race car of their own.

As you can see from the photo above, Iron Man 2 will be sponsoring Stephan Verdier’s Crawford Performance-prepped Subaru Impreza in this season’s Formula Drift series. That’s nothing new: Movies, superhero movies especially, often sponsor racing teams. (Just check out David Coulthard on the podium in a superman cape or Jarno Trulli riding the bat-pod to see what we mean.) But if you look closer, you’ll see the Stark logo on the quarter-panel. So while we wait to see Stark’s on-screen heroics in the upcoming movie, we can enjoy Verdier’s on-track heroics in Formula D as well. Top Tip, Andy!

[Source: MotorWorldHype]

Continue reading Iron Man Tony Stark to sponsor Formula D car? [w/video]

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BYD Co, a Chinese automaker and battery maker backed by U.S. billionaire icon Warren Buffett, has posted a forecast-beating fourth quarter. The news comes as Beijing’s policy initiatives boosted demand in China, the world’s largest car market.

BYD, which stands for “Build Your Dreams,” earned 1.46 billion yuan ($214 million) in the fourth quarter due to the economies of scale of its fast growing automobile unit. Full-year net profit was 3.79 billion yuan, up from 1.02 billion yuan a year earlier. The company’s battery and electronic business, largely held by BYD Electronic, accounted for about 47 percent of the sales in 2009.

Most analysts say that earnings growth for BYD, which stands for “Build Your Dreams,” would likely slow down in 2010 as car sales in China return to normal growth rates. But BYD is feeling upbeat and has lifted its 2010 car sales forecast by 14 percent to 800,000 vehicles, nearly double of its 440,000 sales last year.

BYD, a front runner among Chinese automakers in fuel-efficient vehicles, earlier this month agreed to team up with Daimler to produce electric-cars for the Chinese market.

The company is lead by Wang Chuanfu, a soft-spoken entrepreneur who in his early days used to dismantle rival’s batteries to understand how they worked.

– By: Kap Shah

Source: Reuters

 

Not a day passes whereby an employee in a mortgage bank doesn’t start a grease fire (which they claim is an accident) in the kitchen. In all seriousness, here’s a worthwhile 45 seconds:

In a story from the New York Post, GMAC has hired Goldman Sachs to start the process of selling Res Cap. Between GMAC being mostly owned by the government ($17 billion for 56%), and Res Cap losing billions of dollars, and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owning a sizeable chunk of ResCap’s debt, it could make for an interesting story. Recently the committee overseeing how money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program is managed issued a report on how the government has handled the GMAC bailout, saying “it is deeply concerned that Treasury has not required GMAC to lay out a clear path to viability or a strategy for repaying investors.”

Speaking of Goldman, they have more problems. Did you know the tax rate it paid on its profits last year was 0.6 percent? The CEO of Goldman Sachs was furious when he heard this. He said, “What? When did we start paying taxes? This is ridiculous.”

I noted yesterday that the USDA’s Rural Development loan program is scheduled to lose its funding next month, as it seems to do every year. A few savvy readers wrote to suggest that this time around, things are a little different. On the micro-sense, the USDA’s program underwriters always issue a conditional commitment when they do their manual underwrite prior to funding, even when funds ran out. This time, apparently, USDA offices are telling brokers that they will not be issuing conditional commitments until Congress approves funds again.

I notice that gasoline prices are back up, usually attributed to demand by China and India. The price has been drifting around, not attracting too much attention, which is good because historically speaking any sharp spike in the price of oil leads to a sharp drop in consumer confidence. After all, gasoline prices are the most publicly visible prices in the economy – no other prices are displayed in bold, two-foot-tall numbers. But higher gasoline prices may not have the same impact as they did a year or two ago. To a great extent gas prices have already dropped the demand for SUV’s, including the Hummer. This, in turn, impacted jobs, and to some extent housing since fewer people want or have a long commute to an over-priced suburb.

On the Ginnie Mae website is a useful “rent versus buy” calculator:

One curious thing to note about the deficit here in the United States is that as the budget deficit hits records highs, the interest on the public debt is hitting record lows. How is that possible? Just like borrowers who have refinanced their mortgage in the last year, the US Government is refinancing its debt – at very low rates. So although the government budget deficit is climbing (which could actually result in a downgrade by the rating agencies of our country’s credit rating), the interest rate that the US is paying debt holders is low. In fact, and I know that this is a simplistic approach but one that is good if you’re talking to your neighbor while washing cars, but the yield on the 10-yr Treasury note 10 years ago was above 6%. As that debt matures this year, and is replaced by new Treasury notes, the yield is in the high 3’s, saving the government 3%.

Most agents and brokers seem to be “up” on the SAFE Act. Classes continue, as education is critical. Here in California, the California Mortgage Bankers Association is hosting a question and answer webinar on March 30^th starting at 10AM PST, dealing with how the SAFE Act impacts originators and having real-live regulators do the speaking. Visit www.CMBA.com or check out http://www.cmba.com/new/brochures/SAFEActWebinar3-10CMBA.pdf

During a war, it is easy to remember what being a “hawk” or being a “dove” means. As it turns out, employees of the US Government who are involved in setting monetary policy are also classified as hawks and doves. In this instance, a “hawk” is someone who believes that the Fed’s primary duty is to control inflation. Inflation has not been an issue in quite some time, and in fact in our country’s history there have only been a handful of periods of high inflation. “Doves” believe in keeping unemployment low while at the same time raising interest rates quickly to fight inflation. The Fed meets today. No one is expecting them to increase the overnight Fed Funds rate, which has hovered between 0-.25% for many moons.

Of particular note is that yesterday mortgage traders saw light-to-normal volumes, but with only the Fed buying. Money managers, servicers, and Asian investors stayed on the sidelines – and mortgage prices were stable. The FOMC will likely acknowledge that rates will remain low for an extended period but possibly signal that they are ready to act if conditions warrant change. Although economic data has shown the recovery is taking hold, the Fed’s main concern is employment. The news from the economy continues to fluctuate. For example, last week’s Retail Sales was strong but there were three key reports on the labor market recently (Job Openings and Labor Turnover survey, Jobless Claims, and the unemployment data) which were mixed. One was slightly positive, while the other two pointed to continued trouble. In spite of heightened inflation expectations, it appears the FOMC wants a sustainable labor market before moving on rates.

In spite of the news yesterday, the fixed-income markets were pretty quiet. Industrial Production expectedly climbed for the 8^th straight month. The Empire State Manufacturing Survey dropped slightly – but really, is news like that supposed to move rates when entire countries like Greece or Spain are worried about their debt and the impact on global markets? Speaking of which, it was reported by the TIC (Treasury International Capital report) that during the month of January net foreign purchases of US long-term securities was roughly $19 billion. China continued selling U.S. Treasuries, although it remained the largest foreign holder following revisions that showed it never actually lost the top spot to Japan, the Treasury Department said.

Yesterday mortgage prices started off the day by improving about .125, and pretty much stayed there for the rest of the day. Today, of course, the Fed will announce the results of their two-day meeting. Most expect the Fed to note the approaching end of the MBS Purchase Program and reiterate that it will continue to evaluate its purchases of securities in light of the evolving economic outlook. One interesting thing to note is that long-term mortgage investors are beginning to receive cash from the Freddie & Fannie buydowns. The money is somewhat expected, given the performance of certain pools. Some of it is going back to work in buying mortgages on a forward basis, but for other investors they are sitting on the cash – concerned about the end of the purchase program and more desirous of shorter term instruments and cash flow.

This morning we’ve seen some import and export prices levels, along with Housing Starts and Building Permits. Import prices were -.3%, with a year-over-year change of +11.2%, and export prices were -.5%. Housing Starts were about as expected, down 5.9% from upwardly revised number, and Housing Permits were down 1.6% (versus January’s 4.7%) to an annual rate of 612,000 down from 622,000. There was little impact on rates, and the 10-yr seems comfortable around 3.70%, and mortgage prices are worse by a shade.

The minister was preoccupied with thoughts of how he was going to ask the congregation to come up with more money than they were expecting for repairs to the church building.
Therefore, he was annoyed to find that the regular organist was sick and a substitute had been brought in at the last minute.
The substitute wanted to know what to play.
“Here’s a copy of the service,” he said impatiently. “But, you’ll have to think of something to play after I make the announcement about the finances.”
During the service, the minister paused and said, “Brothers and Sisters, we are in great difficulty; the roof repairs cost twice as much as we expected and we need $4,000 more.
Any of you who can pledge $100 or more, please stand up.”
At that moment, the substitute organist played “The Star Spangled Banner.”
And that is how the substitute became the regular organist!

Rob

(Check out http://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/channels/pipelinepress/default.aspx. For archived commentaries, check www.robchrisman.com )

If you follow Larry Lessig on Twitter, you noticed that all day Monday he was putting messages on Twitter about how “JZ” was sick and was trying to “open source” his diagnosis. This pointed to a blog that only referred to “JZ” as “Z” and had some basic info on the symptoms of “the patient.” There were a series of blog posts, detailing some of the details of the sickness, tests that had been done, and some of the general questions that the doctors were trying to zone in on. It even included a list of possible diagnoses, crossing out the ones that had been ruled out. Relatively quickly, two separate readers came up with an obscure medical journal article from South Korea from 1994 “about heptatic mega-hemagionas and FUOs,” which apparently quite accurately described the situation.

It didn’t take long for people to realize that the JZ was Harvard professor Jonathan Zittrain, and once revealed, he put up a blog post of his own clarifying the situation, noting that they no longer needed help with the diagnosis, and everything sounds fine (what they diagnosed sounds treatable). He especially wanted to downplay the situation, and not create too much concern for his well-being or the need for any immediate help. The original blog where the details were being shared was taken down, and it now just points to Zittrain’s own explanation.

It’s great to hear that this worked out, and so rather than worrying about Jonathan, I thought it was interesting to think about this aspect of “open sourcing” a diagnosis. Obviously, when it comes to medical info, there are always serious privacy concerns, but this definitely does seem like a case where when there’s confusion, more eyes and more brains can help. I’m reminded of the silly complaint often lodged against Wikipedia, that people wouldn’t want brain surgery done by “a crowd,” but by an expert. But, as has been noted over and over again, that presumes the crowd includes no experts, and that the real experts won’t quickly establish themselves as such. On top of that, it ignores that once you have many different people — some experts, some not — you may get obscure or different perspectives that help lead to the important nugget of info you were seeking out, such as a medical journal article from Korea in 1994.

All this has me wondering if there’s an opportunity out there for the medical profession to make more use of something like this, with patient consent, obviously. I know doctors converse informally all the time, but opening up some aspects of the diagnosis could be interesting. Of course, I also don’t know how often situations like this occur, where the diagnosis is obscure enought that additional help might be useful, but it seems like an area that has possibilities.

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We knew that al Qaeda was coaching disciples to claim degradation and abuse at the hands of Coalition troops should they be captured, but could we fathom this suggestion coming from American lawyers?

“…On the evening of Jan. 26, 2006, military guards at Guantanamo Bay made an alarming discovery during a routine cell check. Lying on the bed of a Saudi detainee was an 18-page color brochure. The cover consisted of the now famous photograph of newly-arrived detainees dressed in orange jumpsuits—masked, bound and kneeling on the ground at Camp X-Ray—just four months after 9/11. Written entirely in Arabic, it also included pictures of what appeared to be detainee operations in Iraq. Major General Jay W. Hood, then the commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo, concurred with the guards that this represented a serious breach of security.

Maj. Gen. Hood asked his Islamic cultural adviser to translate. The cover read: “Cruel. Inhuman. Degrades Us All: Stop Torture and Ill-Treatment in the ‘War on Terror.’” It was published by Amnesty International in the United Kingdom and portrayed America and its allies as waging a campaign of torture against Muslims around the globe.

“One thread that runs through many of the testimonies from prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq, and from Guantanamo,” the brochure read, “is that of anti-Arab, anti-Islamic, and other racist abuse.”

The message to the detainees was clear: If you want to claim you are being tortured, here is a vast menu of examples from which to choose…” (Read the entire story)

It seems I spend my life lamenting over the fact that some story or another isn’t being covered by the MSM or that the public in general is unaware or inappropriately blase about something that should be inciting outrage…

The entire GITMO situation is one of those things. It was bad enough when we learned that admittedly NINE people in the Obama administration’s Justice Department opted to defend terrorists at one point in the not so distant past…but now we learn that lawyers are unlawfully passing propaganda to men that were caught amidst trying to kill American troops?!

I realize ‘treason’ would be too much to ask for…but something? Some outrage…a debarring perhaps? Better yet, a one way ticket to Yemen.

Earlier this month Ford announced that its base 2011 Mustang, powered by a 305-hp 3.7L V6, is the most fuel-efficient Mustang ever built. Averaging an official EPA-rated 19/31 mpg (city/highway) when mated to a 6-speed automatic transmission, the 2011 Ford Mustang V6 is also the first production car in history to produce more than 300-hp with more than 30 mpg highway.

Today, Ford announced that its 2011 Mustang GT, powered by a new 412-hp 5.0L V8, gets an official EPA rating of 26 mpg highway when equipped with the six-speed manual transmission giving it the best fuel economy in its class.

Click here to get prices on the 2011 Ford Mustang.

“The 2011 Mustang continues to exceed expectations in every category, and these fuel economy numbers are another chapter in an incredible story,” said Derrick Kuzak, Ford’s group vice president, Global Product Development. “To offer this kind of horsepower and class-leading fuel economy in a comfortable, beautiful, tech-savvy and affordable package – it’s really unprecedented.”

When mated to a 6-speed manual transmission, the 2011 Ford Mustang GT averages 17/26 mpg (city/highway) – a 6-speed automatic gets an EPA rated 18/25 mpg.

Official 2011 EPA fuel economy ratings for the Mustang product line are:

2011 Ford Mustang V6:

• 19 mpg city and 31 highway (automatic coupe)
• 19 mpg city and 29 highway (manual coupe)

2011 Ford Mustang GT:

• 18 mpg city and 25 highway (automatic coupe)
• 17 mpg city and 26 highway (manual coupe)

2011 Ford Mustang GT:

– By: Omar Rana

There is an OpEd in yesterday’s Taunton Daily Gazette (which I gather from their advertisers is somewhere in Massachusetts) that left me a tad befuddled… It’s about the ongoing Starbucks-unconcealed weapon controversy.

The writer, Lloyd Garver, seems to have his stereotypes muddled and the result is a disjointed and confusing pontification…

He begins by stating that Starbucks is a “symbol of yuppies and carefree consumerism” and a place where “the smallest cup of coffee is called a “Tall.” Depending on what you order, you can easily spend two or three bucks for a cup.”

But then says that those things make it a “place with the kinds of products mocked by right-wing opponents of vegetarians, elitism and free-range chicken potpies.”

So, “carefree consumerism” is a left-wing trait? Paying $4 a coffee is a hippie prerogative to be mocked by the GOP? I mean, if we’re trading in stereotypes here, I thought the Grand Ol’ Party was comprised of the rich fat cats? Who better to waste precious dollars on fancy grande half-calf mochachinnos than rich, white old men…right?

And are the free-range vegans frequenting Starbucks…or roasting their own organic Guatemalan beans and pouring it into their recycled, reusable travel mugs?

Even from there the article talks about a riff between “traditional NRAers” that believe guns should be concealed and these “gun-toting, Second Amendment-loving customers” that are causing the controversy. So, traditional NRAers aren’t “gun-toting, Second Amendment-loving customers?”

The commentary was all over the place with inconsistent stereotypes. Am I knit-picking here. I really don’t think so… You can read it and decide.

But for the record Mr. Garver, I am a life-long Libertarian leaning Conservative (or maybe Conservative-leaning Libertarian) and not only do I frequent Starbucks for my grande no-fat vanilla lattes whenever possible, I only make Starbucks’ Verona or Italian Roast at home. I buy free range and I recycle (and compost!) AND I don’t, nor would I ever, own a gun.

Total housing starts were at 575 thousand (SAAR) in February, down 5.9% from the revised January rate, and up 20% from the all time record low in April 2009 of 479 thousand (the lowest level since the Census Bureau began tracking housing starts in 1959). Starts had rebounded to 590 thousand in June, and have moved mostly sideways for nine months.

Single-family starts were at 499 thousand (SAAR) in February, down 0.6% from the revised January rate, and 40% above the record low in January and February 2009 (357 thousand). Just like for total starts, single-family starts have been at about this level for nine months.

Here is the Census Bureau report on housing Permits, Starts and Completions.

Housing Starts:

Privately-owned housing starts in February were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 575,000. This is 5.9 percent (±10.0%)* below the revised January estimate of 611,000, but is 0.2 percent (±9.8%)* above the February 2009 rate of 574,000.

Single-family housing starts in February were at a rate of 499,000; this is 0.6 percent (±10.6%)* below the revised January figure of 502,000. The February rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 58,000.

Housing Completions:

Privately-owned housing completions in February were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 700,000. This is 5.4 percent (±20.2%)* above the revised January estimate of 664,000, but is 15.5 percent (±13.6%) below the February 2009 rate of 828,000.

Single-family housing completions in February were at a rate of 458,000; this is 4.3 percent (±13.7%)* above the revised January rate of 439,000. The February rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 236,000.

This level of starts is both good news and bad news. The good news is the excess housing inventory is being absorbed – a necessary step for housing (and the economy) to recover.

The bad news is economic growth will probably be sluggish – and unemployment elevated – until residential investment picks up.

Note: on the February snow storms, starts were up in the West and Midwest, and down in the Northeast and South (includes D.C. and Virginia), so the snow probably did impact starts. Of course some builders started spec homes to beat the tax credit expiration – and that boosted starts temporarily.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Rampant Mortgage Delinquencies Splashing Cold Water On Housing Rescue Efforts
• Meredith Whitney: Housing Will Surely Double Dip, And Banks Will See DRAMATIC Writedowns
• Soaring Stock Market, And Housing Rebound Means The Wealth Effect Is Back!

Faltam poucos dias para o lançamento da nova máquina na Europa e novas imagens do novo Mercedes Classe E Cabriolet são mostradas ao público, confira agora algumas informações adicionais deste carro que promete causar inveja a muita gente:

Segundo a Mercedes, o novo Classe E possui o conhecido sistema AirCap e para maior conforto dos passageiros, desviando o vento pela carroceria, acabando com a turbulência e salvando penteados de muitas pessoas, e o sistema de aquecimento AirScarf que através do desvio de ar frio cria uma “bolha” de ar no interior do carro, e também ajusta o encosto de cabeça do motorista em até 36º, tornando o ambiente mais agradável.

A capota do Classe E Cabrio possui 23,5 milímetros de espessura e um sistema de segurança completo com encostos de cabeça nos bancos traseiros e airbags de cabeça em painéis da porta com volume de 17 litros para uma área de 0,7 x 0,5 metros.

Novas imagens do novo conversível da Mercedes

Via | Autoblog

Acaba de ser publicado un nuevo vídeo sobre la versión descapotable del deportivo más exclusivo de Lamborghini. No es otro que el Lamborghini Reventón Roadster. Este vídeo ha sido realizado cerca de un concesionario de Italia en donde un comercial conduce una unidad.

En cuanto a la motorización, hace uso de un motor V12 que desarrolla 670 CV. Con él puede acelerar de 0 a 100 km/h en sólo 3.4 segundos y su consumo homologado esta situado en 21,3 L/100km. Sus emisiones se situan entorno a los 495 g/km de CO2.

A continuación os dejo con el vídeo, que lo disfruteis:

Related posts:

1. Lamborghini Reventón Roadster, vídeo promocional
2. Lamborghini Gallardo LP550-2 Valentino Balboni, nuevo vídeo
3. Lamborghini Reventón Roadster, imágenes filtradas

Chicago-area writer Arny Alberts’ harrowing tale of sexual abuse and the resulting years-long pursuit to achieve closure have been detailed in his book, Burnt Cookies: A Quest for Closure.

Now available from Llumina Press, Burnt Cookies: A Quest for Closure recounts Alberts’ life experiences, spanning from his high school days up to the present. For Alberts, the catalyst that triggered his writing was a phone call from a high school friend. That conversation set in motion an intense journey through a series of traumatic, disconnected memories.

“Burnt Cookies doesn’t hold back from the truth,” Alberts said of his book. “Names are real, situations of grooming and abuse are detailed. I want people to see how easy it was–how my trust was betrayed–and help people become aware of the potential threat in their future.”

Alberts added that, although the book contains passages that are difficult to read, full disclosure was an absolutely essential part of telling his story. The details of sexual abuse revealed in Burnt Cookies paint a vivid picture that helps readers understand why these experiences led to Alberts’ alcohol dependency, an epileptic seizure disorder and marital problems.

“I decided to try and help others who had gone through similar experiences and publish my story, as horrific and disturbing as it is,” Alberts said. “I would like to help anyone affected by sexual abuse: parents, friends, siblings and victims themselves.”

Burnt Cookies: A Quest for Closure was displayed at the 2009 Book Expo America in New York, and is now available from Llumina Press (on the Web at llumina.com/store/burntcookies.htm, through e-mail at [email protected] or by phone at 1-866-229-9244) and from Amazon.com.

More information about Arny Alberts, his journey and his writing can be found on his Web site, arnyalberts.com.

Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services

 

March 15, 2010

To Our Clients, Colleagues and Friends,

We have a client in the Columbus , Ohio area looking for someone to head up their Secondary Marketing Department. Expertise and experience in pipeline management, in making certain the data is accurate, is more important than the ability to be the world’s greatest expert on where interest rates are headed.  This photo shows a bit of what a great city Columbus is.  We’ve only been there in the winter, but we can easily imagine how pretty it must be in Spring and Summer.

 

• Investors tend to look at Price-to-Earnings ratios on big banks and Price-to-Book ratios on small banks. If we look at Price-to-Book ratios for the big banks, we find that many are trading below book value, obviously a reflection of investors’ distrust of what the book value really is when you apply serious mark-to-mark on loans. Anyway, here’s the ratio for a few of them.

65%  of book value	Citigroup
75%  of book value	Bank of America
76%  of book value	Key Bank
102%   of book value	Fifth Third
107%   of book value	JPMorgan Chase
146%   of book value	Wells Fargo
197%   of book value	U.S. Bank

The higher number for U.S. Bank is clearly a vote of investor confidence. By the way, there are tons of community banks whose stocks trade at big discounts to book, and many of these will be 10-baggers for investors with patience and strong stomachs.

• High school senior Hannah Garrett applied for a summer job as a horseback riding instructor at a summer camp, and the application specified that they wouldn’t hire anyone with tattoos, adding that any camp counselors who got tattoos during the summer would be fired. Yippee.  We still don’t like tattoos on women, and maybe there’d be fewer of them if more employers took this stand.

• This past Saturday would have been Kirby Puckett’s 50th birthday. Kirby has to be on anyone’s All Star list for a combination of sheer talent and joyful love of the game. When he signed for $7 million in 1997, he said he loved playing baseball so much that if they hadn’t offered him a contract, he’d play for free.   He had a lifetime batting average of .318, played every single game of his career for the Twins, and averaged 603 bats per season.  He won six Golden Glove Awards and was an All-Star ten times. What we remember most was watching him leap over the fence to rob A’s hitters of sure-thing home runs.  He was only 5-7 but he jumped like he was 6-7.  His eyesight went bad and he was out of baseball at 35 and dead at 46. Wherever you are, Kirby, we sure loved watching you play.

With all due respect to Killebrew, Hrebek, Carew, and Viola, Kirby was the greatest Twin of them all.

• We periodically tell friends about the near-perfect food, Spam. We think the company that makes it is even better.  Hormel (HREL) had revenues of $6.5 billion last year, raised their dividend for the 44^th consecutive year, and if you look at their stock for the past five years, it’s up 32%  v. the S&P 500 which, as we write this, is down about a half a point.
• By the way, Twinkies is another of nature’s perfect foods, but how the heck do you invest in them?  Any information would be welcome.
• It seems baseball managers are always saying of their star pitchers “He’s a real stud, and we know we can always get seven innings from him.” Seven innings? In 1933 New York Giant Carl Hubbell threw an 18-inning shutout.  Who the heck came up with the idea of taking pitchers out after 110-120 pitches?  Pitchers did just fine before the creation of the “pitch count.”
  
• Isn’t it almost a cliché that when people become really wealthy, they want to tear down their already-big house and build an even bigger one? In an interesting twist, Steve Jobs has a house near Silicon Valley with 14 bedrooms and 13-1/2 bathrooms. and he just got permission from the authorities to tear it down and build a much smaller one!
   

· When Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner engineered those huge loans to AIG, well over $100 billion, lots of people thought it was throwing good money down the toilet and that it would never be repaid. From the sale of one of its insurance units to MetLife for $15 billion, along with other moves, AIG will shortly be paying back $50.7 billion to the government.  Governments should never pick winners or losers, so we hate the idea of bailouts, but this one looks like it will turn out okay.

· The latest issue of Business Week has a great article by the fellow who told the SEC early on that Bernie Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme. You’ll be surprised to see how Madoff’s feeder-funds in Europe thought he was getting such good returns.  What’s interesting is how most of these feeder funds knew he was doing something illegal (they thought he was front-running, not doing a Ponzi) but looked the other way as long as they benefited.  Seriously, take a few minutes to read it. 

• One of the most fun events every year is Gary Findley ’s annual dinner for bank CEO’s.  Gary ’s taking a break this year, but we look forward to attending in 2011. Great food, great wine, great cigars, and it’s pretty stunning to sit there in one room with 50 or so presidents of community banks.  His law firm’s community bank client list is lengthy, and his clients extraordinarily loyal.
• There are still 460 banks left with Texas ratios greater than 100%.  We think we’re at the point where the number has stopped increasing and will now start to drop, a clear sign that banks are successfully dealing with their credit problems.
• One of the banks that failed last week was Park Avenue Bank.  This Manhattan- based bank had a Texas Ratio of a whopping 447%.  Holy mother of God!
  
• If you’re patriotic and you like steak, you’d want to know the butcher who carved this cut of meat.  You could call it the United Steaks of America.
  
  We’re very proud to have done work for Farmers Bank & Trust in Overland Park , Kansas , and we offer them this photo for them to use in their newsletter to bank customers.
  
• We have a mortgage banking client we advised on buying a bank in 2009. He came very close to buying one last year, was offered very attractive terms. We looked very closely at their Call Report, saw a rapid deterioration in loan performance, and argued as strongly as we could that he should not buy it. The bank just failed and we got a very nice note from him thanking us.  Sometimes the best deals are the ones you don’t do.
• We have a Phoenix client looking for a closing manager/supervisor, one very strong on compliance.  If you know someone, let us know
  
• We just read about the food shortages in Venezuela , and isn’t it predictable that command economies never work?  Fascist dictator Hugo Chavez wants to turn the country into the utopia and workers paradise that Cuba is, so the government has seized six million acres of farms and ranches as well as several big supermarket chains.  Don’t these people know their history?  Stalin failed when he collectivized the farms, as has every other economy based on state ownership of production.  Beef production has fallen 38% and soldiers are stationed in grocery stores when food arrives to keep order in the midst of massive shortages.
  
  We hope the people of Venezuela do to Chavez what the Italians finally did to    Mussolini.
  
• The Special Examiner has completed his report on the Lehman failure, and its 2,200 pages are a damning indictment of management deceit and Board cluelessness. Equally complicit is Lehman’s auditor Ernst & Young, which never raised questions about the financial and accounting shenanigans going on.  As Alan Abelson wrote, it turns out that the accounting firms are not always accountable.  Here’s the whole report.  We’re hard-copy kind of guys, but we did skim parts of it. If you don’t want to read the whole thing, there are some good newspaper stories on it.  By the way, this guy Anton Valukas who wrote the report deserves an A++.  We need more guys like him on the Boards of financial institutions, and maybe Obama should appoint him to head up the SEC.  And while we’re at it, someone should also appoint him to investigate what led to the failure of FNMA and Freddie Mac.

· One of these days, Congress will have to decide on the deposit size covered by FDIC incurrence, the former $100,000 or the current $250,000. Banks want the larger amount to more easily get bigger deposit accounts, but opponents talk about imposing some degree of moral hazard.  We’ve noticed in our travels that many European governments offer only a percentage of deposit insurance over a basic amount, and we’ve actually sat around thinking about this.  We wrote about this once before, and we came up with something like this:

.	Amount insured	Amount un-insured
Up to $100,000	$100,000	0
$100,000 – $150,000	$145,000	$5,000
$150,000 – $200,000	$190,000	$10,000
$200,000 – $250,000	$235,000	$15,000
$250,000 – $500,000	$230,000	$20,000

You can quibble about the exact amounts to be insured, but you get the point.  We like is that this is the best of both worlds:  The banks can now attract largely -insured deposits up to $500,000, but we get to introduce moral hazard.  They’ll only get the big deposits if they’re safe and sound.
The best story to bolster our point is when we were sitting at a restaurant right next to super-bank executive Tony Frank.  His mom and dad were there with him, and the conversation we overheard (it was a very quiet night there) went like this:

“So mom, dad, where are you putting your money these days?”  His elderly mother said “Well, Tony, we know we should put it in your bank, but we’re getting wonderful rates on our CDs at Vernon Savings.”    “Mom, that’s horrible!    There was just a story in American Banker that laterally 98% of their loans had gone bad.” His wise mom answered with “Tony, I heard something like that, but we have about $40,000 there and it’s all FDIC insured, so what difference does it make.” We rest our case.

                                                   *       *

Whether you like him or dislike him, President Obama might have a post-White House future as a stock market analyst.  On March 9^th last year, the markets bottomed out and took off for the races with great returns in all sectors.  What’s interesting is that on March 3, only six days before, Obama announced at a press conference that “…buying U.S. stocks is a good deal for long-term investors.”  On a different note, we’re running a contest (but without prizes) for your favorite 3-4 albums of all time.  But this one is only for people over 50!  We can’t wait to see what all of you send in!  We’re off to Florida and Utah this week, so send in those album nominations so we get them by Friday.

Cheers!
Garrett, Watts & Co.

Helping lenders increase revenues, control costs, and better manage risk.

• Mike McAuley   ([email protected] )
• Corky Watts      ([email protected]) 
• Joe Garrett      ([email protected] )

PART TWO OF TWO PARTS

If you have not read Part One, read it first: Milestones (Part One)

In that Part One, I mentioned the first post I submitted and also that first series of posts I submitted, The Kyoto Series.

As I mentioned, I would compose the post and then send it by email to Ed, who would post them for me. After a while he gave me the facility to log in at the site and submit them directly. Along the way, he offered me help in virtually every aspect of blogging. He encouraged me to add images and he patiently guided me through every aspect of that, as well as in many other areas.

He also asked if I might also submit posts in other areas not related to my series on electrical matters. He got me to submit posts on things concerning Australia, historical matters, political matters, things where we were similar to the U.S. and general aspects of life here in Australia.

Our site also has a good list of contributors who primarily write for other sites. In a similar vein, I then contacted an Australian journalist who has a blog site of his own as part of a huge media outlet here in Australia. That was Andrew Bolt, and he contributes one of his posts of our choosing across to our site each day, thus adding further to our list of contributors. We have been publishing Andrew’s posts now for nigh on 19 months now. Andrew’s blog is absolutely huge here in Australia, and his posts are often linked to in the U.S.   …  

Around  that time, the Word ‘International’ was added to our Blog name, mainly because our blog had been getting International readers for quite some time now, in addition to having International contributors, from Australia, Canada, and India, to name a few.

Currently the ratio of online visitors to our site is about 58% U.S. readers to 41% International readers. Readers from Canada are at 7%, Great Britain 5% and my own country of Australia is 5% of the total. The rest of our online visitors come from 154 other countries. So we have a great diversity in online readership. What is interesting is this, especially for those of us in the U.S. and Western, mainly English speaking Countries. That diversity of readership has also seen readers from well inside Russia, and the other 14 Independent Countries that used to make up the old USSR, as well as readers from Mainland China. For those readers to visit our site, and also for those in European Countries, they have to go to more work than just clicking onto our site. They have to come to our site via a separate tab that then translates our posts into the language of their Country of origin. So, when we see readers from those diverse Countries, that is heartening, and makes us realise that in fact, we do have something to say that they want to read.

After that original Kyoto series, I had the idea that would be the end of it, and that, having contributed something so comprehensive in nature, then there would not be much left to say.

I kept contributing posts, mostly general in nature, and then I found that the posts I had already contributed were not the finish of it. There was always something new to contribute in that area.

Ed also asked that in the run up to the U.S. election, might I also contribute posts in that area. I felt this might seem a little strange on my part, contributing from here in Australia on U.S. political matters, so those first few steps were tentative.

At around the same time, Ed asked if I would like to assist with the submission of posts from Creative Commons (Permissible to republish), Public, and other similar sites. Again, this was another area where Ed helped me considerably. Those first few efforts at doing this were time consuming, mainly in fiddly little areas that did take up time.  All my tasks became easier with time.

I was now back looking seriously at the area of my expertise, the electrical field, as well as general interest posts, and also researching and re-publishing information, and other posts.

Around 16 months ago, I also added the Sunday Music series to our line up of posts, one that is most satisfying for me, as I have a long and abiding interest in music.

In January of 2009, Ed asked me to take on the responsibility of Editor-in-Chief. With this position, only the Administrator is above me.

As huge as that honour might seem, I am under no such illusion that this is a big thing. My tasks are easier than the task of site management and site administration.

During the night while you in the U.S. are all tucked up in bed, it’s the next day here in Australia. I can then review any breaking news and other developments as they are happening around the world. I submit my article(s) and other news and posts for the early morning hours in the U.S. I start viewing the world’s event around 6PM ET USA, and do my last checking and post usually around 8AM ET USA.

We have a dedicated group of readers who visit our site, and every morning we have those posts ready at our site for them to read, a cross section of opinion from numerous sources.

Other posts do get submitted during the day U.S. time, and in the main, they are those that are not ready for me to see during the time I have available to work them up for our site.

So, as much as it might seem I have a large role to play, that role is really a minor one. I’m just here to help out. Our valued readers are the major reason for this blog.

Along the way, our blog has grown. Again I have no illusions that I have been the cause of that. I am just one cog in the wheel. Blogs are categorised loosely into seven areas from the huge blogs (The Majors) right down to the tiny blogs. Ours is in the second level, that of a Very Large Blog. Our list of contributors from other blogs include four of those Majors, so we have a good cross section of posts each and every day.

We still have a very large readership, from those who have our site bookmarked and visit every day, to those who just visit for an individual post, but our biggest readership is from off-site RSS and email feeds and from our Syndicated News feeds. Our readership has been steadily increasing, and for that we thank those who do visit our site and receive our blog via feeds..

This day may be a personal milestone for me, that of having been a contributor here for two years now. I have now contributed around 620 of my own posts in that time. True, the subject of expertise I have chosen may be a technical one, but it is nonetheless an interesting one that offers me the chance to show readers that the subject is not one that is a closed debate, and that any information can only add to the overall knowledge base. Along the way in submitting those posts, what gives me most encouragement is that other people are actually linking in to those posts because they offer information that has helped them to understand the matter a lot better. That makes me believe that in some small way, I actually am making a difference.

I still comment occasionally at other sites, and sometimes I will even link to one of my posts with that comment, mainly to draw attention to the relevant information in that post. One thing that some people find a little incongruous is the fact that I contribute to a site based in the U.S. and that I do that from here in Australia. This is the only site I contribute posts to, other than those occasional comments at other sites. I have had a comment in reply that I should be doing a similar thing here in Australia with a blog of my own. That thought has never crossed my mind. My thinking on that is that the information I have is relevant everywhere, and even though it may ’seem’ to be centred around the U.S. it applies in all areas. Also, the opportunity I have at this blog makes me a medium sized fish in a huge pond, and to start all over here in Australia, I would be a tiny fish in a small pond. The main point is the relevance of the information, and being technical, then it applies the same here in Australia, as it does in the U.S.

This is one occasion where Science has not married up with Engineering, and while people may have been blinded with Science that ’seems’ so overwhelming on the surface, the Engineering part of the equation has been ignored. My task is to highlight that Engineering aspect.

I know that my posts are in the main long, and detailed, but sometimes, a simple ten second sound byte just cannot convey the correct information, and in nearly every case, that ten second sound byte is completely misleading.

After two years, I may still be a minnow in the blogging scheme of things, and with each passing day, new information comes up that makes me want to continue doing exactly what it is that I’m doing now.

We are looking for more people to contribute to our site. As our Ad in the left-hand column states “We Are Looking For People With Opinions! …  No writing experience needed. Please email us at: gompgm(at)gmail(dot)com”

Filed under: Blogs, Personal Tagged: Blogging, Personal

PART ONE OF TWO PARTS

Today marks another of those milestones that almost seem to creep up on you without your even noticing.

Two years ago this morning, my first post was submitted to this Blog site.

Before that first post here, I had already been contributing on a small scale to a Car Care site, mainly in the form of tips on how to keep your car’s paint in a good condition. I would also sometimes add comments to other sites, mainly in the form of sporadic comments, and mainly at news media sites here in Australia that were open for comment.

I have a very close friend who lives in California, and we would share regular emails on a daily basis, sometimes as many as half a dozen a day. He would mainly send me links to sites that he thought would interest me, and since we shared similar opinions on nearly everything, if he found something of interest, he would forward it to me.

As you might expect, there were considerably more sites in the U.S. than here in Australia, so he would have access to a lot more than I did, hence he would send me more links than I would send back to him.

The idea of blogging, actually contributing posts to a site on a regular basis, as opposed to adding a comment to an already submitted post or news article was something still relatively new here in Australia,   …    so, in the main, those online media outlets were all that I really did have access to here in Australia. The comments I did add to them were few, and mainly on something that was of particular interest to me.

What these new links my friend would send me did tell me was that there were actually more than the major media sites available for ordinary people to be able to express opinion, and to talk about things that were of an interest to them, other than just adding a comment at the site.

That didn’t mean I dived in head first and started leaving comments at the links he was sending. It was a rare thing for me to leave a comment at any of the sites he was sending me, and even though the links were interesting, I didn’t feel the need to start commenting at random, just for the sake of leaving a comment.

One of the links he sent me was to a post from T. Lee Humphrey posted at our site, titled Counter Attack And Retake The Message.

Ed, who runs this site sent me an email asking me if he could use my comment as a post and he posted the comment with its own title on 16 March 2008. In that same email he asked me if I would like to contribute posts on a regular basis.

Having never done anything like this previously, other than a few tips at the Mothers Car Care Forum, I wasn’t all that sure I could even do it at all. I replied that, yes I would like to contribute, but I wasn’t sure if those posts would be anything worth reading, and that it might tap out after a few posts.

I had an idea that I might attempt a few posts on some aspects of the current Global Warming debate, with respect to the Kyoto Protocol, and how a blind adherence to something like that would see unintentional consequences in the area of the generation of electrical power. This may sound obscure, but I had 25 years in the electrical trade in the Royal Australian Air Force. My training as an electrician, in those far off days of the late 60’s and early 70’s, was a lot more in depth than similar training is today, and that may actually surprise you. We were trained almost to Engineer level in those days, and now, for a tradesman to be competent to work as an aircraft electrical tradesman, that level of training to such a comprehensive scale is not required. That comprehensive training was recognised at a later date, and those long term members of us who did that training were recognised with an Associate Diploma Of Electrical Engineering. For the last 6 years of my time in the Air Force, I spent teaching that electrical trade to new guys, and that also gave me a minor teaching qualification as well. I also spent nearly two years as the senior electrical trades examiner for that trade school.

What I hoped to achieve with those few posts I might be able to submit here was to impress upon people that a blind adherence to what Kyoto called for would lead to problems in that area of electrical power generation.

The series I envisioned at that time I actually thought would exhaust itself after 6 to maybe 8 posts, if I could stretch it out that far in the first place. As it was, it stretched to 51 posts, 2 explanations and a retrospective, 54 parts in all.

This is the link to that series, and there are 20 posts to a page, so to get back to the first post you’ll need to scroll back to the start, and also take the ‘Previous Entries’ link.

It seemed that the more I looked, the more there was to say. At first I would do my research here at the computer, compose the post and then send it off to Ed via email, and he would post it. I was contributing those posts at the rate of one every second day. It made for a lot of research at first, because I didn’t want it just to be an opinion piece. What I wanted was the facts, because those facts stand up better than opinion. True, I added opinion, but where possible I backed that up. After a month or so, Ed gave me the facility to login at the site and submit those posts directly.

The second problem I had was probably the most important, and that was to take something that is quite technical and then break it down to terms that the layman might understand, to simplify it if you will, but to offer explanation.

Along the way, I visited so many sites that even I started to learn things as well. Luckily, comprehensive training in that electrical field made it understandable for me.

Something like this does have some hazards, and one of those is a personal hazard. Right from that very first post, I nailed my flag to the mast. I stated right up front that I didn’t believe that what we were doing here on the surface of the Planet was contributing in a major way to Global Warming, which has since gone through a name change and is now referred to as Climate Change. I also stated that Global Warming is a fact, as the Earth has gone through previous warming periods and also cooling periods, and if those at that time were not caused by man made things on Earth, then it was a naturally occurring thing. We may contribute in part, but we are not causing it to the extent we are being led to believe, in what is basically a huge scare campaign. This is the link to that first post in that series, and it may seem a little amateur, but I have no problem now with what I said in that first post.

However, having said that, what I then wanted to point out was that even if you did believe in man made Global Warming, then there were consequences that you have not been made aware of. That was my task, to point those things out to you if you did believe.

Also, writing these things down left them there for all to see. That’s why I did so much research, and not opinion pieces, but actual factual information from those sites that gave those facts. Then I had to interpret them so they could be easily understood. This might also seem to be a hazard. All those posts are right there, admittedly online, but still in the proverbial ‘Black and White’. Again, they have also stood the test of time. No one has come and shot me down. That immediately tells me the information is factual, and most importantly, correct, something I have been well aware of all along. If that information was in any way wrong, then someone would have come in and corrected me, and oddly enough, the only thing that has been corrected is from a post that was not part of that Kyoto series, but was actually related to it, and it was something about cows stomachs. This is the link to that post, and immediately I was informed of the error, I corrected the post with an explanation.

The statistics I use have (quite naturally) changed over the last two years, and this only serves to confirm what I have been writing about all along, that being that something like this will take time, a really long time, it will be enormously expensive, which it is proving to be, and will have minimal effect, something also being borne out.

That original series is as current now as it was as each post was submitted.

It’s not the only thing I have done here at this site and in Part Two, I will deal with some of those other things.

Link to PART TWO: Milestones (Part Two)

Filed under: Blogs, Personal Tagged: Blogging, Personal, The Kyoto Series

As was widely predicted, it looks like the UK Lords have passed the controversial Digital Economy Bill, a piece of legislation written by the entertainment industry against consumer interests, to try to prop up an obsolete business model. Now they’re planning to rush it through the Commons with little debate or chance to stop an incredibly dangerous bill — unless people start making some noise about how this bill is being rushed through, and the lack of any real public consultation or debate.

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Filed under: Coupe, Performance, Ford

When it was first announced that the 5.0-liter engine was making a return to the 2011 Ford Mustang, none of us here at Autoblog were really that concerned with the fuel economy. We were all about the horsepower, and at 412 ponies underneath the hood, the 5.0 doesn’t disappoint. Ford, however, was thinking about appearances and earth-hugging as well, and managed to make the 2011 Mustang even more efficient than the 2010 model despite all that extra extra power. According to the numbers released today, the new Mustang GT gets 17 miles-per-gallon city and 26 mpg highway with the six-speed manual and 18/25 mpg with the six-speed automatic.

These numbers are not only a huge improvement from the 2010 Mustang with the 4.6-liter V8 (15/23 mpg w/manual, 15/22 mpg w/automatic), but they also best the figures achieved by the Chevrolet Camaro SS – 16/24 mpg when equipped with a manual and 16/25 mpg with the automatic. As reported earlier, the 2011 Mustang V6 claims top honors against its Camaro counterpart as well with an impressive 19/31 mpg in six-speed automatic form.

So what accounts for the improved fuel economy despite the increase in displacement and horsepower? According to Ford, having an extra gear in the car’s transmissions play a large role in addition to the Twin Independent Variable Camshaft Timing (Ti-VCT) that can quickly adjust the intake and exhaust valves. Read more about the Mustang’s powertrain improvements for 2011 after the break.

[Source: Ford]

Continue reading 2011 Ford Mustang GT rocks out with 412 horsepower, 26 mpg highway

2011 Ford Mustang GT rocks out with 412 horsepower, 26 mpg highway originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 06:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Earlier this year we learned that Saab’s new owner Spyker has plans to build the Aero X Concept if resources become available.

Spyker CEO Victor Muller said that he loved the car and that it “deserves to be built.”

“It’s got true ‘Saabishness’ in it,” said Muller. “It’s one of the best designs of the past five years”

Rumors around the web now state that Spyker is planning to build a version of the Aero X on the company’s C8 Aileron platform. We’re not sure when this new supercar/sports car will show up or if this rumor has any backing behind it – but we’ll find out soon enough.

Spyker made not mention of the Aero X when it recently outlined its plans for Saab through 2012. You can find out more about Spyker’s Saab plans here.

– By: Omar Rana

Source: autoblog.it

The controversial Digital Economy Bill has passed through the House of Lords, one of the UK Parliament’s chambers, and will now go before the House of Commons, where it is expected to be rushed through before the general elections in the country. The bill has seen some of its most controversial portions amended, though critics say… (read more)