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On Monday, I attended and participated in the always excellent twice yearly event, the SF Music Tech Summit. As always, it was a fun time, full of interesting people. While smaller than some of the big music events, pound for pound, I tend to end up in a very high percentage of fascinating chats with people at SF Music Tech. The panel I was on was the first in the morning, and was officially called “meet the press,” even though at least two of the five panelists (myself included) don’t consider ourselves press. I didn’t mean to stir up much controversy (never do), but I apparently got a few vocal folks in the audience riled up on a few points. The one that got some attention on Twitter, was the claim that live music was growing. A few folks started screaming and no one then let me back that up, but the numbers don’t lie. A lot of people came up to me afterwards with stories of success by focusing on live music, and I even heard from some folks who are involved in organizing live shows who say that the “complaints” about live shows tend to come from those who focus only on a subset of live venues that have struggled lately — but that the overall live market is thriving (as the numbers show).


However, there was a second point that I later tried to make that again I never had a chance to follow through on, and wanted to do so here. People were asking about what business models are working for musicians, and I started listing out some examples, and a loud gentleman in the front row yelled out that the business model that had to be at the center was selling music. I responded with what I thought was an important question: “Why?” and again people started yelling. Of course, no one answered the question, and then the panel shifted gears to another topic.

But, the reaction from the crowd on that question cemented for me one of the biggest reasons why some in the industry have struggled to grasp new business models. As I discussed in my NARM presentation a few months ago, selling music is just not a good business model, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t good, very profitable, music business models. It’s just that selling music isn’t a very good one. Instead, you need to learn to use the music (which still needs to be good, and is still the central reason why these other business models work) to sell something else — something scarce, which can’t easily be copied. That can be attention, access, time, creative ability, cool physical products, whatever. All of those things are made more valuable the more popular the music is, and you can build all sorts of powerful and immensely profitable businesses once you recognize that.



But if you still think that selling the music or making money directly from the music has to be at the “center” of any music business model, you’re shutting yourself off to the largest opportunities out there. But, the thing is, music has always been a product that makes something else more valuable. While there was some disagreement on the panel from someone about how record stores were profitable in the 70s, that’s a case where the music was making the vinyl (and later, plastic) more valuable. Today, it makes iPods more valuable. As the big box retailers know, it acts as a loss leader to bring people in to buy higher margin goods. Music is great at selling other, higher margin things. If you ignore that in the music business model, you’re missing the big opportunity.

This isn’t to downplay the importance of music, or say that the quality of music doesn’t matter. It absolutely does. But the music is not the scarcity, and you don’t make money off of selling something that’s abundant. You use the abundance to figure out what other scarce goods it makes more valuable and you sell those. So, people can complain and shout all they want, but it doesn’t change the basic fact that until you recognize that selling music directly just isn’t a very good business model, you’re limiting your market tremendously.

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CAGJ joined the farmers of Island Meadow Farm – Chandler Briggs, Caitlin Henry and Roby – in an awesome heart wrenching, gut wrenching chicken slaughter during the September Teach out to Vashon Island.  Here is a juicy snapshot of our journey.

By CAGJ Intern, Valentina de la Fuente

Something I learned about chickens today is that they live in the present moment.  They show no fear or dread as their sisters and friends are snatched by the feet and vanish from their chicken tractor home.  They continue naively clucking and scratching and preening themselves until their moment of fate also comes.  Perhaps they unconsciously understand their fate. The variety of chicken that Chandler, Caitlin and Roby choose are bread specifically as meat birds.  Instead of maturing in several months, they mature in several weeks, and their breasts are significantly larger and juicier, though they’re significantly more lethargic and sedentary.  They choose this chicken for several reasons.  Because the farm is on an island, the price of imported inputs such as grains is significantly higher.  Though the wild, “chicken-like” quality of the bird is sacrificed, killing the birds in a few weeks rather than a few months cuts down significantly on its cost per pound.  It’s a decision that is challenging to make.

The killing process is a fascinating, emotional, gruesome spiritual experience.  Chandler grabs two birds by their gangly feet as they frantically thrash about, and puts them upside down in a traffic cone like structure nestled in the crotch of a tree.  He pulls the head taut through the cone so the neck and jugular are exposed.  In a humble act of gratitude, he ceremonially thanks the bird for giving life and nourishment. With a sharp metal blade, he slits the jugular.  Bright, neon red blood pulses into white waiting buckets.  It bleeds for a minute, then with a sharper and bigger knife, he saws off the head and drops it in the bucket.  The bird is dead, but it thrashes violently in the cone, its muscles and nerves continuing to shoot adrenaline through its rigid body. About 15 birds are killed this way.  We watch like children, as if seeing death for the first time.  People hold each others hands, squeezing harder at the moment of death and violence.  Eyes close, blink, and tears work their ways down cold cheeks. Our minds our blank, dull, and numb.  All we can do is stare, and feel a little more grown up with each moment, with each death. There is a sense of awe and silence.

The dead body is extracted, instantly dipped into scalding water to loosen the feathers, and then put into a machine that de-feather’s the bird by bouncing it around with rubber suckers.  It is hard to imagine that a few moments earlier, this pale yellow piece of meat was a living, feeling, clucking, scratching being. What the machine does not take off, an eager team of volunteers plucks by hand.  At a nearby table people stand with sharp knifes extracting livers, gizzards, hearts, and kidneys, for soups and stalks.

The experience of the chicken deaths lives imprinted on my mind for the rest of day, and the weeks following.  I feel I have earned my right to eat this meat.  This meat holds no lies.  Its life and death is not a hidden secret that lies buried, invisible in dark cramped warehouses of shit and stink.   It lived fully until its moment of death, offering its metabolism to produce nitrate rich compost, its body to nourish, its death to educate, and its revenue to help sustain the farm.

Filed under: Coupe, Performance, Audi, Electric

Audi may not be positioning itself as a “green brand,” but it’s still putting a rather big toe into the environmentally-friendly waters of electric sportscars with its R8-based e-tron, which is reportedly headed for production in 2012.

As a refresher – as if you needed one – the e-tron debuted as a concept at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September with some truly impressive statistics: four separate electric motors with 230 kW (313 horsepower) and 4,500 Nm (3,319.03 pound-feet) of torque (sort of), which is enough to push it to 62 mph in a mere 4.8 seconds.

So, um… want one? The line forms at the rear, and you’d better not dawdle as Audi says its only planning to build 1,000 of examples. Naturally, pricing has yet to be set, but it’s reportedly expected to be “above R8 levels.” Duh. Regardless, with all those lithium ion batteries and their associated electronic gadgetry, we don’t imagine that Audi plans to make much of a profit when it finally goes on sale in two years.

[Source: Autocar]

Audi e-tron sales to be limited to 1,000 units? originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Larry Nancarrow, Skyjack’s Product Application Specialist and
Senior AWP Training Instructor is pleased to announce a new home
for the Aerial Work Platform Training (AWPT) program offered by
Skyjack Inc, Division of Linamar Corporation. Based out of
the recently completed state-of-the-art Linamar Technical
Center, training courses will be offered for both Scissor Lift
and Self Propelled Boom models.
“I am very pleased and looking forward to be working with
our customers and various Linamar facilities to provide
AWP Training at The Centre” noted Nancarrow. If you are
an external customer and wish to acquire more information
please contact Larry Nancarrow direct at 1-877-288-8403.
Linamar facilities who would like to schedule training should contact
Maja Schweiger, Training Coordinator, at 519-515-0001, Ext. 343.
Skyjack is the fi rst AWP Training Centre in Canada and offers Power
Accessed License (PAL) training which conforms to ISO18878 Standards.

Skyjack began manufacturing scissor lift work platforms in 1986 and through the 1990’s grew to over 30% market share to become a world leader in this sector of the aerial lift industry. Skyjack remains a dominant player who has adapted rapidly to the changing face of the industry.

Quality and reliability are the hallmarks that have given Skyjack a solid reputation as the manufacturer of the best scissor lifts in the world. Skyjack products are manufactured, sold and supported worldwide. In August 2002 Skyjack was purchased by Linamar Corporation (LNR, TSX), a leading manufacturer of precision-machined components, assemblies and modules. Linamar’s solid balance sheet gives Skyjack increased strength and long-term stability. Currently, Skyjack has production facilities in Canada, the United States, and Hungary with support offices in Europe and Asia.

Skyjack produces a full line of self propelled scissor lifts with elevated work heights reaching up to 56ft. Skyjack became the industry leader by providing machine features combining durability, quality, and serviceability, making Skyjack scissor lifts world renowned for product reliability. Skyjacks current Boom lift model lineup consists of telescopic booms featuring work heights ranging from 45 to 71ft with plans to further expand the boom lift product line.

Most recently, the acquisition of Volvo’s Material Handling Equipment business complements the acquisition of Carelift Equipment completed in August of 2007. This Expands Skyjack’s Telehandler product offering resulting in the VR series and Zoom Boom series telehandlers and provides additional manufacturing capacity to further the company’s growth.

Skyjack continues leading the industry engineering reliable lift solutions by people who care.

I brought my trash cans in from the curb and saw a discreet little card about tips for the holidays. I opened my newspaper and a greeting card from my carrier fell out. My realtor sent a little calendar in the mail. My letter carrier, who always gives great service, seems to be putting her all into the job. I haven’t seen my lawn care guy recently. No need to cut lawns with snow on the ground. However, a card is probably going to appear in my mailbox and day. And then some people have the house cleaning service, the kid who shovels snow from the sidewalk, the pool guy, the house sitter…How do you decide whether to give someone a holiday tip and how much should you give?

Well, you’ll be happy to know that you don’t need to tip your realtor. He or she just wants to be sure you remember who you used to buy your current home in case you decide to resell it and would be flabbergasted to receive a tip. And, while your mail carrier may really, really deserve a tip, he or she isn’t allowed to accept it. According to Emily Post, you can give your carrier a small, inexpensive gift, but may not give a gift card or any form of money.

However, your private trash collector employees, your newspaper carrier and all the other folks who provide services for your home would be happy to be tipped. Emily Post has an entire set of guidelines for what to give different people and also talks about what to do if you can’t afford to tip.

If you do decide to leave a tip, just remember that it is best to give it in person or to mail it to your service person’s address. My garbage disposal service company asked that any tips be sent to the staff at the office address because thieves are finding and stealing their tips and this type of thing probably is not limited to my area!

Do you tip the people that help you care for your home or do you feel that they’re just doing their job and don’t deserve a tip on top of the money you already pay for services?

Photo: SXC

Post from: Blisstree

Tipping People That Help You Care for Your Home

The Obama Administration today issued its long-awaited Open Government Directive (OGD), a blueprint for transparency that the President promised on January 21, his first full day in office. The OGD is “intended to direct executive departments and agencies to take specific actions to implement the principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration” the President spoke of as he took office, and it is hopefully the first of many concrete steps that will be taken to alter the entrenched culture of secrecy that pervades the federal government.

The OGD imposes four broad mandates on the federal bureaucracy: 1) publish government information online; 2) improve the quality of government information; 3) create and institutionalize a culture of open government; and 4) create an enabling policy framework for open government. The Directive sets time limits, ranging from 45 to 120 days, for agency action to implement specific benchmarks (this “open government timetable” is summarized in an excellent analysis by Meredith Fuchs of the National Security Archive). Many of the requirements are fairly concrete; for instance, within 60 days, each agency must create an “Open Government Webpage” to serve as the gateway for agency activities related to implementation of the OGD, including the receipt of public comments. There are lots of good ideas in the directive, and the success of this endeavor will be determined by the enthusiasm (or lack thereof) with which it’s received by agency officials and the federal workforce.

If the White House is serious about gaining enthusiastic, government-wide cooperation to make open government a reality, it can lead by example, and EFF can suggest a great place to start. Back in January and February, soon after the President issued his groundbreaking pronouncements on transparency, we submitted two requests to the White House for information concerning high-profile technology policy issues. The first sought disclosure of a waiver the White House Counsel issued to permit the use of visitor-tracking cookies at WhiteHouse.gov. The second request asked for release of policies governing the use of BlackBerries and other wireless devices by the President and high-ranking White House officials. More than ten months after the submission of those requests, EFF is still waiting for responses.

While we applaud the Obama Administration for continuing to say the right things about government transparency, and look forward to the successful implementation of the initiative announced today, we can’t ignore the fact that the White House continues to be less than forthcoming about some of its own practices and policies. We hope we’ll be receiving the information we requested before the first anniversary of the President’s inauguration.

Filed under: Suzuki, Volkswagen, Earnings/Financials

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Though Suzuki CEO Osamu Suzuki would beg to differ, it seems that the old saying has once again been proven prescient. After a ton of rumor, innuendo and speculation on the matter along with the subsequent denials, a fresh report from Reuters indicates that Volkswagen is indeed on the verge of announcing that it’s procuring a 20% stake in Suzuki.

Assuming that the news is accurate, it will cost VW roughly $2.8 billion (250 billion yen) to purchase a fifth of Suzuki. Anonymous sources (aren’t they all these days) suggest that the German automaker’s share in Suzuki could easily rise to a controlling thirty-percent-plus stake.

[Source: Reuters | Image: Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty]

REPORT: Volkswagen to take 20% stake in Suzuki originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The paper reviewed here is ‘Transfers to Psychiatry through the Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Service: 11 Years of Experience’ by Christodolou and colleagues and freely available here. The authors aimed to characterise patients that were seen by Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry services and transferred to the inpatient environment. In the abstract they write that

‘Medical diagnoses do not seem to play a major role in the transfer to the psychiatric ward. From the psychiatric diagnosis, depressive and dysthymic disorders are the most common in the transferred population, whilst the transfer is influenced by social factors regarding the patient, the patient’s behaviour, the conditions in the ward she/he is treated in and any recent occurrence(s) that increase the anxiety of the staff‘

The study was undertaken in a district general hospital in Athens with 650 general hospital beds and 18 beds on the psychiatric unit. The data was sampled from a 10-year period ending just prior to a change in law (March 1989- December 1999) which influenced admission of detained patients to psychiatric units. A control sample consisted of patients that were not transferred to the psychiatric ward during a single year of the study period. The control group were corrected for age and sex. Demographic and other details were recorded and these are identified in the methods section.

In the results section, 294 patients were transferred over the 10 year period and 225 patients were identified for the control group. The researcher provide a number of different results. Some of the results I found particularly interesting. Thus 5.2% of the referrals to the consultation-liaison (C-L) service were eventually transferred to the psychiatric unit while 9.9% of the admissions to the psychiatric unit were from the C-L service. The majority of the control group and the transfers were medical referrals. The differences between the transfer and control group in terms of marital status were particularly interesting with married status being significantly more likely in the control group. In the transferred group 75.8% had a past psychiatric history whereas in the control group this figure was significantly lower at 63.1% (p<0.01 – Fisher’s exact test). In terms of diagnostic labels, the transfer group were significantly more likely than the control group to have a personality or mood disorder while the reverse was true for acute adjustment disorders and no diagnosis. A number of other results are presented and the authors discuss the implications.

The authors note in their discussion that this was a retrospective study and suggestive a prospective design as a basis for subsequent studies. I would argue also that this is an exploratory study in that the data is being used to characterise the different populations i.e. transfers and non-transfers. Thus it is likely that some of the correlations will produce false positives but the positive findings in this study can serve as testable hypotheses in subsequent studies. The other question to ask is to what extent are these results unique to a district general hospital in Greece. The researchers note that legislation following the study period changed the nature of transfers and the psychiatry service set-up and so it is reasonable to suppose that differing legislations in other countries might impact on the relationships identified. A finding I thought significant was that marital status was significantly different in both groups and again to what extent does culture interact with this relationship?

In summary I thought this retrospective study used a large dataset to generate testable quantitative hypotheses (e.g transfers are significantly more likely to be married than non-transfers) that would lend themselves to a prospective study or replication studies. The researchers have also generated a number of testable qualitative hypotheses (e.g the hypothesis involving the relationship between impulsive/disruptive behaviour, somatic illness and transfer) which can be supported both through strengthening of the quantitative findings on which they were based as well as qualitative approaches to either replication of confirmation through other paradigms.

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The comments made here represent the opinions of the author and do not represent the profession or any body/organisation. The comments made here are not meant as a source of medical advice and those seeking medical advice are advised to consult with their own doctor. The author is not responsible for the contents of any external sites that are linked to in this blog.

As world leaders are gathering this week Copenhagen to discuss cooperating on measures to address climate change, the solutions they seek might serve not only to make us safer from hurricanes and rising oceans, but from each other, too.

Studies have shown that hot days — and hot cities — often have higher rates of violent crime than cooler days and cooler cities. As the world’s temperature rises, will violent crime rise, too?

One study compared the murder rate with the annual average temperature and found a correlation. The research, done by psychologists at the University of Missouri and Iowa State found that over from 1950-1995, the violent crime rate has increased along with the temperature. When controlling for poverty, age shifts and the “general upward drift of violent crime,” the study found that for each degree Farenheit in the Earth’s average temperature, the U.S. murder rate rises by 3.68 per 100,000 people. That means for every degree we add, the U.S. will see nearly 10,000 additional murders a year. The study was published in 1998, so it’s a bit dusty.

(more…)

The LG eXpo was set to launch on Monday, but to the consternation of many of our readers the Snapdragon-powered device was nowhere to be seen. 

WMExperts have now revealed the smartphone has been delayed a few days due to shipping issues, but is still expected soon.

Hopefully when it does arrive it will be with a bit more bang that its low-key launch so far.

Read more at WMExperts here.

Filed under: Classics, Coupe, Performance, Europe, BMW

Audi has the mid-engined R8 (now available with a 525-horsepower V10). Mercedes-Benz now has the AMG SLS (with more power than the R8 – 563 horses). BMW has… a 500-horsepower V10 in a 4,000 pounds M6. Not exactly competitive in the supercar department these days. Well, according to everyone’s favorite British Buff Book (EVO), BMW will be releasing a new supercar. Probably something resembling a mashup between the M1 Homage Concept and the Vision EfficientDynamics Hybrid Concept. However, it might not be called M1. Or, it might be.

Here’s the thing – BMW is also believed to be working on a buffed out, super version of the 135i (based on the Tii Concept) that semi-logically could be called the M1. Check out the supposed stats on this little puppy: a reworked twin-turbo 3.0-liter motor good for 400 hp and 370 lb-ft of torque, a 150 pound weight reduction, seven-speed dual-clutch tranny, the M3’s suspension and torque-vectoring rear end. Where do we sign up?

The issue is that some people within BMW feel the semi-sacred M1 moniker should be reserved only for a car that replaces the 1978 M1, the first car BMW’s Motorsports Division ever made (even if Lamborghini played a roll). They do have a point, as among us gearhead types the M1 is a pretty reverential piece of machinery. However, what would you call an M-caliber 1 Series?

Autoblog’s advice is this: nothing’s sacred. Call the hopped-up 135i the M1. No one cares except for a few old timers within BMW and a few fanatics on the outside. Besides, the aforementioned old timers have sat idly by as the fabled M Division has arguably diluted its once lofty rep by releasing the X5 M and X6 M. It’s all water (and money) under the bridge anyhow. And by freeing themselves from this false dilemma (because really, who cares?), BMW is free to name the new supercar the M8.

Failing that, just name the mighty 1 Series the Tii (confusing almost everyone) and reserve M1 for a proper supercar. We don’t really mind, as long as both cars go on sale. And no matter the name, it sounds like the range-topping 1 Series should see the light of day in 2011 and the new supercar – which will pair BMW’s 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 with two electric motors – should come online around 2012. Color us excited.

[Source: EVO]

REPORT: More details on BMW’s rumored M1(s) originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Obama’s mortgage approach doubted – (Source: Tulsa World)By KYLE ARNOLD – The former Tulsa banker who was brought in to run Freddie Mac during its financial crisis late last year says mortgage- modification programs won’t rescue the housing market and that problems are likely to mount again.  “It’s a classic asset bubble,” said the ex-banker, David Moffett. “We’ve had them before and we’ll have them again.” – iStockAnalyst

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Why Treasury Needs a Plan B for Mortgages – By GRETCHEN MORGENSON – thanks Ira Artman – … the Treasury Department conceded last week that the Home Affordable Modification Program, its plan to aid troubled homeowners by changing the terms of their mortgages, was a dud.  … the program doesn’t account for all of a borrower’s debts — the first mortgage, second lien, credit card debt and automobile payments. … As a result, what may look like an affordable mortgage payment under the Treasury plan quickly becomes onerous when other debt is added. ... – NY Times
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Congress Is the Drunk at the Fed’s Punch Bowl: Roger Lowenstein – … But here’s the thing. The changes that Congress is urging would make things worse. If anything, the Fed has been too sensitive to public opinion. And in the recent past, it was too eager to satisfy the public with an easy-interest-rate and easy- mortgage policy. … – Bloomberg
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Bernanke Confirmation? – David Kotok – … Our conclusion: whatever comes out of this Congress will limit the Fed’s powers and transfer some its ability to set an independent monetary policy.  That transfer will shift control to the executive branch.  That means more of the policy will be made by the President and a very few people around him, like the Treasury Secretary and his chief advisers. … – Cumberland Advisors

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U.S. cuts estimate of bank bailout costs – Glenn Somerville –  The projected long-term cost of the U.S. government’s bailout of the nation’s big banks is going to be at least $200 billion less than previously thought, a Treasury Department official said on Sunday night. – Reuters

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Why the Fed loves inflation – By Bill Fleckenstein – Chairman Ben Bernanke has some radical ideas about pumping money into the economy to keep prices up. This is no way to kick an economy when it’s down. – MSN Moneycentral

S&P says up to 75 Western European companies could default on debt in 2010 – …  representing a default rate of between 8.7% and 11.1%, according to Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services.  “While the annual default rate is likely to have peaked at 13.1% in the third quarter of 2009, we expect it to continue to run at more than double its historic average throughout 2010, as the slow pace of economic recovery is likely to be insufficient to save many highly leveraged and poorly performing companies.” … – Research Recap

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And Fed Fund Futures Awake – Submitted by Tyler Durden – Major move in Fed Fund futures today, with the implied probability of a rate hike to 1.25% by November 2010 nearly doubling to 14% from 8.1% – Zero Hedge

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Dollar Carry Trade Remains in Vogue – Posted by Larry Doyle – … What does all this mean? Lots of questions remain, including:
1. Will the cheap source of funding from a 0% Fed Funds rate continue?  How long?
2. Will the Fed extend its quantitative easing program via its purchases of mortgage-backed securities beyond Q1 2010? How would the market react if it does not?
3. What happens to the train wreck that still encompasses our commercial real estate markets?
4. Will retail sales confirm the labor statistics reported today?
5. Will the markets begin to trade based on fundamentals instead of the technical support provided by the Fed and Treasury? Can Ben and Tim carefully let the air out of the bubble created over the last 8 months? – Sense on Cents Blog

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counterpoint to peak oil – Cheap Oil is Here to Stay; Forget “Peak Oil,” We Now Have “Peak Demand,” We’ll Never Run Out – Mark Perry Carpe Diem Blog

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Asset-Backed Bond Market Must Embrace Stricter Rules, Bair Says – By Dawn Kopecki – Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said the market for bonds backed by consumer debt won’t be weaned from government assistance until banks embrace stiffer guidelines for issuing the securities.  “Nobody has any confidence in the securities,” Bair said – Bloomberg
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READ THIS: America Without a Middle Class – Elizabeth Warren –  Huffington Post

There are lots of pet adoption promotions going on right now. I talked about Iams Home 4 the Holidays earlier. Found Animals Foundation is also having a big pet adoption drive called “Save a Stray for the Holidays” in 14 Los Angeles shelters on December 19.

For some people, this is a fine time to adopt a pet. If you have ample time during this holiday season to properly introduce your new pet into the home, including training, then why not?

My husband and I picked out a cat for Christmas from a rescue six years ago. We decided to adopt him the first week of December to have even more time to get him settled in before Christmas. And we weren’t planning on traveling much for the holiday, so it all worked out. And that cat is still with us now. However, if your home is super high energy over the holidays with lots of parties, or if you’re going out of town for several days, it may not be the best time to adopt. That doesn’t mean you can’t delay the adoption until January though.

Giving Pets as Gifts

If you’re surprising someone with a new dog or cat for Christmas, you need to ask yourself a couple of questions. Are you really sure this person wants the responsibility of a new pet right now and for the next 15 or 20 years? That’s probably not your decision to make. Also, wouldn’t you rather pick out your own pet?

If you’re a parent who’ll be taking care of the pet, that’s different. Yet, I do think that the pet bond may benefit from a child being able to select his or her own dog or cat.

The magic of receiving a pet for Christmas doesn’t depend on the surprise element. I still say that the cat my husband and I picked out together for Christmas was the best gift I’ve ever received. And we agreed on the cat together before taking him home.

Are you introducing a new pet into your home this month?

(Image via stock.xchng)

Post from: Blisstree

Don’t Give Surprise Pet Gifts

What better way to do business than to combine two segments of the economy that are hurting? Either land got cheap, or Bentley’s got cheap, so some combination thereof, because here in Northern California, near San Jose, there’s a development giving away Bentley’s to anyone who will buy one of their lots! READ MORE

A news story broke about CitiGroup’s possible plan on paying back their TARP monies. READ MORE

Count your blessings that the SEC is not accusing you of misleading investors (or that you didn’t buy gold $100 an ounce higher than where it is now). This is where three former top executives of New Century Financial find themselves: accused of fraud and misleading investors as the company’s subprime loan business was failing in 2006. New Century’s former CEO and co-founder Brad Morrice, former chief financial officer Patti Dodge and former controller David Kenneally are the names to watch, and probably not hire if you have stockholders since the SEC also wants the three barred from serving as officers or directors of any public company and reimbursement of their bonuses or stock option awards. READ MORE

Be careful what you charge for FHA loans. The FHA kicked Equitable Trust Mortgage (Baltimore) out of its program yesterday, claiming they overcharged borrowers, particularly minorities, for FHA loans.

more news on FHA, Flagstar, CitiMortgage, Wells Correspondent & Wholesale, Franklin American, the economy, and joke of the day …  <<<  CLICK HERE

Filed under: Motorsports, Europe, Japan

Germany’s DTM series is presently contested by just two automakers, Mercedes-Benz and Audi. In an effort to increase manufacturer participation, global reach, and television audiences, Autosport reports that DTM’s overseers to be talking to Japan’s Super GT series organizers about a tie-up. The GT500 class includes Honda, Lexus, Nissan, and a single Aston Martin DBR9.

The talks are centered around letting the cars race together, not DTM and Super GT actually coming together. The hurdles would be rationalizing the specifications: GT500 racers employ a different construction, as the series doesn’t mandate spec electronics, tire, gearbox, differential, fuel, and brake suppliers as in DTM. However, Super GT does have its own way of creating parity and close racing, using restrictor plates and pit stop regulations.

If the two can find a way to come together, it might encourage BMW to join the series and bring its American Le Man M3 to the party. The Munich marque has resisted DTM, saying it isn’t interested in a series so heavily focused on Germany. Don’t get any hopes up, though – the Super GT management said they don’t see the link-up as “a matter for the very near future.”

[Source: Autosport | Image: Alex Grimm/Bongarts/Getty]

DTM cars to run in Japan’s SuperGT series? originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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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.

There’s a new, massively detailed, study coming out on the secrets to being a great innovator, and the key finding really stands out:

“What the innovators have in common is that they can put together ideas and information in unique combinations that nobody else has quite put together before.”

Notice that one of the key components of all of this is seeing ideas and information that are already out there, and then doing the useful part of putting them together in a different way. This is something we’ve noted time and time again when it comes to innovation. Often, the actual “idea” isn’t new — but it’s that it is put together in a better or different way than before, and that new way works better for people. Yet, when you have something like patents on the basic ideas (and, before some patent lawyer shows up to say patents aren’t on ideas but inventions, let’s all just agree how ridiculous that claim is), it makes this much more difficult and expensive. The classic example of this is RIM. The idea of wireless email was hardly new. Lots of folks had been trying to do it right. The technical issues behind providing email wirelessly were not difficult either. What RIM did was put it all together in a compelling way — by recognizing how to package it all in a manner that was significantly more usable than previous attempts. And yet, another firm, NTP, who had failed to innovate and had failed to actually figure out a way to make wireless email useful, came along and sued, because it held patents on the very concept of wireless email. After a long legal battle, RIM was eventually forced to pay over $600 million to NTP.

Those sorts of situations should really bother anyone who believes in the importance of innovation. As this study has shown (yet again), real innovators need to be free to combine different ideas and experiment to see what actually works. The problem, as it appears to be so often, is the faulty belief that the “innovation” is in the idea itself. That’s almost never the case. The innovation is in figuring out the right combination of factors that packages it up the way the market wants things. And now we’ve got another study showing this, though it seems unlikely to actually impact policy decisions, and that’s a huge shame if you’re a supporter of innovation.

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To Our Clients, Colleagues and Friends, 

· During the crazy times, everyone used to get Lucites when a deal was done. No more. Coffee mugs with the banks name and logo are the thing now, and we actually like collecting them from clients.  A white mug with your name and logo stands out the most.  We have some from bank mugs which are dark, and no matter what the color of the lettering, it just doesn’t stand out.  Keep this is mind next time you place an order.

· New York Community Bank took over Amtrust (i.e. the old Ohio Savings Bank), and we’ve always been intrigued by the former’s lending strategy. Almost all their lending is first lien mortgages against New York City apartment buildings that are rent controlled. Their theory is that if a building is rent controlled, its rents are low enough to make certain the building is always fully occupied. And if the loan has a good DSC ratio to start with, full ongoing occupancy makes that loan good as gold. 
Why did they want Amtrust when they’re almost totally focused on New York City ? Well, they got $4 billion in cash, zero construction loans, zero non-performing loans, plus $4 billion in ultra cheap money market deposits.  We know some good people at Amtrust, and we hope things work out for them.

· There’s no question that there are many banks that need to be shut down, but there are also banks being forced into failure by overly harsh regulatory orders.  Some banks being seized might survive if only management were given time to work through their problems. Not many, but some!  Rather than being overly punitive on banks now, shouldn’t they have done that a few years ago when real estate lending got out of hand?  You don’t take the punch bowl away after everyone’s passed out or tossing their cookies, you do it before the party gets too wild.
Regulators should have been tougher a few years ago, and for those who’ve proven their past ability to work through problems, they should loosen up a little bit now.  Consent Orders can make it difficult or impossible to turn a bank around, and aren’t there some banks where you want to make it easier and not harder for them to succeed?

· An experiment was done with Cal ’s library program to lend framed art for undergraduates to hang in their dorm rooms.  One group was told that they could exchange any print they weren’t happy with, with unlimited exchange rights.  The other group was told that there were no returns at all, and whatever they chose, they had to keep all semester.  At the end, both groups were surveyed as to their satisfaction with the program.  Which group do you think liked it better? In a bit of a surprise, the ones given no choice were much, much happier with the program.
We think about this experiment from time to time when we look at various programs offered by banks.  When Garrett, Watts opened its first checking account way back when, we were offered an endless number of account types, with every combination and permutation of fees, number of checks permitted and so on. We remember asking, “Don’t you have just a basic business checking account?”  People seem to want multiple choices in supermarkets and when dating, but this may not be the case with bank offerings.

· In 1979 General Motors had over 618,000 employees.  Today it’s about 75,000, for a 87.9% shrinkage in the workforce.  Can someone look up GM’s market cap at its peak versus what it is today?  It would be fascinating in a sort of morbid way.  

· Thirty years ago, GM had a 50% market share of all auto sales in the U.S.   Today it’s struggling to stay at 20%.  If you’re in a bookstore (remember those?), there’s a bazillion books on how to succeed in business without really trying.  But there are very, very few books that study the colossal failures.  We consciously don’t read books like The One Minute Manager or the ridiculous Who Moved My Cheese, but we might read a book that explores the commonalities among companies that fail.

· Freddie Mac demanded re-purchases  of $2.7 billion of single-family mortgages to lenders for the first nine months of the year, and our clients are getting more and more of those scary re-purchase letters!  The past year or so, we hear that when FNMA takes back a property, they make the seller of the loan repurchase it in about 25% of the cases. 

· Just because you don’t sell to FNMA, you don’t get to ignore the buybacks mentioned above.  If you sell to Chase, BofA, Wells, or Citi,they sell your loans to FNMA, and if they have to buy them back from FNMA, they’re going to make you buy them back from them, or at least make them whole.  But you already knew that.

• Remember how banks getting TARP money had to pay pretty rich dividends and grant the government warrants? Capitol One just paid back $3.5 billion of TARP money, including a 5% dividend, and the government sold the attached warrants for a profit of $146 million.  The profit on the warrants + the dividends means a total profit to the U.S. taxpayer in excess of $200 million.  Leave it to an ex-Goldman chief, Hank Paulson, to come up with a program that saved the banking system and generated a profit for the taxpayers.
• Remember Billy Joel cheating on his wife, the model Christie Brinkley?  And now Tiger Woods is cheating on his wife?  These are two of the most beautiful women in the world, and it reminds us of a song that would get played very late at night at college parties with the improbable title “If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, go an’ make an ugly woman your wife.”  It was kind of like Louie, Louie. No one would every buy the record to just sit around and listen to it, but no party was complete without it.  Even people who never danced would jump up and dance so they could join everyone else in drunkenly shouting out the lyrics.
• From Fred Jackson:  “The late Edmund Safra told my class, when we were trainees at Republic National Bank of New York , Manage the costs of your liabilities, and good-yielding assets are simple to find.” Amen to that, Fred.  What a great lesson, and probably weird-sounding to mortgage people who think earnings are asset driven. We’ve known hugely successful banks with loans-to-deposit ratios well under 60%.  Commerce Bank back in New Jersey used to be an amazing money maker, and they typically ran about 30-35%.  And the market understands this.  For the fifteen years before the bank got sold to Toronto-Dominion Bank, its stock way outperformed Microsoft and all those other sexy tech stocks. 
• And one last thing.  We were recently talking about someone who’s been out of the business for 2-3 years and we said that he’d lost his Mojo. We pretty much know how to use the word Mojo in a sentence, but do any of you know exactly what the heck a Mojo actually is?  It’s obviously a noun, but is it a formal noun that you capitalize, or do you just use lower case?  Muddy Waters sang “Got my Mojo working…. I’m gonna use it on you.” Kind of sounds sexual, but if you say that Allan Greenspan has lost his Mojo, it has about zero sexual connotations.  Maybe negative sexual connotations.  Can you say that Hillary Clinton has lost her Mojo, or can only men lose it? Anyway, we know some of you out there can help answer the burning question, “Just what the heck is a Mojo?”

Do you care about your community and do you buy a lot online?  Totally unrelated, right?  Wrong!  In the typical city, of every $100 spent in independent stores, $68 returns to the community through payroll taxes, sales taxes and other expenditures.  If you spend it at a national chain store located in your city, only $43 will stay in your town.  And if you spend it online, $0 comes back.  Happy Christmas shopping.

Can you believe it’s only three weeks or so till Christmas?  Oy vey!

Garrett, Watts & Co.  

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

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

Our northern neighbor’s free-speech rights

Editor, The Times:

Amy Goodman’s most recent column in The Times should not elicit any wide-eyed responses [“Detained at the B.C. border in Canada’s Olympic crackdown,” Opinion, syndicated column, Dec. 4], especially from Goodman herself.

Any reporter with experience would know that Canada’s free-speech rights are more limited than in the U.S. Books can be challenged in Canada, and many have been. A quick look at www.freedomtoread.ca will show people the current list of challenged books in Canada. The attempt to bring certain types of printed material into the country can be met with confiscation.

What has played out at the border with Goodman should not be taken as some sort of travesty. It should be seen simply as Kabuki theater between the press and the Canadian government.

— Dave Riggs, Seattle

The same as the U.S., only colder?

Americans assume Canada is like the United States, only colder. There are many other differences too.

Speaking as someone who was held under the Emergency Powers Act, I can attest to the differences in the British justice model. The minister of justice can hold someone for 30 days on his own signature. The detainee has no charges filed, has no attorney assigned, never has go to court, is not allowed communication in or out, and the Ministry of Justice does not have to respond to inquires about the detainee.

You just drop off the planet.

And the really cool part is that the detention order can be renewed monthly, forever. Two of the main reasons I was able to get out were the efforts of Amnesty International and my mom.

The police in Canada can tap your phone, read your mail and monitor your Internet usage because they feel like it. There is no judicial oversight. The police can detain you, search you and interview you without any sort of probable cause.

Rights are something you have here. Not there.

— Douglas Kerley, Lynnwood