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Support for global trade

Editor, The Times:

I write to commend The Seattle Times’ support for the South Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and for raising awareness among readership on this critical issue affecting our economy and Washington workers.

Among the many stops on his trip, President Obama visited South Korea, a critical trading partner for the U.S. and one with whom we’ve had a free-trade agreement pending congressional approval for more than two years.

This visit presents the perfect opportunity for the president to demonstrate to the world that the U.S. remains open to global trade, and to signal to American workers that we will continue to support them and pursue every opportunity to create jobs and spur innovation in this country.

Our Northwest workers produce some of the very best goods and services in the world — Boeing airplanes, Microsoft information technology and Paccar trucks, to name a few — but 95 percent of our customers are located outside America’s borders. Therefore, trade is an essential, proven economic stimulus that brings the results of American labor to global markets that demand them, sustaining and creating jobs in the process.

America, and Washington state in particular, can ill afford to sit on the sidelines failing to act while our competitors race ahead to engage and open new trade markets. A recent U.S. Chamber of Commerce study revealed that we stand to lose 350,000 American jobs should we not enact the trade agreement before implementation of the European Union’s own agreement with South Korea.

America must not be just a participant in the global economy; we must lead it. I will continue to press for policies that ensure we will.

— Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Auburn

Trade agreement: Been there, done that

Yes, trade is good, but not all trade deals are good, so let’s not do the Korea free-trade agreement.

Korea has systematically shut out U.S.-manufactured goods, most notably U.S. automobiles, and this agreement does not change that. The mega-banks, entertainment providers and software industry will be big winners in this deal, but once again American workers will come up short.

The Korea agreement uses the WTO model that the least regulation is the best regulation. It is the same flawed approach that led to the recent global financial crisis created by runaway banks.

Our members of Congress should be working on reforming and improving our trade model before making any more bad deals.

The template for change already exists in the Trade Act (HR 3012), which has been co-sponsored by 127 members of Congress, but not one from Washington state. It’s time to get on board the way forward and stop repeating past mistakes.

— Allan Paulson, SeaTac

We need a new direction, and a new policy

Our country has spent the past 15 years indulging the free-market, free-trade ideology of deregulation and offshoring, of cutting government oversight and coddling investors.

Look what its brought us: Our manufacturing sector is in shambles, our leading export is fraudulent financial services, and the rich keep getting richer while the rest of us struggle.

Even in our state of Washington, companies like Boeing are outsourcing and offshoring faster than you can say, “Oops, the Dreamliner’s off schedule again.”

Do you still think the answer is more of the same?

Come on.

Our country needs a new direction in trade policy. Reps. Adam Smith and Dave Reichert should reject the outdated Korea free-trade agreement, and instead put that great bipartisan spirit to work fixing the mess we’re in.

— Marina Skumanich, Seattle

Finding the balance between pure free trade and protectionism

The trade debate is easily expressed as trade versus protectionism.

If you are against trade, you must be a protectionist. This is a curiously American sentiment, since every other country in the world finds a comfortable spot between those two extremes.

No country in the world is pure free trade or pure protectionism.

It is far more useful for everyone to favor a trade policy that raises our standard of living and strengthens communities we care about. We can all oppose a trade policy that lowers our standard of living or wrecks communities we care about.

From that perspective, we all favor trade, and we need only ask which of the available trade policies will do the best job of raising our standard of living, and helping communities we care about.

Free trade has failed to meet lofty promises made to American workers, families and communities. Adding one more agreement with Korea won’t redeem a trade model that is fundamentally flawed.

— Stan Sorscher, Seattle

Legislators shaking in their boots?

Thank you Prof. James N. Gregory for your informational commentary on Tim Eyman [“Rejection of Eyman empowers reform of state’s finances,” Opinion, guest commentary, Nov. 18].

I had no idea how much power Eyman had over our state government. In the past five years just two of his five amendments passed, and evidently these amendments have caused our legislators to shake in their boots.

Whether I agree or disagree with Eyman, at present this is still a free country and we still have free speech and choice. Evidently we have not elected the right legislators to resolve our tax problems despite the Tim Eymans of the world.

Who can we blame next?

— Malva Anderson, Covington

Keep your day job, Gregory

According to James N. Gregory, “Most state revenue comes from sales tax, meaning that those with small incomes pay a greater percentage of it in taxes than those with large incomes.”

It doesn’t mean that at all, and it is fortunate that Gregory is a professor of history and not of math.

One critical item that he left out was that food is not subject to sales tax.

Since those with small incomes pay a much greater percentage of their income on food, it is very likely that those with very small incomes actually pay a smaller percentage of their income on state sales taxes than those with larger incomes.

The actual percentage of sales tax per income is based on what percentage of one’s income is spent on taxable items. The extreme example would be a person on subsistence income that pays 100 percent of their income on tax-free food and therefore they would pay zero percentage of their income on sales tax.

In that example, every other person that spent any money on a taxable item would pay a greater percentage.

If a person spends a greater portion of their income on taxable items than another person then they pay a greater percentage in taxes than the other person regardless of the amount of the incomes.

This is a math question, not a sociology question.

— Richard C. Shell, Woodinville

Response to Lynne Varner’s ‘second opinion’

Columnist Lynne Varner has poor arguments for criticizing the new guidelines for breast-cancer screening [“Mammograms: a second opinion,” Opinion, Nov. 18].

Saying they fly in the face of conventional wisdom and long-standing consensus is shortsighted.

Guidelines are, and should be, continually adapted in light of new research and statistical findings. Recent estrogen-therapy findings are also not conflicting medical advice, but another example of the revision of guidelines in light of its association with adverse side effects.

Varner doubts a similar correlation for men would exist.

In fact, tests for prostate cancer also recently came under new guidelines because of false positives and the finding that many of the cancer cases that had been treated would have been so slow growing that they never would have been a problem.

If everyone had yearly MRIs, we might discover more cases of brain cancer, but is that the best use of health-care resources? No.

If we want to control health-care costs, we have to look at the statistics to make these decisions.

— Marilynn Gottlieb, Bainbridge Island

A man’s point of view

I find myself appalled at the recommendation by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force for women to hold off screening for breast cancer until the age of 50 [“Breast-cancer flap gets political,” News, Nov. 19].

Although I am not a woman, the idea that a government-created group recommends lackadaisical preventive health practices truly scares me.

These sorts of practices can easily be carried over into almost any health issue concerning men and women alike. When President Obama gets his health-care reform, there will be a panel like this on every health topic, helping the government look for ways to cut costs and ration care.

Panel decisions like this will not be mere recommendations, but will become dictated terms in health-care plans. This leaves early testing procedures uncovered, forcing patients to choose between parting with profuse amounts of their own cash or gambling with their lives.

— Donald Bricker, Lake Tapps

Filed under: Car Buying, GM

Last month, General Motors raised some eye brows when it announced its 60-day satisfaction guarantee program giving customers the ability to drive their vehicles for 60 days and return them with zero minimal risk. A month ago, we told you that only one vehicle had been returned under the program, and that guy simply traded his manual tranny Corvette for one with a six-speed slush box. Now, a little more than two months into the promotion, the General has a still fairly insignificant 193 (out of 220,000 sales) customers who have returned their vehicle under the program, and GM says some of those customers decided to purchase different or better equipped GM models.

But while 193 appears to be fairly insignificant when compared to overall sales, it also represents 30 percent of the 653 people who actually opted for the 60-day option in lieu of a $500 discount. While some would say that the 30% number is very bad for GM, we’d say that it isn’t much of a surprise given the fact that those 653 customers obviously weren’t very sure about their purchase decision to begin with.

GM appears to be pretty pleased with the fact that so few vehicles have been returned during the program, but the automaker also plans to learn from those who were dissatisfied with their product. Vice President of Global Product Engineering Mark Reuss told the Associated Press that he and other executives plan to call customers who turned in their vehicles under the program, calling it “about the best unfiltered consumer feedback we’ve had” and according to the report, Chairman Ed Whitacre came up with the idea to make the calls. GM’s 60-day guarantee promotion is scheduled to end on January 4, 2010.

[Source: Associated Press | Source: Joe Raedle/Getty]

193 vehicles returned under GM’s 60-day satisfaction guarantee originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Former Alaska governor’s memoir released this week

With the recent release of Sarah Palin’s ghostwritten work of fiction, “Going Rogue: An American Life,” I can’t help but note the lost opportunity in naming this missive, and the nonstop chatter about it and her in the media.

Wouldn’t rouge have been better than rogue? Between all those red states and the makeup Such a loss.

All the chatter has led me to coin a new word: Palindrone

Verb:

1. To drone on and on about Sarah Palin

Noun:

1. One who drones on and on about Sarah Palin

2. The sound produced when one drones on and on about Palin

Usage: The Fox palindrone kept palindroning for hours, saturating the news with naught but palindrone.

— David Darrow, Seattle

As I sit against the florescence of the television screen, watching the conservative Fox News pundit Glenn Beck drive political nails into progressive leaders using the fear of U.S. blacks and immigrants of color as his hammer, my memory harkens back to the year in which the book Push was set, 1987. During that time, eugenics theories about the inherent laziness and criminality of black teenagers was rampantly resurgent in the news. Conservative research was cementing stereotypes of the black welfare queen, the crack baby, the HIV infected black woman as the truth that justified the destruction of the safety net as we knew it. Since then, health care has become increasingly privatized. Welfare has turned horrifically to an indentured servitude of workfare. The numbers of black women with HIV have skyrocketed. And the movie Precious, based on the book Push by Sapphire, was released.

Caricatures or Complex Characters?
Clarice “Precious” Jones is an extreme character, meant to shock the senses and unveil the underbelly of the brutality of racism and capitalism in the patriarchal land of the free. In the film and in the book, Precious is a dark-skinned teenaged girl who experiences multiple forms of oppression and violence at the hands of multiple perpetrators. In the movie, her sexually brutal father is an invisible or blurry character at best, while her mother, whose victimization as a woman was only alluded to, is cast as the primary perpetrator. It is only through the extreme telling of an extreme story that this dichotomy of inequity is revealed. There is only one man in the story as told in the movie – a male nurse- and the welfare and education systems which oppress black womanhood and subvert black female resistance are cast as saviors. Questions have been necessarily raised by black audiences -is this story the best way to reveal these contradictions? Is the mother the real villain? Does the story reflect reality or is it more of a caricature? And if a caricature how does that shape the impact of the film on the representations of black women in media and in the public psyche?

I have known many black girls afflicted by multiple forms of abuse, compounded by addiction and illness. I have watched black women beat their children to bloody pulps in the street, cursing them the whole time. I have heard black mothers threaten to cut their daughter’s pussy out to prevent them from having sex. I have witnessed black women trade their daughters for crack. I have heard and seen so many things. And I have also seen those same exact women place themselves in front of a fist to save their daughters. I have watched those black mothers walk the hoe stroll for hours to make enough money to feed and house and clothe their babies, as they struggled to overcome addiction. I have watched, in my own home, my own beautiful black mother struggle with the decision to keep her man and have an adult life or protect her daughters and live for her children. Eventually, she chose the latter, though not soon enough. My mother was alone from the time I was about 14 to her death in 2005. That’s almost 20 years of intimate solitude in an effort to stand between her black daughters and the world of violence that waited for us in and beyond our home because she did not know how to manage both the safety of her children and her needs as a woman. These characters, Precious and her mother, are not simple caricatures, and yet the film chose some truths over others, and must be interrogated. This is by no means an exhaustive review, or a review of any kind. It’s what came for me after watching the film.

Black Womanhood and Complexity
Can you imagine that patriarchal colonialism and a generational experience of slavery can result in an experience of powerlessness and shame that can twist the mind and give rise to the belief that your three-year-old child has stolen your man? Can you imagine that there are black and brown girls, and boys, all over this world, that have HIV, have been raped by their father, sexually and physically abused by their mother, failed by the school system and exploited by the welfare system. And that these girls are brilliant and beautiful and full of unrealized promise- as are their mothers. These women are two sides of one coin, mother and daughter. Both trapped in different ways, both villainized by “culture of poverty” research, and exploited by the economic system and the civil institutions that touch and shape the daily texture of their lives.

The Narrative of Black Female Citizenship
This set of contradictions, this opening of an unhealed national and international wound, is not a mere regurgitation of racist and sexist images. There is a real untold story here, and the voice of that child and the voice of her mother need to be heard. They need to be heard because it is our silence on issues of sexual abuse and systemic violence that allows the space for the empire’s story about us to be the only one told. We do not control our media and cultural systems or the institutions of civil society, and therefore the narrative of black female citizenship has been used in so many ways as the lynchpin to justify the most brutal democracy in the world. The lies that our citizenship is somehow a gift and not a right, that our mothers are responsible for the socialization of black children and therefore the cause of their incarceration, and that our daughters have drained and massacred the economy, have justified mass incarceration, war, the privatization of social services and health care, and the defunding of public education. The same has been done to black men, using different stereotypes. But this, right here, is about black women.

Let’s talk about education. It was a strong thread that bound this plot together through the realization of the unrelenting power of words. In the book Push, the transformation of Precious occurs over the course of more than a year. Her increasing sense of pride and self-worth is tied directly to her increasing ability to read. Literacy is a powerful thing. It increases one’s ability to navigate and transform the physical, political, and economic conditions we find ourselves subject to. The ability to express one’s story, to know that it will be witnessed, is as powerful a motivation for transformation as any. Why did the leaders of the Cuban revolution begin by increasing the literacy of the poor? For the same reason that Venezuela has placed so much import on democratizing their media system. Because the power of literacy, media or otherwise, is foundational for social change. The fact that the conductor of the orchestra in this case was a black lesbian added depth and complexity to the story of black women being told in the film. The depiction of black lesbians as allies to heterosexual black women was a blessing that brought tears to my eyes.

Hollywood vs. Our Stories
All this being said, the Hollywood version of the book absolutely invisibilized patriarchy, cast the system as a hero and not an actor responsible for the conditions of oppression in which Precious lived and survived, and over-simplified Precious’ mother as an animal who fed her child to the wolves. The movie’s flaws are real, and knowing that the film was being viewed by white middle class audiences whose ability to discern the notes in this song was minimal, was painful to experience.

It doesn’t make the story less powerful, less revealing, or less necessary. But it does leave room for the next telling to make these contradictions less nuanced, the complexity more stark. For U.S. born blacks mitigated by a history of slavery and colonial violence, complexity is the name of the game. And though I am tired of our black mothers, whose internalized shame and experience of powerlessness sometimes results in extraordinary brutality, being cast in roles that are either victim or villain, and never as the complex intersection of both, never as victor- I was stunned to joyful silence by the numbers of young black girls and boys I saw in the theatre. This is a complicated conversation that is rarely had in our families or classrooms, and even more rarely had in public. And it needs to be had.

Unrelenting Survival
In 1987, I was 13, and the book Push changed my life. I identified in some ways with the experience of Precious. I remember the tenements, the crack houses, the emergence of AIDS and the way both devastated family connection. I recall the news, the myth of the teenaged super-predator, the labels of crack baby, welfare mother, the images of addiction and violence that shaped so many black children’s understanding of themselves. and then there are things I won’t talk about, that make me proud to watch Precious survive, and her mother repent, on the screen. Because I understand the untenable choices black girls and women feel, and are, forced to make.

Today I am 35, and I am grateful for those precious black and brown children, those daughters of this nation’s dust, those human queens subjected to -and the perpetrators of-inhuman cruelty. Because with each individual survival there is a greater chance of our collective survival and transformation. And that is a story, a historical legacy that is the journey in my feet, the ancestor at my back, and the bitter at the bottom of capitalism’s cup. We are our mothers’ daughters, more than the sum of empire’s history, and our mothers are no worse than human. That is the story that needs to be told. Sapphire is one of hundreds of writers who pull back the veil on black female citizenship to reveal the abject bullshit of this democracy’s contract, place humanity back into the narrative, and open the door for complexity. Tell the truth, in all its complexity, regardless of the dominant group’s watchful gaze. And even when Hollywood distorts the tale, we will, by our own honest hands, set ourselves free.

Cause we are watching too. And this, precious, is for you.

Bighead carp are one of two non-native species of Asian carp causing widespread concern among Great Lakes advocates. The other is silver carp.

Great Lakes advocates are calling it a “conservation emergency” now that non-native Asian carp have been detected within seven miles of Lake Michigan. They want an immediate closure of locks and gateways leading to the lake in a literally”last-ditch” attempt to keep the fish out.

The fear is that the giant fish will disrupt the valuable Great Lakes sport fishery by outcompeting species at the top of the Lake Michigan food web, consuming the forage fish the established species depend on — and like many of the other 180 non-native aquatic species already in the Great Lakes, causing general ecosystem disruption.

Read more of this story »

HTC is grabbing a page from the book of most review sites by publishing their own 7 minute run through of the HTC HD2.

Of course HTC is a bit late with this, and may have had a few more views if they released this 2 weeks ago, rather than a week after launch.

We’ve mentioned the ongoing lawsuit against ISP iiNet in Australia a few times. Basically, the movie studios are pissed off at iiNet because it didn’t do much in response to letters that were sent concerning IP addresses of those that the studios believed were sharing unauthorized works. As iiNet noted, however, it didn’t see why it was involved in any of this:

They send us a list of IP addresses and say ‘this IP address was involved in a breach on this date’. We look at that say ‘well what do you want us to do with this? We can’t release the person’s details to you on the basis of an allegation and we can’t go and kick the customer off on the basis of an allegation from someone else’. So we say ‘you are alleging the person has broken the law; we’re passing it to the police. Let them deal with it’.

The trial has been going on recently, and while I haven’t been following the details that closely (figure it’s worth waiting for the verdict), there was one interesting tidbit. As the company had suggested earlier, it’s arguing that sharing a file via BitTorrent is arguably not copyright infringement at all. That’s because of the way BitTorrent works, in breaking up any file into tiny components and sharing the individual pieces. A key element of copyright law is looking at how much of the content is shared. Down in Australia, they have a “fair dealing” exception to copyright law that appears to allow for copying small portions of a work, and some precedent of short video clips not being considered infringing.

While I would be quite surprised if this argument worked (even if it may be technically correct, it’s so rare that judges pay attention to the technical aspects when it comes to copyright), I’m a bit surprised we haven’t seen this argued elsewhere as well. Of course, if it does actually work, it will only turn the focus back towards the question of whether or not “making available” violates the distribution right of copyright, since that would cover what BitTorrent users were doing, if they offered up any unauthorized content (even if they actually shared only a tiny fraction).

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To Our Clients, Colleagues and Friends,

· At mid-year 2009, the three top banks held 53% of all deposits in California .  Here are the top six, which collectively hold 65% of all deposits in the state.

1.    24.5%  BofA

2.    19.2%  Wells Fargo

3.    9.6%  JPMorgan Chase

4.    5.5%  Citigroup

5.    3.5%  Mitsubishi UJF

6.    3.4%  U.S. Bancorp

A year ago, Wamu was #3 with 14% and World Savings was #4 with 5%.  Things change.

• Okay, here’s how you pay for college in 18 years, based on what Paul Tuttle suggested when Hannah Garrett was born.  (1) Figure out how much money you’ll need, and (2) buy enough zero coupon bonds that mature in 18, 19, 20 and 21 years to fund that amount.  If you need, say, $100,000 in 18 years, you can buy $100,000 U.S. Treasury Zeros today at about 42.  This way, you’ll write a check for $42,000 and know that in 2027 when your son or daughter becomes a freshman, the bonds will mature at $100,000.  Do the same thing for each year, and as that guy says on late night TV, “Set it and forget it.”  The higher rates go, the cheaper the bonds will get, so be sure to schedule your baby’s delivery when rates are really high.
• Hannah Garrett was astute enough to be born in 1991 when Treasury rates were about 8%.  At that time you could buy $100,000 of zeros for about $31,000.  This was one insightful baby, and her college bonds start maturing this year.  This is all thanks to Tuttlenomics.
• We were on a local freeway yesterday when traffic came to a halt.  Maybe 20 feet away was a downed motorcycle, with the motorcyclist sprawled dead on the freeway. Things like this are disturbing on many levels and remind us of how fleeting life can be.

· In an act of great charity, the FDIC has stopped issuing Cease & Desist orders.  They think it scares the public!   Instead, the kinder, gentler FDIC will now call them Consent Orders.  This, of course, is because the opening sentence has the Board of Directors signing a document in which they consent to receive a C&D.  People, a Board consenting to a Cease & Desist Order is like a man on death row consenting to a lethal injection.  And the best part (we’re being sarcastic) is that if you appeal it, it will be called a C&D and not a Consent Order.  Is this a great regulator, or what?· Did you know that at California banks under $100 million, only 25% of all CEO’s have their country club dues paid for by the bank?  If the bank is over $1 billion, 83% have their dues paid for.  This should make it obvious where you want to work.    At the smaller banks (under $100 million) the average CEO salary is $192,000. At a billion it goes to $482,000.· And what about Chief Financial Officers?  At banks under $100 million, the average salary is $131,000.  Once you get over $1 billion, it goes to $259,000. Quite seriously, higher salaries with increased size often, in our view, could be a very real reason why bankers grow their banks.· But what about Board members? Why would they want to see a bigger bank? At under $100 million, only 13% of the banks pay Director Fees, at an average of about $290 per meeting.  Once you get to $1 billion, fees go to about $1,080 per meeting.· Do you ever feel overwhelmed with reading material?  Pre-internet and e-mail, you read your daily newspaper, maybe 2-3 magazines a week, and the rest of the time was reserved for reading books. Now, you start the day with 100 e-mails, blogs, stuff people send you, etc, etc. etc.  You really need to fight to have time for books, but there’s really nothing quite like having a perfect book you can’t wait to pick up and read.  We’re re-reading An American Tragedy, and it’s that kind of book.· Forty years ago on Sunday, President John Kennedy was assassinated while on a motorcade in Dallas .  Strangely, Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis both died that same day.  Both were enormously popular writers, but their obituaries were very small stories buried in the back pages.  If you have to die, it’s useful to do it on a day when there isn’t much else happening in the news.
· A long. long time ago we wrote down the ten things we thought people should learn from going to school: (1)  Discipline and perseverance, (2)  tolerance and compassion (3)  how to make friends (4) honesty  (5) courage to deal with the unknown  (6)  curiosity  (8)  ability to have fun   (9)  introspection  (10)  taking responsibility for your actions  (11) a love of reading and (12) a sense of history.  And long after you’ve forgotten what a cosine is or how to conjugate French verbs, won’t these lessons still be with you?· And isn’t it amazing that Google, which didn’t exist as recently as 1997, generated $22 billion of revenue last year?  This is the sort of thing that makes us so optimistic about our nation’s future. When people worry about what America will do, now that we’re not really a manufacturer anymore, the answer is “No one knows, but no one knew that Google would come along when it did.”  As long as we have entrepreneurs, the profit motive will continue to create new businesses that create jobs and wealth.· And how about that Manny Pacquiao?  Have you ever seen a tougher boxer?  He goes out and beats the hell out of Miguel Cotto, sending Cotto to the hospital, then goes to a nightclub where he performs late into the morning with his band.  We saw Oscar de la Hoya in a few fights and never saw someone as tough, but Pacquiao beat the absolute stuffing out of him a few months back.  This guy Pacquiao just might be a smaller version of Muhammad Ali.· When we wrote about the types of risk financial institution faced, we got a ton of suggestions. We can’t go into them all here for lack of space, but thanks, Peggy, Herb and the rest of you who wrote in with your thoughts on risk management.· We waste lots of time looking up statistics on the Oakland A’s, even when they were in Kansas City or Philadelphia , so here’s a doozy.  On April 22, 1959, the White Sox held an 8-6 lead over the A’, but they went on to score 11 runs on only 1 hit in the 7^th!  That inning featured one single, two players reaching base on errors (plus an additional error), a bases-loaded hit batsman, and 10 walks, 8 of them with the bases loaded.  The A’s outfielder that day was Roger Maris who was probably so disgusted that he decided then and there to get traded away, preferable to the Yankees.· What’s up with TARP? The government has invested $204 billion in banks, has been paid back $71 billion, and has received $10 billion in interest and dividends.· What would happen if you lost your Blackberry, i-Phone or cell phone?  We’d suggest typing up your name, your e-mail address and home or office phone number and then taping it to all these devices.· Here’s the most amazing short surfing video you’ll ever see.  Skip the intro button on the bottom and get right to it.  It’s a 40-50 foot wave, maybe from Mavericks: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4684/amazing_wave_surfing/· We just finished the Due Diligence involving a $2.0 billion mid-west bank buying a mortgage banking company.  We covered finance, operations, secondary marketing, systems, and countless sub-areas, along with due diligence on their servicing portfolio.  One of the main attractions to the bank was that the servicing department has $25 million in DDA impounds.· We just saw the perfect movie, perfect in that it’s perfect for a first date, a last date, college kids, a married couple, a father and his daughter, a son and his mother, you and your grandmother, people with tattoos and piercings, and people disgusted by tattoos and piercings.   It’s Forget Paris starring Bill Chrystal.  Very hilarious, sweet, romantic, and very engaging.  See you next week, maybe once before Thanksgiving.Garrett, Watts & Co.  Helping mortgage lenders increase revenues, control costs, and better manage risk.

• Corky Watts         408-497-3135
• Joe Garrett         510-469-8633   
• Mike McAuley      281-250-2536

Forbes CMO Network, An Insightful Resource For Marketing Leaders
I’m serving CMOs by teaming up with the Forbes as a regular contributor. My goal? To guide marketing leadership on how to leverage disruptive technologies and meet business goals.   At a more detailed level, this blog will continue to aim at providing nitty-gritty breakdowns, frameworks, and insights.  Use these two resources in tandem to both develop strategies, and then implement best practices across the organization.

[Companies Must Develop A Holistic Strategy, As Social Technologies Impact Every Customer Touchpoint]

Social Technologies are a Horizontal –Not A Vertical Approach
It continues to amaze the market that such simple social technologies can impact the entire organization.  In fact, social technologies, at the core, allow people to connect to each other without a middle person in the way.  As a result, expect social technologies to impact every employee and customer touchpoint.   CMOs must prepare in their 2010 planning how to leverage social, not as a skunkworks but as a strategic shift in all communications.

Three Resources to Use:

1. Use the Forbes CMO article as a guide for your marketing leadership, pass along this article “CMOs: Consumers Are Connected. You Need To Be, Too”.
2. Below, use the detailed matrix (and the links within them) for the strategists who need to plan out the actual programs.
3. Leave a comment with other suggestions, and benefit from working with the very savvy Web Strategy community, who I learn from every single day (thank you).

Web Strategy Matrix:  Social Technologies Impact Every Customer Touchpoint

Medium	Description and Examples	Market Maturity	Impacts To Brands
Digital Advertising	Facebook launched “Social Ads” that allow advertisements to appear based on your profile information and friends.	Infantile	As profiles become portable (like Facebook or Google connect) people can share their personal info for contextual experiences, expect advertising to improve CTRs as social data is added.  See how an interactive ad benefitted from my Facebook data.
Search Marketing (Paid and SEO)	For years, bloggers heavy linking and frequent content have scored high on SERP pages. Recently, Google and Microsoft partnered with Twitter, to offer “Social Search” which means users could received customized SERP based on their friends behaviors and preferences.	Pre-Teen	Social search will impact a prospects search results are impacted by their friends, this complicates the traditional search marketing strategy of simple keyword placement. Conversational marketing becomes a key factor in search strategy. Learn more about Social Search.
Email Marketing	Many email vendors like Responsys, ExactTarget, Constant Contact and Zeta Interactive provide simple ways to “share this” email with their friends on social networks. More advanced vendors are offering advanced monitoring, and innovative companies like Flowtown are using email addresses to identify a prospects social networks	Infantile	Email marketers can no longer be in broadcast mode, but must be prepared for emails to be shared with each other. Furthermore, they should seek how to influence content on the newsfeed in social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn.  Learn how email and social networks are interlaced.
Web Campaigns/Microsites	Traditional microsites now have social components from simple “Share this” features to viral videos and community dialog. On the extreme side, Skittles allowed the whole site to be taken over by consumers.	Adult	A marketing campaign today without social elements is asking to be ignored. To benefit from word of mouth, marketers know spurring a conversation will cause the campaign to spread.
Corporate Site	Corporate sites are integrating social features, From Community Platforms like Mzinga, Awareness, Pluck, Kickapps, Liveworld (client) they encourage customers to talk back.	Young Adult	Even if companies don’t want their website to be social, they can’t stop it. Google’s “SideWiki” product allows any webpage to be social using a browser plugin.
Mobile, Location Based	Location based social networks are quickly emerging among early adopters. Foursquare, Gowalla, and even Twitter are allowing people to share their location, time, and social context.	Infantile	Advertising and special offers becomes more targeted as brands can triangulate contextual information for consumers –but only if they desire to see it.
Sales Efforts	Ok, this isn’t a medium, nor the two listed below, but it impacts the scope of the CMO. Most marketers provide sales enablement resources, now these sales folks are armed with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. In fact, many sales folks have had their digital rolodex in LinkedIn for years.	Young Adult	For savvy marketers, providing social marketing skill training to sales folks will provide them with best practices, and teach them to do more quicker. Those that do nothing run the risk of PR nightmares and even legal problems for the untrained department. Learn about social media policies.
Support Efforts	What happens in customer support now echos on the social web, from Dooce’s flare up with Maytag to Domino’s Employees snotting on Youtube.  Furthermore, customers self-support each other in forums, Facebook, and GetSatisfaction.	Adult	Marketers must provide a holistic experience to customers, as they don’t care what department you’re in.  Read more about Social Support.
Product Development	A handful of savvy companies like Dell, Starbucks, and Nokia are using social tools to improve the innovation process using tools from Salesforce ideas, Uservoice, or Getsatisfaction	Infantile	Customers want to innovate with brand, use these free resources to improve brand messaging, test new features, and to develop an army of advocates.  Learn how some companies have benefitted from co-innovation.
Real World and Events	Physical events are now impacted by social technologies, and even virtual events.  Attendees will connect to each other, comment about the event, and discuss if even after the event has concluded.	Adult	Event marketers must develop a strategy to encompass both pre, during, and post event to be successful.  Here’s a playbook to integrate social and events.

Sharing This Content
Occasionally, I get a few emails from people asking if they can use my blog posts in their presentations. Here’s my policy: You cannot package up this content and sell it without my permission. However, it is ok to use for educational purposes as long as you give me credit on the slide, mention it verbally, and link to my blog. Creative Commons defines this as: Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Love to hear your comments below, and how social impacts all digital channels.

Thanks to Christine Tran, Altimeter Researcher for her editorial expertise on the Forbes piece.

Filed under: Technology, Ferrari, Rumormill

As if scissor doors, gullwings, butterflies and those crazy Koenigsegg pivoters weren’t enough to separate exotics from lesser cars, Ferrari is said to be working on another new door design that is both radical and practical. Go figure.

Autocar came across a patent filing showing a few diagrams depicting this unique door setup. What sets it apart is the fact that the new Ferrari door includes part of the front fender and hinges upward like the butterfly door from a LeMans racer. Apparently the opening is large enough and shaped in such a way that “occupants can place their foot directly behind the front wheel.”

According to the patent application, that will make ingress and egress much easier for passengers in low-slung supercars, though the new door design is said to work just as well on front engined cars as it does for vehicles with their engines mounted aft or amidships. Even better, this design and its unique hinges are reported to be “easy and cost-effective to make,” which should make it easier for the Dodge Chargers of SEMA circa 2012 to get in on the fun too.

We’re still seeing an issue with the A-pillar and windscreen, but it looks interesting. We’ll be sure to keep an eye out for any photos of these funky doors, but for now we’re stuck wondering how hard it was for Ferrari engineers to use the supplied British sports car diagram in order to submit their application form.

[Source: Autocar]

REPORT: Ferrari working on radical new door opening originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Star Trek and Transfromers: Revenge of the Fallen headline this week’s Video Store update, backed by a mob of blood-drenched killers — Hitman, the un…

 

One top ex-secondary guy wrote to me and said, “Things I sort of miss hearing in mortgage banking: “What are rates gonna do tomorrow?” “Why is IndyMac a point better than we are?” Anything associated with “Did you hear what they said on CNBC this morning…….?” “How come I’m losing money on the hedge?” And “See that rep over there? We ended up naked in a hot tub at a conference back in ‘94.” I tell you, sometimes this commentary writes itself.

Right now, companies all over the US are talking about next Friday. Either the companies are closed, and the employees have the day off to go spur the economy, or companies are open. Those that are open may have low seniority people at the desks, or people who don’t care about taking the day off and would rather “bite the bullet” and come in for the day after Thanksgiving. US Postal service is in effect, and therefore it counts as a rescission day. But lock desks, and loan sales, will slow down next week with the holiday coming up.

Maybe folks are out there thinking about their upcoming holiday parties, assuming lay-offs have not been too dramatic and they’re actually going to have one. So here is one for you men out there: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8367141.stm

Will the jumbo market ever come back? I, for one, believe that it will. Obviously many banks offer the product through their retail branches – it earns them a very nice spread versus their cost of deposits. Things are a little iffier through the correspondent channel, but moving in the right direction. Chase, for example, offers non-agency product to eligible Chase clients.

More news about Chase, GMAC Correspondent, D.R. Horton, Suntrust, stock and bond markets, more on short sales, and joke of the day <<< CLICK HERE

CONTACT:
Laura Henderson (202) 621-2947
Patrick Creighton (202) 621-2951

Washington, DC – In anticipation of President Barack Obama’s return from Asia, the free-market Institute for Energy Research (IER) today released and delivered a policy brief for the president and his advisors on China’s booming energy economy and growth.

Thomas J. Pyle, president of IER, issued this statement:

“By all accounts, the president’s trip to Asia was a successful one, and we welcome him home. However, it’s critical to highlight the commonsense energy policies that China is pursuing. Because of China’s aggressive pursuit for affordable, reliable and secure energy – of all forms – their nation continues to be one of the world’s most powerful economic engines. And our team of experts have prepared a compelling outline of ways the U.S. can learn from China and once again make energy a top priority in this country.

“China is manufacturing coal-fired power plants by the week, nuclear plants every few months, the largest hydro-electric dams on earth, windmills and solar panels for export, and securing up oil and gas reserves around the world. They understand that affordable energy is key to economic activity, growth and prosperity.

“Unfortunately, policymakers in Washington are working to increase the cost of energy and limit access to our most affordable resources while others work tirelessly to shut down our nation’s power plants, regardless if it results in the loss of jobs and higher energy costs. Litigation and inaction from federal bureaucracies continues to delay responsible offshore energy exploration. And while China is deploying next generation nuclear technologies, our government continues to say no to low-carbon nuclear energy.

“We hope someday that expensive and unreliable alternative and renewable energy forms can exist in the market place without significant taxpayer assistance and government mandates. And we hope the president reads this paper with an open mind.”

NOTE: Click HERE to view the briefing paper sent to the President today.

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Filed under: Earnings/Financials, Tesla, Electric

Rumors about Tesla’s plan to go public have been circulating since 2008, but a down stock market seemed to put a damper on the start-up’s IPO. Now, the word on the street from Reuters is that Tesla is planning to go public “soon.” When might that be, exactly? Who knows. A source told Reuters it could happen “any day,” but Stephan Dolezalek, managing director of VantagePoint Venture Partners and a Tesla investor, said in September that it’s unlikely to happen in 2009.

For its part, Tesla continues to offer little guidance on the report other than to dismiss it as “rumor or speculation.” We shall see…

[Source: Reuters]

REPORT: Tesla Motors planning IPO “soon” originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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(This guest post originally appeared at the oil drum, and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License)

One of the features of many models that are used to predict future events is that they focus on target years. Decadal years are the most common target years, so that whether talking of climate or the amount of oil or natural gas available, models focus on, for example, the amount that will be available in 2030. The problem with this approach is that it leaves the public to think that a problem is not yet serious. For example if the prediction is that the production of oil will only be 75 mbd, in 2030 then there is an implication that until 2030 that the situation will remain fine.

However the world does not reach those levels by continuing in the business as usual mode for the next 21 years, and then suddenly have production drop off a cliff one Friday night. Rather it is a problem that inexorably will grow, year on year, between now and then. I was struck by this thought as I looked through the latest comments from CERA/IHS on their view of the future of oil supply. Their view, as we have come to expect, is an optimistic one, and though we are not still living in the days of $30 oil that they had, at one time predicted, it is worth looking into so as to provide some explanation of the difference between their view and mine.

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See Also:

• Why CERA Thinks Peak Oil Is Total BS
• Developed Countries’ Oil Demand Already Peaked Back in 2005 — CERA
• Peak Gold: Yearly Gold Production Is Now On A Permanent Downwards Slope

This sounds familiar .

Felix Salmon: What are the consequences of allowing multi-billion-dollar systemically important multinational corporations to report their assets using proprietary mark-to-model tools involving discredited Monte Carlo simulations? I think we all know the answer to that one. But unbelievably, after such shenanigans contributed enormously to the greatest financial meltdown in living memory, the SEC is now set to allow more or less exactly the same thing in the oil industry.

Otto points to a stunning report by oil consultant Alan von Altendorf which spells it all out. Up until now, oil companies needed to actually prove they had reserves before they reported proven oil reserves. Now, however, the SEC is allowing them to use internal, proprietary computer models to essentially pull their “proven reserve” numbers out of thin air (or the nearest friendly Monte Carlo simulation).

We’re not quite as appalled as Felix is — for one thing, oil companies don’t pose systemic risk the same way as financial companies, so just because you can draw a line between overuse of models and the financial blowup, it doesn’t mean we’ll suffer similar repercussions if these models turn out to be total BS.

And, of course, models are useful, and frequently better than actual counting (see: the census controversy)

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See Also:

• Oil Traders Get Even More Bullish On Oil
• Roubini: 10 Reasons The Recovery Will Be U-Shaped
• Asia, Europe, Oil, Gold Keep Climbing