BetonSports Clients Still Don't Have Their Money

Shades of Refco in this collapse. The US gov't has no incentive at all to help - consider it the cost of disobeying a too powerful State:

BetonSports PLC, the London-based Internet gambling company barred from doing business in the U.S., owes money to at least 4,863 customers and cannot repay any of them because of an Antiguan court order, its lawyers say.

Betonsports can't comply with a November directive by U.S. District Judge Carol Jackson in St. Louis that it return the money because the funds are controlled by the company's Antigua subsidiary, which is subject to the authority of courts in that Caribbean nation, attorney Jeffrey Demerath said in papers filed with Jackson Wednesday

Legalized Internet Gaming in New York

A buried NY Post article has the details, so far, just for horses:

Racing and Wagering Board yesterday issued guidelines for internet wagering in N.Y. State, which becomes legal Jan. 22. NYRA is optimistic it will have its internet betting system up and running by that target date, according to COO Bill Nader, while NYCOTB president Ray Casey expects to be operational by end of month.

Wisdom of the Crowd for Search Rankings - Business Week

The founder of Wikipedia plans to take on the giant by offering search results that tap the knowledge of people across the Web

The new search engine will rely on the support of a volunteer community of users. The idea is that Web surfers and programmers will be able to bring their collective intelligence to bear, to fine-tune search results and make the experience more effective for everyone. "If you search in Google, a lot of the results are very, very good and a lot of the results are very, very bad," says Wales. What that shows, Wales says, is that mathematical formulas alone do not produce consistently relevant results. "Human intelligence is still a very important part of the process," he says.
…
When a user performs a search on Wikiasari, the engine will return results based on a formula akin to Google's own Page-Rank system, which determines relevance by counting the number of times other Web pages link to a specific page, among other things. Unlike Google, however, users will then be able to reorder the results based on which links they find most useful by selecting an edit function.

The article doesn’t mention how they will prevent gaming the system. Wikipedia doesn’t give a financial incentive to manipulate pages – this will.

It’s like raaaaaiiiiin on your wedding day…

From NYT:

Mr. Boone, who is African-American and serves on the board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
...

Mr. Boone said, “To have someone refer to other black people as ‘colored,’ what does that teach your child about race?”

Shaun Donovan Lies About Housing

...referring to the mayor’s plan to create or preserve 165,000 units of lower-priced housing by 2013. “No other single change that we will make, or new policy, will have as broad an impact.”

Except getting rid of rent controls.

Comrade Bloombergs Statism machine rolls on. Him and the rest of them think that affordable housing is the result of legislative fiat. Not that it every worked previously:

The 421-a program, which costs the city hundreds of millions of dollars a year in forgone tax revenue, was begun in the 1970s to spur housing development. Under the program, developers could get a 10- to 15-year exemption from the increase in taxes that resulted from their work...

When the real estate market in Manhattan revived in the 1980s, the program was modified to require developers in central Manhattan to build lower-cost units if they wanted the tax break.

The same initiative failed in the 70's, it failed in the 80's and it will fail again to provide anything but profit opportunities for the politically connected.

Also note the newspeak in the article - "affordable housing advocates" - which seems to be a euphemism for looter

Sarbanes - Unconstitutional? Yes Argues Ken Starr

Its own creator, Mike Oxley, said it was, "hastily written and enacted." In a WSJ Op/Ed Ken Starr says that it may be unconstitutional as well.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act powerfully illustrates the law of unintended consequences. Due to hasty drafting by Congress in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals, Sarbox has cost the U.S. economy over $1 trillion, according to one study published by the AEI-Brookings Center. To add insult to grievous injury, it is unconstitutional.
...
It is time to call Congress back, both to help our economy and reaffirm that our constitutional system imposes clear limits on the government's urgent desire to "do something." Congress must be reminded that the "solution" is at times worse than the problem.

Hillary and Obama – The French Connection

In 2002 French politician Le Pen surprised many when he captured 18 percent of the initial vote. The public was shocked since the polls showed him running much lower. The people didn’t want to admit voting for him - which is what the polls missed – but many believed in his nationalist platform.

The idea of an Obama and Clinton ticket is like that – people will publicly praise the idea but will vote the other way when it comes down to it.

Who wouldn’t want a minority and a female to lead the country? Well come on you aren’t some kind of RACIST are you?

Of course the Dems will vote for what ever fool is on the ticket (just like the Repubs) but the voters on the margin are who matter. Media hype doesn’t equal electability.

Basing too much on polls this early is a mistake.

Obama is inexperienced and a radical leftist – at this point no one really is talking about his track record – it’s an ugly one. As in ugly enough that even being a VP candidate is a long shot. Hillary Clinton is hated, even by people who aren’t very political. I don’t see why anyone would propose her for the top spot – she can’t win.

I will be shorting Obama but I think he may trade even higher. If Clinton wins the nomination I’ll short the dems.

Steve Sailer Blog

Watching him demolish legions of Gladwell fanboys on Gladwells own message board was hysterical. It was like watching Dawkins take on a "born again"

His blog is here: http://www.isteve.blogspot.com/ Great stuff, he has new and original idea on every single post.

Austrian Influence on Prediction Markets

I just like this article because it quotes Hayek. From Cnet:

In a 1945 paper, the great Austrian economist F.A. Hayek described how prices set by a free market are really "a mechanism for communicating information" about the probability of future events.

...Hayek's insight showed that the results can be surprisingly accurate, as long as enough people are allowed to wager real money on the outcome.

Now, technology firms are using a modern twist on this idea, called prediction markets, as a way to save money, harness the distributed knowledge of their rank-and-file employees...

More "Wisdom" From the Cultural Elite - Harvard Bigshots Sink Fund

I remember thinking how stupid it was for Harvard to get rid of fund manager Jack Meyer because he made too much money. He was the guru who made Harvard over 16% a year for 10 years while trading billions. Incredibly even that market beating return wasn’t enough for Harvard to keep him around.

The lamentations of the privileged were too much and Harvard brought on less well paid help to manage their $18 Billion endowment. They got what they paid for according to Bloomberg, “Harvard's return on its endowment fund slipped to 16.7 percent in the fiscal year ended June 30, the lowest in three years, and behind rivals Yale University and Stanford University.”

Unfortunately the article didn’t cover any of the important questions, like why do people still contribute a school that already is sitting on $18b?

More Market Freedom? – Regulatory Tide Turning

Remember when Trust Fund Baby Elliot Spitzer tried to shake down H&R Block for the crime of offering retirement accounts for the poor? It was hard to miss since it was front page news everywhere. You may have missed the fact that Spitzers abusive prosecution failed again becuase the only media play it got was the Wall Street Journal Op/Ed Page.

Trust Fund Baby Spitzer is leaving the AG post in disgrace (unfortunately he isn’t disappearing for good) after a long string of embarrassing losses. At the same time regulations from the post Enron era are being rolled back.

Paulson is going after Sarbox, and the “Justice” Department got smacked down yesterday with new restraints being put in place in response to the brutal Thompson Memo. From the NY Times:

Under the revisions, federal prosecutors will no longer have blanket authority to ask routinely that a company under investigation waive the confidentiality of its legal communications or risk being indicted. Instead, they will need written approval for waivers from the deputy attorney general, and can make such requests only rarely.

It may be too late. The US’s burdensome regulations helped London eat our lunch.

Comrade Bloomberg and Schumer say that are going to help. With friends like these…

Leach Clubbed by Poker Aces

Leach’s defeat is one of the few Republican losses tied directly to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. In today’s NY Post, The Poker Players Alliance takes credit:

The Poker Players Alliance last month set its sights on Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa), who steered the ban through the House. Leach, a longtime incumbent, ended up being one of the most unexpected casualties of the midterm elections, losing by 3 percentage points.

A Dirty Shame – US Drug Policy in Afghanistan

Afghanistan has agreed to poppy-spraying measures in a desperate bid to deflate the soaring drugs trade, America's anti-narcotics tsar announced at the weekend.

The move was urgently needed to prevent Afghanistan becoming a narco-state, said John Waters, the head of the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy. "We cannot fail in this mission." - The Guardian

The US tends to be a serial cry-baby about the drug trade but this latest move will be an even more embarrassing failure than usual.

The laughable failure of the US to control the drug flow even in our own prisons doesn’t stop the bold moves of declaring war on crops around the world. The opium trade is about 50% of the GDP of Afghanistan and the US has no ideas for alternatives to make up for it.

We addressed this earlier: Record Opium Crop

Eliminating supply drives up the price of the crop and the incentive to produce it. In other words the more the US can destroy, the better off they make the drug traffickers.

Potential spray victims may want to buy stock in Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, whose chemical Roundup is going to be used to destroy their property.

NFP

Economists' consensus - 110,000
CME Auction Market participants' consensus - 85,200

Once again there is divergence. The previous numbers had the CME estimate on the low side of the economist forecast with the CME numbers being closer to the actual.

US Gambling Firms to Offer Online Gaming

Its not moral here apparently but OK for them to do in Europe.

The US gaming industry is getting ready to re-enter the US market when online gambling is legal again. Step one was getting rid of the competition. Step two is what they are working on now- getting into the online gaming biz started in the UK. Its only a matter of time before they enter the US market. As LV Sands COO Bill Weider puts it,"As the Internet gaming landscape continues to evolve, this effort will put us in a strong position to evaluate and react to other potential opportunities."

They will be back here soon.

A Child or a Pet? - The Potential Sick World of Deaf Pedophiles

“We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one's own ego and one's own desires..” - Pope Benedict XVI

The New York Times yesterday reported on reverse eugenics. There people are really sick:

…some parents had the painful and expensive fertility procedure for the express purpose of having children with a defective gene. It turns out that some mothers and fathers don’t view certain genetic conditions as disabilities but as a way to enter into a rich, shared culture.

Here is an excerpt from a NY Times article about online pedophiles with the word pedophile changed to deaf. Identical arguments, same rational, pathological selfishness:

In that, Sonali was demonstrating what experts said is the most dangerous element of the deaf Internet community: its justification of illegal acts. Experts described the deafs' online worldview as reflective of ''neutralization,'' a psychological rationalization used by groups that deviate from societal norms.

In essence, the groups deem potentially injurious acts and beliefs harmless. That is accomplished in part by denying that a victim is injured, condemning critics and appealing to higher loyalties -- in this case, an ostensible struggle for the […]freedom of children.

Deafs see themselves as part of a social movement to gain acceptance of their attractions. The effort has a number of tenets: that [genetic defects] are beneficial to minors, that children are psychologically capable of consenting and that therapists manipulate the young into believing they are harmed by such encounters.

Comrade Michael Bloomberg: The myth of the “businessman politician” is long past its prime.

Exhibit A: Market hating statist Michael Bloomberg.

He somehow ran as a Republican, but he has all the traits of a Hollywood limousine liberal. Especially his hatred of property rights.

First there was the smoking ban. This sneaky piece of legislation was never mentioned by Napoleon during his campaign but managed to pass under the guise of health benefits. Property rights be damned, the State knows best for you.

At the time speculation that a smoking ban would open the doors to greater intervention in the citizens lives by banning other unhealthy substances was dismissed at unrealistic. But today it occurred as the NYC Board of Health voted to ban trans-fats in the city.

I didn’t know that I answered to the Board of Health for anything, but that doesn’t prevent them from VOTING away my rights. Bizarre.

One of Mikes favorite activities, besides the rape of property rights, is following in the steps of Rosie O’Donnell by walking around with several bodyguards and proclaiming his hatred of the 2nd Amendment. You’ll never reach the White House that way Bloomy!

His rowback on the stripclub shooting was amusing to. First he declared the cops guilty, and then the news came out about a 4th armed man in the car. Bloomy response, “We don't know what happened.” Thanks for that Mike! Next time you should find out the facts before you start obsequiously kissing up to the minority vote.

Just like Corzine, Bloomberg thinks because he is rich, he knows better than you do about how you should lead your life. And because he is rich he doesn’t suffer any of the consequences of his own stupidity.