95% of Britons Have Done This

Why have “95 percent of Britons…urinated, vomited or defecated in public”?






















As expected, Government idiocy is the cause. Their Disabilities act forced the closure of rest rooms. Furthermore, regulations are still in place, “which prevents local authorities for charging for men’s urinals.”

Gunpoint do-gooders have forced toilets to close and kept regulations in place that would permit opening of the new one. The Public Health committee has the gall to get indignant at the obvious results of the gov’t policy and states, “for…those with disabilities or health problems, the lack of public toilet facilities restricts their lives.” And what did they expect? What solution does their report recommend? Of course, more intervention of they type that got rid of the toilets in the first place is deemed the best solution.

95% of Britons have experienced the consequences of statist meddling; the authorities can’t even run a rest room correctly, why gives them control over anything important?

Easy To Use Weather Hedging Tool

Unlike most weather contracts, this site makes them easy to get estimates and really hedge against fluctuations. Forbes has an article on them here.

Their Tools section makes the estimates dead simple to do.
https://www.weatherbill.com/tools

Friedberg, 26, has an astrophysics degree from UC, Berkeley and left his job in business development at Google last summer to start Weatherbill. Now up to a staff of 12, he plans to open a U.K. branch and eventually sell contracts tailored for specific neighborhoods or remote locations using a $250 weather gauge.

Biggest flaw is that right now you can't hedge a Hawaii vacation, "no reliable weather stations there" is what they told me.

CBOT Standards of Success

The headline: CBOT Successfully Launches Dow Jones U.S. Real Estate Index Futures


The Numbers*:






*columns deleted for readability







Chart and headline from John Lothian - http://www.johnlothiannewsletter.com/

Another Prosecutorial Failure on Wall St

It makes good headlines to go after those rich Wall St guys but the charges almost never stick. These guys have a worse conviction rate than Spitzer.

“Chin held that while federal prosecutors proved that defendant David Finnerty engaged in interpositioning, they failed to prove fraudulent or deceptive conduct within the meaning of the securities laws.…Before Wednesday's ruling, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District had already dropped charges against seven of the defendants... Chin's decision "is a vindication" of Finnerty."

Finnerty was vindicated but the abusive prosecution already ruined his life. Where is the punishment for these state thugs who “provided no real evidence” of any crime but charged him anyway? Of the 15 traders charged, over half of them have had the charges dropped.

The game for the prosecutors is to make outrageous charges to get some headlines. Overcharge the traders so that they are looking at 120 year sentences if convicted to force the settlement. Since the prosecutors never had a case in the first place they have to rely on threats and bullying people into a settlement. If it falls through – who cares? They already got their headlines and disgraced the people that were charged anyway. Plus it worked for Spitzer.

It won’t be the last time.

Enron Case Falling Apart

Dealbreaker.com reports what we've been saying from the beginning:

Since the prosecution of former-Enron CEO Jeff Skilling, who is now serving a 24-year and four month jail sentence, also used the "honest services" theory, there has been some speculation that the court's decision might be a sign that it could overturn some of his convictions as well. When the fifth circuit court denied Skilling bail in December, it noted that there were "serious frailties" with his conviction on securities fraud and insider trading convictions.

The decision by the government not to appeal the fifth circuit ruling means that Skilling's appeal before the same court will be able to rely on ruling as controlling law. It may be too early for Skilling to pop the cork on the champagne. But it's probably not too early to start putting some on ice.

An Anon comment in the forums puts it perfectly, abusive law enforcement by state thugs the entire time:

The Enron prosecutions were/are characterized by perp walks, defamatory DOJ press conferences and unbridled use of witness intimidation, while the lynch mob never ceased to shout out its encouragement. You name the prosecutorial power/advantage, and it was abused. These prosecutions appears to be unraveling And if they do, perhaps the use of abuse will have been shown to be a dead end street, the “justice” in the criminal justice system more sturdy than it now appears. Of course, even then how to undo the damage done? As Skilling said, “good people have died.” Several fine men have spent and are spending time in prison on trumped up charges. Others are or will be imprisoned based on false, self-serving pleas. Yet folks like Rudy, who jumped started their careers with such abuse, seem to get along afterwards just fine. I going to listen to Abe's linked song again.

NY Times Gets [Another] F in Economics

In an article full of economic idiocy this paragraph is especially bad. :

The assumption was that tens of thousands of farmers who cultivated corn would act “rationally” and continue farming, even as less expensive corn imported from the United States flooded the market. The farmers, it was assumed, would switch to growing strawberries and vegetables — with some help from foreign investment — and then export these crops to the United States. Instead, the farmers exported themselves, partly because the Mexican government decided to reduce tariffs on corn even faster than Nafta required...

The Planners stick to script - IF ONLY those Mexicans learned to be rational it would have worked! With better planning NEXT time it will be different...

Bloomberg Bias

Odd crime comparison:

Rio de Janeiro state, with a population of 8 million, had 6,620 murders in 2005, or 42 per 100,000 people, according to recent government figures. That compares with a rate of 35.4 per 100,000 in Washington, D.C., according to 2005 figures from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The Washington DC (pop 580k) murder rate is 7x the national average - no where else even comes close.

Why not compare New York City a population of 8.1 million and a murder rate of 6.6 per 100,000?

Mayor Bloomberg Wimps Out

"His aim is not to make the people happy but to bring them into a condition which renders him, the dictator, happy. He wants to domesticate them, to give them cattle status. The cattle breeder also is a benevolent despot" - Mises

Socialist billionare Bloomberg flip-flopped today on his parking ticket stance and said the fines would be waived. Thanks Mike! Its good to know you can still relate to the masses.

He originally defended his stance with this, "I’d like to sleep in, too. But it was the right thing to do." Why does this guy think he has anything in common with people who work for a living?

Hedge Funds Fuel Weather Contract Growth

FromThe Economist:

The most common users are energy companies (or hedge funds trading energy risk), which account for 46% of the market. Many of them are hedging natural-gas prices that are very sensitive to warm or cold weather. Agriculture accounts for 12% of the derivatives market. This share could be bigger, but free government crop insurance in many countries has dampened demand. Aid agencies have also used weather derivatives to help poor countries cope with drought.

HOW ONLINE GAMBLERS SET LINE ON HOLLYWOOD - NY Post

Basically they google it and guess:

First, they scour the most popular entertainment Web sites, reading every fragment on the candidates' behavior.

Next, they do a Google search to scratch up more information and to try to get a feel for whether the information on each of the potential fathers is positive or negative, plausible or implausible.

Third, they do what's called a "blog pulse," seeing what those in the blogosphere are writing and what they might believe.

Prediction markets and the madness of crowds

Paul Murphy of ZDnet on Global Warming PMs:

Suppose, therefore, we list the claims made in each of the ten most cited articles appearing on realclimate.org during the first quarter of 2007 and sell a bundle of bets based on how many of these stories will have been substantially discredited by some deadline like April 1st, 2010.

Once we nailed down the details we'd have a bundle of eleven bets from which I would keep my "all ten" bet, trades my "zeros" to jtmodel for his tens, and hope to sell enough of the other nine to get as many more "all ten"s as I could.

The left (and neocons) have a long history of failed initiatives, I think even they aren't dumb enough to bet when they are so sure to lose.

Valentines Day in NYC

-On Valentines day in New York you can observe the value of roses decline as the night goes on. About three years ago I sat in a cafe and watched a deli for several hours. It had about 5 price changes through the night. This consisted of changing the handwritten sign on the roses. The longer you wait the better deal you get. One year I'll chart this for different places in the city to prove my theory downtown roses depreciate faster.

Bloomberg Posts Something Worth Reading

They took a break from their normal statist drivel to put out something worth reading. Definitely read the whole thing. - If Hedge Funds Kept Cows, Your Milk Would Go Sour :

Leveraged Buyouts

You have two cows. You come home from the fields one day to find Henry Kravis chatting to your spouse at the dining-room table. Two days later, you have no spouse, no farm, and no table. Two guys the size of sumo wrestlers have saddled up the cows and are riding them around the farmyard.

Currency Market

You have two cows. China has 1 trillion cows. Guess who sets the price of milk?

Bond Market

You have two cows. One is Brazilian, one is Australian. They yield 25 quarts of milk per day. That's half as much as three years ago, when you traded your less-lactiferous German and U.S. cows for them. You are thinking of swapping for a pair of Namibian cows. They only have three legs but, hey, they produce 26 quarts per day.

Derivatives

You have two cows. You repackage five of them into a Collateralized Lactating Obligation, pay for a AAA credit rating, slice the CLO into 10 pieces and sell it to investors, skimming the cream from the milk for yourself. Three of the cows fall ill, and the credit rating plummets. You get to keep the cream.

Roman Tax Collection Methods - Not Much Has Changed

From Lactantius's 'Of the Manner in Which the Persecutors Died':

Each spot of ground was measured, vines and fruit-trees numbered, lists taken of animals of every kind, and a capitation-roll made up… In default of all other evidence, men were tortured to speak against themselves; and no sooner did agony oblige them to acknowledge what they had not, but those imaginary effects were noted down in the lists. Neither youth, nor old age, nor sickness, afforded any exemption. The diseased and the infirm were carried in; the age of each was estimated; and, that the capitation-tax might be enlarged, years were added to the young and struck off from the old. General lamentation and sorrow prevailed.

After this, money was levied for each head, as if a price had been paid for liberty to exist; yet full trust was not reposed on the same set of surveyors, but others and others still were sent round to make further discoveries; and thus the tributes were redoubled, not because the new surveyors made any fresh discoveries, but because they added at pleasure to the former rates, lest they should seem to have been employed to no purpose. Meanwhile the number of animals decreased, and men died; nevertheless taxes were paid even for the dead, so that no one could either live or cease to live without being subject to impositions. There remained mendicants alone, from whom nothing could be exacted, and whom their misery and wretchedness secured from ill-treatment. But this pious man had compassion on them, and determining that they should remain no longer in indigence, he caused them all to be assembled, put on board vessels, and sunk in the sea. So merciful was he in making provision that under his administration no man should want! And thus, while he took effectual measures that none, under the reigned pretext of poverty, should elude the tax, he put to death a multitude of real wretches, in violation of every law of humanity.

January Non Farm Payroll

Economists' consensus: 160,000
CME Auction Market participants' consensus: 134,800
ADP: 152,000

The BLS's Birth/Death estimates will likely put this low. Here is what happened the last three months when the number came out:

Morons in Boston vs. The Cartoon Terrorists

The authorities are so incompetent they though an LED picture ad of a cartoon character was a bomb and ended up shutting down the city (after the “threat” had been there for two weeks). Instead of admitting their foolishness they Nifonged the creators of the ad with bogus charges and turned up the anti-terror rhetoric.

Of course the terrorists are now laughing at what a bunch of paranoid, overreacting sissies the US has become - which means they are accomplishing their goal.

Here is a partial list of MA people who aren't very smart:

Boston Police Commissioner Edward Davis called the stunt "unconscionable," while Boston Mayor Thomas Menino called it "outrageous" and the product of "corporate greed." Democratic Rep. Ed Markey, a Boston-area congressman, added, "It would be hard to dream up a more appalling publicity stunt."

My favourite quote is from AG Martha Coakley whose bomb training consisted of watching Speed in 1994:

"It had a very sinister appearance," Coakley told reporters. "It had a battery behind it, and wires."

Remember she is talking about a children's cartoon character.