Time to Diversify Out of China?

So, according to this columnist, it sounds like much of the stellar returns Chinese companies have been showing are from investment returns, rather than actual business operations, and also some shady accounting practices.

Much of the stellar growth in Chinese corporate earnings has been generated by the rise in stock values because many companies have invested heavily in the market rather than core businesses.

Yay! Is there any asset class that isn't approaching the peak of a bubble right now? I just recently saw a quote in the comments on Felix Salmon's blog:

Gold is for optimists. I'm diversifying into canned goods.

Seems like a good idea right now.

Update (2007-11-26 noonish): Fixed the source attribution on the Gold quote.

Jobs, Candidates and NAFTA

While checking out some diaries on dailykos, I noticed this item of interest which I'd apparently missed back in February: Hershey is shutting down some of it's production in Hershey, PA and sending 1,500 jobs to Mexico. That will reduce U.S. and Canadian production from 90% to 80%. This floored me and pissed me off.

It was probably that same diary that reminded me of how that fact dovetails into Hillary's laughing off the results of NAFTA.



Screw this Hillary shit. She is part of the problem.

Vote for Edwards.

Kelly from The Office Tours Scranton

Slideshow, via boston.com.


The reason I noticed it was because I was perusing this article about how Europeans on shopping holiday in weak dollar America might bail out the retailers this X-Mas season.

Aussies Vote Labor

John Howard's Liberal (Note: That's the name, but they are ideologically Conservative) party was voted out Saturday, at something like a 53-46 margin. Labor, headed by Kevin Rudd, is expected to get over 80 seats in the 150 seat lower house of Parliament.

Rob Griffith / AP

Without having followed the elections, it appears from my brief reading that John Howard was brought down by something similar to an "Abramoff scandal", as well as some employment policies that shifted a lot of power away from labor and towards employers.

It sounds like some Australians are taking quarrel with some lefty American bloggers citing Howard's close friendship with Bush as being a big factor in this election, suggesting that Americans need to get over ourselves. As such, I shall avoid making any such observations.

Tangential question, from the msnbc article cited above: Why do news agencies insist on referring to situations like this as "a humiliating defeat"? The Liberals still got 46% of the votes. It's just that more voters wanted them out than wanted them in. This is the nature of politics, and it's not clear to me why that should be considered humiliating. (I mention this even though from what news I've heard about JH, I'm quite pleased that his party got the boot.)

Cool Web Tools - CatalogChoice

Just heard about this today on NPR's All Things Considered - New web tool, CatalogChoice.

Basically, you sign up on this site, and tell them what catalogs you're receiving that you do not wish to receive, and they get you off the list. As the founder explained, this is especially helpful for catalogs that arrive for previous residents. In our current apartment, we regularly receive solicitations for about 3 previous residents.

At the moment, I don't have any catalogs from which I need to unsubscribe, but as soon as one arrives, I'm signing up.

Annoyances

I suddenly realize how much I hate sites that require cookies, but don't tell you which site you need to allow cookies from, in order to use them.

My 401(k) provider has a site, and I've tried enabling every obvious source domain combination in Firefox's Extended Cookie Manager extension, but I still can't seem to get it working. It's not even like this is a free content site that would make money putting ad-tracker cookies on my machine, so it makes no sense.

Proposal: Any web site/application which requires cookies should explicitly specify any and all cookie domains necessary for access.

First-hand Account of Pakistani Demonstrations

Via Boingboing, we are informed of this blog post from a Pakistani journalist who was involved in a protest over Musharraf's takeover, and their subsequent police beatdown and arrest.

The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) and the Karachi Union of Journalists (KUJ) had called for a peaceful demonstration at 03:00 Tuesday (yesterday) outside the Karachi Press Club. The purpose was to demand the freedom of the Press, etc. Please note, all of us were totally unarmed, while the police surrounding the area were in complete riot gear with shields and motey dandey and bulletproof vests, helmets, knee pads, and whatnot. The entire area around the press club had been cordoned off.

The moment the rally got out of the Press Club, we were attacked (yes, "attacked") by the policemen. There was a LOAD of brutal baton-charging, and one policeman hit ARY's Aajiz Jamali so hard on his back with the shield, that the shield broke in two. :-S Women and men were hit indiscriminately and very VERY brutally -- yes I can emphasize that enough. I'm skinny -- I crawled around and got out unhurt, but a lot of other people were seriously injured. Everyone ran back towards the press club. Some of our office bearers and senior people had been picked up.

Coincidentally, the preznit just made some comments on his buddy in an interview just last night:

Bush said that Musharraf hasn’t yet “crossed the line” and insisted Musharraf has “advanced democracy in Pakistan.”

Ah, yes...Freedom is on the march. Sigh...

Technorati Tag: pakistan

NPR and "Balanced Opinions"

The other day on NPR, they presented a story which left me wondering what possibly qualified it as newsworthy. It appears to be the direct result of the active Republicanization of NPR.

Basically, it was about an informational roadshow going around the country since 2005 attempting to sustain the misunderstanding of the crises facing Medicare and Medicaid, and conflate those with the modest potential problems facing Social Security.

Dean Baker commented on it that day, and did his usual fine job of analyzing the core message of the Road Show.

However, he raised a point that's been bothering me about NPR's reporting lately. During this particular segment, they attempted to illustrate the road show's bipartisan creds, by explaining that its participants include a member from "the conservative Heritage Foundation" and one from the "left-leaning Brookings Institution". They've been doing this a lot lately, pairing up Heritage and Brookings to present "both sides of the story".

The reason this portrayal is complete bullshit: Brookings, despite whichever way their particular policy recommendations may lean, is an "Independent" institution. The Heritage Foundation, by contrast, has a core mission of promoting conservative public policies.

Thus, typical of modern media procedures, the pairing of an active partisan advocate with a representative of an independent think tank becomes "balance". Our "Liberal Media" - nay, the ultimate bastion of Our Liberal Media - still can't manage to get an actual liberal partisan involved in the dialogue.

Unsurprisingly, the conclusions drawn by the participants seem to suggest that we must make "tough political choices". In case you haven't been following the debate, the "tough choice" is not "raise taxes", it's "reduce benefits".

Less surprisingly, it appears that our representative from the left-leaning Brookings Institution, Douglas Elmendorf, has been beating the "Social Security is in Crisis" war drums for some time now.

So, let's just recap...thanks to the magic of our modern political climate, "Both Sides of the Story" is comprised of the conservative side, and the right of center side. Thank you, Our Liberal Media.

Update: Just before I posted this, I decided to google "left-leaning brookings institution". Clearly, I'm not the first person to make this observation. However, I took way too much time writing this post, so it's going up anyway, dammit!

Technorati Tags: npr, Liberal Media, left-leaning brookings institution

Catchin' up on some housecleaning

Here are some videos I've been meaning to put up.

CollegeHumor presents the lost pilot for "24" from 1994. I love the hair, but I'd say it looks more like '97 to me. (Thanks, Geo!)



Also, some of the writers from The Daily Show put together a clever analysis of the issues behing the writers' strike.



Enjoy!

Feingold Comes Swinginig on FISA Telco Immunity

In hindsight, I'm actually glad that the Russinator didn't run for Prez. He still drops the law without pandering to "The Center"

The Senator from the great State of Wisconsin brings the 2x4 to the fistfight on FISA Telco Immunity.

Feingold says: Hell, no! No immunity for lawbreakers.

Thank you very much, Senator.

No. Retroactive. Immunity. for Lawbreakers, Period!

The Senator proves once again why he is "The Only Senator That Matters", dammit!

Legend of a Cowgirl

Imani Coppola...Awesomeness from the past.......

I actually have this as a cassingle, never saw the video until tonight.

Local ties for spending bill veto

Whoa what's this? Disgustedem (yes, that lapsed blogger Disgustedem) is making a post? You betcha.

On Tuesday 11/13 Preznit Bush vetoed a $606 billion spending bill due to what he calls "pork" earmarks. Well as TP notes most of these are from Republican requesters:

However, much of the “pork” Boehner complained about was requested by Republicans. Aside from the “National Programs and Activities,” the single biggest earmark in the Labor-HHS-Education section of the bill belongs to Sen. Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., who won $9.3 million for the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. The second-largest was requested by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. — $8.4 million for the University of Louisville Research Foundation.

Read it here: http://thinkprogress.org/2007/11/14/bush-mcconnell-shelby-earmarks/

Also today there is this well timed Times article which goes into detail of the local repercussions the veto has: http://thinkprogress.org/2007/11/14/bush-mcconnell-shelby-earmarks/

While it appears this money is still possible when did Chimpy start becoming so fiscally conservative? Oh ya - this money isn't for Iraq.

Outsourcing Bargain, Doh!

The other day my friend, (and lapsed contributor to this blog) disgutedem, picked up a bunch of stocks in one of the big Indian outsourcing firms. From our uninformed perspective, it was a reasonable hedge against the possibility of having our jobs outsourced to them.

Also, on the day he was buying it, there was still Street cred for the argument that "techs aren't as exposed to subprime."

Today, Kedrosky points out that the big Indian outsourcers are rather heavily exposed to the "It's-cheap-for-a-reason" financial sector.

The race to the bottom continues apace!!!!!!!

Radiohead covers Smiths via BigPicture

Huh! I normally go to The Big Picture for witty economic commentary, not music, but it's becoming increasingly clear that Barry R. and I share some similar tastes.

From BP, Radiohead doing a pretty album-faithful cover of The Smiths "The Headmaster Ritual". I don't even want to start a Johnny-vs.-Johnny guitar conversation.

Basic summary: One of my favorite post-college bands covers one of my favorite "college/high school bands". Effin'-Ay right!

Update (2007-11-16): Ha! I just watched this vid again and apparently, Johnny has decided he ain't allowing any more frontal shots unless they're from the guitar-up and neck-down on a crappy webcam. As someone who tends to look crappy in photos, I applaud this move. As a band geek who wants to watch him play, I'm disappointed by the quick cut edits. Yay/boo!

Pakistan becomes a dictatorship

So on Fri/Sat, Pakistan's President declared a state of National Emergency, and suspeded the constitution, based largely on the threats of:

an Islamic militant movement that has spread from border regions to the capital and an increasingly defiant Supreme Court, which was expected to rule soon on the validity of his recent presidential election win. Hearings scheduled for next week were postponed, with no new date set.

A general consensus suggested that this was a move towards dictatorship, and less concerned with national threats.


Not surprisingly, today, the military and police rounded up political activists. The Pakistani-friendly U.S. Government was understandably rendered egg-faced on the subject.

UFS pimpin' out snoopy to the interns

Okay, I just got this Metlife ad on the sidebar of my yahoo financial pages. Now, I am admittedly a purist, but this Snoopy artwork appears to have been done by a moderately promising intern in MS Paint.

WTF? Are there no standards anymore? Can't the United Features Syndicate afford Photoshop for their licensed images? Line weight, anyone?

Free Jammie Thomas

In case anyone doesn't know, Jammie Thomas is the person who was sued by the RIAA for uploading 24 songs on Kazaa. Ultimately, this story is about the RIAA turning their business model into a "Sue people for screwing up our failed money-making scheme" versus a "Figuring out how to adapt our business model to give people what they want"

The RIAA was awarded (depending on the article, the exact dollar amount is not clear) approximately $220,000. I'll save you the trouble of doing the math...that's over $9,000 per song.

I haven't followed the story closely, but it sounds like this case was won under questionable circumstances. It's also not clear to me, the casual observer, whether she actually admitted to sharing the songs or not.

She's fighting the ruling on the grounds that the damage amount is unconstitutional. I don't know if she's got a legal leg to stand on, but my sense is that -whether or not she was actually guilty of the crime- the punishment is completely out of line with the magnitude of the offense.

Here's the page for freejammie.com, the proceeds of which are allegedly going to her legal fees for the motion to overturn.

wikipedia entry (not terribly informative)
wired blog post

Secret History of LOLCats

Courtesy of Attack of the Show, we learn that - contrary to popular opinion - LOLCats predate the Internet by quite some time. I'm peeing myself laughing...and ceiling cat is watching me do so.

The History of LOLCats - Watch more free videos

Siouxie Sue - Kiss them for me

The reason we saw the first Lollapalooza twice was because Siouxsie had a throat thing the first time.

Cherub Rock - Smashing Pumpkins

For real, this time........


I recall these guys getting booed off the stage, at Rec Hall at PSU, because people wanted to see the opening band and headliners...Pearl Jam and the Chili Peppers, respectively..........