Paid Detail Unit

Unbelievable. For $37 / hour Wall Street bankers can hire a member of the NYPD, complete with gun, handcuffs and the legal authority to make arrests. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, Wall Street already owns Congress, the Fed, a private army is the next logical step. I worry about the Occupy Wall Street crowd, they may be in over their heads here...

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/who-really-owns-nypd-turns-out-its-no

To top it off these hired guns are indemnified by taxpayers. God forbid Wall Street be held responsible for their actions.

h.t. Big Picture

Remember Meredith Whitney?

Last year she predicting "hundreds of billions" in municipal bond defaults for 2011. So far she's waaay off, in the first half of the year there were $511 million of muni defaults. However that number is almost going to double today as Harrisburg filed for bankruptcy. Still a far cry from "hundreds of billions" but if it works out well for them maybe other heavily indebted municipalities will follow suit. There are certainly no shortage of those.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/12/harrisburg-bankruptcy-idUSN1E79B0DS20111012

Slovakia to the rescue

One of the smallest EU members has been in the spotlight recently. Slovakia is the only country that didn't approve expanded powers for the European Stability Fund. The leader of one of their parties explained his position as:

"How am I supposed to explain to people that they are going to have to pay a higher value-added tax (VAT) so that Greeks can get pensions three times as high as the ones in Slovakia?"

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,790577,00.html

I'm glad someone is willing to make the hard choices. Greece has to default. If the problem is too much debt the solution isn't more debt. Of course the Germans and French will get their way somehow, but perhaps this will inspire others.

RIP Steve Jobs

Only Steve's own words are fitting here. From his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford:

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on."

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

Google - really cool or really scary?

Interesting line from an article I just read about Google:

"We are not Google’s customers, we are its product. We – our fancies, fetishes, predilections and preferences – are what Google sells to advertisers."

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n19/daniel-soar/it-knows

Its incredible how much data Google must have on me and everyone really. They know everything I've searched for online, everything I've looked at on my phone, all my email, they have maps of the entire world (with pictures!) and all the location based data they're collecting from my phone. On top of that they're working on getting access to every book in the world, building self driving cars and who knows what else - recording every conversation across the globe? Their business isn't search, its data. Maybe they'll even figure out how to automate the process of analyzing the data... in that case I should look into a new career. I wonder if Google is hiring...

h.t. MR

So about that income tax hike

The personal income tax in Illinois went up from 3% to 5% this year, the corporate tax went up from 4.8% to 7%. Tough pill to swallow but I guess everyone needs to chip in to keep the state solvent... or so I thought. This one line was just depressing. "Illinois' financial condition continues to worsen, though arguably not as quickly as before." The state is still facing an over $8 billion deficit this year.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20110926/NEWS02/110929908/illinois-going-deeper-into-debt-despite-tax-hike-civic-federation-says-greg-hinz

But in the grand scheme of things an $8 billion hole in a $117 billion budget isn't too bad. That is of course until you consider all the underfunded pensions and other off the book liabilities. Greece appeared to be in pretty good shape when they had Goldman Sachs cooking their books...

But what really scares me is the city's deficit, $650 million deficit from a $3.2 billion budget - a 20% hole. Can you imagine the city cutting 20% of spending on everything?

California and collective delusions

Over the past few years Michael Lewis has written some of the best articles out there about the financial crisis. His latest on California is excellent as well:

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/11/michael-lewis-201111

The overarching theme is that we (the West) have developed into a society that sacrifices the future for the sake of immediate gratification. Until we reverse this attitude this financial crisis won't end, no amount of monetary or fiscal stimulus will help. If the problem is too much debt the solution isn't more debt.

Also this article made me really like Schwarzenegger.