Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Inflation Not A Threat

2 Comments

…yet. I think that there’s a typo here, though:

Some experts argue that Fed chief Ben Bernanke is simply replacing money annihilated in our economy’s “Great Deleveraging” and that he should print even more. Retired securities lawyer Frederick Feldkamp, a Michigan native, says the Treasury’s nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac alone erased $33 billion in bank capital. The Treasury inadvertently wiped out the two mortgage giants’ preferred stock, which hundreds of banks had held as core capital, and which was considered so safe that regulations let the banks leverage that capital by as much as 50 to 1 when making loans. Feldkamp reckons that when banks wrote off the $33 billion in preferred stock, support for about $1.65 billion in debt was erased — a significant credit contraction.

I think that’s supposed to be $1.65 trillion. $1.65 billion is seat-cushion change these days…

History, Humor, Popular Culture

BCS Declares Germany Winner Of WWII

8 Comments

This is pretty funny.

“Germany put together an incredible number of victories beginning with the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland and continuing on into conference play with defeats of Poland, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands. Their only losses came against the US and Russia; however considering their entire body of work — including an incredibly tough Strength of Schedule — our computers deemed them worthy of the #1 ranking.”

The US came in fourth, with only two victories — Germany and Japan.

It reminds me of the old joke that college football is the only sport where the champion is determined by drunks arguing in bars. Which is why they brought in the computers, I guess.

Business, Economics, Space, Technology and Society

Space Solar Power And Launch Costs

3 Comments

There’s a long piece in this week’s Economist on the current prospects for solar power satellites. It’s a pretty good overview, but has a few problems. First of all, it doesn’t mention lasers at all. This is particularly a large oversight when it comes to the discussion of military applications. If space-based power is used for military logistics, it’s unlikely that it will be of the microwave variety — the power density is far too low to be practical for many of the envisioned needs. Lasers are more likely (though they will still not be a cost-effective weapon, despite the paranoia of some who will oppose the concept).

Also, in the discussion on launch costs, they didn’t spend enough time discussing the suborbital route, though they mentioned it. And while there was never much prospect of Gene Myers launching ETs into orbit, the chance that it will happen now is essentially nil, so the discussion of Space Islands is (at best) anachronistic. A description of Bob Bigelow’s activities with his orbital facilities, which weren’t mentioned at all, would have been much more useful and relevant to the reader.

[Update a few minutes later]

There seems to be a push on to get the Obama administration to adopt SBSP as a new energy initiative. Given all the other energy alternatives they want to chase (wind, terrestrial solar, etc.) why not? Even if it doesn’t pan out, it could result in lower launch costs for other things, which (as the report points out) are a prerequisite.

Administrative

Blogroll

2 Comments

I don’t know when I’ll get around to figuring out how to properly incorporate it into the new template (and it really needs weeding/updating as well), but in response to a question in comments, I’ve added a link to my old index page with it, in the upper left box.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

“Transforming Democracy”

9 Comments

John Cox, on the salivating glee with which people like Todd Gitlin and E. J. Dionne look forward to the fascist tactics that will be enabled by President Obama’s identity cult:

Gitlin becomes almost giddy with the prospects of how a cult of personality, fluent in Web dynamics, can exploit “his more than 3 million names – disproportionately young and energetic.” They “remain a political force as long as he satisfies them that, once in office, he can deliver.”

But Obama doesn’t have to “deliver” in conventional political terms in order to “satisfy” his netroots. In a “political landscape where passions outweigh ideological clarity,” as Gitlin himself puts it, Obama’s self-centered movement need only satisfy those passions. And Gitlin makes it clear that the Web technologies are ideally suited to do just that.

Obama can “deploy his supporters to muscle reforms through.” One gets the distinct impression that for Gitlin it’s the muscling even more than the reform that’s so satisfying. As president, Obama can get them to “bombard Congress with phone calls to break filibusters and [my favorite catch-all] otherwise stir them to action….”

As he asks at the end, into what are they are so eager to see democracy “transform”?

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Missing The Real Point

12 Comments

I think that this is a misdiagnosis:

How come nobody connects the following dots:

1. Massive bank problems precipitate a $700 billion federal bailout.
2. Meanwhile, private companies (including automakers) find it difficult to get banks to loan them money.
3. So those private companies go to the feds for bailouts of their own.
4. Nobody says: “The federal government won’t bail out companies that can’t get private loans. That’s why we gave the money to the banks, so the banks could make private loans. Loan money is what banks do. If you need money, go see a banker. We gave them lots of money they can loan out. Maybe they’ll loan some to you.”

Am I missing something?

An excellent point. So I put it to some auto supplier and finance sources, and this is what they say we’re missing: The federal credit bailout ain’t working.

Credit is still frozen. No banks are willing to lend. And the auto companies are still in free fall.

I don’t think that’s the problem at all. I don’t know whether credit is still “frozen” or not (there seem to be a lot of mortgage loans happening), but even if it were melted and boiling, I don’t think you’d find a sane banker who would lend these companies money, even at junk-bond rates, given the nature of their business plans and prospects. That’s why they have to go to Congress…

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

It’s A Start

4 Comments

We’re finally starting to take the asteroid threat seriously enough to start dedicating new telescopes to looking for them. A hundred million dollars seems like a pretty cheap insurance policy against another Tunguska or worse, in a populated area.

Unfortunately, we’re not developing the kind of spacefaring capability we need to do something about it if we see one coming. This is one kind of change that I’d be happy to see with the incoming administration. But it remains to be seen what space policy will come out of the process.

Political Commentary, Space

Good News, If True

I had suggested this to some people on the transition team, but I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. It looks like the Ares V RFP (and perhaps others) that was going to ruin (as is often the case) the contractors’ holidays with the need to work a proposal, is being postponed (and perhaps going away altogether — we can only hope). It’s a waste of money and contractor resources to force them to bid on a Phase I of a program that’s under review as to whether it should exist at all. Clearly, as noted over at R’n’S, Mike was trying to rush these things to entrench them and make them more of a fait accompli before he leaves, and fortunately, the incoming administration is having none of it.

I’m not sure how that worked, exactly, since they don’t actually have any authority until January, but (just as a guess) if I had been them, I would have told the contractors that I had no intention of funding the program without (at a minimum) a requirements review, which would imply (at a minimum) a rebid, and hope that they would in turn tell NASA that no one would bother to bid now.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!