“Fantastic Mr. Fox” is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). It has danger, sorrow and an awareness of mortality.
—NYT
vine found
US Trade Deficit, up 18%
Sometimes what looks bad on the surface is actually quite good and I think that’s the case this time around. Exports are growing strongly and imports are turning up because domestic spending has turned the corner.
—Sal Guatieri, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto, on the 18% rise in the US trade deficit to $36b, the highest since January
Not now, but later
There is real tension surrounding the free versus pay debate. It will play out in the next two years. We believe that the value of high quality content is not recognised online [by giving its away for free] so something needs to happen. I don’t believe the media industry can continue to exist in this way….The traffic which comes in from Google brings a consumer who more often than not read one article and then leaves the site. That is the least valuable of traffic to us… the economic impact [of not having content indexed by Google] is not as great as you might think. You can survive without it….We will lead. There is a pent up need for this. There has to be a resolution for the free versus pay debate otherwise we cannot afford to pay for things like news bureaus in Kabul.
—Jonathan Miller, Chief Digital Officer, News Corp, at the Monaco Media Forum on Friday, 13 November, 2009
Foreclosures over 300k, 8th straight month
The foreclosure problem is still with us and will keep prices down. The real issue is we don’t know what inventory banks are holding that they have yet to put on the market.
—Stephen Miller, chairman of the economics department at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas
The fundamental forces driving foreclosure activity in this housing downturn — high-risk mortgages, negative equity, and unemployment — continue to loom over any nascent recovery. We continue to see foreclosure activity levels that are substantially higher than a year ago in most states.
—James Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac, in a release, which was selected from his statement and quoted in Bloomberg. The release was titled, “Foreclosure Activity Slows for Third Straight Month,” and Saccacio began his quote with: “Three consecutive monthly declines is unprecedented for our report, and on first blush an indication that the foreclosure tide may be turning.”
- The top three states by foreclosure-rate, California, Nevada and Florida, accounted for almost half of the 330k foreclosures in October.
- The top five exceeded half of all foreclosures in October, including Arizona and Idaho
- The top ten exceeded 65% of all foreclosures in October, including Illinois, Michigan, Georgia, Maryland, and Utah.
- And the top twenty exceeded 80%, belying the 80/20 rule
“ small talk is the grooming of the mind
Martin Cohen on Wikipedia
To control the reference sources that people use is to control the way people comprehend the world. Wikipedia may have a benign, even trivial face, but underneath may lie a more sinister and subtle threat to freedom of thought.
—Martin Cohen, who would go on to say, “If anyone disagrees with the Wikipedian consensus, their edits are “reverted” and they can be banned - “indefinitely”.” These comments illustrate his underlying frustration with what really matters for Wikipedia: “not your sources but the ‘support of the community’.”
More on the debate?
Christie inherits a state that’s in arguably the worst financial condition in its 233- year history. Last year’s $7 billion shortfall, closed with stimulus dollars and tax hikes, has resurfaced at an even larger $8 billion for 2010. Residents face crippling property taxes (an average of $7,000 per capita), high income and sales taxes, $45 billion in debt and the net loss of 400,000 people since 2000.
—Eileen Norcross: NY Post. She contends that the Property Tax Relief Fund (PTRF) and unfunded municipal mandates are to blame.
So far, 15,918 New Jerseyans have reached the county boards or the state tax court — nearing the record of 16,300 set in 1992, said Lynne Allsop, court executive with the state’s Tax Court Management Office in Trenton.
During a revaluation, emotions run high. It’s simply a redistribution. There are always people who go down. There are always people who go up.
—Rick Del Guercio Jr. of Appraisal Systems Inc
The longer you go, the worse it gets. This is really good. They’re on top of things. Everyone’s paying attention. … This whole last 10 years have been a learning curve for everybody.
—Joan Durkin, Essex County’s tax administrator, on the pledge by Maplewood to conduct another assessment in 2011, after 10 years. Victor DeLuca, Mayor of Maplewood, remarked, “Isn’t that ironic? Back in the hot seat again. We did say we’d do it every ten years.”
Some concerns about the asset-price inflation are overstated. Policy makers want to reflate asset prices as part of the recovery; if that starts getting out of hand, then you can get worries about future asset bubbles. These concerns I think are somewhat premature.
—David Riley, head of global sovereign ratings at Fitch Ratings
You got people out there saying the bear market rally’s over. I think they’re smoking dope.
—Jeffrey Saut, chief investment strategist at Raymond James & Associates in St. Petersburg, Florida, which manages $214 billion.
It’s just a reversal of excessive pessimism. We still have a lot more bull market to go because we had such a huge bear market…The economy is not recovering at a slow pace. America is faster than people think. Third-quarter GDP numbers knocked the socks off of expectations.
Are you forgetting Bilski?
I think this case is the case of the century for patent law
—John F. Duffy, a professor at the George Washington University Law School
It’s not very often that some obscure issue of patent law can excite so much attention.
—Pamela Samuelson, a professor of law and information management at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. Her brief argued that the State Street decision in 1998 had the effect of “knocking patent law loose from its historical moorings and improperly injecting patents into business areas where they were neither needed nor wanted.”
The Cash Nexus
[The bourgeousie] has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left remaining remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.”…It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade.
—Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto…”All that is solid melts into air.” Also of interest, The Cash Nexus, Nial Ferguson (2001)
