Believe the "govt death panel" bs or I don't want to talk about it now, I'll wait until I can't

View Press Releases from Cantel Medical Corp:

CANTEL MEDICAL CORP. (NYSE: CMN – News) announced that on August 20, 2009 it received a letter of resignation from Ms. Elizabeth McCaughey as a director of the Company. Ms. McCaughey, who had served as a director since 2005, stated that she was resigning to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest during the national debate over healthcare reform.

On Wednesday, the day before she resigned, she appeared on the Daily Show and could not find her "proof" of the so called death panel crap.
Watch the first part here. Be sure to watch this part & this part too.

So I guess a question could be, should we continue to pollute the health care debate with crap to get the bill killed & waste another 10 years not fixing our health care system or should we talk about the important factual details now and not put it off?

There's only time to debate the tough choices we're all going to have to make, like who is going to decide if you are intubated or not.

Let's get it done event - find an event near you

Be part of the solution to help get an appropriate health care bill done. Find out where an event is near you & take part in it.

CEO of Palantir on Charlie Rose

At CharlieRose.com:



A fascinating interview how Palantir is able to "spy" while adhering to their core principle of:

Putting our values to work, Palantir voluntarily developed new technologies and a rigorous framework to: protect privacy and civil liberties; empower policymakers and administrators to enforce legal, regulatory, and policy requirements; and, equally important, ensure that the implementation of all requirements is audited.

More about their privacy & civil liberty policies.
Their home page.

Read love letters between the SEC & AIG

Remember last fall when the world's financial system came within hours of completely melting down? Welp, the SEC has released letters it exchanged with AIG starting in spring 2008.

Check post at Footnoted.org.
Do some investigative reporting and read the letters at SEC's site.

There's some fascinating stuff in there like this.

From this link at SEC:

Question by SEC attorney, note date:

Form 10-Q for the Fiscal Quarter Ended March 31, 2008

Note 4—Shareholders’ Equity and Earnings (Loss) Per Share, page 19

1.

You disclose that you shortened the vesting period of outstanding awards under your share-based employee compensation plans during the first quarter of fiscal 2008. Please provide us your evaluation of the modification[.]

Another exchange in the same document:

2. You state that your credit-based analyses estimate potential realized credit pre-tax losses of approximately $1.2 billion to approximately $2.4 billion, as compared to the $20.6 billion of unrealized market losses recognized in the fourth quarter of 2007 and first quarter of 2008. Please expand your disclosure to explain the specific factors causing the divergence between your estimates of fair value and amounts to be ultimately realized upon settlement maturity.

AIG Response:

The unrealized market valuation losses of $20.6 billion recorded on AIGFP’s super senior credit default swap portfolio represent the cumulative change in fair value of these derivatives. Consistent with the definition of fair value in the Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 157, “Fair Value Measurements” (FAS 157), the unrealized market valuation loss of $20.6 billion represents AIG’s best estimate of the amount it would need to pay to a willing, able and knowledgeable third-party to assume the obligations under AIGFP’s super senior credit default swap portfolio as of March 31, 2008.

On the other hand, AIG’s estimate of the potential pre-tax realized credit losses of approximately $1.2 billion to approximately $2.4 billion as of March 31, 2008 represents its then current estimate of the potential credit losses that it may incur if the multi-sector CDO portion of AIGFP’s super senior credit default swap portfolio and the referenced obligations acquired by AIGFP in extinguishing its obligations under the swaps are held to maturity. Credit losses represent a point-in-time estimate, using information available at that particular date, of the potential shortfall of principal and/or interest cash flows on the referenced obligations and credits underlying the portfolio that will not be recovered assuming the credit derivative portfolio and referenced obligations are held to maturity. At March 31, 2008, AIG derived its estimates of the potential pre-tax realized credit losses by applying two distinct methods, a ratings-based static stress test and a roll rate analysis.

At March 31, 2008, the estimates for the range of the potential realized credit losses were lower than the fair value of AIGFP’s super senior multi-sector CDO credit default swap portfolio, a net loss of $19.3 billion at March 31, 2008. The fair value of AIGFP’s super senior multi-sector CDO credit default swap portfolio is based upon fair value accounting principles, which rely on third-party prices for both the underlying collateral securities and the CDOs that AIGFP’s super senior credit default swaps wrap. These prices currently incorporate liquidity premiums, risk aversion elements and credit risk modeling, which in some instances may use more conservative assumptions than those used by AIG in its roll rate stress testing. Due to the ongoing disruption in the U.S. residential mortgage market and credit markets and the downgrades of RMBS and CDOs by the rating agencies,the market continues to lack transparency around the pricing of these securities. These prices are not necessarily reflective of the ultimate potential realized credit losses AIGFP could incur in the future related to the AIGFP super senior multi-sector CDO credit default swap portfolio, and AIG believes they incorporate a significant amount of market-driven risk aversion.

In conducting its risk analyses as of June 30, 2008, AIG discontinued use of the rating-based static stress test and used only the roll rate stress test because it believes that the roll rate stress test provides a more reasonable analysis methodology to illustrate potential realized credit losses than the rating-based static stress test used previously.

To the uneducated, say someone like me, it appears AIG gave "x" number of employees early vesting, re: faster bonuses, at the same time they were trying to explain to the SEC why their hallucinogenic valuations of their credit default swap portfolio was $18B "off".

Note the date of this correspondence? March 2008.

Remember Bear Sterns?

There's been people working on the story of the possibility Bear Sterns was "bailed out" by JPMorgan Chase & us because Bear Sterns was going to bring down JPMorgan with it.

Facebook could be 4th largest country, or social media is bigger than you think

Read the info behind the video at Socialnomics.
Thanks to Virginia Bicycling Federation's blog for the link.

Contract law & mortgage back securities complicate more than you think

From NYTimes article:

The case against Countrywide is being closely watched by pension funds, insurance companies and other investors in mortgage securities who contend that loan servicing companies that agree to change the terms of mortgages are breaching contractual obligations to owners of those loans.

Investors who own mortgage securities receive interest and principal payments from borrowers over the life of the loans. When servicing companies modify those loans, investor payments are typically reduced.

“I view this as an opening salvo and a demonstration that investors do have contractual rights, even when it is politically unpopular,” said William A. Frey, one of the investors who brought the lawsuit. “This is ultimately going to be one of many legal battles over who should pay the hundreds of billions of dollars in losses on mortgages.”

In other words, the derivative called a mortgage back security[MBS], which is bundled mortgages, has complicated any home owner assistance programs, balance sheets of banks & other holders of the MBS.

It can certainly be argued this will be a large factor in complicating & delaying any recovery in the "real" economy.

Who is more un-patriotic?

It is well known, heavily documented & is considered fact that plastic litter, particularly in water like bays & oceans, kill. It kills sea life, as an example, when it's eaten, can't be digested and plugs up the animal.

There's also a pretty good argument that "waste" kills, like too much packaging as an example.

So if a local restaurant packages their mints in packaging like this:



And undoubtedly some of this packaging is washed down our storm drains which lead to a creek which flows into an inlet which flows into the Chesapeake Bay, and we're talking only a few hundred yards from creek to bay:



The question is, who is more un-patriotic?

The seafood restaurateur for over packaging their mints?
The few patrons who litter every day?
Or both?

BTW, there is cigarette butt litter on the ground, visible in the storm drains & on the streets everyday as well.

Fox News are liberals & hears their proof

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Fox News: The New Liberals
www.thedailyshow.com
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Robots controlling our money - is it worth the risk?

The future doesn't bring an army of robots walking down the streets shooting at humans who don't obey them. You've seen the movies & read the sci-fi.

It would be a lot easier if the robots just took our money wouldn't it? Then we'd kill each other.
Wanna help me write the movie/book? Contact me.

On a side note, from an article at Security Industry News:

The rise of high-frequency trading and speed-of-light transactions has fueled the need. Now, 70 percent of average daily trading volume in equities involves a buy or sell order from a high-frequency trader, according to research Aite Group[.]

The article goes on to describe how the industry is working it's butt off to increase that & to speed up the trading which is currently measured in milliseconds.

And from a different article at Security Industry News:

There's even a thriving business to be had in "latency arbitrage," which focuses on fast and frequent trading.

This so called "trading" is done by algorithmic software written for the most powerful hardware & stretched to squeeze out "profits" in milliseconds. Sounds like it's simply trying to squeeze out waste, but what happens when the computerized trading "breaks" and loses control?

On Black Monday in October 1987, the stock market melted down in a catastrophic one day.

In 2008/09, it took several months to melt down to its current "bottom" in March '09.

So far, regulations have not been put in place to address the incredible risk, complexity, lack of safeguards re: massive high-frequency trading. Not to mention other safeguards. Writing such legislation & regulation in such a short time is impossible.

That being said, have you contacted your legislators to demand they tighten the regulations on the gambling, I mean, on the finance/banking industry? No? Are you still contributing to your 401(k) & IRA buying stocks & mutual funds?

Like somebody once said, "fool me once, shame on you. Fool me, you can't get fooled again."

Treasury's legislative proposals on OTC derivative trading sent to Congree

Opinion piece from FT.com:

“Through higher capital requirements and higher margin requirements for non-standardised derivatives, the legislation will encourage substantially greater use of standardised derivatives and thereby will facilitate substantial migration of OTC derivatives onto central clearing houses and exchanges,” says the Treasury.

Paul Hamill, a director in Credit Trading at Barclays Capital, says: “Liquidity will determine how the market settles on a concept of what is a standard contract and therefore can be cleared.

If you do not understand the high priority this legislation needs, how these contracts have been traded & what they did to the global economy & will do again; and, you have money invested "for the long term", you should worry.

Why?

You wouldn't give someone you don't know thousands of dollars without doing your due diligence about whether you'd get paid back or not.

You wouldn't buy a used car/truck from someone you didn't know sight unseen without a test drive .

So it's pretty simple, if you do not understand the macro risks to your long term investments, you shouldn't "blindly" throw money in it hallucinating that "the market will come back like it has in the past".