U.S. Lets China Bypass Wall Street Primary Dealers for Treasury Orders
May 22nd, 2012This is very interesting.
Via: Reuters:
China can now bypass Wall Street when buying U.S. government debt and go straight to the U.S. Treasury, in what is the Treasury’s first-ever direct relationship with a foreign government, according to documents viewed by Reuters.
The relationship means the People’s Bank of China buys U.S. debt using a different method than any other central bank in the world.
The other central banks, including the Bank of Japan, which has a large appetite for Treasuries, place orders for U.S. debt with major Wall Street banks designated by the government as primary dealers. Those dealers then bid on their behalf at Treasury auctions.
China, which holds $1.17 trillion in U.S. Treasuries, still buys some Treasuries through primary dealers, but since June 2011, that route hasn’t been necessary.
The documents viewed by Reuters show the U.S. Treasury Department has given the People’s Bank of China a direct computer link to its auction system, which the Chinese first used to buy two-year notes in late June 2011.
China can now participate in auctions without placing bids through primary dealers. If it wants to sell, however, it still has to go through the market.
The change was not announced publicly or in any message to primary dealers.
Research Credit: HPLovecraft666
SpaceX Rocket Blasts Off for Space Station
May 22nd, 2012Via: AP:
A commercial rocket blasted off early Tuesday with a load of supplies for the International Space Station, opening a new era of dollar-driven spaceflight.
The SpaceX company made history as its Falcon 9 rocket rose from its seaside launch pad and pierced the pre-dawn sky, aiming for a rendezvous later this week with the space station. The rocket carried into orbit a capsule named Dragon that is packed with 1,000 pounds of space station provisions.
It is the first time a private company has launched a vessel to the space station. That’s something only major governments have done — until the present test flight. Launch controllers applauded when the Dragon reached orbit 9 minutes into the flight.
Harvard Medical School Facing Trial Over Massive Alzheimer’s Disease Research Fraud
May 21st, 2012Via: Alliance for Human Research Protection:
The US Court of Appeals, 1st Circuit overturned a summary judgement by a lower court ordering a whistleblower lawsuit filed by Dr. Kenneth Jones against Harvard Medical School, its teaching hospitals, Brigham and Women’s and Massachusetts General Hospital, and Dr. Marilyn Albert (Principal Investigator) and Dr. Ronald Killiany to proceed to trial.
The case involves the largest Alzheimer’s disease [AD] research grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health (from 1980 through 2007) for a large project aimed at identifying early physical signs of Alzheimer’s by scanning certain regions of the brain with MRIs.
Dr. Jones was the chief statistician for the NIH grant. He blew the whistle after realizing that measurements used to demonstrate the reliability of the study had been secretly altered. Without these alterations, Dr. Jones explained, there was no statistical significance to the major findings of the study. When he insisted that the altered measurements be subjected to an independent reliability study, and that the manipulated results could not be presented as part of a $15 million federal grant extension application, he was terminated and his career came to an end.
The allegations in the suit concern multiple research fraud: data manipulation, significant deviations from the protocol, altered and re-traced MRI scans. To get positive results, Dr. Jones alleges, Dr. Killiany “fraudulently altered the MRI study data prior to 1998 to produce false results of a statistically significant correlation between conversion to AD and volume of the EC [entorhinal cortex].” US ex rel. Jones v. Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard University.
He further alleged that Dr. Albert and Dr. Killiany violated federal regulations (43 CFR 50.103(c)(3) by making false statements in the NIH grant application. Statements that “were predicated on falsified data that the defendants, knowing of this falsity, failed to take corrective action or disavow the data.”
Research Credit: anchoviesmegma
Wisconsin Cops Tell Woman to Bring Cash to Bail Son Out of Jail, Then Steal Her Money
May 21st, 2012Via: Huffington Post:
When the Brown County, Wis., Drug Task Force arrested her son Joel last February, Beverly Greer started piecing together his bail.
She used part of her disability payment and her tax return. Joel Greer’s wife also chipped in, as did his brother and two sisters. On Feb. 29, a judge set Greer’s bail at $7,500, and his mother called the Brown County jail to see where and how she could get him out. “The police specifically told us to bring cash,” Greer says. “Not a cashier’s check or a credit card. They said cash.”
So Greer and her family visited a series of ATMs, and on March 1, she brought the money to the jail, thinking she’d be taking Joel Greer home. But she left without her money, or her son.
Instead jail officials called in the same Drug Task Force that arrested Greer. A drug-sniffing dog inspected the Greers’ cash, and about a half-hour later, Beverly Greer said, a police officer told her the dog had alerted to the presence of narcotics on the bills — and that the police department would be confiscating the bail money.
“I told them the money had just come from the bank,” Beverly Greer says. “We had just taken it out. If the money had drugs on it, then they should go seize all the money at the bank, too. I just don’t understand how they could do that.”
The Greers had been subjected to civil asset forfeiture, a policy that lets police confiscate money and property even if they can only loosely connect them to drug activity. The cash, or revenue from the property seized, often goes back to the coffers of the police department that confiscated it. It’s a policy critics say is often abused, but experts told The HuffPost that the way the law is applied to bail money in Brown County is exceptionally unfair.
It took four months for Beverly Greer to get her family’s money back, and then only after attorney Andy Williams agreed to take their case. “The family produced the ATM receipts proving that had recently withdrawn the money,” Williams says. “Beverly Greer had documentation for her disability check and her tax return. Even then, the police tried to keep their money.”
Student Loan Bubble Putting Hundreds of Colleges at Risk
May 21st, 2012Via: Business Insider:
The size, scope, and impact of this problem is an enormous anchor weighing down our next generation and our nation’s economy.
Make no mistake, this anchor is not only impacting thousands of students and families but is also having an equally burdensome impact on colleges and universities nationwide.
…
1. Using this post-crash model (and may it not be “mid-crash”), 207 colleges and universities—31% of the 678 institutions in the database— have, under at least some circumstances, more debts than cash and marketable investments. In the model these 207 inadequate-capital institutions have projected net financial asset balances ranging from a negative few hundred thousand dollars to nearly a negative $400,000,000. More than half of the 205 had negative projections from ($10,000,000) to ($100,000,000).
2. This means that the inadequate-capital institutions (which might include a third or more of NAICU members) are exposed to severe disruption from negative factors such as declines in cash and investments, escalation of interest payments on variable-rate debt, and required accelerated repayment of principle, particularly if several negative factors were to coincide.
Warning: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
Update: Low of Day Opening Minutes: $33.05
Man, bust out the calliope music for this one.
—End Update—
It looks like they’re trying to defend $35 now.
Denmark: Children Who Co-Sleep Nightly Are 70% Less Likely to be Overweight vs. Kids Who Never Sleep with Their Parents
May 21st, 2012That’s great, but I’m sick of getting kicked in the nuts. 😐
Via: Inhabitots:
In odd but true news, yet another perk of co-sleeping has been revealed – reduced obesity. According to a new study from Denmark, kids who co-sleep nightly are 70% less likely to be overweight as compared to kids who never sleep with their parents. The study also found that even occasional co-sleeping had benefits, as part-time co-sleepers were 50% less likely to be overweight as compared to total non-co-sleepers.
The Future of Sustainable Agriculture at Disney EPCOT: GMO and Styrofoam
May 21st, 2012Sponsors of “Living With The Land” at Disney EPCOT:
The Sierra Club has launched a campaign against genetically engineered foods. We’re targeting Kraft Foods, which is the largest packaged food producer in America.
We’re asking Kraft to remove all genetically engineered products from their foods. This includes not using milk from rBGH-treated cows (the U.S. is the only industrialized nation that permits this practice) and not using genetically engineered (GE) corn, potatoes, soy and so forth.
The Nestlé boycott is a boycott launched on July 7, 1977, in the United States against the Swiss-based Nestlé corporation. It spread quickly throughout the United States, and expanded into Europe in the early 1980s. It was prompted by concern about the Nestle’s promotion of breast milk substitutes (infant formula), particularly in less economically developed countries (LEDCs), which campaigners claim contributes to the unnecessary suffering and even deaths of babies, largely among the poor.[1] Among the campaigners, Professor Derek Jelliffe and his wife Patrice, who contributed to establish the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action (WABA), were particularly instrumental in helping to coordinate the boycott and giving it ample visibility worldwide.
The United Fruit Company was frequently accused of bribing government officials in exchange for preferential treatment, exploiting its workers, paying little by way of taxes to the governments of the countries in which it operated, and working ruthlessly to consolidate monopolies. Latin American journalists sometimes referred to the company as el pulpo (“the octopus”)…
The piece below is from 2007.
Via: Inhabitat:
I spent the majority of my time at EPCOT hovering around the LAND exhibit and going on behind-the-scenes tours of EPCOT’s greenhouses. The entire agri-tech research center area has been re-branded under the rubric of “sustainability” and now includes a public exhibition on agricultural technology and global ecology called ‘Living With Land’ – a rousing exhibit on farming and agricultural innovation which takes the very 1950?s-esque position that humanity can solve its food shortages and environmental problems by improving agricultural technology. I’m not really sure that I buy this, but the exhibit was certainly a fascinating romp through the history of “the future”.
…
The 6-year-old then asked our guide about genetic experimentation, and pretty quickly we all learn that most of the crops within the “Living With The Land” greenhouses are genetically modified. At this point in the tour I’m starting to think that perhaps EPCOT needs to give media training to their interns – because lots of talk about genetically modified crops and copious use of styrofoam “because its cheap and disposable” doesn’t exactly paint the rosiest of pictures for an exhibit supposedly about “Living With The Land”
Research Credit: tal
JP Morgan Trade Losses Could Reach $5 Billion… Or More
May 21st, 2012Via: Business Insider:
When JPMorgan first announced that its CIO office had blundered into a huge trading loss, the number was pegged at $2 billion, though the company said it could go higher.
Then the loss was reported to be $3 billion.
And now…
$5 billion or more?
From WSJ:
The nation’s largest bank has said publicly that its losses on the trades have surpassed $2 billion, and people familiar with the matter have said they could over time reach $5 billion.
But the losses could be even bigger if the company sells its positions into a market that has turned against its positions, some traders say. Improvements in the markets could slice the bank’s losses.
Microsoft to Charge Customers $99 to Remove OEM ‘Crapware’
May 20th, 2012This issue is definitely becoming more ridiculous as the profit margins disappear in the commodity PC meat grinder. I spend about fifteen minutes removing crapware from each new Windows based machine (Dell and Lenovo) that I prepare for use by a small company here.
The good news is that uninstalling the stuff is simple using the control panel in Windows, but the fact that people have to do it at all is absurd.
Now, why not hang a $99 price tag out there to remove garbage that shouldn’t be on the machines in the first place?
Innovation!
Maybe Microsoft is trying to grow Apple’s market share.
Via: ZDnet:
Will people be willing to pay Microsoft to remove the crapware that the OEMs install on new PCs? Microsoft thinks they will.
For around two and a half years, Microsoft has been offering what it calls Signature editions of certain PCs. According to Microsoft, these PCs give you faster and easier access to “the applications you want right away without getting sidetracked talking to trialware or other sample software”.
In other words, when you boot up your new PC, instead of having to deal with a blizzard of pop-ups and dialog boxes related to trialware and demo software — collectively known as crapware — the system boots to a clean Windows desktop.
