Will Robots Steal Your Job?
September 27th, 2011Via: Slate:
They might not know it yet, but some of the most educated workers in the nation are engaged in a fierce battle with machines. As computers get better at processing and understanding language and at approximating human problem-solving skills, they’re putting a number of professions in peril. Those at risk include doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, scientists, and creative professionals—even writers like myself.
5 Minute U.S. Dollar Index for Fib Heads
September 27th, 2011Warning: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
I was just examining the recent gold slaughter by looking at the U.S. Dollar Index and I noticed a fantastic series of Fibonacci setups on the current five minute dollar index chart.
U.S. Dollar Index, 5 Minute Interval
U.S. Dollar Index, 5 Minute Interval
U.S. Dollar Index, 5 Minute Interval
Japan: Radioactive Zone Bigger Than That Left by Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
September 27th, 2011Via: Bloomberg:
Beyond the police roadblocks that mark the no-go zone around Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant, six-foot tall weeds invade rice paddies and vines gone wild strangle road signs along empty streets.
Takako Harada, 80, returned to an evacuated area of Iitate village to retrieve her car. Beside her house is an empty cattle pen, the 100 cows slaughtered on government order after radiation from the March 11 atomic disaster saturated the area, forcing 160,000 people to move away and leaving some places uninhabitable for two decades or more.
“Older folks want to return, but the young worry about radiation,” said Harada, whose family ran the farm for 40 years. “I want to farm, but will we be able to sell anything?”
What’s emerging in Japan six months since the nuclear meltdown at the Tokyo Electric Power Co. plant is a radioactive zone bigger than that left by the 1945 atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While nature reclaims the 20 kilometer (12 mile) no-go zone, Fukushima’s $3.2 billion-a-year farm industry is being devastated and tourists that hiked the prefecture’s mountains and surfed off its beaches have all but vanished.
The March earthquake and tsunami that caused the nuclear crisis and left almost 20,000 people dead or missing may cost 17 trillion ($223 billion), hindering the recovery of the world’s third-largest economy from two decades of stagnation.
‘Firefly’ and Anti-Fascism Posters Get Professor Threatened with Criminal Charges on University of Wisconsin Campus
September 26th, 2011Via: Foundation for Individual Rights in Education:
A professor has been censored twice, reported to the “threat assessment team,” and threatened with criminal charges because of satirical postings on his office door. Campus police at the University of Wisconsin–Stout (UWS) censored theater professor James Miller’s poster depicting a quotation from actor Nathan Fillion’s character in the television series Firefly, and the police chief threatened Miller with criminal charges for disorderly conduct. After UWS censored his second poster, which stated, “Warning: Fascism,” Miller came to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.
“Colleges and universities are supposed to foster brave and bold environments of freewheeling intellectual inquiry and expression. If a quote from a network science fiction show is a bridge too far, something has gone seriously wrong,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said.
49% of Americans Believe Federal Government “Poses an Immediate Threat to the Rights and Freedoms of Ordinary Citizens”
September 26th, 2011Via: Gallup:
A record-high 81% of Americans are dissatisfied with the way the country is being governed, adding to negativity that has been building over the past 10 years.
…
The findings are from Gallup’s annual Governance survey, updated Sept. 8-11, 2011. The same poll shows record or near-record criticism of Congress, elected officials, government handling of domestic problems, the scope of government power, and government waste of tax dollars.
Captain Obvious: ‘Massive Jobs Shortfall’ Predicted for Global Economy
September 26th, 2011Via: Guardian:
The world’s major economies are heading for a “massive jobs shortfall” by the end of next year if governments do not change their tack on policy, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) said in a study published on Monday.
In the report, prepared with the OECD for G20 labour ministers meeting in Paris on Monday, the ILO said the group of developing and developed nations had seen 20m jobs disappear since the financial crisis in 2008.
At current rates it would be impossible to recover them in the near term and there was a risk of the number doubling by the end of next year, it said.
Gold Eyes Biggest 3-Day Fall In 28 Years
September 26th, 2011Warning: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
Update: Bullish Gartley
Squinting at it on the daily now, I’d call it a quasi bullish Gartley. To see it, I had to exclude the candle shadow from the September high, and the fib ratios aren’t right. Still, close enough. Remember, this isn’t physics.
Spot Gold Daily Interval
—End Update—
It sliced through the standard Fib retracement levels for the last weekly interval ramp higher like a hot knife through butter.
There’s currently a wild (short covering) rally underway that touched off from the 88.6% retracement. I’m just mentioning this as a curiosity for any Fib heads out there, as it came within about $4 of that 88.6 and put in a V shaped short-term bottom at $1532. I have no idea if that’s going to turn into a good support or not.
Spot Gold, Weekly Interval
Via: Reuters:
Gold was set for its biggest three-day loss in 28 years on Monday, as investors fled commodity markets in a scramble to secure cash in the face of mounting fear over the impact of a potential Greek debt default on the rest of the euro zone.
European policymakers began working on new ways to stop fallout from Greece’s near-bankruptcy from inflicting more damage on the world economy after stinging criticism for failing to stem the debt crisis.
European equities fell, while industrial commodities such as crude oil and base metals bore the brunt of investor desire for cash in the face of mounting uncertainty.
In the last three days alone, gold has fallen by nearly 10 percent in its largest three-day slide since February 1983 and implied volatility has risen to a 2-1/2 year high.
Spot gold was last down 3.0 percent on the day at $1,621.49 an ounce by 0903 GMT, having fallen earlier by as much as 7.4 percent, putting the difference between the intraday high and low at $128.40, the largest daily price swing on record.
NYPD Has Anti-Aircraft Capability
September 26th, 2011Update: Barret .50 Caliber Rifle [???]
lol
Via: New York Post:
Police sources told The Post that the weapon that Kelly was referring to involves a Barret .50 caliber rifle, which can be mounted on almost any police chopper.
—End Update—
Via: New York Daily News:
Ten years after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the NYPD now has the capability to take down a plane if necessary.
In a “60 Minutes” interview that airs on CBS Sunday night, Kelly said the department’s counterterrorism unit is prepared to thwart an oncoming plane if it’s deemed a threat.
“Well, it’s something that’s on our radar screen,” Kelly told Scott Pelley of the news show. “I mean in an extreme situation, you would have some means to take down a plane.”
He did not elaborate on what methods the NYPD would use but a police source said, “NYPD Aviation has weapons that caould be deployed with that capability.”
Kelly discussed the precautions made before the General Assembly meeting at the United Nations this week, just days after a threat was made to attack the city on the 10th anniversary of 9/11.
IMF May Need Bailout
September 26th, 2011*chortle*
Via: Telegraph:
Christine Lagarde has signalled that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may have to tap its members – including Britain – for billions of pounds of extra funding to stem the European debt crisis.
The head of the IMF has warned that its $384bn (£248bn) war chest designed as an emergency bail-out fund is inadequate to deliver the scale of the support required by troubled states.
In a document distributed to the IMF steering committee at the weekend, Ms Lagarde said: “The fund’s credibility, and hence effectiveness, rests on its perceived capacity to cope with worst-casescenarios. Our lending capacity of almost $400bn looks comfortable today, but pales in comparison with the potential financing needs of vulnerable countries and crisis bystanders.”
The Federal Reserve Plans to Identify “Key Bloggers” and Monitor Billions of Conversations About the Fed on Facebook, Twitter, Forums and Blogs
September 26th, 2011Is there are Federal Reserve link for this document?
Here’s the document that ZeroHedge has produced:
Sentiment Analysis And Social Media MonitoringSolution RFP
Request for Proposal (Event-6994)
Event Information
Description:
Federal Reserve Bank of New York (“FRBNY”) is extending to suppliers an invitation to participate in an Sentiment Analysis And Social Media Monitoring Solution RFP bid process. The intent is to establish a fair andequitable partnership with a market leader who will who gather data from various social media outlets and newssources and provide applicable reporting to FRBNY. This Request for Proposal (“RFP”) was created in an effort tosupport FRBNY’s Social Media Listening Platforms initiative.
I’ve been seeing Fed users and robots on Cryptogon since 2002, so… *shrug shoulders*
Via: Economic Collapse Blog:
The Federal Reserve wants to know what you are saying about it. In fact, the Federal Reserve has announced plans to identify “key bloggers” and to monitor “billions of conversations” about the Fed on Facebook, Twitter, forums and blogs. This is yet another sign that the alternative media is having a dramatic impact. As first reported on Zero Hedge, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has issued a “Request for Proposal” to suppliers who may be interested in participating in the development of a “Sentiment Analysis And Social Media Monitoring Solution”. In other words, the Federal Reserve wants to develop a highly sophisticated system that will gather everything that you and I say about the Federal Reserve on the Internet and that will analyze what our feelings about the Fed are. Obviously, any “positive” feelings about the Fed would not be a problem. What they really want to do is to gather information on everyone that views the Federal Reserve negatively. It is unclear how they plan to use this information once they have it, but considering how many alternative media sources have been shut down lately, this is obviously a very troubling sign.
You can read this “Request for Proposal” right here. Posted below are some of the key quotes from the document (in bold) with some of my own commentary in between the quotes….
“The intent is to establish a fair and equitable partnership with a market leader who will who gather data from various social media outlets and news sources and provide applicable reporting to FRBNY. This Request for Proposal (“RFP”) was created in an effort to support FRBNY’s Social Media Listening Platforms initiative.”
A system like this is not cheap. Apparently the Federal Reserve Bank of New York believes that gathering all of this information is very important. In recent years, criticism of the Federal Reserve has become very intense, and most of this criticism has been coming from the Internet. It has gotten to the point where the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has decided that it had better listen to what is being said and find out who is saying it.
“Social media listening platforms are solutions that gather data from various social media outlets and news sources. They monitor billions of conversations and generate text analytics based on predefined criteria. They can also determine the sentiment of a speaker or writer with respect to some topic or document.”
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York intends to listen in on “billions of conversations” and to actually determine the “sentiment” of those that are participating in those conversations.
Of course it will be those conversations that are “negative” about the Federal Reserve that will be setting off the alarm bells.
“Identify and reach out to key bloggers and influencers”
Uh oh. So they plan to “identify” key bloggers and influencers?
What exactly do they plan to do once they “identify” them?
“The solution must be able to gather data from the primary social media platforms –Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums and YouTube.”
Hopefully you understand this already, but nothing posted on the Internet is ever anonymous. Everything on the Internet is gathered by a vast host of organizations and is used for a wide variety of purposes. Data mining has become a billion dollar industry, and it is only going to keep growing.
You may think that you are “anonymous” when you criticize organizations like the Fed, but the truth is that if you are loud enough they will see it and they will make a record of it.
“The solution must provide real-time monitoring of relevant conversations. It should provide sentiment analysis (positive, negative or neutral) around key conversational topics.”
Why do they need to perform “sentiment analysis”?
If someone is identified as being overly “negative” about the Fed, what will they do about it?
“The solution should provide an alerting mechanism that automatically sends out reports or notifications based a predefined trigger.”
This sounds very much like the kind of “keyword” intelligence gathering systems that are currently in use by major governments around the globe.
Very, very creepy stuff.
