College Requires Students to Carry GPS Enabled ‘School Phone’
November 27th, 2007Does the College of Knowledge issue dribble bibs to these twits to prevent accidents during lectures? You know, show up to How to Be a Good Slave 101 and Advanced Don’t-Taze-Me-Bro Strategies 400 with your xTreme dribble bib and your hip sKo0lEd phone.
Via: CBS News:
College students at Montclair State University are all talking about a new requirement that will require students to have a cell phone.
CBS 2 HD has learned more on this required feature that is forcing students to dig into their wallets.
At Montclair State, there is no excuse for being out of touch.
“‘School Phone’ I use for campus e-mail, different things like that,” freshman Angela Vuocolo said.
That’s right.
First-year student Vuocolo said ‘School Phone’ — as in a Sprint-operated cell phone — is now mandatory for all students. It’s the first program of its kind in the country.
The cost: $420 a year for a base plan which is bundled into the tuition bill.
It includes just 50 peak voice minutes a month, but unlimited text messaging to any carrier, unlimited campus-based data usage, and student activated emergency GPS tracking.
“What it does is allow students to have an extra pair or group of people watching over them when they’re going from one location to another,” Montclair Police Department Chief Paul Cell said.
Related: Mobile Phone Companies Provide Real Time Tracking Information to Feds; Probable Cause Optional
Related: AT&T Invents Programming Language for Mass Surveillance
Related: Introducing iPanopticon for Students
Hedge Fund that Shorted Subprime Assets Up Over 1000% this Year; Fund’s Manager Tells Clients, “Our Entire Banking System is a Complete Disaster” and Use Profits to Buy Gold
November 26th, 2007Lots of people have an opinion on gold. But how many of them are running funds that are up over 1000% for the year? Just one.
Via: Financial Times:
A Californian hedge fund has made more than 1,000 per cent return this year by betting against US subprime home loans, making it one of the world’s best-performing funds of all time.
Lahde Capital, set up in Santa Monica last year by Andrew Lahde, last week passed the 1,000 per cent mark, after fees, following the latest leg of the credit market turmoil. The fall in the value of subprime-linked securities has boosted a group of funds which spotted the problems in advance.
The decision to use derivatives to short, or bet against, low-quality US home loans taken by a select group of hedge funds last year appears to have become the most profitable single trade of all time, making well over $20bn in total so far this year. John Paulson’s New York-based Paulson & Co, the biggest of the group with $28bn under management, is said by investors to have made $12bn profit from the trade already.
However, Mr Lahde, whose fund is one of the smallest specialists shorting subprime, has now begun to return money to investors, telling them in a letter: “The risk/return characteristics are far less attractive than in the past.â€
In his letter, Mr Lahde said he expected the collapse in value of subprime mortgage-linked securities to be repeated for bonds backed by commercial property loans in a deep recession – which he also predicts.
“Our entire banking system is a complete disaster,†he wrote. “In my opinion, nearly every major bank would be insolvent if they marked their assets to market.†He also said he would be putting some of his own profits into gold and other precious metals.
Mr Lahde has used the phenomenal returns to boost his business, launching a fund to bet against commercial real estate this autumn – which made 42 per cent in its first two months – and is in the process of creating a third fund to short credits with a broader mandate.
Lahde’s first fund, US Residential Real Estate Hedge V Class A, soared 712.8 per cent in the year to the end of October, before this month’s sell-off pushed it past the 1,000 per cent mark.
There is no reliable data on how many other funds have made 1,000 per cent, or ten times the investment, in a year. But RAB Capital, London hedge fund manager, shot to prominence in 2003 when it returned 1,475.5 per cent in its Special Situations fund, which now runs $2.4bn and is the biggest shareholder in troubled bank Northern Rock.
Bigger subprime top performers include Paulson’s Credit Opportunities fund, up 550.8 per cent to the end of October, and the Subprime Credit Strategies fund run jointly by Texas-based Hayman Capital and Corriente Advisors, up 526.5 per cent.
Police to Deploy Spy Drones in Texas
November 26th, 2007Via: Click2Houston:
Houston police started testing unmanned aircraft and the event was shrouded in secrecy, but it was captured on tape by Local 2 Investigates.
Neighbors in rural Waller County said they thought a top-secret military venture was under way among the farmland and ranches, some 70 miles northwest of Houston. KPRC Local 2 Investigates had four hidden cameras aimed at a row of mysterious black trucks. Satellite dishes and a swirling radar added to the neighbors’ suspense.
Then, cameras were rolling as an unmanned aircraft was launched into the sky and operated by remote control.
Houston police cars were surrounding the land with a roadblock in place to check each of the dignitaries arriving for the invitation-only event. The invitation spelled out, “NO MEDIA ALLOWED.”
HPD Chief Harold Hurtt attended, along with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and dozens of officers from various police agencies in the Houston area. Few of the guests would comment as they left the test site.
News Chopper 2 had a Local 2 Investigates team following the aircraft for more than one hour as it circled overhead. Its wings spanned 10 feet and it circled at an altitude of 1,500 feet. Operators from a private firm called Insitu, Inc. manned remote controls from inside the fleet of black trucks as the guests watched a live feed from the high-powered camera aboard the 40-pound aircraft.
“I wasn’t ready to publicize this,” Executive Assistant Police Chief Martha Montalvo said. She and other department leaders hastily organized a news conference when they realized Local 2 Investigates had captured the entire event on camera.
“We still haven’t even decided how we were going to go forward on this task, so it seemed premature to me to announce this to the media,” Montalvo said. “But since, obviously, the media found out about it, then I don’t see any reason why just not go forward with what we have so far.”
Montalvo told reporters the unmanned aircraft would be used for “mobility” or traffic issues, evacuations during storms, homeland security, search and rescue, and also “tactical.” She admitted that could include covert police actions and she said she was not ruling out someday using the drones for writing traffic tickets.
Research Credit: EP
Cryptogon Readers Contribute $100 and $50
November 26th, 2007DJ sent $100 and JR sent $50. Thank you.
CLUB OF ROME PLAN FOR EUROPEAN, MIDDLE EASTERN AND NORTH AFRICAN ENERGY NETWORK: TRANS-MEDITERRANEAN RENEWABLE ENERGY COOPERATION (TREC)
November 25th, 2007Of all the hate-to-say-I-told-you-sos on Cryptogon, this one probably takes the cake…
They—the elite, the people who run the world—have a Plan. And anyone who’s trying to convince you that the world is ending because we’re running out of energy is either ignorant of basic, observable, physical phenomena, or they’re in on the scam. It’s one or the other.
What’s the scam?
Look no further than the numbers, updated continuously throughout each trading day. As that stuff runs out, you, me, all of us are going to pay. And pay dearly. The corporations involved are going to lift our wallets, flip us upside down and shake loose any change that may have remained in our pockets. It’s a good, old fashioned shakedown.
But what comes after we’ve been fleeced to within an inch of our lives?
The cull. About 90% of the global population will be killed off. You know, to a more sustainable level. Got that, all you silly twits talking about fart taxes and Al Gore!
The fraud of energy scarcity is as obvious as the real problems with topsoil/erosion and strategic material depletion.
The emerging “clean, green” system is the elite’s answer to managing what’s left for Their almost exclusive benefit. That’s what “sustainable” actually means. We’re talking about nothing less than the world being transformed into a plantation inside a prison camp. It’ll be 1984 and Brave New World, rolled into one.
Think Blackwater USA mercenaries in solar powered hummers. Everyone microchipped. Tracked, watched, profiled, under surveillance 24 hours per day. “Green” Walmarts. Terminator robots. (Ok, so we’re nearly there, even if the terminator robots aren’t running in autonomous mode yet.)
The following search link lists dozens of past stories on Cryptogon about this emerging system: clean green fascism.
If you’re not familiar with the Club of Rome, you’ll want to do some reading on that organization. (Hint: Club of Rome is an old favorite for people who keep at least half a roll of Reynold’s Wrap around their heads at all times. In polite circles, though, it’s a respected think tank.) In short: Scarcity, doom, depopulate the planet and We’ll be in charge of what’s left.
“But Kevin,” you say, “They’re just doing what you’ve said has been possible all along. Isn’t that good?”
Look, I’m all for clean energy, but I’m not taking a chip, a vaccine, or a fart tax coupon book.
If you doubt what I’m saying, the thing to do will be to just watch what comes along with the mass deployment of the clean energy systems.
It’s not going to be good.
Via: Club of Rome DESERTEC: TREC Clean Power from Deserts:
The DESERTEC Concept
Satellite-based studies by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) have shown that, using less than 0.3% of the entire desert areas of the MENA region, solar thermal power plants can generate enough electricity and desalinated seawater to supply current demands in EU-MENA, and anticipated increases in those demands in the future.
Harnessing the winds in Morocco and on land around the Red Sea would generate additional supplies of electricity. Solar and wind power can be distributed in MENA and transmitted via High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission lines to Europe with transmission losses that would be no more than 10-15%. The Club of Rome and TREC are both pursuing this DESERTEC Concept: bringing technology and deserts into service for energy, water and climate security. Countries like Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia have already shown an interest in this kind of cooperation.
Mortgage Failures Could Create Nightmare
November 25th, 2007This is an Associated Press piece. It’s as mainstream as it gets.
Via: Yahoo / AP:
In the months ahead, millions of other adjustable-rate mortgages like Colombo’s will reset, giving them a higher interest rate as required by the loan agreements and leaving many homeowners unable to make their payments. Soaring mortgage default rates this year already have shaken major financial institutions and the fallout from more of them, some experts say, could spread from those already battered banks into the general economy.
The worst-case scenario is anyone’s guess, but some believe it could become very bad.
“We haven’t faced a downturn like this since the Depression,” said Bill Gross, chief investment officer of PIMCO, the world’s biggest bond fund. He’s not suggesting anything like those terrible times — but, as an expert on the global credit crisis, he speaks with authority.
“Its effect on consumption, its effect on future lending attitudes, could bring us close to the zero line in terms of economic growth,” he said. “It does keep me up at night.”
Some 2 million homeowners hold $600 billion of subprime adjustable-rate mortgage loans, known as ARMs, that are due to reset at higher amounts during the next eight months. Subprime loans are those made to people with poor credit. Not all these mortgages are in trouble, but homeowners who default or fall behind on payments could cause an economic shock of a type never seen before.
Some of the nation’s leading economic minds lay out a scenario that is frightening. Not only would the next wave of the mortgage crisis force people out of their homes, it might also spiral throughout the economy.
The already severe housing slump would be exacerbated by even more empty homes on the market, causing prices to plunge by up to 40 percent in once-hot real estate spots such as California, Nevada and Florida. Builders like Chicago’s Neumann Homes, which filed for bankruptcy protection this month, could go under. The top 10 global banks, which repackage loans into exotic securities such as collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, could suffer far greater write-offs than the $75 billion already taken this year.
Massive job losses would curtail consumer spending that makes up two-thirds of the economy. The Labor Department estimates almost 100,000 financial services jobs related to credit and lending in the U.S. have already been lost, from local bank loan officers to traders dealing in mortgage-backed securities. Thousands of Americans who work in the housing industry could find themselves on the dole. And there’s no telling how that would affect car dealers, retailers and others dependent on consumer paychecks.
Based on historical models, zero growth in the U.S. gross domestic product would take the current unemployment rate to 6.4 percent. That would wipe out about 3 million jobs from the economy, according to the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute.
…
Borrowers who took out loans in the first six months of this year are already falling behind on their payments faster than those who took out loans in 2006, according to a report from Arlington, Va.-based investment bank Friedman, Billings Ramsey. That’s making it even harder for would-be buyers to get new mortgages — a frightening prospect for home builders with projects going begging on the market, and for homeowners desperate to unload property to avoid defaulting on their loans.
Meanwhile, the number of U.S. homes in foreclosure is expected to keep soaring after more than doubling during the third quarter from a year earlier, to 446,726 homes nationwide, according to Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac Inc. That’s one foreclosure filing for every 196 households in the nation, a 34 percent jump from just three months earlier.
Such data suggests more Americans could lose their homes than ever before, and those in peril are people who never thought they’d welsh on a mortgage payment…
Australia: John Howard Finally Kicked to the Curb
November 24th, 2007Via: Bloomberg:
Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party won Australia’s election, ending John Howard’s 11-year rule after promising to tackle climate change, restore workers’ bargaining power and withdraw Australian troops from Iraq.
Labor won 83 of the 150 seats in the House of Representatives, gaining 23 seats from 2004, according to Australian Broadcasting Corp. projections. The Liberal-National coalition has 58 seats, with two independents and seven undecided, ABC said.
…
Howard, 68, said he is unlikely to retain his seat, becoming the first Australian leader to be voted out of parliament since 1929. He accepted responsibility for the defeat and anointed his deputy, Treasurer Peter Costello, as his successor.
Australia’s second-longest serving leader, Howard was one of the first allies of U.S. President George W. Bush to send troops to Iraq.
Soybeans: Highest in 34 Years
November 24th, 2007Via: Bloomberg:
Soybeans surged above $11 a bushel to the highest in 34 years as China increased purchases of dwindling U.S. supplies.
U.S. exporters reported sales of 1.81 million metric tons last week, up 39 percent from the previous week and the second straight high in the year that began Sept. 1, the Department of Agriculture said today in a report. Citigroup Global Markets projected sales of 900,000 tons to 1.1 million tons. China, the biggest importer, accounted for 66 percent of last week’s total.
Gold Gaps Up Into Weekend: Biggest Weekly Gain Since July 2006
November 24th, 2007WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
Woh.
But… Hmm. Thin holiday volume…
Decent chance for an ascending triangle long play setting up on the daily interval… or is it a short squeeze??? We’re range bound again, roughly between $772 and $845. The weekly stochastic oscillator is still perilously high (mid 80s), from a long perspective. It’s going to take a serious grunt to break above $845.
Ahh, feels good not to be trading this.
Via: Bloomberg:
Gold jumped 3.3 percent, capping the biggest weekly gain since July 2006, as the dollar’s decline to a record against the euro and climbing energy costs sparked demand for the metal as a hedge against inflation.
The price of gold has surged 29 percent this year, and the dollar is down 10 percent to the lowest ever against a basket of six currencies, including the euro and the yen. Crude oil closed above $98 a barrel, and heating oil climbed to a record.
Nanosolar’s Breakthrough: Solar Now Cheaper than Coal
November 24th, 2007Via: Celsias:
Their mission: to deliver cost-efficient solar electricity. The Nanosolar company was founded in 2002 and is working to build the world’s largest solar cell factory in California and the world’s largest panel-assembly factory in Germany. They have successfully created a solar coating that is the most cost-efficient solar energy source ever. Their PowerSheet cells contrast the current solar technology systems by reducing the cost of production from $3 a watt to a mere 30 cents per watt. This makes, for the first time in history, solar power cheaper than burning coal.
…
The Nanosolar plant in San Jose, once in full production in 2008, will be capable of producing 430 megawatts per year. This is more than the combined total of every other solar manufacturer in the U.S.
More: Nanosolar
Related: Clean Energy and Turning What’s Left Into Trash
