Events

From the New York Times the last few days, three articles worth reading. First, the story of AIG: When you start asking around about how A.I.G. made money during the housing bubble, you hear the same two phrases again and again: “regulatory arbitrage” and “ratings arbitrage.” The word “arbitrage” usually means taking advantage of a price differential between two securities — a bond and stock of the same company, for instance — that are related in some way. When the word is used to describe A.I.G.’s...

Through multitasking and some minor process improvements, I'm already through 92 of the re-ripping project I started last week. At this rate...I should be done sometime next month. If the weather were warmer, I should point out, I'd be walking Parker instead.

Via Calculated Risk, unemployment in California crests 10% for the first time in 26 years: The 10.1% jobless rate is the highest since June 1983 and not far below the 11% record set in November 1982 at the worst point of a severe recession, according to the governor's office. Job losses escalated in January, with the state's unemployment rate jumping by 1.4 percentage points from a revised 8.7% for December. The L.A. Times goes on to report a total of 380,743 layoffs in California so far this year....

That's how Douglas Adams described the effect of a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. I feel like I've just drunk two, after a phone call I recevied an hour ago from North Carolina. Long-time readers of this blog who know me personally have noticed I actually maintain a certain sense of reserve in my public writings. The actual word is "privacy," but so few people remember what that word means in the context of the Internet that I avoid using it. These long-suffering people (called "friends" and "family")...

Three more photos from my trip. First, AA 657 arriving from JFK: Second, the ruins of the Mullet Bay Resort, destroyed in September 1995 by Hurricane Luis: Finally, another view of that sunset from the 15th:

The Rocky Mountain News, one of Denver's two newspapers, will shut its doors after tomorrow's edition: Rich Boehne, chief executive officer of Scripps, broke the news to the Rocky staff at noon today, ending nearly three months of speculation over the paper's future. He called the paper a victim of a terrible economy and an upheaval in the newspaper industry. "Denver can't support two newspapers anymore," Boehne told staffers, some of whom cried at the news. On Dec. 4, Boehne announced that Scripps was...

Via Calculated Risk, the FDIC's Supervisory Capital Assessment Program has published its stress-test scenarios. Ew: the average baseline shows a 2.0% decline in GDP this year followed by a 2.1% increase in 2010, as well as an "alternative more adverse" projection of -3.3% in 2009 and +0.5% in 2010. They forecast house prices to decline by -18% (baseline) to -29% (alternative) through 2010, with rises in unemployment to 8.8% (baseline) up to 10.3% (alternative). Now, imagine you're a bank with $100...

First, the President's Fate of the Union address, very much worth watching: we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they...

British airline Ryanair has a pilot program allowing cell phones in flight. One hopes, if this comes to the U.S., for special "quiet" areas: Within six months 50 planes will be kitted out. If it proves popular, the service will be rolled out across the whole 170-strong fleet. Passengers will be able to make and receive calls for €2-3 ($2.50-3.80) per minute, send and receive text messages (50c plus) and use e-mail (€1-2). ... To be fair to Ryanair, it does not claim to be anything other than a noisy...