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Be Sure To Catch These Items
December 19th, 2011 Posted in Uncategorized
Dec, 19 2011
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As we reach the end of 2011, I keep stumbling across loads of important blog postings which deserve more attention. These pieces aren't really concerned with the usual, "year in review"- type of subject matter. They are simply great items which could get overlooked by people who are too busy during this time of year to set aside the time to browse around for interesting reads. Accordingly, I'd like to bring a few of these to your attention.
The entire European economy is on its way to hell, thanks to an idiotic, widespread belief that economic austerity measures will serve as a panacea for the sovereign debt crisis. The increasing obviousness of the harm caused by austerity has motivated its proponents to crank-up the "John Maynard Keynes was wrong" propaganda machine. You don't have to look very far to find examples of that stuff. On any given day, the Real Clear Politics (or Real Clear Markets) website is likely to be listing at least one link to such a piece. Those commentators are simply trying to take advantage of the fact that President Obama botched the 2009 economic stimulus effort. Many of us realized – a long time ago – that Obama's stimulus measures would prove to be inadequate. In July of 2009, I wrote a piece entitled, "The Second Stimulus", wherein I pointed out that another stimulus program would be necessary because the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was not going to accomplish its intended objective. Beyond that, it was already becoming apparent that the stimulus program would eventually be used to support the claim that Keynesian economics doesn't work. Economist Stephanie Kelton anticipated that tactic in a piece she published at the New Economic Perspectives website:
Despite the current "ridicule and scorn" campaign against Keynesian economics, a fantastic, unbiased analysis of the subject has been provided by Henry Blodget of The Business Insider. Blodget's commentary was written in easy-to-read, layman's terms and I can't say enough good things about it. Here's an example:
The reason austerity doesn't work to quickly fix the problem is that, when the economy is already struggling, and you cut government spending, you also further damage the economy. And when you further damage the economy, you further reduce tax revenue, which has already been clobbered by the stumbling economy. And when you further reduce tax revenue, you increase the deficit and create the need for more austerity. And that even further clobbers the economy and tax revenue. And so on.
Another "must read" blog posting was provided by Mike Shedlock (a/k/a Mish). Mish directed our attention to a rather extensive list of "Things to Say Goodbye To", which was written last year by Clark McClelland and appeared on Jeff Rense's website. (Clark McClelland is a retired NASA aerospace engineer who has an interesting background. I encourage you to explore McClelland's website.) Mish pared McClelland's list down to nine items and included one of his own – loss of free speech:
A bill in Congress with an innocuous title – Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) – threatens to do much more.
This bill's real intent is not to stop piracy, but rather to hand over control of the internet to corporations.
At his Financial Armageddon blog, Michael Panzner took a similar approach toward slimming down a list of bullet points which reveal the disastrous state of our economy: "50 Economic Numbers From 2011 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe," from the Economic Collapse blog. Panzner's list was narrowed down to ten items – plenty enough to undermine those "sunshine and rainbows" prognostications about what we can expect during 2012.
The final item on my list of "must read" essays is a rebuttal to that often-repeated big lie that "no laws were broken" by the banksters who caused the financial crisis. Bill Black is an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in the Department of Economics and the School of Law. Black directed litigation for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) from 1984 to 1986 and served as deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) in 1987. Black's refutation of the "no laws were broken by the financial crisis banksters" meme led up to a clever homage to Dante's Divine Comedy describing the "ten circles of hell" based on "the scale of ethical depravity by the frauds that drove the ongoing crisis". Here is Black's retort to the big lie:
Sixty Minutes' December 11, 2011 interview of President Obama included a claim by Obama that, unfortunately, did not lead the interviewer to ask the obvious, essential follow-up questions.
I can tell you, just from 40,000 feet, that some of the most damaging behavior on Wall Street, in some cases, some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street, wasn't illegal.
I offer the following scale of unethical banker behavior related to fraudulent mortgages and mortgage paper (principally collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)) that is illegal and deserved punishment. I write to prompt the rigorous analytical discussion that is essential to expose and end Obama and Bush's "Presidential Amnesty for Contributors" (PAC) doctrine. The financial industry is the leading campaign contributor to both parties and those contributions come overwhelmingly from the wealthiest officers – the one-tenth of one percent that thrives by being parasites on the 99 percent.
I have explained at length in my blogs and articles why:
• Only fraudulent home lenders made liar's loans
• Liar's loans were endemically fraudulent
• Lenders and their agents put the lies in liar's loans
• Appraisal fraud was endemic and led by lenders and their agents
• Liar's loans could only be sold through fraudulent reps and warranties
• CDOs "backed" by liar's loans were inherently fraudulent
• CDOs backed by liar's loans could only be sold through fraudulent reps and warranties
• Liar's loans hyper-inflated the bubble
• Liar's loans became roughly one-third of mortgage originations by 2006
Each of these frauds is a conventional fraud that could be prosecuted under existing laws.
It's nice to see someone finally take a stand against the "Presidential Amnesty for Contributors" (PAC) doctrine. Every time Obama attempts to invoke that doctrine – he should be called on it. The Apologist-In-Chief needs to learn that the voters are not as stupid as he thinks they are.
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Inviting More Trouble
June 23rd, 2011 Posted in Uncategorized
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I frequently revert to my unending criticism of President Obama for "punting" on the 2009 economic stimulus program. The most recent example was my June 13 posting, wherein I noted how Stephanie Kelton provided us with an interesting reminiscence of that fateful time during the first month of Obama's Presidency, in a piece she published on William Black's New Economic Perspectives website:
As it turned out – that is exactly what happened. Obama's lack of leadership and his apologetic, half-assed use of government power to fight the recession has brought us to where we are today. It may also bring Barack Obama and his family to a new address in January of 2013.
At this point, the "austerian" economists are claiming that the attenuated stimulus program's failure to bring us more robust economic growth is "proof" that Keynesian economics "doesn't work". The fact that many of these economists speak the way they do as a result of conflicts of interest – arising from the fact that they are on the payrolls of private firms with vested interests in maintaining the status quo – is lost on the vast majority of Americans. Unfortunately, President Obama is not concerned with rebutting the arguments of these "hired guns". A recent poll by Bloomberg News revealed that the American public has successfully been fooled into believing that austerity measures could somehow revive our economy:
As the public grasps for solutions, the Republican Party is breaking through in the message war on the budget and economy. A majority of Americans say job growth would best be revived with prescriptions favored by the party: cuts in government spending and taxes, the Bloomberg Poll shows. Even 40 percent of Democrats share that view.
Though Americans rate unemployment and the economy as a greater concern than the deficit and government spending, the issues are now closely connected. Sixty-five percent of respondents say they believe the size of the federal deficit is "a major reason" the jobless rate hasn't dropped significantly.
Republican criticism of the federal budget growth has gained traction with the public. Fifty-five percent of poll respondents say cuts in spending and taxes would be more likely to bring down unemployment than would maintaining or increasing government spending, as Obama did in his 2009 stimulus package.
The voters are finally buying the corporatist propaganda that unemployment will recede if the government would just leave businesses alone. Forget about any government "hiring programs" – we actually need to fire more government employees! With those annoying regulators off their backs, corporations would be free to hire again and bring us all to Ayn Rand heaven. You are supposed to believe that anyone who disagrees with this or contends that government can play a role in job creation is a socialist.
Nevertheless, prominent individuals from the world of business and finance are making an effort to debunk these myths. Bond guru Bill Gross of PIMCO recently addressed the subject:
Solutions from policymakers on the right or left, however, seem focused almost exclusively on rectifying or reducing our budget deficit as a panacea. While Democrats favor tax increases and mild adjustments to entitlements, Republicans pound the table for trillions of dollars of spending cuts and an axing of Obamacare. Both, however, somewhat mystifyingly, believe that balancing the budget will magically produce 20 million jobs over the next 10 years. President Obama's long-term budget makes just such a claim and Republican alternatives go many steps further. Former Governor Pawlenty of Minnesota might be the Republicans' extreme example, but his claim of 5% real growth based on tax cuts and entitlement reductions comes out of left field or perhaps the field of dreams. The United States has not had a sustained period of 5% real growth for nearly 60 years.
Both parties, in fact, are moving to anti-Keynesian policy orientations, which deny additional stimulus and make rather awkward and unsubstantiated claims that if you balance the budget, "they will come." It is envisioned that corporations or investors will somehow overnight be attracted to the revived competitiveness of the U.S. labor market: Politicians feel that fiscal conservatism equates to job growth.
Hedge fund manager, Barry Ritholtz discussed his own ideas for "Jump Starting the U.S. Economy" on his website, The Big Picture. He concluded the piece by lamenting the fact that the federal debt/deficit debate is sucking all the air out of the room at the very time when people should be discussing job creation:
The focus on Deficits today is absurd, forcing us towards another 1938-type recession. The time to reduce the government's economic deficit and footprint is during a robust expansion, not during (or just after) major contractions.
During the de-leveraging following a credit crisis is the worst possible time to be deficit obsessed.
Don't count on President Obama to say anything remotely similar to what you just read. You would be expecting too much.
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Taibbi Tackles A Tool
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A few weeks ago, I saw Andrew Ross Sorkin's appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher. At one point during the discussion, Sorkin asserted that the financial crisis of 2008 did not result from the violation of any laws. I immediately screamed "Tool!" at the teevee. Worse yet, because Sorkin is not an attorney, his legal opinions are not worth the electrons used to convey them.
Since that time, ARS has continued with his bankster exoneration crusade. In the process, he has drawn criticism from such authorities as William Black.
On May 24, Robert Scheer of Truthdig posted a review of the HBO movie-adaptation of Sorkin's book, Too Big To Fail. Scheer's review demonstrated how "access journalism" often creates fawning sycophants. Scheer closed the piece with this thought:
Perhaps the main value of the book and film is the instruction they provide on the limits of mainstream journalism in the decade that led up to the meltdown. Sorkin, who rose to be a business editor at the Times, covered Wall Street deal-making in exquisite detail, relying on an access journalism that has often proved deeply flawed in traditional business news coverage. What was largely ignored as it was unfolding was the story of the unbridled power of Wall Street financiers over the political process that caused this tragedy for so many tens of millions who have lost jobs and homes.
On June 6, Sorkin wrote a piece for his Dealbook blog in defense of Goldman Sachs. The essay seemed to be particularly focused on the vulnerability of Goldman CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, to perjury charges resulting from his testimony before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Carl Levin. Sorkin concluded that the evidence was "far from convincing" that Blankfein lied when he testified that Goldman "didn't have a massive short" position against the housing market.
It's difficult to avoid turning up on Matt Taibbi's radar when one is carrying water for Goldman Sachs. Taibbi immediately set about debunking Sorkin's Goldman piece on June 7. Taibbi did a thorough job of making it clear that Blankfien lied, using a similar analysis to what I expressed on May 19. While focusing on Sorkin's perspective, Taibbi made an especially strong point, reminiscent of the debate which has arisen concerning the ethics of economists in the aftermath of the film, Inside Job. Economists who publish "academic studies" on a subject don't usually feel obligated to disclose that they are on the payrolls of companies who could benefit from that that type of support. It appears as though Sorkin may be suffering from a similar affliction. Consider this point from the beginning of Taibbi's retort to Sorkin's June 6 defense of Goldman:
The Sorkin piece reads like it was written by the bank's marketing department, which may not be an accident. In November of last year, the New York Times announced that "Dealbook" was entering into a sponsorship agreement with a variety of companies, including … Goldman, Sachs. This is from that announcement last year:
DealBook will also feature news and insights on deal-related topics from Business Day's well-known roster of leading business reporters, which includes recent hires in addition to a veteran stable of Wall Street's most highly-regarded journalists.
Barclays Capital, Goldman Sachs, Sotheby's and Tata Consultancy Services are charter advertisers for the relaunch of DealBook.
"This is the next step in the evolution of DealBook, providing a community of highly-engaged readers and busy executives with essential news and insights, and keeping them plugged in to the most important news of the day," said Andrew Ross Sorkin, DealBook editor.
Even last year I thought it was a terrible decision by the Times to take money from Goldman in the wake of an unprecedented period of financial corruption – especially to sponsor, of all things, business reporting.
But now? This looks like a joke. In Russia in the Yeltsin years, reporters had a term for selling editorial print content to mobsters. They called it "selling jeans," a play on the old Soviet-era black-marketeer practice of trading rabbit hats to tourists for their Levi's. This Sorkin piece has the unmistakable look of a brand-new set of 501s to me. Pieces like this undermine the great work that reporters like Gretchen Morgenson have done in the paper in recent years.
Once again, Matt Taibbi has used his unique style to keep the spotlight on the malefaction which caused the financial crisis and the subsequent wrongdoing, as well as the failure of the mainstream media to give a damn about any of it.
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Crazy Like Fox
Donald Trump has enjoyed a good deal of publicity during the past few weeks, since he jumped on the "birther" bandwagon, voicing skepticism as to whether Barack Obama was really born in the United States. Many of Trump's critics insist that The Donald is not a serious Presidential candidate and that his newfound "birther" agenda demonstrates that his Presidential campaign is nothing more than a flimflam publicity stunt.
I have a different theory. I believe that Trump is running a "decoy" campaign. Keep in mind that Trump is currently the #2 contender for the Republican nomination. Remember also that the Republican Presidential primaries for 11 states (and the District of Columbia) are conducted on a "winner-take-all" basis – meaning that when a candidate wins a state primary, that candidate wins all of the delegates who will represent that state at the Republican National Convention. If Trump can win a few of those states, he could amass an impressive amount of "pledged" delegates. I suspect that Trump's goal is to win the support from the extreme right wing of the Republican Party and "hijack" those delegates who would have been otherwise pledged to candidates acceptable to the Tea Party. Bill O'Reilly's intervention to defuse the "birther" controversy (at which point he insisted that Trump has not been seriously seeking the nomination) was apparently motivated by the fact that the candidates most likely to be eliminated from contention because of Trump's presence – Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin – are both darlings of Fox News. In fact, Palin is a Fox News contributor.
At the 2012 Republican Convention in Tampa, Trump could step aside and support Willard Romney, who is despised my many Tea Party activists for having created what is now known as "Obamacare". Trump's elimination of the Tea Party favorites before the convention would solve Romney's problem with that voting bloc. Romney can be expected to have an equally difficult time winning the support of dog lovers, as a result of his decision to strap the family dog, Seamus, to the car roof for a 12-hour family vacation drive to Ontario. Despite his "Presidential" appearance, this Homer Simpson-esque episode from Romney's life has already impaired efforts to portray him as a potentially effective Commander-In-Chief.
Meanwhile, President Obama is busy trumpeting his newly-minted, false campaign promises. Gallup reported that on April 15, Obama's approval rating had tied its all-time low of 41%. More interestingly, his approval rating among African-American and Hispanic voters is beginning to slip from its enormously-high levels:
Though majorities of blacks (85%) and Hispanics (54%) continue to approve of the job Barack Obama is doing as president, his ratings among these groups slipped in March and have set or tied new lows.
Obama, elected to office with strong support from minority voters, has averaged better than 90% approval among blacks, and 65% among Hispanics, during his term. Prior to March, Obama's lowest monthly average among blacks was 88% in July 2010 and December 2010. The president's 54% March job approval rating among Hispanics ties the low from July and August 2010.
Despite the efforts of Republican commentators, such as Peggy Noonan, to create a narrative to the effect that Obama's waning popularity – as well as the losses sustained by the Democrats in the 2010 elections – resulted from voter concern about government spending and the deficit, I suspect that Americans have simply become alienated by the failure of Obama and his party to deliver on their 2008 promises. Worse yet, the capitulation to the interests of Wall Street by Democrats who promised "reform" has reinforced voter apathy – the real factor in the 2010 Democratic setbacks.
Cord Jefferson of Good provided this graphic of what Congress would look like if it truly represented America. The failure of Democrats to win the support of Independent and centrist voters is readily apparent. You can blame gerrymandering all you want, but as long as the Democrats fail to provide alternatives to Republican policies, they will continue to lose. I believe it was William Black who said:
Under America's two-party system, we have one party that is owned by big business and another party that sells out to big business.
I was pleased to see my own sentiments shared and articulated quite well by Mike Kimel of the Presimetrics Blog, in his recent posting entitled, "Why I Will Not be Voting for Obama in 2012". Although Mr. Kimel doesn't have an alternative candidate in mind, the very reason for his disillusionment with Obama is that – with respect to the nation's most significant problems – our current President has proposed no alternative policies to those of his predecessor:
And yes, there are a handful of things Obama did that GW might not do, but let's be realistic – this has looked from the very beginning like GW's third term.
Which leaves just one question – if the policies of the Republicans are even worse than Obama's – and they tend to support anti-growth tax policies (calling them pro-growth doesn't change the data), what should a rational person do? I don't know. But I think if I'm going to see Republican policies enacted, I'd prefer to see them run under a Republican label. See, Democratic policies may not be very good, but historically they have tended to produce better results than Republican policies. (BTW – Michael Kanell and I have an entire book called Presimetrics looking at how Presidents performed on a wide range of topics.) Another four years spent bringing the feeble Democratic brand down to the levels of the even more feeble Republican brand will cause lasting damage.
Obama will never re-ignite the enthusiasm of 2008 by presenting himself to the voters as "the devil you know" or "the lesser of two evils". What America's middle class really needs is an honest, Independent candidate to make a run for The White House in 2012.
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Some Quick Takes On The Financial Crisis Inquiry Report
January 31st, 2011 Posted in Uncategorized
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The official Financial Crisis Inquiry Report by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC) has become the subject of many turgid commentaries since its January 27 release date. The Report itself is 633 pages long. Nevertheless, if you hope to avoid all that reading by relying on reviews of the document, you could easily end up reading 633 pages of commentary about it. By that point, you might be left with enough questions or curiosity to give up and actually read the whole, damned thing. (Here it is.) If you are content with reading the 14 pages of the Commission's Conclusions, you can find those here. What follows is my favorite passage from that section:
We conclude widespread failures in financial regulation and supervision proved devastating to the stability of the nation's financial markets. The sentries were not at their posts, in no small part due to the widely accepted faith in the self-correcting nature of the markets and the ability of financial institutions to effectively police themselves. More than 30 years of deregulation and reliance on self-regulation by financial institutions, championed by former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and others, supported by successive administrations and Congresses, and actively pushed by the powerful financial industry at every turn, had stripped away key safeguards, which could have helped avoid catastrophe. This approach had opened up gaps in oversight of critical areas with trillions of dollars at risk, such as the shadow banking system and over-the-counter derivatives markets. In addition, the government permitted financial firms to pick their preferred regulators in what became a race to the weakest supervisor.
In order to help save you some time and trouble, I will provide you with a brief roadmap to some of the commentary that is readily available:
Gretchen Morgenson of The New York Times introduced her own 1,257-word discourse in this way:
For those who might find the report's 633 pages a bit daunting for a weekend read, we offer a Cliffs Notes version.
Let's begin with the Federal Reserve, the most powerful of financial regulators. The report's most important public service comes in its recitation of how top Fed officials, both in Washington and in New York, fiddled while the financial system smoldered and then burned. It is disturbing indeed that this institution, defiantly inert and uninterested in reining in the mortgage mania, received even greater regulatory powers under the Dodd-Frank law that was supposed to reform our system.
(I find it disturbing that Ms. Morgenson is still fixated on "mortgage mania" as a cause of the crisis after having been upbraided by Barry Ritholtz – twice – for "pushing the Fannie-Freddie CRA meme".)
At her Naked Capitalism blog, Yves Smith focused more intently on what the FCIC Report didn't say, as opposed to what it actually said:
The FCIC has also been unduly close-lipped about their criminal referrals, refusing to say how many they made or giving a high-level description of the type of activities they encouraged prosecutors to investigate. By contrast, the Valukas report on the Lehman bankruptcy discussed in some detail whether it thought civil or criminal charges could be brought against Lehman CEO Richard Fuld and chief financial officers chiefs Chris O'Meara, Erin Callan and Ian I Lowitt, and accounting firm Ernst & Young. If a report prepared in a private sector action can discuss liability and name names, why is the public not entitled to at least some general disclosure on possible criminal actions coming out of a taxpayer funded effort? Or is it that the referrals were merely to burnish the image of the report, and are expected to die a speedy death?
At his Calculated Risk blog, Bill McBride corroborated one of the Report's Conclusions, by recounting his own experience. After quoting some of the language supporting the point that the crisis could have been avoided if the warning signs had not been ignored, due to the "pervasive permissiveness" at the Federal Reserve, McBride recalled a specific example:
This is absolutely correct. In 2005 I was calling regulators and I was told they were very concerned – and several people told me confidentially that the political appointees were blocking all efforts to tighten standards – and one person told me "Greenspan is throwing his body in front of all efforts to tighten standards".
The dissenting views that discount this willful lack of regulation are absurd and an embarrassment for the authors.
William Black wrote an essay criticizing the dissenters themselves – based on their experience in developing the climate of financial deregulation that facilitated the crisis:
The Commission is correct. Absent the crisis was avoidable. The scandal of the Republican commissioners' apologia for their failed anti-regulatory policies was also avoidable. The Republican Congressional leadership should have ensured that it did not appoint individuals who would be in the impossible position of judging themselves. Even if the leadership failed to do so and proposed such appointments, the appointees to the Commission should have recognized the inherent conflict of interest and displayed the integrity to decline appointment. There were many Republicans available with expertise in, for example, investigating elite white-collar criminals regardless of party affiliation. That was the most relevant expertise needed on the Commission.
At this point, the important question is whether the efforts of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission will result in any changes that could help us avoid another disaster. I'm not feeling too hopeful.
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Democrats Share The Blame
January 24th, 2011 Posted in Uncategorized
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January 21 brought us Episode 199 of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. At the end of the program, Bill went through his popular "New Rules" segment. On this occasion, he wound it up with a rant about how the Republicans were exclusively at fault for the financial crisis. Aside from the fact that this claim was historically inaccurate, it was not at all fair to David Stockman (a guest on that night's show) who had to sit through Maher's diatribe without an opportunity to point out the errors. (On the other hand, I was fine with watching Stephen Moore twist in the wind as Maher went through that tirade.)
That incident underscored the obvious need for Bill Maher to invite William Black as a guest on the show in order to clarify this issue. Prior to that episode, Black had written an essay, which appeared on The Big Picture website. Although the theme of that piece was to debunk the "mantra of the Republican Party" that "regulation is a job killer", Black emphasized that Democrats had a role in "deregulation, desupervision, and de facto decriminalization (the three 'des')" which created the "criminogenic environment" precipitating the financial crisis:
The Great Recession was triggered by the collapse of the real estate bubble epidemic of mortgage fraud by lenders that hyper-inflated that bubble. That epidemic could not have happened without the appointment of anti-regulators to key leadership positions. The epidemic of mortgage fraud was centered on loans that the lending industry (behind closed doors) referred to as "liar's" loans — so any regulatory leader who was not an anti-regulatory ideologue would (as we did in the early 1990s during the first wave of liar's loans in California) have ordered banks not to make these pervasively fraudulent loans.
From roughly 1999 to the present, three administrations have displayed hostility to vigorous regulation and have appointed regulatory leaders largely on the basis of their opposition to vigorous regulation. When these administrations occasionally blundered and appointed, or inherited, regulatory leaders that believed in regulating, the administration attacked the regulators. In the financial regulatory sphere, recent examples include Arthur Levitt and William Donaldson (SEC), Brooksley Born (CFTC), and Sheila Bair (FDIC).
Similarly, the bankers used Congress to extort the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) into trashing the accounting rules so that the banks no longer had to recognize their losses. The twin purposes of that bit of successful thuggery were to evade the mandate of the Prompt Corrective Action (PCA) law and to allow banks to pretend that they were solvent and profitable so that they could continue to pay enormous bonuses to their senior officials based on the fictional "income" and "net worth" produced by the scam accounting. (Not recognizing one's losses increases dollar-for-dollar reported, but fictional, net worth and gross income.)
When members of Congress (mostly Democrats) sought to intimidate us into not taking enforcement actions against the fraudulent S&Ls we blew the whistle.
President Obama's January 18 opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal prompted a retort from Bill Black. The President announced that he had signed an executive order requiring "a government-wide review of the rules already on the books to remove outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive". Obama's focus on "regulations that stifle job creation" seemed to exemplify what Black had just discussed one day earlier. Accordingly, Bill Black wrote an essay for The Huffington Post on January 19, which began this way:
I get President Obama's "regulatory review" plan, I really do. His game plan is a straight steal from President Clinton's strategy after the Republican's 1994 congressional triumph. Clinton's strategy was to steal the Republican Party's play book. I know that Clinton's strategy was considered brilliant politics (particularly by the Clintonites), but the Republican financial playbook produces recurrent, intensifying fraud epidemics and financial crises. Rubin and Summers were Clinton's offensive coordinators. They planned and implemented the Republican game plan on finance. Rubin and Summers were good choices for this role because they were, and remain, reflexively anti-regulatory. They led the deregulation and attack on supervision that began to create the criminogenic environment that produced the financial crisis.
Bill Clinton's role in facilitating the financial crisis would have surely become an issue in the 2008 Presidential election campaign, had Hillary Clinton been the Democratic nominee. Instead, the Democrats got behind a "Trojan horse" candidate, disguised in the trappings of "Change" who, once elected, re-installed the very people who implemented the crucial deregulatory changes which caused the financial crisis. Bill Black provided this explanation:
The zeal, crude threats, and arrogance they displayed in leading the attacks on SEC Chair Levitt and CFTC Chair Born's efforts to adopt regulations that would have reduced the risks of fraud and financial crises were exceptional. Just one problem — they were wrong and Levitt and Born were right. Rubin and Summers weren't slightly wrong; they put us on the path to the Great Recession. Obama knows that Clinton's brilliant political strategy, stealing the Republican play book, was a disaster for the nation, but he has picked politics over substance.
Obama's proposal and the accompanying OMB releases do not mention the word or the concept of fraud. Despite an "epidemic" of fraud led by the bank CEOs (which caused the greatest crisis of his life), Obama cannot bring itself to use the "f" word. The administration wants the banks' senior officers to fund its reelection campaign. I've never raised political contributions, but I'm certain that pointing out that a large number of senior bank officers were frauds would make fundraising from them awkward.
Black targeted Obama's lame gesture toward acknowledgement of some need for regulation, encapsulated in the statement that "(w)here necessary, we won't shy away from addressing obvious gaps …":
Huh? The vital task is to find the non-obvious gaps. Why, two years into his presidency, has the administration failed to address "obvious gaps"? The administration does not need Republican approval to fill obvious gaps in regulation. Even when Obama finds "obvious gaps" in regulatory protection he does not promise to act. He will act only "where necessary." We know that Summers, Rubin, and Geithner rarely believe that financial regulation is "necessary." Even if Obama decides it is "necessary" to act he only promises to "address" "obvious gaps" — not "end" or "fill" them.
At the conclusion of his Huffington Post essay, Black provided his own list of "obvious gaps" described as the "Dirty Dozen" — ". . . obvious gaps in financial regulation which have persisted and grown during this, Obama's first two years in office."
Bill Black is just one of many commentators to annotate the complicity of Democrats in causing the financial crisis. Beyond that, Black has illustrated how President Obama has preserved – and possibly enhanced — the "criminogenic" milieu which could bring about another financial crisis.
The first step toward implementing "bipartisan solutions" to our nation's ills should involve acknowledging the extent to which the fault for those problems is bipartisan.
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Justice Denied
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A recent article written by former New York Mayor Ed Koch began with the grim observation that no criminal charges have been brought against any of the malefactors responsible for causing the financial crisis:
Most of us assumed that the Enron scandal had set a precedent for the prosecution of corporate financial crime. A few Enron executives received prison sentences and the CEO, Ken Lay, died while serving time. Enron's auditor, Arthur Andersen & Company, was forced out of business. In the wake of the Savings and Loan Crisis of the late 1980s, Charles Keating and a few of his associates were indicted by the State of California. Keating eventually received a ten-year prison sentence for fraud, racketeering and conspiracy. Keating's prosecution resulted from pressure brought by William Black, former litigation director for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. At one point during Black's investigation, Keating issued a written memo to one of his minions, with this directive: "If you can't get Wright and Congress to get Black . . . Kill him dead."
These days, William Black has been doing quite a bit of speaking and writing about the need to initiate criminal proceedings against the culprits responsible for causing the financial crisis. On December 28, Black characterized the failure to prosecute those crimes as "de facto decriminalization of elite financial fraud":
Our best bet is to continue to win the scholarly disputes and to continue to push media representatives to take fraud seriously. If the media demands for prosecution of the elite banking frauds expand there is a chance to create a bipartisan coalition in Congress and the administration supporting prosecutions. In the S&L debacle, Representative Annunzio was one of the leading opponents of reregulation and leading supporters of Charles Keating. After we brought several hundred successful prosecutions he began wearing a huge button: "Jail the S&L Crooks!" Bringing many hundreds of enforcement actions, civil suits, and prosecutions causes huge changes in the way a crisis is perceived. It makes tens of thousands of documents detailing the frauds public. It generates thousands of national and local news stories discussing the nature of the frauds and how wealthy the senior officers became through the frauds. All of this increases the saliency of fraud and increases demands for serious reforms, adequate resources for the regulators and criminal justice bodies, and makes clear that elite fraud poses a severe danger. Collectively, this creates the political space for real reform, vigorous regulators, and real prosecutors.
Hedge fund manager, David Einhorn (author of Fooling Some of the People All of the Time) was recently interviewed by Charlie Rose. At one point during the interview, Charlie Rose asked Einhorn to address the argument that regulators lacked the tools necessary for preventing the financial crisis. Mr. Einhorn gave this response:
I would actually disagree with that. I think that the problem was that the laws were not enforced. After Enron you had Sarbanes Oxley. And there have been hardly any prosecutions under Sarbanes Oxley. You put in a tough anti-fraud law. The CEO has to sign there is no fraud.
The CFO has to sign that the financial statements are correct. If it's not, there are going to be criminal consequences to all of this. And the result was that effectively you passed a law but then they didn't enforce the law.
And once the bad guys figured out that the law wasn't being enforced, it effectively provided cover because everybody said, look we have the tough antifraud law. The fraud must have gone away.
While many people have been getting excited about the "insider trading" investigation currently underway, I have been sitting here, wearing my tinfoil hat, viewing the entire episode as a diversionary tactic to direct public attention away from the crimes that caused the financial crisis. Fortunately, I am not the only cynic with such an outlook. Jesse Eisenger recently wrote a piece for the DealBook blog at The New York Times entitled, "The Feds Stage a Sideshow While the Big Tent Sits Empty". Here is some of what Eisenger had to say about the "insider trading" investigation:
In fact, plenty of people on Wall Street are happy about the investigation. The ones with clean consciences like the idea that the world of special access to favorable tips is being cleaned up.
But others are pleased for a different reason: They realize the investigation is a sideshow.
All the hype carries an air of defensiveness. Everyone is wondering: Where are the investigations related to the financial crisis?
John Hueston, a former lead Enron prosecutor, wonders, "Have they committed the resources in the right place? Do these scandals warrant apparent national priority status?"
Nobody from Lehman, Merrill Lynch or Citigroup has been charged criminally with anything. No top executives at Bear Stearns have been indicted. All former American International Group executives are running free. No big mortgage company executive has had to face the law.
There's an old saying: "Justice delayed is justice denied." The government has demonstrated that it is in no hurry to bring any significant criminal charges against the perpetrators of the crimes that caused the financial crisis. With the passing of time, it becomes increasingly obvious that those crimes will go unpunished. The cause of justice is simply no match for the ability of certain individuals to operate "above the law". In fact, it never has been.
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Deceptive Oversight
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March 16 brought us a few more provocative essays about the Lehman Brothers scandal. The most prominent subject discussed in the reactions to the Valukas Report has been the complete lack of oversight by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — the entity with investigators in place inside of Lehman Brothers after the collapse of Bear Stearns. The FRBNY had the perfect vantage point to conduct effective oversight of Lehman. Not only did the FRBNY fail to do so — it actually helped Lehman maintain a false image of being financially solvent. It is important to keep in mind that Lehman CEO Richard Fuld was a class B director of the FRBNY during this period. Does that sound like a conflict of interest to anyone besides me? The Securities and Exchange Commission (under the direction of Christopher Cox at the time) has become another subject of scrutiny for its own dubious semblance of oversight.
Eliot Spitzer and William Black (a professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri – Kansas City) recently posted a great article at the New Deal 2.0 website. Among the memorable points from that piece is the assertion that accounting is "the weapon of choice" for financial deception. The Valukas Report has exposed such extensive accounting fraud at Lehman, it will be impossible for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to feign ignorance of that activity. Another memorable aspect of the Spitzer – Black piece is its reference to those "too big to fail" financial institutions as "SDIs" or systemically dangerous institutions. Here is some of what Spitzer and Black had to say about how the FRBNY became enmeshed in Lehman's sleazy accounting tactics:
The FRBNY knew that Lehman was engaged in smoke and mirrors designed to overstate its liquidity and, therefore, was unwilling to lend as much money to Lehman. The FRBNY did not, however, inform the SEC, the public, or the OTS (which regulated an S&L that Lehman owned) of what should have been viewed by all as ongoing misrepresentations.
The Fed's behavior made it clear that officials didn't believe they needed to do more with this information. The FRBNY remained willing to lend to an institution with misleading accounting and neither remedied the accounting nor notified other regulators who may have had the opportunity to do so.
The FRBNY acted shamefully in covering up Lehman's inflated asset values and liquidity.
The consequences of the New York Fed's involvement in this scam were discussed in an article by Andrew Ross Sorkin from the March 16 edition of The New York Times. (You may recall that Andrew Ross Sorkin is the author of the book, Too Big To Fail.) He pointed out that the consequences of the Lehman scandal could be very far-reaching:
Indeed, it now appears that the federal government itself either didn't appreciate the significance of what it saw (we've seen that movie before with regulators waving off tips about Bernard L. Madoff). Or perhaps they did appreciate the significance and blessed the now-suspect accounting anyway.
There's a lot riding on the government's oversight of these accounting shenanigans. If Lehman Brothers executives are sued civilly or prosecuted criminally, they may actually have a powerful defense: a raft of government officials from the S.E.C. and Fed vetted virtually everything they did.
On top of that, Lehman's outside auditor, Ernst &Young, and a law firm, Linklaters, signed off on the transactions.
The problems at Lehman raise even larger questions about the vigilance of the SEC and Fed in overseeing the other Wall Street banks as well.
The question as to whether similar accounting tricks were being performed at "other Wall Street banks as well" opens a very huge can of worms. It's time for the government to step back and assess the larger picture of what the systemic problem really is. In a speech before the Senate, Delaware Senator Ted Kaufman emphasized that the government needs to return the rule of law to Wall Street:
We all understood that to restore the public's faith in our financial markets and the rule of law, we must identify, prosecute, and send to prison the participants in those markets who broke the law. Their fraudulent conduct has severely damaged our economy, caused devastating and sustained harm to countless hard-working Americans, and contributed to the widespread view that Wall Street does not play by the same rules as Main Street.
Many have said we should not seek to "punish" anyone, as all of Wall Street was in a delirium of profit-making and almost no one foresaw the sub-prime crisis caused by the dramatic decline in housing values. But this is not about retribution. This is about addressing the continuum of behavior that took place — some of it fraudulent and illegal — and in the process addressing what Wall Street and the legal and regulatory system underlying its behavior have become.
As part of that effort, we must ensure that the legal system tackles financial crimes with the same gravity as other crimes.
The nagging suspicion that those nefarious activities at Lehman Brothers could be taking place "at other banks as well" became a key point in Senator Kaufman's speech:
Mr. President, I'm concerned that the revelations about Lehman Brothers are just the tip of the iceberg. We have no reason to believe that the conduct detailed last week is somehow isolated or unique. Indeed, this sort of behavior is hardly novel. Enron engaged in similar deceit with some of its assets. And while we don't have the benefit of an examiner's report for other firms with a business model like Lehman's, law enforcement authorities should be well on their way in conducting investigations of whether others used similar "accounting gimmicks" to hide dangerous risk from investors and the public.
We can only hope that a continued investigation into the Lehman scandal will result in a very bright light directed on those privileged plutocrats who consider themselves above the law.
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Carnegie Mellon University Counterpoint
The A Cappella Blog
The Recording Rant
It's the most wonderful time of the year. No, this is not a repost from December. My Christmas is the end of the college semester, when so many groups decide to display their hard work and money spent by releasing their albums. Months and months have been spent finding new, creative ways to reinvent songs that have usually been recorded before, but these groups have unique takes on these songs that make them worth listening to; or so we hope. Isn't that why you buy an album? We hope that what we find inside that professionally designed cover is a new experience of songs that we might have heard before, or a song that is so well-done that we get on iTunes to grab the real thing. We wait patiently for the CD release concerts, willing to pay what we do knowing that our interest will be spiked and once again we will find new inspiration in this genre that we have invested so much in. Much like Christmas, though, there are gifts every once in awhile, like the two-sizes-too-big sweaters from a crazy aunt, that you were hoping would for once be something that you actually wanted. Every year you open that box and find the same thing. In a cappella, that is too often the case.
"Fix you". Those two words have appeared on more a cappella albums than I care to count for the past few years. Anybody could make the same case for "Hide and Seek". These are songs that have ruled the track lists for numerous CDs, but this year was a year of a swing in the trend. While there were repeats, which are going to happen eventually no matter how unique you might think your choice in songs is, they were done with their own style. I credit music directors and producers who are aware of the possibility of "Viva La Vida" appearing on ten to twelve albums this year, in realizing that making their version different could make all of the difference when they are being reviewed or listened to by any general a cappella enthusiast. Now, while I would love to reveal what I have personally discovered in a majority of the albums released this season, I would rather leave it to you to judge on your own. In these albums though, you might wonder what it is that is making you so excited about the music. Well…
It's the arrangements. A part of it is the talent. Another part is the producer. In some cases, a large part of it is the producer. What sets albums apart from each other, is the fresh ideas that come about with each passing semester. A prime example of this is the Stanford Harmonics' version of "The Sound of Silence". If you live under a rock or are new to a cappella, find a way to get your hands on this song. It is a classic, yes, but done in a way that you have never heard before. It will inspire you and drive you to arrange if you are a music director. Charlie Forkish has truly set himself apart from the competition. I credit the producer as well (you know who you are), but in my mind, the thing that makes an album worth your time and money, is its ability to set itself apart from the competition. In the now, very crowded genre of a cappella, a fresh take on a song or maybe an original or not so popular title, is a great way to keep your group from becoming just another needle in the proverbial haystack. Any of you who are starting a new project, or considering doing so, should keep this in mind. It will give you a real shot at standing out amongst the giants. Helpful tip: check out the Brown Jabberwocks' new album when it releases. You won't be disappointed.
By Mike Chin on May 13, 2009 in The Recording Rant • Permalink
Mike Chin
Mike Chin co-founded The A Cappella Blog in 2007. He continues to share leadership responsibility for the site, overseeing columns, reviews and features as the content manager. He currently lives in Georgia.
Email Website @miketchin
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With bitter cold moving in, beds filled up fast at Soul Saving Station.
Ralph Weddle reads a newspaper at the Code Blue shelter Thursday.
With temperatures dipping below 20 degrees and snow falling, Ralph Weddle found warmth in the basement of Soul Saving Station on Henry Street.
The Code Blue shelter was a little cramped, but staying there for the night beat the alternative.
"Out in a tent somewhere," Weddle, 59, said of where he'd be without it.
But the food is just as good, he said.
Nearly every bed was filled Thursday night as bitter cold hit the Capital Region, with low temperatures expected to continue today. After the Salvation Army said it could not longer meet the needs of the Code Blue program earlier this year, prompting a search for a new home, the no-questions-asked shelter opened at Soul Saving Station on Nov. 6 and has been open 27 nights — far more than the five nights it had opened at this time during last year's mild winter. The shelter opened 88 nights total last year.
The colder weather along with a combination of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's executive order in January requiring the homeless to be sheltered when temperatures dip below 32 degrees all contributed to the increased demand for the shelter.
And while some local shelters have said the 32-degree Code Blue order expired with the summer, Michael Finocchi, executive director of Shelters of Saratoga, said he expects the mandate to be renewed, and the Saratoga Springs shelter continues to follow it.
Increased demand means an increased need for volunteers, food and supplies and, most of all, monetary donations, said Finocchi, whose organization runs the Code Blue program.
He said the nonprofit has raised $11,000 toward its fundraising goal of $85,000, which is needed to keep the shelter open throughout the winter months. The shelter's about-$160,000 budget includes salaries for four recent hires brought on to meet the increased demand.
"We're always looking for volunteers, but monetary donations are huge because we don't get any funding for this program except for a small amount to go toward my director's salary," he said.
The shelter was busy Thursday afternoon with volunteers and staff bringing in food and warm-weather items. After carrying in sleeping bags, jackets and blankets donated by Shelters of Saratoga, volunteer Dan Shields talked with Cheryl Ann Murphy-Parant, the program's on-site director, about the need for more helping hands. He told her to call him anytime help was needed; she said she would.
"Thank you for what you do," he said.
Murphy-Parant said she has a core group of about 50 volunteers but could use more — especially now during the busy holiday season with temperatures dropping.
Even with a smaller space to manage, volunteers are needed "for safety reasons" and to make sure guests "get the best possible care," Murphy-Parant said.
Her efforts to coordinate it all have not gone unnoticed by those making the shelter home on cold nights.
"Over on my makeshift desk over there is a 'thank you' card that they gave me the other night, so it really makes it all worthwhile," she said.
Murphy-Parant said the new location has been working out, although the smaller space has presented some challenges — mainly the lack of showers. Shelter staff have been referring people to the Salvation Army as well as Shelters of Saratoga on Walworth Street, where showers are available, she said.
"There have been hiccups, . . . it's difficult because it's a smaller space, but we're getting there," she said.
The 41-bed shelter is also close to capacity — averaging 36 guests per night — and is working on a contingency plan with Saratoga Hospital, the police department and other organizations to make sure anyone who needs a place to stay on a frigid night has one, she said.
"I'll never leave somebody out in the cold," she said.
The new location at Caroline and Henry streets, close to restaurants, the Caroline Street bar district and the Children's Museum, drew some criticism from neighbors when it was announced, but Murphy-Parant said most of the neighbors have been welcoming so far.
The new site also comes with a new curfew that prevents guests from leaving after 11 p.m., though people coming in off the street aren't turned away, Finocchi said.
To volunteer: Visit www.codebluesaratoga.org/ or call Cheryl Ann Murphy-Parant at 812-6886.
To donate: Send checks marked "Code Blue" to Shelters of Saratoga, 14 Walworth St, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866, or visit www.sheltersofsaratoga.org.


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text:
ANTIBACTERIAL AND ANTI-INflAMMATORY ACTIVITIES OF CALENDULA OFFICINALIS GROWING IN IRAQ
Rehab S. Ramadhan*, Zinah F. Hussein and Rana K. Dulaimi
This study was designed to evaluated antimicrobial activity of Calendula officinalis aqueous extract against some pathogenic microorganisms. So that, the aqueous extract of Calendula officinalis was screened for its anti-microbial activity using the plate agar diffusion method. It was tested against four bacteria species; two Gram-positive bacteria (Bacillus subtilis, and Staphylococcus aureus) and two Gram-negative bacteria (Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa). The susceptibility of these different bacterial species toward the extracts of this plant was compared with each other and with selected antibiotic (streptomycin) used as positive control. Result showed that aqueous extract of Calendula officinalis had antibacterial activity against gram positive bacteria. The effect of Calendula officinalis was studied on male albino mice that included two parts .the first part was the affect of the extract on organ physiology like liver and kidney. The second part was the effect of the extract on the bacterial infection and wound healing. The study was performed by designing an experiment in which four groups of mice were set, every groups is of three mice. The first group was control, the second group was administrated with extract oral mouth for 10 days in concentration of 100mg/kg, the third one was administrated with 75 mg/kg, and the fourth group was feed with 25 mg /kg of the extract. After 10 days, mice were killed and put for autopsy histology slides were made from kidney and liver and compared with control group. No change was observed among studied slides which may indicate that the extract has no toxic effect on organs.The other part of the study was the effect of aqueous extract on bacterial infection and wound healing. Two groups of mice three in each one were studied. the first one is control that was wounded on wounds were infected by staphylococcus aureus and left for normal healing, while the other group was treated by the extract after infecting wounds and contaminating them by staphylococcus aureus. Our results showed an accelerated healing in wounds of extract treated group compared with control.
Keywords: (Antibacterial, Anti-Inflammatory, Phytochemical, Histopathology, Calendula officinalis).


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HomeWorldBermuda battens down for Category 3 Hurricane Humberto
Bermuda battens down for Category 3 Hurricane Humberto
September 18, 2019 Admin World 0
Powerful winds from Hurricane Humberto began hitting Bermuda Wednesday as the government urged people to stay off the streets during the British territory's close brush with the powerful Category 3 storm. And another growing storm threatened tourist resorts along Mexico's Pacific.
Bahamas Gov. John Rankin called up 120 members of the Royal Bermuda Regiment to prepare for possible storm recovery efforts and National Security Minister Wayne Caines said urged everyone to be off the streets by 5 p.m.
Authorities ordered early closings of schools, clinics and government offices.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said tropical storm-force winds began to hit the islands of some 70,000 people in the early afternoon and warned that hurricane-force gusts would probably last until early Thursday.
James Dodgson, director of the Bermuda Weather Service, said the storm was projected to pass about 80 miles (130 kilometers) to the north of Bermuda around 8 p.m. Wednesday and could produce tornadoes and dangerous storm surge.
"Humberto's a big hurricane and we're looking at the conditions already deteriorating. There's some very strong winds kicking in, particularly this evening," he said.
Caines said non-emergency medical services would be closed until Thursday. Evening flights from the U.S. and Great Britain were canceled.
"We'd like to ask all of Bermuda to prepare for the storm, to know that the government and everyone is rooting for us, and we can get through this," Caines said. "We've been through this before."
Humberto's maximum sustained winds strengthened to 120 mph (195 kph) and the storm was centered about 140 miles (195 kilometers) west of Bermuda early Wednesday afternoon. It was moving east-northeast at 16 mph (26 kph).
Hurricane-force winds extended outward up to 105 miles (165 kilometers) from the center, with tropical-storm-force winds reaching as far as 195 miles (315 kilometers)
Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Lorena posed an increasing threat to tourist resorts on Mexico's Pacific Coast and the Baja California Peninsula.
Forecasters said Lorena was expected to brush or hit land by early Thursday somewhere between the port of Manzanillo and Puerto Vallarta while growing toward hurricane force. The still-uncertain long-term forecast track showed it moving on toward the Los Cabos resorts by Saturday.
Maximum sustained winds had increased to near 70 mph (110 kph) by the early afternoon, with higher gusts.
It was located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south-southeast of Manzanillo and was moving northwest at 13 mph (20 kph) early Wednesday afternoon.
Mexican officials also said they were concerned that some parts of southern Mexico, which have seen a lack of rainfall, could now get torrential rains and floods from a combination of Lorena and two other weather systems in the area.
In Texas, the remnants of Tropical Storm Imelda threatened to drench parts of Southwest Texas and southwestern Louisiana with up to 18 inches (46 centimeters) of rain over the next few days. It was the first named storm to hit the Houston area since Hurricane Harvey's much heavier rains flooded more than 150,000 homes around the city and caused an estimated $125 billion in damage in Texas.
Tropical Storm Jerry also formed Wednesday morning and was forecast to become a hurricane as it nears the outermost Caribbean islands Thursday night or Friday.
Further off Mexico's Pacific Coast, Tropical Storm Mario also was expected to be a hurricane by Thursday, while staying out to sea.
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text:
Music Holly Dalrymple
dalrymplh@southwestern.edu
Fine Arts 165
Holly Dalrymple
Choral Conducting, Music Education
Dr. Holly Dalrymple is Associate Professor of Music and Director of Choral Activities at Southwestern University. She conducts SU Chorale and SU Singers, teaches Advanced Choral Conducting and Repertoire and Choral Methods and pedagogy for Music Education majors.
Dr. Dalrymple has directed middle school and high school choral programs in Richardson, Plano, and Pflugerville, Texas. Prior to joining the music faculty at Southwestern University, Dr. Dalrymple served as the Director of Choral Activities (2019-2022) and as the Associate Director of Choral Activities (2013-2019) at the University of Wyoming. While at UW, her choirs performed for the Wyoming Music Educators Association and the American Choral Directors Association Northwest conference in Portland, Oregon.
As a frequent festival clinician, Dr. Dalrymple focuses on sound production, teaching the young female voice and leading treble choirs, and strengthening musical independence through literacy. Research interests include vocal pedagogy and sound production in the choral rehearsal, issues of gender and equity in music, sociology and identity within music occupation, and the supervision of future choral music educators through meaningful pedagogy and methodology.
She earned a Doctoral degree in choral conducting with a related field in voice performance from the University of North Texas, a Masters degree in choral conducting from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Bachelor of music education from Texas State University.


Now, with the power grid finally – after 62 hours! – back in business, I'm able to continue my stats/analytics exploration of the past Marcialonga ski race.
Furthermore, as the next graphic demonstrates, the event is not exactly dominated by the millenials – the dominant age group is the 50+ folks – perhaps ski racing is way too hard work for young & beautiful of today…?
First, observe that the histogram clearly shows that there are way more men than women participating. Secondly, it's interesting that men have a long right hand tail, that is, there are both absolutely as well as relatively, many male partipants at the higher end of race times, i.e. relatively speaking, poor performers. The Female distribution is much more "normal", i.e. the tails are more evenly distributed. One way to interpret this is that the participating men are more split, one fairly large part are very fit, and one large part of them are less well trained, where quite a few are very poorly trained, (relatively speaking – myself, I would probably die if I tried to ski that race…). While the women are more "equal" in their performance. The difference in tails between men & women can also be seen in the distances of the respective means and medians: the diff is quite a bit wider for the men.
Here we have the overall race results, that is, men as well as women ordered by race time into a single results list, ranging from place 1 to place 5588. Again, we can see something interesting here, e.g. that the men are much more evenly, "uniformly" in stats speak, located at the "podium list", while the women are "tail heavy", that is, more frequently residing at the lower spots of the results list. Remember that the results list is a joint list, consiting of both genders, so this is not such a big surprise – except for those that believe that "gender is a purely social construct".
Looking at the male distribution, it's interesting to notice how uniform it is with a small peak just before place 1000 – my interpretation of that is that many of the participating Swedish men are fairly serious amateurs, putting quite a lot of effort into their skiing and general physical fitness.
The above graphic might look a bit busy for some, but rest assured, it's really not that complicated: on the horizontal x-axis are the race result spots, ranging from 1 to 5558.
Most of the plots are plotted against the left hand vertical y-axis, which shows race time in seconds. Against that axis, I've mapped three plots: male race positions (blue), female race positions (red), and the time difference between them (orange). These plots show some interesting things: Look at the difference in slope between the female and the male plots. That difference tells us that for women, particularily for the top spots, the differences in race time are very large, while the men are much more even in their performance, all over the spectrum. We can also see that for both genders, the laggards are really really far behind those in front – the slope at the end of the plots is almost vertical.
Plotted against the right hand side y-axis, is the relative (think percent) difference between the first 898 men vs women (reason for that weird number is that it is the number of female participants, and since I compare men's race finishing spots with women's finishing spots…) Anyway's, from that cyan plot we can see that for the top performers, e.g. the first 3-4 men vs first 3-4 women, the time difference is about 15% (115 on the right hand vertical scale). That is, the (presumably) elite' men and women who finish in the first 3-4 spots in the respective group, have a time difference about 15%. That number is very, extremely consistent with what I observed in my analysis last weekend of Tour De Ski, where all participants are real elite skiers. Here, for Marcialonga, a race dominated by serious but amateur skiers, with only a handful real elite skiers, the difference in race time between men vs women grows very rapidly: already at 100th podium place, the difference in finishing time is almost 60%, and at the 800th or so finishing spots, the women take about 2x as long to finish the race.
Here, on the horizontal x-axis, I've put the age groups of the race. Age groups are simply an aggregation of the age of each competitor, into discrete groups, eg 18-30, 30-40 etc. On the vertical axis, we again have race finishing time. The blue vertical "bars" are actually dots, each representing a the time of a racer by that age. there are 5558 such blue dots on the graph.
The objective here is to figure out if and how age impacts race results. Not going into all the nitty gritty mathematical & computational details of Linear Regression, let me just point out the yellow lines: they are all sloping (slightly) upwards. That tells us that there is a dependency between age and race time, and that dependency is such that the older you are, the worse your performance. Not that surprising,right ? At least not for us senior citizens… Furthermore, the graph can also quantify that relationship: again, without going into all the nitty gritty detail, let me just finish up this post by saying that according to this data and my analysis, each additional year of age slows you down by about 60 seconds on the Marcialonga track! 🙂 So if you did your first race at 20 years of age, you can expect your finishing time at your 40th anniversary race be about 40 minutes longer than your first race.
This entry was posted in Bayes, Data Analytics, Numpy, Pandas, Probability, PYMC, Python, sports, Statistics and tagged Bayes, Data Analysis, Numpy, Pandas, Probability, PYMC, Python, sports, Statistics, WebScraping. Bookmark the permalink.


text:
Pedro de Unamuno fue un militar y marino español. Se sabe que ostentó el cargo de general y almirante en una expedición realizada a finales del siglo XVI por orden del virrey de la Nueva España, Álvaro Manrique de Zúñiga (1585-1590).

Tras los descubrimientos realizados por el fallecido marino Francisco Gali en la expedición de 1584 a las costas de la Alta California, el virrey decidió organizar una nueva expedición para confirmar los informes de Galí. Pedro de Unamuno partió de Filipinas, que en aquellos momentos estaba bajo la jurisdicción del virreinato de Nueva España, en el año 1587 y llegó a la bahía de Monterey en donde se topó con una espesa niebla que hizo más lento su avance en el mar; llegó a pasar por fuera el cabo San Lucas llegando al cabo Corrientes, en las costas de Jalisco, lugar en el que le apercibieron que habían visto pasar una nave con bandera inglesa, la cual se encontraría tal vez cerca de las costas próximas al puerto de Mazatlán. Unamuno apuró su paso y llegó a salvo al puerto de Acapulco, en esa ocasión la niebla le había evitado del ataque del corsario inglés, posiblemente Francis Drake. Tras su viaje aconsejó que se estableciera una colonia en la bahía de Banderas.

Véase también
 Francisco Gali
 Galeón de Manila (a partir del descubrimiento de la ruta por Andres de Urdaneta en 1565)
 Expediciones de España en el Pacífico Noroeste

Fuentes

Almirantes de España del siglo XVI
Exploradores de España del siglo XVI de la Nueva España
Exploradores españoles del océano Pacífico

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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A big data infrastructure like PNDA involves a multitude of technologies and tools. Providing enterprise-grade security for such a system is not only complex, but is of primary concern for any production deployment. The PNDA team is working on a "security blueprint" that addresses each component, and the system as a whole. It's not yet ready, but what follows is a discussion of some the main issues we're considering, the direction we're heading in, and the current thinking on how each component will be secured.
In the world of Kerberos, each client or service is identified by the principal. At all times, the KDC (Key Distribution Center) server maintains a list of all principals in its internal database, coordinates authentication requests across nodes, and assures that everyone is who they say they are.
Some underlying technologies in PNDA, such as Kafka, Hadoop, and HBase, don't include support for users. They rely on the UNIX users of the node on which they are run. Kerberos user principals typically have the format username@realm.com. Hadoop converts this two part principal into local Unix user name by stripping of domain name.
PNDA is a complex system involving multiple nodes. In order to synchronize all user and group level mappings in one place, our intention is to leverage an LDAP directory and configure nodes to resolve enterprise users via PAM.
The core services are runs as UNIX daemons under the same name as local UNIX user. For example, HDFS is run as the hdfs user and HBase is run as the hbase user, sharing a common group called hadoop. These users by design are assigned 'super user' status. To prevent malicious attacks and for added security, they can possibly be created as UNIX users on nodes and be white-listed from submitting any jobs.
The first step in securing any system is authenticating the user, in other words identifying who they claim to be, before they are allowed to use any services. Kerberos forms the basis of authentication in PNDA.
The second step is authorizing the user, that is to say identifying what an authenticated user can access in regard to data, cluster resources, etc.
In the following sections, we go into detail how we plan to tackle some of these concerns with regard to each component.
Authentication is only part of a story; Kafka also needs to have authorization rules regarding who is allowed to CREATE/READ/WRITE on specific topics.
Authorization rights for Kafka Manager to create a topic with CREATE and DESCRIBE permission.
The above discussion is about how Security can be enabled since the Kafka 0.9.0 release. Work is still ongoing for some dependent components such as Logstash, Kafka manager, and the Spark-Kafka connector.
Let's consider that you have generated the right keys and certificate. In this example, we will use Kafka 10.0.1 and will just use PLAIN/JAAS files for authentication.
Then on the producer window, you can type some message and you should see them on the consumer window.
It needs to have a Kerberos principal of its own, with proper authorization rights on HDFS, Oozie, and HBase.
It needs to authenticate itself by running a kinit before accessing REST APIs like HTTPFS or Oozie over SPNEGO.md.
Batch applications are submitted to a cluster using the Oozie scheduler. Before we go into details of how application security is supported, it's worth understanding the details of how Oozie works in a secure cluster. The Oozie scheduler primarily consists of two parts, the server and the client. The server, on behalf of the client, submits the end user's jobs to services like ResourceManager or JobTracker. When submitting jobs on a secure cluster, it needs a Kerberos principal of its own. Since some of these jobs may run for days or weeks, credentials are renewed programmatically using a server keytab file.
Does this mean anybody can submit jobs to an Oozie server? Not really. The Oozie client front end can be secured using Kerberos, and the Deployment Manager can authenticate itself using its principal before submitting batch jobs for an application. This way the credentials are validated only during job submission, and Hadoop services will be able to execute long running job requests by validating with the Oozie server credentials.
Can authorization rules be applied for a user without them ever providing their credentials? This is where the proxy user comes in, using a technique called impersonation. The Deployment Manager, when submitting jobs can impersonate on the real user's behalf using the -doas option of the Oozie API.
For long-running apps, such as ones that use Spark Streaming, to be able to write to HDFS or use YARN, it is possible for the application to pass a principal and a keytab to spark-submit via the --principal and --keytab parameters, respectively. The keytab passed in will be copied over to the machine running the Application Master via the Hadoop Distributed Cache. (It will be copied securely, if YARN is configured with SSL and HDFS encryption is enabled.) The Kerberos login can be periodically renewed using this principal and keytab, and the delegation tokens required for HDFS access will be generated periodically.
Gobblin requires a user principal to run long running jobs on a secure cluster. It needs to get a delegation token periodically for accessing cluster resources, which in turn requires it to renew KDC credentials. To run Gobblin on a secure cluster, the application.conf file needs the Kerberos principal name and keytab location.
HBase can be secured using SASL with Kerberos to prevent unauthenticated access to data. A secure HBase is also dependent on HDFS and Zookeeper being secure, as it uses HDFS to store its data and metadata on Zookeeper. Once authentication is enabled, clients may have to do login via kinit either using the shell or through a Java client.
Create (C): can create tables or drop tables (even those they did not create) at the given scope. The possible scopes are superuser, namespace level, table level and even at column level.
For further information, see chapter 60 in the the HBase Guide.
Once a user identifies themself against HDFS through Kerberos, their file or folder ownership is verified against user name and group memberships. However, a simple permission model of the single user and group is insufficient for a multi-tenant platform like PNDA. To support multiple users and group level permission, HDFS can be configured for extended POSIX Access Control Lists (ACLs). An ACL consists of a set of ACL entries. Each ACL entry specifies a name and group and grants read, write or execute permission for a file or folder. The ACL scheme also differentiates between an 'access ACL' and 'default ACL'. Default ACL is what assigned to subfolders and directories when they get created under parent folder.
Impala, the open source analytic database for Apache Hadoop, supports authentication using both Kerberos and LDAP. Using LDAP and Kerberos together provides significant value. Kerberos remains the core authentication protocol and is always used when Impala daemons connect to each other and to the Hadoop cluster. LDAP is ubiquitous across the enterprise and is commonly utilized by client applications connecting to Impala via ODBC and JDBC drivers. A mix of the two therefore makes sense in the case of PNDA.
OpenTSDB is essentially a time series database that runs above HBase. It consists of TSD( Time Series Daemons) that uses HBase to store and retrieve data. Clients can communicate with TSDs through HTTP API for dashboards or statistical inference. API access to OpenTSDB can simply be secured by running it behind a firewall or an HTTP Server like Ngnix.
Cloudera Manager supports many security mechanisms for authenticating users. Within PNDA, we can configure Cloudera Manager to authenticate against an LDAP Server to have a common reference for user accounts.Cloudera Manager supports authorization through user roles. User membership in particular role determines what features are visible to user and actions they can perform.
Like Cloudera Manager, we can also enable LDAP authentication for Hue to have shared repository of enterprise user accounts. Hue can also be configured to support impersonation whereby users logging into console can access all cluster services without actually authenticating themselves against Kerberos.
The Main console can implement LDAP over TLS as the frontend authentication scheme. Since existing interfaces like Cloudera Manager and Hue also integrate with LDAP, it makes sense to adopt LDAP over TLS as an authentication mechanism. Use of LDAP also argues well for the future, if we need to enable SSO with an enterprise identity provider or integrate with their existing directory service.
SPNEGO with Kerberos authentication can be configured for the Web UIs of HDFS, YARN, MapReduce2, HBase, Oozie, Spark, etc.
PNDA users who need terminal access to the cluster need to authenticate themselves using Kerberos over SSH at the edge node. SSH can be configured to delegate the TGT ticket, thereby allowing the user to access cluster services. SSH with Kerberos provides cryptographic authentication that doesn't give away the user's password, and the ticket cache offers the same advantages as the key agent, allowing for single sign-on.
As one can see from above discussion, securing a distributed system like PNDA is not only very complicated but equally challenging to meet security needs of a modern enterprise. As part of this blueprint, we barely scratched the surface. There is still a lot to be explored in areas like Transparent Encryption for Data Rest/ Motion, Centralized authorization policy management either through Apache Sentry/Ranger, Data Audit, Lineage and Redaction needs and Service level requirements regarding Yarn queue consumption, disk quota, etc.


text:
Zaštita autohtonih poljoprivrednih proizvoda je sustavna procedura Ministarstva poljoprivrede Republike Hrvatske kojom se pojedini autohtoni poljoprivredni proizvodi proglašavaju zaštićenim na području Republike Hrvatske prema svojoj izvornosti ili oznaci zemljopisnog podrijetla.

Sustav zaštite određen je Uredbama Europske unije, te zakonskim i podzakonskim aktima Republike Hrvatske.

Autohtonim proizvodom smatraju se oni prehrambeni proizvodi koji zbog tehnoloških, prehrambenih i organoleptičkih specifičnosti, kvalitetom i posebnošću uspješno konkuriraju na hrvatskom tržištu i dio su hrvatske gastronomske ponude. Mnogi od njih su postali prepoznatljivi kao i zemljopisna područja u kojima se proizvode.

Osnovi razlozi sustava zaštite autohtonih proizvoda su postizanje više cjenovne kategorije, stvaranja identiteta i prepoznatljivosti, izravne veze proizvoda s određenim zemljopisnim područjem daje dodatnu vrijednost i prepoznatljivost tom području, te pridonosi ruralnom razvoju, kao i osnivanja interesnih udruženja u svrhu zajedničkog nastupa na tržištu, odnosno zajedničke promidžbe pojedinog prehrambenog proizvoda.

Sustav zaštite podijeljen je na dva područja:

 Zaštićene oznake izvornosti (ZOI)
 Zaštićene oznake zemljopisnog podrijetla (ZOZP)

Zaštićene oznake izvornosti

 Creško ekstra djevičansko maslinovo ulje
 Korčulansko maslinovo ulje

 Krčko maslinovo ulje

 Neretvanska mandarina

 Ogulinsko kiselo zelje
 Paška janjetina

 Šoltansko maslinovo ulje

 Varaždinsko zelje
Istarski pršut

Zaštićene oznake zemljopisnog podrijetla

 Baranjski kulen
 Dalmatinski pršut
 Drniški pršut
 Krčki pršut
 Lički krumpir
 Meso zagorskog purana
 Poljički soparnik
 Slavonski kulin

Izvori

Poljoprivreda