6/10/2005
Greenspan, Regulators Raise Volume of Housing Alarm
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Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan this week added to a chorus of worry about the growth of home loans seen as far riskier than the 30-year mortgage that has been U.S. housing's bedrock for decades.
Those alternatives, called "exotic" by the Fed chief on Thursday, have played a big role in sustaining the four-year housing boom by making homes more affordable, which in turn stoked demand and drove prices higher and higher.
But these hundreds of alternative mortgage products have also injected more risk into the market -- both for lenders and borrowers, according to regulators and some analysts.
Of most concern are loans that require little downpayment and delay big principal payments, leaving homeowners highly leveraged for longer just as rates appear poised to rise.
"The dramatic increase in the prevalence of interest-only loans, as well as the introduction of other relatively exotic forms of adjustable-rate mortgages are developments of particular concern," Greenspan told Congress.
posted by Kevin at 2:21 PM
6/9/2005
Forced Radiation for Texas Girl
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The monster wants to arrest you, kidnap your children and poison their bodies with radiation: Child welfare officials seized a 12-year-old cancer patient from her parents, saying they were blocking radiation treatment that doctors say she needs.
posted by Kevin at 4:30 PM
Nuclear Plans Missing
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A senior official said several sets of blueprints for uranium centrifuges - the so-called P-1 and more advanced P-2 systems which were peddled by the Khan network - have gone missing.
"We know there were several sets of them prepared," said the official. "So who got those electronic drawings? We have only actually got to the one full set from Libya. So who got the rest, the copies?
"We have no evidence they were destroyed. One possibility is another client. We just don't know where they are."
A European diplomat privy to western intelligence on the Khan network added: "This is what keeps people awake at night. It's very sensitive. The fact that there are [nuclear] proliferation manuals kicking around is deeply disturbing."
posted by Kevin at 3:24 PM
MacOS/Intel on Non Apple Systems? Not if Apple Can Help It
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Umm yeaahhh. My guess is that the lunatics will have Apple development builds of this thing running on $200 white boxes within weeks to months: It's believed that Apple will likely add a specialized chip to the motherboard of its Intel-based systems that the Mac OS X must first detect prior to booting. Either that or the company will contract a proprietary motherboard chipset from Intel that will perform a similar function.
posted by Kevin at 2:37 PM
6/8/2005
Cryptogon Readers Make Contributions
ME sent $25 and PW sent $20. These guys (and a handful of other readers) are keeping Cryptogon free for all of you filthy, useless takers who show up, day-after-day and contribute nothing, zero, zilch, nada in return. Note: You're going to have Karma, it's up to you to determine which kind. Have a nice day.
posted by Kevin at 5:25 PM
6/7/2005
General Motors to Axe 25,000 Jobs and Shut U.S. Car Plants
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The show is windin' down: General Motors will cut 25,000 American workers from its factory floors in the next three years as the world's largest car maker struggles to slim down to match declining demand for its vehicles.
posted by Kevin at 5:43 PM
Tanks on New York City Streets
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Shooting a movie about martial law... Or martial law? On a recent trip to NY City (last weekend) three gun-mounted, armored tanks/vehicles were driving through the streets of Manhattan. I took these pictures with my camera phone (hence the crappy quality).
I couldn't believe how many people just waved at the armed soldiers peeking out of the top, many even cheered loudly in support. Nobody took the time to say, "why the hell are armed soldiers and tanks rolling down the middle of the street?!?Update: It's FleetweekResearch Credit: JS
posted by Kevin at 11:05 AM
Surveillance Cameras Used to Fine Brits for Chewing Gum Violations
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WARDENS have issued the first £50 fine for dropping chewing gum in Manchester as part of a new Big Brother-style litter clampdown.
A man was caught on surveillance cameras spitting out the gum in Piccadilly Gardens. CCTV camera operators saw the incident and alerted city centre wardens, who were given a description of the offender. They approached the man and issued him with a £50 fixed penalty notice. It is understood he plans to appeal.
posted by Kevin at 11:03 AM
Sh*tty Group
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Citigroup just can't catch a break. Now it's lost the account data of 3.9 million of its customers.
The financial services giant has attempted to stay out of the headlines since rankling regulators on several continents last year for everything from lax account controls to maverick dealings by a handful of fixed income traders. The U.S. Federal Reserve even told Citi, the king of mergers, that it couldn't do any big transactions until it got its compliance and control act together.
So it must have been particularly galling for Chief Executive Charles O. Prince--who has made shoring up internal controls his priority--that Citi was forced on Monday to disclose a data breach involving 3.9 million accounts in its CitiFinancial consumer lending operations.Research Credit: SA
posted by Kevin at 3:01 AM
Update: Italian Arms Story
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I received the following from Cryptogon reader MN. Nice find: Australian SBS TV has a international current affairs program called Dateline and sent a reporter to Italy. One man with a dv cam. He got an interesting story from Camorra Italy. The part that may interest you is from a criminologist and expert on organised crime as he talks about arms sales and - Berettas.
Open the feature: Code of the Camorra
"To explain his point about collusion between organised crime and state authorities, Lamberti points to recent arms deals in the Middle East, in violation of international sanctions.
AMATO LAMBERTI, (Translation): If I were to go to Iran, I'd see that the Iranian police have an Italian Beretta in the holster. Who sold it to them? In Iran, the guided missiles, the anti-tank ones, they are Italian-made. It is written on them, BPD (Bomprini, Parodi and Delfino). How did those missiles arrive in Iran from Italy? Arms factories are controlled by the state and by the customs police, nothing can escape them. How do they get there? There's a link between industry, state and organised crime. They organise the traffic and its all money that goes into the state coffers." Related: Iraqi Insurgents Carrying Covert Ops Bump Guns
posted by Kevin at 2:42 AM
6/6/2005
Watch Steve Jobs Unfurl
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 Ordo Ab Chao: The circle is nearly complete. For the last five years, Apple has been secretly developing x86 versions of Mac OSX and all of their applications in parallel to their regular commercial releases, "Just in case," as Steve Jobs puts it. In an astonishing, live demonstration, Jobs announced that he was giving his keynote presentation on a Pentium 4 system, complete with a money shot of "About this Mac" showing the Pentium 4. I know. I nearly fell out of my chair. Now, take a guess who was working with Apple on the Xcode development environment as it related to portability to x86? After witnessing that little trick with OSX on the PC, I was in such a state of shock that I nearly missed the significance of a single sentence that was spoken a little later, not by Steve Jobs, but by Roz Ho, the manager of the Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft. "Our team has been working closely with Apple engineers on Xcode so we can make the transition."Did you catch that, all of you iTwits out there? B Gates sent his minions deep into the nether realms of Apple's skunkworks (surly, there's a crypt somewhere inside 1 Infinite Loop) to assist with the development of Xcode, the key to Apple's transition to Intel's hardware. This thing is going to be Longhorn with pretty widgets and iTunes.
posted by Kevin at 4:23 PM
Confirmed: Apple Switches to Intel Microprocessors
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One DRM architecture to rule them all!Apple Computers will have Intel inside by this time next year said the company's CEO Steve Jobs at a gathering of software developers in San Francisco Monday.
Specifically, Apple said it "plans to deliver models of its Macintosh computers using Intel microprocessors by this time next year, and to transition all of its Macs to using Intel microprocessors by the end of 2007."
In doing so, the firm will abandon the PowerPC chip platform it has used, in partnership with Motorola and IBM, since the early 1990s. I looked through my archives and found this little gem from 2002: I personally don't believe that Apple will be able to resist the DRM scheme for long. The powers behind the DRM freight train are too big and too powerful. Microsoft, Intel and AMD are all for it. This means that they will buy legislation to make non DRM hardware illegal. They won't have to declare non DRM hardware illegal. There won't be any non DRM hardware. Have a nice day.
posted by Kevin at 12:33 PM
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:. Reading
Fatal
Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture by Andrew Kimbrell
Readers will come to see
that industrial food production is indeed a "fatal harvest"
- fatal to consumers, as pesticide residues and new disease vectors
such as E. coli and "mad cow disease" find their way
into our food supply; fatal to our landscapes, as chemical runoff
from factory farms poison our rivers and groundwater; fatal to
genetic diversity, as farmers rely increasingly on high-yield
monocultures and genetically engineered crops; and fatal to our
farm communities, which are wiped out by huge corporate
farms.
Friendly
Fascism: The New Face of Power in America by Bertram Myron Gross
This is a relatively
short but extremely cogent and well-argued treatise on the rise
of a form of fascistic thought and social politics in late 20th
century America. Author Bertram Gross' thesis is quite straightforward;
the power elite that comprises the corporate, governmental and
military superstructure of the country is increasingly inclined
to employ every element in their formidable arsenal of 'friendly
persuasion' to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Americans
through what Gross refers to as friendly fascism.
The
Good Life
by Scott and Helen Nearing Helen
and Scott Nearing are the great-grandparents of the back-to-the-land
movement, having abandoned the city in 1932 for a rural life based
on self-reliance, good health, and a minimum of cash...Fascinating,
timely, and wholly useful, a mix of the Nearings' challenging
philosophy and expert counsel on practical skills.
Silent
Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth by David Bollierd
In Silent Theft, David Bollier
argues that a great untold story of our time is the staggering
privatization and abuse of our common wealth. Corporations are
engaged in a relentless plunder of dozens of resources that we
collectively own—publicly funded medical breakthroughs,
software innovation, the airwaves, the public domain of creative
works, and even the DNA of plants, animals and humans. Too often,
however, our government turns a blind eye—or sometimes helps
give away our assets. Amazingly,
the silent theft of our shared wealth has gone largely unnoticed
because we have lost our ability to see the commons.
The
Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It: The Complete Back-To-Basics
Guide by John Seymour The
Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It is the only book that
teaches all the skills needed to live independently in harmony
with the land harnessing natural forms of energy, raising crops
and keeping livestock, preserving foodstuffs, making beer and
wine, basketry, carpentry, weaving, and much more.
When
Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten
When Corporations
Rule the World explains how economic globalization has concentrated
the power to govern in global corporations and financial markets
and detached them from accountability to the human interest. It
documents the devastating human and environmental consequences
of the successful efforts of these corporations to reconstruct
values and institutions everywhere on the planet to serve their
own narrow ends.
The
New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques
for the Home and Market Gardener
This expansion
of a now-classic guide originally published in 1989 is intended
for the serious gardener or small-scale market farmer. It describes
practical and sustainable ways of growing superb organic vegetables,
with detailed coverage of scale and capital, marketing, livestock,
the winter garden, soil fertility, weeds, and many other
topics.
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