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6/10/2005

Greenspan, Regulators Raise Volume of Housing Alarm :.

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.


6/9/2005

Forced Radiation for Texas Girl :.

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.



Nuclear Plans Missing :.

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."



MacOS/Intel on Non Apple Systems? Not if Apple Can Help It :.

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.


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.


6/7/2005

General Motors to Axe 25,000 Jobs and Shut U.S. Car Plants :.

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.



Tanks on New York City Streets :.

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 Fleetweek

Research Credit: JS



Surveillance Cameras Used to Fine Brits for Chewing Gum Violations :.

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.



Sh*tty Group :.

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



Update: Italian Arms Story :.

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


6/6/2005

Watch Steve Jobs Unfurl :.

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.



Confirmed: Apple Switches to Intel Microprocessors :.

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.




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