Month: February 2014 | Page 3

February 19, 2014

No Weather Excuses, Please

Weather Excuses Nothing in Economies

Business owners who complain that weather caused slumping sales, fewer homes being built, low stock prices, or decreased consumer confidence sound like a school kid claiming the dog ate his homework. When I hear such lame excuses, I know something else is going on. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/19/us-usa-weather-corporate-warnings-idUSBREA1I09120140219

So looking behind the complaints about cold or hot fronts, not looking at them, will explain why the economies of the US and Europe, and by extension the rest of the world economies, seem so anemic. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/19/us-usa-housing-builders-analysis-idUSBREA1I03Y20140219

In the home-building industry, a glut of unsold homes, both new and older, explains more than ice-bound roads. Add to that, jobs lost in the Great Recession of 2008 rose to 8.2 M, of which about 2.3 M were in construction. Skilled construction workers simply have moved on and moved out of the building business. Some have retired, some have retrained, some have settled for less. And the confidence of builders has dropped for the same reasons. http://www.forbes.com/sites/erincarlyle/2014/02/18/builder-confidence-drops-in-february-nahbwells-fargo-housing-market-index-shows/

Major economic indicators http://www.bls.gov/bls/newsrels.htm#major tell serious economic analysts that weather explains nothing, but troublesome reports about too much heat or too much cold symbolize deeper challenges, according to analysts at http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-04/don-t-buy-carmakers-bad-weather-excuses.html

The future of regional economies depends on larger world economies, and the big picture tells us that major restructuring will take time. A few winners and many more losers will populate news reports as our world shifts from established patterns to a new and less certain order. At least that’s my view, but what do you think?

Jerry Hamilton

February 18, 2014

Oliver Stone Rant Seems Nearly Right

O Stone Almost All Good

Oliver Stone, known as a Hollywood movie maker, speaks up about libertarian politics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Stone That’s nothing new for him, but he lulled me into head nodding ninety percent through…until he blew it, in my view. http://nation.foxnews.com/2014/02/17/oliver-stone-rails-against-obama-and-his-msnbc-defenders

Hatred for Republican disestablishment-ism sounds right, Chavez truly started something big in Venezuela that left frustrated and bitter opponents, Ron Paul really mesmerizes me too, Obama has disappointed many former followers, government surveillance seems intolerable, and Hillary as a hawk makes sense. I nod my head with sympathy. http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2014/02/18/oliver-stone-calls-obama-weak-man/ and http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/02/17/oliver_stone_rails_against_weak_obama_msnbc_defenders.html

But when asked to look more closely at Chavez’ effects on free speech and assembly, he missed a beat, as I heard it. Any of us with opinions about life after six or seven decades of serious study and thought can be lulled into thinking we have studied all we need to. That’s a trap. We never understand reality fully, and study offers the single best way for mere mortals to push beyond our innately primitive tendencies.

“Of course I will study more; we all need more research,” should have been Oliver’s reply, not “I have done my research,” like a petulant child. The research should never be done among any seeker of truth.

Not that study actually produces much knowledge and wisdom, because it seems less than likely that human beings are fully capable, without inspiration from outside ourselves, of real wisdom. That was the central meaning of accounts of Old Testament Abram who became Abraham to give birth to nations of souls willing to listen to God because otherwise humanity must spiral into cycles of self-destruction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Abraham

As Vladamir Putin put it in the context of Russia’s loss to the US hockey team after having a point disallowed by a referee, even referees make mistakes. http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/olympics-fourth-place-medal/vladimir-putin-is-totally-not-upset-about-disallowed-russia-goal-vs–usa-hockey–casually-shames-team-065517190.html Oliver Stone made a mistake, but his point of view still thrills my soul.

That’s just me, of course. What do you think?

Jerry Hamilton at http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com

February 17, 2014

UN Rattles Human Rights Sabers Against N. Korea’s Kim Jong-un

Supreme Leader Kim to Face Justice?

United Nations human rights investigators whom N. Korean invited, after lengthy negotiations, to look into human rights reports have issued a blistering 372-page brief alleging international crimes. http://www.afp.com/en/node/1274705 and http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/17/korea-north-un-excerpts-idUSL6N0LL0CO20140217 Some of the same UN investigators now say N. Korean leaders, possibly including Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, may face international justice as a result. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/17/us-korea-north-un-idUSBREA1G0O720140217

One wonders how a ‘Supreme Leader’ may be subjected to human rights laws of the international community. Is any nation’s Supreme Leader, Emperor, King of Kings, or similar exalted leader the subject of any other authority? Or, on the other hand, can any nation-state (since about 1780 with Jeremy Bentham’s coinage of the term “nation” the idea of ‘states’ and ‘nations’ has been muddled, http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k93974k/f40.image.r=.langEN) agree with other nation-states to criminalize the conduct of either another nation-state or its leaders?

You and I might not feel comfortable with lofty notions of international justice without at least some review of what the terms mean. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customary_international_law

However, our news today across the globe includes the most powerful, or super powerful, nation leading a charge against the leader in a nation steeped in civil war, Syria, where most legal scholars whisper that the US has no legal authority under international law. http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/un-suggests-american-attack-syria-would-be At the same time, Israel builds and tears down West Bank houses and offices while the rest of the world appears to say it has no right to do so, despite its 1967 victory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law_and_Israeli_settlements Today the most bellicose little nuclear power in the world, North Korea, is being called a criminal by the UN. Is the true rule of international law, He who carries the biggest stick rules?

International law hits our streets not only with daily news but perhaps with calls on young soldiers to fight a distant battle for reasons based on muddled international law. To me, the rules by which nation-states play once seemed clear as I came away from the 1973 withdrawal of US forces in Saigon. Yet, today those rules, or lack of agreement on those rules, seems at the heart of wars and rumors of wars. The UN investigators claiming Kim Jong-un criminality have not helped, from this perspective.

What do you think?

Jerry Hamilton from http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com

February 15, 2014

One Tax Dollar Paid Equals One Vote, Says Tom Perkins

Tom Perkins Prefers Only Taxpayers Vote

He’s definitely NOT running for public office! A San Francisco-based investor, Tom Perkins is a member of the top 1% of the wealthiest Americans. He offers his opinions freely about who should vote and how taxes should work. He says that for each tax dollar paid, the payer should be entitled to a vote. Further, he says, progressive taxes, inherently unfair to the wealthiest like Perkins, should be changed. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/14/us-venture-perkins-taxes-idUSBREA1D1N620140214

No one takes Perkins seriously, but maybe they should. His recommendations for votes or taxes will not likely interest even a handful of political influencers. Nonetheless, if he and just a few others from the 1% voice opinions broadly enough, something like a French revolution might be encouraged among a growing collection of publicly minded progressives. Economic inequality now occupies the attention of many serious thinkers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality

The divide between rich and poor, both in the US and worldwide, has not been larger for over a century. http://articles.latimes.com/2013/sep/11/nation/la-na-nn-income-inequality-20130910 A question on many minds today concerns whether the government should do more to create economic equality. http://www.economist.com/economist-asks/should_government_do_more_close_gap_between_rich_and_poor

Perkins cannot be serious about his simplistic ideas, but someone out there might not realize he intends merely to promote a conversation about voting, taxes, and the future of his nation-state, the USA. From the perspective of http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com, this type of conversation requires constant renewal to sustain any large, modern society. What do you think?

February 15, 2014

Zero-Day Attacks French GIFAS and US VFW

Old IE Too Risky for GIFAS and VFW

The French military defense contractor GIFAS and the US veterans organization VFW learned the hard way why updating Microsoft software such as Internet Explorer makes a big difference. These two organizations received the same treatment a Japanese financial company took on the chin recently, which some security investigators from Symantec Corp blamed on a Chinese conspiracy. The Chinese government has firmly denied all Chinese involvement, of course. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/15/us-hacking-microsoft-idUSBREA1D02220140215

The attack depends on old versions of the Microsoft browser Internet Explorer (IE). Specifically, versions 9 and 10 of IE were attacked through ‘zero day vulnerabilities.’ The most obvious and cheapest preventative, short of avoiding IE and other Microsoft software (which has become a routine choice among many experienced professional software developers), requires upgrading to IE version 11. http://www.pctools.com/security-news/zero-day-vulnerability/

A simple portrait of how Microsoft makes software has helped me for the past several decades, so I will pass it along to those who might be able to use it themselves. When in the 1970’s Microsoft was starting up, it won a huge gamble that made all the difference in its profitability. Beating its CPM competitor by sheer luck to obtain a contract with IBM, the planet’s largest computer maker then and still a force with which to be reckoned, Bill Gates and his buddies decided to put out whatever software they could cobble together quickly to meet contract deadlines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft

They pushed junk software onto a hungry, naïve market and as quickly as they could they upgraded that junk piece by piece. In terms of management theory, they turned the old professionals’ model of Administration-Service-Sales (where a business sets up a shop or an office, hones its skills and builds its inventory to offer great services or products, and then sells its very best to a small market that recognizes value; http://www.sba.gov/content/marketing-sales-management) to the new model Sales-Service-Admin (where the business promises to sell whatever customers say they want despite not currently having it, then cobbling together something close to what was promised and servicing it to patch unavoidable glitches, and finally handling paperwork admin as an afterthought). The result made Microsoft a financial success very quickly, although insiders who knew how the magic had been made vowed to do something different and better.

The same model, SAA, has been adopted repeatedly in markets where customers don’t recognize value because the standards have shifted and the sophistication needed to apply those standards to evaluate a service or product has become too advanced. Microsoft did not invent the SAA management model but Microsoft mastered it.

Today Microsoft software seems ubiquitous; avoiding it requires real effort. Further, competitors who saw how profitable Microsoft became almost overnight couldn’t beat that profitability so they joined in, leaving consumers adrift in a violent SAA sea.

Enter the hackers who know the weaknesses of early products well enough to take advantage. That’s how the zero-day vulnerabilities get in the door. No one sees them enter until their damage is done. Ongoing security investigators suspect that the same holes now being patched at the VFW and GIFAS may have been embedded in software for some extended time before discovery.

The old professional model that combined a hard won set of specialized knowledge with age old moral codes has given way in this age of information to ever improving knowledge without the morality. The role of security investigators, both governmental and private, will have a long and profitable future in this environment, as analysts at http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com see it. What do you think?

February 14, 2014

Fun Book About Hindu’s Other Voices by Wendy Doniger

Spiritualism and religion, or in the western vernacular, faith, has occupied my mind since the first conscious breaths I can remember. Who or what is God, I have asked since the time I learned to speak.

A few seekers have crossed my paths, and when they write I grab their texts in hunger and thirst, continuing my journey in search of faith, or as I prefer to name it, something worth trusting. Wendy Doniger, or once as I learned her name a while ago, Wendy O’Flaherty, has attracted me along the way because she has focused all of her distinguished career on Hinduism. http://www.faithstreet.com/onfaith/author/wendy-doniger

Equally interesting to me, she has taught for years at the University of Chicago’s divinity school, which exists just a few miles away from my family’s stomping grounds. Sanskrit was not one of the 14 languages I mastered, albeit temporarily, in my services to the US government, so the original texts related to one of the oldest human faiths have stood beyond my reach. Only English and German translations from Sanskrit, plus a few dozen excellent commentaries in English, have held my gaze. http://divinity.uchicago.edu/wendy-doniger

Happy Day! Wendy has published another fun read entitled The Hindus: An Alternative History, which now graces my Kindle reader. It won’t grace the reading devices of many Hindus, however, because the publisher, Penguin Books, just agreed today to take all of its print copies and destroy them, putting them out of the reach of anyone trying to purchase a copy in India. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/14/us-india-book-idUSBREA1D0TX20140214

Funny how the grandest democracy of them all, India, carefully squelches all divergent voices when it comes to Hinduism. What are they trying to hide, I must wonder aloud. That is precisely what Wendy’s new book uncovers: The divergent stories of great minds lost behind the hierarchical cloak of a choreographed Hindu history. That established history, similar to many other histories, offers one traditional view of Hinduism’s long reign from the perspective of its religious leaders. All divergent views critical or simply unsympathetic to that hierarchy or that traditional view have been immersed in the overbearing weight of unpublished histories. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/11/the-hindus-wendy-doniger-withdrawn_n_4769192.html

If the contemporary Hindu leaders of India had their way, Wendy Doniger’s latest excellent effort would also be immersed in obscurity…forever. But I am here to tell the world that a scholarly based, delightfully good read about an alternative Hindu history is available now, everywhere in the world except the capitol of Hinduism. http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com

Everyone should purchase or check out from the local library a copy of The Hindus: An Alternative History. Let us show the free speech aspirationalists of India how the rest of the world takes its leaders’ censorship. At least, that’s my opinion.

What do you think?

February 13, 2014

Wintery Mix on Wall Street

On Tuesday this week when Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve Chair, testified before the US Congress, stock prices on the Wall Street market climbed. Today, however, as Yellen’s testimony was postponed due to a winter storm in the Washington DC region, stocks dove. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/13/us-markets-stocks-idUSBREA080LL20140213

News of increased jobless claims http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm and slumping spending by consumers http://www.bls.gov/cex/ added downward pressure in the US stock market, so the winter storm cannot account for all of the bad news on Wall Street.

Some analysts call the current market sentiment a wintery mix. http://www.cit.com/perspectives/outlook-series/retail-outlook/index.htm?cmp=PaidSearch&gclid=CNntt9eoybwCFSYOOgodqxQARQ&jsf=688b9263-dc0d-4772-872c-457b7f2ea0ae:35584

Nonetheless Comcast and Time Warner sealed their deal to let Comcast buy out its cable competitor with a stock swap, betting that the two largest cable systems in the US will generate plenty of profits as 2014 unfolds. The current declines on Nasdaq, the DOW, and Wall Street portray low sentiments now, but overall market growth still bolsters some, as the Pepsi report of 5% gain illustrates.

To analysts at http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com the current market should be interpreted as a ‘consolidation’ for steady growth reports in the first and second quarters of 2014.

What do you think?

February 12, 2014

CAR Crises Grows Despite French Troop Commitment

France’s 1600 military members support a larger UN force of peacekeepers in the Central African Republic (CAR) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_African_Republic but according to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon many more French troops must be sent to effectively produce peace. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/11/us-central-african-un-idUSBREA1A2AK20140211

Already 5000 African troops work with the French, yet Christian forces intent on permanent removal of Muslims coordinate ‘ethnic cleansing’ across hundreds of miles in the land-locked republic. Over 250,000 new CAR refugees in the region since the beginning of 2014 have been added to the existing 850,000, which includes 400,000 in the immediate vicinity of Bangui, capitol of CAR. http://www.voanews.com/content/amnesty-peacekeepers-failed-to-prevent-ethnic-cleansing-in-car/1849583.html

Will other Euro forces join in support of CAR peacekeepers? According to a member of the European Union’s parliament, Arnaud Danjean, “Many European countries do not consider the situation in Central African Republic as a strategic and military priority.” http://www.euronews.com/2014/01/10/france-and-eu-involvement-in-central-african-republic/

So will the humanitarian crisis in CAR simply be left to grow? Should France reconsider its commitments to African peace? Are the current French troops to be left as the only significant European force for the foreseeable future?

Here at http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com we pose such questions to clarify the larger conversation about how the First World nations will respond to Third World crises. Some opinions in the debate describe the modern policy of world leaders as disengaged. http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com/?p=1503

If wars escalate, leaving in their wake waves of millions of refugees, can the EU and the USA afford to stand back? Are there no strategic interests related to central Africa? What other nations in the region might benefit from peace in CAR?

What do you think?

February 12, 2014

More Bitcoin Carnage

Yesterday we commented about Mt Gox’s halt to Bitcoin account withdrawals, and today we focus on denial of service attacks from unknown computer operators. Mutant code lines have been targeting the Bitcoin program. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/12/us-usa-bitcoin-idUSBREA1A20X20140212 Consequently, shutdowns on exchanges supporting Bitcoin and other digital currencies have raised concerns worldwide, says the Bitcoin Foundation. https://bitcoinfoundation.org/blog/

Although Bitcoin stresses that it now is collaborating with other currency technicians to work around the cyber attacks, the broader public attention to digital currencies has generally suffered a significant blow to confidence this week. http://www.forbes.com/sites/leoking/2014/02/12/bitcoin-hit-by-massive-ddos-attack-as-tensions-rise/

Here at http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com we will continue our monitoring of NewCoin news because we believe changing how money works for people matters.

What do you think?

February 11, 2014

Better Markets Sues US Justice Dept

NGO Better Markets http://www.bettermarkets.com/ sues for better market justice.

A Washington DC non-profit organization named Better Markets, headed by Dennis Kelleher, has sued the US Department of Justice, headed by Eric Holder. We have not seen the pleadings at HamiltonFinanceServices.com, but from reports in the Wall Street Journal, it appears to be a suit alleging malfeasance by Eric Holder and failure of due process over the Justice Department settlement with J P Morgan Chase. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304558804579375032500914984?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304558804579375032500914984.html

As reported, the J P Morgan Chase settlement ended potential civil actions by the Justice Department related to allegations of fraud by J P Morgan Chase. http://hamiltonfinanceservices.com/?p=948 Better Market says that without more details made public, the settlement fails to serve the marketplace or the justice system adequately. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/10/us-lawsuit-justice-jpmorgan-idUSBREA191ET20140210

In other words, Better Markets says, through its law suit, that the Justice Department may be unjustly favoring a big bank with a sweetheart deal that the federal courts, not the prosecutors at Justice, should oversee. http://www.afp.com/en/node/1267903

Interesting idea, but will it fly? Will the court system recognize Better Markets’ standing to sue in the first place?

The settlement between the Justice Department and J P Morgan Chase constitutes a blanket settlement of all civil claims, reserving a possibility of criminal action for the future at the discretion of the Justice Department. Better Markets argues that without publicly disclosing the names of perpetrators and other details underlying the settlement, the un-filed civil law suit from Justice may hide a sweetheart deal.

What do you think?