12:07 – My life has become a steady stream of building science kits, processing orders for them, and shipping them. Not that I’m complaining. I wish it could be like this all year long. Instead, it’s semi-crazy in July, full-on crazy in August and September, and back to semi-crazy in October. Still, as long as we can continue to build enough kits to meet demand, and assuming the current sales trajectory holds up, it looks like we’ll reach my goal for the year in September, if not August. The remainder of the year should allow us to exceed the goal comfortably.
And to think that back around April/May, I was seriously considering starting another book in the DIY science series and designing another kit. As it is, I’ll be hard pressed to get the first batch of forensic science kits ready by the time the book hits the bookstores in about a month. I haven’t even started making up the solutions, of which there are a large number, other than in prototype quantities. As a very smart friend of mine once commented, “We can do anything, but we can’t do everything.”
There are over 300,000 people working in investment banking in London alone. Admittedly, London is perhaps the biggest banking center in the world right now, but the numbers of people working in similar positions in other major finance cities of the US and Europe, make it clear that this is a huge industry.
Now, how many of those 300,000 work at Barclays? I cannot find definite figures, but there are over 10,000 in “the City” and Barclays also has investment banking offices spread all over greater London. According to British regulators, it is impossible that hundreds of those Barclays employees did not know about the rate-fixing Barclays was allegedly doing (it’s been admitted to by the CEO who resigned, so I really don’t need to say “allegedly”, but a career in journalism makes me do it) by rigging and contributing false information to the LIBOR interest rate fixing mechanism. Why did NO ONE blow the whistle?
The Economist reports
http://www.economist.com/node/21558281
that contract owners in these investments are already planning to sue for being cheated out of higher interest rates. How much are these contracts worth? During the period in question—hang onto your chair—$700 trillion. It may be more, because investigators are looking into 20 banks in 6 countries, including the US and Canada, and many banking experts expect the LIBOR scandal to grow significantly bigger as cross-continental wrong-doing is discovered—because regulators claim Barclays did not act alone.
So, as if the world did not already have enough troubles, these contract owners sue and reap millions in compensation—like smokers did from the tobacco companies, says the Economist—who pays those penalties? Why you and me, the depositors of,—and investors in,—the banks in question.
It sure appears that the towering, tottering mega-banks look headed for a fall. Just one disastrous financial calamity after another is arising from the hell-hole of a banking industry that has become too big to fail, and has succeeded in lobbying to eliminate the Glass-Steagall Act, which kept banks from dabbling in both deposits and investments and mixing the two.
This is not going to be the last crisis we will see in banking, and this one has barely gotten started. I think Shakespeare’s line needs to be altered: The first thing we do, let’s kill all the bankers.
I always figured that once the lawyers were gone, the bankers would get “get their minds right”.
Turns out it was US regulators that found the criminal LIBOR activity. The UK has had no oversight whatsoever in that area, after the banks persuaded government to let the banks regulate themselves in regards to LIBOR. Talk about getting your mind right!
The LIBOR rate affects almost everyone in life, from your credit card interest rates to bank deposit fees and interest rates to companies you own stock in. This may end up being a bigger deal than Enron. You might even want to sue.
And once again, it was email records at Barclays that confirmed the funny business. You would think people crossing the line would not be doing it with email.
This probably doesn’t fit here, but fuck the UN and fuck Obama.
Why wouldn’t it fit in here?
Right. What was I thinking. I meant double-fuck the UN and Obama. Stop trying to take my guns and raise my taxes, biatches.
Speaking of raising taxes, great exposé on taxes by Arthur Laffer, the Laffer Curve guy, in last week’s Business Daily—the Wed 4 July edition. Find it here in this maze of the last 30 days of their programs.
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/bizdaily/rss.xml
I always love it when people like Laffer are able to make mincemeat of self-righteous BBC reporters with nothing more than common sense and intuitively obvious logic.
Laffer is the second piece on the show, about 10:35 in. He predicts an Armageddon on 1 Jan next year, when all sorts of new taxes kick in, some quite big increases.
Well, I had the burial of my pet earwig today. Oddly, the police were not interested in his strange drunken behavior the day before he died. Or the strange circumstances of his death—apparently committing suicide by somehow gluing himself to the stainless steel sink until he expired. Or was it a mysterious homicide perpetrated by the earwig-hating spiders also living in the house?
He was buried at sea. After a long struggle with a knife to scrape his glued remains from the sink, I then turned on a giant tidal wave flood from the faucet and he washed out to sea. Or to wherever those underground pipes through the neighborhood go. I pay enough monthly for maintenance on those pipes that they should stretch to the sea.
Meanwhile, I am having a cup of tea to calm my nerves over the loss. I will really miss having to take him outside every day of the week.
This probably doesn’t fit here, but fuck the UN and fuck Obama.
You can fuck Obama if you want, but personally I would think you would have better taste in men if you swing that way.
‘…rainy days and Monday always get me down…’
Shazamm! Folks is fired UP toDAY!
What we chiefly need here are two channels of disposal: release all non-violent criminals from our prison industry complexes forthwith and replace them with the common sort of violent types, non-capital-crime, and put them on hard-labor chain gangs, building, repairing and maintaining regional and small-town infrastructure, minus the large cities, which can rot. Make the non-violent types pay restitution and all that, of course, and maybe fines. A bitch-slap here and there.
Now for the banksters, lawyers, politicians, financial speculators, and all that sort, along with their statist and media and academic enablers: roll the tumbrils and start lining these fuckers up. And a tip o’ the beret to the very late Dr. Guillotine, who came up with the idea: quick, humane, cheap. And dead certain.
This is very short—a description of a new research paper that confirms what we all knew:
“How the record industry killed legal P2P, created a generation of pirates, and laughed all the way to the graveyard—By Cory Doctorow”
http://boingboing.net/2012/07/09/how-the-record-industry-killed.html
Doctorow links to a longer summary of the paper.
To me, this signifies how the influence of laws is a fast-growing influence on our lives, and when those laws are not in tune with an ever-faster moving society, they now actually cause great harm. The days of Congress sitting back and just letting things slide on forever is going to have to end. There is going to have to be an effort to weed out misguided laws, and get some solid cause and effect reasons for laws to exist—or they need to be repealed. Congress is on this same path to the graveyard that Doctorow speaks of.
We were talking here earlier about jobs and college and training and what STEM might be worth doing for a young person to really get ahead and make some dough in engineering, IT and so forth.
This is a guy who is four levels down from the CEO of a gigantic corporation and his education and experience: I reckon he makes a bundle, but his education is not out of reach of kids with the aptitude and drive:
Education
Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, Univ. of New Haven, 1979
Master of Science in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, MIT, 1981
PhD in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, MIT, 1986
Patents granted
Patent name Patent date Patent number Patent issuing country or region
CENTRALIZED BACKPLANE BUS ARBITER FOR MULTIPROCESSOR SYSTEMS 1994-01-18 5280591 United States
INTERFACE WITH ADDRESS DECODER FOR SELECTIVELY GENERATING FIRST AND SECOND ADDRESS AND CONTROL SIGNALS RESPECTIVELY IN RESPONSE TO RECEIVED 1995-04-25 5410654 United States
METHODS FOR PERFORMING DIAGNOSTIC FUNCTIONS IN A MULTIPROCESSOR DATA PROCESSING SYSTEM HAVING A SERIAL DIAGNOSTIC BUS 2001-03-13 6202097 United States
MULTIPROCESSOR SYSTEM HAVING LOCAL WRITE CACHE WITHIN EACH DATA PROCESSOR NODE 1994-07-05 5327570 United States
SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION SYSTEM 1997-01-29 2602599 Japan
SERIAL DIAGNOSTIC INTERFACE BUS FOR MULTIPROCESSOR SYSTEMS 1995-11-21 5469542 United States
UNIVERSAL BUFFERED INTERFACE FOR COUPLING MULTIPLE PROCESSORS MEMORY UNITS, AND I/O INTERFACES TO A COMMON HIGH-SPEED INTERCONNECT 1996-12-24 5588122 United States
UNIVERSAL BUFFERED INTERFACE FOR COUPLING MULTIPLE PROCESSORS, MEMORY UNITS, AND I/O INTERFACES TO A COMMON HIGH-SEED INTERCONNECT 1999-02-09 5870572 United States
A CENTRALIZED BACKPLANE BUS ARBITER FOR MULTIPROCESSOR SYSTEMS 1996-10-24 2574967 Japan
A HIGH-PERFORMANCE, MULTI-BANK GLOBAL MEMORY CARD FOR MULTIPROCESSOR SYSTEMS 1996-05-17 2518989 Japan
A HIGH-PERFORMANCE, MULTI-BANK GLOBAL MEMORY CARD FOR MULTIPROCESSOR SYSTEMS 1995-10-31 5463755 United States
A SERIAL DIAGNOSTIC INTERFACE BUS FOR MULTIPROCESSOR SYSTEMS 1996-04-16 2510810 Japan
A UNIVERSAL BUFFERED INTERFACE FOR COUPLING MULTIPLE PROCESSORS, MEMORY UNITS, AND I/O INTERFACES TO A COMMON HIGH-SPEED INTERCO 1996-08-23 2082865 Japan
General experience
Business
Research & Development
Customer
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
University of Vermont
Sigh…
I *really* wanted to do my first degree in electrical engineering (and perhaps also a BSc in maths and physics) but didn’t get into my first choice at Adelaide Uni. Well, the world’s a poorer place for that. I could have invented all that stuff 10 years earlier than it was, got rich, famous, saved the world, etc. But it wasn’t to be.
Yeah but look at ya now…livin the life o’ Reilly Down Under wid all dem sheilas in dare teeny bikinis at da beach…big ol’ cans o’ dat watery lager which piss tastes better…shrimp on da barbie..etc…carry a big ol’ knife an wrassle gators…sheeeet….you got it made in da shade, mate…
Chuck,
Thanks for the Laffer laugh. ” I make mince-meat out of you!” is about right.
Jim
“Don’t go into science!” chemist advises her daughter.
http://www.wpost.com/national/health-science/us-pushes-for-more-scientists-but-the-jobs-arent-there/2012/07/07/gJQAZJpQUW_print.html
So, we’ll just produce more lawyers and Wall Street bankers who’ll pull in millions for destroying jobs and robbing people blind…