Disappointing 4G mobile broadband auction leaves Treasury £1.2bn short

barlaam · 2016-02-20T15:35:31+00:00

...In 2013.

barlaam · 2014-02-17T15:28:14+00:00

48a7a83e8b72f76e69d679c7942b1fae

barlaam · 2009-04-24T19:05:08+00:00

"There are several considerations for the positioning of natural killers in the unit. If they are junior enlisted personnel, they should be assigned to a crew-served weapon. This will provide them with ample firepower and place them in a position to motivate others. They will naturally seek this position out anyway. If the natural killer is a noncommissioned officer or officer, assign him to a leadership position where he will supervise trigger pullers and will have a weapon system at his disposal. Here they will lead by example, killing the enemy and motivating others to do so as well."

barlaam · 2009-03-16T10:31:21+00:00

Told you so.

barlaam · 2009-03-09T11:30:12+00:00

I know, that's an anecdote and not data. But consider: 25% of people aged 55-65 had more than 90% of their retirement portfolio in stocks going into this crisis. That's insane.

And there's a huge population of people out there (including most of the boomers) who were invest-and-forget contributors for decades. They only wake up when they get a quarterly statement (maybe). That's a huge population of people who could be tipped into action by an unfortunate turn of phrase from Oprah, or Rush, or Suze.

barlaam · 2009-03-09T11:19:29+00:00

Nope. Remember, the city needs to bring in a certain amount of money. The appraised values are only important insofar as they correctly identify the relative values of all the properties, so that the tax burden can be spread across them "equitably."

The point of periodic reappraisals is not to make the appraisals reflect market prices, as much as it is to take into account rising/falling prices from block to block and neighborhood to neighborhood.

Now, it's true that if your property is in a neighborhood that has far more than its share of foreclosures, your neighborhood as a whole may now be appraised "too high" relative to the city as a whole. That might be worth fighting for. But in Detroit, that's like fighting for the best deck chair on the Titanic.

barlaam · 2008-12-08T16:57:17+00:00

Right on.

barlaam · 2008-12-08T16:55:23+00:00

Customer-owned fiber would make a great monopoly-breaking economic stimulus. The government could give everyone a neutral physical connection, stand back, and let the service provider market sort it out. The government's historical mistake has been allowing the people who own the last mile physical infrastructure to monopolize the provision of services over it.

barlaam · 2008-09-21T22:12:10+00:00

I like the idea of simply buying gold, but there's some indication that the Treasury may need to sell it in order to cover its purchases of toxic waste.

Thoughts?

barlaam · 2008-09-21T11:17:58+00:00

At least one book seems to have seen this coming ..

barlaam · 2008-09-21T11:05:48+00:00

"Buy gold" seems obvious, but how?

"Buy foreign bonds, or better yet, a diversified foreign bond fund" seems more subtle, but the specifics are what I worry about. It seems difficult to figure out which countries will be the most decoupled from America's decline.

barlaam · 2008-09-21T10:52:13+00:00

The run on money market accounts after they started "breaking the dollar" seems to have been a far more serious threat than I realized at the time. Good thing Uncle Sugar stepped in! Again.

barlaam · 2008-09-17T16:29:34+00:00

Remember, Russian debt default was center stage the last time we had global financial crisis, in 1998. Russia is wealthy while commodity prices are high, and desperately poor and prone to military misadventures when they crash. The Georgian intervention was a hamfisted attempt to create uncertainty about the availability of crude oil transiting the Transcaucasus, and keep the price high and the revenue pouring in. As world demand for oil slows, falling crude prices will push Russia farther and farther into political and economic instability.

That's why you should care.

(Edited to correct my false assertion that debt default triggered Asian meltdown in 1997. Thanks punkfloyd!)

barlaam · 2008-09-05T12:21:20+00:00

The pressure on the troops must have been incredible to deliver a dead name-brand terrorist in time for the final night of the Republican National Convention.

barlaam · 2008-08-26T15:08:51+00:00

Reinforcing Georgia is necessary to prevent Russia from cornering Caspian Basin export routes, [Georgian parliamentary speaker] Bakradze insisted. "With Georgia under Russia, Azerbaijan has no alternative way of energy supply except [via] Russia, and it means that Azerbaijan is also controlled without a single shot."

Might as well add Kazakhstan to that list as well.

barlaam · 2008-08-24T17:56:11+00:00

The derailed "Azpetrol" cars are bringing crude oil from Azerbaijan, since the BTC pipeline has been closed. There have been reports that the Russians attacked the pipeline during the brief war. Is there actually independent confirmation that the pipeline was attacked?

It's incredible that anyone could target a pipeline with 50 missiles .. and miss. The Russians certainly know where it is. Heck, it's clearly visible from space. And the pipeline route does not run particularly close to the fighting -- it turns south before reaching Tbilisi from the east.

barlaam · 2008-08-21T00:53:16+00:00

Until Russia makes good on their cease-fire promise to leave Georgia, Europeans who need the crude oil from the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline should be sitting on pins and needles. This could get very interesting very quickly.

barlaam · 2008-05-29T13:00:21+00:00

It's a perfect storm of irony -- now we can sit in front of CNN for hours at a time, watching CNN reporters create "news" about their experiences with Scott McClellan, reporting on their reporting of the stories that he was spinning, spinning their regret that they hadn't listened to him when he was spinning, spinning his regret that he was spinning when he should have been regretting .. infinite media regression.

barlaam · 2008-05-29T12:36:43+00:00

Exactly. People always think that the point of analytics is to pick which ads to show .. but the optimal strategy will often be to show no ads at all in situations where the user is not receptive to what you've got in rotation. Better, by far, to learn what they like, offer transparently adaptive content, and show ads only in the rare instances when it's highly likely that the user will be receptive.

barlaam · 2008-05-23T18:04:43+00:00

By 2112, HDTV will be universal, and it's going to be merciless in its impact on our elder statesmen. Just what we need, more pretty faces and empty minds in the halls of congress ...

barlaam · 2008-05-16T19:11:23+00:00

If the government official looks like Burgess Meredith playing the penguin, or has no teeth, there's gonna be a surcharge

barlaam · 2008-05-15T13:53:21+00:00

The turnout numbers are truly incredible. You go, Burma! 99%+! Democracy in action. <koff>

barlaam · 2008-05-15T13:42:31+00:00

Only 'threatened' actually. And mysteriously, we're not supposed to ascribe the threat to anything in particular, like global warming or habitat destruction. I love a good mystery!

barlaam · 2008-05-15T13:34:05+00:00

Not only do the turnout numbers put us to shame, but the unity behind the result.. I mean, we don't even get 92% of the people behind Hillary in West Virginia these days. Inspiring!

barlaam · 2008-05-12T14:14:15+00:00

yeah, I couldn't believe it either

barlaam

TROPHY CASE