Writing Capital

In China, Hacking Has Widespread Acceptance

Thu, 23 May 2013 08:16:52 -0400

In China, Hacking Has Widespread Acceptance:

Name a target anywhere in China, an official at a state-owned company boasted recently, and his crack staff will break into that person’s computer, download the contents of the hard drive, record the keystrokes and monitor cellphone communications, too.

Pitches like that, from a salesman for Nanjing Xhunter Software, were not uncommon at a crowded trade show this month that brought together Chinese law enforcement officials and entrepreneurs eager to win government contracts for police equipment and services.

“We can physically locate anyone who spreads a rumor on the Internet,” said the salesman, whose company’s services include monitoring online postings and pinpointing who has been saying what about whom.

» via The New York Times (Subscription may be required for some content)

via 31 Charts That Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity |...

Thu, 23 May 2013 08:11:27 -0400

via 31 Charts That Will Restore Your Faith in Humanity | Business Insider

Notes on Chomsky

Thu, 23 May 2013 08:05:57 -0400

[Last summer I blitzed through all of Chomsky’s corpus that I could find on audiobook. Here are my notes. #X indicates the track of the audiobook. I’ve only added parenthetical notes where I’ve felt qualified to do so. Please take this data with a grain of salt.]

[Misc. lectures (1994-7)]

After Reagan, business had a wave of illegal firings of people exercising their right to organize unions. Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guaranteed this right, but was rescinded—Reagan said he wouldn’t enforce it.
US has the worst record in the West hemisphere (besides El Salvador and Lithuania) of adhering to conventions supporting workers’ rights
From 1985 to 1992 the US went from highest labor cost to lowest in the industrial world
Low growth and high unemployment is attractive to stock market investors because they want a stable currency with no sudden stimulus via growth. [This idea is batshit insane.]
In 1970, prior to deregulation of currencies, about 90% of the capital in international transactions was related to the real economy—i.e. for investment or trade—and 10% was speculation. By 1995 it was 5% related to the real economy and 95% for speculation. Plus the nominal amount has grown astronomically.
There were about 800 labor newspapers in the US during the 1950s.
Some ‘exports’ just happen to cross the US–Mexican border as they pass from on US transnational corporation to another, and are then sent right back to the US.

Propaganda and Control of the Public Mind (1998)

#27: “The point of getting power down to the states is so that any business, even a middle-sized business, can make sure that the money does into their pockets, not into the pockets of poor people. It’s trickier to do it at the Federal level.”
Every corporation has a state charter
1 in every $6 of the US economy is spent on marketing
Saudi Arabia is the most fundamentalist nation, but was not included in USA ‘clash of civilizations’ jingoism

Free Market Fantasies (1999)

#18 (0:50 – 1:00): About 50% of US trade is internal to American corporations (e.g. car companies shifting parts from one branch in USA to another in Mexico). It’s about the same percentage for Japan, and about 40% for the entire world.
Devolution (moving power from federal to state) is meant to make people accept their wider context and to increase corporate power (since these corporations are often more powerful than states, plus can threaten to go to the next state so as to get subsidies and legal leniency)
Tobin tax – small tax on short-term capital speculation to dissuade overinvestment in speculation and incentives for lower growth
In many respects, the global economy is less integrated than it was 100 years ago.
LBJ came up with the phrase “guns and butter”
American revolutionaries wanted rule by other country men, not by parliament
Cold War study: NSE68 (April 1950)
Publicly subsidized private profit corporations: based on US military tech—planes, computers
“soft targets” = civilians
About ⅓ of the material in US elementary schools was coming straight out of corporate propaganda offices by the early 1950s
“The Crisis of Democracy” (1975)
Horowitz - Transformation of American Law → accommodate to private power
“low intensity warfare” (by US) = terrorism
May Day – murder of anarchists (US: ‘law day’)
The sociologist Daniel Bell was an editor of Fortune magazine
Mexico’s ‘economic miracle’ cut wages by 50% and increased malnutrition.
Gillette built excess foreign capacity to prevent strikes
There’s a death penalty associated with capital flight in South Korea
Chomsky refers to Nixon as “the last liberal president”
Chomsky attributes the good social security of continental Europe and Japan to their feudal (precapitalist) systems, which are predicated on the right to live (even if one’s life is lousy).

Necessary Illusions (1999)

#14: “In fact, what’s called neoliberal economics—really, classical economics—is based on the principle that people don’t have the right to live. You go back to the origins—you know, David Ricardo and Malthus and those guys—their big point was to convince people that you do not have the right to live: you hurt the poor by helping them. And the idea that you have a right to live is just a mistake, it has to be beaten out of people’s minds—the only right that you have is whatever rights you get on the labor market.” [Bullshit]
Saddam Hussein reinvested all the profits from oil, contributing to Iraq’s economic growth
The US often forbade Britain from selling arms to victim nations so that they would turn to Russia and thus give the US an excuse to invade.
Stalin offered to unify East and West Germany.
Clinton ordered genocide on Cambodians
Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia was a humanitarian intervention
Cal Schmidt was the eminence gris of the Bush presidency
The term ‘conflict’ is often used as an agentless euphemism for US aggression
Schumpeter - The Sociology of Imperialism

Case Studies in Hypocrisy (2000)

The Bretton Woods agreement forbids the IMF from providing credit for capital flight—economists a the time, including Keynes, believed that liberalized capital markets undermines free trade; it was a virtual truism that liberalized capital undermines democracy
1% of US households holds about half the stocks, and most of the rest are owned by the top 10%. This is why one should be skeptical when people point to success of the stock market as ‘proof’ of improvement
There are more deaths every 2 years from hunger than there were in both world wars
Mohawk Valley formula – using propaganda to turn the public against strikers (by opposing them to American[ist] togetherness)
The point of vacuous slogans like ‘support our troops’ is that they don’t mean anything—it means about as much as ‘supporting people in Iowa’.
Vietnam syndrome – “sickly inhibitions against the use of military force” (~Goebbels)
Wagner Act – gives US citizens the right to organize (Reagan said he wouldn’t enforce it)

American Addiction (2001)

Coffee is the second major commodity besides oil
The Colombian paramilitary publicly admitted that 70% of its funding came from narco-trafficking
Leading jihadists initially condemned the 9/11 attacks; if the US had not gone to war, they could have begun some diplomacy
[crucial problem with Chomsky’s argument in this lecture: coca ≠ cocaine]
Much of China’s oil comes from Iran
When the Bolivian water supply was privatized, this was because of the World Bank’s advice to do so

Imperial Ambitions (2005)

#16 (1:00–1:30): About $2 billion of the $13 billion Marshall plan went to support US companies so that Europe could shift from a coal-based to an oil-based economy.
Tokyo’s buildings were originally made of wood, and therefore could be firebombed
Chomsky is pro-draft: a volunteer army = a mercenary army of the disadvantaged
#25 (0:54–1:18): social science epistemology
Chomsky is actually interested in intellectual culture, which is what led him to study politics
#27: ridiculously optimistic interpretation of Smith and Ricardo
Freedom of the press didn’t exist in the USA until the 1960s—likely doesn’t exist in any other country (got rid of ‘seditious libel’)
#31 & #36f: Chomsky’s childhood
‘Odious debt’ – US didn’t want to pay Cuba’s debt to Spain, so (rightfully) pointed out that it was wasted by leaders
Carter was the first president to emphasize his religiosity; all the rest followed him.

Failed States (2007)

For the first time, US military aid to Latin America is higher than the total amount of economic aid from key Federal agencies
#17: Doctors who assisted in Pinochet’s torture prisons to make sure that people wouldn’t die are now practicing in Santiago
Mexican–US border was militarized in 1994 by Clinton (‘operation gatekeeper’). Why 1994?—Year when NAFTA was passed. Mexican agriculture couldn’t compete with US agribusiness.
#18: biggest massacre in labor history (Chilean miners)
Cambodia is the most bombed country in history
NSE48 – Lockheed Martin
“Saltwater fallacy” – imperialism need not cross oceans, but can also reside in territorial disputes
France is most viewed as having a positive influence on the world
Mexico is among the most negative about the USA’s role in the world.
Al Jazeera is based in Qatar

Industrial mathcore gangsta rap.

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:38:29 -0400

Industrial mathcore gangsta rap.

Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:33:06 -0400

Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?
Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Cecil Graham: And a sentimentalist, my dear Darlington, is a man who sees an absurd value in everything, and doesn’t know the market price of any single thing.
— Oscar Wilde - Lady Windermere's Fan, act III

10 Perspectives Into The Slow, Agonizing Death Of The American Worker | Zero Hedge

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:27:43 -0400

10 Perspectives Into The Slow, Agonizing Death Of The American Worker | Zero Hedge:

usagia:

The middle class American worker is in danger of becoming an endangered species. The politicians are not telling you the truth, and the mainstream media is certainly not telling you the truth, but the reality is that there is nothing but bad news on the horizon for workers in the United States. The American people inherited the greatest economic machine in the history of the world, and we have wrecked it. Decades of very foolish decisions have resulted in the period of steady economic decline that we are experiencing now. Today, American workers are living in an economy that is rapidly declining, and their jobs are steadily being stolen by robots, computers and foreign workers that live in countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages. Politicians from both political parties refuse to do anything to stop the bleeding because they think that the status quo is working just great. So don’t expect things to get better any time soon. The following are 10 charts that demonstrate the slow, agonizing death of the American worker…

Some rather sobering charts….

RGMs stands for Rapid-Growth Markets

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:22:07 -0400

RGMs stands for Rapid-Growth Markets

10 most common jobs

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:16:40 -0400

10 most common jobs:

lejacquelope:

The poverty level for 2012 was set at $23,050 (total yearly income)

Of the 10 most common private sector jobs in America, 7 are BARELY above the poverty line. 9 out of 10 are less than twice the poverty line.

No, the federal government does not profit off student loans

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:11:17 -0400

No, the federal government does not profit off student loans:

yostivanich:

Worse, it’s hard to say what the actual market price of these loans would be, because unlike the federal government, private lenders actually ask basic questions of borrowers. The federal student loan program requires shockingly little in the way of information on the part of borrowers. “If you walked into a bank and said ‘I’d like a loan’ and then they asked for your credit score, and you say ‘No questions asked, please,’ they’d laugh you out the door,” Delisle says. “That’s how the government makes student loans.”

Delisle guesses that the actual market rate would be between 12-18 percent, far above any rates the federal government currently charges. The government might be able to make an actual profit with rates below that, as it’s better at making collections than private lenders. And if it started asking about credit histories it could go lower still. Sallie Mae offers a fixed-rate loan for undergrad that varies in rates between 5.75 percent and 12.875 percent, depending on your credit history. That’s not too far from what the federal government is charging now.

Then again, maybe the federal government doesn’t want to make a profit. Maybe it considers providing these loans a public good, and worth its while to provide even if it costs money. The question of whether subsidizing lower rates for programs like the PLUS loan and the “unsubsidized” Stafford loan, which are available to even the richest students, is good public policy, or better policy than boosting programs for the poor like Pell Grants, is an important one for policymakers to answer.

But this has nothing to do with making a profit or not making a profit. Delisle, for one, supports pegging the interest rates to the 10-year Treasury rate, just like Obama and House Republicans (who were probably influenced by his proposal). But he doesn’t have any illusions that that reform is about making a profit.

“The fixed rate is well below market, and so you’ve got a program whose goal is to make loans to people at below market rates,” he explains. “That’s the only goal and it’s accomplishing that goal. That is why Congress is really grasping at what the right rate should be, because they’ve already met their goal.”

theatlantic: Just 27% of BA’s Have Jobs Related to Their Major?...

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:06:03 -0400

theatlantic:

Just 27% of BA’s Have Jobs Related to Their Major? Don’t Believe the Fed’s New Stat

Whenever you see a big, bold statistic about the fate of college grads, take it with a grain of salt.

Read more. [Image: Federal Reserve]

TL;DR: The study’s category for ‘related to X major’ is too narrow, e.g. it lists as ‘related’ jobs for math majors: “professor, math scientist, mathematician, natural science manager, and statistician.”

Here’s The Top Stock Held By Each Of The 50 Biggest Hedge Funds...

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:55:04 -0400

Here’s The Top Stock Held By Each Of The 50 Biggest Hedge Funds
Sam Ro, businessinsider.com

The analysts at FactSet recently went through the filings of the 50 biggest hedge funds to see what moves they were making in the stocks market.

“The 50 largest hedge funds increased their equity exposure by over 5% in Q1 2013,” said FactSet’s Michael Amenta.

“This quarter, Boeing Co. was the favorite allocation of the funds,” he added. “The stock experienced $1.6 billion in inflows, which amounted to nearly 250% of its Q4 value in the funds’ aggregate portfolio. Boeing’s shares are up 28.2% year-to-date (“YTD”), compared to 15.7% for the S&P 500.”

However, Boeing was not the top holding of any of the top 50 funds.

Eunuchs of the Universe

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:49:41 -0400

Eunuchs of the Universe:

parislemon:

25 years after The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe returns to Wall Street for Newsweek. It’s a very different world than when he last explored it. The testosterone trader has been replaced by the quiet quant.

borcsok: JPMorgan’s EM analysts have recently announced that...

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:44:09 -0400

borcsok:

JPMorgan’s EM analysts have recently announced that they have cut their 2013 EZ growth forecast to -0.6% from -0.2% previously. As a result, their projection for Hungary was trimmed to -0.7% from -0.5% for 2013. For next year JPMorgan envisages 1.4% GDP growth in Hungary. [via]

"Nigeria’s commercial nerve center, Lagos is set to become the continent’s 13th biggest economy,..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:38:38 -0400

“

Nigeria’s commercial nerve center, Lagos is set to become the continent’s 13th biggest economy, similar to the size of West African nation, Ghana, investment research and advisory firm, Renaissance Capital has revealed. In its latest report titled, “Nigeria Unveiled: Thirty Six Shades of Nigeria,” the company stated that with a per capita income of about $2,900 which is currently double amount of the national average of $1,700, Lagos is at par with countries such as Morocco and Sri Lanka.

Lagos’ economy is significant to that of Ghana and is the heart of Nigeria’s $284 billion GDP economy.

“We base our analysis on states’ internally generated revenue, which make up 15 per cent of state government revenue, and consumption data, as proxies for state income.

“Lagos State produces about 12 per cent of Nigeria’s GDP, which is equivalent to $32 billion by 2013 ending. Post rebasing, which we now expect in early 2014, we estimate a 40 per cent upward revision in the country’s national income.

“By our estimates, the Lagos State economy will become Africa’s 13th biggest economy in 2014 at approximately $45 billion – equivalent to that of Ghana,” said RenCap.

”

- Lagos to be Africa’s 13 biggest economy by 2014, similar to the size of Ghana says Renaissance Capital

You know it’s serious when they start comparing a city to countries. And we manage all this without stable electricity, easy access to basic resources, and the necessary infrastructure to accommodate life in a commercial urban landscape.

Just think about what Lagos would be if all the above-mentioned factors were appropriately set up and maintained.

Damn.

(via dynamicafrica)

ilovecharts: The World’s Resources

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:33:08 -0400

ilovecharts:

The World’s Resources

docutube: Warren Buffett Revealed (2012) 48min. Now in his...

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:27:42 -0400

docutube:

Warren Buffett Revealed (2012) 48min.

Now in his eighties, Buffett has - for decades – held an unparalleled position in American finance. He is not only a legendary investor with an astounding success rate, and a billionaire forty times over; he is also – by far - the most respected businessman in America. This program includes interviews with Buffett, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, his Berkshire Hathaway partner Charlie Munger, his daughter Susie Buffett, early investor Chuck Peterson, newspaper publisher Stan Lipsey, former Salomon CEO John Guttfreund and Vice Chairman Deryck Maughan, and Buffett biographers Roger Lowenstein and Alice Schroeder.

"That the Obama administration is now repeatedly declaring that the ‘war on terror’ will last at..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:22:06 -0400

“That the Obama administration is now repeatedly declaring that the ‘war on terror’ will last at least another decade (or two) is vastly more significant than all three of this week’s big media controversies (Benghazi, IRS, and AP/DOJ) combined. The military historian Andrew Bacevich has spent years warning that US policy planners have adopted an explicit doctrine of ‘endless war’. Obama officials, despite repeatedly boasting that they have delivered permanently crippling blows to al-Qaida, are now, as clearly as the English language permits, openly declaring this to be so. It is hard to resist the conclusion that this war has no purpose other than its own eternal perpetuation. This war is not a means to any end but rather is the end in itself. Not only is it the end itself, but it is also its own fuel: it is precisely this endless war - justified in the name of stopping the threat of terrorism - that is the single greatest cause of that threat.”

- Washington gets explicit: its ‘war on terror’ is permanent | Glenn Greenwald (via theamericanbear)

danspeerin: Austerity! (you know outside of killing people...

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:16:39 -0400

danspeerin:

Austerity! (you know outside of killing people obvs!)

smarterplanet: Google and NASA Launch Quantum Computing AI...

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:11:33 -0400

smarterplanet:

Google and NASA Launch Quantum Computing AI Lab

Quantum computing took a giant leap forward on the world stage today as NASA and Google, in partnership with a consortium of universities, launched an initiative to investigate how the technology might lead to breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.

The new Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab will employ what may be the most advanced commercially available quantum computer, the D-Wave Two, which a recent study confirmed was much faster than conventional machines at defeating specific problems. The machine will be installed at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Facility at the Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley and is expected to be available for government, industrial, and university research later this year.

Google believes quantum computing might help it improve its web search and speech recognition technology. University researchers might use it to devise better models of disease and climate, among many other possibilities. As for NASA, “computers play a much bigger role within NASA missions than most people realize,” says quantum computing expert Colin Williams, director of business development and strategic partnerships at D-Wave.

We have met the enemy and he is PowerPoint

Mon, 20 May 2013 08:06:02 -0400

connected-marketing:

The standard PowerPoint presentation elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch. This can lead to catastrophes like the 2003 NASA Columbia disaster. According to the NASA Investigation Board, this accident resulted from “the endemic use of PowerPoint substituted for rigorous technical analysis”.

PowerPoint has also been identified as the most dangerous internal threat to the US military organization. Military commanders have serious concerns that PowerPoint stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making. According to General McMaster’s, PowerPoint’s worst offense is the lists of bullet points that take no account of interconnected political, economic and ethnic forces. It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control, General McMaster said. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.

Not least, it ties up junior officers - referred to as PowerPoint Rangers - in the daily preparation of slides, be it for a Joint Staff meeting in Washington or for a platoon leader’s pre-mission combat briefing in a remote pocket of Afghanistan.

Microsoft’s ubiquitous software forces people to mutilate data beyond comprehension. For example, in a business setting, a PowerPoint slide typically shows 40 words, which is about eight seconds’ worth of silent reading material. With so little information per slide, many, many slides are needed. Audiences consequently endure a relentless sequentiality, one damn slide after another. When information is stacked in time, it is difficult to understand context and evaluate relationships.