General linkiness

[unixronin]

Cotton candy is a glass.

Chris Christie sets a reporter to rights for calling him confrontational (via rosencrantz23).

The SR-71 flight manual is now available online.  (Well, OK, it will be again in a couple of days after they rebuild their database, which crashed under the traffic load.)

A back-of-the-envelope estimate of the scale of the BP Deepwater Horizons well plume, based on some simple analysis and deduction, via Examiner.com.

And last but not least, the Agonist on financial crashes, "algo trading", and the financial markets.  Did you know banks could borrow money from the Fed at 0% interest, then invest it straight back into Treasury bills at 3.5%?  Do the math, and remember whose pocket that bond interest ultimately comes out of.  But wait!  It gets better!  If there's a deficit — and when isn't there a deficit these days? — the Fed has to de facto borrow the money to pay off those T-bills when they come due.  (I wonder what interest rate the Fed pays on the money...?)

Comments

[lebo-superman.livejournal.com]

Who was it, Rothchild (?) who said, "Give me control of a country's money supply, and I care not who makes it's laws." (or something like that). Now we see what he meant. Besides borrowing money to actually spend, the bankers have our government paying interest TWICE on the same money. No wonder that even when we reduce spending the deficit grows. grrrr.

Besides which, when the Fed prints paper money, it all costs exactly the same to print no matter what numbers they put on it, but they sell it to the government at the face value. Since we know they make a profit on even the $1 bills, the profit on the $100's & $500's really keeps them in business!

[dafydd.livejournal.com]

The Federal Funds Rate (http://www.investorwords.com/1902/Federal_funds_rate.html) isn't quite zero (http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h15/Current/).

Also, the Federal Funds Rate and Discount Rate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_reserve#Federal_funds_rate_and_discount_rate) only apply to overnight loans. So, effectively, banks only get 1/365th of that 3.5% interest...

(Interestingly, The Fed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_reserve) is privately held, but turns over its profits to the US Treasury. In 2009, that profit was $45 Billion (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/11/AR2010011103892.html) returned to the people of the United States.)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

The article seems to imply only a handful of banks get that 0% rate. I don't know if that's correct.

It does put a bit of a different complexion on it if it applies only to overnight rates though. Of course, one could argue that daily churn doesn't actually cost the bank anything; they just have to make the same transaction 365 times a year.

$45 billion annual profit from the Fed isn't to be sneezed at. Unfortunately it's a drop in the bucket of current spending.

[dafydd.livejournal.com]

The investorwords.com site says The Fed doesn't directly set the rate, but makes its preferences known through selective buying and selling. I'd call it analogous to being the dealer at a poker table where the players can lend to each other. If one player were getting a flat 0%, I suspect the other players would want to know why.

[dafydd.livejournal.com]

Also, I've only skimmed the article, because I clocked almost 55 hours this week and I'm exhausted. I did note that he was approaching hysteria regarding last week's half-hour crash, but fails to mention the automated trading holds that would have stopped all trading had the markets sunk much lower than they did.

I don't remember what the percentage-drop triggers are, but I do recall the NYSE saying it had a half-hour hold and a 4-hour hold built in to its computers, and that two half-hour holds in a day would result in all trading stopped for the day.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

The "Flash Crash" was pretty interesting in a lot of ways, I think, not least because some of the stop-loss triggers apparently did not work, and because the NASDAQ selectively chose to retroactively cancel some, but not all, of the trades involved.

I have no doubt there will be more investigation.

[polaris93.livejournal.com]

Reading A volcano of oil erupting (http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-8199-Breakthrough-Energy-Examiner~y2010m5d13-A-volcano-of-oil-erupting), I got to the link for Leaked report: Government fears Deepwater Horizon well could become unchecked gusher (http://blog.al.com/live/2010/04/deepwater_horizon_secret_memo.html). I thought I was terrified before I got to that link. I had no idea what terror really is until I read the linked article. We are well and truly screwed, though just how much worse it will get is anyone's guess at this point. It was those vast sheets of red crud spread far across the waters of the Gulf that got to me most, though the idea that somebody might try shutting off that gusher of oil with a nuke is right up there with it. God help us all, because I don't think anyone else can.

[polaris93.livejournal.com]

Talk about synchronicity, I just ran across this: Could Cleanup Fix for Gulf Oil Spill Lie in Secret Saudi Disaster? - AOL News (http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/could-cleanup-fix-for-gulf-oil-spill-lie-in-secret-saudi-disaster/19476863). I wonder if they can do something with this.

[rain-manpnw.livejournal.com]

So then the question becomes ... which came first - cotton candy or fiberglass?

Just be careful which pink frothy stuff you put in your mouth.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Are either of those good to put in your mouth?

Re: first link

[zeekar.livejournal.com]

Auto-starting AUDIO ads?! Screw that!

Re: first link

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Ew! Sorry, I use NoScript and didn't get'em.