Declarations from Fady's World

I just finished reading Hank Paulson’s “On the Brink”, and though the book was a boring, blow-by-blow recount of the events, it shed some light on the near collapse of the global financial system in the fall of 2008.
It did help me answer the question of whether TARP was necessary: it wasn’t.
TARP in of itself was pretty harmless; most of the funds have or will be paid back, with interest, to taxpayers. Toxic assets turned out not to be a real problem: it was a good-old-fashioned run on the bank; a global run on all the banks.
TARP never lived up to its name: It never purchased any “Troubled Assets”. It simply played the role of “lender of last resort”. A role typically reserved for the Federal Reserve, and as such avoided some short term pain. We will never know what could have happened.
But the story does not end here.
TARP opened Pandora’s box and enabled the US Government to do or attempt to do things that a few months prior would have been unthinkable.
TARP changed the American psyche so talk of “hundreds of billions” became acceptable in polite company.
TARP led to the Stimulus, GM bailout, $13T budget deficit, red ink as far as the eye can see.
TARP forced us to cross the Rubicon. Led by the unwavering self-confident, never-doubt-myself-for-a-minute but willing-to-change-my-mind-at-my-convenience Paulson, we moved into virgin territory. And the damage caused will take decades to undo.
Moral hazard on a slippery slope! We could and should have done without TARP. Libertarians and House Republicans were right after all.
By the way, Hank portrayed John McCain as a bumbling idiot, unable to grasp the situation let alone formulate a cohesive plan. Maybe my faute-de-mieux theory was right?

It has been quite a long time since I was excited about an Apple product announcement. Their tack to being a media company took them out of my sphere of interest for a decade now. Apple technology had become a fashion statement, rhetoric notwithstanding.

The tablet was another story; I always thought it to be the natural evolution of the laptop. I was involved in early attempts at creating a tablet computer by Grid Systems, stood in line for hours at MacWorld in Boston to buy a Newton, plunked over 1G last year on UMPC, bought an OLPC (you can rotate the screen and turn it into a tablet) and have been a Kindle fan from day one.

The main problem with the early attempts was CPU and storage. That was solved by about 2003, leaving two main problems: software and screen technology.

In today’s world software is no longer an issue: there is a number of options out there from Win7, to Chrome OS, to iPhone OS. The thornier problem of screen technology remain unsolved.
You see a tablet needs to be lightweight, rugged, viewable in any lighting condition and run un-tethered for a long time. Present screen technology is just not up to snuff.

• e-Ink comes closest but suffers from lack of color and inability to address individual pixels which makes it unsuitable for media applications. Besides, it’s as unsexy and an IBM PS/2.
• Backlit LCD displays are power hogs and not daylight readable. Fragile as a champagne flute, these displays are just not meant to be dropped.
• OLED technology is promising, but suffers from shorter life (display dims and looses color over time), and higher costs.

Power consumption in non e-Ink devices necessitate larger batteries and therefore tend to weight 1-3 lbs. It is simply not comfortable to hold that kind to device for an extended period of time.

My prediction is that the iPad (after the fanboys buy two each) will not garner enough of an audience to be counted a success. It’s too much of a compromise: too heavy for a book reader, too large to be an iPod (imagine going to the gym), too limited to replace my laptop (VPN anyone?), not enough connectivity for TV viewing.

Unlike Microsoft, Apple does not have a history of investing heavily in non-homerun products. 50% chance, iPad will die on the vine.

I was planning a blog on this subject, but then I decided to simply post the chart and allow folks to come to their own conclusion.

To me, this clearly explains the logic and reasoning driving presidential actions. When our President and 92% of his advisors have never earned an honest dollar in their life, what do you expect?

It should not have come as a surprise to any insider that Editor & Publisher, a venerable 125 year-old publication that focused on the newspaper industry, was shut down by Nielsen its parent company.
The writing was on the wall, inked circa 1996 when the internet burst on the scene, and E&P took pains to ensure the industry held on to its outdated business model. E&P even fought AP’s effort to supplement its revenue stream by reselling technology to member newspapers.
They fought against digital cameras, they fought against AdSend. They were purist (in the bad sense of the term) and died as purists.

EditorandPublisher.com dropped off the net on Friday December 11th 2009. Last headline exalting user response and trashing the Washington Post for running a Sarah Palin op-ed.

I am flabbergasted that a US car company with middle-americans as primary customers and a stack of retro muscle cars and full-sized trucks equipped with Hemis V8 is deploying the above ad as a way of rescuing sales.

Is this a flavor of things to come under FIAT’s leadership? Can someone tell them that the emperor has no clothes?

Exactly how many political activists will be interested in a Chrysler 300? Seven is my guess, 11 if you include Cash-for-Clunkers.