text: Our two adult sons worked with Giri and Ben in October 2013. Learned a lot, but because they didn't have a lot of any kind of board experience, probably didn't get as far as they should have. Ben and Giri were very nice and experienced and were the perfect instructors. Recommend more time for the zero to hero kiteboarding experience... More


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Today is December 10, 2013
Front Page
September 21, 2006
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September 21, 2006
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Basso Dino-Mine Adventure Playground completed
At the top of a slide, a girl waits for her turn to go down a slide at the recently opened Basso Dino-Mine Adventure Playground. Organizers raised $250,000, mostly in private donations, for the playground, which was built with the help of more than 3...
CEU Student Allegedly Hit by Price Driver near College Dorms
A college student crosses 300 East at the corner of 500 North. College freshman Kaylie Brundage was reportedly struck while attempting to cross 300 East. Police reports indicated Brundage was wearing dark clothing as she attempted to cross the road...
USDA Awards Grants to Helper and East Carbon Public Safety Departments
East Carbon Mayor Orlando La Fontaine along with East Carbon City Police Chief Sam Leonard accept a USDA Grant from USDA State Director John R. Cox. The community facility grant will go towards purchasing new vehicles and updated equipment for the...
PRWID Board Plans to Impose Rate Increases Before New Year
The Price River Water Improvement District board confirmed on Tuesday its intentions to pursue a rate increase before the end of the year. Various figures have been thrown around by the board since financial advisers pointed to the need to increase r...
Driver Reportedly Rolls Pickup Truck near LDS Institute Of Religion on 400 North
A vehicle rolled over while the driver of the vehicle was traveling west on 400 North on Monday evening. According to police the driver swerved to miss a dog in the road and hit the curb, leaving the truck on its side in front of the former site of ...
Desert Wave Pool ready for colder winter weather
Price city public works department personnel install the final door on the south end of the wave pool on Tuesday. An annual event, the wave pool is covered in winter months to allow year-round use. The wave pool also began operating on its winter hou...
State announces Seventh District court judicial vacancy
Applications are now being accepted for a district court judge position in the Seventh Judicial District, which includes Carbon, Emery, Grand and San Juan counties. The positions will replace Judge Bruce K. Halliday who announced his retirement effec...
BLM Seeks Public Comments on Oil Shale Research
Today the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced the release of the Oil Shale Research, Development and Demonstration (RD&D) Environmental Assessment (EA) for a 30-day public comment period, which closes on October 18, 2006....
Sitla Boasts Revenue Increases for Schools
The School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration's financial results for fiscal year 2006 are in. The reports show that revenues produced by SITLA reached another record level. For FY 2006, gross revenues were $161.8 million - an increase of ...
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Matthew Weiner on His Beef With Alex Trebek, and How Mad Men Will End
By Lane Brown onJust because Matthew Weiner has a new $30 million deal and an armload of Emmys doesn't mean he can't carry a few grudges, too. On Friday night the Mad Men creator stopped by Largo in Los Angeles for a discussion with Curb Your Enthusiasm's Jeff Garlin. With no particular agenda, the talk was a free-flowing conversation that often touched on people and things that have pissed Weiner off over the past few years. Below, six people on his shit list. Plus, some hints on how Mad Men's final season will end.
Alex Trebek
While he was still a poor, unemployed college grad, Weiner appeared on Jeopardy! and won. At episode's end, he had the following encounter with Trebek: "I went up to him and said, 'When I was in college, Jeopardy! was on at 3:30 in the afternoon and it was during this class called 'The Human Brain,' and I got a D in the class because I was always watching your show. Which is funny, because my dad's a neurologist ' And he looks at me and says, 'Most of our champions are excellent students.' It was hurtful! Alex basically said, 'You have bad grades. No Centrum Silver for you.'"
The Actor Who Kicked Him in the Butt
When Weiner was a writer on a network sitcom he refused to name (our guess: The Naked Truth) he had a dispute with one of the show's actors that ended in a bruised ass. Said Garlin: "I know you were kicked in the butt once. [Weiner] was writing on a show, and one of the actors — who's a writer now — got so mad at Matt that he went up and kicked him in the butt." "He wanted to have a fight with me," remembered Weiner. "He was much bigger. He said, 'You know how to fight?' And I said, 'I'm a comedy writer. Of course I don't know how to fight.' He had homicide in his eyes, so I took the high road and turned around to walk away. Then he kicked me in the leg " Interjected Garlin: "I heard from Robby Benson that it was in the butt." "It left a mark," said Weiner. "I told on him."
Conan O'Brien
Weiner's wife, Linda, to whom he's been married for 20 years, always told him he was the funniest person she'd ever met — "except for this one guy." One night, they were watching TV when it was announced that Conan O'Brien would inherit Late Night from David Letterman. "Linda says, 'Oh my god, that's the guy!'" remembers Weiner. "I've met Conan since then and I told him, 'The first year you were on the air, I used to watch you every night and tell my wife you were [sarcastically] fantastic.' And he goes, 'We had a rough first year. Was that because you were wishing that on me?'"
Mad Men's Focus Group
AMC didn't focus-group Mad Men until the end of the show's first season, when they were trying to decide whether to pick it up for a second. "They told me, 'You're going to have to have a Come to Jesus meeting with Lionsgate and AMC about what you're doing and what you need to change, and then they might renew it,'" said Weiner. "As I was driving there, somebody called me and said, 'It was just in Variety that they renewed the show.' So I went to the meeting and they said, 'Our focus group told us they think Pete and Peggy are boring, and they hate the advertising business parts the show is boring, the pace is too slow, and you need more scenes ' Finally the head of AMC said, 'Well, if we're going to renew this ' And my manager said, 'We just heard it's already been renewed!' And the chairman guy looks around and says, 'Thanks a lot, guys. Way to go with the leverage.'"
TV Recappers
Last season on Mad Men, in the episode in which Don Draper writes his journal, the show featured its first-ever voice-over narration, which became a point of contention among critics on the Internet: "Somebody wrote, 'Well, we learned one thing about Don — he's not a good writer.' Some of that was from somebody's actual journal. And some of that was very important to me. And I was like, 'You want to know what's going on in Don's head? He's going to actually tell you.' Some people were like, 'You're not allowed to do that. There's no voice-over on the show.' And I'm like, 'Go fuck yourself. Go get your own fucking show. Don't write on the Internet what I'm allowed to fucking do.' But I have to say, I've been treated very well out there. My show is a success because of the Internet."
The Makers of Revolutionary Road
During the Q&A portion of the discussion, Weiner was asked if he ever thought about what he could do with Mad Men on HBO, with Boardwalk Empire's budget. "Mad Men is TV-14, not even TV-MA," said Weiner. "I'm allowed three shits a show. I can say 'Jesus,' I can say 'Christ,' but I can't say 'Jesus Christ' unless he's actually there I don't think about the budget, but here's what I think about: When we were making the pilot, they were making Revolutionary Road at the same time. They were shooting in Grand Central Station. And they had every gray flannel suit that ever existed in New York City. I had to cast shorter, smaller extras because all the normal-size suits had been bought by the studio [making Revolutionary Road]. It's incredible. Look in the pilot and you'll see that Jon Hamm is a foot taller than everybody else."
Bonus: How Mad Men Will End
When asked if he had an end point in mind for Mad Men's seventh and final season, Weiner answered in the affirmative: "I do know how the whole show ends," he told us. "It came to me in the middle of last season. I always felt like it would be the experience of human life. And human life has a destination. It doesn't mean Don's gonna die. What I'm looking for, and how I hope to end the show, is like It's 2011. Don Draper would be 84 right now. I want to leave the show in a place where you have an idea of what it meant and how it's related to you. It's a very tall order, but I always talk about Abbey Road. What's the song at the end of Abbey Road? It's called 'The End.' There is a culmination of an experience of people working at their highest level. And all I want to do is not wear out the welcome. I was 35 when I wrote the Mad Men pilot, 42 when I got to make it, and I'll be 50 when it goes off the air. So that's what you're gonna get. Do I know everything that's gonna happen? No, I don't. But I just want it to be entertaining, and I want people to remember it fondly and not think it ended in a fart."
Previously from Lane Brown:
The Men Who Camped Out for Twilight: A Photo Essay
Just How Good Is Al Pacino In Jack and Jill?
Bomb Shelter: Why Did Tower Heist Fail?
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Short trips in the stunningly scenic Upper Mississippi River Valley. Longer rides to quaint villages on quiet back roads. Tours of protected parks and refuges with abundant wildlife and fantastic vistas. Hundreds of miles of easy or challenging roads leading to fascinating places you've always imagined might be out there somewhere.
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Columbia University professor and Nation columnist Patricia Williams joined Tom Brokaw and Ari Melber on MSNBC to remember the late Nelson Mandela. Williams said one of Mandela's defining legacies was signing South Africa's constitution, "one of the most progressive in the world." She also compared and contrasted the South African leader to Barack Obama, saying the American president invokes some of the hope and inspiration of Mandela, but "the question of Guantánamo and certain foreign policies makes his situation a more complex one."
—Steven Hsieh
On Tuesday, five federal agencies approved a key financial reform intended to keep banks from making risky bets for their own profit. Known as the Volcker rule, the regulation took three years to finalize and withstood a concentrated lobbying front from Wall Street and business groups.
As recently as last month financial reformers expressed concern that the final rule would leave critical loopholes open and fail to stop banks from engaging in speculative trading, with taxpayers vulnerable to big losses. But after seventy-one pages of official guidelines were unveiled yesterday, reform advocates appear to have won their campaign for a stronger law. But because of critical gray areas in the rule, how much stability it restores to the financial system depends on implementation and enforcement. (For a deeper dive into the specifics of the final rule, read Alexis Goldstein on wins, losses, and toss-ups.)
"Today's finalization of the Volcker Rule ban on proprietary trading is a major defeat for Wall Street and a direct attack on the high-risk 'quick-buck' culture of Wall Street," said Dennis Kelleher, the president of the advocacy group Better Markets, in a statement. "Regulators have resisted much of the heavy Wall Street pressure to weaken an earlier proposal. In fact, they seem to have strengthened the rule in several significant ways," wrote Americans for Financial Reform, another advocacy coalition.
The ultimate goal of the Volcker rule is to make banking boring again by rebuilding a wall between commercial banking activity and the kind of risky trading done by investment firms. The rule bans commercial banks from making bets for their own profit rather than for their customers, a practice known as "proprietary trading." Banks suffered about $230 billion in proprietary trading losses during the first year of the financial crisis, and taxpayers were on the hook for the massive bailouts required to keep the banks afloat. More recently, proprietary trading disguised as risk hedging caused JP Morgan's "London Whale" scandal, a loss of $6.2 billion in 2012.
Whether the Volcker rule will truly stop proprietary trading depends in large part how strictly regulators enforce it. Under the rule, banks will establish their own compliance programs, and officials from several agencies will be responsible for policing their activity. There's plenty of gray areas in the rules, and supervisors from agencies with different perspectives will have to decide when banks are engaged in allowed activities, like risk-hedging and market making, and when they're cheating.
"Given the absence of a lot of 'bright-line' distinctions, I think supervisors are going to bear going forward an important responsibility to make sure that this rule really works as intended," said Janet Yellen, vice chair of the Federal Reserve board of governors and Obama's nominee to head the agency. The board voted unanimously to approve the final rule, with several other board members noting that the real strength of the rule depends on implementation.
Sarah Bloom Raskin, long an advocate for a strong Volcker rule, said one of the priorities should be setting guidelines for the examiners who will evaluate banks' compliance with the rule. "This emphasis on compliance within firm-chosen limits rather than absolute thresholds means that the role of supervisors and examiners…becomes critical," she said.
Raskin also argued for a deeper consideration of pay schemes at financial institutions, in light of a compensation provision in the Volcker rule that forbids banks from rewarding proprietary trading. "It seems to me that if we're serious about minimizing financial instability in the context of the Volcker Rule, then we have to engage in some scrutiny of the design of compensation plans and ask ourselves if various pay arrangements are thwarting the rule's goals," Raskin said. "As long as compensation arrangements are unconstrained, the Volcker Rule would need to be more restrictive. We need to stay vigilant to the possibility that the compensation arrangements at particular institutions will not be conducive to the minimizing of the potential for financial instability."
Raskin will soon leave the Fed to serve as the deputy Treasury secretary. In that position she is likely to play key watchdog role in the enforcement of the Volcker rule and other financial reforms.
Members of Congress will scrutinize how the rule is implemented, too. Senators Carl Levin and Jeff Merkley, who amended Dodd-Frank to include the Volcker rule, called its finalization "a big step" toward the goal of separating banks and high-risk trading. "No regulation is ever perfect, and we will carefully monitor implementation and hold regulators and firms accountable," they said in a statement.
Banks could lose billions if the Volcker rule is strictly enforced, and financial reformers don't expect Wall Street to stop trying to weaken it now that it's final. "Public engagement was crucial in pushing the rulemaking process, and it will need to be sustained in the implementation process," said Americans for Financial Reform, which also warned that more transparency is needed. "The Volcker rule cannot be allowed to disappear into a private conversation between Wall Street and its supervisors."
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Wall Street is also weighing legal challenges to the law. If they proceed, a business group like the Chamber of Commerce or the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association is likely to front the lawsuit, with funds donated by some of the largest banks and legal representation from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's son Eugene Scalia. "We will now have to carefully examine the final rule to consider the impact on liquidity and market-making, and take all options into account as we decide how best to proceed," the Chamber of Commerce said in a statement. Opponents could challenge the rule on procedural grounds, or argue that it improperly considers costs and benefits or contradicts other directives in Dodd-Frank.
The Volcker rule is not the final act of financial reform, as Erika Eichelberger notes at Mother Jones. Federal agencies still have to write or complete hundreds of rules mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act, including requirements for how much capital banks have to hold in reserve and regulations governing credit-rating firms and derivatives trading.
Read Next: Gary Rivlin on the army of Wall Street lobbyists working to weaken the Dodd-Frank finance reform act.
This article was originally published by Bustle and is re-posted here with permission.
I turned 18 just months before the 2008 presidential election, making me eligible to participate in one of the most historic races our country has ever seen. Casting my ballot for Barack Obama was anti-climatic—I was away at college, so I filled out an absentee ballot. The act of voting didn't feel all that monumental. But election night did.
As soon as the major networks had determined that Obama would be the next president of the United States, I ran outside with the rest of my freshman dorm and celebrated on the quad. It was like a scene from a cheesy movie: hundreds of students congregated in the center of campus, cheering and commemorating the moment we had all been hoping for. It's an image I often conjure up when older generations call us apathetic.
I voted for Obama in 2008 because I was enchanted by his rhetoric. I wanted a president who believed in the same issues that I did, who thought LGBT rights and racial equality weren't just important but essential. I was tired of old white men making decisions for millions of people who didn't have their same privileges. I wanted a president who was the polar opposite of George W. Bush, someone who would get us out of imperialist conflicts in the Middle East masquerading as war.
I wanted Barack Obama to be my president. I knocked on doors with a friend on Super Tuesday, and handed out pamphlets about the former senator from Illinois in a predominantly conservative neighborhood. I read his memoir on my spring break in high school. I devoured all his speeches on television and YouTube. Then, I voted accordingly. Obama's campaign didn't just inspire me to want change: he made me want to be a part of that change.
A recent survey from Harvard's Institute of Politics finds that 54 percent of millennials now disapprove of Obama's job performance. (Compare that to a 2009 poll that showed a 58 percent approval rating among young people.) America's youth has changed its tune, and for good reason.
For many of us, what came after Obama's campaign was disappointment after disappointment. Sure, the first bill signed into law under his presidency was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a piece of legislation aimed at leveling the gender pay gap. But these kind of symbolic measures weren't representative of the more radical ideologies Obama had, to me, once exhibited.
President Obama campaigned, and sold me, on an antiwar platform. Nearly five years later, my friends and family are still being deployed to Afghanistan. Guantanamo Bay is still up and running, and the president has supported torture tactics despite backlash and resistance. His lack of comprehensive immigration reform continues to hurt our nation: by the end of 2013, almost 2 million people will have been deported under President Obama's watch. (To compare, the same amount of people were deported in total between 1892 and 1997.) The Obama administration has been accused of being "the most hostile" administration toward the press in history. Not to mention that little NSA spying issue.
With every day spent in the White House, the president's bright-eyed idealism seemed to shift toward the same old politics of every man who came before him. In turn, my idealism shifted right along with his. Am I disappointed? Of course. Would I vote for him again? Absolutely.
I'm not the only millennial living with this contradiction. Harvard's new study also showed that46 percent of millennials surveyed would vote for Obama again. Of course we would—because the alternative is way scarier. As long as the US has to operate and govern within the democratic two-party system, these are the choices we have to make.
When November 6, 2012 came around, I was in my last semester of college. I felt like my political consciousness had come full circle. This time, I was little older, and a little more sober to the fact that the president is limited to the political systems currently in place. I knew what Obama had done, and the promises he hadn't fulfilled.
I cast another absentee ballot for Obama. And this time, when he won, I felt my hope a little more absent as well.
On the John Batchelor Show, Russian studies professor and Nation contributor Stephen Cohen criticizes the American media's coverage of ongoing protests in Ukraine. Expanding on a letter he wrote to The New York Times, published on this site, Cohen disputes the narrative that Vladimir Putin bullied President Viktor Yanukovych into rejecting a EU-deal. Hear why EU-integration might not be such a great idea for Ukraine in the first place and how the American press has failed to report "the true story" of what's really going on in Kiev.
—Steven Hsieh
It's been another great year for hard-hitting or wonderfully creative documentary films, from Sarah Polley on her family to Jeremy Scahill on targeted killing abroad (and need I mention my own on Beethoven's Ninth?).
Last night I watched another film on the just-announced shortlist of finalists for this year's Academy Award for the genre: Blackfish.
As you may have heard, it takes a deep (so to speak) look at the practice, over the past four decades, of capturing orcas in the wild and hauling them to the Sea Worlds of the world. The film raises alarms not just about these magnificent creatures but the danger to trainers and performers at the water expos. We see shocking footage of numerous deaths or near-death experiences of humans leading to a current legal action that has, for now, curtailed the man-to-whale contact in the shows.
But at the heart of it, and I do mean heart, is the foul practice of capturing the orcas at sea and breaking up their families (among the tightest in creation). Who knew that, like Indian tribes of yore, each grouping of orcas has their own "language"? That they can live for 100 years? That the mothers and kids stay together their entire lives (yes, as often the case, the dads are around but not central). And so on.
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You may shake with anger and sadness on viewing this film, or at least give your cat or dog an extra hug.
Here's the trailer:
Time magazine has named Pope Francis as its Person of the Year. It is hard to quarrel with their choice of a pope who attacks the "idolatry of money," not to mention a pope who when asked about gay members of the clergy said, "Who am I to judge?" Oh, and the fact that he makes Rush Limbaugh burst a vein is just a bonus.
That said, Pope Francis would not have been my choice. For me, a "Person of the Year" is someone who is the personification of the issue that has shaped society most decisively in the previous calendar year. My choice would have been either the late Trayvon Martin, murdered in 2012 yet immortalized in 2013, or national security state whistleblowers Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. These are three people whose legacy will extend far beyond 2013.
In considering my Sportsperson of the Year, I apply the same lens: who best represents what I believe to be the most important narrative in the sports world from 2013? The story of the year in sports is, for me, a no-brainer. This has been the year when the "last closet" has been breeched with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender athletes, as well as their allies, finally being heard. To see athletes like Jason Collins and Brittney Griner come out of the closet; to see LGBT athletes and allies from around the globe pledge to use the platform of the 2014 Sochi Olympics to stand up to Russia's draconian anti-gay laws; to see organizations like the You Can Play project and Athlete Ally take center state; to see NFL players like Chris Kluwe and Brendon Ayanbadejo helping to lead victorious fights for marriage equality; to see the NFL Players Association sell t-shirts of NFL player/allies, is to indeed see the walls of the "last closet" begin to start tumbling down.
My Sportsperson of the Year, however, is none of these people. I was tempted to choose Jason Collins, but the inability of even one NBA general manager to sign Collins to a contract makes his narrative incomplete, not reflecting the hope and possibility that this past year represents.
The story that best demonstrates the distance traveled in 2013 is the story of Robbie Rogers, and he is my Sportsperson of the Year. Robbie Rogers is a professional soccer player who in incredibly dispiriting fashion both came out of the closet and retired in February at age 25. Rogers told the world that he could not imagine being both a pro athlete and openly gay. "I wouldn't want to deal with the circus," he said. "Are people coming to see you because you're gay? Would I want to do interviews every day, where people are asking: 'So you're taking showers with guys—how's that?… Fuck it. I don't want to mess with that."
It was tragic. Yet then two events took place that changed Rogers's life. One was seeing Collins come out and get a powerfully positive response from the sports world. The other was speaking to 500 LGBT teenagers and not being able to explain to them why he had retired. "I seriously felt like a coward," he told USA Today. "These kids are standing up for themselves and changing the world, and I'm 25, I have a platform and a voice to be a role model. How much of a coward was I to not step up to the plate?"
Rogers then the day after Collins came out, signed with the Los Angeles Galaxy. On May 26, Rogers became the first openly gay male athlete to take the field in North America.
Afterward, Rogers had a remarkable life lesson to share. "I don't know what I was so afraid of," he said. "It's been such a positive experience for me. The one thing I've learned from all of this is being gay is not that big of a deal to people…. I think as the younger get older and the generations come and go, I think times are just becoming more accepting."
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Oh, one last note: Robbie Rogers considers himself a devout Catholic and said, "Being Catholic—and people may disagree—but we are called to love everyone. Be honest. Be true in your relationship with God. I've always lived that way."
With that line comes clarity about the people who have truly shaped our world in 2013. Pope Francis is the reflection of changes taking place in our society. Robbie Rogers is that change personified. Rogers said, "It is awesome to be part of a movement that his changing society." He needed that movement to step forward, but because he was brave enough to not only come out but come back, he is also expanding that movement to empower countless others. He is my Sportsperson of the Year.
Read Next: Dave Zirin looks at how Mandela fought for his ideals on the sports field as well as the podium.
The last thing that President Obama needs right now, as he struggles to finalize an accord with Iran and get the peace conference on Syria up and running next month, is a showdown over Ukraine. But he might just get one. The three-week-old crisis there is teetering on the brink of something far worse, as protesters vow to expand their demonstrations and security forces threaten a general, violent crackdown. Despite signs that the government in Kiev may be trying to negotiate a resolution to the standoff, and despite nationally televised talks between Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovich and his three predecessors, there's enormous potential for uncontrolled violence.
The right in the United States, especially the neoconservative anti-Russia lobby, is in a lather, perhaps intoxicated by the toppling of a statue of V.I. Lenin in Kiev by anti-government protesters. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Edward Lucas, author of The New Cold War: Putin's Russia and the Threat to the West, urges the United States and the Europeans to expand the confrontation from Ukraine to Russia itself. If Ukraine "falls into Russia's grip," he warns, "Europe's own security will also be endangered." Complaining angrily that the West has allowed Russia to threaten Ukraine, Lucas says:
The best way Europe or America can help Ukraine—and Georgia and Moldova—is to take a much tougher stance with Russia. The EU may not want to play geopolitics. But geopolitics is being played in Europe, and EU interests and members are at stake.
The EU should freeze Russia's request for visa-free travel for holders of "official" passports. America and EU countries should also freeze Russia's application to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Paris-based good-governance club. The EU should intensify its scrutiny of Gazprom's behavior in the European gas market, and pursue its upcoming antitrust "complaint" (in effect a prosecution) against the Russian state-owned giant with the greatest vigor possible.
It is time to show Mr. Putin that his hunting license in Russia's neighborhood is now canceled.
But Lucas isn't confident that anything like that will happen. "Don't hold your breath," he concludes.
But everyone ought to be holding their breath—and avoiding sharp public comments such as Secretary of State John Kerry's unfortunate remark that he was "disgusted" by the Ukraine government's decision to clear part of Independence Square, where the protests are centered, by force yesterday. (This is the same Kerry who seem quite solicitous of Egypt's military, which has used vastly stronger violence, killing hundreds, in suppressing protests there since the July coup d'état.) Said Kerry:
"The United States expresses its disgust with the decision of Ukrainian authorities to meet the peaceful protest in Kyiv's Maidan Square with riot police, bulldozers, and batons, rather than with respect for democratic rights and human dignity. This response is neither acceptable nor does it befit a democracy."
And Kerry couldn't resist getting in a plug for Ukraine's Orthodox Church, which is rallying the protesters: "As church bells ring tonight amidst the smoke in the streets of Kyiv, the United States stands with the people of Ukraine."
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After days of playing down the crisis in Ukraine, the United States has lately upped its involvement, with Vice President Biden calling Yanukovich and Victoria Nuland, a quasi-neocon who serves as assistant secretary of state, dropping in on Kiev to contribute her two cents.
The crisis began when Yanukovich, under severe pressure from Russia, opted not to sign an agreement with the European Union and instead signaled his decision to join an economic pact linking Russia and a handful of former Soviet states. Earlier this year, Russia threatened to bring Ukraine to its knees via a trade embargo and other measures, taking advantage of the fact that Ukraine is heavily dependent on Russia economically, and it is near bankruptcy, needing an infusion of something like $18 billion to stabilize itself. The accord with the EU, accompanied by the usual demands from the International Monetary Fund, would force Ukraine to accept stringent economic austerity measures to qualify for aid, and the EU also wants Yanukovich to free political prisoners, including an imprisoned former prime minister, Yulia Timoshenko. Russia, on the other hand, won't come to Ukraine's aid until and unless it gets assurances that Ukraine won't become part of an EU-NATO alliance against Moscow. So, as long as Ukraine is caught between east and west, Cold War–style, it's unlikely that either side will come to Ukraine's aid economically.
Maybe Yanukovich can play both sides against each other. As The New York Times reports:
Russia has indicated some willingness to help, potentially with a combination of lower gas prices, the refinancing of existing debt and, perhaps, a small bridge loan, but not until the political turmoil has been resolved. … The possibility that Ukraine could be tipped back into Russia's orbit has set Western officials scrambling, in part to put together a more palatable aid package that perhaps would persuade Mr. Yanukovich to reconsider signing the accords.
President Obama and Kerry ought to urge the EU to rejigger the offer to Ukraine, tell Russia that they are willing to meet them halfway, and work out a Solomon-like solution that gives everyone a win-win.
But, on the right, there is strong pressure on Obama to turn this into a good-vs.-evil struggle of titanic, Manichean proportions. Take, for example, the near-hysterical words of George Wiegel, writing in National Review:
For while there are many factors impelling Ukrainians into the streets these days, the most basic question at issue in the confrontation between the protesters and the government of Viktor Yanukovych is this: Will conscience, tethered to moral truth and ordered to the common good, be permitted a place in the Ukraine of the 21st century? Or is Ukraine condemned by history, by geography, and by the toxic aftereffects on its culture of seven decades of Communism to be an outlier or exile in the contemporary drama of freedom, governed by brute force detached from any notion of moral responsibility?
Before this becomes Axis of Evil Revisited, Obama needs to reign in Kerry and Nuland and calm things down.
Read next: Stephen F. Cohen's thoughts on the New York Times coverage of the protests in the Ukraine.
The trouble with making "functional" government the great aspiration of the American experiment – as so many pundits and politicians now do – is that a smoothly operating Congress is not necessarily moral, humane or even economically smart.
It is important to remember this disconnect as we consider the budget deal announced late Tuesday by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, and Senate Budget Committee chairman Patty Murray, D-Washington.
"This agreement breaks through the recent dysfunction to prevent another government shutdown and roll back sequestration's cuts to defense and domestic investments in a balanced way," said Murray. "It's a good step in the right direction that can hopefully rebuild some trust and serve as a foundation for continued bipartisan work."
Ryan was equally self-congratulatory, declaring that – after a fall the saw a government shutdown, nasty wrangling over the historically uncontroversial task of raising the debt ceiling and general congressional dysfunction – he and Murray had achieved "a clear improvement on the status quo."
"This agreement makes sure that we don't have a government shutdown scenario in January," he added. "It makes sure we don't have another government shutdown scenario in October. It makes sure that we don't lurch from crisis to crisis."
Murray and Ryan are excited that they had stopped fighting for long enough to agree to $63 billion in "sequester relief" – as opposed to an actual end to sequestration – and $23 billion in net deficit reduction. They're also glad that they have set the discretionary spending level for fiscal year 2014 at $1.012 trillion, while setting the level at $1.014 trillion for fiscal year 2015. That apparently qualifies – in the eyes of the budget negotiators – as a sufficient alternative to lurching from crisis to crisis.
But the agreement does not address the crises that matter. "This plan won't create jobs, get the economy back on track, or meaningfully cut the deficit," explains Congressman Peter DeFazio, D-Oregon.
And that's not the worst of it.
What of the 1.3 million jobless Americans who – with a fully Dickensian twist – now stand to lose Federal unemployment benefits three days after Christmas?
The budget agreement does not look like a "step in the right direction" for them. And unless Democrats succeed in renewing benefits in a distinct piece of legislation that apparently must pass this week – as Congress is moving rapidly toward recess – many of the most economically vulnerable Americans will be "lurching from crisis to crisis" very soon.
Their crisis is our crisis. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, extending benefits for the long-term unemployed would boost a still slow economy by two-tenths of a percent in the coming year – creating 200,000 needed jobs. As the CBO explains: "Recipients of the additional benefits would increase their spending on consumer goods and services. That increase in aggregate demand would encourage businesses to boost production and hire more workers than they otherwise would, particularly given the expected slack in the capital and labor markets."
Without providing for the extension, something that easily and appropriately could have been done in the budget agreement, Ryan and Murray failed in their most basic humanitarian and economic duties.
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And what of the federal workers and members of the military who will be required to take what is effectively a pay cut in order to pay more for their retirement benefits?
"Federal workers have sacrificed over $113 billion for deficit reduction since 2011, including a three-year pay freeze and increased pension contributions for newly hired employees. This figure does not include the up to eight furlough days caused by sequestration this summer and a 16-day shutdown in October which resulted in financial hardship and profound anxiety for half the government's workforce and their families," noted unions that represent federal employees. "Given these contributions, we are dismayed to learn that increasing the pension contributions and/or changing the retirement formula for current federal employees is on the table. This is simply unacceptable."
This is, also, absurd.
Despite Murray's prodding, the House and Senate budget chairs did not close a single tax loophole. But they did come up with a scheme to take money away from public employees and people serving in the military – effectively reducing what millions of Americans will have to spend on Main Street.
Members of House and Senate who are paid $174,000 annually, collect generous benefits and – thanks to redistricting and an incumbent-rewarding campaign finance system – enjoy no small measure of job security, can pat themselves on the back for breaking through "the recent dysfunction." But forcing others to lurch from crisis to crisis so that you can tell yourself you have taken "a step in the right direction" is socially and economically dysfunctional. Not to mention cruel, and irresponsible.
Read Next: Jessica Weisberg explains how inequality has been woven into the fabric of American society.
Last month, we noted that a bipartisan group of senators, lead by Jeff Merkley of Oregon, introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that asked President Obama to seek a vote in Congress over whether to extend the war in Afghanistan through "2024 and beyond," as the potential security pact with the Afghan government proposes.
Monday, the contours of a Senate deal to advance the NDAA were announced—and Merkley's amendment will not be receiving a vote.
This is despite the amendment gaining even more support among powerful Democrats, including one—Alaska Senator Mark Begich—who is up for re-election in 2014, a possible barometer of how politically toxic the war has become (67 percent of Americans don't think the war was worth it, according to a recent poll).
The amendment now counts Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), Ron Wyden (D-OR) Joe Manchin (D-WV), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Jon Tester (D-MT), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Patty Murray (D-WA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), along with Merkley and Begich as co-sponsors.
Senator Tom Coburn is threatening to dramatically slow down the NDAA if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid doesn't allow Senators to propose amendments, but that gambit is unlikely to work.
But Merkley isn't giving up—his office pledged to bring a similar bill back for consideration before the security pact is finalized, and expressed dismay that the measure likely won't be considered this year.
"Senator Merkley is disappointed that his amendment will not get a vote during the Defense Authorization debate," said Jamal Raad, Merkley's press secretary. "He still thinks it is important that before we commit massive resources and thousands of troops to another decade in Afghanistan, Congress should vote, and he will continue pushing for a vote."
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Meanwhile, the seemingly smooth negotiations between the United States and Afghanistan seem to have hit a snag, with Afghan President Hamid Karzai calling for delays and protesting several provisions. That may yet scuttle another decade of war. But Merkley and his colleagues are pressing on, holding to the notion that Congress ought to have a say on another decade of war with an essentially new mission.
Read Next: The Nation's interactive database of civilian casaulties in Afghanistan.
This is part one of a series on the perils of privatization. Check back soon for the next installment.
Riding the buses in Chicago has been awfully fun this busy Christmas Season. Half the time, it's been free.
This fall, you see, after a series of delays, the city brought online a new fare payment system called "Ventra" in which customers tap "smart cards" against electronic readers at bus entrances and train station turnstiles. Only it turns out these cards are not so smart. Half the time, tap after tap after tap, the damned things don't work, and the bus driver just exasperatedly waves you through. Although it hasn't been as much fun for the passengers who exited the bus through the front door and discovered that, if their purses or backpacks brushed too close to the reader, they were charged twice. Or for a guy named Al Stern who became a local celebrity after receiving an e-mail on Friday, September 6, informing him he'd be receiving a Ventra card in the mail soon to replace his "Chicago Card," which was the previous prepayment system (which worked fine). Four minutes later he got the same e-mail, then four minutes after that, then four minutes again after that, and so on and so forth all the way until the next morning. Twenty-four days later he arrived home to a pile of 91 envelopes shoved through his mail slot, each holding a Ventra card; the next day, 176 more arrived, each one, he later discovered, canceling the last. "You have to call and activate it," he told Crain's Chicago Business, "but I've been afraid to do that."
The goofs accelerated, like Lucille Ball working at the assembly line, or Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. At the end of November federal workers discovered they could "pay" fares by scanning their employee IDs. ("Please be advised that intentional misuse of federal credentials is prohibited," the local EPA office wrote employees.) Other customers reported being double-, triple- or even quadruple-billed. At the end of October the Chicago Tribune reported, "CTA employees are being 'verbally attacked daily by angry riders' who are blaming them for problems with the new transit-fare payment system"; their union called on the Chicago Transit Authority to scrap Ventra until the bugs were worked out. The city started charging the vendor for the proliferating lost revenue, while that vendor kept promising serial "software fixes" that never seemed to do anything but introduce novel problems. At the end of November came news that when people tapped their wallets, like they used to do without problem with their old Chicago Cards, random credit or debit cards were charged. Then, last week, the "CTA: Ventra Glitches Mostly Gone But Delays Remain." Rush-hour outages began, and some buses stopping accepting fares altogether. That came two days after the headline, ""CTA: Ventra glitches mostly gone but delays remain."
It's been our own municipal version of the Obamacare rollout—which means everyone should pay attention. For the root problem is exactly the same. Congressman Henry Waxman argued about glitches in the ACA, "if anybody's head should roll, it should be the contractors who didn't live up to their contractual responsibility." But that's only half right. Consider the sign Harry Truman used to keep on his Oval Office desk: "The buck stops here." The problem is not just the profusion of private contractors who do the public's business so poorly; it's the fact that the public's business is being so relentlessly privatized by the government executives in charge. Slowly, the perceived imperative to privatize has become the political tail that wags the policy dog. The results are before us.
Why, indeed, was this massive change in how Chicagoans pay for their bus and train fares initiated in the first place? "What was wrong with the old system? It worked fine," ran the first comment on the Chicago Tribune's article on all the abuse the poor bus drivers are facing from frustrated customers. Ran the second, "I have never even heard a compelling argument as to WHY we needed a new system to begin with."
Well, my friends, here's your compelling argument: under the old system, rich investors didn't get a piece of the action. Under this one, they most decidedly do.
The contract to replace Chicago's fare payment system was awarded to the publicly traded corporation Cubic in 2011 by the previous mayor, Richard M. Daley, for $454 million, and implemented with alacrity by the current mayor Rahm Emanuel. I'll have much more to say about this company and its many dubious works in the next part of this series. For now, consider this. In a separate part of the project, Chicagoans are offered the following opportunity, as advertised on the back of their Ventra cards: "Go beyond transit. Call or go online to activate your Money Network® MasterCard® Prepaid Debit Account and use your Ventra Card for purchases, direct deposit, bill pay, and at ATMs." This is how the City of Chicago intended to turn its millions of captive citizens over to the commercial banking industry: hoovering spare change from the pockets of Chicago's marginal communities into corporate America's overstuffed coffers.
Chicagoans who choose to turn bus cards into bank cards will be socked with hidden fees: $1.50 every time they withdraw cash using your bus-card-cum-bank-card from an ATM,$2.95 every time they add money using a personal credit card. Two dollars for every phone call with a service representative (or, oops, each "Operator Assisted Telephone Inquiry"). Two bucks for a paper copy of their account. An "account research fee" of $10 an hour.
At which point, learning about all that, they might cry, Help! Let me out of this "deal"! Well, that'll cost them $6—a "balance refund fee."
Now, turning your bus card into a bank card is optional—a program supposedly intended to help Chicago's underbanked poor. I liked this observation, however, from a Tribune article last March: "It may be a tough sell, some experts said. Many low-income individuals are cash-centric in their spending habits because they are wise to the way of credit-card charges." But not to fear, if you're a Master of the Universe investing in one of the participating multinational banking concerns—Mastercard, First Data, or MetaBank—backing the play. Even though Chicago's impoverished might not make ready marks for the scam, Chicagoans who don't choose the banking option will suffer hidden charges. There is, for instance, a $7 "dormancy" fee if you don't use your transit card for eighteen months, with another $5 charge tacked on for every dormant month after that.
Note that I said hidden fees. How hidden? Well, the only reasons Chicagoans learned about them was that the Chicago Tribune pored through over 1,000 pages of legal boilerplate (for more on how impossibly complex user contracts rip off consumers generally see my reporting here) and discovered them.
The reporters at the local CBS affiliate, meanwhile, reported that First Data got an "F" rating from the Better Business Bureau, with ninety-seven complaints filed against it over the past three years. MetaBank was recently ordered to pay $5.2 million by federal regulators for another public/private hustle, a now-discontinued program of issuing debit cards funded by tax refund loans at interest rates between 120 and 650 percent with a fee of $2.50 per $20 loaned.
The Trib noted, "Neither the CTA nor Cubic…nor MasterCard; nor MetaBank; nor First Data, which will issue the prepaid debit accounts, have disclosed the extra charges or how consumers can avoid them." The city promised, though, that a "CTA public education campaign on all aspects of the Ventra card, including the fees, will start soon." I must have missed it. Another fee which all transit users will have to bend over backward to dodge is the $5 it costs to get a transit card in the first place. That $5 is supposed to be refunded if you register your card online or by phone. I didn't learn about that until I began researching this piece, though I was unable to make the site work on my decrepit old computer. Then they decided to waive the $5 fee, but only if you buy your card via phone or online, not at vending machines—which sort of compounds the insult against less-savvy customers or those with decrepit computers, doesn't it?
Now, you might think poorer Chicagoans without even decrepit old computers should be able to hobble along paying for their fares like they always have, in cash. But single-ride tickets are going to be $3, instead of the normal $2.25—with what the CTA calls a seventy-five-cent "convenience fee" tacked on.
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Chicagoans, these are the business partners your city has chosen. And this is the man in charge of protecting you from them: Forest Claypool, president of the Chicago Transit Authority. Some protector. Claypool wrote that "the 'convenience fee' covers the cost of producing the disposable tickets and is 'entirely avoidable to any and every customer' so long as they purchase and register Ventra cards.'" But as I noted above, poor people tend to use cash because they don't trust cards—reasonably enough. But the black-hearted bureaucrat "bristled at the characterization by many critics that cash-payers are being penalized…'There is no $3 cash fare,' he said. 'The $3 is if a person chooses a disposable, one-ride ticket. It has nothing to do with cash.' "
The editors of Crain's Chicago Business, no Bolsheviks they, disagree with his blithe assessment. They say "the embedded fees could prey upon the least financially savvy among us, those for whom a $5 charge here and a $7 fee there add up to real money… They rely on people's ignorance to take in money. And that's not the kind of business our public servants ought to be in."
So, so naïve, Crain's Chicago Business. That's precisely the business our public servants want to be in—"public" servants like Mayor Emanuel. As Chicago anti-privatization activist Tom Tresser explained to me last summer, "We have a massive global movement of capital which, because they've burned their own fucking houses down through their own greed, don't have the gilt returns that they're used to receiving…. So the new guaranteed annual returns that big business and big capital are looking for is our assets."
Next time, I'll focus on the particular big business behind the fare collection system in Chicago—and in Sydney, Vancouver and London, too. I guarantee it will be eye-opening.
Read Next: Greg Kauffman on a Senate plan to cut food stamps.


text:
We found
5 caravan parks
within 65 miles Quarnford
1 bookable
Clitheroe, Lancashire Show on map |
Two-bedroom holiday home | 6 x | No availability | |
Three-bedroom holiday home | 8 x | No availability |
Want to see more? We're only showing the sites that are bookable on Pitchup.com.
Show campsites and holiday parks that aren't bookable through Pitchup.com...
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text:
American Bandstand
Thursday, April 19th, 2012 | musiX | 1 Comment
Dick Clark passed away on April 18 at the age of 82. It signifies the end of an era in rock and roll. When I say end of an era, I mean he was one of the last—if not the last—link to rock's Golden Age (Jerry Lee Lewis also comes to mind, a man who wrote Clark off when Clark stopped playing his records after Lewis' personal life made headlines in 1958).
For more than 30 years, Clark was the guy giving those artists their first breaks, and defending them against disapproving parents. He's also the one common thread in many people's early memories of pop music. My parents. Me. Anyone born in the '80s. Dick Clark was a square, but he still managed to introduce to the world a wide range of artists, including Buddy Holly, Public Image Ltd, Run-D.M.C., Little Richard, X, Conway Twitty, Sparks, The Jam, Madonna, The Seeds, Def Leppard, Captain Beefheart, Chubby Checker … the amazing list goes on.
American Bandstand was as big a part of my Saturday mornings as Looney Tunes. The Barry Manilow version of "Bandstand Boogie" was burned into my tender gray matter for years. And while Clark's Bandstand came to an end in 1989, and he became more associated with bloopers, $10,000 Pyramids and New Year's Eve countdowns (not to mention the now infamous scene in Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine), he was—and always will be—the World's Oldest Teenager. Appreciate that for what it is. It's a position that will probably never be filled.
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text:
So what prompted the composer of "The Black Swan" to button his shirt all the way up on that fall date? He had been invited to a very solemn venue by very distinguished hosts. And that was an invitation that Taleb had every intention of accepting. In fact, he had been waiting and expecting it for more than a decade. The raison d'etre of the event for which his company was now being required had been close to Taleb´s heart for most of his professional and intellectual life. It represented a central theme in his actions and ideas, close to an obsession. He had through the years incessantly warned as to the havoc that might be wreaked should others massively act in a manner counter to his convictions. Such concerns typically went unheeded (to the detriment, it turned out, of society), but now he was being offered a pulpit that seemed irresistible. This time, the world would have no option but to listen attentively.
As Taleb entered the Rayburn Building of the U.S. House of Representatives on Capitol Hill that September morning, he must have felt vindication. As he approached the sober room where several men and women awaited the start of the House Committee on Science and Technology´s hearing on the responsibility of mathematical model Value at Risk (VaR) for the terrible economic and financial crisis that had caused so much misery, Taleb probably reflected proudly on all those times when, indefatigably and in the face of harsh opposition, he alerted us of the lethal threat to the system posed by the widespread use of VaR in finance. Now that the damage wrought by VaR seemed so inescapably obvious that lawmakers had been motivated into investigating the device, Taleb no longer seemed like a lone wolf howling at the moon.
What is so wrong about VaR, and why was Taleb so concerned about its impact? More importantly, why should VaR be held responsible for the crisis? VaR is a number that purports to estimate future losses derived from a portfolio of financial assets, and presents two major problems: 1) it is doomed to being a very wrong estimate, because of its analytical foundations and the realities of real-life markets; 2) in spite of such (well-known) deficiencies, it has for the past two decades become an ubiquitously influential force in the financial world, capable of directing decision-making inside the most important banks. In other words, by letting trading activity be guided by VaR, we have essentially exposed our economic fate to a deeply flawed mechanism. Such flawedness, as was the case not only in this crisis but also before, can yield untold malaise.
One dimension in a 3D world
VaR is an untrustworthy measure of future market risk for one main reason: it is calculated by looking at the past. The upcoming risk of a trading asset (a stock, bond or derivative) is essentially assumed to mirror its behavior over the historical time period arbitrarily selected for the calculation (one year, five years, etc). If such past happened to be placid (no big setbacks, no undue turbulence) then VaR would conclude that we should rest easy, safe in the statistical knowledge that no nasty surprises await. For instance, in the months prior to the kick-start of the crisis in mid-2007, the VaR of the big Wall Street firms was relatively quite low, reflecting the fact that the immediate past had been dominated by uninterrupted good times and negligible volatility, particularly when it came to the convoluted, eventually lethal, mortgage-related securities that investment banks had been enthusiastically accumulating on their balance sheets. A one-day 95% VaR of $50 million was typical, and typically modest in its estimation of losses: at that level, a firm would be expected to lose no more than $50 million from its trading positions 95% of the time (in other words, it would be expected to lose more than $50 million only 12 days out of a year´s 250 trading days). Once we keep in mind that those Wall Street entities owned trading assets worth several hundred billion dollars and that the eventual setbacks amounted to several dozen billion dollars, we can appreciate that VaR´s predictions were excruciatingly off-base. The soulless data rearview mirror may have detected no risk, but that certainly did not mean that the system was not flooded with the worst kind of risk, ready to explode at any time. In finance, the past is simply not prologue, but someone forgot to tell VaR that.
Beware of the fat tails
The fact that the mathematical engineering behind VaR tends to assume that markets follow a normal probability distribution (thus assuming extreme moves to have negligible chance of happening, something obviously quite contrary to empirical evidence) can also contribute to the model churning unrealistically low numbers as big losses are ruled out, as can VaR´s reliance on the statistical concept of correlation, which calculates the future expected co-movement of different asset classes, based on how such co-dependence worked out in the past. If several assets in the portfolio happened to be uncorrelated or, better yet, "negatively correlated" in the past, VaR will take for granted that those exposures should cancel each other out, yielding lower overall portfolio risk estimates. However, as any seasoned trader would tell you, just because several assets were negatively correlated last year, we can´t imply that they won´t move in tandem (positively correlated, implying that chances are that they can all tumble concurrently, thus painting a much worse overall risk picture) next month. Market history is flooded with cases when assets that were supposed to move independent of each other all tanked at the same time. Correlation in finance simply can´t be captured mathematically.
As the alert reader may have by now noticed, the main problem with VaR is not so much that its forecasts won´t be accurate, but that it can be quite easy to get a VaR that´s very low. You just need a portfolio of assets that happened to have recently enjoyed benevolent calm and/or little correlation with each other. If you manage to compose such grouping, the model will yell to the world that you run a sound, riskless operation. That´s exactly what was taking place on Wall Street all those years prior to late 2007. According to VaR, the situation could not have been rosier and less worrisome, risk-wise.
Such misplaced generosity would not be a big concern if VaR did not play a relevant role in the markets. But, rather unfortunately, the tool could not have played a more decisive part. Simply put, VaR may have been the single most influential metric in the history of finance. No other single number ever impacted, shaped and disturbed market (and thus economic) activity as profoundly as it did. VaR´s perilously inexact estimations of risk mattered because the model mattered so much.
Invented by Wall Street in the late 1980s, VaR quickly became the accepted de rigour market risk measurement tool inside dealing floors around the globe. Trading decisions and traders' compensation began to depend on what VaR said; if the number churned by the model was deemed unacceptably large, a trader would be asked to cut down his positions, if the number was deemed comfortably tame the trader would be assigned more capital. If he made good money while enjoying a low VaR, he would be considered a hero by his bosses, someone capable of bringing in big bucks in a (purportedly) risk-lite manner. Clearly, traders had every incentive to own portfolios endowed with low VaRs, and thus began a long-honored tradition to try and game the system into delivering subdued mathematical risk estimates. The pernicious effects of such gaming may have come fully home to roost during the credit crisis, two decades after the quantitative prodigal son was first allowed to infiltrate us.
VaR´s reputation as a risk measurement tool certainly has taken a big hit during the recent malaise. During the nightmarish days that saw the eruption of the worst financial meltdown in eight decades, the device insultingly misbehaved as a warning signal when it came to the fallen financial giants. The real losses witnessed were way above the predicted theoretical losses, and VaR numbers were breached far more abundantly than what the model would dictate.
Take Swiss giant UBS, a very prominent victim of the crash. It reported 50 VaR exceptions for 2008 and 29 for 2007. At the 99% confidence level chosen by UBS, there should have only been about 2.5 exceptions (trading days when actual losses exceeded VaR´s predictions) per year. Or take local rival Credit Suisse. The Zurich powerhouse experienced 25 and nine VaR exceptions in 2008 and 2007, respectively; also at 99% confidence, this implies above six times more real losses than theoretically forewarned. It seems unnecessary to state that VaR did not properly warn the Helvetians during the unfolding of the bloodbath.
And you didn´t need to be based in a neutral country with magnificent ski slopes and exquisite private bankers in order to experience your own dose of VaR disillusionment. Perhaps it shouldn´t be exceedingly surprising that Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns witnessed less-than-glorious VaR behavior, particularly in the latter case (in excess of 20 exceptions during its last three quarters as a living independent entity, more than twice the predicted number for the adopted 95% confidence level, which allows for only twelve yearly exceptions); but they were not alone by any means, with Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Bank of America (BoA), for example, similarly witnessing the breakdown of the theoretical dogma (BoA had 14 violations in 2007 at 99%, JP Morgan had eight in 2007 at 99% and Morgan Stanley had 18 violations in 2008 at 95%). And other Europeans can boast plenty of misguiding too. Mighty Deutsche Bank, for one, was surprised to observe 35 VaR violations in 2008 and 12 the year before, in all around ten times higher than theory would dictate.
Dangerous limitations
Twenty years after it was first brought into the fold of finance, should VaR still be used as risk radar following such a disappointing track record? So far, the thing continues to be employed by banks, hedge funds and other firms. It´s true that it´s not the only risk reference consulted, typically complemented with additional analysis such as stress testing. And yet, it appears hard to understanding why a device that can malfunction so gravely (especially at crunch time) should be given so much credence and respectability. When a bank reports its market exposures to investors, journalists, regulators and other outsiders through its quarterly filings, it continues to do so through the VaR lens. To this day, VaR continues to be openly equated with market risk. It´s almost as if the crisis had not happened at all.
Even more important than becoming the in-house method for calculating and managing risk and for informing the rest of the world as to a firm´s riskiness, VaR was adopted by policymakers as the tool to be used for the crucial purpose of determining the mandatory capital charges that financial institutions should face for their trading activities. Trading, you see, is not free. A while back, international regulators decided to impose a capital levy on market punting: for every trading position that a bank took on, a certain amount of capital had to be set aside so as to act as protective cushion for possible future setbacks. Naturally, the size of said capital requirement can play a huge role in the amount (and type) of trading assets that a bank would hold. If the charges are too exacting, accumulating tons of assets will be excruciatingly capital-intensive (i.e., excruciatingly expensive). Expressed differently, the size of the requirements will determine how much trading-related leverage a bank can enjoy. If the capital charge is modest, then traders need only to put up a small upfront deposit to own a whole lot of assets, being allowed to finance their portfolio mostly via borrowing. That is, by crowning VaR as the king of capital requirements, regulators essentially left the determination of banks leverage in the hands of a mathematical construct of dubious reliability. As the recent meltdown clearly shows, few things can be as impacting as the amount of gearing undertaken by financial institutions.
And, as we said earlier, because VaR can tend to be (or can be made to be) quite small, it follows that the reign of VaR is likely to deliver dangerously substantial leverage. Not only that, VaR also can deliver the worst kind of leverage. Because VaR only focuses on past market data, it does not fundamentally discriminate between different types of asset families, treating, say, Treasury bonds the same as, say, subprime CDOs when it comes to measuring their future risk. All that matters is the recent behavior of the given asset, not its obvious intrinsic characteristics. The fact that Treasuries are per definition less adventuresome and more robust than CDOs would not matter one iota to VaR. It doesn´t know that Treasuries are issued and backed by the U.S. government while complex mortgage derivatives are stuffed with toxic NINJA loans. VaR doesn´t read the newspapers, or watch television. It doesn´t know that the U.S. government is, by its very nature, a less risky debtor than an unemployed mortgage borrower. To VaR, Treasuries and CDOs are the same thing: just blips of historical data on a screen. If the CDO data for the last two years happens to be less volatile than the Treasuries data, the model will say with a straight face that CDOs are less risky than Treasuries.
This is not theory, this can actually happen. Even the most lethal of asset families can spend a relatively long period setback-free, showing nothing but continuous gains in value as a bubble is built and sustained. That´s exactly what happened with subprime CDOs all the way to mid-2007, and that is why, according to VaR, those Wall Street firms holding those assets were not facing much trouble and thus should not be demanded to post too much protective capital. Anybody with half a brain who chooses to use it understands that subprime CDOs are far from risk-lite, let alone safer than Treasuries-like securities. Unluckily for us, VaR was not endowed with a brain, notwithstanding the braininess of those who invented it and calculate it daily. The result: VaR permitted investment banks to accumulate untold amounts of very illiquid, very lethal assets in an extremely highly leveraged fashion (i.e. on the cheap, capital-wise). Just before the crisis, the typical VaR-dictated trading-related leverage around Wall Street was 100-to-1 (even 1,000-to-1). That is, banks were forced to post only $1 in capital for every $100 (or $1,000) of assets that they wanted to own. That´s a lot of leverage. The most insignificant drop in value of your portfolio can wipe you out, fast. Given that the portfolio that was being financed with so little equity and so much debt was (thanks to VaR´s blindness as to the true nature of an asset) inundated with poisonous stuff, it is easy to understand why the meltdown, when it inevitably came, was so shocking and so sudden.
Nassim Taleb was in a good position to understand from the get go that VaR could result in destructive toxic risk-taking if allowed to be influential. As a seasoned and successful options trader who had experienced several market rollercoasters that had been prospectively assumed (by the same theoretical notions underpinning VaR) not to be possible, Taleb quickly realized that it is useless to try to measure that which does not lend itself to be measured. Market activity is simply too untamable, too wild, too undecipherable. In an environment where everything is possible and where the next unprecedented crash may be around the corner, it is hopeless to try to infer much from the historical record. As a quantitatively educated individual, Taleb knew only too well that the rotten math behind VaR (the assumption of normality, the faith in statistical correlation) only makes things worse. For Taleb, there was no doubt: rather than helping understand, control and reduce risk, VaR will result in higher and worse risks. Bothered by such possibility, he decided to embark in the mid-1990s on a loud anti-VaR campaign. At the time, going at VaR was truly heretical. The acceptance of the tool within academic, theoretical and regulatory circles was unassailably unquestionable, religiously so. VaR proponents wasted no time in ruthlessly lambasting Taleb, dismissing him as a ranting worry-monger incapable of appreciating the magic that the mathematical risk technology could deliver. Financial risk, VaR fans declared, had been finally conquered, subjugated into a neat number by the unalterable precision of the precious analytics. How could anyone dare criticize such gloriousness? Had that Lebanese fellow gone mad?
Taleb´s first vindication came in 1997 and 1998. As markets everywhere succumbed to the chaos ignited by the Asian crisis, first, and the disaster of mega hedge fund LTCM afterwards, VaR was openly revealed as a gravely malfunctioning guide. As real trading losses climbed way above those predicted by VaR, the hitherto rock-solid reputation of the model began to suffer. Worse, VaR itself had a large hand in accelerating those losses by prompting banks to engage in sudden and massive liquidations of positions, fueling a devastating falling debacle. In a rehearsal of what would take place a decade later, VaR not only failed to warn of the upcoming danger, but essentially contributed to the realization of such danger.
Despite the temporary tarnishing of its name, VaR was not discarded or abandoned in financeland following those nasty episodes (which, particularly in the case of LTCM, threatened the system´s viability). Quite the opposite occurred, actually. Not only did those regulators who had originally embraced the tool continue to do so, avoiding in the process a much-needed rethink of VaR´s true value, but another, rather significant, one decided to join the party. In 2004, the Washington DC-based U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) established a rule that allowed large Wall Street broker-dealers (the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers) to use their own risk management practices for capital requirements purposes, recognizing outright that charges were destined to be lower under the new approach. VaR was predictably sanctioned as the main method of calculation, and as we know this implied that illiquid securities ("no ready market securities" in the jargon), which previously would have been subjected to something like 100% deduction for capital purposes (about 1-to-1 leverage, making it unaffordably expensive to buy billions and billions of dollars in those securities), were now afforded the same VaR treatment as more conservative and conventional alternatives. If the mathematically-driven number happened to be low, the required capital charge would be low.
That is, engaging in unapologetically risky activities instantly became much more cheap and convenient for U.S. investment banking powerhouses. In this sense, perhaps we shouldn´t be surprised by the fact that those financial institutions gorged on less-than-perfectly-liquid, über-complex (and thus high-yielding, for a while at least) stuff. The VaR-transmitted regulatory encouragement was probably too tempting to resist, as a high return measured against a tiny equity base makes for very tasty quarterly reports. The end result, of course, was a highly levered, undercapitalized financial industry whose fate was exposed to the soundness of subprime securities. Or, in slightly different wording, a ticking time bomb which duly exploded not long after.
By jumping onto the VaR bandwagon in 2004, the SEC allowed Taleb to enjoy a second, much stronger, vindication three years later. Had the SEC not adopted that policy, which some have salaciously termed "The Bear Stearns Future Insolvency Act," it is quite probable that the crisis would not have happened (as the lethal securities would either not have been accumulated, or would have been backed by a lot more cushiony capital) and that Nassim Taleb would not have had to don that bothersome tie that September morning.
Pablo Triana is the author of "Lecturing Birds On Flying: Can Mathematical Theories Destroy The Financial Markets?" (Wiley 2009).


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SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of getting your web site ranked in the search engines. SEO is not difficult as some people would like you to believe.
Now this may be because they are in the same market and do not want you to compete with them, or they are an SEO firm and they are looking to have you pay them for this information.
Top 10 SEO Tips – Tricks – Secrets
Here are my Top 10 SEO Tips you can use to help get your Web Site more exposure in the Search Engines.
- Keyword Research : Keyword Research is the first and probably most important job in process of search engine optimization.
- Keyword in Domain name : Lets take, our main targetted keyword is "Dog Training Dallas", than if our domain name contains our main targeted keyword "Dog Training Dallas", like www.DogTrainingDallas.com then it will rank higher in search engines.
- Keyword in Title : If the main keywords are targeted in Title of the page, the chances for ranking higher in search engines increases. The "Title Tag" is in the source code below the <html> and above the <body> tags.
- Keyword in Description : If our targeted keywords are in description of the page, again the chances of ranking the website in search engine increases.
- Keyword in page file names : If the page file name contains the keyword of our website, it gives greater weight in ranking in search engines
(e.g. www.domain.com/your-keyword/your2-keyword.html) - Alt Image Tags : All images should be optimized well, with adding alt image tags as search engine robots cannot read, they read the alt tag for the image. It will help to target your keywords in describing the image to robots. So use your keywords in the Alt Image tags.
- Link Popularity : Link popularity is one of the important factor in ranking the websites higher in search engines. Link popularity can be defined as total number of incoming links to website to particular page or to the main domain. Bets are one way quality incoming links from relevant sites
- Anchor Text Optimization : Use the same keywords as anchor text to link to the page from different pages on your site. This is especially useful if your site contains many pages. The more keywords that link to a specific page the better.
- Fresh Content : Robots love fresh content, so you want to update your website frequently with fresh relevant content. This will attract the search spiders and help you more in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
- Web Directory and Article directory submissions : Try to increase one way links by directory submissions and article submission. Over time this will help you to grow inbound one way links and ultimately help your web site achieve higher rankings in the search engines.
As I said SEO is not Rocket Science, it is matter of applying a few simple basic techniques to your site, consistantly and you will see the results.
iNetGlobal offers a Directory Linking (SEO Links) service and a Blog Content (Blog Pros) service for increasing content and inbound links.


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Volume reduction and stabilization of waste before final disposal.
Complete decommissioning process.
Nuclear engineering and consultancy services.
Software and specialized tests, investigations and studies for NPP's and fuel vendors worldwide.
"Our aim is to present information about Studsvik that allows investors and shareholders to make a relevant assessment of the Studsvik share."
"Our aim is to present information about Studsvik that allows investors and shareholders to make a relevant assessment of the Studsvik share. We shall be pleased to provide journalists and others with further information regarding Studsvik and its management or with product information, logotypes and graphics. Don't hesitate to contact us if you need further information."
Jerry Ericsson, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Deputy CEO Studsvik AB
To help reduce the environmental impact of our communications and improve cost efficiency we have limited the distribution of the printed Annual Report. Studsvik offers a digital version of the Annual Report as an alternative. Follow the link below and you can read or download the report.
Choose your location in the dropdown to get the right contact information.
It is also possible to show financial information in your mobile.
Remium AB has been appointed to act as liquidity provider for the company's share.
Read more about Remium Relations AB


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Serious about getting fit? Try this workout routine designed by Dr. Vonda Wright, an orthopedic surgeon and author of Fitness After 40: How to Stay Strong at Any Age. It combines aerobics, strength training, and flexibility and balance exercises. Read More »
Your Weekly Workout Calendar
Set a fitness goal, then use our workout program calendar to reach it. By Week 10, you'll have a great start on a lifetime exercise habit.
Flexibility Stretches keep your muscles limber and help protect you from injury. | Aerobic Exercise Get your heart rate up through walking, dancing, or whatever floats your boat. | Carry a Load Load-bearing exercise makes you strong and protects your body as you age. | Equilibrium/Balance Balance exercises help you prevent falls and stay active throughout your life. |
How to do it » | How to do it » | How to do it » | How to do it » |
Click on each tab for the exercise schedule of the week:
To keep track of your progress, print out a copy of our handy checklist each week.


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Welcome to my blog! I'll be updating my blog quite frequently, so bookmark my site and check back often to see my most recent work and what I'm up to - oh, and feel free to leave me a comment or two as well!
Stephanie Williams Photography is a husband + wife photography team inspired by love and life. We're a wedding and portrait photography studio in Southern California, documenting weddings locally and worldwide. We love to travel! My husband Isaac works alongside me at every wedding - and he makes an occassional appearance on the blog as well! We strive to capture the complete story of every wedding we photograph and infuse a bit of fashion - inspired portraiture into our photojournalistic coverage. What I love most about my amazing job is capturing the love and connection between couples and their friends and family! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me or leave a comment! Comments make me happy! ;)
Thank you for visiting!
The ballons work so well. Beautiful images.
I love these shots, especially the one with the sun flares. Beautiful!
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You're watching...
NFL Season Kicks Off with Replacement Refs
Sports agent Eugene Lee argues the integrity of the game is compromised with replacement officials.
Sep 5, 2012
You're watching...
Sports agent Eugene Lee argues the integrity of the game is compromised with replacement officials.
Sep 5, 2012
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Full -- again.
Football season starts tonight the Dallas Cowboys against the New York Giants millions of people will be watching.
But the league's regular arrests will not be that the NFL is locking them out will use replacement officials instead.
Joining us now is sports agent yeah.
I made the comment a few moments ago.
That was up role in the studio when I made it writes that what's this got to do with safety OK you use substitute restless I -- do with the safety of the plants doesn't add anything to do that.
I don't know if it's necessarily safety Stuart I think -- the integrity of the game you're gonna have referees that are inexperienced that are on qualified making.
Huge cauldron in games that count and I think that's what -- of additional safety at issue.
Would you make the case that the safety of the plans is an issue of safety could be an issue famous calls in wall circumstance in terms of unnecessary roughness penalties.
After the whistle hits you know certain.
Objectionable actions that would otherwise be called in -- game if players are being flagged for stuff that normally will be called.
It's gonna take their aggressiveness in their violence to another level it won't affect the score that would because it's the same -- -- -- some in the Plainfield east and level regardless of the officials use you may -- a game changing play.
At the end of the gamer won the game counts where -- remiss.
To call my concern is with the unnecessary roughness.
Rules being expanded now in terms of the -- that are allowed.
With new -- for raised the possibility that we can get some very very unsafe and dangerous plays.
I think increases I think this is a huge risk for the NFL and one that has been understated.
I -- -- mean the NFL's at an all time high with its popularity.
And the NFL I don't think they wanna risk that by having the integrity of the game -- You think the audience in terms of TV -- -- you think you'll be low tonight because the substitute rafts.
I don't think so I don't think the popularity of beginning -- the -- Wayne but I think that as more calls or missed.
Gonna have more monopoly or humor and sergeant mark calls get challenged.
When you have substitute -- I believe so.
I've seen that during the pre season I was at the patriots giants game on Wednesday of last week and it was horrible in the first half -- the referees missed first -- called the wrong penalty.
And they went to the wrong player and finally when they went the wrong teen.
And was the first time in recent memory I can remember a crowd audibly booming referees for a non game changing play if you got something similar tonight if you did.
Would that put so much pressure on the on the NFL that they bring the regular wrest back that's what the referees association is banking on the fact that is more more calls are being there's been more gains are being decided not on the field but by the referees.
They feel that that's what's gonna bring in a -- the bargaining -- represent -- -- a World Cup replies on the the cowboys yes that's correct.
It's going to be a fun time tonight dynamic to get down there -- -- it doesn't get in this guy.
I did and you what about -- plan.
No not necessarily -- have faith that.
The refereed gonna do their best thing but at the end of the at at the end of the day I think the integrity that's what's gonna gaullist and sons Doug I mean it is just.
Stewart I have to tell -- full disclosure.
One of my friends is now -- replacement refereed and he's a very good college refereed.
But I I don't think he belongs in the NFL he's a good man he cares for you know what.
I worry about the late hits I worry about the unnecessary roughness and I'd worry about the Ripley's losing control it that's my -- The crazy part is that they're only 45 million dollars apart in a nine billion dollar revenue week in.
Alright alright I can say I know nothing about the subjects they shouldn't contribute to the -- -- usually you know what you're talking about we appreciate you being here thank you.
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Good evening,
Since a power blip this morning when I try to boot my ReadyNAS NV+ The power light flashes for about 5 seconds then disk lights #1 and #3 come on steady and nothing else changes. Reading through the forum and looking up the activity lights it seems as if there is a good chance that my boot sector is damaged (not surprising after a power failure). So I downloaded the TFTP software and went through the readme, however when trying to boot the device by holding the power button I get no difference in the lights, there is no second flashing of the disk lights, no matter how long I hold the power button for. Also the fans seem to be running full tilt during this process and the only way to power it off is to pull the power.
So a little more digging suggested that it may need the Memory reseated, which I did, same process on boot. Unable to get it to boot in a manner that would let me attempt an TFTP fix. The device also does not show up on RAIDar.
So I'm at a loss, I would really like to not lose all the data on the drive because I do not have a backup (shame on me). I guess there is a possibility that the memory module is toast as well. But I don't seem certain that it is the case. I've opened a support ticket which I've put in the title. If anyone else sees this and can give me any idea's to try that would be fantastic.
Thanks in advance.


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I'd nominate myself, but I don't have the time either. Or the bandwidth, since I live in the middle of nowhere.
Eckels is the only one I know for sure would be qualified to do it, but I'll wager he doesn't have time either. *sigh*
And good luck AGN!
The more beautiful and pure a thing is, the more satisfying it is to corrupt.
Macto Pro Vestrum
Id say Breaker too, its been nice having you running AGN WL.. Thanks
Haha, I said Breaker to be a smart ass because I thought all the n00bs would cry.
I fail :(
Things to do today:
1. Get up.
2. Survive.
3. Go back to bed.
I wouldn't nominate Breaker unless he nominates himself first.
Personally I think it would be best to split up the work load among 2 or 3 people so one person doesn't have to be relied on to do everything, and one person doesn't have all the pressure of trying to make everyone happy.
I would suggest SB if he weren't so busy as well.
You may think of me as a noob, but I have seen the work of them, and I nominate Breaker and Goki.
goKi loves this place a lot and I think he would do a most exquisite job helping run this place.
If you love... love without reservation. If you fight... fight without fear.
ST: If you're going to go the way of the ostrich and stick your head into the sand or up your butt and expect everything to go the way you had imagined it, you deserve your fate.
I've been waiting for someone to say this so I didn't have to say it first. :p I sincerely think this would be a great idea though. There's nothing wrong with having multiple people to take up the word, particularly if they're active. Like I'd mentioned earlier, [Note: All conditions assume that you're active!] if one of the owners feels too pressured, the others can pick up a little bit of the slack. One person can handle interpersonal affairs, one person can code, (Assumably, -can- code worth crap, ... so the saying goes, anyway ... )Personally I think it would be best to split up the work load among 2 or 3 people so one person doesn't have to be relied on to do everything, and one person doesn't have all the pressure of trying to make everyone happy.
I think it'd be nice to have someone that you can always PM without fear of being chastized. I think it'd be nice to have someone who's active, friendly, and encourages posting in a happy and productive way up there. A forum role model, as it were. goKi is pretty good at that right now, I think. o.o Vegeta1215 similarly, in fact, along with most of the mods here, when they show up.
I was thinking the same thing. Frankly, I'm surprised people suggested him. No offense (to Breaker), but his reputation does precede him. Regardless, he hasn't been that active much lately.Originally Posted by moocow
Honestly, I agree with the multiple parties. I think that Breaker or goKi would be awesome obvious choices. Must they have ALL of the qualities you mentioned, or can they find a reliable support staff? goKi would be my number one for forum matters, since he is typically more active on the board.
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Florida is one of the worst polluters in the U.S., according to a report by the National Resources Defense Council, which ranked Florida sixth on a list of the most toxic states.
The NRDC found that overall; there was a 19-percent decrease in all air toxics emitted from power plants in 2010, including a 4-percent drop in mercury emissions. Two factors are thought to be the reasons behind the improvement in toxic emissions.
For the complete story, see the Sept. 6 issue of Navarre Press or subscribe online.


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Painted Here to Match 2010-2012 Factory Mustang Colors. This Modern Muscle Design Trunk Emblem Surround is painted right here, at AmericanMuscle HQ, with the same base coat clear coat urethane paint Ford used on the exterior of your Mustang to match your stock factory color perfectly.
High Quality Construction. Injected molded from automotive grade acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) material for its light-weight and superior durability, this Modern Muscle Design Rear Trunk Emblem Surround can handle the bumps and abuse of daily driving while keeping a show-quality appearance.
Easy Install. No drilling or messy body work is required for installation. This MMD Mustang trunk emblem surround installs quickly and easily using 3M double side automotive tape for a secure bond.
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Note: Select your year Mustang to see factory paint colors available for that year.
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Mustang Fitment: 2010, 2011, 2012 Details >>


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Friday TV: TV One Extensive "News One Now" Coverage of Mandela's Passing (VIDEO)
... moreWe have added the new full movie trailer for director Paul W.S. Anderson's historical distaster movie, "Pompeii."
... moreNelson Mandela, the revered South African anti-apartheid icon who spent 27 years in prison, who led his country as the first black president, died Thursday at home. He was 95.
... moreCrazy people and the holidays = great TV. …for a TLC show, at least.
... moreOkay, no recap but spoiler alerts for the few who have not seen the last episode.
... moreJustin Bieber's video vixen Cailin Russo gets under Selena Gomez's skin (VIDEO)
... more