Runningforofficekentuckey: February 2011

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Making Money System

Okay folks, it looks like the whole country is now playing Peter Peterson's budget ball. For those not familiar with him, Peterson is a Wall Street investment banker. He has made billions of dollars through his dealings and government subsidies, and now he is using much of this money to accomplish a lifelong quest, gutting Social Security and Medicare.

Toward this end, he has set up a fake news service (the "Fiscal Times"); he's funded scary, anti-Social Security documentaries; sponsored a set of rigged public forums (America Speaks) and even paid for the construction of a high school curriculum to indoctrinate school children. According to some accounts, he is now the largest employer in the DC area after the Pentagon.

The way Peterson's budget game works is that you get some deficit or debt target. This is against a backdrop where the baseline projections show the deficits going through the roof in 10-20 years. The reason for the exploding deficit is the projection of exploding health care costs. The US would be looking at massive budget surpluses if it had the same per person health care costs as any other wealthy country.

Under the rules of Peterson's budget ball, you are not allowed to do anything about rising health care costs. In fact, reform of the private health care system was explicitly ruled out as an option at the Peterson-funded America Speaks forums.

This means, for example, that we can't reduce prescription drug costs by adopting a more efficient mechanism for financing drug research. The Center for Medicare and Medicare Services projects that the country will spend more than $3.3 trillion on prescription drugs over the next decade. We would probably spend less than one-tenth of this amount if drugs were sold in a free market, but Peterson's budget ball doesn't let you reform the system of financing drug research. You can't even go the intermediate step of public financing of clinical trials advocated by Joe Stiglitiz, the Nobel laureate who was President Clinton's chief economist.

Peterson budget ball also doesn't let contestants take any of the other steps that could bring US health care costs more in line with costs elsewhere. This would include letting Medicare beneficiaries buy into more efficient health care systems elsewhere. This could put tens of thousands of dollars into the pockets of beneficiaries each year while saving the government trillions of dollars in the coming decades.

Nor does Peterson budget ball allow for medical tourism, which could lead to huge cost savings as people get their health care in other countries to escape our broken system. Peterson's budget ball also does not allow contestants to take down the barriers that prevent more foreigners from coming to practice medicine in the US, bringing physicians' wages here in line with the rest of the world.

Not only does Peterson's budget ball prevent contestants from fixing the health care system. He also doesn't want them to tax Wall Street speculation. This source of revenue could raise close to $1.8 trillion over the course of a decade. Virtually all of the revenue would come at the expense of the financial industry, since most investors would simply cut back their trading in response to any increase in trading fees.

And Peterson doesn't want anyone to consider the possibility that we could have the Federal Reserve Board simply hold the government bonds it is now buying, so that taxpayers are not burdened with hundreds of billions a year in additional interest payments. If the Fed held $3 trillion in bonds in 2020, offsetting the inflationary impact with higher reserve requirements, it would save the country $150 billion a year in interest.

Their argument is that we wouldn't want Congress dictating policy to the Federal Reserve Board. After all, the Fed has done such a great job. According to the claims of its chairman, Ben Bernanke, the Fed's policies brought us to the brink of a second Great Depression. With that sort of track record, how can anyone suggest making the Fed more accountable?

In short, in Peterson's budget ball, we can't make any changes that might create any serious inconvenience for the rich and powerful. We can have some small cuts in defense and modest tax increases for the rich as window dressing, but what we are left with is a massive budget deficit and nothing but Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs left to cut.

That might sound like a rigged game, but Peterson is paying for it, so he gets to set the rules. What else would we expect? The big question is whether President Obama is also playing this game. We will find out Tuesday.

BBC Online is meeting its obligation to commission 25 percent of eligible production work from external suppliers - but must make wide-ranging changes to the process, a review by its regulating BBC Trust has concluded (release, review)

The BBC has met the quota requirement every year since it was recommended by the 2004 Graf report. Last year, it commissioned external interactive producers for work totalling £20 million.

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But a Deloitte review in to the quota commissioned by the trust slates the system for lack of transparency, management, direction and value for money.

Consequently, the trust - whilst it is not raising the quota - has ordered BBC Online to “discuss with industry what form strategic goals for a quota system might take”, and to simplify the current process.

This BBC Trust review has been many months in the making - the BBC executive had already known the outcome and recommendations before Friday’s publication and has partly responded - it has already agreed to give the trust, after speaking with industry, a review within three months. The trust says the whole issue requires “urgent attention”.

Deloitte’s review (highlights):-

“The BBC is complying with the requirements set out in the BBC Agreement. However, the Online independent supply quota does not appear to be working well in practice. Whilst steps have recently been taken to remedy the issues surrounding it, both the BBC and the independent sector recognise there is a lack of: communication around how the commissioning for online takes place, clarity around how the quota is calculated and tracked; and, consistency and efficiency in commissioning practices. Most significantly, interviews demonstrate a strong belief in the independent sector that BBC online commissioners select suppliers to pitch for commissions based on the commissioners’ personal knowledge, rather than any rounded evaluation of who is equipped to deliver quality and value for money.

“There is a high degree of external scepticism as to whether reported performance is real or the result of an accounting allocation.

“Overall BBC Online expenditure is expected to go down rather than up

“There are issues with the management of the current arrangements that impact the value for money and quality BBC Online achieves for licence fee payers

“BBC Online has failed to provide sufficient transparency to the sector in terms of: strategic direction, emerging opportunities, decision making processes, and reporting of performance relative to the quota.

“An average commission size in FY 2009/10 of less than £5,000 and only 17 commissions over £100,000

“The revenues of the top 100 interactive agencies totalled c. £790m in 2009. In 2009/10 the BBC spent c. £20m externally as part of the BBC Online quota. Although the BBC will spend more on digital content (for example on those areas excluded from the eligible base), in absolute terms the impact that the BBC makes on the online content sector is limited.

“In this context, BBC Online’s c. £20m of ‘eligible’ annual spend lacks the scale to have as significant an impact on the shape of market as the BBC does in TV broadcasting.”

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Why is Fox News Trashing Ron Paul ? | The Big Picture

Busted: Fox News Fakes CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Bizarre deception by Fox News via boingboing, running the 2010 crowd noise booing Ron Paul's 2011 win.

NYT's Fed reporter to become deputy op-ed editor « Talking Biz News

Talking Biz News. Information about business journalism, from the Carolina Business News Initiative. « Why the FT and the Economist have been successful in America � No Comments. NYT's Fed reporter to become deputy op-ed editor. 2011 ...

ABC News Correspondent Beaten in Bahrain - The Hollywood Reporter

Miguel Marquez says he began yelling "Journalist!" during the military crackdown to show he wasn't a protestor.

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Why is Fox News Trashing Ron Paul ? | The Big Picture

Busted: Fox News Fakes CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Bizarre deception by Fox News via boingboing, running the 2010 crowd noise booing Ron Paul's 2011 win.

NYT's Fed reporter to become deputy op-ed editor « Talking Biz News

ABC News Correspondent Beaten in Bahrain - The Hollywood Reporter

Miguel Marquez says he began yelling "Journalist!" during the military crackdown to show he wasn't a protestor.

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Why is Fox News Trashing Ron Paul ? | The Big Picture

Busted: Fox News Fakes CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Bizarre deception by Fox News via boingboing, running the 2010 crowd noise booing Ron Paul's 2011 win.

NYT's Fed reporter to become deputy op-ed editor « Talking Biz News

ABC News Correspondent Beaten in Bahrain - The Hollywood Reporter

Miguel Marquez says he began yelling "Journalist!" during the military crackdown to show he wasn't a protestor.

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Why is Fox News Trashing Ron Paul ? | The Big Picture

Busted: Fox News Fakes CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Bizarre deception by Fox News via boingboing, running the 2010 crowd noise booing Ron Paul's 2011 win.

NYT's Fed reporter to become deputy op-ed editor « Talking Biz News

ABC News Correspondent Beaten in Bahrain - The Hollywood Reporter

Miguel Marquez says he began yelling "Journalist!" during the military crackdown to show he wasn't a protestor.

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Why is Fox News Trashing Ron Paul ? | The Big Picture

Busted: Fox News Fakes CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Bizarre deception by Fox News via boingboing, running the 2010 crowd noise booing Ron Paul's 2011 win.

NYT's Fed reporter to become deputy op-ed editor « Talking Biz News

ABC News Correspondent Beaten in Bahrain - The Hollywood Reporter

Miguel Marquez says he began yelling "Journalist!" during the military crackdown to show he wasn't a protestor.

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Why is Fox News Trashing Ron Paul ? | The Big Picture

Busted: Fox News Fakes CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Bizarre deception by Fox News via boingboing, running the 2010 crowd noise booing Ron Paul's 2011 win.

NYT's Fed reporter to become deputy op-ed editor « Talking Biz News

ABC News Correspondent Beaten in Bahrain - The Hollywood Reporter

Miguel Marquez says he began yelling "Journalist!" during the military crackdown to show he wasn't a protestor.

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Why is Fox News Trashing Ron Paul ? | The Big Picture

Busted: Fox News Fakes CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Bizarre deception by Fox News via boingboing, running the 2010 crowd noise booing Ron Paul's 2011 win.

NYT's Fed reporter to become deputy op-ed editor « Talking Biz News

ABC News Correspondent Beaten in Bahrain - The Hollywood Reporter

Miguel Marquez says he began yelling "Journalist!" during the military crackdown to show he wasn't a protestor.

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Why is Fox News Trashing Ron Paul ? | The Big Picture

Busted: Fox News Fakes CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Bizarre deception by Fox News via boingboing, running the 2010 crowd noise booing Ron Paul's 2011 win.

NYT's Fed reporter to become deputy op-ed editor « Talking Biz News

ABC News Correspondent Beaten in Bahrain - The Hollywood Reporter

Miguel Marquez says he began yelling "Journalist!" during the military crackdown to show he wasn't a protestor.

benchcraft company scam

Why is Fox News Trashing Ron Paul ? | The Big Picture

Busted: Fox News Fakes CPAC Presidential Straw Poll Bizarre deception by Fox News via boingboing, running the 2010 crowd noise booing Ron Paul's 2011 win.

NYT's Fed reporter to become deputy op-ed editor « Talking Biz News

ABC News Correspondent Beaten in Bahrain - The Hollywood Reporter

Miguel Marquez says he began yelling "Journalist!" during the military crackdown to show he wasn't a protestor.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Money Making Schemes

Fred and Jeff Wilpon said late last month that they would sell 20-25% of the team to guard against any potential Madoff settlement. Since then, settlement talks have broken down, leading to the unsealing of the lawsuit last week.

Picard is seeking $300MM in fictitious profits from Wilpon and his business partners. In addition, Picard seeks an unspecificied amount beyond that (the New York Times reports it "could reach beyond $1 billion") alleging that Wilpon should have known or suspected Madoff's scheme.

The standard by which Picard arrived at the $300MM is pretty common in these cases- fictitious profits are distributed to those who lost money in Ponzi schemes, scams where new backers are consistently recruited to pay off old investors. For the Wilpons to incur losses above $300MM, Picard's standard will be to prove that a "reasonable man" would have suspected something was amiss regarding Madoff's scheme, and alleges numerous instances of the Fred Wilpon and his partner/brother-in-law Saul Katz receiving warnings from both business partners and Katz's own son.

It isn't clear how Wilpon would raise anything approaching even the initial $300MM from a minority sale of the Mets. Forbes valued the team at $845MM in April 2010, but Wilpon has borrowed heavily against the team. Forbes reported this week that the combined book value of the Mets and Citi Field, including debt, is negative $225MM, though Adam Rubin of ESPN New York has cast doubt on that figure. That was before the Mets were named specifically in Picard's suit, giving the team even more potential liability.

Even if someone would pay a premium to own the Mets outright, it is far less clear that someone will pay that same premium for a minority stake and no authority. In other words, a 25 percent stake in the Mets is worth $211.25MM as per April 2010, absent any of the debt or other mitigating factors, and assuming that a 25 percent stake (minority) is actually worth one quarter of 100 percent stake (majority). (It isn't.) Obviously, with all the mitigating factors, 25 percent of the Mets isn't worth close to $211.25MM - which is, itself, far less than the $300MM Picard is likeliest to recover.

SNY is enormously profitable, and would earn a decent amount in a straight sale. However, Wilpon and his partners have borrowed against SNY as well, diluting the value. And far more ominously, the New York Post reported this week that any proceeds from a sale of SNY would be distributed to those lenders. In other words, when Jeff Wilpon described SNY as wholly separate from any sale of the Mets last Friday, he may not have been making a choice.

At the end of the day, no one knows what the maximum amount of money Fred Wilpon and his partners can raise without selling a majority stake in the New York Mets. But there is a number, X, and as long as Picard's settlement would be higher than X, Wilpon will face the choice between fighting in court and losing his team.

It may well be that there is a certain amount of money Wilpon needs to raise to avoid bankruptcy, even including a full sale of the team. If we call that Y, and Picard's settlement would be higher than Y, Wilpon has even greater reason to fight this in court, hoping a judge sees things his way.

Either way, the longer Wilpon doesn't settle, the likelier it is that one of these two scenarios has come to pass. The results would be disastrous for the New York Mets. With cases such as these often taking a year or more, Mets ownership could be in the midst of this battle next November, just as Albert Pujols and Jose Reyes are scheduled to hit free agency.

Former super-lobbyist Paul Magliocchetti was sentenced today to 27 months in prison, a spokesman for the Justice Department told TPM.

Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office for the Eastern District of Virginia, told TPM that the hearing, which began at 1 p.m., lasted until 5:30 p.m.

Magliocchetti pleaded guilty to making hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions and making false statements to a federal agency as the founder and president of the lobbying firm PMA Group Inc. Though the crime was described by prosecutors as one of the largest schemes to violate campaign finance law, the politicians who received the campaign donations, including the late Rep. John Murtha and Rep. Pete Visclosky, (D-Ind.), were unaware of the plans, according to the Justice Department.

TPM reported this week that a psychologist hired by Magliocchetti's team said that he would be at a "high risk for suicide" if he was incarcerated.

As the Washington Times reported, Magliocchetti's lawyers brought up his donations dating back to 2005 in arguing for lighter sentencing. Among the donations: over $33,000 to The Girl Scouts; $500 for the Capital Area Food Bank;, $7,500 for an opera festival; and $46,600 to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation.

Magliocchetti's lawyers argued in court documents filed in December that he should receive leniency because of "Mr. Magliocchetti donated not only his time and talents, but also hundreds of thousands of dollars to numerous charities over the years, many in the Washington, D.C. area and his home state of Pennsylvania."

But Maggliocchetti's lawyers failed to mention that many of the legitimate charitable organizations that received donations were also pet organizations of the congressmen Maggliocchetti lobbied.

According to lists of charitable donations submitted to the court, Magliochetti donations went to many Johnstown, Pennsylvania cultural and charitable organizations. The economic rejuvenation of Johnsown, a small city in western Pennsylvania which happened to be the hometown of Rep. John Murtha (D), was a personal project of the late Representative.

For instance, Magliocchetti donated to the Johnstown symphony, including $12,500 for Opera Festival, and $40,030 for other purposes. The Washington Times article notes that Joyce Murtha, the representative's wife, is a big supporter of the symphony, and that Murtha himself used $14,400 in campaign funds to buy tickets and advertising from the symphony. Magliocchetti also donated $56,050 to the Johnstown Girl Scouts Council and $22,050 to the Johnstown non-profit Women's Help Center.

Late Update: "Paul Magliocchetti spent half of a decade gaming the system. He concocted a massive scheme to secretly funnel money to political campaigns - all so that he could gain wealth and prestige," Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department's Criminal Division said in a statement. "As today's sentence makes clear, he must now pay a price."

U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Neil MacBride said in a statement that Magliocchetti "carried out one of the largest federal campaign finance frauds in history."

"He learned that no one - despite wealth and influence - is above the law," MacBride said. "Today's sentence should put anyone on notice that if you seek to buy the influence of elected public officials through skirting the campaign finance laws you'll not merely be exposed publicly but you'll go to prison for a long time."

[Ed. note: this story was updated after publication.]

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CBS News reporter Lara Logan sexually assaulted in Egypt - From ...

CBS says Logan was the victim of “a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating” while covering the events in Egypt last week.

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Shocking details have been released regarding the incident involving CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan during the protests in Egypt. CBS News issued a statement Tuesday revealing that Logan is currentl in the.

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CBS says Logan was the victim of “a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating” while covering the events in Egypt last week.

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CBS says Logan was the victim of “a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating” while covering the events in Egypt last week.

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CBS says Logan was the victim of “a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating” while covering the events in Egypt last week.

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Friday, February 11, 2011

Making Free Money Online

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Nokia and Microsoft form mobile partnership | News

Nokia and Microsoft have announced plans to form a partnership in the mobile space that the companies hope will help it c...

Denver Broncos News: Horse Tracks - 2/11/11 - Mile High Report

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Nokia and Microsoft form mobile partnership | News

Nokia and Microsoft have announced plans to form a partnership in the mobile space that the companies hope will help it c...

Denver Broncos News: Horse Tracks - 2/11/11 - Mile High Report

Horse Tracks -- Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee.

DiRT 3 dev unconvinced by Kinect Xbox 360 News - Page 1 ...

Read our Xbox 360 news of DiRT 3 dev unconvinced by Kinect.

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Nokia and Microsoft form mobile partnership | News

Nokia and Microsoft have announced plans to form a partnership in the mobile space that the companies hope will help it c...

Denver Broncos News: Horse Tracks - 2/11/11 - Mile High Report

Horse Tracks -- Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee.

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Nokia and Microsoft have announced plans to form a partnership in the mobile space that the companies hope will help it c...

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Horse Tracks -- Your Daily Cup of Orange and Blue Coffee.

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Have you been looking for fast, easy ways to make money online? I will give you 5 things to do, all of which I have personal experience with. Some involve eBay, some don't.

1. One of my favorite things to do to make money online, is the one that I'm doing right now! Write articles for Associated Content! There are a few people out there that make a full time living writing for Associated Content, but it takes tons of work to be able to do that. The best way is start off slow like I did. Write an article or two a day, and work from there. Start off by only writing about the things that you enjoy or know a lot about. Depending on the article, Associated content pays two ways. Depending on subject matter, Associated Content pays you for your article up front. This can be anywhere from $1-10 per article, but the average is about $3-4 per article.

Associated Content also pays you by how many views your article generates. They pay $1.50 per 1,000 page views, and the more views you get, the more money you make based on their clout system. It's not easy to make a living on Associated Content, but it is easy to make an extra $100 a month. That's a cable bill, or an energy bill!

2. When your looking for ways to make money online, you will here about eBay over and over again. This is a good way to get started with making money online. The best way to start with selling things around the house. Look around you right now. Do you see something just sitting around, never being used? Sell it! eBay is free to sign up, but they do charge small fees for listing (unless you start your auction under $0.99,) and they charge a fee when an item sells.

3. Another way to make money online is Amazon's Mechanical Turk. I use Mechanical Turk every day. Literally. Every day! Basically what it is, is companies that have you do tasks like finding businesses locations, or getting product information. It's all extremely easy, and some of them pay pretty well. You can easily make a few hundred bucks a month on mechanical turk, and if you have the dedication, you could probably make a living.

4. Here's another way to make money on eBay. Do you have a thrift store in your town? Why don't you head on down there and pick up a few things. You can make a lot more money than you think by picking up items at your local thrift store and selling them on eBay, but it can be tricky. Like writing articles, start with what you know about. For me, it was electronics. Find something you know is a good price, and you think you could make a few bucks with on eBay. Once you get the flow of things, you'll learn more about more items, and be making more money in no time.

5. This last one is another eBay one, but it's a little more time consuming. Go to the online auction site, auctionzip.com and sign up. This is not like eBay. It's real life, real time auctions that are broadcast online. You can bid on items and then pay with your credit card and have them shipped via UPS. I have made a tremendous amount of money doing this. I've bought items for $25 that have sold in the hundreds.

These 5 things are all great ways to make money online. I actively do all of these 5 things, and make a decent amount of money. However, I also keep my day job, and so should you! Hope you enjoyed this article, and hopefully you can start making some money online!

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Making Money Uk

Many thanks to Roddy Boyd for sending me over e-galleys of his new book on the implosion of AIG, Fatal Risk. (If you want me to read a book — I’m looking at you, publishers — then sending it over in electronic form makes it much more likely I’ll do so. I would never have read Zero-Sum Game, for instance, Erika Olson’s insider account of the CME-CBOT merger, had she not sent it to my Kindle. But she did, and I did, and I’m happy I got to read it.)

Boyd’s book is as in-depth as any autopsy of AIG will ever be and it does presume a reasonably sophisticated grasp of finance on the part of the reader. That’s smart, on Boyd’s part: he knows who his audience is for this book.

Boyd’s definitely done his homework here: he seems to have talked to almost everybody who matters, with the possible exception of Martin Sullivan, the hapless AIG CEO who ends up bearing the lion’s share of the blame for what ultimately went wrong. Sullivan’s predecessor, Hank Greenberg, is deeply flawed, of course, in part because he insisted on singlehandedly and personally being the key risk-control mechanism for an enormous company which no one man could possibly oversee in detail and in part because the company he so assiduously built managed to fail so devastatingly the minute he left. (On top of that, of course, there’s the question of his various prosecutions; Boyd is sympathetic to Greenberg on that front and very harsh on Eliot Spitzer.)

Boyd’s case that the AIG implosion would never have happened had Greenberg stayed on as CEO can never be proven one way or the other. My suspicion is that AIG was so big and Greenberg was stretched so thin, that ultimately AIG was certain to fail in any case. But the incompetence of Greenberg’s lieutenants is quite astonishing: Boyd writes at one point that neither Stasia Kelly, the general counsel, nor CFO Steven Bensinger, nor CEO Martin Sullivan had ever even heard of the “credit support annex” which proved fatal to company, by forcing AIG to put up billions of dollars in collateral when the CDOs it insured fell in value. And at a later point, Sullivan is astonished by numbers which had been carefully explained to him the previous day by the notorious Joe Cassano.

Cassano is certainly a very large part of the reason why AIG failed — his headlong rush into mortgages was a move which was explicitly ruled out by both of his predecessors at AIGFP, for good reasons, and he took full advantage of the fact that his boss, Martin Sullivan, lacked any ability to understand what he was doing or to rein in his excesses.

But in reality it was Win Neuger, with his idiotic and devastating securities-lending transactions, who probably did more harm to AIG than any other individual. Matt Taibbi told the Neuger story in his own inimitable style in Griftopia, but Boyd provides chapter and verse for anybody who really wants to understand the details.

When AIG failed along with various monoline insurers, the lesson that many of us drew was that no company should ever use its triple-A rating as a business model. If your triple-A is necessary for you to continue to make money, then you shouldn’t really have a triple-A in the first place: it’s a rating which should be reserved only for companies which don’t need it.

What happened at AIG, along with the other monolines, is pretty simple: they started taking their triple-A for granted, like it was some kind of fact of nature rather than a hard-won award which could be removed at any minute. Whatever else you might say about Hank Greenberg, he always jealously guarded his triple-A. But when he went, so did that culture.

There are no corporates any more, which rely on their triple-A rating for profits: even Berkshire Hathaway has been downgraded. That’s good. But there are still sovereigns. The UK strikes me as a little Greenbergian: it’s making deep fiscal cuts now, in an attempt to ensure its triple-A is never taken away. The U.S., by contrast, is more reckless, a bit like AIG after Greenberg left — it’s going after growth, first and foremost, rather than concentrating on its debt ratios. That might well be the right decision to make — especially if the U.S. could live with its bonds carrying a little bit of credit risk. But it’s a decision which should very much be made consciously and I don’t think that anybody has really done that.

How can an Android smartphone maker hope to stand out from the crowd of other Android ODMs? One big way could be content and the user experience around it. Today HTC announced that it is buying Saffron Digital, a London/Los Angeles outfit that specialises in mobile content delivery services, specifically around video, for £30 million ($48 million).

For now, HTC and Saffron Digital say that getting purchased by one handset maker will not impact its current business of working with several of HTC’s competitors.

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In Europe those customers include LG (SEO: 066570), Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC), T-Mobile and Nokia; (NYSE: NOK) and in the U.S. Saffron works with Samsung. The company also has partnerships with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and Wildvine; operators like T-Mobile and Vodafone; (NYSE: VOD) and content companies such as the UK broadcaster Sky and Paramount Digital Entertainment.

Saffron made its name in optimising video delivery to work across different mobile devices. Now Saffron says that it will use the HTC investment to extend its services into categories like games and music; and to grow its business in territories such as Asia.

For it part, HTC is making the investment to “increase our global service delivery capabilities and expertise,” says HTC CEO Peter Chou in the release announcing the news.

This is not the first instance of a device maker getting involved in video delivery services: just last week, Nokia was the lead invester in an $8 million funding round for VOD company Voddler. We are likely to see more of these deals as smartphone makers take advantage of faster networks, and faster devices, to better differentiate themselves from each other.

Saffron, which is currently headquartered in London and Los Angeles, expects to retain these offices; as well as its existing management team, which includes Shashi Fernando as CEO; David McDonald as COO; and Aaron Luber as the U.S. director of operations.

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Report: More than 700 children died in Afghan conflict in 2010 ...

KABUL (BNO NEWS) -- More than 700 children lost their lives in conflict-related security incidents in Afghanistan in 2010, according to figures compiled in an annual report of the Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM). ...

Small Business News: Digital Privacy and Customer Care

Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.

Obama to Push for Less Restrictive Trade with Russia; Expedited ...

Fox News has learned that President Obama will call on Congress to support a permanent normal trade relations status with Russia and that his U.S. trade ambassador will tell Congress Wednesday the White House will intensify efforts this ...

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For now, HTC and Saffron Digital say that getting purchased by one handset maker will not impact its current business of working with several of HTC’s competitors.

See more of our latest Entertainment coverage
or add an alert for future coverage of Entertainment.

For it part, HTC is making the investment to “increase our global service delivery capabilities and expertise,” says HTC CEO Peter Chou in the release announcing the news.

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Report: More than 700 children died in Afghan conflict in 2010 ...

Small Business News: Digital Privacy and Customer Care

Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.

Obama to Push for Less Restrictive Trade with Russia; Expedited ...

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Report: More than 700 children died in Afghan conflict in 2010 ...

Small Business News: Digital Privacy and Customer Care

Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.

Obama to Push for Less Restrictive Trade with Russia; Expedited ...

bench craft company

For now, HTC and Saffron Digital say that getting purchased by one handset maker will not impact its current business of working with several of HTC’s competitors.

See more of our latest Entertainment coverage
or add an alert for future coverage of Entertainment.

For it part, HTC is making the investment to “increase our global service delivery capabilities and expertise,” says HTC CEO Peter Chou in the release announcing the news.

bench craft company

Report: More than 700 children died in Afghan conflict in 2010 ...

Small Business News: Digital Privacy and Customer Care

Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.

Obama to Push for Less Restrictive Trade with Russia; Expedited ...

bench craft company

Report: More than 700 children died in Afghan conflict in 2010 ...

Small Business News: Digital Privacy and Customer Care

Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.

Obama to Push for Less Restrictive Trade with Russia; Expedited ...

bench craft company

Report: More than 700 children died in Afghan conflict in 2010 ...

Small Business News: Digital Privacy and Customer Care

Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.

Obama to Push for Less Restrictive Trade with Russia; Expedited ...

bench craft company

Report: More than 700 children died in Afghan conflict in 2010 ...

Small Business News: Digital Privacy and Customer Care

Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.

Obama to Push for Less Restrictive Trade with Russia; Expedited ...

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Report: More than 700 children died in Afghan conflict in 2010 ...

Small Business News: Digital Privacy and Customer Care

Small business is all about customer care. So how to you feel about new proposed legislation that is designed to prevent online clients from tracking customer.

Obama to Push for Less Restrictive Trade with Russia; Expedited ...

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Knight-Mozilla News Technology Partnership Announced | The Mozilla ...

We are excited to announce the Knight-Mozilla News Technology Partnership, a Mozilla Drumbeat project supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Journalism Program. For the next three years, we will have the opportunity to ...

Arrowheadlines: Chiefs News 2/8 - Arrowhead Pride

NJ Chiefs Fan is having technical difficulties (which he told me about yesterday, which I promptly forgot this morning, which is why Arrowheadlines is so late today).