Two years ago, Verizon agressivley opened a campaign to get communities in New York to adopt their new FiOS fiber optic service for telephony, Internet and digital television. In my Village of Croton on Hudson, NY, which is located between Peekskill and Ossining in Westchester County, we responded in a timely manner and even retained special counsel experienced in these agreements to be sure the village’s interests were well protected and represented.
Our villagetook steps to move to FiOS because VZ had already negotiated franchise agreements with larger municipalities to the south and east of Croton. Verizon was busy stringing the fiber optic cable throughout the NY area that would carry the FiOS TV, as well as telephone and Interent, so we figured the service offering was real. VZ even began an agressive direct mail and newspaper stuffer campaign advertising phone, internet and TV as a combined FIOS package to Croton residents, including my family.
Our community bought the VZ campaign hook, line and sinker. Like my family, many Croton residents dropped cable and satelite satelitte TV dish subscriptions based on what now seem to be false representation by VZ that the television service was about to be launched. This was a year ago. Today we have FiOS phone and internet,which is great BTW, but no TV. For me this meant going back to Cablevision and wasting time, again, changing providers. As of today, VZ representatives cannot give me a date for turning on the TV service and they refuse to respond to queries by attorneys for our village seeking to finalize the service contract.
On more than one ocassion over the past 18 months, the Village of Croton has submitted revisions or comments on the TV franchise agreement to VZ, only to have those documents, which VZ appeared eager to have, go without a response. The Village of Croton regularly renegotiates franchise agreements with Cablevision, which both set a precendent in process and substance for the VZ FiOS TV matter, as well as show that we do conclude such agreements in timely fashion for other corporate applicants.
Both through our attorney and directly through the village’s own contacts within the VZ empire, we have tired to elicit a response fromVZ management, but without success. Each time we follow up, we get vague answers that do not appear to eliminate the possibility of FiOS…
The more observant and aesthetically sensitive ZH reader will have already noticed that Tranche 1 of the Lehman Brothers Collection (hereinafter known as the LBHI Creditors Committee ["LBHI-CC"] Collection) (warning: 50+ MB .pdf) will come under the hammer tomorrow at noon. The 300+ lots include significant works by Bernar Venet, Willie Cole, Arturo Herrera, Pouran Jinchi, Louis Lozowick, Roy Lichtenstein, Louis Bourgeouis, Terry Frost, Bernice Abott, Bernard Cathelin and Herbert Brandl. (No word yet on the various return tiers on the CAOs (Collateralized Art Obligations) that Goldman is underwriting next month.
Your author is pleasantly surprised to observe that liquidators to the House of Fuld, Alvarez & Marsal, have eschewed convicted co-conspirators Christie’s (1766) and Sotheby’s (1744) in preference to a distinguished Philadelphian auctioneer, Freeman’s (1805), invitations to summer at Ron Baron’s East Hampton guest house notwithstanding. (C’mon, what is a little conspiracy charge, or two, between friends, after all?)
ZH’s intern will be bidding telphonically on the below signed Warhol screenprint depicting Warhol’s “GENERAL FULD” mere days before Fuld’s Last Stand at which he and all of his compatriots were killed by short sellers, Charlie Gasparino, the FSA, the Bank of England, and a host of other Lakota Indian allies.
Lot 405 ANDY WARHOL (american, 1928-1987) “GENERAL CUSTER” from “cowboys and indians” 1986, signed and numbered 122/250 in pencil (there were also 50 artist’s proofs), the full sheet; Gaultney Klineman Art, Inc., New York, publisher. Color screenprint on Lenox Museum Board. sheet: 36 x 36 in. (91.4 x 91.4cm) [Feldman & Schellmann II.379].
Estimate $15,000-20,000
Very faint traces of minor rubbing in the sleeve at bottom center that catch light very faintly when examined out of the frame and held to raking light, very faint smudging of the signature lower left, otherwise in very good original condition. Framed in plexi box frame.
ZH representatives will be at the preview parties for Freeman’s “Fine American and European Paintings and Sculpture” auction scheduled for December 6th, 2009 and the “Works from the Lehman Brothers Collection: Part II” auction on February 12th, 2010, where we shall be overconsuming the higher value hors d’ouvres and more expensive liquor.
The more observant and aesthetically sensitive ZH reader will have already noticed that Tranche 1 of the Lehman Brothers Collection (hereinafter known as the LBHI Creditors Committee ["LBHI-CC"] Collection) (warning: 50+ MB .pdf) will come under the hammer tomorrow at noon. The 300+ lots include significant works by Bernar Venet, Willie Cole, Arturo Herrera, Pouran Jinchi, Louis Lozowick, Roy Lichtenstein, Louis [sic] Bourgeouis, Terry Frost, Bernice Abott, Bernard Cathelin and Herbert Brandl. (No word yet on the various return tiers on the CAOs (Collateralized Art Obligations) that Goldman is underwriting next month.
Your author is pleasantly surprised to observe that liquidators to the House of Fuld, Alvarez & Marsal, have eschewed convicted co-conspirators Christie’s (1766) and Sotheby’s (1744) in preference to a distinguished Philadelphian auctioneer, Freeman’s (1805), invitations to summer at Ron Baron’s East Hampton guest house notwithstanding. (C’mon, what is a little conspiracy charge, or two, between friends, after all?)
ZH’s intern will be bidding telphonically on the below signed Warhol screenprint depicting Warhol’s “GENERAL FULD” mere days before Fuld’s Last Stand at which he and all of his compatriots were killed by short sellers, Charlie Gasparino, the FSA, the Bank of England, and a host of other Lakota Indian allies.
Lot 405 ANDY WARHOL (american, 1928-1987) “GENERAL CUSTER” from “cowboys and indians” 1986, signed and numbered 122/250 in pencil (there were also 50 artist’s proofs), the full sheet; Gaultney Klineman Art, Inc., New York, publisher. Color screenprint on Lenox Museum Board. sheet: 36 x 36 in. (91.4 x 91.4cm) [Feldman & Schellmann II.379].
Estimate $15,000-20,000
Very faint traces of minor rubbing in the sleeve at bottom center that catch light very faintly when examined out of the frame and held to raking light, very faint smudging of the signature lower left, otherwise in very good original condition. Framed in plexi box frame.
ZH representatives will be at the preview parties for Freeman’s “Fine American and European Paintings and Sculpture” auction scheduled for December 6th, 2009 and the “Works from the Lehman Brothers Collection: Part II” auction on February 12th, 2010, where we shall be overconsuming the higher value hors d’ouvres and more expensive liquor.
Studio Zero’s costume party gets revved up after the rest of the evenings events start to wind down. We’ll pipe the feed into Radio Zero live as soon as it gets going. Join us for dark beats and light silliness into the wee hours and the (always present) possibility of a cameo drop-in from an A-lister.
Chat up the DJ (send your .mp3 files) here: radiozh.
Or… join the real Radio Zero nerds on our IRC server at chat.zerohedge.com #radiozh. If you just can’t be bothered with an IRC client, we’ve provided one for you here. Otherwise, consider getting mIRC.
Shenanigans to begin sometime after 10 ET and before 11ET (maybe).
Studio Zero’s costume party gets revved up after the rest of the evening’s events start to wind down. We’ll pipe the feed into Radio Zero live as soon as it gets going. Join us for dark beats and light silliness into the wee hours and the (always present) possibility of a cameo drop-in from an A-lister.
Chat up the DJ (send your .mp3 files) here: radiozh.
Or… join the real Radio Zero nerds on our IRC server at chat.zerohedge.com #radiozh. If you just can’t be bothered with an IRC client, we’ve provided one for you here. Otherwise, consider getting mIRC.
Shenanigans to begin sometime after 10 ET and before 11ET (maybe).
I have been in South America this week, speaking nine times in five days, interspersed with lots of meetings. The conversation kept coming back to the prospects for the dollar, but I was just as interested in talking with money managers and business people who had experienced the hyperinflation of Argentina and Brazil. How could such a thing happen? As it turned out, I was reading a rather remarkable book that addressed that question. There are those who believe that the United States is headed for hyperinflation because of our large and growing government fiscal deficit and massive future liabilities (as much as $56 trillion) for Medicare and Social Security.
This week, we will look at the Argentinian experience and ask ourselves whether "it" – hyperinflation – can happen here.
The Ascent of Money
I will be quoting from Niall Ferguson’s recent book, The Ascent of Money. I cannot recommend this book too highly. In fact, I rank it up with my all-time favorite book on economic history, Against the Gods, by the late (and sorely missed) Peter Bernstein. There are very few books I read twice. There are too many books and not enough time. This book I will have to read at least three times, and soon, and I have a lot of underlines and mark-ups in it already.
If there were one book I could require every member of the Congress to read, it would be this one. As I read it, I am struck again and again by how fragile and yet resilient our economic systems are. Fragile in the sense that governmental policy mistakes, no matter how well-intentioned, can destroy the wealth of a nation, and resilient in that it doesn’t happen more often.
In his introduction Ferguson writes, "The first step towards understanding the complexities of the financial institutions and terminology is to find out where they came from. Only understand the origins of an institution or instrument and you will find its present day roles much easier to grasp."
As is often said, those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it. If you want to understand what is happening in the economy, what the consequences of our choices could be, then I strongly suggest you get The…
So yes, they have certainly sold their goods to the highest bidders.
Indeed, at least some people trust prostitutesmorethan elected officials.
But the prostitution analogy is inaccurate.
Specifically, as the chairman of the Department of Economics at George Mason University (Donald J. Boudreaux) points out:
Real whores, after all, personally supply the services their customers seek. Prostitutes do not steal; their customers pay them voluntarily. And their customers pay only with money belonging to these customers.
In contrast, members of Congress routinely truck and barter with other people’s property…
Members of Congress are less like whores than they are like pimps for persons unwillingly conscripted to perform unpleasant services.
Consider, for example, agricultural subsidies. Each year a handful of farmers and agribusinesses receive billions of taxpayer dollars. These are dollars that government forcibly takes from the pockets of taxpayers and then transfers to farmers.
The customers, in this case, are the farmers and agribusinesses. The suppliers of the services performed for these customers are taxpayers, for it’s the taxpayers who possess the ultimate asset — money — that farmers and agribusinesses lust after. And the intermediaries who oblige the suppliers to satisfy the base lusts of the customers are politicians. Just as pimps facilitate their customers’ access to prostitutes’ assets, politicians facilitate their customers’ access to taxpayers’ assets.
We taxpayers have less say in the matter than we like to think. Sure, we can vote. But if even just 50.00001 percent of voters cast their ballots for the candidate proposing higher taxes, the assets of not only our pro-tax citizens, but also those of the remaining 49.00009 percent of us anti-tax citizens are put at the disposal
Ron Paul tells Bloomberg that Congressman Watt has just more or less killed the bill to audit the fed:
Representative Ron Paul, the Texas Republican who has called for an end to the Federal Reserve, said legislation he introduced to audit monetary policy has been “gutted” while moving toward a possible vote in the Democratic-controlled House.
The bill, with 308 co-sponsors, has been stripped of provisions that would remove Fed exemptions from audits of transactions with foreign central banks, monetary policy deliberations, transactions made under the direction of the Federal Open Market Committee and communications between the Board, the reserve banks and staff, Paul said today.
“There’s nothing left, it’s been gutted,” he said in a telephone interview. “This is not a partisan issue. People all over the country want to know what the Fed is up to, and this legislation was supposed to help them do that.”..
Paul, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, said Mel Watt, a Democrat from North Carolina, has eliminated “just about everything” while preparing the legislation for formal consideration. Watt is chairman of the panel’s domestic monetary policy and technology subcommittee.
Contact Congressman Watt and tell him what you think.
So yes, they have certainly sold their goods to the highest bidders.
Indeed, at least some people trust prostitutesmorethan elected officials.
But the prostitution analogy is inaccurate.
Specifically, as the chairman of the Department of Economics at George Mason University (Donald J. Boudreaux) points out:
Real whores, after all, personally supply the services their customers seek. Prostitutes do not steal; their customers pay them voluntarily. And their customers pay only with money belonging to these customers.
In contrast, members of Congress routinely truck and barter with other people’s property…
Members of Congress are less like whores than they are like pimps for persons unwillingly conscripted to perform unpleasant services.
Consider, for example, agricultural subsidies. Each year a handful of farmers and agribusinesses receive billions of taxpayer dollars. These are dollars that government forcibly takes from the pockets of taxpayers and then transfers to farmers.
The customers, in this case, are the farmers and agribusinesses. The suppliers of
the services performed for these customers are taxpayers, for it’s the taxpayers who possess the ultimate asset — money — that farmers and agribusinesses lust after. And the intermediaries who oblige the suppliers to satisfy the base lusts of the customers are politicians. Just as pimps facilitate their customers’ access to prostitutes’ assets, politicians facilitate their customers’ access to taxpayers’ assets.
We taxpayers have less say in the matter than we like to think. Sure, we can vote. But if even just 50.00001 percent of voters cast their ballots for the candidate proposing higher taxes, the assets of not only our pro-tax citizens, but also those of the remaining 49.00009 percent of us anti-tax citizens are put at the disposal of our pimps’ customers. (And note that many of those who vote for higher taxes are not among
Eric writes about the Obama administration’s entry to the clean energy sector. For more about Eric, intellectual property, and the law, click here to read our interview. For additional thoughts by Eric on everything, visit his blog.) – Ilene
The Obama administration launched a clean-energy blitz Tuesday, with President Barack Obama sweeping into this Central Florida hamlet to unveil $3.4 billion in stimulus grants for advanced electricity-grid projects
This PR parade relies on the idea that this administration, if not Obama himself, gets into details, and chooses the right cutting edge technologies and methods. Look at Obama above, with his sleeves rolled up, giving pointers to an appreciative bunch of field managers (perhaps the NEA can get to work on some Soviet Realism in this context). In this case, Obama merely has to allocate some of our money to a select list of projects that are aligned with the buzzwords ‘clean energy’, and we get the increasing returns to scale that Paul Krugman won his Nobel Prize for (too bad Ann Krueger didn’t win a Nobel for showing the same ‘infant industry’ argument has been a pretext to protect inefficient industries for over 200 years).
It never occured to any of these guys that there aren’t any magic solutions to our energy problem. They act as if we only tried to develop batteries, we could have ten times the power. See this video from Zocalo, and at the end of the critical discussion about the oil industry an audience member earnestly asks: "can’t we develop energy out of water?" as if the only reason we use oil is because the Rich Uncle Pennybags character from the Monopoly Game is not letting us. The electric car predates the internal combustion engine. My laptop and cell phone routinely run out of energy, highlighting the high reward waiting for the next battery innovation. There has been and continues to be research, and incentives, to increase the efficiencies of batteries.
Obama hates being compared to socialists, so I’ll refrain and compare him to a communist. In the state published hagiography, Divine Stories About the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Il is presented as someone excellent at golf, pistol shooting, technology,
Improvement in first time unemployment claims is slowing. Actual, not seasonally manipulated data, including an adjustment for the usual weekly upward revision, shows that the year to year rate of change is on the cusp of a possible upside breakout, which would be good news for stock market bears if it happens.
Initial Unemployment Claims Chart- Click to enlarge
Here’s why it’s mind blowing. I’ve plotted it below on an inverse scale with the S&P 500 overlaid.
Unemployemt Claims and Stock Prices - Click to enlarge
Major US Markets including (NYSEARCA:DIA), (NYSEARCA:SPY), (NASDAQ:QQQ), and (NYSEARCA:IWM) dropped over 3% each on Italian bond fears and an increased worry that Europe will not be able to bail out its 4th largest economy. Furthermore, the iShares MCSI Italy Fund (NYSEARCA:EWI) wiped out over 9% today, further illustrating the dire situation in Italy and the European Union: ...
The second economic disappointment of the day comes from the Dallas Fed, which dropped from -2.0 to -11.4 on expectations of -9.0- this was the 4th consecutive negative print month. The report was, in a word, horrible, with just 2 of the 15 constituent indices posting an increase, and the bulk solidly in the red, led by Unfilled and New Orders which dropped 16.8 and 11.2, respectively: not good for economic growth. On the employment side there was nothing good either, with both employment and hours worked declining by -...
Bloomberg reports that Diana Containerships (NASDAQ: DCIX) files to offer stock up to $172.5M. Diana Containerships says that Diana shipping will also buy $20M of stock.
Top 5 RisersStockRatingAnalysisVLOSTRONGBUYAn increasingly positive growth rate of past earnings, along with improving expectations for long term growth, make Valero a good prospect for high returns.KROSTRONGBUYKronos Worldwide has been gaining recognition from analysts as a good canditate for achieving higher than expected earnings along with higher overall projected valuation.SFIBUYiStar is one of the top candidates projected to achieve both higher than previously projected earnings in the short run and a higher earnings growth rate in the long run.AMATSTRONGBUYApplied Materials has been...
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February is now past, and the Biotech Porfolio is loaded with winners and a miss (PLX). MRK is down a bit, but I expect that trade to recover, and one could be more agressive and double down on it, or play another round at the Jan13 $30 options for roughly the same price. Below is the summary, and note the grey boxes are ones that did not fill. I am still a fan of BMRN, and like DEPO as well. Now let's look at a few others.
Table 1. PSW Biotech Plays Since January 2011
 
Our newest play is Momenta Pharmaceuticals (MNTA), who is pursuing a three-part business model which includes complex generic equivalents in partnership with the Sandoz division of Novartis, proprietary compounds, and follow-on- biologics (FOB). It seems that this company is tied up in competition/litigation wit...
Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(