[ucodegen]

I’m beyond disturbed when my country violates international law, i.e. the Geneva convention and can somehow justify our actions.

It is interesting on how many people don’t read the Geneva convention and then accuse people of violating it. First and foremost, the Geneva convention is written to protect the citizens within the country where the battle is taking place. The protection afforded to the fighting forces is secondary. Parts of the Geneva convention relating to protections for the fighting force are bilateral, not unilateral. For example, we have fighting force ‘A’ and ‘B’. If fighting force ‘A’ violates the Geneva convention, than fighting force ‘B’ is no longer bound by it. This is what gives the Geneva convention some of its ‘teeth’.

The Geneva convention has prohibition on explicitly targeting civilians.. whuups.. that is exactly what Al Qaeda has done– multiple times. (Twin Towers and their own people in Afghanistan who disagree with them.. local tribal leaders.)

The Geneva convention prohibits use of civilian shields.. whuups again.

The Geneva convention prohibits fighting forces from concealing themselves with civilian garb (this is to allow the opposing force to discriminate them from civilians and not accidentally hit a civilian).. whuups again.

The Geneva convention prohibits either fighting force from forcing the civilians to conceal or protect them.. whuups again.

This is why, during the whole Al Qaeda and IRAQ scenario, the UN and NATO has been quiet. The Geneva convention is written primarily to protect the civilians.. not the fighting forces, from abuse. It is written because of what Hitler and his forces did to their own civilians.. including forced conscription of children (also against the Geneva convention) into a fighting force.

[ucodegen]

I’m beyond disturbed when my country violates international law, i.e. the Geneva convention and can somehow justify our actions.

It is interesting on how many people don’t read the Geneva convention and then accuse people of violating it. First and foremost, the Geneva convention is written to protect the citizens within the country where the battle is taking place. The protection afforded to the fighting forces is secondary. Parts of the Geneva convention relating to protections for the fighting force are bilateral, not unilateral. For example, we have fighting force ‘A’ and ‘B’. If fighting force ‘A’ violates the Geneva convention, than fighting force ‘B’ is no longer bound by it. This is what gives the Geneva convention some of its ‘teeth’.

The Geneva convention has prohibition on explicitly targeting civilians.. whuups.. that is exactly what Al Qaeda has done– multiple times. (Twin Towers and their own people in Afghanistan who disagree with them.. local tribal leaders.)

The Geneva convention prohibits use of civilian shields.. whuups again.

The Geneva convention prohibits fighting forces from concealing themselves with civilian garb (this is to allow the opposing force to discriminate them from civilians and not accidentally hit a civilian).. whuups again.

The Geneva convention prohibits either fighting force from forcing the civilians to conceal or protect them.. whuups again.

This is why, during the whole Al Qaeda and IRAQ scenario, the UN and NATO has been quiet. The Geneva convention is written primarily to protect the civilians.. not the fighting forces, from abuse. It is written because of what Hitler and his forces did to their own civilians.. including forced conscription of children (also against the Geneva convention) into a fighting force.

[ucodegen]

I’m beyond disturbed when my country violates international law, i.e. the Geneva convention and can somehow justify our actions.

It is interesting on how many people don’t read the Geneva convention and then accuse people of violating it. First and foremost, the Geneva convention is written to protect the citizens within the country where the battle is taking place. The protection afforded to the fighting forces is secondary. Parts of the Geneva convention relating to protections for the fighting force are bilateral, not unilateral. For example, we have fighting force ‘A’ and ‘B’. If fighting force ‘A’ violates the Geneva convention, than fighting force ‘B’ is no longer bound by it. This is what gives the Geneva convention some of its ‘teeth’.

The Geneva convention has prohibition on explicitly targeting civilians.. whuups.. that is exactly what Al Qaeda has done– multiple times. (Twin Towers and their own people in Afghanistan who disagree with them.. local tribal leaders.)

The Geneva convention prohibits use of civilian shields.. whuups again.

The Geneva convention prohibits fighting forces from concealing themselves with civilian garb (this is to allow the opposing force to discriminate them from civilians and not accidentally hit a civilian).. whuups again.

The Geneva convention prohibits either fighting force from forcing the civilians to conceal or protect them.. whuups again.

This is why, during the whole Al Qaeda and IRAQ scenario, the UN and NATO has been quiet. The Geneva convention is written primarily to protect the civilians.. not the fighting forces, from abuse. It is written because of what Hitler and his forces did to their own civilians.. including forced conscription of children (also against the Geneva convention) into a fighting force.

[ucodegen]

I am hearing people stating that the RE market is ‘on fire’ right now, but I just don’t see that. I know my sample size is comparatively small. An example is a house near me. It is off over 30% from market price.. many lookers, no offers.

As for inflation. Inflation involves more than just M0 (currency). You really want to look at M3 + value of leverage-able assets (ie. RE). We just took a huge hit in the price of homes (shutting down the home ATM). The drop in dollar valuation of near-liquid and liquid assets is highly deflationary. The current ‘printing’ going on is offsetting some of the loss at M3.. but not all.

Here is another factoid. Many people think that the TARP funds are a give away. Take a look at the earnings report from BofA. They just paid the gov $402Mil of interest on the $45B of TARP funds it received. I don’t think my calcs are wrong.. It comes out to something near a 3.6% interest rate. That is definitely not free money, thought it is cheap. Interesting point is that it is costing the fed about 2.5% or less in terms of paying out on the treasury bills were sold to get the TARP money.

[ucodegen]

I am hearing people stating that the RE market is ‘on fire’ right now, but I just don’t see that. I know my sample size is comparatively small. An example is a house near me. It is off over 30% from market price.. many lookers, no offers.

As for inflation. Inflation involves more than just M0 (currency). You really want to look at M3 + value of leverage-able assets (ie. RE). We just took a huge hit in the price of homes (shutting down the home ATM). The drop in dollar valuation of near-liquid and liquid assets is highly deflationary. The current ‘printing’ going on is offsetting some of the loss at M3.. but not all.

Here is another factoid. Many people think that the TARP funds are a give away. Take a look at the earnings report from BofA. They just paid the gov $402Mil of interest on the $45B of TARP funds it received. I don’t think my calcs are wrong.. It comes out to something near a 3.6% interest rate. That is definitely not free money, thought it is cheap. Interesting point is that it is costing the fed about 2.5% or less in terms of paying out on the treasury bills were sold to get the TARP money.

[ucodegen]

I am hearing people stating that the RE market is ‘on fire’ right now, but I just don’t see that. I know my sample size is comparatively small. An example is a house near me. It is off over 30% from market price.. many lookers, no offers.

As for inflation. Inflation involves more than just M0 (currency). You really want to look at M3 + value of leverage-able assets (ie. RE). We just took a huge hit in the price of homes (shutting down the home ATM). The drop in dollar valuation of near-liquid and liquid assets is highly deflationary. The current ‘printing’ going on is offsetting some of the loss at M3.. but not all.

Here is another factoid. Many people think that the TARP funds are a give away. Take a look at the earnings report from BofA. They just paid the gov $402Mil of interest on the $45B of TARP funds it received. I don’t think my calcs are wrong.. It comes out to something near a 3.6% interest rate. That is definitely not free money, thought it is cheap. Interesting point is that it is costing the fed about 2.5% or less in terms of paying out on the treasury bills were sold to get the TARP money.

[ucodegen]

I am hearing people stating that the RE market is ‘on fire’ right now, but I just don’t see that. I know my sample size is comparatively small. An example is a house near me. It is off over 30% from market price.. many lookers, no offers.

As for inflation. Inflation involves more than just M0 (currency). You really want to look at M3 + value of leverage-able assets (ie. RE). We just took a huge hit in the price of homes (shutting down the home ATM). The drop in dollar valuation of near-liquid and liquid assets is highly deflationary. The current ‘printing’ going on is offsetting some of the loss at M3.. but not all.

Here is another factoid. Many people think that the TARP funds are a give away. Take a look at the earnings report from BofA. They just paid the gov $402Mil of interest on the $45B of TARP funds it received. I don’t think my calcs are wrong.. It comes out to something near a 3.6% interest rate. That is definitely not free money, thought it is cheap. Interesting point is that it is costing the fed about 2.5% or less in terms of paying out on the treasury bills were sold to get the TARP money.

[ucodegen]

I am hearing people stating that the RE market is ‘on fire’ right now, but I just don’t see that. I know my sample size is comparatively small. An example is a house near me. It is off over 30% from market price.. many lookers, no offers.

As for inflation. Inflation involves more than just M0 (currency). You really want to look at M3 + value of leverage-able assets (ie. RE). We just took a huge hit in the price of homes (shutting down the home ATM). The drop in dollar valuation of near-liquid and liquid assets is highly deflationary. The current ‘printing’ going on is offsetting some of the loss at M3.. but not all.

Here is another factoid. Many people think that the TARP funds are a give away. Take a look at the earnings report from BofA. They just paid the gov $402Mil of interest on the $45B of TARP funds it received. I don’t think my calcs are wrong.. It comes out to something near a 3.6% interest rate. That is definitely not free money, thought it is cheap. Interesting point is that it is costing the fed about 2.5% or less in terms of paying out on the treasury bills were sold to get the TARP money.

[ucodegen]

There are plenty of examples to the contrary:

* S&L Deregulation: Led to S&L crisis
* Deregulation of the electrical power industry:led to Enron and the now familiar “rolling blackouts”
* Repeal of The Glass-Steagall Act: Big contributor to the current mess

On one of these, I know a bit.. and your statement is inaccurate. This is the deregulation of the electrical power industry. We are still under the state of deregulation on power generation, and no rolling blackouts.., so what happened? The truth is not that the deregulation caused the problem, it is how the deregulation was done that gives a case study in governmental stupidity (and voters not reading what they were voting for – ie the text of the bill).

The electrical power deregulation bill had two wierd quirks written into it.
1) Electricity was to be bought on spot market on day – to – day contracts.
2) Electrical cost was to be determined by combination of cost of last generator on line and spot market price.

The authors of the bill thought that the spot market price would be best representative of the price. Nothing could be further from the truth. Spot markets are the most manipulated markets around, but they average out in the long term to what the value of power really is (Eventually the speculator has to sell what they bought – they are not holding for consumption). Take down a power generator and the spot prices shoot up. Long term contracts with power generators were explicitly forbidden by the deregulation bill. The way a long term contract work is by stating a delivery of ‘X’ megawatt-hours per hour over a period of ‘Y’ days-months-years for ‘Z’ dollars per megawatt-hour with a must deliver clause. The power generator would have to go out on the spot market to find the remaining power should they be unable to deliver the contracted amount. The power generator would have to absorb the difference in the contract price and the spot price. This forces power generators to keep their cheapest generators running full-out on line as much as possibly and keeping the most expensive ones on standby. Pulling a generator offline as an ’emergency repair’ would cost the power generators because they would be bound by a long term contract and would have to find replacement power through either the spot market or their higher cost generators that were on standby.

The second clause in the deregulation bill allowed power generators to successively add cheap power generators as demand built up.. then at the last moment, add a very inefficient power generator. The way the bill was worded, the cost of the power would be considered as the cost of the last generated added.. for all of the units, even the cheaper ones. The authors of the deregulation bill assumed that power providers would not try to ‘game’ the bill and will add the cheapest power generators to the grid as demand increased.

Where Ex-Gov. Davis screwed up is when he tried to get around the spot market price restriction by having the state buy from the power generators and then sell to the grid using longer term contracts. He bought long ‘multi-year’ contracts for all the power needed during the time when the spot market prices had been manipulated up (bought the house at the peak of the market). He should have bought a mix of 1 week, 1 month, 6 month etc power contracts with mandatory delivery requirements. The longer contracts would stop the manipulation of the spot market, allowing the long term prices to also drop (long term tends to act like an EMA of the spot market), while avoiding a lock-in at the higher price. Ex-Gov Davis could then fill in the long term power purchases after the market stabilized. — wonder why California’s budget is so screwed up even though we have had record property tax and property sales tax revenue??.. take a guess.

[ucodegen]

There are plenty of examples to the contrary:

* S&L Deregulation: Led to S&L crisis
* Deregulation of the electrical power industry:led to Enron and the now familiar “rolling blackouts”
* Repeal of The Glass-Steagall Act: Big contributor to the current mess

On one of these, I know a bit.. and your statement is inaccurate. This is the deregulation of the electrical power industry. We are still under the state of deregulation on power generation, and no rolling blackouts.., so what happened? The truth is not that the deregulation caused the problem, it is how the deregulation was done that gives a case study in governmental stupidity (and voters not reading what they were voting for – ie the text of the bill).

The electrical power deregulation bill had two wierd quirks written into it.
1) Electricity was to be bought on spot market on day – to – day contracts.
2) Electrical cost was to be determined by combination of cost of last generator on line and spot market price.

The authors of the bill thought that the spot market price would be best representative of the price. Nothing could be further from the truth. Spot markets are the most manipulated markets around, but they average out in the long term to what the value of power really is (Eventually the speculator has to sell what they bought – they are not holding for consumption). Take down a power generator and the spot prices shoot up. Long term contracts with power generators were explicitly forbidden by the deregulation bill. The way a long term contract work is by stating a delivery of ‘X’ megawatt-hours per hour over a period of ‘Y’ days-months-years for ‘Z’ dollars per megawatt-hour with a must deliver clause. The power generator would have to go out on the spot market to find the remaining power should they be unable to deliver the contracted amount. The power generator would have to absorb the difference in the contract price and the spot price. This forces power generators to keep their cheapest generators running full-out on line as much as possibly and keeping the most expensive ones on standby. Pulling a generator offline as an ’emergency repair’ would cost the power generators because they would be bound by a long term contract and would have to find replacement power through either the spot market or their higher cost generators that were on standby.

The second clause in the deregulation bill allowed power generators to successively add cheap power generators as demand built up.. then at the last moment, add a very inefficient power generator. The way the bill was worded, the cost of the power would be considered as the cost of the last generated added.. for all of the units, even the cheaper ones. The authors of the deregulation bill assumed that power providers would not try to ‘game’ the bill and will add the cheapest power generators to the grid as demand increased.

Where Ex-Gov. Davis screwed up is when he tried to get around the spot market price restriction by having the state buy from the power generators and then sell to the grid using longer term contracts. He bought long ‘multi-year’ contracts for all the power needed during the time when the spot market prices had been manipulated up (bought the house at the peak of the market). He should have bought a mix of 1 week, 1 month, 6 month etc power contracts with mandatory delivery requirements. The longer contracts would stop the manipulation of the spot market, allowing the long term prices to also drop (long term tends to act like an EMA of the spot market), while avoiding a lock-in at the higher price. Ex-Gov Davis could then fill in the long term power purchases after the market stabilized. — wonder why California’s budget is so screwed up even though we have had record property tax and property sales tax revenue??.. take a guess.

[ucodegen]

There are plenty of examples to the contrary:

* S&L Deregulation: Led to S&L crisis
* Deregulation of the electrical power industry:led to Enron and the now familiar “rolling blackouts”
* Repeal of The Glass-Steagall Act: Big contributor to the current mess

On one of these, I know a bit.. and your statement is inaccurate. This is the deregulation of the electrical power industry. We are still under the state of deregulation on power generation, and no rolling blackouts.., so what happened? The truth is not that the deregulation caused the problem, it is how the deregulation was done that gives a case study in governmental stupidity (and voters not reading what they were voting for – ie the text of the bill).

The electrical power deregulation bill had two wierd quirks written into it.
1) Electricity was to be bought on spot market on day – to – day contracts.
2) Electrical cost was to be determined by combination of cost of last generator on line and spot market price.

The authors of the bill thought that the spot market price would be best representative of the price. Nothing could be further from the truth. Spot markets are the most manipulated markets around, but they average out in the long term to what the value of power really is (Eventually the speculator has to sell what they bought – they are not holding for consumption). Take down a power generator and the spot prices shoot up. Long term contracts with power generators were explicitly forbidden by the deregulation bill. The way a long term contract work is by stating a delivery of ‘X’ megawatt-hours per hour over a period of ‘Y’ days-months-years for ‘Z’ dollars per megawatt-hour with a must deliver clause. The power generator would have to go out on the spot market to find the remaining power should they be unable to deliver the contracted amount. The power generator would have to absorb the difference in the contract price and the spot price. This forces power generators to keep their cheapest generators running full-out on line as much as possibly and keeping the most expensive ones on standby. Pulling a generator offline as an ’emergency repair’ would cost the power generators because they would be bound by a long term contract and would have to find replacement power through either the spot market or their higher cost generators that were on standby.

The second clause in the deregulation bill allowed power generators to successively add cheap power generators as demand built up.. then at the last moment, add a very inefficient power generator. The way the bill was worded, the cost of the power would be considered as the cost of the last generated added.. for all of the units, even the cheaper ones. The authors of the deregulation bill assumed that power providers would not try to ‘game’ the bill and will add the cheapest power generators to the grid as demand increased.

Where Ex-Gov. Davis screwed up is when he tried to get around the spot market price restriction by having the state buy from the power generators and then sell to the grid using longer term contracts. He bought long ‘multi-year’ contracts for all the power needed during the time when the spot market prices had been manipulated up (bought the house at the peak of the market). He should have bought a mix of 1 week, 1 month, 6 month etc power contracts with mandatory delivery requirements. The longer contracts would stop the manipulation of the spot market, allowing the long term prices to also drop (long term tends to act like an EMA of the spot market), while avoiding a lock-in at the higher price. Ex-Gov Davis could then fill in the long term power purchases after the market stabilized. — wonder why California’s budget is so screwed up even though we have had record property tax and property sales tax revenue??.. take a guess.

[ucodegen]

There are plenty of examples to the contrary:

* S&L Deregulation: Led to S&L crisis
* Deregulation of the electrical power industry:led to Enron and the now familiar “rolling blackouts”
* Repeal of The Glass-Steagall Act: Big contributor to the current mess

On one of these, I know a bit.. and your statement is inaccurate. This is the deregulation of the electrical power industry. We are still under the state of deregulation on power generation, and no rolling blackouts.., so what happened? The truth is not that the deregulation caused the problem, it is how the deregulation was done that gives a case study in governmental stupidity (and voters not reading what they were voting for – ie the text of the bill).

The electrical power deregulation bill had two wierd quirks written into it.
1) Electricity was to be bought on spot market on day – to – day contracts.
2) Electrical cost was to be determined by combination of cost of last generator on line and spot market price.

The authors of the bill thought that the spot market price would be best representative of the price. Nothing could be further from the truth. Spot markets are the most manipulated markets around, but they average out in the long term to what the value of power really is (Eventually the speculator has to sell what they bought – they are not holding for consumption). Take down a power generator and the spot prices shoot up. Long term contracts with power generators were explicitly forbidden by the deregulation bill. The way a long term contract work is by stating a delivery of ‘X’ megawatt-hours per hour over a period of ‘Y’ days-months-years for ‘Z’ dollars per megawatt-hour with a must deliver clause. The power generator would have to go out on the spot market to find the remaining power should they be unable to deliver the contracted amount. The power generator would have to absorb the difference in the contract price and the spot price. This forces power generators to keep their cheapest generators running full-out on line as much as possibly and keeping the most expensive ones on standby. Pulling a generator offline as an ’emergency repair’ would cost the power generators because they would be bound by a long term contract and would have to find replacement power through either the spot market or their higher cost generators that were on standby.

The second clause in the deregulation bill allowed power generators to successively add cheap power generators as demand built up.. then at the last moment, add a very inefficient power generator. The way the bill was worded, the cost of the power would be considered as the cost of the last generated added.. for all of the units, even the cheaper ones. The authors of the deregulation bill assumed that power providers would not try to ‘game’ the bill and will add the cheapest power generators to the grid as demand increased.

Where Ex-Gov. Davis screwed up is when he tried to get around the spot market price restriction by having the state buy from the power generators and then sell to the grid using longer term contracts. He bought long ‘multi-year’ contracts for all the power needed during the time when the spot market prices had been manipulated up (bought the house at the peak of the market). He should have bought a mix of 1 week, 1 month, 6 month etc power contracts with mandatory delivery requirements. The longer contracts would stop the manipulation of the spot market, allowing the long term prices to also drop (long term tends to act like an EMA of the spot market), while avoiding a lock-in at the higher price. Ex-Gov Davis could then fill in the long term power purchases after the market stabilized. — wonder why California’s budget is so screwed up even though we have had record property tax and property sales tax revenue??.. take a guess.

[ucodegen]

There are plenty of examples to the contrary:

* S&L Deregulation: Led to S&L crisis
* Deregulation of the electrical power industry:led to Enron and the now familiar “rolling blackouts”
* Repeal of The Glass-Steagall Act: Big contributor to the current mess

On one of these, I know a bit.. and your statement is inaccurate. This is the deregulation of the electrical power industry. We are still under the state of deregulation on power generation, and no rolling blackouts.., so what happened? The truth is not that the deregulation caused the problem, it is how the deregulation was done that gives a case study in governmental stupidity (and voters not reading what they were voting for – ie the text of the bill).

The electrical power deregulation bill had two wierd quirks written into it.
1) Electricity was to be bought on spot market on day – to – day contracts.
2) Electrical cost was to be determined by combination of cost of last generator on line and spot market price.

The authors of the bill thought that the spot market price would be best representative of the price. Nothing could be further from the truth. Spot markets are the most manipulated markets around, but they average out in the long term to what the value of power really is (Eventually the speculator has to sell what they bought – they are not holding for consumption). Take down a power generator and the spot prices shoot up. Long term contracts with power generators were explicitly forbidden by the deregulation bill. The way a long term contract work is by stating a delivery of ‘X’ megawatt-hours per hour over a period of ‘Y’ days-months-years for ‘Z’ dollars per megawatt-hour with a must deliver clause. The power generator would have to go out on the spot market to find the remaining power should they be unable to deliver the contracted amount. The power generator would have to absorb the difference in the contract price and the spot price. This forces power generators to keep their cheapest generators running full-out on line as much as possibly and keeping the most expensive ones on standby. Pulling a generator offline as an ’emergency repair’ would cost the power generators because they would be bound by a long term contract and would have to find replacement power through either the spot market or their higher cost generators that were on standby.

The second clause in the deregulation bill allowed power generators to successively add cheap power generators as demand built up.. then at the last moment, add a very inefficient power generator. The way the bill was worded, the cost of the power would be considered as the cost of the last generated added.. for all of the units, even the cheaper ones. The authors of the deregulation bill assumed that power providers would not try to ‘game’ the bill and will add the cheapest power generators to the grid as demand increased.

Where Ex-Gov. Davis screwed up is when he tried to get around the spot market price restriction by having the state buy from the power generators and then sell to the grid using longer term contracts. He bought long ‘multi-year’ contracts for all the power needed during the time when the spot market prices had been manipulated up (bought the house at the peak of the market). He should have bought a mix of 1 week, 1 month, 6 month etc power contracts with mandatory delivery requirements. The longer contracts would stop the manipulation of the spot market, allowing the long term prices to also drop (long term tends to act like an EMA of the spot market), while avoiding a lock-in at the higher price. Ex-Gov Davis could then fill in the long term power purchases after the market stabilized. — wonder why California’s budget is so screwed up even though we have had record property tax and property sales tax revenue??.. take a guess.

[ucodegen]

@paramount

“A Ford Expedition SUV often flips when one of its tires looses it tread or rapidly decompresses, much less getting into an accident.”

And yet if you look at the overall death rates of an Expedition it is lower than average.

And you have just demonstrated that you can take a quote out of context, as well as miss the point I was making… The point I was making was that a vehicle flipping is not all that dangerous, particularly if the occupants remain strapped in (seat belted to begin with). The biggest problem is when the passenger compartment is intruded upon in the crash. The only microcar that I would consider driving is the Mercedes Smartcar because the passenger compartment remained intact after the collision.

[ucodegen]

@paramount

“A Ford Expedition SUV often flips when one of its tires looses it tread or rapidly decompresses, much less getting into an accident.”

And yet if you look at the overall death rates of an Expedition it is lower than average.

And you have just demonstrated that you can take a quote out of context, as well as miss the point I was making… The point I was making was that a vehicle flipping is not all that dangerous, particularly if the occupants remain strapped in (seat belted to begin with). The biggest problem is when the passenger compartment is intruded upon in the crash. The only microcar that I would consider driving is the Mercedes Smartcar because the passenger compartment remained intact after the collision.

[Author]

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