Bookraft

Good and True History is important so that past mistakes are not repeated - or false excuses for what was done are exposed. Good history is very important in the case of the financial meltdown of 2007-2009. Hopefully it does not linger or outbreak with greater virulence in 2010 to 2012

So with that in mind here are 5 recommendations on what happened and who-dunnit in the Great Financial Meltdown:
Paul Krugman - NYTimes blog - The Irish Mirror. Small piece casts light on how the mortgage flu bug afflicted Ireland even though the Irish did not have some of the key US symptoms.
Andrew Sorkin - 539 page book - Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System---and Themselves. The book's title says it all and even as a reporter at the NYTimes, the access to key players and events is astonishing. Good chronology, but low analysis.
John Cassidy - 400 page book - How Markets Fail : The Logic of Economic Calamities- is a step above the Justin Fox book on the Myth of Rational Markets because it has a broader viewpoint on the economic factors shaping markets - not just financial markets.
Bailout Nation - 400 page book - Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy documents in clear terms some of the key political and economic trends that produced the Financial Meltdown.
Charles Morris -260 page book - The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash describes easy money, high rollers and how they produced the great credit crash. But even better, the book came out before Bears Stearns collapse and then Lehman Brothers followed by $700Billion and counting bailout. In effect, US had an early warning much like the ignored signals at Pearl Harbor or "unconnectable dots of " 9/11.

The key point in all these books is that a)financial markets simply were not even close to working perfectly and efficiently as the Chicago School described and counted on so that the next stopper, b)financial regulators and statutory controls, which had been largely disarmed/disbanded, were not available to effectively control the excesses which generated the bubble and ensuing collapse and c)the top banksters were only too happy to take advantage of Taxpayer-funded Moral Hazard Insurance because through a series of incidents from Resolution Trust, the CMO intercessions to Long Capital Management, through 3 Greenspan lowering of interest rates in the 2000's - they had seen the Federal Reserve act to preserve US Financial markets - and not let the markets be "efficient and clearing" by themselves.
So now as basic Financial Reform is delayed and is being stewed and depleted by very powerful financial lobbies, the question of how soon and how long the US and World economies get to be immunized against a repeat virulent financial bubble is still in the air. To help deflect the financial lobbyists it is important to understand how badly distorted financial markets were and still are.

What made this book a delight for me were two things. First, there is the simple fact that I had never read any of Dorothy

Whats was this? Here at the Port Hope Library - a bastion of good reading and literary standing. Jane Austen for Dummies???!! Tell me this is a mistake. Or maybe a bit of Bob Newhart-like absurdist humor.

Could it be the library is catering to the Coles Notes or illicit "thesis paper" trade ? Trinity College School [undoubtedly a stalwart source of Austen-philes]is just up near Croft Street and might be the source of a few all-nighter needs. Perhaps there might be a Trinitian or two needing some insight into Pride and Prejudice or just a little Persuasion.

I could not ignore the book. It was right in the stacks, right smack in front of my face. And I had just praised Jane to a friend and now ... but no Dummies for me. Really what could one expect from a book craving to serve the at-best curious and more likely the simply vacuous and clueless? Besides, hadn't Jane already proved more than enough times that we are all uncivil enough [currently the US Congress seems to have a corner on the contemporary Uncivil Market], so just let it be.

Well I had to at least - horrors - confirm the worst and be done with it. So with great discretion worthy of Captain Wentworth I furtively picked up J.A. for Dummies. I was embarrassed to see it was by Joan Klingel Ray, PhD an obvious catering to the Coles Notes set. And the cover - here was an image of an eighteenth century English gala party with women dressed to the nines, men in great boots, uniforms, and frock coats. But the rouge! Such an excess of rouge make all the party goers look badly overdone.

Oops - whats this here. A colleague come to visit with me. Better cover-up J.A. for D. right away. There will be no end of ribbing and trouble if Cory discovers that I am a J.A. fan. We discuss the hockey playoffs and the Olympics and agree that US and Germany had done remarkably well. Oh, the hockey had gone well and Canada at least Owned the Golden Podium . Cory seems to want to find out what I am reading. So I casually toss J.A. for D. with a book Fables on top over by the Please Do Not Reshelve Books sign and complain that the library is a mess since they instituted this policy.

A few minutes later I quickly pickup J.A. for D. and right away discover the incriminating evidence on pages 2 and 3 no less. Cheat Sheets! Well there you go. Now wait a second, describing Darcy of Pride and Prejudice as the extremely wealthy hero is hardly satisfactory. What is this Joan Klingel Ray trying to do?

Okay a simple glance at the table of contents is all I need to make this a shut and closed case for pandering to the eager-to-remain-uneducated masses. Hmmmmm.
Getting to Know Jane Austen, Lady and Novelist
Austen Observes Ladies and Gentlemen
Living Life in Janes World
Enjoying Austen and Her Influence Today
Now whats this? - a section on Playing the Dating game, Courtship, Austen Style. I'll just glance into this. Well I'll be darned I did not know that ... well just a small matter. Okay whats this then - Following Religion and Morality for Jane Austen and Her Times. How could that be much different than contemporary circumstances. Maybe a bit more important then. I'll just peruse this quickly.

Well by the time I come to Marrying, a Serious Business for Jane and Her Characters it finally dons on me - I have a problem. I will have to figure some way of checking out this book without attracting too much attention. Maybe I should try "I am getting it for my friends daughter who is reading Persuasion for her English class. Not to worry, the Port Hope Librarians are Discretion at its Best.

The Vancouver Winter Olympic Games have been a delight despite the warm weather; and NBC is probably the most delighted. And the coverage in the Press around the world has been a lot more than aided by the relatively even distribution of medals. What really surprised was the mixed coverage and usage of social media such as Twitter, Facebook and various blogging commentaries and forums. However, on the use of media such as video, graphics, and image slideshows the world media showed off mixed competence.

A perusal of various websites covering the games found a lot of media coverage and even some how-to articles available going beyond the immediate results and describing the challenges of various Game events. Anybody interested in finding out how and why and maybe some of the physics and science behind an event had a wealth of articles to choose from. Here is our ranking of the top five Winter Olympic Pages for their use of Web media.

5th Place - Google Earth 3D Map of the Games

Use of Google Earth and its special viewing files of the Olympic venues requires a free download of the Google Earth program if users don't already have it downloaded. But Google Earth [and Google Mars for that matter] are well worth the while because they give such wonderful views of places and cities throughout the World. And Google has pulled out the stops for a great look see at Vancouver, the games sites, and the great BC countryside.

4th Place - HowStuffWorks How the Luge Works

HowStuffWorks is a website devoted to explaining how things work with pictures and explanations. This coverage of the Luge Event is typically thorough [although the map of the Whistler Luge Track is strangely missing given that maps of the luge runs in Torino 2006 and Salt Lake City 2002 tracks are shown]. After reading this article I have a much better feel for the equipment, speed and danger of luge racing.

3rd Place Bronze - NBC/NSF Science of the Winter Olympics

The NSF-National Science Foundation worked with NBC to put out a 16 part series of videos describing the science of some of the more popular Olympic events. What is novel is that they look not just at the physics but also the biochemistry and fluid dynamics that turn out to be crucial for the many different sports. These are wonderful learning exercises that I wish I would have had for my Science classes in grade or junior high school. Not only are they very instructive but also they are very motivational. Imagine seeing a sport up close and then getting the basic science behind the event. What a motivator for understanding and/or participation. The illustration at times is uneven, but the overall quality is high.

2nd Place Silver - NYTimes Tie - Inside the Action and Interactive Action

The New York Times has set a standard for coverage of the Games that just blows away the competition for savvy use of graphics, video and blogs. They are consistently a level above the sports media - using video window in video, graphics, direct illustration on video and competitor's own dubbed commentary to add great insights into the intricacies of the sports. I looked at a number of sites including TheStar, GlobeandMail, ESPN, CTVOlympics, NBCOlympics, BBC/Sports, LeMonde/Sports, LATimes, DerSpeigel, among others - and none offered the range of sports or the insights of the written and video coverage that could match the NYTimes.

1st Place Gold - NYTimes - Fractions of a Second: An Olympic Musical

Edward Tufte who is to communication graphics as Josef Albers is to Color Theory or J.K.Rowling is to childhood fiction - I suspect Tufte would give his seal approval to this musical graphic that shows in sing song tunes how close the finishes were in a number of the Olympic events [you must visit the site for the benefit of audio playback - its better than a blink of the eye]. The musical tones tell the story in sonorous fashion of just how close the finishes were. This is a gold medal triumph of Web media "illustration" and gives more credence to the NYTimes as the savviest of the old Press Corps in the new Web Media World.

A recurring problem since its invention is that Money does indeed talk. The Supreme Court of the United States just accorded to Money the full Rights of Free Speech. Yet Congressional leaders are constantly saying they are mute to the "talk" of lobbyist's Money and other enticements. Even Niall Ferguson in his Ascent of Money put coin behind property in his assessment of the relative fall of British aristocracy in the nineteenth century. In general, there is an insistence among the highly Moneyed, that Money does not talk ... or at least not nearly effectively as they would expect and/or like.

All the NYTimes All-the-News-Fit-To-Print motto has recently had a test of how loudly Money talks. Here is what Slate has to say about the Issue:

A little more than a year ago, when the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim increased his stake in the New York Times Company (NYT), I wrote "I pity the Times Mexico bureau chief who has to tiptoe through who is and isn't out of favor with the paper's new sugar daddy." Now we have a very clear example of how the Times treats Slim within its pages; it's not pretty, and the journalistic compromise can be seen well beyond Mexico.

For the last several days, bloggers and many business news outlets have been revealing truly astounding details from a court case involving J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM) and two large Mexican telecom companies, one of which is Slim's. Blogger Felix Salmon at Reuters was one of the earliest to cover this at length; his summary of the case gets right to the heart of it.

Now a just concluded search of the NYTimes website only produced the series of links/mentions of the story in the NYTimes seen in the screenshot to the left taken from Feb 25, 2010 TimeTopics section of the NYTimes online edition. It was found in the Time Topics section detailing the background of Carlos Slim Helu, his enormous wealth and his investments in the NYTimes - 6.9% of the common stock and $250 million in debt.

However search of the Internet found a number of blogs covering the story - including Slate which is used above for the quote and Clusterstock among others. The commentary about the susceptibility of the NYTimes caving to the influence of the Money behind it is only matched by the yet another scandalous proof that Wall Street considers Fiduciary Trust for Clients unenforceable contractual nonsense to be safely ignored. Meanwhile, and in contrast, Money talks and in no uncertain terms.

Finally, on a broader scale - given the fiancial plight of many newsmedia, and the frightful state of TV news coverage [think anything but "Fair and balanced" Fox News for starters]; one has to consider that if the NYTimes is vulnerable to Money Talk - what about the even less endowed Press in general. Yes, the Web Blogs do provide an outlet- but say Slate or Huffington Post do not have the familiarity and or prestige of outlets like the Christian Scince Monitor, Newsweek, LATimes, or Business Week - all of which have various readership stresses and therefore funding problems. In an era demanding good decisions to be made, are all options going to be explored or is the Money going to shape all the conversations?

Have you ever wondered what would happen if a Bizzarro cartoon were turned into a story setting? Well then you would have Anhk-Morpork of Discworld as sketched in book 9 of some of the finest comic crafting of the past two decades by Terry Pratchett. This is a return to the Night Watch and its growing cast of Keystone Kopper Konstabulary kharacters. Pratchett has added to anti-hero extraordinaire Captain Vimes some new recruits including Detruitus the slow thinking Troll, Angua the sexy moll-cop with a wolfish history, and Cuddy the Dwarf whose size is no barrier to his brass.

Of course misbegotten crime is unleashed on the Night Watch hatched by a plutocratic monarchist who oxymorons his way through one bizarrely massive murder after another. So this gives Pratchett the opportunity to display the Night Watch's died in the wool sankfreud as it stumbles on toward the resolution of major philosophical questions disguised as running jokester crimes. The satire is tart but delicious, the anti-heroes heroically droll and fair-minded to a fault, and the action always suggesting Fire, Ready, Aim. But in fact the plotline is as ironically taut as the rich and ribald spoonerisms and portmanteaus running rampant in the language. If you like to giggle or laugh out loud or smile silent and knowingly, this is the best comic concoction to be found on a real Terra Gone Terribly Meltdownish Wrong. As Captain Vimes would say "I suppose you could conclude the book is quite good".

PS: The reading by Tony Robinson is nothing short of a virtuoso performance and a magnificent tickle.

Hmmm, a historical novel by Ken Follet, master of modern suspense novels and sketcher of amazing character portraits. The setting is surprising for Follett, 12th century England and the pre-Renaissance building of massive and imposing cathedrals throughout Europe - one of the catalysts along with the Crusades for Europe's embarking on rediscovering and reinvigorating itself by means of its origins. And such a cast of characters! Each is launched into the story with unforgettable drama - the "witch" Ellen cursing publicly with damning epithets a prior, a prelate, a sheriff - all together at the hanging of her lover; the Welsh monk Prior Phillip surviving in his youth by dint of a harrowing voice of another from sure slaughter at the hands of an English raiding party consumed with blood lust and propelled by wanton looting; Tom the Builder demanding from William Hamleigh, son of the Earl, a final payment to his workers for a discontinued country house.

On and on, the first two hundred pages of a thousand page book introduce one memorable character sketch after another in the England of post-William the Conqueror. Life and government is subject to the whims and fancies of rival Lords and Barons. The English monarchy constantly teeters from one faction to another as Civil Wars are endemic - and the Church is one of the few [and unsteady] refuges for the population. One sees first hand, the dangers of a plutocracy.

With this compelling setting and cast of characters including portraits of historical figures such as King Stephen, sometime Queen Maud, Archbishop Henry, and a host of ravenously aspiring Earls, Counts and Barons - the making of the cathedral at KingsBridge [think of the actual cathedral at Salisbury as one of Follett's models]becomes the backdrop of the story and interaction among the characters.

And unfortunately, just like the first and second tries at building the Kingsbridge Cathedral, this wonderful beginning and amazing cast of characters and fascinating times falls down.

I met HeLa by way of Scientific American more than ten years ago. I was struck and fascinated by the nature of HeLa's survival - HeLa are the Cervical Cancer cells of Henrietta Lacks, a poor Negro woman treated at John Hopkins Hospital. That is all I knew at the time - but I remembered the sheer and stunning replicative ferocity of HeLa cells and what an effect they had on the story of cancer metastases - how it spread so virulently. And then I met the immortal HeLa again in the New York Times book reviews . After reading the review I know I will want to meet HeLa - Henrietta Lacks again.

Apple's entry into the eReader business has already had some repercussions. Amazon is resisting calls from publishers to raise Kindle prices from $9.99 to $14.99 - the Apple iBook Store price on the iPad for its equivalent books. The NYTimes reports [and now confirmed with more details at Slashgear] that all MacMillan books have been yanked from Amazon website as the parties negotiate over fees. Amazon has to be careful because if big book publishers move to the Apple iPad exclusively that will diminish the value of the Kindle which is already under attack from many competitors and a clearly better iPad eReader.

Steve Jobs announced the iPhone 4g .... oops,  iPad today and it turns out to be a giant iPhone with 10inch color screen, Apple's own processor, no support for Flash nor for  multi-tasking, and a top price of $829. It supports WiFi, 3G, USB, and some Bluray connectivity. It will read directly and run iPhone apps but they run in half-size on the screen. Gamers were not impressed.

However three features stood out to this viewer. First, this is a Kindle Killer. Color, auto shift to horizontal or vertical reading, all the iPhone multi-touch/gesturing and the backing of major publishers in both books and news/magazines means not only Kindle but most most of the new  CES 2010 eReaders - R.I.P. Second, the battery lasts 10 hours when using the screen or Wifi constantly - upto quadruple  that otherwise.  3)The AT&T $30 unlimited download plan is a killer price - can AT&T network stand the additional load?

iPad is a robust media device - movies, TV, photos, and music machine even without Flash.

Biggest disappointments - no word on the OS, and no multi-tasking, not available for 2 months and counting plus connectivity is still hazy - only one USB port, no support for WiFi Direct yet - and most glaring still shuns Adobe Flash. How can you aspire to be a major media device and not support Flash player?
But give Steve Jobs credit - he is claiming to be the King Palm of mobile devices - and he has timed his entry into the eReader market with exquisitely. Color, 10-inch screen, very light and very fast performance. Can be docked and used with an Apple keyboard. The only question - can you take it outdoors and read it ??