Via Yves Smith, Michael Smith provides a great look at the infamous A.I.G. F.P unit that collapsed with $180 billion which US taxpayers now pay for.
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This statement below has totally changed my position on Japan and the F-22.
Ex-chief systems engineer for the F-22 is "convinced that Japan can get fully equivalent capabilities in the areas of its needs at lower overall cost by other routes."
And that for the US to recommend the F-22 to Japan is like encouraging a good friend to drink and drive.
NBR'S JAPAN FORUM (POL) F22s for Japan: more signals to North Korea?
But there are what I regard as more substantial reasons to question the feasibility and desirability of purchasing the F-22 as well.I say this recognizing very well the strength of Japanese desire for the aircraft. During a recent visit to Tokyo I had occasion to speak with a number of top air force officers as well as civilians involved in defense matters, and all made it clear that they feel Japan must have F-22s.
More than two decades ago, at the inception of the program, I was the chief systems engineer for the F-22 at Lockheed. That is to say that I know a great deal more about it than one can read in the press. There is no doubt that it is a very impressive airplane with no equal in the world.
It is also an extraordinarily expensive airplane. The 50 aircraft Japan needs would cost roughly $10 billion to buy (with spares and support equipment), and would have high ongoing operating costs. It is likely that any aircraft needing major repair or modification would have to be shipped back to the United States.
I am convinced that Japan can get fully equivalent capabilities in the areas of its needs at lower overall cost by other routes. I recognize that Japanese do not like to be told what they need by outsiders, but for the United States to encourage Japan to buy F-22s would be like encouraging a good friend to drink lots of alcohol before he sets out to drive home.
Wonderful news!
Susan Crawford (wikipedia, her blog), is rumored to be joining the Obama administration. What's important about this is Susan is both someone who understands the Internet at a fundamental level (via her time as a board member of ICANN) and also understands the web at a fundamental level. She is also a strong proponent of network neutrality, which I believe to be critically important for the future of the Internet.
OneWebDay Founder Tapped By Obama
This is a few months late but JP Morgan's Imran Khan has a lengthy 2009 Internet Investment Guide (or here) out that is worth reading for it's coverage of China, Korea and Russia.
Josh Marshall from TalkingPointsMemo:
TPM Reader JC sent me to this interview with Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Taleb on CNBC. Here's what JC wrote:He hits it spot on. These two guys are talking about a deep structural crisis in the world economy. And these CNBC yahoos can't stop asking for stock tips. Really surreal.In this clip, Nouriel Roubini and Nassim Taleb are still being treated as a circus sideshow by CNBC... They're predicting the end of finance, and offering the only clear path out of this mess that I've seen offered (with the knowledge to back it up), and CNBC keeps asking them for stock tips. It's ludicrous. Wall Street media -- CNBC at least -- doesn't realize how bad this is yet. They're stuck in a bubble where they think everything will go back to normal in a few months....
I'm watching it again now. This is a seminal piece of video. You have to see it. I'm not sure I've seen anything that captures -- albeit unintentionally -- the vast disconnect over what is happening today in the US economy.
If you ever watched CNBC for any kind of financial information, you now know that the financial information provided at Nickelodeon or Sesame Street is as good as the information they have at CNBC. God help you if you used CNBC to make any investment decisions.
Partial transcript of Susie Gharib's interview with Buffett.
SG: But there is debate about whether there should be fiscal stimulus, whether tax cuts work or not. There is all of this academic debate among economists. What do you think? Is that the right way to go with stimulus and tax cuts?A lot of people on Wall Street were paid a lot of money to "know what to do." That they didn't (look at those funds who invested 100% into Madoff) is a travesty of a size that is calculated in hundreds of billions of dollars if not trillions.
WB: The answer is nobody knows. The economists don’t know. All you know is you throw everything at it and whether it’s more effective if you’re fighting a fire to be concentrating the water flow on this part or that part. You’re going to use every weapon you have in fighting it. And people, they do not know exactly what the effects are. Economists like to talk about it, but in the end they’ve been very, very wrong and most of them in recent years on this. We don’t know the perfect answers on it. What we do know is to stand by and do nothing is a terrible mistake or to follow Hoover-like policies would be a mistake and we don’t know how effective in the short run we don’t know how effective this will be and how quickly things will right themselves. We do know over time the American machine works wonderfully and it will work wonderfully again.
PBS Interview with Warren Buffett
I'm heartened to see a Freshman Democratic Congressman, Alan Grayson of Florida, grilling Fed Vice Chair Kohn so expertly. That said, Kohn sounds like someone who should not be doing the job he is in.
Barry Ritholtz has a (3 part) 25-minute documentary by the Wall Street Journal that's worth watching. Note that it is all Wall Street Journal reporters who are interviewed, but it's still worth a viewing.
As a New Yorker, born and raised, my one hope in this recession is that New York City becomes a more heterogeneous city. Wall Street's influence on New York City was too large since the 1990s and into the 2000s. I love New York City but it is not a city I wish to live in at the moment. If New York City can emerge from the recession as a more honest city, a better place for more people to live, not just rich people, I'd like to live there again one day.
Esther Dyson on Google (vs. Yandex) and her preference of market forces for regulation of information on the Internet: Big Brother Google?
As it happens, I have a complex relationship with Google. I have fed at its trough many times – as a personal guest; as an advisory board member of Stop Badware, an NGO it sponsors; and as a speaker at its events. I also sit on the board of 23andMe, co-founded by the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
But I also sit on the boards of Yandex in Russia, one of a small number of companies around the world who beat Google in their local markets, and of WPP, a worldwide advertising/marketing company famous for its rivalry with Google. Finally, I’m suspicious of concentrations of power of any kind.
So I welcomed the chance to clarify my thinking. I took the con side of the debate: Google does not violate its motto. However, I do think there is a danger that someday it could.
...
A Google that is accountable to its users – searchers, advertisers, investors, and governments – is likely to be a better outfit that does more good in today’s relatively open market. In short, there is no regulatory system that I trust more than the current messy world of conflicting interests. Whatever short-term temptations it faces – to manipulate its search results, use private information, or throw its weight around – Google, it is clear, could lose a lot by succumbing to them in a world where its every move is watched.
Barry Ritholtz is awesome.
How to Save Detroit | The Big Picture
