Mike’s Typo

How many articles have we read about the homeless problem and drug trade ruining our streets. I’m all for making help available to those who want to improve their lives. But, too many times I see the results of ignoring the homeless and/or allowing the problem to grow and fester. So, I had to chuckle when I came across this article, originally published in the LA Times. An inventive bar owner in Atlanta came up with a solution to rid his environment of homeless and the drug trade. The R2D2ish robot, nicknamed “Bum Bot” is sounds like just the contraption to have. Maybe if Sharper Image had picked up on this trend they’d still be in business.

Wanna see Bum Bot in action, here’s a YouTube video.  Here’s another video courtesy of CNN.

Finally, I am going to get rich quick. And, for FREE I’m going to let my fav 4 in on this. (If you’ve just tuned in, you may be reader 005 - we’re building readership slooowly.)

So, my brilliant idea. First, you need a glass of wine or a beer. Then come back and read on.

Ok. So, I’m driving home tonight in my USV (Ultimate Stupid Vehicle) and I’m watching the gas gauge drop like time-lapse photography. On the radio is the news of the day: Dow closes down 200+ at 12,040, oil at $105/barrel, and gas at the pump close to $4. So, I’m thinking. Scary, I know. This USV takes 35-40 gallons of the good stuff (near $4 ethol). If I fill up, park this thing and just wait, I’m sitting on huge appreciation. Right there in my tank, in my driveway - this could be my retirement. Do the math. You can’t touch this kind of appreciation in stocks. The sub-prime kaboom has sent the whole house equity thing into the tank - not sense WWII have fewer people had less than 50% equity in their houses. This is gonna be BIG. Instead of equity in your house, it will be equity in your tank. Taking the vehicle out for a spin will be like writing a check on your home equity line. You with me here. Go tonight; go RIGHT NOW - fill up and park it.

Ok, so now what. Well, we’ve got a few Harley’s down at SC and Green Valley. Up to 57 MPG and fun as the day is long (Daylight Savings this weekend). So, what are you waiting for? Park your USV and ride!

When you make your first million off this scheme, please send me a check for $10. Thanks.

TED. That’s the sold-out, lovefest of free thinkers of the world that happens later this week in Monterey, CA. I’m a bit pissy because I didn’t get one of the coveted 1,100 invites. Course, had I gotten the invite, I’d be walking around with my coffee can asking for donations to send me to TED - it’s $6,000, plus room, food, greens fees, etc. So, I’ll be sulking and watching the speakers online. You might remember an earlier post about one of the recipients of the TED prize - James Nachtwey. If you haven’t seen his video presentation, I still recommend it.

The rumors for this year? Well, one of the highly anticipated speakers is Al Gore. He presented his global warming talk a few years ago - before it became a movie. Peace prize in hand, he’s got a new presentation, and no one is saying what it’s about.

The whole event is sorta a who’s who of the entertainment, technology and design industries. As one PR piece mentions, it’s a gathering to cross-pollinate ideas and gain inspiration from presentations on the latest developments in sciences and the arts. Hey, on that cross-pollination thing. Maybe they can spend a few nanoseconds talking about the bee problem or what to do with that quagmire of plastic floating off Hawaii, or….

Signing off: pissy cause I got passed over.

In the dog-eat-dog-world (yuck) of today’s blobbing, you know you’ve arrived when you beat Fake Steve Jobs (FSJ) to a story. We reported here yesterday (or maybe it was the day before) that there was a grass roots effort to pump some life back into Hillary’s campaign. Today, FSJ came out with the same story. It’s fun to be first!

Whew. Arms a bit sore from reaching around to pat myself on the back. I gotta confess. It’s our great staff of Internet scavengers that grind away everyday to feed me with stories worthy. Sorry FSJ, you get what you pay for when it comes to staff talent. Way to go team!

The good news is we’ve got four subscribers now!  The bad news is I’m number 4.  Number 003 still has a cool site.  But, that’s another story.  So, confession time.  I subscribed to the RSS feed.  Not that I want to read my writing, although I’ve been accused of wanting to hear myself talk, but I did want to make sure that the feed was working.  You know it would be kinda sad if all this good stuff was getting beamed out there - to nowhere.  So, I signed up.  (But, I used an alias.)

Rainy day.  So, I’m cruising through my RSS reader and damn if I don’t come across one of the Typo Blob posts.  Wholly spam, Batman.  Someone has picked up one of our stories, and ….  Then it occurred to me that I’d subscribed.  Call it a senior moment - but, it felt so good!

All this said, you can subscribe if your an RSS’r.  Or, we’ll keep batching these pearls into the Typo and beaming that directly to your emailbox.  Thanks, 001-003 for reading.

Seems like the flurry of posts on the blob really took it out of me. I came crashing down. Might even have “carpool tunnel.” But, it’s Tuesday (our Monday) and I’m back with a vengeance. But, before I jump into some new posts, I’ve got to backtrack and point out a slight error in the Got A Call From Wesley post. Seems that one of our three readers saw the boob-boo and fired off an email to my editor. I’m guessing he just has Typo envy. See on his site and blog, no typos are allowed. As our other two readers know, we thought ahead and covered this and future transgressions by naming this the Typo. So, as the Boss (Bruce Springsteen) recently said, “Believe none of what you read, and less of what you see.” Or, was it the other way around. All kidding aside, it’s great to have readers that can do the math. Wes’s situation is darker than I originally reported. Interest and penalties at somewhere north of 10% would be $1.7 million. Whew. So, a hearty thanks to reader 003.

PS Love Number 003’s site; check it out.  It’s on my top 10 coolest sites list.

Sub-prime mortgages. Arbitrage. What’s next from our trusted banks - the keepers of our savings? In fact, what happened to that concept? You know the idea that giving your money to a bank for safe-keeping, was actually, you know, safe?

Sixty days ago did you even know what a sub-prime mortgage was? How about arbitrage? It’s a new world. What high-finance demon is lurking out there to scare us next?

So is the glass half empty or half full? So, many questions to start this rant. But, my answer is that the glass is half full and about to get fuller. Because, I have a very safe place for you to deposit your money. Right here at Santa Cruz or Green Valley Harley-Davidson. We’ll take good care of your money. You won’t get it back, but that’s the risk you take with banks, the market, and other assorted hazards out there. So, give it to us. Guaranteed enjoyment; maybe even a sense of enlightenment. Throw in a dash of inner-peace while you’re at it.

Did I mention you can have your paycheck direct deposited with us?

Reading more and more about this “mad trader” from France’s Societe Generale bank, makes me think of the Abbott & Costello routine: Who’s On First. Really, this is an unbelievable story with the chief executive of the bank calling the culprit of these trades “a terrorist.” That should give you a bit of pause.

As the story goes, the fictitious trading started in 2005. Since then there were several instances where alarms went off, but the trader, Jerome Kerviel, was able to produce sufficient evidence to calm the auditors. What’s interesting is really what he was doing. In the world of finance, he played in a game difficult for most of us to understand. They call it arbitrage. So, arbitrageur, Kerviel, was responsible for buying one type of stock index futures while at the same time selling a similar mix of indexed futures with a slightly different value as a hedge against possible losses. The concept is telling. Betting that a set of futures will go up or down is considered so risky that it’s someone’s job to “hedge” by buying other similar futures that will hopefully act the opposite as markets move. Wow. Complicated. But, don’t worry your money is safe because if the bet is wrong there is an offsetting bet to protect you against a big loss.

So, the game of arbitrage, when played correctly, leads to small profits from very large trades. Ah, but if you’re sure that one set of futures will go up. I’m mean if you are totally, completely sure, then you can make so much more money by not making the “hedge” trade. (Because that position will for sure go down, right?) It’s not arbitrage anymore, but this is what Kerviel was doing. He started small making bets that he was right. And when he was, he made big money for the bank. Way bigger than he could make if he performed his job as defined. Visions of sugarplums were replaced by glory in the eyes of his fellow traders, his bosses, and huge bonuses to reward his brilliance.

Societe Generale’s head of asset management was quoted in this NY Times article as stating that Mr. Kerviel was “massive in money” by the end of December. But, then the European markets turned down in January and his losses mounted. Couldn’t we change the names and the description of the game and call this Las Vegas? Or, how about change the name to Citibank and the game sub-prime mortgages. Ah, where mortals should not dabble.

The money quote: “He bet on the return of the markets that were extremely low and he imagined that there would be a return of the markets just as large as the losses. There is an addiction. There is a dependency on this complicated game of betting on the markets, and there is a sort of spiral into which it is difficult to exit.” This from the french prosecutor.

Alas, my parting thoughts. When it’s over, the US will be blamed for this. Afterall, it was the US economic woes that sent the European markets into a tailspin earlier this month - just at the very moment bank management paniced and sold all of Mr. Kerviel’s positions. What a movie this will make. Or, has it already been made. Anyone remember the line, “Greed is good?” Or how about the book Bonfire of the Vanities.

A new issue of the Typo is in the works. Should hit your emailbox mid-week. This one will have some good editorial content to make up for the embarrassing amount of “sales” related articles that have graced the Typo since Jan. 1. So, stick with us.

But, this one is just too good to leave lay. Or, should that be lie? That’s why I called the publication the Typo. Here’s where I was headed.

One guy. A mid-level employee, has brought France’s second largest bank to its knees with $7 billion in trading losses. Holy Cow, Batman!

Let’s step back and look at this. One guy. $7.2 billion (sorry, this is the correct number; I was only off by $200 million). A bank. Not just any bank. The second largest bank in France. A bank - suppose to be a safe place to put your money. For more than a year, Senor Kerviel (sorry, can’t spell the french equivalent), evaded multiple layers of computer controls and audits. Oh, and this little fact. He didn’t take any of the money. The whole thing was to cover up his bad trades early in the game. Cover one bad trade with a bad trade. Cover those with more bad trades. Is this the way it worked? Las Vegas odds would have been better, right? Probably couldn’t beat the travel controls the bank has in place.

Here is the money quote from the head of the bank (pun intended): “Societe Generale has been the victim of a serious internal fraud committed by an imprudent employee.” Is that the understatement of the year. Ok, and really whose fault is this? Stay tuned. This should develop into an interesting and unbelievable story. Want to read more, link over to the NY Times article.

My friends tell me, “Don’t quit your day job.” They’re right. But, that doesn’t stop me from snapping pictures. When I’m not writing articles for the Typo, I can often be found out playing with my cameras. Many of you saw the Memorial Day exhibit in the Santa Cruz store. I heard a lot of “amazing shots, I had no idea…” So, hoping that this doesn’t come across as too much of the self-promotion that it is - my photo web site is up. I wish I could say the same for other things (like the stock market).

The site is a project that started in November 2002. It had a lot of stops/starts/stops/starts and so on. About six months ago, I finally decided it needed to happen. So, our designer, Richard Miller, has been working to finish the beast. He had a little help. Sasha, from Siberia (a tad north of Russia), did a lot of the behind-the-scenes coding. Sasha’s a freelance-programmer-by-night and a first rate (so I’m told), porn-star-actress-by day. I took the pictures, Richard designed the site, and she wrote the code. Let’s make sure we keep the roles straight. True story. Well, some of it anyway.

You can find the site at mikejamesphoto.com. Hope you enjoy it.