The Slamlander

I found Erwin’s new chasis!

and this is also why outsourcing is such a problem.

First, check this out and then see this.
Then note these facts:

• EU rates, at the ECB, are currently at 2%
• After last week US FED rates are at 2.25%
• US textile import quotas expire 1Jan05.
• Over 50% of Americans are seriously concerned about their personal debt.
• Recent data has shown that the U.S. current account deficit has ballooned to 5.6 percent of the economy, underscoring expectations that dollar weakness will continue in 2005.
• People’s Bank of China Policy Board member Yu Yongding that Beijing planned to trim its purchase of U.S. Treasuries.
• The dollar has been under pressure for months from investor concerns that the United States will struggle to attract enough foreign funds to finance a widening current account deficit.
• US Buck still has, at least, 15-20% to fall.

Now I see these mechanisms in motion:
First, the US Buck is losing it’s legs:

1. The US current account deficit increases get turbo-charged by increased imports of Chinese made clothing and textiles. IOW, it’s getting worse and not better, folks.
2. China reduces purchases of US T Notes (Would you buy into something that you know, absolutely, is going to cost you a 15-20% loss upfront? — China ain’t doing that either) and buys something stable, like Euros.
3. What this means is that China will be selling textiles for USD and swapping those USD for EUR
4. Since no one else wants USD either, USD will drop faster and further in 1Q05 and into 2Q05. I’m going to go beyond the experts here and predict 20-25% drop, before it’s all done, and I’m considering that a conservative number. We may be seeing a complete USD collapse (I hope not — I’d seriously love to be wrong here).

Next, US Debt crisis coming to the forefront:

1. US Debt service ratio is at 18.31. The highest it has ever been (Over 7 Trillion USD).
2. In order to at least try to support the falling Buck, the US FED has to increase rates, regardless of the CPI (Inflation index).
3. In order to keep parity with returns in EUR investments, at 2%, given that USD will fall another 20%, FED rates have to go up to 4-6%. Just a month ago I predicted increases to 4%. I no longer believe that. I now believe in 5% and that may not be enough. It really needs to go higher but the US FED may not find that politically feasible.
4. This basically triples rates from last November’s values.
5. US Consumer debt fueled the 2004 econ recovery. This is about to come to a screeching halt.

Then, US Corporate outlook and jobs (not Steve)

1. US Corp balance sheets look the best that they have looked for years. Debt/Cash ratios have improved from 44% to 34%.
2. This is largely due to the jobless recovery — All those people that they failed to hire.
3. All that cash may fuel M&A activity. What this means for the US job market is more job elimination. A good example of this is where PeopleSoft will lay off 5-6K workers due to the Oracle/PeopleSoft M&A deal.
4. CEOs aren’t stupid. Earning expectations are already dropping 3-5 points, from ’04 numbers. They are not going to be adding staff with dropping gross sales numbers. Yes, IT capital spending is expected to go up but that just keeps existing staff employed, barely.Look for some CIOs to allow attrition-based shrinkage.

Summary:

1. USD is going down another 20-25%
2. The economic reef of US debt will be exposed. Banruptcies will increase and banks will go into crisis.
3. Jobs will not increase past 1Q05.
4. FED rate will go to 4-6%
5. The Bears will start eating bull again.

Repairing table width;

You Are a Hunter Soul

You are driven and ambitious – totally self motiviated to succeed Actively working to acheive what you want, you are skillful in many areas. You are a natural predator with strong instincts … and more than a little demanding. You are creative, energetic, and an extremely powerful force. An outdoors person, you like animals and relate to them better than people. You tend to have an explosive personality, but also a good sense of humor. People sometimes see you as arrogant or a know it all. You tend to be a bit of a loner, though you hate to be alone. Souls you are most compatible with: Seeker Soul and Peacemaker Soul

This one’s fairly neat ;P

I am a member of 4 cliques of size 7

• , , , , , ,
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is to vote for someone that you do not know.

in this link, I now have this reference list to follow up.

The Patriot Acts I & II, CAPPS II, The trusted Traveler program, HR3077 which basically bans books before they are written by censoring what our colleges teach at the whim of a foreign nation, HR4230 creating super citizens and S-625 relying on Police state actions to deal with “hate crimes”. The United States hit all 14 points of fascism in January 2004. http://www.couplescompany.com/Features/Politics/Structure3.htm See for yourself. We’ve had all 7 warning signs for over two years and still we go on oblivious? We’re already censored and apathy is the instigator. This article should be a wake up call. It is time for us as a nation to come together and stop our loyalty to parties, agendas and people. The definition of patriotism in America is loyalty to the Constitution. This event and abomination to our rights is a chance to prove it. The constitution isn’t republican or democratic. It’s American. So why do we continue to allow our leaders to desecrate and diminish it? This idea should have never been allowed on our soil, let alone receive entertainment as policy. What is it going to take for us to come together and leave the “conservative” vs “liberal” labels behind and just start calling ourselves what we are, Americans? What is it going to take?

I just saw an interview with the CEO of Massive, Inc.

It works like this;

1. You plug you game into your comp and it installs itself
2. The game uses your internet connection to attach to the Massive network, if available.
3. It informs the Massive network of what your doing, including your browsing habits.
4. The Massive network then delivers context sensitive ads to your game, based on your personal profile
5. Playing offline isn’t an answer as it installs a daemon that will connect when you go online later.
6. It also monitors all activity on your computer and builds a profile for you.
7. The will not tell you what it’s doing until your anti-spyware detectors squeal, if it does.

Another word for this is Spyware. They already have co-publishing deals with all the game publishers, since it does require a client built into the game itself. Also, since it only needs to connect occasionally, this implies that they install a daemon that is continuously resident and monitors your internet connection. Not only does it connect to download the ads for the game, it HAS to monitor all your browsing and report what you’re doing. It has to do this or Massive cannot deliver on its promises.

Be afraid, be very afraid. Massive aren’t the only ones doing this.

Seen on CNBCeurope and Mark Hanes correctly pointed out the privacy issues.

I got an advert for this in my email.

Some of you may know that I run my own servers, on a dynamic IP, that changes three times a day (BlueWin.ch wants 79CHF for a static IP address). I do this, via DynDNS.Org, and a Win2K daemon running on my main server. DynDNS is free, why should I pay NSI 25USD per year and they don’t even have a update service, that I can run on my server?

Not since the days I was on the ICANN/DNSO-GA have I had such a laugh!

The funny part is that when dynamic IP allocations started becoming the norm (back in 1998), I told Chuck Gomes (NSI), at ICANN 2000(Marina Del Rey), that NSI needed to start offering such a service. He was convinced but, he couldn’t sell it to his brand new Versign bosses (Verisign had just acquired NSI at the time). Since then, DynDNS has the market-share and only gormless twits would pay NSI’s tarif. Now if Verisign were to buy DynDNS, there might be a problem.

I hope we don’t have any farmers in the crowd.