Links 12/25/12

Santa’s stressful Christmas Eve, in numbers and Google and Bing battle to track Santa’s sleigh after Norad switches sides Telegraph

Down to -50C: Russians freeze to death as strongest-in-decades winter hits (PHOTOS) RT (Chuck L)

How does a traffic cop ticket a driverless car? New Scientist

How to Good-bye Depression Amazon. For reasons that will become obvious if you click on the link, the UK based reader who found this choice item shall remain unnamed.

Up to 70pc off as sales start early Telegraph

A third of bankers hate their jobs, survey finds Independent

Trump Tower Woes Signal Top of Toronto Condo Market Bloomberg (George P). A canary in the coal mine, or a false positive?

New Delhi Locked Down to Douse Rape Protests Wall Street Journal

Setting the Stage for a Second Term Time. From last week. Not recommended if you have eaten recently.

Catfood watch:

Why did Campaign for America’s Future remove an article against Social Security cuts? Corrente

Mr. Incompetent, the Economy Wrecker Alan Greenspan, Was Central to the Formation of the Campaign to Fix the Debt Dean Baker

The Best Way to Solve the “Fiscal Cliff” Has Always Been to Just Eliminate It Jon Walker, Firedoglake (Carol B)

Obama Will Ride to the Rescue … for Republicans Cenk Ugyur, Alternet

Silencing the Science on Gun Research The Journal of the American Medical Association

After Trayvon Martin was shot… Twitter (Carol B)

News from the front lines of the battle to create a New America Fabius Maximus

West Coast ports may join Eastern on Dec 30th strike Reuters (Paul Tioxon)

US firefighters shot dead at blaze in Webster, New York BBC

Student food banks fight hunger on campus Associated Press (Lambert)

Economy Weighs on Shoppers in Final Holiday Dash to Mall Bloomberg

Judge Takes Aim at Another S.E.C. Settlement New York Times

A decisive year for ‘deglobalisation’ Howard Davies, Financial Times

Antidote du jour:

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34 comments

  1. AbyNormal

    im getting an error for this link

    Why did Campaign for America’s Future remove an article against Social Security cuts?

  2. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

    2013 – the year of deglobalization?

    That would be nice.

    And 2012, what would you call it?

    1. Year of Living Dangerously (through more money printing)

    or

    2. The Year of Pigeon Money*

    * pigeonn money = homing money, it always finds its way home and home is where the Fed is.

    1. Hypothetical_Taxpayer

      You don’t understand Modern Monkey Theory. No wonder you are confused about everything all the time.

      1. Hypothetical_Taxpayer

        Excuse me. Sometimes my hubris runneth over and I make brash assertions and then neglect to make some supporting statements that unequivocally assert my unquestionable correctness.

        Usually I do this by stating a few things that Modern Monkey Theory is NOT – which always leaves any rational person with the opinion that I know what Modern Monkey Theory IS, and that I rightfully deserve to be Leader of the free and not so free world.

        Modern Monkey Theory is not something new. It (or we – depending on the descriptive or prescriptive use of “it”) started out as Modern Monetary Theory. After stealing that from the monetarists and re-branding as our own (with our own made up words and flows) we successfully branded it as MMT.

        But success leads to its own failures and we came to realize the “big money” is in the fiscal arena of economics. Imagine our disappointment when we found out the Keynesians beat us to that one. Drat! It’s like Israel finally realizing the Gaza Strip is beachfront property, but the Palestinians got there first.

        You can just imagine the branding problem that left us with. Monetary guys doing fiscal policy. Change the name to Modern Fiscal Theory (MFT)? Not a chance – the MMT brand is worth just too much.

        So we put the problem to our brain trust back in Kansas City and after some vigorous debate, they all decided to agree to disagree and then move forward anyway. The way that happened was someone from the math dept heard a bunch of screaming and stuck his head into the econ lab and said “What if econ wasn’t math and maybe a social science and then we could let the engineering dept have this lab again and I wouldn’t have to listen to all this unintelligible screaming. Monkeys would make less noise – but you are all smarter than monkeys…right?”

        It was just the breakthru the gang needed. Smarter than monkeys. Social Science……MMT

        We can save the brand name!!!!

        So I am providing that background out of the generosity of my heart and a sincere desire to educate you on my clear superiority in all things that matter.

        To take that one step farther, we have graciously produced this film footage here to satisfy what should be an insatiable desire to learn at least a “dumbed down for your consumption” version of what Modern Monkey Theory is all about. Don’t worry, you will not be tested for comprehension. All we desire is your complete adoration.

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6exm2Hi28Xw

        1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

          That sounds like a lot to digest, but I am more comfortable righting our upside-down pyramid.

      2. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

        Well, in my defense, I spent many foggy years in Berkeley and San Francisco growing up. I have a tendency to be in a fog as a result.

  3. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

    Save up to 70% already?

    If you don’t buy what you don’t need (instead of buying to fulfill your desires – Century of The Self), you save 100%.

    Yes, you will not help grow our GDP and this will cost jobs, but you have to start to fight back.

    Some things, like taking control of our lives instead of being manipulated to consume, are more important than jobs.

    1. MyLessThanPrimeBeef

      I am happy to announce that most of my gifts this year to my friends were made by yours truly.

      I had to buy the raw materials, that’s true, but that’s why it’s called Neo-Neanderthalism

  4. diptherio

    Re: How to Good-Bye Depression

    …trying it now…36…37…38…no immediate noticeable effects…42…43…will issue a full report after the holidays…58…59…60…

    1. Can't Help It

      On a more serious note, one of the reasons I am going to graduate school is to improve Machine Translation software. 30 years going and you can still find plenty of mistakes even with simple grammatical structures when trying to convert from one major language to another i.e. between English, Mandarin and Japanese.

      It’s a hot topic debate that Machine Translation is ultimately impossible, but I am not talking perfect, just something reasonable i.e. correct grammar with relatively frequent error in terms of choosing a word to use.

  5. Ned Ludd

    Regarding sales, two cheap ways to buy video games:

    GOG. They license the source code for old video games and update them so they work on current versions of Windows and, for some games, OS X.

    The Humble Bundle. Every couple of months they sell a bundle of games. You pay what you want for it. There are bonus games that you get if you pay more than the average. You can have a portion (or all) of the money you pay go to charity.

    Also, Amazon’s UK store is a great way to buy DVDs of European movies and British TV shows. Although they will not work on U.S. DVD players, I found I can play them fine on my computer using VLC.

    1. j.s.nightingale

      It’s only Americans who don’t know about the Region Coding scam. Brits, Aussies and Japanese have been on to it for the last 10 years. Region free players have been available there for at least as long.

  6. Susan the other

    Dean Baker on Alan Greenspan. Greenspan was there at the creation of the fix-the-debt-2011 secret conference. And creation of the causes of the debt: unrestricted “capital” leaving the country along with all the jobs; the dot com bubble; the housing bubble. And of condoning fraudulent securitizations and indecipherable derivatives; and he didn’t blink when he bailed out LTC. And he told Congress, in the political debris of the aftermath, that he had “found an error in one of his models.” He probably manipulated LIBOR from the 90s on. I think he’s Selig. And since we have excellent electronic records now, the discovery rule can be extended – so I think it’s not too late to discover that his actions and lack of action destroyed this country. Mr. Greenspan himself is Exhibit A of the crime of the century. Including the one point that is never mentioned: he advised Clinton to “balance” the “deficit” on the fragile back of the private sector, thereby bankrupting it and creating a carrion feast for his bankster friends. Malice aforethought? Maybe. One thing is for sure, he has never fixed any kind of debt in his life, he has only created it.

    1. ex-PFC Chuck

      These people should be equipped with an invisible fence-type device, such as an ankle bracelet that will give them a severe electric shock whenever they approach within fifty miles of either Washington DC or New York City.

  7. Steve

    Toronto? There is a Trump building in Stamford CT you should look into. Presently, it says 1, 2 and 3 bedrooms starting at 500K. My students in Stamford say it used to be higher. I walked by it at what should be prime time for people using lights–around 9:30pm–and it looked like no more than a fifth of the units were filled. A sign of the apocalypse, or else people aren’t all that excited to live in downtown Stamford.

  8. barrisj

    Torture, drones, “fiscal cliff”, Tea Party, Benghazi, Muslim Brotherhood, banksters, GoldmanSachs, West Antarctic meltdown…wait, how about Peace on Earth and Goodwill to Men!

  9. Cynthia

    Merry Christmas and thanks to all at Naked Capitalism and everyone who posts here – we all learn from each other and this place has been invaluable in enlightening me. Thank you

  10. AbyNormal

    “I’m going to paraphrase Thoreau here… rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness… give me truth.”
    Krakauer, Yves, Lambert & the rest of You…give unencumbered Truth unconditionally.
    (years of gratitude to all, i humbly bow my head)

  11. Maximilien

    From the Bloomberg article: “Herbert Crockett said his late father suggested investing in something he could touch, so he put cash into Donald Trump’s latest hotel project in Toronto…..”

    Yup. No doubt about it. The Toronto condo market has peaked. Why?
    The last fool has bought in. The fool’s name? Herbert Crockett.

    Mr. Crockett bought the condo in the Trump Hotel in Toronto as an
    investment. He lives in France. He must be living under a truffle.

    Otherwise, he’d have heard that the housing bubble burst five years ago.
    That the myth of housing as an investment went with it. That Donald Trump is better known for his spectacular bankruptcies than the profits he
    returns to his investors.

    Mr. Crockett, who seems to be rather sophisticated, turns out to have been ignorant and ill-informed (and perhaps a little greedy). He believed the wild claims of eager salesmen. Now he is paying the price of his credulity. He and his money are being separated.

    Live and learn, Mr. Crockett.

  12. barrisj

    In the lamentable absence of F. Beard, let me offer up this sentiment:”God bless us, everyone!” And – no, I’m resolutely NOT a Christian! But surely a Dickensian!

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