Cell Phone Rates

I had read somewhere that cell phone rates were very expensive in the US versus other countries.

Well, now I know.

I signed up for cell phones for 3 people in the USA with ATT. It cost US$ 69.99 for the first two lines and then US$9.99 for the third line. Expensive, and this is not even including messaging or internet usage.

I am now back in Taiwan and looking at my cell phone bill from Taiwan Da Ge Da....

NT$ 180

That is without any usage, but even when I was using it more, it wasn't US$ 35.00 per month, and messaging is free.

I may have to switch to a pre-paid phone for the USA and drop the ATT phone...just too much money for what its worth. I could still use my Taiwan cell for messages and the occasional email access in the US and probably save.

Oh, and AT&T also locks their phones so I cannot insert my Taiwan simcard into it for use here in Taiwan. THANKS AT&T!

Interesting Interview on World Economy

http://watch.bnn.ca/#clip217106

Though I was a bit jealous somehow.

The Wife's First Attempt at Sushi

Schadenfreude

In February of 2009, The People’s Republic of China (a communist country) once again broadcast to the world that they were growing increasingly uneasy with the amount of US treasuries they were buying and holding. At that point they owned more than $744.2 Billion in US government debt, with additional large holdings of private US debt in the form of corporate bonds. In an article published in Reuters. Luo Ping, director-general at the China Banking Regulatory Commission (a communist), broadcast the increasing discomfort China had with its mounting US debt.

“Except for U.S. Treasuries, what can you hold?” Luo was cited by the paper as saying. “Gold? You don’t hold Japanese government bonds or UK bonds. U.S. Treasuries are the safe haven. For everyone, including China, it is the only option.” In further remarks, Mr. Luo stated, “There will be no bottom-fishing of financial institutions, particularly in the U.S., because there is a lot of uncertainty about the quality of the books,” the paper quoted Luo as saying; “We hate you guys. Once you start issuing $1 trillion-$2 trillion… we know the dollar is going to depreciate, so we hate you guys but there is nothing much we can do.”

Mr. Luo, just a reminder, you're the ones who are buying these pieces of paper rather than letting your currency appreciate. No one has a gun to your head.

Falling Down - 2009

A post-racial society means that anyone can be a gun nut with horned-rimmed glasses.

Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Poor Career Choices

As a native Californian, I am appalled that my career counselor at high school did not inform me of the lucrative careers and pensions available working for the State or local government.

Bruce Malkenhorst, a city of Vernon retiree with a $499,675 annual pension.

The San Ramon Valley Fire Protection District chief, Craig Bowen, retired last December at age 51 with an annual salary of about $221,000 a year. His annual pension is $284,000.

The Moraga Orinda Fire District chief, Peter Nowicki, turned a $185,000 annual salary into a $241,000 yearly pension at age 50. Then Nowicki went back to work for the district on a five-month contract at $176,000 a year, collected on top of his pension.

In retrospect, I should have worked either in finance or the fire department.

Yahoo Headline

Oklahoma City police investigate Jessica Alba link to vandalism

I so want to click the link and learn more.

But I must resist.

Maybe a simple google image search for Jessica Alba would be a compromise?

Testing Astrology

Normally I do not read my horoscope, but today at McD's I read the Taiwan News and I stopped at the horoscope section to see the day's fate.

To paraphrase the horoscope, it says I am going to be really enthusiastic today.

Huh? I woke up in a mood from lack of sleep, weird dreams, business stress, moving stress, and (possibly the kicker) sleeping on a tile floor for a week anything but enthusiastic. Then I had to drive around and go to see my new Taiwan living quarters which make a Turkish prison look like a Martha Stewart creation. 

Now, all this was before Noon. So, maybe the rest of the day can act as a pseudo-scientific test (random sample of 1) for Astrology. Just as fire fights fire, pseudoscience can fight pseudoscience. 

So, far I have taken a long nap (again on the tile floor)  and canceled a business trip. I am about to go download some files in the bathroom (phrase copyright IJ) and then waste some more time before going to a KTV tonight for a friend's birthday.

I see little chance for extreme enthusiasm to break out, but since beer will drunk at the KTV, there is still hope for Astrology.

Yahoo Headlines

People choose news that fits their pre-existing views, study finds

I pretty much already knew that, though.

Errata

1. When should I sell off my stocks? The bear market rally has to end pretty soon.

2. Michelle Obama & Sarkozy's Franco-Italo Wife-Mistress

You know the First Lady could kick the shit out of that smug Eurotrash bitch.

Maybe smack her with a designed in the USA Coach handbag. They hold up better than Gucci.

USA! USA! USA!

Update: 

Okay,I assume these sorts of photos are just cherry picked from 1,000s taken, to show people in either a good, bad, or humorous light.

But looking at this again, I really get a vibe that says "BALEFUL." Barack and brood better be getting their homework done, making their beds, and taking out the trash, too. I know I would.

CT-Fucking-PAT 2

The form I filled out this time asked different questions.

Like if your employees were drug tested.

They also asked a lot about computer security procedures. 

Must be worried about cyber attacks being launched by stoner employees who don't have photo ID badges.

Update on Ethnic Quotas

Apparently not all Asians get the best deals form affirmative action...if you're Chinese, Taiwanese, or Korean it does not help much and might actually harm your chances for UC Berkely.

So, my kid is now a "gender-role challenged Pacific Islander"

gender-role challenged = tom boy

Pacific Islander = Taiwanese

but it sounds pretty oppressed, right?

Karl asked if people from Spain are considered Hispanic. 

According to the State of New York, they are not considered Hispanic for Affirmative Action purposes.

Other says yes. Others say Hispanic also includes Portgual, which would be inconvenient for Judge Sotomayor as Cardozo then gets "first Hispanic" laurels.

I probably should have used the word Latino instead to describe people who have some percentage of evil honky conquistador genes and some percentage of good, nuturing, peace-loving Aztec genes.

Then again, I suppose a Hispanic from Spain could have a genetic background as follows:

20% Indigneous Iberian

20% Ibero-Celtic

20% Carthago-Phonecian

20% Roman

20% Moor

Now, at least some part of that mix is white oppressorish, so I am just saying that they are as conflicated as our 1/8 Cherokee friend.

p.s. Some of those ethnicities are kind of made up based on Rome Total War.

p.s.s. I remember Laura Gomez, my shift manager at Taco Bell. She was a very, very hot blue-eyed blonde haired Hispanic, and she could have my "affirmative action" anytime she wanted.

CT-fucking-PAT

Yes, yes, yes we goddam lock up the factory at night.

Some old dude named Mr. Chen is fucking in charge of that shit.

Yes, he also changes the batteries in the burglar alarms at regular intervals.

I guess. Because I am not really going to spend 5 hours on this little list of check boxes.

Breathe deeply. Breathe deeply. Breathe deeply.

95% of CTPAT is common sense stuff that any owner of a factory will do on their own because they don't want their inventory or equipment stolen. Maybe its just the cynic in me, but I suspect the natural avarice of capitalists is a stronger incentive than any concern for stopping terrorism. (Though, if you paid a bad man enough, they'd probably give you a key to that CPAT approved gate anyways.)

5% of CTPAT might be useful to teach companies to watch the empty container and how the container could be used for smuggling contraband, not just nukes.

Actuarially speaking, the amount of time spent waiting in lines, or filling out CTPAT forms might very well outweigh the lifetimes lost by actual terrorist acts.

Question

Do you think it would be easier to turn around a car company like GM or to take over the healthcare system and lower costs?

Errata

1. Applying lessons from the finance system's trouble to other areas...

Too big to fail, in retail, would that be Wal-Mart?

2. Skeptical on Green Jobs

We're being promised green jobs making windmills* or solar power equipment, but I bet those jobs end up in China and instead the only jobs in the USA will be the warehouse forklift guys and the installers. Anecdotal evidence is that the Chinese already make solar panels, and sell most of them to Germany where they are heavily subsidized.

It is especially wrong-headed to have a cap & trade or carbon tax that is based only on domestic production - you essentially give yet another cost advantage to China and friends - instead of on consumption and have it apply to imports as well as domestic products. 

I anticipate a WTO challenge to this, but since Value Added Taxes are already applied to imports and rebated for exports, I see no reason a carbon tax could not be done similarly. 

This also elminates the free-rider problem where you could end up with all carbon emissions simply being transferred from the USA to China and India - not exactly the goal of these policies I think.

*Just read some Danish company (Vestas?) is investing billions in windmill factories in Colorado, so maybe there will be jobs. I'm curious how well they do versus the Indian companies that also make windmilss - maybe the quality issue will make them competitive.

Yahoo Headline

Multiracial people become fastest-growing US group

This ties into some experiences I had with my daughter. When registering for kindergarten in the United States, I made sure I checked the Asian ethnicity. From the story it says you can now check more than one box, but I think I would have chosen only the Asian option, because I think the US will end up with entitlement quotas based on "how ethnic you are", much as in bad old days of quadroons and octoroons, and such. See this quote from the story:

Liebler noted a potential dilemma where a white student who is one-eighth Cherokee applies to college and seeks an admissions preference based on race and disadvantaged status. Should the college give the multiracial student the boost, if one-eighth of his family suffered a past racial harm but seven-eighths of his family were the perpetrators?

Notice the complete bullshit assumption that the 7/8's white must be guilty of causing racial harm. What if they were Shakers or abolitionists or Russian peasants who only moved to America in 1900?

Or the most torturous impossibility, Russian peasants who had been enslaved by the Turks/Tartars/Mongolians who share the same Asiatic genes as the Cherokees, and in fact, had harmed the Russian peasants before the white man ever made it to the New World...

I guess you'd have to prove that with documentation.

How about the whole Hispanic ethnicity, which essentially is some mix of white and American Indian. Should they be forced to break out the fractions, too? "Hmmmm, according to the spectrograph, looks like you're 70% conquistador and only 30% Indig." Or could they figure out by your genes that you were mainly Aztec, who had conquered many other local peoples, and thus would be ineligibile since getting smacked down by the Spanish was really just Karma?

Okay, back to reality now. In the Yahoo story's hypotherical case, the student would be an octoroon of ethnic goodness and probably would lose out to a full Asian (though that may change, too.) 

Maybe I should have claimed Pacific-Islander, after all Taiwan is an island in the Pacific.

Note: I am not sure if am for or against affirmative action. I just think its gets silly when we get down to fractions of ethnicities. 

Final crazy thought: So, the kid who is 1/8 Noble Savage and 7/8 White Oppressor....what if he exists today only because some scumbag drunken Irish soldier raped a peaceful basket-weaving Cherokee woman several generations back? I mean, sure, objectively that is a horrible thing, but subjectivley, for that person, they have to be happy it happened...otherwise they wouldn't exist.

p.s. 1/8 Cherokee means someone made it with a Cherokee like 80-100 years ago, which would be 1909-1929, so in this instance we are not even dealing with actual perpetrators of the Trail of Tears.

Paraphrasing Confucius

Women and children are not only the hardest animals to raise, but the most pain in the ass to move.

Outer Space Alien Intelligence Officer

Imagine you are an intelligence analyst for the Bzrokigians, a alien species who has been spying on the planet Earth via remote electronic surveillance. Below is some of the analysis you will provide your leaders based on the collected photo:

"In Earth society the most powerful people are old people with double or triple chins and shortish head fur. They wear monochrome clothing based of the color black. Eyeglasses are only worn by the most powerful individuals, and may be worn in either the "aggressive" position covering and shielding the soft defenseless eye orbs, perhaps symbolizing distrust or wariness, or upon the head fur, showing openess and friendship, or simply brazen strength. The small glasses of distilled fruit juice seem to be ceremonial, though we are uncertain why the female apeling's glass appears less full than that of the male apeling. The Xenopsychology team has extrapolated that the baring of teeth to the counterparty is accompanies by deceitful action in approximately 80% of incidents involving high level individuals."

Currency Markets

I still do some foreign currency investments, which basically means I keep some CDs in RMB waiting for some more appreciation to happen. I also bought VE, a European stock that pays a nice dividend, when the Euro was weakish.

Anyways, this article interested me. Basically the gist is that China will try to trade with Brazil using their own currencies and not the US dollar. Nothing hard about that, except that for some reason these sorts of exchange rates tend to simply follow the dollar.

Let me explain via the NT$. Theoretically, I thought there should be a separate market for US$/NT$ exchanges and another  one for €/NT$ exchanges, but they instead simply follow US$/€ relationships. So, if its NT$ 44/€, its probably because the US$ is weak vs. the Euro and not because there is some strong demand for Euros in Taiwan due to trade, investment, etc.

I suspect the RMB/Real will have a similar relationship where the exchange rate is simply a proxy of RMB/USD and Real/USD - so does it really hurt the US dollar as a reserve currency when they trade like this? 

I don't know - I could even be wrong about my experience with the TWD.

But I would suggest that unless you really need USD, to not hold too many of them.

PS: Or am I dumb and the market is so huge and strong that its simply an equation of US$ =NT$ = €, so that any changes are so swiftly computed that it looks like the NT$ is unimportant?

GM to import cars from China

I am so glad we gave GM billions to rescue them once, and probably will give them billions more in the coming years to keep them and the UAW going.

Because we had to save a vital part of American industry and the high-paying blue collar jobs they provide. 

Of course, by "American industry" I mean import warehousing and by "high-paying blue collar jobs" I mean paying union wages for guys to watch the Chinese cars roll out of said warehouses while collecting paychecks paid for by taxpayers. Those workers would help give the car a final wipe-down with a damp cloth, but since they're classified as left-rear bumper welders, the union work rules won't let them do that. So Sorry. I'll just finish the sports page and then go home to watch American Idol.

UPDATE:

Maybe you wonder why GM management is doing this...my theories

1. Because they are stupid and think that the Democratic run government will let them do this AND still take government money.

2. Because they can't be forced to drive in hybird sedans to China - so their private jets will still be useful.

3. Because they enjoy banquets and socializing in China. Don't laugh - you'd be suprised how some companies decide where to purchase based on non-economic factors.