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Jul 04 2012

Happy Anniversary!

Today concludes our second year of operation and every indication is that you enjoy our content as much as we do providing it.

It’s easy to get the impression that this site is dominated by just a few voices, but I think if you follow over time you’ll see that there are a lot of regular and semi-regular contributions.  I want to thank those people because that kind support is far more important than money.  Even casual Authors will notice that there is no piece that is not evaluated for featured status.

It relies on you.  I like to think The Stars Hollow Gazette has developed into a site of character and interest, a place you visit several times a day to read the latest and are proud to participate in.  If you feel the same I urge you to send us your eyeballs and read, link, quote, comment, and recommend.

Thank you for your kind indulgence.

Opening Day- July 4, 2010

First Anniversary on The Stars Hollow Gazette– July 4, 2011

First Anniversary on DocuDharma– July 4, 2011

Hmm… not much Anniversary specific.  How about the next day?

First Anniversary on DocuDharma– July 5, 2011

Also, TheMomCat made note of our first week of programming in Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette.

And we filled in your content with these reprints-

It’s a joy and a pleasure to provide you with a place your contributions can be highlighted and I hope you will take advantage of the opportunity to express yourself.

Jul 04 2012

This is what we call…

Court Papers Undercut Ratings Agencies’ Defense

By GRETCHEN MORGENSON, The New York Times

Published: July 2, 2012

When Cheyne issued its various securities in 2005, Moody’s and S.& P. rated them all investment grade. Even though Cheyne’s portfolio was bulging with residential mortgage securities, some of its debt received the agencies’ highest ratings, a grade equal to that assigned to United States Treasury securities. About two years later, as mortgage losses began to balloon, both agencies downgraded Cheyne’s debt below investment grade, to what is known as junk.

After the institutions that bought Cheyne’s debt sued Morgan Stanley and the ratings agencies, Moody’s and S.& P. immediately mounted a First Amendment defense. But Shira A. Scheindlin, the federal judge overseeing the matter, ruled in September 2009 that it did not apply because the Cheyne deal was a private offering whose ratings were distributed to a small group of investors and not the public at large. Judge Scheindlin agreed with the plaintiffs, who argued that the ratings were not opinions but were misrepresentations that were possibly a result of fraud or negligence.

“The disclaimers in the Information Memoranda that ‘a credit rating represents a rating agency’s opinion regarding credit quality and is not a guarantee of performance or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any securities,’ are unavailing and insufficient to protect the rating agencies from liability for promulgating misleading ratings,” Judge Scheindlin ruled.

The judge also ruled against the defendants’ motion that documents and depositions generated in the case should be sealed. As a result, e-mails and deposition transcripts were filed with the court on Monday, showing how closely agency officials rating the deal had collaborated with Morgan Stanley, the firm that hired them to rate Cheyne’s securities.

Former Brokers Say JPMorgan Favored Selling Bank’s Own Funds Over Others

By SUSANNE CRAIG and JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG, The New York Times

July 2, 2012, 9:06 pm

Amid the market volatility, ordinary investors are leaving stock funds in droves.

In contrast, JPMorgan is gathering assets in its stock funds at a rapid rate, despite having only a small group of top-performing mutual funds that are run by portfolio managers. Over the last three years, roughly 42 percent of its funds failed to beat the average performance of funds that make similar investments, according to Morningstar, a fund researcher.

“I was selling JPMorgan funds that often had weak performance records, and I was doing it for no other reason than to enrich the firm,” said Geoffrey Tomes, who left JPMorgan last year and is now an adviser at Urso Investment Management. “I couldn’t call myself objective.”

…

There is also concern that investors may not have a clear sense of what they are buying. While traditional mutual funds update their returns daily, marketing documents for the Chase Strategic Portfolio highlight theoretical returns. The real performance, provided to The Times by JPMorgan, is much weaker.

Marketing materials for the balanced portfolio show a hypothetical annual return of 15.39 percent after fees for three years through March 31. Those returns beat a JPMorgan-created benchmark, or standard of comparison, by 0.73 percentage point a year.

The actual return was 13.87 percent a year, trailing the hypothetical performance and the benchmark. All four models with three-year records were lower than the hypothetical performance and the benchmarks.

…

Regulators tend to discourage the use of hypothetical returns. “Regulators frown on using hypothetical returns because they are typically very sunny,” said Michael S. Caccese, a lawyer for K&L Gates.

Jul 04 2012

To be specific…

Why is Nobody Freaking Out About the LIBOR Banking Scandal?

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

July 3, 9:04 AM ET

Most intriguingly, or perhaps disturbingly, there were revelations last week that Bank of England deputy Governor Paul Tucker had a conversation with Diamond at the peak of the crisis in 2008. The conversation reportedly left Diamond, and subsequently his traders, with the impression that the bank had carte blanche to rig LIBOR downward in order to help allay spiraling public fears about the banks’ poor financial health.

…

That is explosive stuff. Members of Parliament will be grilling Tucker tomorrow about those events in what is sure to be a far more combative and entertaining legislative inquiry than the Jamie Dimon dog-and-pony show we just went through here in the states in recent weeks.

…

Anyway, the LIBOR story is leading the front pages of most of Britain’s dailies, it’s on TV, and it’s producing blistering editorials and howls of outrage amongst politicians and activists. But as compadre Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism put it, where’s the outrage here in America?

…

(T)o me what’s missing from all of this is the “Holy Fucking Shit!” factor. This story is so outrageous that it shocks even the most cynical Wall Street observers. I have a friend who works on Wall Street who for years has been trolling through the stream of financial corruption stories with bemusement, darkly enjoying the spectacle as though the whole post-crisis news arc has been like one long, beautifully-acted, intensely believable sequel to Goodfellas. But even he is just stunned to the point of near-speechlessness by the LIBOR thing. “It’s like finding out that the whole world is on quicksand,” he says.

Mirabile Dictu! Barclays CEO Bob Diamond Resigns Over Libor Scandal (Updated)

Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

This sudden announcement also makes it seem much more likely that serious shoes will drop at the Wednesday hearings.

Although this news has just broken, and I’m sure there will be a ton more commentary in the next few hours, I suspect the proximate cause is that Diamond’s attempts to defend the rigging of Libor during the crisis as being tacitly approved by the Bank of England was not going to fly.

…

In other words, Diamond was saying “you can’t really blame us for this, we told everyone and no one said no.” We’ll find out soon enough, but the effort to shift blame to the regulators may be what sunk him. Paul Tucker, the deputy governor to the Bank of England to whom Diamond spoke directly on October 28, 2012, has had subordiantes issue denials of Diamond’s account.

…

The other interesting side effect is that this development, that of two heads falling in short succession at the top of one of the UK’s biggest banks, the only major institution not to receive any bailout funds, will raise the visibility of the Libor scandal in the US considerably. One correspondent has said the price manipulation goes back to 2001, and if that proves to be true, this is an even bigger cesspool that the reports so far envision. And the fact that top executives have been forced to resign from a bank that cooperated in the investigations and the settlement documents said deserved to be treated with leniency as a result, raises the question of what sort of sanctions should be meted on the executives of less cooperative and presumably equally culpable institutions.

Behold, the British establishment, panicked

Paul Mason, BBC

3 July 2012

Here is the central problem with Barclays. Its business model has become heavily reliant on the kind of investment banking Bob Diamond pioneered at Barcap, a division he created and was determined to lead to global dominance until Alistair Darling impolitely stopped his acquisition of Lehman Brothers in September 2008.

…

The results have been felt in every community in Britain. Four years ago, Barclays was lending £52bn to non-finance, non-property businesses in the UK, 27% of all loans.

Now the figure is £38bn, and just 16% of business loans. In the process the bank – single handedly – has taken £3bn of capital out of manufacturing, more than £3bn out of retail/wholesale, while ploughing an extra £10bn into home loans and £6bn into property.

…

It has reduced its exposure to British business, carries a £700bn net credit risk that is only possible because of the implicit guarantee the October 2008 bailout gave to all banks. And it is:

“(a) a machine for enriching investment bankers … with £1.5 billion in staff bonuses last year versus a pre tax profit of £3billion (b) the risks to the tax payer are not offset by corporation tax, because Barclays has used losses to minimise its payments; [paying] just £113 million in UK corporation tax in 2009.”

…

But the crisis threatens to escalate in three directions. First to the 20 other global banks who stand accused of manipulating Libor.

The scale of class-action lawsuits being readied in the United States is, say some, big enough to sink certain of these banks. We will soon hear the results of the other – regulatory and criminal – investigations into the City of London.

Second, to the City of London itself.

…

(T)he management of the bank: its board, its chairman and its CEO stood accused, effectively, of negligence. Yet again London turned out to be the dodgiest place to do business, and that was why the original slap on the wrist did not work.

So now we have a third direction of escalation. Both the SEC and FSA left unanswered questions about the manipulation of Libor for “survival” reasons.

…

By last night, that meant the Bank of England – an institution created in the Christopher Wren era – was getting calls from financial journalists of the type normally aimed at, well, people like Bob Diamond. In short order he was gone.

Such is the power of the British establishment. But its problems are not over.

Jul 04 2012

On Patriotism

(a reprint from our initial offerings)

It’s an interesting coincidence that exactly 50 years after The Declaration, Jefferson and Adams died within hours of each other.  Ironically Adam’s last words were- “Jefferson still survives.”  In fact Jefferson preceeded Adams which could have caused some embarrassment provided you believe in an afterlife and that Jefferson and Adams could have ended up in the same place.

Me?  Not so much.  People forget that our founders were revolutionaries and the establishment of The United States of America led to a string of more or less successful rebellions in Haiti, South America, and France.

It’s certainly not a historical leap of faith to call The Council of Europe and the Age of Metternich a reaction to a little fight we picked on the road between Lexington and Concord.

History is real, and not so very long ago.

These were people just like us.  Every bit as smart, twice as tough, and doing the best they could with the tools they had available.

Recently they’d been through 30 years of Civil War based on religious sectarianism and class warfare.  Fighting the French and Indians was kind of intermittent by comparison.

They were not rubes by any means though it’s a classic American gambit going back to Franklin at least to put a dead beaver on your head and pretend to be an idiot.  It makes the women want you.

My favorite Ben who is not a traitor was considered the head of the committee that composed The Declaration, but the principal Author was Thomas Jefferson whom we find recently to have made a last minute substitution of ‘citizen’ for ‘subject’ that I found reflective of his principles as a Founder.

Revolution is not all skittles and beer.

America had its Cincinattus and a Republic if we could keep it, but political feuding between the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists was little short of open warfare in the election of 1800.  People were literally shot down like dogs.

Adams had to suffer Jefferson as a Vice-President (Mr. Heartbeat) and successor.  Two Term Jefferson left his office to James “Mr. Constitution” Madison and the rest, as they say, is history until Andrew “Kingfish” Jackson (but that’s a story for another day).

The democratic impulse and enlightenment values embodied in the work of our Founders, little things like the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the institutions of the Congress, Presidency, and Court have always been under attack by powerful elites who seek to influence outcomes in their favor.

The very least honor we owe these brave and principled patriots is to resist those efforts and defend justice and the rule of law to the best of our ability.

Jul 04 2012

2012 Le Tour – Stage 4

Abbeville / Rouen (133 miles)

Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

Narrow roads and crosswinds meant a big day for crashes yesterday with at least 3 major ones at the tail end of the stage and 2 retirements including Jose Rojas.  Perhaps more significant is Konstansin Sivtsov who’s departure from Sky leaves the team even more oriented to supporting Bradley Wiggins’ General Classification run and less to the Points competition of stage 3 winner Mad Manx Mark Cavendish.

Rookie Peter Sagan claimed a second stage victory with a funny finish sprint that left people talking.  Mike Morkov dominated the climbing checkpoints.

Today’s racing takes place along the Channel coast which can mean slippery damp sea breezes.  There are 4 category 4 climbs and a points award right after the major descent before the last hill.  This is one of 2012’s longest stages.

General Classification

Place Rider Team Time/Delta
1 CANCELLARA Fabian RADIOSHACK-NISSAN 14:45:30
2 WIGGINS Bradley SKY PROCYCLING +00:07
3 CHAVANEL Sylvain OMEGA PHARMA-QUICK STEP +00:07
4 VAN GARDEREN Tejay BMC RACING TEAM +00:10
5 BOASSON HAGEN Edvald SKY PROCYCLING +00:11
6 MENCHOV Denis KATUSHA TEAM +00:13
7 EVANS Cadel BMC RACING TEAM +00:17
8 NIBALI Vincenzo LIQUIGAS-CANNONDALE +00:18
9 HESJEDAL Ryder GARMIN-SHARP-BARRACUDA +00:18
10 KLÖDEN Andréas RADIOSHACK-NISSAN +00:19

Coverage is customarily on Vs. (NBC Sports) starting at 8 am with repeats at 8 pm, and midnight.  There will be some streaming evidently, but not all of it is free.

Sites of Interest-

The Stars Hollow Gazette Tags-

Pretty tables-

Jul 03 2012

Everyone is looking for an edge

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.

– Stockton

Jul 03 2012

2012 Le Tour – Stage 3

Orchies / Boulogne-sur-Mer (123 miles)

Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

No retirements so far though some riders are dealing with injuries.  The problem is that once you stop, you stop.

The Mad Manx racked up another stage win.

Probably not today though, Jean-François Pescheux the official site handicapper thinks it is highly unlikely that there will be any Sprinters around at the finish what with the 4 category 4 and 2 category 3 climbs.  There will be a mid stage point award.

In the General Classification there isn’t much movement of the top ten.  As I was working on yesterday’s piece I realized that deltas after each stage were hard to locate unless you captured them at the time.  I’ve got the data for the Prologue and Stages so far and I’ll post them with the pretty tables as soon as I can get the formatting done.

General Classification

Place Rider Team Time/Delta
1 CANCELLARA Fabian RADIOSHACK-NISSAN 10:02:31
2 WIGGINS Bradley SKY PROCYCLING +00:07
3 CHAVANEL Sylvain OMEGA PHARMA-QUICK STEP +00:07
4 VAN GARDEREN Tejay BMC RACING TEAM +00:10
5 BOASSON HAGEN Edvald SKY PROCYCLING +00:11
6 MENCHOV Denis KATUSHA TEAM +00:13
7 GILBERT Philippe BMC RACING TEAM +00:13
8 EVANS Cadel BMC RACING TEAM +00:17
9 NIBALI Vincenzo LIQUIGAS-CANNONDALE +00:18
10 HESJEDAL Ryder GARMIN-SHARP-BARRACUDA +00:18

Coverage is customarily on Vs. (NBC Sports) starting at 8 am with repeats at 8 pm and midnight.  There will be some streaming evidently, but not all of it is free.

Sites of Interest-

The Stars Hollow Gazette Tags-

Pretty tables-

Jul 02 2012

2012 Le Tour – Stage 2

Visé – Tournai (129 miles)

Le.  Tour.  De.  France.

Well, if you’re rooting for one of the 135 riders that are now more than a minute down you have my official permission to panic.  Given the tight bunching and mass timing during the flatter stages it will be hard to make that up.

This one is Kansas flat.

You may think Menchov and Gilbert put on moves yesterday, but what happened is that Lancaster and Gretsch fell back.

Now there’s always the possibility of flaming chunks of twisted metal to keep you amused as well as the spectacular scenery.  One category 4 climb and a point award.  It should be routine and restful except that it’s rare for there not to be some early breakdowns.

Sprinters will be featured and everyone will be looking at Cavendish for a good finish.

General Classification

Place Rider Team Time/Delta
1 CANCELLARA Fabian RADIOSHACK-NISSAN 05:05:32
2 WIGGINS Bradley SKY PROCYCLING +00:07
3 CHAVANEL Sylvain OMEGA PHARMA-QUICK STEP +00:07
4 VAN GARDEREN Tejay BMC RACING TEAM +00:10
5 BOASSON HAGEN Edvald SKY PROCYCLING +00:11
6 MENCHOV Denis KATUSHA TEAM +00:13
7 GILBERT Philippe BMC RACING TEAM +00:13
8 EVANS Cadel BMC RACING TEAM +00:17
9 NIBALI Vincenzo LIQUIGAS-CANNONDALE +00:18
10 HESJEDAL Ryder GARMIN-SHARP-BARRACUDA +00:18

Coverage is customarily on Vs. (NBC Sports) starting at 8 am with repeats at noon, 8, and midnight.  There will be some streaming evidently, but not all of it is free.

Sites of Interest-

The Stars Hollow Gazette Tags-

Pretty tables-

Jul 01 2012

Euro Cup 2012: Spain/Italy

ESPN 2:30 pm.

Spain plays ball control with short passes which pisses some people off.

They’re also the favorites.

I don’t understand football at all.

Jul 01 2012

2012 America’s Cup World Series: Newport

When last we visited our heros, Billionaire by the Bay Ralph Ellison of Oracle and his rag tag team of highly compensated ex-patriot New Zealand mercenary dock rats, they had emerged triumphant from their titanic struggle to retrive the Royal Yacht Squadron £100 Cup from the shiftless, coastless, and mysterious Swiss bankers.

These villains had used the wide open rights the Deed of Gift gives the cup holder to set the terms of the next match in ways that make a successful challenge impossible and yes, yes it is much more reprehensible when a foreigner does it, no matter how many times you’ve done it to him.

Sadly this titanic struggle between evil and slightly lesser evil went almost entirely unnoticed by United States audiences despite its lopsidedness, perhaps because it was only available as a live simulcast from Valencia.  Because Billionaires crave celebrity with the searing secret lust of any random reality ‘star’ this situation must be corrected.

And so America’s Cup 2.0, re-imagined for the new century.

Now there are some things that are very good about this, the return of the Louis Vuitton Cup for one, but there are others that invite consideration.

A goal (not the only one) is to make the sport more like Formula One.  As a way to expand their schedule they’ve instituted a second series of more frequent races which is purported to acclimate crews and managers to the capabilities of the new equipment.  Because they use smaller boats support staff and crew are greatly reduced making it somewhat less expensive.

These contests are held in the traditional picturesque watering holes, this week in Newport R.I., and so far have been quite exciting (though hard to find) because of the wide variety of wind conditions and ‘Regatta’ races with all the boats out on course bashing into each other.

As you might imagine the Oracle crews dominate like 2011 Red Bulls.

But this article in The New York Times describes some of the other ways they’re working to make it more telegenic-

America’s Cup Updates As It Trawls for Viewers

By JOSHUA BRUSTEIN, The New York Times

Published: June 27, 2012

The task of changing this belongs to Stan Honey, whom the America’s Cup hired as its director of technology last year. Honey has made a career out of creating augmented reality for sports broadcasts. He is best known for the glowing first-down line in football telecasts, and he has also developed glowing hockey pucks for N.H.L. games, the illuminated strike zone for baseball and various graphics for Nascar races.

Sailing is in more dire need of augmented reality than perhaps any other sport, said Honey, a former professional sailor. Boats tack back and forth, trying to catch pockets of wind that will propel them through a race’s various legs. It can be difficult to determine who is ahead, or what strategy is being employed to remain there.

“If you don’t put the graphics on the water, you end up with people saying, O.K., white triangles on a blue background,” Honey said.

So Honey has developed the LiveLine system, a virtual playing field that lies on top of the telecast. On television, boats fly flags identifying themselves. White lines appear at regular intervals, and blue lines mark the boundaries of the pitch, turning a patch of open water into something resembling a nautical football field. Yellow circles surround the motorboats that mark the end of each leg, identifying the areas where the changes in which a boat has the right of way can come into play.

…

Honey’s team has ended up changing how the races operate. Race officials now watch the sailing on monitors from a control room on the shore, and any decision that relies on the objective knowledge of a boat’s position is made using the same positional data used to create the graphics.

The new approach has also inspired some new rules. Until recently, the penalty for certain fouls required a team to stop its boat and spin it in a circle. Now, a virtual line appears two boat lengths behind the offender, which must move behind the line to pay off the penalty. For 10 seconds, that line moves at the same speed as the boat. After that, the line slows to three-quarters of the boat’s speed.

The America’s Cup has also begun using computerized data analysis to change the course of the race while the race is in progress, to make sure that the event fits easily into broadcast time slots.

You can see the results starting at 2:30 pm on NBC.

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