Banks mess up again

You must have heard that the big banks are putting a moratorium on foreclosures. They didn't do this out of the goodness of their hearts. They are doing it because they fear their records are so shabby that they will loose in court.
Taking a man's house is a serious business, and a decent court will demand more evidence than just a bank computer ticket saying the mortgage is in arrears. For openers the court demands that a responsible bank official review the paperwork and sign to attest it's accuracy. That's an antifraud measure. The responsible officials know that the judge will hang them if the paperwork is false, forged, altered, or missing. Sounds like the responsible bank officials, fearing to put their names on the line, found some gullible junior employee and had him/her sign the forms, thousands of them.
Now that the judges are wised up, the banks know that the paperwork won't fly. Next, comes some other issues. The bank needs to produce the original paper mortgage with the borrowers notarized signature. Can they do this? Or did they microfilm the mortgage and discard the original to save space? Like they do with my canceled checks. Did they sell the mortgage to Fannie or Freddie or GMAC or Merrill Lynch to turn into mortgage backed securities? What happened to the original during the sale? Can the bank prove to the court that they still own the mortgage after so many were sold?
What brought the mortgage paperwork issue to light at this inconvenient time? Could it be that bank record keeping has been shabby for years and the courts were accepting the shabby paperwork. And now that foreclosures are peaking one scrappy homeowner cried out "The emperor has no clothes"? And sure enough, once someone points out the problem, it is a problem.
So, give the banks one black mark for sloppy record keeping. Give them a second black mark for not having the brains to cut a deal with the homeowners. Foreclosure sales only recover a half of the loan value. Guy defaults on a $200K mortage, the bank will be lucky to recover $100K selling the house. If the banks had any brains, they would have cut a deal with the homeowner, drop his mortgage 25% and let him keep the house. That way the bank only looses 25%. Go to foreclosure and the bank looses 50%. What would an intelligent bank do?
How smart does one have to be to become a banker?

The Nanny State marches on

On Fox TV news I learned that Congress is working on a federal law to ban texting while driving. I will agree that texting behind the wheel is dangerous and should not be done.
But do we need a law prohibiting a stupid practice? Surely some public information ads will do just as well. (This is your cell phone, this is your cell phone on drugs)
Proving the crime of texting while driving is gonna be next to impossible. The driver will simply deny it, and then it's his word against the cop's word. Traffic laws are enforced by state and local cops. Should they be enforcing a federal law? If the voters feel so strongly about this issue will they not pass state laws banning the practice? Massachusetts and New Hampshire have already done so.
Finally, why the concentration on texting? I've had a couple of hairy moments when youngest son tunes his Ipod while under way.

Then to add insult to injury, I hear the EPA is planning on raising efficiency standards for household appliances (water heaters , air conditioners, washing machines and the like). The "improved" appliances will be pricy, as much as $900 extra for a small reduction in power consumption. How to lower the standard of living, make stuff more expensive. Reducing power consumption means adding insulation, making the heat exchangers bigger, making wires thicker, all of which raises the cost. I think homeowners are better fitted to make cost benefit tradeoffs than EPA bureaucrats.

Reviving Lincoln Part 2

Ford is still talking about it. They claim to have funding for seven new Lincoln models over the next few years. Now they are talking about culling the Lincoln dealerships. Ford has something like 1200 Lincoln-Mercury dealers, whereas Lexus and Ifiniti sell more cars from dealer bases of about 200.
Of course, this desire to cull out the dealerships says that excess dealers cost Ford money. Normally companies like a solid distribution network. More dealers is better because it insures that even customers in remote locations can find a dealer. So the extra dealers must cost Ford money to keep them in operation.
Dealers are supposed to be semi independent businesses, making money as middle men. Ford should not be subsidizing them. Rather than culling extra dealers, Ford ought to consider changing the dealer arrangement so that the dealers pay their own way. That way the hopeless dealers will just go out of business, leaving the efficient dealers to service customers.

Retraining is the solution to unemployment?

Some people think you can retrain anyone to anything. I heard a pundit on Fox claim that construction workers (currently highly unemployed due to the construction slump) could be retrained as programmers for Google.
Right. Guys that do construction do it cause they like working out of doors in the sunlight and fresh air. They like working with their hands and doing heavy lifting. They like seeing something real, that they can touch, take shape under their hands.
Put a guy like that in a cubical, facing a PC monitor, and ask him to debug some ugly C++ code and it just ain't gonna work. It will drive the construction guy crazy. This just isn't what he considers work. It isn't a matter of training or intelligence, it's a matter of liking the stuff. No way is a real construction guy going to be happy turned into a code geek.
There are plenty of things construction guys might consider other than working construction. Mining, logging, truck driving, railroading, airline work, heavy equipment operation, shipping, plumbing, HVAC, and lineman (power or telephone) come immediately to mind. But forget programming, selling, and jockeying paperwork.

No fingerprints says Aviation Week

Stuxnet is a large and powerful bit of malware that someone unleashed on the Iranians. The Iranian victims accuse Israel. Israel and everyone else denies having anything to do with it. Stuxnet may be slowing down/crippling/destroying the Iranian A-bomb program. The Iranians claim the harm is minor, nobody else is talking at all.
Stuxnet is designed to target Siemens built industrial control systems which the Iranians use in their A-bomb program. Mahmud Liai, an official if Iran's industries and mines ministry says 30,000 systems have been infected. Since Stuxnet hasn't appeared over here (yet) it may be programmed to favor Iran over other countries.
How destructive could Stuxnet be? Very destructive. It could destroy the infected computer by overwriting the boot PROM. Once overwritten the computer won't start until the prom is removed and replaced from the motherboard. The proms are surface mount parts and replacing them is a tough job for even the best of technicians. It could break the machinery under its control. In a US test called "Aurora" malware caused a $1 million electrical generator to shake itself to pieces by flipping circuit breakers rapidly on and off.
How to defend against malware like Stuxnet? Simple. Don't use Windows computers anywhere near an important system. Stuxnet spreads by USB port. When a flash drive is inserted in a Windows system USB port, Windows helpfully loads and executes code on the flash drive.

Thou shalt not speak ill of the dead

At funerals, it is appropriate to express condolences, grief, and to eulogize the dear departed. Anything else (political demonstrations) is unbearably painful to the bereaved family. All families are entitled to a dignified funeral for their loved ones. Especially so are the families of servicemen who died for my country.
The case of the Snyder family and the "Westboro Baptist Church" just went before the supreme court. The Snyders were conducting a funeral for their son, a marine killed in action in Iraq. The "Westboro Baptist Church" conducted a hateful political demonstration at the funeral.
Much of the Supreme court argument centered around the right (or lack of right) of the "Westboro Baptist Church" to express hateful opinions. This is wrong. The real issue is the right of the Snyders to conduct a funeral for their son free of hateful and improper political demonstrations. The "Westboro Baptist Church" is perfectly free to express their opinions, just so long as they don't do it at funerals. There are plenty of other times and places where they can speak as freely as they please.
America prides itself on being a land of law. American law must provide families the right to bury their dead in peace.

Reviving Lincoln

Once upon a time Lincoln had as much status as Caddy. Lincoln used to furnish presidential limo's, at least in Democratic administrations.
Used to be the proper noun "Lincoln" meant a luxury sedan sold by dedicated Lincoln dealers. Now "Lincoln" denotes a merely plusher level of interior trim on Ford cars.
Ford Motor company, hoping to make a bit more money, announced that it would "revive" the Lincoln brand. For car companies, luxury cars are profit sources. They can be sold for twice the price of ordinary cars but they cost little more to make than ordinary cars. Instant profit margin. The current Lincoln lineup is merely Fords with a Lincoln badge affixed to them, the public recognizes this, and hence Lincoln doesn't sell very well, or for very much, and the resale value sucks. Most people won't pay luxury car prices for a Ford with just a badge on the trunklid and a different grill.
Assuming Ford actually puts up the cash to design a new Lincoln, one wonders what they will make. They could stick with the 6 passenger American sedan. It may be a geezer mobile, but there are a lot of geezers out there and they tend to have money. If they did some design work to gain more trunk space for taking kids to camp and to college, they might really have something. Say arrange for the rear seat backs to fold down and extend the trunk right up to the front seatbacks.
Or they could switch to making Mercedes/BMW type Euro sedans. Caddy is working on this. They are having customer perception troubles. When the customer thinks of "Caddy" he thinks of a full sized sedan and has trouble seeing the compact Caddys as real Caddys, especially the six cylinder ones.
Or they could do a luxury SUV. For a while Hummer made money for GM, but the gas price spike killed it and GM sold it to the Chinese. But it might be possible to build a less thirsty SUV, say 25 mpg and sell it. The SUV is popular with married folks cause it holds all the children, will carry plywood home from the lumber yard and furniture home from the auction. On the down side, married with children families tend to be a little cash strapped and buy the low end brand to save money