GKN Technology is a British company that makes the wings for Airbus. The UK government pulled out of the Airbus consortium some years ago, but GKN Technology retained their Airbus business somehow. The Airbuses are assembled in Europe (Germany or France, cannot remember which). Which means those British built wings get shipped across the Channel. When Britain does the paperwork to pull out of the EU, presumably those wings have to pay the EU tariff when they land on the continent.
And it's not like GKN Technology can find another customer for its wings. Those wings are Airbus wings, and won't fit another airplane. If Brexit means Airbus has to pay a serious tariff on the wings, they will surely investigate alternate suppliers located on the continent. And with EU unemployment running at 10%, any EU supplier will have no trouble staffing up to handle the extra business.
Be afraid, be very afraid.
Tuesday, July 5, 2016
FBI lets Hillary off the hook.
The FBI director held a news conference, live on TV, just a few minutes ago. Bottom line, the FBI doesn't think they have enough to prosecute with. They read a ton of emails. In fact you gotta wonder how Hillary had the time to crank out nearly 100K emails. She was only secretary of state for four years, call it 1000 days, so that's 100 emails a DAY. How did she manage to eat lunch and go the can, and do 100 emails a day??
The FBI claimed to have really scrubbed Hillary's server, recovering a lot of email from caches and deleted-but-not-scrubbed disk space. They also said that Hillary's lawyers had wiped a lot of email as "personal" and the lawyers did a better job than Hillary, they scrubbed the disk files (over wrote them with random ones and zeros) and deleted them (erased the file names from the disc directory). Which makes the emails unrecoverable, like they had been shredded.
The FBI did a lot of talking about how classified and how many were classified. Groovy but any secret service in the world would love to read the American secretary of state's email no matter what it's classification.
In short, the FBI trashed Hillary and her state department for sloppy handling of classified, but they don't think it was deliberate, and you gotta show intent to prosecute. The FBI didn't find intent, and so Hillary gets off, not scot free, some of the mud sticks, but they ain't gonna prosecute, so she can go on running for president. Another tight squeeze for a Clinton, like Whitewater, like Vince Foster, like Monica, like a bunch of other stuff.
The FBI claimed to have really scrubbed Hillary's server, recovering a lot of email from caches and deleted-but-not-scrubbed disk space. They also said that Hillary's lawyers had wiped a lot of email as "personal" and the lawyers did a better job than Hillary, they scrubbed the disk files (over wrote them with random ones and zeros) and deleted them (erased the file names from the disc directory). Which makes the emails unrecoverable, like they had been shredded.
The FBI did a lot of talking about how classified and how many were classified. Groovy but any secret service in the world would love to read the American secretary of state's email no matter what it's classification.
In short, the FBI trashed Hillary and her state department for sloppy handling of classified, but they don't think it was deliberate, and you gotta show intent to prosecute. The FBI didn't find intent, and so Hillary gets off, not scot free, some of the mud sticks, but they ain't gonna prosecute, so she can go on running for president. Another tight squeeze for a Clinton, like Whitewater, like Vince Foster, like Monica, like a bunch of other stuff.
Sunday, July 3, 2016
The Supremes pretend to practice law.
Actually they are mere indulging in their private political prejudices. Law is a body of rules, written down. Moses showed the way. Just ten commandments, chiseled into stone tablets by the hand of God. And law is limited. Ten was the starting number. We have a lot more now. but if it isn't written down, it isn't law.
Judges are supposed to know the law, and apply it to the specific case before them. And there is always room for interpretation. Even "Thou shalt not kill" (from KJV) has been interpreted to read "Thou shalt not commit murder." a much narrower reading. It's up to judges to look at the law, look at the facts of the case, and render a judgement, using pure reasoning.
When this is happening, a majority of judges (or for that matter a majority of reasonable men) will come to the same judgement in the same case. That is, if they are looking at the law, and reasoning from the facts of the case. If they are judging from personal prejudices, anything can happen.
Since the unfortunate death of Justice Scalia, it has become clear that he eight survivors on the court are judging from personal prejudice rather than from the law. Hence the number of four to four ties. How the eight top lawyers in America can fail to come to a majority opinion is a scandal. These clowns aren't practicing law, they are setting themselves up as kings.
Judges are supposed to know the law, and apply it to the specific case before them. And there is always room for interpretation. Even "Thou shalt not kill" (from KJV) has been interpreted to read "Thou shalt not commit murder." a much narrower reading. It's up to judges to look at the law, look at the facts of the case, and render a judgement, using pure reasoning.
When this is happening, a majority of judges (or for that matter a majority of reasonable men) will come to the same judgement in the same case. That is, if they are looking at the law, and reasoning from the facts of the case. If they are judging from personal prejudices, anything can happen.
Since the unfortunate death of Justice Scalia, it has become clear that he eight survivors on the court are judging from personal prejudice rather than from the law. Hence the number of four to four ties. How the eight top lawyers in America can fail to come to a majority opinion is a scandal. These clowns aren't practicing law, they are setting themselves up as kings.
Saturday, July 2, 2016
Franconia Old Home Day Parade.
By the way, the Blogger people have been messing with the photo uploader again. At least it still uploads although I had to do it twice before it worked.
Friday, July 1, 2016
DEC makes the market, adapts to a changing market, finally fails and dies
Digital Equipment Company moved into the big time when it invented the minicomputer, back in the early 1960's. The legendary PDP 8 wasn't much of a computer, only 12 bits wide, the largest number it could handle was only 4096, not much. And it could only address 4096b words of magnetic core memory, RAM had not been invented yet. But it was a computer, it was small compared to the only other computers available that year, namely mainframes costing in the millions and filling an entire room.
The PDP8 only cost $8000 (1960 dollars) and was smart enough to do a fair number of things. A whole bunch of automatic test sets were built, with a PDP8 built in and running the show. So many were sold that DEC became rich and famous. All looked well until the micro processor came on the scene in the early 1970's. One of my first projects coming out of engineering school was to design a microprocessor board to run a test set. My board had plenty of punch and only cost $200, parts. That pretty much killed the $8000 PDP8 for that role.
DEC recovered, they juiced up their minicomputer and sold it for timesharing. A PDP11-35 could support a couple of dozen timesharing terminals, enough to run a small company. The later PDP11-70 and the VAX were even stronger. And the timesharing rig, with disk drives and mag tapes might cost $100,000. Still cheap compared to a mainframe. This kept DEC going thru the 1980's.
Then the desktop computers appeared. The IBM PCs, and the Compaqs. These sold for $3000 or so, and were every bit as good as the the DEC minicomputers, and they were cheap enough for every engineer to have one for his very own.
And that was the end of DEC. Compaq bought them up, and then HP bought Compaq, and now there is hardly a trace of DEC left.
The PDP8 only cost $8000 (1960 dollars) and was smart enough to do a fair number of things. A whole bunch of automatic test sets were built, with a PDP8 built in and running the show. So many were sold that DEC became rich and famous. All looked well until the micro processor came on the scene in the early 1970's. One of my first projects coming out of engineering school was to design a microprocessor board to run a test set. My board had plenty of punch and only cost $200, parts. That pretty much killed the $8000 PDP8 for that role.
DEC recovered, they juiced up their minicomputer and sold it for timesharing. A PDP11-35 could support a couple of dozen timesharing terminals, enough to run a small company. The later PDP11-70 and the VAX were even stronger. And the timesharing rig, with disk drives and mag tapes might cost $100,000. Still cheap compared to a mainframe. This kept DEC going thru the 1980's.
Then the desktop computers appeared. The IBM PCs, and the Compaqs. These sold for $3000 or so, and were every bit as good as the the DEC minicomputers, and they were cheap enough for every engineer to have one for his very own.
And that was the end of DEC. Compaq bought them up, and then HP bought Compaq, and now there is hardly a trace of DEC left.
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Wall Street Futures Contracts
Gambling? Or shrewd investment? The Wall St futures market is big enough for NPR to report on it. Like Friday, when the Brexit vote was counted and announced, NPR said that Wall St futures had dropped a lot before the market opened. At any rate, a good deal of money is invested in "futures". Does this money do anything to encourage economic growth, employment, new product development, in short, good things for America as a whole, or just some profits to lucky gamblers?
I have never dealt in futures, and a quick Google didn't say just how stock market futures work. Let's assume they work like commodity futures. Two parties reach a deal, sign a contract, to deliver so much of something, or buy so much of something, for such and such a price, on a date in the future. If the market price of what-ever-it-is changes before the due date, one party makes money, and the other party does not.
Does this kind of deal make sense for the larger economy? Hard to tell. Certainly the money spent on futures contracts does not go to a company in return for stock. Companies print and sell their stock, for cash, to obtain money to run the company, grow the company, pay the workers, lots of things that create jobs. And the stock market makes people willing to buy stock. With an organized stock market, open for business five days a week, a stock holder knows he can sell his stock holdings when he needs some cash. And the trade will go thru, and he gets a check, within a day or two. This is a goodness, it gives companies a fine way to raise money.
But I don't see how a stock futures contract does anything good for the economy. It surely doesn't funnel money to companies. I don't see it increasing market liquidity. I think it's just plain gambling, of no benefit to anyone except lucky winners.
I'm not an economist, I'm just a plain engineer. I've never read anything about the economic effect of futures trading. I wonder what the economics community thinks about them.
I have never dealt in futures, and a quick Google didn't say just how stock market futures work. Let's assume they work like commodity futures. Two parties reach a deal, sign a contract, to deliver so much of something, or buy so much of something, for such and such a price, on a date in the future. If the market price of what-ever-it-is changes before the due date, one party makes money, and the other party does not.
Does this kind of deal make sense for the larger economy? Hard to tell. Certainly the money spent on futures contracts does not go to a company in return for stock. Companies print and sell their stock, for cash, to obtain money to run the company, grow the company, pay the workers, lots of things that create jobs. And the stock market makes people willing to buy stock. With an organized stock market, open for business five days a week, a stock holder knows he can sell his stock holdings when he needs some cash. And the trade will go thru, and he gets a check, within a day or two. This is a goodness, it gives companies a fine way to raise money.
But I don't see how a stock futures contract does anything good for the economy. It surely doesn't funnel money to companies. I don't see it increasing market liquidity. I think it's just plain gambling, of no benefit to anyone except lucky winners.
I'm not an economist, I'm just a plain engineer. I've never read anything about the economic effect of futures trading. I wonder what the economics community thinks about them.
Wednesday, June 29, 2016
NAFTA, pro and con
According to Wikipedia (a reasonably impartial source) NAFTA dropped tariffs between the three countries to zip in nearly all cases by now. It took President Bill Clinton's best efforts to get NAFTA ratified over the dead bodies of US unions. NAFTA did increase trade between Mexico, Canada and the US by a lot, perhaps 50% over the years since 1993 when NAFTA was ratified. It also did contribute to US job losses of maybe 500,000 jobs. These numbers can be controversial, but Wikipedia is the most balanced source I am aware of.
We had The Donald on TV yesterday trashing NAFTA up one side and down the other. He promises to "renegotiate" the NAFTA treaty. He claimed that NAFTA is a US job killer. In this, he has, or ought to have, the warm support of US unions who have been anti NAFTA since the beginning.
We had the "three amigos) (Obama, Trudeau, and I can't remember the name of the Mexican president) on TV today. All saying nice things about NAFTA, and the need to keep it going.
Nobody said anything about admitting the UK to NAFTA.
We had The Donald on TV yesterday trashing NAFTA up one side and down the other. He promises to "renegotiate" the NAFTA treaty. He claimed that NAFTA is a US job killer. In this, he has, or ought to have, the warm support of US unions who have been anti NAFTA since the beginning.
We had the "three amigos) (Obama, Trudeau, and I can't remember the name of the Mexican president) on TV today. All saying nice things about NAFTA, and the need to keep it going.
Nobody said anything about admitting the UK to NAFTA.
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