Basel backs off

"Basel" is a international committee of bank regulators who meet in Basel Switzerland now and then.  Their mission is to regularize and harmonize banking regulations world wide, with the idea of prohibiting risky lending and speculation of the sort that caused Great Depression 2.0, and preventing countries from taking over international banking thru favorable national regulations.  Sort of spread the pain of regulations evenly round the world.
   Basel had wanted to enforce a rule requiring banks to have capital (money from investors) equal to 3% of the outstanding loans ("assets" in banker speak).  The idea being that  capital can be used to cover losses from loans gone bad (lender stops paying on the loan). 
   The banks screamed and writhed and threatened to hold their breath.  And Basel backed down.  They changed the rules in complex ways, some kinds of loans don't count, and some derivative deals can be counted as capital, and lo and behold, just about all the banks can meet the 3% standard without raising new capital.  Great joy in Euro Bankville. 
   The Economist article goes on to criticize the concept of a leverage ratio (capital to loans) as crude and inefficient.  They prefer a weighted scale where very safe loans ( US T-bills for example) need less capital than say Greek bonds.  Which sounds good, but who does the weighting?  Reputable US rating agencies like Standard and Poor gave AAA ratings to mortgage backed securities that became worthless.  
    The Economist likes a more liberal leverage policy.  There are two ways to meet a 3% capital to loans ratio.  Raise more capital (difficult and expensive) or make fewer loans.  The Economist doesn't like option #2, they think it inhibits economic growth. 
   In real life, at least on this side of the pond, the issue is not all that important.  If a big bank gets in trouble, the feds bail it out.  We have FDIC, Federal Reserve, and the US Treasury all of whom handed out truck loads of money back in 2007.  Bankers like this.  In the bad old days, when a bank failed, the depositors lost their savings, and the bankers had to skip town before the lynch mob got its hands on them. 
  

Brit Hume speaks favorably about NSA

He was on Fox News a few minutes ago.  Brit is a serious newsman and I have some respect for his opinions.  He said the "meta data" program (scarfing up the billing records of every phone call on the planet and keeping them for ever) is legal, and has been in place for a long time, and nobody has ever found any abuses.
   Maybe.  On the other hand I remember they drove Gen David Petraeus out of CIA by leaking some emails with a mistress.   If the head of CIA cannot keep snoopers out of his email, who can?  By all accounts, they hit Petraeus with email instead of phone calls, but that's a technicality.  Revealing phone calls to a mistress would be as damaging as emails.
   I think the potential for abuse of the "meta data" is so high, and it's contribution to catching terrorists is so low, that I would still cancel the program, before it eats someone. 
  

Words of the Weasel Part 38

"Why can't they get anything done?"   Common whine from the Internet.  "they" being Congress. 
Translation: "Why can't they pass my pet program?"  Answer: "Because you don't have the votes to pass it."

Obama talks about the NSA

And talks and talks and talks.  And doesn't say anything of substance.  He will appoint some new bureaucrats, he will set up more paperwork.  There will be study committees.  He will coordinate with Congress over changes to be made. The US will only spy for virtuous purposes, like counter terrorism, and never for evil purposes like commercial advantage.  We will stop eavesdropping on foreign leader's personal phone calls, but we will continue to intercept their non personal calls. I'm sure that makes foreign leaders feel exceptionally secure. But they will continue the "meta data" program, the scarfing up of everyone's telephone/cellphone billing information and keeping it forever. 
   If it were up to me, I'd terminate the "meta data" program, right now.  Having Uncle Sam keep a record of every phone call I ever made is scary.  Was I ever brought into court, the government could win a conviction merely by showing that I had telephoned some scumbag, any time in the past, and poof, my credibility is shot with the jury. Bang, convicted.  Over the span of a life time you accept telephone calls from lots of scumbags, for instance telemarketers,   politicians, scam artists like Bernie Maddof, whatever.  Plus even Uncle Sam admits that this massive "meta data" program hasn't caught any terrorists.  
   Shut down means removing the electronic taps the NSA has into telephone company computers.  Companies (especially telephone companies) are forbidden to give any customer data to anyone without a specific court order, said order limited to a single individual over a specific length of time.  Such court orders are matters of public record and may be disclosed to anyone, including the targets.  And, erasing the zillions of phone records already in NSA hands.
   And get rid of this "FISA" court to which the NSA and Obama keeps pointing.  "It's OK, the FISA court said so."   The FISA court is a mere rubber stamp, it always approves everything brought before it.  Its proceedings and rulings are secret so nobody knows what's legal and what's not.  Secret courts, star chambers, have no place in a democracy.  Make government officials liable to civil and criminal prosecution for illegal spying.  Unless the accused can show a recent Congressional law saying it's legal, bang, guilty, five years in slam.    

Sea of Monsters, Percy Jackson, Olympians

A fun flick.  It never came to Littleton, so I watched it when it came to Netflix.  It's a movie adaption of a well selling young adult fantasy series of books by Rick Riordan.  If you like the books, you want to see this movie.  If you haven't read the book, you may find the plot/action difficult to follow.  Alexandra Daddario has a good role as Annabeth Chase,  Percy's girlfriend.  She goes questing with Percy, stands shoulder to shoulder with him in battle,  and has as many good lines as Percy does.  The film makes it clear early on that she and Percy have a thing going, and although both roles are melodramatic, they play them convincingly.  Logan Lerman as Percy Jackson doesn't look as cute as he did in the preceding movie (Lightning Thief), his hair is cut shorter, and he looks tougher and  more dangerous. 
   As a fantasy movie, there is a lot of CGI.  Some of it was less than satisfying.  The Civil War confederate ironclad, CSS Birmingham lacks the distinctive silhouette of  the Merrimac, or even CSS Tennessee, and is equipped with such modern conveniences as electric searchlights,  radar,  and 40 mm Bofors auto cannon.  The crew, Confederate ghosts/zombies, don't look very Confederate, or even very southern. They skip the scene in the book were Tyson, the cyclops, goes below to keep the steam engines running as CSS Birmingham attempts to pull out of the Charybdis whirlpool.   The Golden Fleece, object of the quest, looked more like a fancy table cloth than a fleece. 
   This is probably the last of the Percy Jackson movies.  It cost $90 million to make, was released in August, and so far has only earned $68 million, according to IMDB.  Too bad, I enjoyed it.  Nice old fashioned good guys and bad guys, good guys win movie. 

   
  

F35 might be operational in 2015

Why do programs cost so much? Because they take so long.  F35 started 15 years ago.  We have built a couple of dozen of 'em.  It's been flying for a couple of years.  But.  All the missiles and stuff are software controlled.  And the software to run them isn't ready.  They think the software will be ready in another year.
   First mistake.  All the missiles and smart weapons should not require software support from the F35.  There is plenty of room to pack a million lines of code into each missile or smart bomb.  The missiles and smart bombs ought to be able to get a hit with no assistance from the launching airplane.   Benefit:  the missile or smart bomb will work on another aircraft, without requiring a five year software writing fandango. 
   The old F105 could fly into North Viet Nam, suppress the SAM's, jam enemy radar, dog fight with MIGs, and bomb every target in Route Pak 6.  And there was not a lick of software anywhere in that plane.  And, the old Thud went from paper spec to flying combat missions in less than 5 years.  And it was rugged.  It could take a direct hit from an air-to-air missile and fly back to base. 

International Space Station gets a reprieve.

The Obama administration had been planning to "deorbit", aka destroy, the ISS as soon as 2020.  They just announced intention to keep it going until 2024.  This is just intention, they don't have funding passed thru Congress yet.   But they probably will be able to get the funding. 
   Seeing as how they only got the ISS fully functional last year, it makes sense to operate it for a while.  It cost $100 billion to put it up there.  Planning was of the "if you build it they will come" type.  Result, nobody is using it much.  But the kind of things you can do in the ISS  takes time to set up and do, time being years.  Lot of things will get  started now that it looks like the ISS will be aloft long enough to do them. 
  Cost to keep it running is $3 billion a year.  It needs a steady launch of supply vehicles bringing up food, water, air, science experiments.  It also needs the occasional push.  It flies so low that there is still some air drag to slow it down.  The shuttle missions used to burn some fuel to push the ISS up to compensate for the drag.  Now that the shuttle is retired, they will have to do it some other way.