timmah's brain

HTML5 Boilerplate:

is the professional badass’s base HTML/CSS/JS template for a fast, robust and future-proof site.

After more than two years in iterative development, you get the best of the best practices baked in: cross-browser normalization, performance optimizations, even optional features like cross-domain ajax and flash. A starter apache .htaccess config file hooks you the eff up with caching rules and preps your site to serve HTML5 video, use @font-face, and get your gzip zipple on.

Boilerplate is not a framework, nor does it prescribe any philosophy of development, it’s just got some tricks to get your project off the ground quickly and right-footed.

Google satellite view…

Watch Arcade Fire’s video for their new single on only Safari or Chrome.

Amazing.

Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rehypothecation at Naked Capitalism:

Despite its daunting name, rehypothecating is not that hard to grasp. Imagine you operate a pawn shop. People bring things that are valuable and leave them with you as collateral for loans. In rehypothection, you as the pawn broker have gotten permission from the people who have provided their assets to you to take them to another pawn broker and get a loan from them.

You can already see this sounds dodgy. How many times might your gold watch be passed from pawnbroker to pawnbroker? And if the pawnbrokers were each willing to lend a high percentage of its market price, the loans made against this one watch could easily exceed its value.

From Financial Times article:

More important still, banks often churn, or “rehypothecate”, that collateral. More specifically, when banks receive collateral from hedge funds, they often act as if they owned that collateral outright – and post that as collateral to support their own deals. Thus one piece of collateral can be churned several times to support several deals; hence that great financial candy floss cloud.

In other-words, the house of cards which is our financial system, that collapsed upon itself in Fall 2008, is still alive and well and there is still massive risk the next collapse upon itself will not be able to be stopped.

Still own stocks, mutual funds and risky “investments” like it was 1999?

Defined at Investopedia.

Check out Words on DEVOUR.com.

Via Daring Fireball.

Gradual change back to a realistic capitalist society where there is a real middle class or the “let them eat cake” kind of change?

Hat tip to The Big Picture about the Financial Times article entitled The crisis of middle-class America:

But the anger is human and increasingly political. “I have this gnawing feeling about the future of America,” says Spence. “When people lose the sense of optimism, things tend to get more volatile. The future I most fear for America is Latin American: a grossly unequal society that is prone to wild swings from populism to ­orthodoxy, which makes sensible government increasingly hard to imagine.

It’s been reported everywhere that HP’s CEO was fired.

From WaPo:

“We believe that the minimal use of the SEC bounty program can be attributed primarily to the fact that the program has not been widely publicized, internally within the agency or externally to the public,” SEC Inspector General H. David Kotz wrote in a report this year.Even before passage of the new law, SEC officials said they were working to improve the agency’s whistleblower procedures, building a database to consolidate complaints and creating a new whistleblower office.

If ya can’t make money investing by trusting companies who are using fancy schmancy accounting, at least you can improve your chances to make money by investing your time catching them do shady shit.

Bandcamp sounds almost too good to be true for musicians.

…or how Lehman using fancy schmancy “legal” accounting every 24 hours helped become the largest bankruptcy in USA history.

Lehman:

…calculated its reportable liquidity at the end of each day, and if the clearing-bank collateral was released at the end of each day, Lehman considered it part of the “liquidity pool.”

Here’s the short version:

…on Friday, September 12, Lehman claimed that it had a $32.5bn liquidity pool, and on Monday, September 15, Lehman needed $16bn to finance non-central bank eligible collateral. So why, if their liquidity pool was twice the size of their funding requirement, did they have to file for bankruptcy? The answer is that Lehman didn’t actually have a $32.5bn liquidity pool; they had, at most, a $2.5bn liquidity pool. That is not a typo.

Imagine if you could pull a number out of your ass to use as collateral to finance your daily expenses.

Read the Economics of Contempt take on the Lehman Examiner’s Report.
Via Naked Capitalism.

From Sunlight Foundation:

‘Congress’ is a free pocket directory that allows you to quickly get detailed information on your members of Congress, and what they’re up to.

And:

If you’re an activist or are simply interested in political issues, you owe it to yourself and, dare I say it, your country, to download this app.

Hopefully iPhone/iPod is next!

About the Federal Register:

The Office of the Federal Register informs citizens of their rights and obligations, documents the actions of Federal agencies, and provides a forum for public participation in the democratic process.

Policy and transparency geeks check out the new FederalRegister.gov.

Via Sunlight Labs.

From NYTimes:

“In my view, any judgment to expand the balance sheet further should be subject to strict scrutiny,” Kevin M. Warsh, a Fed governor, said in a speech last month in Atlanta. He warned that new purchases could undermine the Fed’s “most valuable asset”: its credibility.

This is the email to one of my accounts:

from chairman@virgnia3dgop.com
to XXX @ XXXXX
date Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 2:23 PM
subject Republican River Rendevous in support of Virginians for Chuck Smith with Special Guest Former Governor George F. Allen

hide details 2:23 PM (2 hours ago)

You are invited to attend a Republican River Rendevous in support of
Virginians for Chuck Smith with Special Guest Former Governor George
F. Allen

Friday, July 30, 2010

Sponsor’s Reception ~ 5:30 PM BBQ ~ 6:00 PM

Osbourne Landing

Shelter Two, Varina, Virginia

Gold Sponsor – $1,500 (8 BBQ dinners & admission for 4 to
Sponsor’s Reception with Governor Allen.)

Silver Sponsor – $1,000 (4 BBQ dinners & admission for 2 to
Sponsor’s Reception with Governor Allen.)

Bronze Sponsor – $500 (2 BBQ dinners & admission for 2 to Sponsors
Reception with Governor Allen.)

Friend – $250 (2 BBQ dinners & admission for 2 to Sponsor’s
Reception with Governor Allen.)

Individual Tickets – $50 per person

All Sponsor levels will received special recognition at the event. All
Sponsor Reception attendees will have a photo opportunity with
Governor Allen. Gold, Silver and Bronze Sponsor Reception attendees
receive an autographed copy of Governor Allen’s new book “What
Washington Can Learn from the World of Sports”.

For more information or to RSVP

CLICK HERE

for PDF flyer or email: mwade3dgop@gmail.com

Contributions to Virginians for Chuck Smith are not deductible as
charitable contributions for Federal income tax purposes. All funds
received in response to this solicitation will be subject to federal
contribution limits and prohibitions. Contributions from corporations,
foreign nationals, and federal contractors are strictly prohibited.
Federal law requires us to use our best efforts to collect and report
the name, mailing address, occupation, and name of employer of each
individual whose aggregate contributions exceed $200 in an election
cycle. An individual may contribute up to $2,400 (or $4,800 per
couple). Multi-candidate PACs are limited to $5,000 per election

Paid for and authorized by Virginians for Chuck Smith.

This email address: chairman@virgnia3dgop.com is dead.

Thinking big, from Mashable:

“On July 30 we will begin purchasing the clean energy from 114 megawatts of wind generation at the NextEra Energy Resources Story County II facility in Iowa at a predetermined rate for 20 years… This power is enough to supply several data centers.”

The company’s long-term commitment will generate a significant amount of capital for NextEra to develop more wind projects.

From Naked Capitalism:

The nation’s three dominant credit-ratings providers have made an urgent new request of their clients: Please don’t use our credit ratings.

The odd plea is emerging as the first consequence of the financial overhaul that is to be signed into law by President Obama on Wednesday. And it already is creating havoc in the bond markets, parts of which are shutting down in response to the request.

This is some great news for your money. Most of the FinReform bill is worthless.

Liability: Investors can bring private rights of action against ratings agencies for a knowing or reckless failure to conduct a reasonable investigation of the facts or to obtain analysis from an independent source. NRSROs will now be subject to “expert liability” with the nullification of Rule 436(g) which provides an exemption for credit ratings provided by NRSROs from being considered a part of the registration statement.

In English that meant the credit ratings agencies had to be used by say, your pension plan or mutual fund as a reason to invest in a particular asset. However – if the ratings agency was wrong with their rating they could not be sued nor held liable. So – obviously there was pressure for them to, let’s say, not tell the truth to get business.

When the the $4 trillion spread in mortgage debt vs. home values is wiped out.

The Bloomberg Chart of the Day via The Big Picture.

Note the explosion of debt in about 2000 when the house was used as a bank to buy crap creating the “buy crap fake economy boom years”.

Thank you for recognizing the potential we’ve seen in Pleasure House Point since 2002.

A team of dedicated volunteers have devoted an almost incomprehensible amount of time, energy, and effort to save Pleasure House Point from development and to raise the level of awareness to the property’s value for preservation, open space, and environmental education.

Our goal has always been to protect 100% of Pleasure House Point and that vision has not changed.

That vision has been strengthened thanks to The Trust for Public Land’s involvement.

We’ve recognized the challenges of raising funds for it’s protection, and are sensitive to using our tax dollars to achieve that goal.

One example we view as a viable option to raise capital is to create a wetland mitigation bank on Pleasure House Point which would also help achieve our goal of restoring PHP to it’s original state.

The time, energy, and effort we brought to protecting PHP from development will continue as we work for nothing short of preserving 100% of Pleasure House Point for open space and environmental education.

Thank you again for promoting the vision we all share.

We look forward to working with you to make Pleasure House Point a show case for community involvement in preservation and environmental education.

Cheers,
Tim Solanic

Press release from City of Virginia Beach Virginia.
Our vision at SavePHP.org.