Green Laptops and the Unbox November 15, 2007January 6, 2017 GREENZO Wayne Mathews: ‘The episode you suggested is available on Amazon Unbox for 99 cents, and can be delivered to your TiVo.’ ☞ Yes! Click here. AMAZON UNBOX ON TIVO If you have a TiVo (though not the DirecTV variety) click here. (Same link as above, but such important news, I felt it deserved its own header.) You can rent or buy movies or TV shows direct from your remote control . . . or by visiting Amazon.com from and beginning the download remotely. Order a movie at work, say, and it will be ready to watch on your TiVo by the time you get home. ONE LAPTOP PER CHILD Kathi Derevan: ‘The One Laptop per Child offer started Monday and runs 12 more days. I just ordered mine. They have even sweetened the pot with a free year of T-Mobile hotspot service. It would almost be ridiculous not to buy this!’ MONDAY’S IMPASSIONED SPEECH Gennady Shmukler: ‘I think my version is no less impassioned but a lot closer to reality than Mayor Anderson’s. Here’s what I would say: ‘What we really need to do is avoid the trap of focusing the blame (for all of the world’s and country’s problems) solely upon President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, the Republican Party, US military and the rest of the United States government. This is not just about few much-hated people who allegedly wronged our country – and the world. They were elected by the people of the United States to lead and protect us in times of world-wide war with Islamic extremism. Anyone who thinks that the most important and pressing problem of today is to expose ‘the atrocities being committed every single day in our name’ by our government is a delusional partisan who will do himself, his party, and this country a great service by focusing instead on incredible atrocities committed every single day in the name of Islam all over the world, in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Indonesia, Israel, great cities of Europe and all over the Middle East and Africa. And he should instead focus on the honor, bravery and sacrifice of our Armed Forces who are our best weapon and strongest defense against the spread of the cancer of the world, Islamic extremism.’ ☞ You have to wonder, though, whether our occupation of Iraq has not multiplied the ranks of the terrorists tenfold. Have we been fighting Bin Laden – or fulfilling his fondest dreams? CORRECTION: CBH Of CBH, I had said, ‘Motley Fool has a helpful analysis here. If the deal goes through and you hang on to your resulting shares in Toronto-Dominion Bank, tax is due only on the gain from the 25% of the deal that’s for cash. It looks as though, all in, we’ll have made about 40% before tax.’ I had assumed that tax would be due only on the cash portion of the deal, because that’s almost always the way an acquisition works – but not this one, as explained here. If you still have your shares, click that link and read the other caveats it raises. It may all work out fine, but I’m selling. HAPN Well, I told you the stock and warrants were out of whack. I had just hoped this would right itself by the warrants rising – not the stock falling. With the stock down by about 40% from the $6 many paid to buy it, most of us still have a nice profit on our warrants. And if the company performs nicely, the stock should come back – and then some. So I have resumed my nap. FMD John Conwell sends this sobering link. I haven’t sold but have asked my guru for reassurance. Tomorrow: Smart Reader Feedback on Mint.com and Smart Cars
Tom Brokaw And Warren Buffett Write Today’s Column November 14, 2007March 10, 2017 Thanks, guys. (And Jeff Bauer for sending me the link.) Jeff writes: ‘The part I found interesting, that I hadn’t heard before, was his response to Tom Brokaw’s challenge of choosing the most rational form of taxation. ‘You can have just an unlimited IRA. As long as you invest money, and don’t actually spend it for yourself, or your kids don’t spend it, or whatever – you don’t get taxed. As soon as you start making withdrawals from society’s bank, start using the resources, the sweat of other people to benefit yourself, you would pay on that. That’s the one that makes the most sense.’ Unfortunately, as Buffett points out, it ain’t gonna happen.’ ☞ I also like Buffett’s comment on CEO pay. He draws the contrast between the way executives may stay up all night bargaining with a union to save the company money and how CEO pay gets set. He’s never heard of a compensation committee playing tough at 3am resisting the demands of a CEO.
Smart Cars to Drive in Palm Beach November 13, 2007March 10, 2017 THE PRICE OF OIL Since the Texas oil men, George Bush and Dick Cheney, took over, and since the secret meetings of the energy task force (the list of whose members even a GAO law suit could not dislodge), the price of oil has quadrupled. ‘Oil consumers are paying $4 billion to $5 billion more for crude oil every day than they did just five years ago,’ according to this global overview in the Washington Post, ‘pumping more than $2 trillion into the coffers of oil companies and oil-producing nations this year alone.’ It’s probably just a coincidence that the oil industry and Halliburton have done so spectacularly well. And that California had a sudden energy crisis – unchecked by the ample powers of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission – that siphoned billions from San Francisco to Houston, unseated a Democratic governor in mid-term, and then disappeared as fast as it materialized. But whether coincidence or not, don’t assume $4 is the highest price a gallon of gas can ever reach. Much of Europe is already paying $7.50 and more. BEATING THE PRICE OF OIL Easy, at least when you’re just one or two in the car. Smart cars arrive in January at about $12,000 a pop, and will double your mileage . . . which halves the cost of fuel. Not right for every situation, but safer than they look and so easy to park. THE PALM BEACH STORY Why buy this wonderful old movie for $11.99 when you can get the whole seven-DVD Preston Sturges boxed set for $28.49? (Or, of course, NetFlix – but then you can’t rewrap it after you’ve watched them and delight someone for the holidays.) However you do it, though, if you haven’t already seen The Palm Beach Story – do. You have to watch Mary Astor and Rudy Vallee and Joel McRae and Claudette Colbert deadpan Sturges lines like . . . ‘That’s one of the tragedies of this life – that the men most in need of beating up are always enormous.’
Mint, Green, and Purple November 12, 2007March 10, 2017 GREENZO So did you see last Thursday’s episode of 30 Rock? If you did, I need say no more. You have just broken into a smile.* *This season’s episodes are not yet for sale on iTunes. Though free at NBC.com, they require sitting thru ads and buffering and, well, it’s not the perfect TiVo viewing experience. But if you insist, it’s episode #205. AN IMPASSIONED SPEECH By Salt Lake’s Mayor Rocky Anderson. Even if you don’t agree with it all, I think most* would agree with this much: We must avoid the trap of focusing the blame solely upon President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. This is not just about a few people who have wronged our country – and the world. They were enabled by members of both parties in Congress, they were enabled by the pathetic mainstream news media, and, ultimately, they have been enabled by the American people – 40% of whom are so ill-informed they still think Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks – a people who know and care more about baseball statistics and which drunken starlets are wearing underwear than they know and care about the atrocities being committed every single day in our name by a government for which we need to take responsibility. * Well, maybe not the 40%, but they don’t read this page. MINT.COM As in making it, or at least keeping track of your coins, not putting it in your tea. It’s a free and much simpler, and in some ways elegant, on-line alternative to Quicken. I have no stake in Mint.com and haven’t test-driven it for real, but one of the young entrepreneurs behind it is a friend. (Some of you may already have tried it – though just launched, they already have many tens of thousands of users – so don’t be shy about telling us how you like it.)
Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome to USA, to USA, to USA November 9, 2007March 10, 2017 A couple of weeks ago I suggested a sort of Greeter Corps to make foreigners feel hugely welcome the minute they set foot and are going through customs, whether they are coming to vacation, to do business, to visit relatives, or to study. Your further thoughts: THE STATISTICS Dave: ‘Here is a link to the problem. I, too, believe the US needs to wise up and treat foreigners like royalty.’ The number of foreign visitors to the United States has plummeted since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington because foreigners don’t feel welcome, tourism professionals said Thursday. “Since September 11, 2001, the United States has experienced a 17 percent decline in overseas travel, costing America 94 billion dollars in lost visitor spending, nearly 200,000 jobs and 16 billion dollars in lost tax revenue,” the Discover America advocacy campaign said in a statement. Chairman Stevan Porter lamented the “extraordinary decline” in the number of overseas visitors to the United States, while the advocacy group’s executive director, Geoff Freeman, blamed the slump on the shabby welcome many foreigners feel they get in the United States. “It’s clear what’s keeping people away in the post-9/11 environment: it is the perception around the world that travelers aren’t welcome,” Freeman told AFP. “Travelers around the world feel the US entry experience is among the world’s worst,” Freeman said, calling on the US government to work with the private sector to make visa acquisition more efficient, the entry process traveler-friendly, and to improve communication. “We have put in place many reasonable security barriers but we have not communicated these barriers and we have not told travelers that we want their business,” he said. “Six years after 9/11, we need to take this more seriously,” Freeman said. “The United States has to do what every other nation in the world does, and that is to promote itself to visitors,” he said. “If you look at visitor numbers from the UK before 9/11, we had 4.8 million visitors. Last year, the number was 4.1 million. “Looking to 2010, the Department of Commerce is projecting an increase in those numbers, but only of one percent over the course of 10 years. “If I ran a business that had one percent growth in 10 years, I’d be fired,” Freeman said. The Discover America Partnership was set up by US business leaders last year to try and redress the flagging image of the United States and bring in more visitors. FINGERPRINTING VISITORS Jason Kelly: ‘Ernst-Dieter Martin wrote, ‘The US is the only country doing this to their visitors…’ Actually, Japan will start fingerprinting and photographing all incoming foreigners later this month – even those already living in Japan who are returning home from overseas. The brochure explains in several languages why this is good for protecting Japan, and notes that those who don’t comply will be denied entry. Japan copies nearly everything the U.S. does, but it was sad to see this happen so quickly.’ MAKING THEM CRY Andrew Sullivan writes: It is by far the biggest change I have experienced in my quarter century living in America: the experience of coming and going. While the illegal border is still chaotic, the legal border seems to be getting more and more onerous, unwelcoming, bureaucratic and sometimes terrifying. Getting any kind of visa can be a nightmare of bureaucracy; being finger-printed and treated like a criminal is the first actual experience many foreigners have of entering the US, and the process of getting through customs and immigration can be, even in completely incident-free circumstances, frightening. My elderly mother arrived for my wedding and started sobbing in my arms after the rough treatment she had received from airport security. The reputation of the US under Bush is in the toilet. But the experience of actually entering America may be affecting far more. These little anecdotes spread. And, in the end, Americans pay the price – in lost tourism revenue, less trade, forgone taxes, and so on. When Bush goes, the country’s reputation will instantly soar (unless he’s succeeded by Giuliani, in which case, we’re headed for pariah status). But unless we get a grip on the police state atmosphere at the legal border, the opinion of mankind with respect to America will only continue to worsen. PUTTING THEM ON BIKES Ralph Sierra: ‘What a great idea the Parisians have had – as reported here in the New York Times . . .’ Twelve weeks after the introduction of the Vélib, 15,000 bikes have been put into service at more than 1,000 stations. In that time Vélibiens (or Vélibeurs or perhaps Vélibistes) have checked out bicycles almost six million times and ridden them an estimated 7.5 million miles. The Vélib system is simple. You swipe a credit card in a kiosk that is located beside a row of parked bikes and purchase a one-day, one-week or one-year subscription. (The system also takes a 150-euro deposit authorization to ensure the bike’s safe return.) The machine prints out a card with your code number and you enter a personal password. You tap in this code and password to unlock a bike and ride off. When you’ve reached your destination, you look for the nearest Vélib station, click your bike into an empty dock, watch a light change from yellow to green to acknowledge that you’ve returned your bike, and you’re done. The first half-hour is free, after that the cost is 1 euro, or about $1.45, for the second half-hour, 2 euros for the third half-hour and 4 euros for each half hour after that. TREATING THEM LIKE CRIMINALS Steven Benoit: ‘My family and I returned from Germany this summer. What a contrast. Munich’s airport was beautiful and laid out well with announcements and all signage in multi languages. We were waved through and our passports were stamped with a smile. No waiting. Upon our return to Philadelphia we were tossed into a churning herded crowd. All signage was confusing and only in English. Aggressive uniformed staff were shouting the same directions over and over (in English only) when clear signage in multiple languages would have had all of us understand where to go. When we return from Europe we continue to feel embarrassed by the way our recent hosts are treated upon entry. Even arrival to NYC…. dirty, confusing and no translations… welcome to America. Our friends from Germany report being treated like criminals. We felt the same way.’
WaMu, Citi, and Chase November 8, 2007January 6, 2017 WA-MOOOPS, ETC. You win some and you lose some (whence: winsome and loathsome). My smart guy bought more at $30, so maybe he’s buying a lot more at $20 (if they manage to maintain the dividend, which the market seems not to expect them to be able to do, it would be yielding 9.7%) – but so far, all that seems likely to come of my LEAPS suggestion is a suggestion of your own that I go take a flying one. I don’t blame you. I tend to be stubborn with these things, sometimes even doubling up after a big decline. (With all the talk of ‘homicidal maniacs,’ suicidal maniacs seem to have gotten lost in the shuffle.) This sometimes works out well, often not. A more rational strategy might be to sell for a tax loss, immediately putting the money into Something Else you think may do equally well. Ideally, this produces a short-term tax loss now and a lightly-taxed long-term gain years from now. There’s always the risk ‘Something Else’ will then begin its own precipitous decline, just as WM – which you no longer own – snaps back. Much harder to take, psychologically, I think, than if you just watched WM go down and down. That’s one of the reasons I too often hold on to my losers. One Something Else to consider may be Blackstone, BX, down to $23 from its IPO price of $36 this summer, part-owned by the Chinese. The Chinese could be good partners to have as the century progresses. But with housing prices likely not yet bottomed, gasoline prices not yet topped, foreclosures rising, recession looming, and all manner of other problems (the debt we incur to occupy Iraq rather than to repair our bridges), don’t put any money into stocks you might need to pull out of stocks anytime soon. That’s always true, but certainly true today. COME-ON RATES – CHECK YOUR BANK ACCOUNTS PERIODICALLY Scott Hoenig: ‘The Citibank account situation is even worse than you described. In February, I signed up for the ‘e-Savings’ account (online and phone signup only – nicely hidden!), when it was offering their highest rate of 5%. They wouldn’t let me keep the same account number, so I had to move my funds from their pathetic Money Market Account, and contact everyone I’ve set up with Direct Deposits to start using the new account number. ‘Month by month, the interest rate decreased, down to 4.16% now. What I didn’t know, and they made no effort to tell me, is that they created differently-branded accounts that work the same way but earn higher interest rates. There’s now an ‘Ultimate Savings Account’ with a 4.4% rate, and an ‘Ultimate Money Account’ with a 4.88% rate. (Again, you’d only see those if you looked for them on their web site – they’re also online/phone signup only.) I’d switch to those, but they’d make me get a new account number again, and I’d have to change all my Direct Deposits again. I think this is a scam. They keep changing the account ‘types’ so that they can lower current customers’ interest rates. The brand-new customers get the high rates (temporarily), and the people with open accounts at the lower rates a) don’t know there are better options, and b) even if they find out, won’t go chasing the rates due to the hassle of switching to a new account number.’ ☞ Maybe they should offer a ‘Guaranteed Not-Quite-Super Money Market Rate Account’ guaranteed to pay half a per cent less than whatever is their then-highest come-on rate. You give up the 50 basis points in return for the convenience of never having to call and change accounts. Ray Merrihew: ‘Another example: Citi recently switched my Dividend MasterCard to a Dividend World MasterCard. No complaints there – with ‘World’ added to the name, it must be better. The problem is that I assumed I would continue receiving e-mail statement notifications. Citi can automatically change your credit card, but apparently they don’t automatically carry forward your preferences because, well, with the word world in the name, how do they know you still want them? Coincidentally, I also failed to receive my paper statement (must have been lost in the mail). So, needless to say, I was hit with a juicy late fee and finance charge. Hmmm, you almost get the feeling . . . ‘ AND NOW A CHASE HORROR STORY There are a million sordid banking stories – so for balance (I like my Citi relationship, by and large), here‘s one from Chase. (Thanks, Jeff Bauer.) They jiggered a guy’s credit card date to make him two day’s late – then raised his rate from 4% to 30%.
American Business At Its Best November 7, 2007January 6, 2017 Good results in Kentucky and Virginia yesterday – in both of which the DNC has invested as part of its 50-state strategy. Thanks for your support. BOREF Borealis subsidiary Roche Bay’s joint venture partner, Toronto stock symbol AXI, made an announcement yesterday. Apparently, its offer of shares at $2.83 (Canadian, so about $3.07 American) was oversubscribed and they are raising 41% more money than planned. This is good news, because it means there will be that much more capital to continue developing the Roche Bay iron ore deposits. And because it suggests that some people think there is value there. (Also because, as part of its joint venture deal, Borealis will shortly get 2.7 million warrants to buy AXI at 35 cents a share; and its subsidiary will be sitting on a further 4 million warrants or so.) All wildly speculative, as always, and frustratingly slow . . . but progress. AXI closed up 23% at $3.20 (Canadian, $3.48 U.S.) on volume of 464,927 shares. Borealis traded up 4% cents at $7.30 (US) on volume of 1,262 shares. TXCO With a well received earnings report, the stock is now triple what we paid for it – and why not, given that they’re in the oil business? I am holding on. To listen to their latest conference call, click here (good through the end of this month). VISTA, MAC – HEY, WHAT ABOUT . . . Paul Rightley: ‘You write, ‘(And yes, I know, I know: Macintosh.)’ Can it be that the man who taught me to buy cases of wine and store them under my bed or to buy ONE expensive bottle of vodka and then refill it with cheaper vodka could be recommending the expensive alternative to Windows XP? (What about the saving of bits of used soap bars, the cheap shirts at Walgreens?) I realize that people like me are usually regarded as slightly insane, but I would heartily recommend Ubuntu Linux. I manage MY vast fortune using gnucash running on Linux. The beauty of Linux is not just that it is free, it is also comes with a lot fewer ties to businesses (like the pesky need for anti-virus software) that can give the feeling that ‘they purposely make it difficult.’ Matt: ‘I just bought a ThinkPad x61s a couple months ago and I love it, good choice. Vista drove me crazy though, so I installed the Ubuntu OS on it instead and haven’t looked back. www.ubuntu.com.’ CANCELATION WOES Kathi Derevan: ‘My two stories: Real Networks – sign up for the SuperPass, very easy; try to cancel, and you have to call on the telephone! I hate the telephone, and I signed up online, so why can’t I cancel online? I suspect it is because they will harangue me in person (sort of) not to cancel. I haven’t called yet, so they still bill. The second story concerns something called Crystal Vision, for which I took a flyer on a free one-month trial (I must have been sleep-deprived mad to do that). I e-mailed my cancellation within the very first month after sampling and seeing nothing there I wanted or needed. My bad, I failed to notice that my credit card was being nicked month after month for $21.50. When I did notice, I e-mailed again, referencing my original cancellation. Apparently I have to telephone them too, because there is no response to the e-mails. What I always remember at times like this: ‘The roach motel, they check in and THEY CAN’T CHECK OUT!!!’ . . . and I am the roach.‘ CANCELING RECURRING CHARGES Steven Rubin: ‘As far as recurring charges that are hard to cancel, you can beat them at their own game by using a ‘disposable’ credit card number. In Citi-speak, they’re called ‘Virtual Account Numbers’ which are of course linked to my own real credit card number, but these numbers are limited by amount and/or time. AMEX used to have a similar program but was suddenly discontinued for reasons unclear and not disclosed (at least to me). I use only these to pay for annual online charges such as Symantec anti-virus, EZ-Pass, etc, or for any online charge to avoid having the number ‘stolen’ (although I’m told that’s an infrequent method by thieves). If I no longer want the service, I just don’t renew the number, and the recurring charge can’t and won’t be honored. If I want to continue, I’ll log on to my account and give them a new, valid number.’ Ernst-Dieter Martin: ‘You can always cancel a subscription by reversing the credit card charges. The credit card companies should be very aware of the black sheep among the subscription services. For the blackest of all – AOL – check this link.’ AMERICAN BUSINESS AT ITS BEST Bob Fyfe: ‘I understand your frustration with trying to cancel service contracts that were so easy to enter into. It can be infuriating. I’d like to share a couple of examples of excellent customer service to counterbalance today’s column. They are not examples of ongoing contracts, but….. Williams-Sonoma/All-Clad Frying Pan: About ten years ago, my wife and I purchased a set of All-Clad pots and pans from Williams-Sonoma. After debating the pros and cons we decided on the set with the non-stick surface for the frying pans. Recently, the larger, more used frying pan lost all of its non-stickiness and became unusable. I took the pan to a local Williams-Sonoma store and explained the situation, hoping that maybe I would get a discount on a new pan. The woman asked if I had purchased the pan at a Williams-Sonoma store, to which I answered “Yes, about ten years ago, but not this store.” She said no problem, and then suggested that since it had been ten years, I probably didn’t have the receipt. I told her that I didn’t. She then said she would be right back with a new pan and explained that they had changed the chemical composition of the non-stick surface to something better than Teflon, and it should last much longer this time, but if I ever had a problem in the future, just bring it back again. ‘Lutron Light Dimmer: The switch on one of the dimmers in our house began to work only intermittently. I called Lutron’s customer service and explained the problem. I asked what the warranty was on the dimmer and the rep told me it was written on the box as 1-year “but around here we consider it to be a lifetime warranty.” He then asked for my address and a credit card, and told me they would send a new dimmer out that day along with a box to return the broken one. If the broken on was returned within a reasonable time (30, 60, 90 days, I don’t really remember) they wouldn’t bill my credit card for the new dimmer. If they didn’t get the old one back, they would charge for the new one. He also told me that they had changed the composition of the switch material and that I shouldn’t have a problem with the new one, but if I did, just call back and they would take care of it. ‘Sears/Craftsman tape measure: I stepped on the extended tape of my 30-foot Craftsman tape measure and crinkled the metal. I knew that Craftsman tools were warranted for life, but assumed that the blade of a tape measure wouldn’t be covered. So I went to my local Sears with the tape measure and explained that I had stepped on the tape as it was laid out across the floor. The salesman told me to go pick out a new tape measure. It didn’t matter that I had broken it with my carelessness, the warranty was unconditional.’
Lenovo Recommends Vista – II November 6, 2007March 10, 2017 VISTA Juan: ‘I have been waiting anxiously for your review of Vista. Since I own one computer with Vista, I would be in state of shock and in need of immediate emergency treatment if you found any positive thing to say about it. My advice . . .’ ☞ I know, I know – Macintosh. But if you have been using ThinkPads forever . . . and if you already know more or less how they work . . . and if you have all your financial stuff in a swell DOS program last updated in 1992 . . . Macintosh may not be the way to go. So every couple of years I get the latest ThinkPad, hoping to upgrade before the hard drive on my old one gives out (though, yes, I make backups), and then the old one becomes a backup. So far, it’s worked. In that spirit, I went to the ThinkPad site and bought a souped up T61, complete with a four-year LoJack contract (so that if it were ever stolen, Interpol could batter down the door of the perpetrators, waterboard them into confessing, and get me back on-line with Web Boggle before you can say, ‘Why do you spend so much time playing Web Boggle?’). That was September 21. By September 24, the LoJack disk had arrived – computer to follow shortly. It had had a promised ship date, at purchase, of ’10 days to two weeks.’ When two weeks had passed with no computer, I checked on the order. It seemed that, as a convenience to the consumer, they had tacked on an additional three weeks. Being one to look for any silver lining, I called Lenovo (which had long since purchased the IBM ThinkPad business) and asked whether they could downgrade the T61 they were building for me from Vista to Windows XP. In configuring my purchase, I had noted the ‘Lenovo Recommends Vista’ banners everywhere. But apparently, Vista makes your programs run a little slower than before. Not a feature I was looking for. And I began to sense there might be other difficulties for someone with limited time and skills to learn something new. (Nor had I seen the Vista clip I suggested you watch last week.) ‘You can’t do that now. The machine is already being built. I would have to cancel your order and have you place a new order, which would only delay it further. But you I can switch you to someone who can send you a disk you can use to downgrade when the machine comes.’ Outstanding. After The Usual Endless Wait On Hold (TUEWOH), I reached someone who said he would be happy to help – what was the serial number of my machine? I explained that my machine was being built in China, but I had the order number, and I hoped that perhaps the disk could be sent now so that when the machine arrived, I could get right to work downgrading it. ‘Nope. Not without the serial number.’ The reason for this is that . . . well, there is no conceivable reason for this. ‘Call back when it comes,’ he advised. ‘Is there anything else I can help you with today?’ So on October 30 the machine did arrive and I did call back – 866-96-THINK. I can’t reconstruct all the branching . . . at least I knew I was ‘an existing ThinkPad customer’ . . . but guessed as well as I could, and when I got to the question about whether I was calling about software or hardware, I guessed ‘software.’ Aren’t Vista and XP software? After TUEWOH, I got a software rep who explained I should have guessed ‘hardware’ – he would connect me. After TUEWOH, I got Jason, who, though very nice, was puzzled by the phone number associated with my call. ‘Yes, this is hardware support, but somehow they put you through to Lenovo Canada – you need Lenovo in Atlanta. I’ll connect you.’ After TUEWOH, I got George in Atlanta software support who couldn’t hear me unless I shouted. Everyone before and after George managed to hear me just fine, so either we had a bad connection or George was just having a little fun. It was so frustrating, I just hung up. I called 866-96-THINK again, this time selecting the sales department, because they have a can-do attitude and pick up on the first ring – ‘yes, we can absolutely get you that disk’ – and got a cheerful referral to 800-388-7080, IBM Parts, which is an automated number that gives other numbers to call – I guessed at 800-426-7378, where I choose ‘hardware’ and was routed back to Atlanta where, after TUEWOH, reached Joseph, who asked for my serial number, which I proudly gave. ‘Hmmmm,’ said Joseph. ‘That’s not coming up.’ ‘Well, but it’s sitting here right on my lap. I’m looking at it,’ I said, as I read it to him again. Joseph said he understood, but it wasn’t in their system yet – no problem, he would transfer me to someone in ‘entitlement’ who would get it straightened out and entered in the system. I was put on hold for 12 minutes (I timed it) and reached a very nice woman who quickly got it straightened out and promised to have someone call me right back so I could – finally – get the free down grade disk. ‘Someone’s going to call me back?’ I asked. ‘Like – when?’ ‘Oh, right away. I’m just entering this in the system and they’ll call you right back.’ That was at 2:15pm. After a couple of hours, I gave up and went out. Maybe I would just stick with Vista. I had begun playing with it – under Vista, Solitaire now keeps track of your highest score and ‘completion average’ and, best of all, lets you right click a couple of times once all the cards are in order and you’ve won. This saves your literally having to move each card on to the proper pile one at a time – it does that for you. A great time saver. Anything to be able to zone out more efficiently. I found an old-fashioned DOS-style command prompt on the Accessory menu, loaded Managing Your Money into the C:MYM12 directory I created (kids: pay no attention, I come from an entirely different era), and it worked fine. Almost. But the ‘almost’ was a deal-breaker, so I downloaded Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, which lets you set up Windows 98 off in a little corner of your hard drive. But Windows 98 asked me to insert my boot disk (which boot disk? huh?) . . . . . . and right about then – 6pm – the phone rang and, yes, it was someone from Lenovo calling back because they understood I wanted the Windows XP Recovery Disk. All I had to give them was $50 (I had thought it was a free downgrade, but eagerly proffered my credit card anyway), and ‘the disk’ was on its way. And it came – 8 CDs, actually, along with a one-page instruction sheet, copyright 2004, that guided my through holding down F1 as Vista was rebooting . . . going into IBM BIOS Setup Utility menu to select STARTUP (‘check!’), then select BOOT (‘check!’), then select CD-ROM DRIVE (‘huh?’). That last was not one of the choices on the screen, but there were three that came close, so I tried each of them, but none of them worked. That is to say, when I inserted Disk 1 of the set they had sent, expecting it to by-pass Vista and start the process of reformatting the hard drive, I instead got Vista’s cheerful start-up screen. This was my fault, as it turned out, because, basically, I am old and stupid. You are not meant to follow the instruction sheet literally in choosing CD-ROM DRIVE from the screen (you are supposed to select one of the three options that are close) . . . . . . but you are supposed follow it literally in choosing the disk to insert, and DISK 1 is not the one to start with. Yes, it is similarly named to the one in the instructions, and, yes, it is Disk 1. But you are supposed to start with one of the others, which is conveniently packaged in a plain white sleeve like the rest. No ME FIRST sticker or anything like that, because, well, why make it easy? Eventually, with help from My Wonderful Smart Friend, I figured it out (‘let me see your other disks,’ he said), and I have now successfully downgraded my Lenovo T61 from Vista Ultimate to Windows XP . . . and it was that simple! In preparing this stultifying report for you, I had occasion to go back to the Lenovo sales site and note that they have added a new option (or maybe I just missed it the first time). For about double the price of their most expensive T61, you can now get one (starting ‘from $5,000’) that is just like the one I got, only with a smaller screen, a hand-sewn leather cover and 24/7 tech support promised by the fourth ring, ‘no menus and holding.’ Featuring Vista Ultimate, of course. The truth is, for someone like me, the extra $2,500 for prompt tech support might actually be worth it . . . though a friend who likes Dell tells me that their tech support usually picks up right away, for free. VISTA: JOKES ASIDE, IT’S GOOD The word from Frank Schrader in West Milford, New Jersey (where once lions roamed in a drive-through theme park, and I got to write about them for New York Magazine, but I digress): Since I haven’t seen what you will be ‘kvetching’ about I can’t comment on specifics. But my advice is to just hang in there, in the end you’ll like Vista. I’ve been using it for over a year what with beta test versions. At first I wasn’t thrilled and I’m an early adopter. But after using the release version for over 6 months and finding my way around, it’s changed the way I work and I love it-for one thing, no more screen full of desktop icons; instead I use the Search and list of recently used programs-now I can see my wall paper (except for the weather and clock gadgets I have in Windows Sidebar). If I could suggest one piece of advice, it’s to use the Search whenever you can. It will find files, programs, web shortcuts, anything with text in it that you search for. Also for file management in Windows Explorer use the search, great for finding files that you’ve forgotten the names of. OK, a second piece of advice, I know you’re a busy man but get a copy of Windows Vista For Dummies and learn about the new features, there’s more to Vista than a pretty face. Yes Vista has some quirks and some things I wish they had done differently. The UAC or User Access Control prompts that come up when you need to do something that requires administrator credentials can be annoying. But after you’ve got the programs you use installed they won’t come up as often and they do make Vista safer. It’s worth the few seconds it costs you. There are pluses too. My favorite (requires either the Vista Business or Ultimate edition): the built-in Windows backup is the best ever. A couple more things, I’m using Vista Ultimate on a computer that was 5 years old in May of this year. The video and network card were upgraded about 2 years ago for other reasons. I did add 512MB of memory for Vista (for a total of 1GB) and upgraded my sound card because there wasn’t a Vista driver for it. Also the PC was a pretty powerful machine when I bought it 5 years ago (I believe in futureproofing). Also, I’m pretty sure I’m an atypical user since I turned 67 in September, but if I can do it… One last thing, my son (who isn’t as quite as much as a techie as I am) got a new laptop about 3 months ago. He hated Vista initially but after some advice from me (pretty much what I’ve just told you) and sticking with it, he’s now a convert and loves it (I should say though that with a brand new laptop he had more driver problems than I did, but as Vista ages those things are being taken care of). PS MYM 12 DOS (I have records back to 1987 and it still does everything I want) is working just fine under Vista with just 2 very minor glitches – I have to use a generic icon (doesn’t matter much, as I said I use the Search and just type MYM and it’s there) and it’s sometimes a little slow to back up to my second hard drive when I quit (I just hit F7 and then Enter and go on to the next thing though-not a real problem). ☞ No need to write in and tell me Frank’s crazy to like Vista. I have lots of those stored up for possible use later in the week. But thanks. VISTA TIP Hubert: ‘I also just recently got a Thinkpad with Windows Vista and had some troubles. I resolved it by: 1. Downloading & installing all critical and recommended updates from Lenovo: Start –> All Programs –> ThinkVantage –> System Updates. And then, 2. Downloading & Installing all Microsoft Updates here. I hope this helps.’ VISTA RUNS FASTER ON A MAC Dick Theriault: ‘Amusingly, the fastest Windows notebook recently tested by PC Magazine was a Mac. Click here. I have yet to speak to one person who doesn’t hate Vista – except for my neighbor’s wife, who states proudly that she knows diddly-zip about computers, but it’s pretty.’
Why We’re In Iraq But You Should See Bee Movie Anyway November 5, 2007March 10, 2017 AND SO IT BEGAN CNN: Can you name the general who is in charge of Pakistan? Governor Bush: Wait, wait, is this 50 questions? I wonder whether he meant ‘Twenty Questions,’ but either way, it’s hard not to remember the exchange . . . from a distant century, prosperous and peaceful. It turns out to really matter who runs the country. That said, I don’t buy the notion President Bush is dumb. Few would dispute that he’s intellectually lazy. But this is a smart guy who knows what he wants and frequently gets it – whether it be ‘out of serving in Vietnam’ or ‘out of showing up for Air National Guard duty’ or ‘dramatically lower taxes for the rich’ – or, perhaps, ‘a dominant role for the oil industry’ from which he came and that shapes his world view. To wit: UGH, UGH, UGH, UGH From the London Review of Books: It’s the Oil Jim Holt Iraq is ‘unwinnable’, a ‘quagmire’, a ‘fiasco’: so goes the received opinion. But there is good reason to think that, from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is none of these things. Indeed, the US may be ‘stuck’ precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no ‘exit strategy’. Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves. That is more than five times the total in the United States. And, because of its long isolation, it is the least explored of the world’s oil-rich nations. A mere two thousand wells have been drilled across the entire country; in Texas alone there are a million. It has been estimated, by the Council on Foreign Relations, that Iraq may have a further 220 billion barrels of undiscovered oil; another study puts the figure at 300 billion. If these estimates are anywhere close to the mark, US forces are now sitting on one quarter of the world’s oil resources. The value of Iraqi oil, largely light crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30 trillion at today’s prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion. Who will get Iraq’s oil? One of the Bush administration’s ‘benchmarks’ for the Iraqi government is the passage of a law to distribute oil revenues. The draft law that the US has written for the Iraqi congress would cede nearly all the oil to Western companies. The Iraq National Oil Company would retain control of 17 of Iraq’s 80 existing oilfields, leaving the rest – including all yet to be discovered oil – under foreign corporate control for 30 years. ‘The foreign companies would not have to invest their earnings in the Iraqi economy,’ the analyst Antonia Juhasz wrote in the New York Times in March, after the draft law was leaked. ‘They could even ride out Iraq’s current ‘instability’ by signing contracts now, while the Iraqi government is at its weakest, and then wait at least two years before even setting foot in the country.’ As negotiations over the oil law stalled in September, the provincial government in Kurdistan simply signed a separate deal with the Dallas-based Hunt Oil Company, headed by a close political ally of President Bush. How will the US maintain hegemony over Iraqi oil? By establishing permanent military bases in Iraq. Five self-sufficient ‘super-bases’ are in various stages of completion. All are well away from the urban areas where most casualties have occurred. There has been precious little reporting on these bases in the American press, whose dwindling corps of correspondents in Iraq cannot move around freely because of the dangerous conditions. (It takes a brave reporter to leave the Green Zone without a military escort.) In February last year, the Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks described one such facility, the Balad Air Base, forty miles north of Baghdad. A piece of (well-fortified) American suburbia in the middle of the Iraqi desert, Balad has fast-food joints, a miniature golf course, a football field, a cinema and distinct neighbourhoods – among them, ‘KBR-land’, named after the Halliburton subsidiary that has done most of the construction work at the base. Although few of the 20,000 American troops stationed there have ever had any contact with an Iraqi, the runway at the base is one of the world’s busiest. ‘We are behind only Heathrow right now,’ an air force commander told Ricks. The Defense Department was initially coy about these bases. In 2003, Donald Rumsfeld said: ‘I have never, that I can recall, heard the subject of a permanent base in Iraq discussed in any meeting.’ But this summer the Bush administration began to talk openly about stationing American troops in Iraq for years, even decades, to come. Several visitors to the White House have told the New York Times that the president himself has become fond of referring to the ‘Korea model’. When the House of Representatives voted to bar funding for ‘permanent bases’ in Iraq, the new term of choice became ‘enduring bases’, as if three or four decades wasn’t effectively an eternity. But will the US be able to maintain an indefinite military presence in Iraq? It will plausibly claim a rationale to stay there for as long as civil conflict simmers, or until every groupuscule that conveniently brands itself as ‘al-Qaida’ is exterminated. The civil war may gradually lose intensity as Shias, Sunnis and Kurds withdraw into separate enclaves, reducing the surface area for sectarian friction, and as warlords consolidate local authority. De facto partition will be the result. But this partition can never become de jure. (An independent Kurdistan in the north might upset Turkey, an independent Shia region in the east might become a satellite of Iran, and an independent Sunni region in the west might harbour al-Qaida.) Presiding over this Balkanised Iraq will be a weak federal government in Baghdad, propped up and overseen by the Pentagon-scale US embassy that has just been constructed – a green zone within the Green Zone. As for the number of US troops permanently stationed in Iraq, the defence secretary, Robert Gates, told Congress at the end of September that ‘in his head’ he saw the long-term force as consisting of five combat brigades, a quarter of the current number, which, with support personnel, would mean 35,000 troops at the very minimum, probably accompanied by an equal number of mercenary contractors. (He may have been erring on the side of modesty, since the five super-bases can accommodate between ten and twenty thousand troops each.) These forces will occasionally leave their bases to tamp down civil skirmishes, at a declining cost in casualties. As a senior Bush administration official told the New York Times in June, the long-term bases ‘are all places we could fly in and out of without putting Americans on every street corner’. But their main day-to-day function will be to protect the oil infrastructure. This is the ‘mess’ that Bush-Cheney is going to hand on to the next administration. What if that administration is a Democratic one? Will it dismantle the bases and withdraw US forces entirely? That seems unlikely, considering the many beneficiaries of the continued occupation of Iraq and the exploitation of its oil resources. The three principal Democratic candidates – Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards – have already hedged their bets, refusing to promise that, if elected, they would remove American forces from Iraq before 2013, the end of their first term. Among the winners: oil-services companies like Halliburton; the oil companies themselves (the profits will be unimaginable, and even Democrats can be bought); US voters, who will be guaranteed price stability at the gas pump (which sometimes seems to be all they care about); Europe and Japan, which will both benefit from Western control of such a large part of the world’s oil reserves, and whose leaders will therefore wink at the permanent occupation; and, oddly enough, Osama bin Laden, who will never again have to worry about US troops profaning the holy places of Mecca and Medina, since the stability of the House of Saud will no longer be paramount among American concerns. Among the losers is Russia, which will no longer be able to lord its own energy resources over Europe. Another big loser is Opec, and especially Saudi Arabia, whose power to keep oil prices high by enforcing production quotas will be seriously compromised. Then there is the case of Iran, which is more complicated. In the short term, Iran has done quite well out of the Iraq war. Iraq’s ruling Shia coalition is now dominated by a faction friendly to Tehran, and the US has willy-nilly armed and trained the most pro-Iranian elements in the Iraqi military. As for Iran’s nuclear programme, neither air strikes nor negotiations seem likely to derail it at the moment. But the Iranian regime is precarious. Unpopular mullahs hold onto power by financing internal security services and buying off elites with oil money, which accounts for 70 per cent of government revenues. If the price of oil were suddenly to drop to, say, $40 a barrel (from a current price just north of $80), the repressive regime in Tehran would lose its steady income. And that is an outcome the US could easily achieve by opening the Iraqi oil spigot for as long as necessary (perhaps taking down Venezuela’s oil-cocky Hugo Chávez into the bargain). And think of the United States vis-à-vis China. As a consequence of our trade deficit, around a trillion dollars’ worth of US denominated debt (including $400 billion in US Treasury bonds) is held by China. This gives Beijing enormous leverage over Washington: by offloading big chunks of US debt, China could bring the American economy to its knees. China’s own economy is, according to official figures, expanding at something like 10 per cent a year. Even if the actual figure is closer to 4 or 5 per cent, as some believe, China’s increasing heft poses a threat to US interests. (One fact: China is acquiring new submarines five times faster than the US.) And the main constraint on China’s growth is its access to energy – which, with the US in control of the biggest share of world oil, would largely be at Washington’s sufferance. Thus is the Chinese threat neutralised. Many people are still perplexed by exactly what moved Bush-Cheney to invade and occupy Iraq. In the 27 September issue of the New York Review of Books, Thomas Powers, one of the most astute watchers of the intelligence world, admitted to a degree of bafflement. ‘What’s particularly odd,’ he wrote, ‘is that there seems to be no sophisticated, professional, insiders’ version of the thinking that drove events.’ Alan Greenspan, in his just published memoir, is clearer on the matter. ‘I am saddened,’ he writes, ‘that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.’ Was the strategy of invading Iraq to take control of its oil resources actually hammered out by Cheney’s 2001 energy task force? One can’t know for sure, since the deliberations of that task force, made up largely of oil and energy company executives, have been kept secret by the administration on the grounds of ‘executive privilege’. One can’t say for certain that oil supplied the prime motive. But the hypothesis is quite powerful when it comes to explaining what has actually happened in Iraq. The occupation may seem horribly botched on the face of it, but the Bush administration’s cavalier attitude towards ‘nation-building’ has all but ensured that Iraq will end up as an American protectorate for the next few decades – a necessary condition for the extraction of its oil wealth. If the US had managed to create a strong, democratic government in an Iraq effectively secured by its own army and police force, and had then departed, what would have stopped that government from taking control of its own oil, like every other regime in the Middle East? On the assumption that the Bush-Cheney strategy is oil-centred, the tactics – dissolving the army, de-Baathification, a final ‘surge’ that has hastened internal migration – could scarcely have been more effective. The costs – a few billion dollars a month plus a few dozen American fatalities (a figure which will probably diminish, and which is in any case comparable to the number of US motorcyclists killed because of repealed helmet laws) – are negligible compared to $30 trillion in oil wealth, assured American geopolitical supremacy and cheap gas for voters. In terms of realpolitik, the invasion of Iraq is not a fiasco; it is a resounding success. Still, there is reason to be sceptical of the picture I have drawn: it implies that a secret and highly ambitious plan turned out just the way its devisers foresaw, and that almost never happens. Jim Holt writes for the New York Times Magazine and the New Yorker. HAPN One of you notes it’s “been dropping like a stone” – closed at $4.25 on Friday, while the warrants were down only modestly to 43 cents – and asked whether the stock might now be an even better speculation than the warrants. Answer: Not yet. In fact, that may be one reason the stock has dropped. Think about it. Say that for some reason, among all the stocks in the world, you had decided HAPN was the one you wanted to buy. But wait: would you buy the stock, risking $4.20 hoping it might double in two or three years? Or would you buy the warrants, risking only a tenth as much, yet standing to septuple your money if the stock doubled. (Right? From $4.20 to $8.40 gives you a double on the stock, but more than 7 times your 43 cents when you exercise the warrants at $5, sell at $8.40, and make $3.40.) If it were me, I’d buy the warrants. So what may be happening is that a large investor or two who owned the stock (and forewent the $5.97 in cash she could have had instead of voting for the deal) may have said to herself, you know what? I still like this company, but with the world maybe ending, and all, I’m going to sell some shares, raising some cash and limiting my risk, and play this one with the warrants instead. I’m just guessing. As before, I plan to nap for a year and see how the business is doing. Because at the end of the day, if the business does well, this should work out. If it doesn’t – well, that’s that. BEE MOVIE You know how every Seinfeld episode is a gem? So, too, Bee Movie, just in a very different way. (And I don’t generally like animated movies, post Dumbo.) STEPHEN COLBERT Never disappoints. I can’t vouch for the book, but the audiobook will have you grinning for three hours and thirty-three minutes. Tomorrow, which I am so certain will not be delayed again I am making it available today: Lenovo Recommends Vista II
Our Less-Than-AAA Rating Agencies November 2, 2007March 10, 2017 With the market drop leading last night’s news, I thought I should put off the Lenovo Vista kvetching until Monday. You can always watch the Vista clip again if you need a laugh in the meantime. UNDERSTANDING THE MESS WE’RE IN To get a sense of whether last month’s financial crisis is over (it’s not), take 10 minutes to read David Einhorn’s comments of October 19. Subprime mortgages will continue to default, he says, even as home equity loans (which are second mortgages) become increasingly less creditworthy. (Right? As home prices fall, there is less equity for lenders to fall back on in case of default.) Nor are the problems confined to housing. Einhorn describes mega-corporate ‘covenant-lite’ and ‘PIK-toggle’ loans that he says ‘are quite parallel to the now criticized ‘no-doc’ and ‘pay-option’ terms that everyone agrees were ill conceived in the residential market.’ The only difference? ‘That we haven’t seen the losses yet.’ This can’t be good for Wall Street, and that can’t be good for the housing market, and that can’t be good for lenders – and round and round it may go. Much of Einhorn’s presentation concerns the for-profit bond-rating agencies. They under-rate municipal bonds (which means taxpayers have to pay perhaps $5 billion a year more in interest costs than they should) . . . but, of far greater significance, they over-rate the credit-worthiness of corporate debt and collateralized debt obligations (‘CDOs’) – and debt insurers – all with scary implications. Four things that seem likely: Short-term interest rates are likely to keep falling (though who knows whether investors will accept low long-term rates, which the Fed cannot control); the dollar is likely to keep falling; foreign companies are likely to use their strengthened currencies to acquire U.S. assets and corporations; Americans are likely to bristle at this, believing it’s fine for us to own their banana plantations, but not for them to own ours. It’s a good time to be cautious, and one more reason to get back to basics, like eating right, exercising, and being good to your friends. (I watched Oprah today.) Have a good weekend.