Sunday, January 31, 2010

Tower of Babel


1) This American Life on people bidding for the contents of abandoned self storage units in California. According to the Self Storage Association, there are 2.35 billion square feet in the United States. That's 7.4 square feet of self storage for every man, woman and child in the country, meaning all of us could stand inside self storage units at the same time. Plus: underwater Byzantine archaeology.

2) Mammoth on the best architecture of the decade.

3) On the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver: Will one venue be foreclosed before/during/after the games? Will another even have enough snow or might it necessitate a nightly Busby Berkeley meteorological extravaganza of snow machines billowing an artificial blizzard? Will you be among “the anti-capitalist, Indigenous, housing rights, labour, migrant justice, environmental, anti-war, community-loving, anti-poverty, civil libertarian, and anti colonial activists to come together to confront this two-week circus and the oppression it represents?”

4) Archinect on minarets.

5) Low-tech Magazine on the history of trolley canal boats. A short concluding section argues for bringing them back as a zero-emission transport system. Be sure to read this comment thread at The Oil Drum for counter-arguments.

6) Polar Inertia on seaside shacks.

7) On February 27, Foodprint NYC, an event organized by Nicola Twilley and Sarah Rich, will touch upon “how our urban food systems work today, how historical forces have shaped them till now, how they might develop in the future — and how these food systems, in turn, have shaped our environment and ourselves.”

8) Also on February 27 but on the other coast, the Los Angeles Urban Rangers will be wrapping up their 3-year Malibu Public Beach project by offering 3 mini-safaris. They're free and no sign-up is required. Just show up for any one of the tours, but don't plan to join mid-safari.

9) An exhibition on the 1910 Great Flood of Paris. If the flash website drives you up the wall, there is Paris Under Water, both the book and the blog.

10) Year-old NPR piece on grain silos converted into ice climbing walls.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Bill Gates announced today that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will spend $10bn over 10 years on developing vaccines for the world's poorest countries. They aim to vaccinate over 90% of children in these countries, and could save over 8.7 million young lives as a result. Gates and his wife are arguably the greatest philanthropists of modern times, using their wealth and influence to address some of the world most under-resourced problems.

Gates also has a sharp sense of humor, as evidenced by the following shot he took at epic blowhard, sometimes assault victim and eternal IPE Journal whipping-boy Silvio Berlusconi:

'Rich people spend a lot more money on their own problems, like baldness, than they do to fight malaria...Dear Silvio, I am sorry to make things difficult for you, but you are ignoring the world's poor.'

In other words, 'I drink your milkshake.'

According to FP Passport, Italy's foreign aid budget was approximately 0.11% of GDP in 2009, one of the lowest in the developed world and half its 2008 amount. This contrasts starkly with the amount of money Berlusconi spends on his own image, which my conservative estimates put at 4,000% of his GBI (gross Berlusconi income).

The Italian premier has grabbed headlines in Italy this week for a disappearing, then reappearing, then disappearing head of hair. The bald Berlusconi is a known purveyor of the art of hair restoration, but the country is gripped by his latest, some might say insufficient, attempts at scalp renewal (I might exaggerate a tad, but it's my blog, so it must be true).

In contrast, Bill Gates spent a great deal of his time and money this week helping the world's poorest and most vulnerable.

After a busy busy week, I am happy to get back to the blog today and hit on a few points I missed while drowning in Excel hell...

-Hot off the presses:
US GDP surged a whopping 5.7% in Q4 2009, the best quarter in over six years, and driven by companies ramping up production to overcome thin inventories amid rising consumer demand. Consumer spending, which accounts for over 2/3 of US economic activity, expanded by a better-than-expected 2%. I'm not even going to make a comment about a job-less recovery, as these are really strong numbers, unless I just did...

-Bernanke wins reappointment, which Simon Johnson believes is the
beginning of the end for financial reform. While I disagree (though I imagine the difference in our expectations is only a matter of degree), Johnson's post is great on the strength of the following sentence:

And now we can look back over 20 years and be honest with ourselves: Alan Greenspan contends for the title of most disastrous economic policy maker in the recent history of the world


-The FT has you covered for
all things Davos. It's been striking just how little coverage the World Economic Forum has received this year. I wonder if our appetite for it has diminished due to a credibility gap, or if there has been a conscious effort by the WEF to keep a low profile?

-Chavez orders the central bank to '
burn the hands' of currency 'speculators' by selling dollars to strengthen the Bolivar by some 30% in unregulated trading. Massive capital flight complicates his plans.

-FP Passport
asks the question we've all been wondering: 'Did Romania's president use the occult to get reelected?"

-Greece is offering investors a
large yield premium on its upcoming bond issue, an event deemed 'absolutely critical' to market sentiment and the government's efforts to reign in the budget.

-Are you an English hooligan? Planning on watching your boys lose to the mighty mighty US in person this World Cup (jk)?
Denied!

Thursday, January 28, 2010

In the past week there has been plenty of analysis on the Volcker Rule - largely by people more knowledgeable than myself. Most, it appears, agree with the notion that we need to do something to prevent the capitalist pirates on-board S.S. Too Big To Fail (pictured right) from sailing around and holding the rest of our economic flotilla hostage. Most also seem to agree that this proposed "something" is better than nothing.

Much of this is speculation, however, since we lack the necessary details to make a final judgment - details which will apparently be left to that venerable institution known as the US Congress. If the healthcare bill is anything to go by.... nevermind.
But let's back up a bit. Because while I have made it clear that Volcker's vision sounds - at first glance - to be quite compelling, I am still struggling with some of the key concepts. Well, one key concept actually: too big to fail. Volcker's plans rest on the notion that commercial banking has a privileged place in our financial system. We depend upon our banks for the day-to-day running of the economy, the argument goes, so we cannot allow them to act like hedge funds on the side. Fair enough.
But merely separating the two activities into "can be allowed to fail" and "can't be allowed to fail" doesn't really address the problem. Much of the financial turmoil originated in the shadow banking sector: entities engaged in "bank-like" activities (originating loans, re-packaging and securitizing debt) that did not have the level of regulation that commercial banks do OR any of the deposit insurance that keeps things secure (detailed explanation available here). When things went tits up, investors fled the shadow banking sector for, you guessed it, the heavily insured mainstream banking sector. Presto, credit crunch.
So again, the question comes down to how splitting apart the riskiest behaviour of our banks is going to prevent a future crisis of this nature. Poor banking regulation was certainly a problem, but so was the fact that a huge financial industry was created outside the regulatory system. It had no safety valve, no backup whatsoever. Volcker's plan does not appear to address this. If anything, it might make this line of business more profitable.
How can we be so sure that only deposit-taking institutions are systemically important (re: too-big-to-fail) enough to protect? The answer is that we can't. Maybe I've been listening to the top financial regulator in my country too much, but it seems the very act of identifying too-big-to-fail creates its own problems.
So I guess my concern with the Volcker Rule is not what it is proposing for deposit-taking institutions, but what it is not proposing for everyone else.
(Update: the top central bankers in both the UK and EU have vocalized their (qualified) support for the reform proposals - good to see the old boys network holding firm, eh whot?)

Joanne Woodward in a set of color wardrobe still for From the Terrace (1960) plus a black and white publicity photo of her reading the book while resting on a "leaning board."












 
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Petula Clark from Monty Hawes awesome new blog,
All Good Things Check him out! :)

The Thin Man Goes Home from Hollywood Dreamland

Carole Lombard from that obscure object

Louise Brooks in 1924 from Another Nickel In The Machine

Blood of Dracula from Wrong Side of the Art!

Marie Prevost from She Blogged By Night

Iris Adrian from SMOKE AND DRESSES


Bettie Page from Suicide Blonde

Theda Bara from 13 thorny roses

Bessie Love in 1928 from This Isn't Happiness

Audrey Tautou from Slacker Chic



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Director Ida Lupino with Edmond O'Brien and
William Tallman on the set of The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

with Stephen McNally and director Michael Gordon
on the set of Woman in Hiding (1950)

Ida Lupino and director Curtis Bernhardt
on the set of Devotion (1946)


Ida Lupino and director Peter Godfrey rehearse a
folk dance on the set of Escape Me Never (1947)
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Miriam Hopkins in Becky Sharp (1935)
 

Yola d'Avril in Beauty and the Boss (1932)
 


Adrienne Ames
 
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The infamous seductress Mrs. Robinson in London West End stage productions of "The Graduate" being portrayed by 3 pretty successful real life seductresses.

Kathleen Turner

Kathleen Turner

Jerry Hall

Jerry Hall

Anne Archer with Andres Williams

Anne Archer with Andres Williams
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Fred MacMurray and Rita Hayworth broadcasting for WWII allied troops overseas.

Rita promotes WWII scrap drives

Rita and Marlene serve visiting servicemen at the Hollywood Canteen
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Christina Ricci

Gwyneth Paltrow in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

Julia Roberts and Laura San Giacomo in Pretty Woman (1990)

Madonna Dick Tracy (1990)

Monica Bellucci

Rosamund Pike in An Education (2009)

Scarlett Johansson

Sharon Stone in Catwoman (2004)

Theresa Russell in Impulse (1990)

Tina Fey
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