Blog Guy, I'm about to graduate from college in December, and I could use some career advice. I know you're great at that.
Well, it depends on what you studied, of course. We need doctors, teachers, engineers....
I majored in creative writing and film studies.
Oh. Have you considered the carwash?
Yeah, but I have only a B-minus average, so the better carwashes won't even look at me.
Not to worry. There's always the carwash in Afghanistan, as you can see in these photos. Plenty of new business, too, since the average car in Kabul lasts four and a half minutes.
Awesome! Thanks for the advice! Say, why are these pictures in black and white, anyway?
I believe they ARE in color, but that's just how color looks in Afghanistan.
Thanks, I can't wait... You want rust-proofing too, sir?
Above: Workers clean a car along Qabri Gora Road in Kabul, November 2, 2009. With Kabul's busy and dusty roads, business is always assured at the carwash.
Below: A customer (R) waits while his car is being washed.
KOSSE, Texas – By the time the mobile food pantry rolls to a halt in this struggling rural community of 479 people, the parking lot of the local social hall is already full and a line of people snakes out of the door.
Half a dozen ladies in their 50s and 60s swarms the truck and within minutes they have set up tables and are bagging up food with an efficiency and single-mindedness that is impressive to watch.
The Capital Area Food Bank of Texas, which covers 21 counties and an area twice the size of the state of Massachusetts, makes monthly visits to Kosse. Every month this year it has set new records for the amount of food it hands out -- currently about 2.2 million tons. CEO David Davenport said he expects that number to rise as unemployment forces ever more people to become “food insecure.”
“The makeup of the hunger line has changed a great deal over the past two years,” he said. “We’re seeing more educated people and those who have been laid of in well-paying industries like the tech sector.”
“These are people we would never have expected to see lining up for food two years ago,” Davenport added.
The food bank has seen a 60 percent increase in demand for free food and in some places, including parts of the state capitol Austin, demand is up 300 percent.
Jason Steelman, 32, who is here with his girlfriend Amber Nash, 22, was a computer software analyst – a trade he picked up in the armed forces – but hasn’t worked in his chosen field for more than three years. He managed to make ends meet working as a truck driver, but the recession put paid to that job.
“All the work that’s left in this area is either seasonal jobs on the farms or working at gas stations,” he said. “We have three kids between us to feed and it’s tough to put enough food on the table.”
As Texas does not support the government food stamp program, the food bank is reliant on the U.S. Department of Agriculture and local donors like supermarket chain HEB.
“Without HEB we’d have problems finding enough food to hand out,” Davenport said. “On the state government level there is an unbending political belief in Texas that when you’re in trouble you have to pull yourself up by your boot straps.”
“That’s assuming that you’re not too hungry to pull them up,” he added. “Or that you even have boots.”
The first time the food bank came here six months ago, 60 families showed up for food. That number has now reached nearly 170.
According to the most recent statistics from the USDA, more than one in 10 Americans had low or very low “food security” in 2007, even before a the recession that began in December of that year. The recession may have ended in the third quarter of this year, according to recent U.S. government statistics, but one in five Texans are now hungry, as are one in four children in the Lone Star state.
“It comes down to economic hardship,” said Kosse mayor Ben Daniel. “There aren’t many jobs in this area right now. It’s hard times for folks around here.”
Danee Binion, 21, here with her seven-month-old daughter Madison, looks after her disabled mother and mentally disabled sister. Her husband works on a ranch, but the full household has stretched their means.
“We need some help to get by,” she said.
Janice Procter, 49, said that he husband, 66, is retired and just had knee surgery, and they have two children at home under the age of 18.
“We’re finding it tough to make ends meet and every little helps,” she said.
Democratic Senator Kirk Watson said that “Texas could do better in providing for its people," and that the state government must take action as the level of hunger in parts of the state has reached crisis proportions.
“Our political leadership should be ashamed of itself,” he said. “Here we are in a state that produces enough food to supply the entire country. Yet we can’t even feed our own people.”
Israeli companies will unveil this month an array of new technologies that will save and maximize use of the world's most valuable resource... water.
The systems range from a drone that flies 300 metres (900 feet) above ground to fight water leaks-- described this week in a recent Reuters article on fighting global leakage -- to a petroleum gas storage system that sits on the ocean floor.
Arad Technologies' water meter-reading drone takes off near Tel Aviv and then parachutes down after completing its flight. REUTERS/Gil Cohen Magen
Water technology is one of the things Israel does best. Two thirds of the country is arid, and its first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, famously declared that Israel would only survive if it could "make the desert bloom".
Since then, Israeli companies have been pioneers in the field and many of of their developments have penetrated the global market.
You can take a look at some of the more intriguing systems to be exhibited at the government-sponsored WATEC conference in Tel Aviv on Nov 17-19 by clicking here.
If you were on the U.S-led coalition base in Bagram in Afghanistan soon after the 2001 invasion, you couldn't help noticing soldiers with long, Taliban-style beards and dressed in light brown shalwar kamaeez down to the sandals.
They kept to themselves. They weren't the friendly sort and before long you figured out these were the Special Forces who had fought along side the Northern Alliance in small teams to overthrow the Taliban and were then hunting its remnants and members of al Qaeda. The men grew beards to blend in during difficult and isolated missions in the Afghan countryside.
Close up, on the base some people thought looked like a little bit of America with its mountains of food, gym, and the easy banter of men and women soldiers, the Western men with the flowing beards stood out.
Eight years on, the Special Forces ops are still trying to master the disguise. But the men are still no closer to ordinary Afghans. In fact, the locals have grown to be especially wary of the Special Forces as this article on the Foreign Policy website says. The beards apparently only serve to allow ordinary people to distinguish them from regular U.S. and allied military units.
In Kandahar province's Zhari district, elders refer to the "bearded Americans," who they say behave very badly, and the "shaven Americans," who aren't so bad, the article says. Likewise, in Uruzgan province, locals have complained about "bearded Americans" using foul language and manhandling respected community elders and government officials.
Of course not all the members of the Special Forces go around with beards and not all the regular troops are clean shaven. And to paint them as Rambo-types would be equally inaccurate, most of them are probably unassuming men, chosen as much for their mental as their physical aptitude.
But because they undertake the most dangerous and controversial missions, they tend to take much of the flak. They are involved in the capture and killing of al Qaeda and Taliban figures, which apart from causing civilian casualties also brings them in close contact with Afghan society at sensitive times. "Special operations forces, for example, perform late-night raids of Afghan homes, a deeply humiliating and dishonorable event in the local culture -- in particular, the searching of women's quarters," the article says.
It has been written by Anthony Bubalo, the programme director for West Asia at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney and Susanne Schmeidl a co-founder of the Liaison Office, an Afghan nongovernmental organization that since 2003 has worked with tribes in southeast and southern Afghanistan on governance, stability, and security.
The renewed focus on the Special Forces is important because of the ongoing debate on whether the United States should embrace the idea of a full-blown counter-insurgency campaign with its population-centric strategy as advocated by General Stanley A. McChrystal or counterterrorism as Vice President Joe Biden argues. In that scenario there would be greater use of Special Forces and unmanned drones to disrupt al Qaeda.
One Special Forces major who spent time both in Afghanistan and Iraq has written a paper arguing that one way way to undermine the Afghan insurgency is to return in part to the strategy that ousted the Taliban in the first place: embed small, highly skilled and almost completely autonomous units with tribes across Afghanistan.
Much like the men who worked with the Northern Alliance in 2001, the unit which Major. Jim Gant calls Tribal Engagement Teams, would wear Afghan garb and live in Afghan villages for extended periods, training, equipping and fighting alongside tribal militias.
Here's his 45-page paper called One Tribe at a Time that has kicked off much debate.
Just as the Sunni tribesmen, dubbed the Sons of Iraq, turned against foreign al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq, Major Gant argues that the Tribal Engagement Teams can counter al-Qaeda networks in Afghanistan by creating or strengthening indigenous fighting forces built upon local militias.
[Pictures at the Bagram air base and Afghan women walking in front of a U.S. soldier]
By Huw Jones
ST ANDREWS, Scotland, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Britain urged world governments on Saturday to consider a levy on banks to fund future bailouts, departing from long-held opposition, though there was little sign of the consensus needed to make it fly.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown raised the idea at a weekend meeting of Group of 20 financial leaders in Scotland -- ending London's resistance to such moves on behalf of its huge financial sector.The United States, key to the success of any global initiative, rejected a tax on day-to-day transactions, though it left the door open to other ways to protect taxpayers from losses. Canada was also lukewarm.
"A day-by-day financial transaction tax is not something we are prepared to support," U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told reporters.
"This idea (of a bank transaction tax) has been around for a long time ... I think frankly the experiences are mixed."
In a briefing later, though, he also signalled the United States would engage in work to seek ways to recoup the costs of future bailouts and protect the economy and important institutions like pension funds from banks' losses.
"I think it's fair to say that this view is shared by many countries that we need to build a system in which tax payers are not exposed to such risks in future," Geithner told reporters.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown joined earlier calls from France and Germany in saying it was time for banks to give something back after governments have poured billions of dollars to shore up the sector.
Brown's intervention took the G20 by surprise though he was careful to list several tough conditions before Britain would actually commit to a new levy, such as full support from all the world's top financial centres, including the United States.
Canada said banks that get into trouble should bear the consequences but a tax may not be the best solution.
"It's one of the ideas that's on the table, but is not particularly attractive to me as finance minister of Canada. We have been a government that has been reducing taxes," Jim Flaherty told reporters.
IMF REVIEW
Britain this week forked out another 30 billion pounds on bailing out two of its biggest banks for the second time, and opinion polls all show Brown heading for defeat at the hands of opposition conservatives in next year's election.
"We should discuss whether we need a better economic and social contract to reflect the global responsibilities of financial institutions to society," Brown told the G20 meeting.
"There have been proposals for an insurance fee to reflect systemic risk or a resolution fund or contingent capital arrangements or a global transaction levy," he said.
Brown said the International Monetary Fund would review the possibility of a global transaction tax and report back in April next year.
"I do not in any way underestimate the enormous and difficult practical and technical issues that will need to be overcome that a globally cohesive system requires and raises.
"But I do not think these issues should prevent us from considering with urgency the legitimate issues I have discussed," he said.
IMF Managing Director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said it was probably impossible to find a transaction tax that would not be avoidable by potential taxpayers.
"So it will be based not on transactions but on something else," Strauss-Kahn said.
A bank sector tax, including a "possible windfall tax for 2009, a one shot thing" and a more long-term tax were two possibilities, Strauss-Kahn added.
Banks have already warned the G20 that if they have to meet new higher capital charges too soon, they will have less money left to lend and aid recovery.
Britain has repeatedly rejected a long-standing idea for a so-called Tobin Tax on cross border foreign exchange transactions to quell speculation.
G20 officials said the levy mentioned by Brown would be broader and could be on all financial transactions or bank earnings. The levy would be small, perhaps around 0.005 percent, much lower than a Tobin Tax. (Additional reporting by Glenn Sommerville and David Milliken, Editing by Patrick Graham)
((Reuters messaging: huw.jones.reuters.com@reuters.net; + 44 207 542 3326; huw.jones@thomsonreuters.com))
I'm late to Sam Jones's article about investors who did due diligence on Galleon and decided to stay away, but I think it raises a number of silly ideas which ought to be put to rest.
First, it's worth noting that, ex post, this kind of exercise can be done on any hedge fund. The vast majority of hedge-fund investors, and all big ones, do some kind of due diligence before investing in a fund. There's no such thing as a fund which receives investments from everybody who does due diligence on it. Therefore, for any fund which fails, there is going to be a certain number of investors who did due diligence on it and who didn't invest. The same is equally true, of course, for any fund which succeeds.
What's more, the reasons given for not investing in Galleon are so weak and vague as to be all but substance-free:
“Crudely, there are three ways to make money as a hedge fund manager,” said one large multi-billion dollar asset manager.
“You can take advantage of trading technology, but few do. You can be more intelligent than others, but few are.
“Or you can have some specialised source of sustainable information. Unless that information is from fundamental analysis – and in Galleon’s case it did not all seem to be – then that’s a red flag for us.” ...
“People mistake wealth for intelligence,” according to one investor.
“No one pretended Raj [Rajaratnam] was a brilliant stock analyst – he was just extremely well connected.
“And he always made that known.”
Both investors accept unquestioningly that there's some kind of a correlation between intelligence and alpha -- despite a long history of extremely smart guys blowing up, and despite the fact that no one has come close to empirically demonstrating any such correlation. On top of this dubious correlation, they then layer the assertion that Raj Rajaratnam wasn't actually all that smart. How would they know?
What's more, if being extremely well connected is grounds for suspicion when choosing money managers, that would probably disqualify pretty much every single Silicon Valley venture capitalist.
It's not even clear that investors who steered clear of Galleon were smart in hindsight, for all this self-congratulatory slapping of their own backs:
Investors that did put their money in Galleon, however, can take comfort from the fact that, by and large, the companies funds’ are highly liquid and are unlikely to suffer losses as a result of unwinds.
The good thing about investing in a fund which makes large short-term bets on individual stocks is that such bets are unlikely to be crowded trades which suffer enormous losses when everybody tries to exit at once. Anybody who invested in Galleon received healthy returns over the length of their investment, and got out unbloodied at the end. The principals won't be as lucky, of course, but the investors have nothing to regret.
Pakistan's military offensive in South Waziristan appears to be showing considerably more success than earlier attempts to take control of the tribal region on the Afghan border, at least according to army accounts which are the only real source of information.
But will it turn the tide in Pakistan's battle against Islamist militants? A few articles which have appeared over the last few days give pause for thought.
"Before operation Rah-i-Najat was launched, the army put the Taliban strength at about 10,000. Since the maximum number of Taliban fatalities has been put at about 500, those not taken prisoner may have slipped into North Waziristan or the adjoining settled districts. They must be pursued relentlessly without being given a chance to reorganise, and the nation ought to be told what strategy the authorities have up their sleeve to finish the job."
And to achieve lasting success, the civilian administration is going to have to provide the kind of basic development - schools, roads, healthcare, electricity - that the refugees quoted in this Los Angeles Times article say they are hoping for.
But that might prove difficult at a time when the country's political parties -- rather than focusing on development and political reforms to convince people to back the government rather than the Taliban -- are once again embroiled in the kind of in-fighting that has destroyed civilian democracy in the past.
Writing in Gulf newspaper The National, historian Manan Ahmed worries about the Pakistani Taliban spilling into Baluchistan and finding fertile ground for growth among a people unhappy with the government in Islamabad. The province is already home to a separatist Baluch insurgency. "The true crisis facing Pakistan is not the Taliban," he writes. It is instead the state's failure to provide political and economic rights to the many different people and ethnic groups who make up the country.
The Pakistan Army this year has driven the Taliban out of the Swat valley and is on the way to pushing them out of their South Waziristan stronghold. But can the civilian government provide the administrative backbone needed to ensure the military operations eventually defeat rather than merely displace the Taliban? The signs are not looking promising.
(A word on comments: my last post elicited some very interesting and insightful comments for which many thanks. But I'd like to ask everyone again to avoid polemics and focus on making points which take the discussion forward.)
(File photos of refugees from Swat during a dust-storm)
Sarbox isn't the only regulatory regime under threat. As Ryan Grim writes over at HuffPo, an amendment has been introduced that would put FASB under the thumb of the new systemic risk oversight council, and give the council the power to literally do away with inconvenient accounting rules that pose a problem for banks.
Astonishingly, at a time when the public is crying out for greater regulation to limit excessive risk-taking by financial institutions, the banks are trying to get Congress to agree that the next time there's a big downturn, they should have the ability to alter their accounting standards -- essentially, fudge the numbers -- so that the public and investors won't be able to tell how insolvent they really are. By ignoring their declining asset values, they can avoid the standard requirement of raising more capital.
The mechanism is contained in an amendment set to be introduced in mid-November by Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) that would move final authority over the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) from the Securities and Exchange Commission to a new body, a so-called "oversight" board, that would include the officials charged with managing systemic risks to the financial markets.
Accountants are apoplectic. Even the Chamber of Commerce is fighting this, on behalf of their non-bank membership, co-signing a letter with the Center for Audit Quality and the Council of Institutional Investors:
By placing the FASB under the jurisdiction of a structure charged with managing systemic risks to the financial markets, accounting rules will be viewed though the narrow lens of a few large companies from specific industries, rather than considerate of the applicability of financial reporting policies to over 15,000 public companies. Such a narrow focus can skew standards such that it makes understanding of transactions that businesses engage in on a daily basis more difficult and undermine the confidence of investors. We believe that the SEC has been and continues to be best suited to provide the oversight of the FASB for such a broad and diverse economy.
As such, we strongly support an independent standards-setting process, subject to public scrutiny and free of undue pressures.
Another helpful bit of the article explains how it isn't Wall Street driving this, it's smaller community banks.
It bothers me how small banks have been able to set themselves up as David to the Wall St. Goliath. No, they don't benefit from TBTF guarantees so, yes, they are at a disadvantage relative to Wall St.
But that's not a reason to bend the rules in their favor. No they didn't get involved in more exotic products that blew up Wall St., but many got caught in the CRE mania. If they are insolvent, they need to be shut down. Otherwise they'll continue to absorb capital that should go to solvent banks and borrowers.
But congressmen tend to like little guy storis (also they like campaign contributions from community banks) so many are happy to sponsor this race to the bottom.
(By the way....it's interesting that Kanjorski is against this. Recall that it was his subcommittee that browbeat FASB into overriding fair value rules earlier this year.)
Okay gang, you all know the deal. We've actually persuaded Prince Charles to endorse our brand of coffee for a TV commercial!
Yeah, he said it's only Canada so nobody will see it anywhere important, and he can use a few extra bucks.
It's a real advertising coup, but we only get one take, so it has to be perfect the first time.
Now, the prince is going to just be walking along doing prince stuff, and ask for a cup of our coffee. He'll try it, and then give us a big smile of delight.
Oh my God! This is our one take? This is supposed to make people buy this crap?
Well, we've paid for it so we have to use it, but at least edit out that last few seconds where he drops to his knees and spews his lunch on the crowd.
Britain's Prince Charles samples naturally grown coffee in traditional farmer's market, at the Evergreen Brick Works Restoration site, in Toronto November 6, 2009. REUTERS/Fred Thornhill
AUSTIN, Texas– Even before we got to Austin, we were presented with a bold claim by residents – that Austin is home to the best Tex-Mex in the world.
We decided to put this claim to the test and, after consulting with Mike Rollins and Dave Porter of the Austin Chamber of Commerce, we chose Chuy’s.
Apart from the fact that this chain with restaurants in Texas and Tennessee comes highly recommended for the food, we were reminded that the Chuy’s restaurant nearest to us was where Jenna Bush, daughter of former President George W. Bush, ended up in trouble for underage drinking in 2001. If it was good enough for Jenna, we thought, then it was good enough for us.
A popular place – it was a long wait for a table – this Chuy’s also turned out to be a massive memorial to Elvis. Evlis posters on the walls, a guitar decorated with images of The King and a couple of full-on shrines.
One of them was located just inside the front door, complete with a blue bust of Presley with an inscription on it that read “Elvis lives.”
Our unflappable waitress Michelle told us that the Elvis shrine had built up over the years with donations from regulars customers who no longer have room for their collections at home.
“Now those customers can come here and see their Elvis memorabilia while they eat,” she said.
There is also the Elvis Presley Memorial Combo on the menu, an artery-congealing medley with enchiladas and queso wings – essentially deep-fried tortillas with melted cheese on them – which The King would doubtless have been proud to eat. Tasty, but deadly.
On the whole the food was good. The fish tacos were great, the fresh salsa with jalapenos was fiery and fantastic and the tortilla chips freshly made. Like the queso wings, the creamy jalapeno sauce was just a little odd and rather dangerous.
Definitely worth a repeat visit for the Elvis memorabilia alone. As for the claim that Austin has the world’s best Tex-Mex, our test was inconclusive, We’ll just have to come back for more.
I majored in creative writing and film studies.
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