Sunday, November 30, 2003

The Beef Guy

 
Beef Prices Are Skyrocketing, say the “features” on the Network News shows. Mad Cow Disease in Canada (only one cow, it turns out) caused the Govmint (local pronunciation) to Ban Beef Imports From There. And since you can’t grow cows fast, up go the prices. High Class Restaurant owners in NYC are shown complaining about 2-3 dollars a pound more for The Good Stuff.

So when I was introduced to T, a local farmer, as a Supplier of Beef, I got real friendly. T takes 4-5 Angus and stuffs them for their Last 100 days, with Corn and other Good Stuff. Then he drives them up to Missouri, where a Govmint approved Meat Packer process them, ages it all a bit, and vacuum packs and freezes it all in small packages.

Learned a lot about butchers and cows when I filled in the Order Sheet for a quarter (or more properly, half of a half, so I get cuts from both front and back). They also will Smoke the Brisket.

Three weeks later, at about 8pm, T arrives, pulling a flat bed trailer with five home Chest Freezers running off an outboard gas powered generator. With his Pop, he unloads the packages, including about 30 one-pound packs of Ground Beef, and lots of the Good Stuff – roasts, filets, rib steaks, and The Pieces of Ox Tail (“only one per cow, you know”). We stack them all in the New Small Freezer, and We Are Done.

T also raises turkeys (26,000 currently). “just shipped about 14,000 last week”. Dressed? “Nope, they count them and take them alive”. How do you “herd” turkeys? - thinking No Shetland Collie is That Good. ”Well, you get a piece of plastic pipe and tie a rag on the end – They get the idea pretty quick, and go right into the conveyor-loader and on to the truck”, says Pop.

Did a Strip Steak on the Grill last night and Hamburger with Turkey Soup tonight.

Happy Atkins at less than $2.40 per pound delivered.


===============



posted by James 2:17 PM

Saturday, November 29, 2003

Cherchez La Money...

 
Surprise, surprise. The French are Financing the Bad Guys...

From The Wall Street Journal -
=========================


Vive le Checkbook

How France bankrolls America's enemies.

BY MICHAEL GONZALEZ
Saturday, November 29, 2003 12:01 a.m.

"Follow the money" is an old adage, and it means that economic interest will eventually explain much human behavior. That France opposed the removal of Saddam Hussein because he owed millions to French banks is proof of this. Less well known, but much more troubling, are key French financial links with other U.S. enemies. They raise the belief that the Franco-American conflict over Iraq was just one slice of the action. For France was not just Baathist Iraq's largest contributor of funds; French banks have financed other odious regimes. They are the No. 1 lenders to Iran and Cuba and past and present U.S. foes such as Somalia, Sudan and Vietnam.

This type of financing is shared by Germany, France's partner. German banks are North Korea's biggest lenders, and Syria's--and Libya's. But France is the most active. In Castro's sizzling gulag, French banks plunked down $549 million in the first trimester this year, a third of all credit to Cuba. The figure for Saddam's Iraq is $415 million. But these pale in comparison with the $2.5 billion that French banks have lent Iran. The figures come from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, and were interpreted by Iñigo Moré for a Madrid think-tank, the Real Instituto Elcano. As he says, "one could think that Parisian bankers wait for the U.S. to have an international problem before taking out their checkbooks." French banks seem to be almost anywhere U.S. banks are absent. They lend in 57 such countries, and are the main lenders in 23 of those. (His report can be read at www.realinstitutoelcano.org.) The report offers reasons why Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin really ought to stop using the phrase "our American friends" every time he talks about the U.S.


The policy of offering France as an alternative to the U.S. has had a deeply corrosive effect on the political relationship this year, something that will only increase now that President Bush has enunciated a clear, long-term policy of expanding freedom around the world. And as the banking figures attest, the anti-U.S. French self-image extends beyond politics. Other evidence suggests that it has become deeply embedded in the French psyche and encompasses not just finance and politics but also culture, media and almost every other human activity. France, in all its manifestations, positions itself as an alternative to the U.S., and expects to profit from it. The BIS does not say how profitable or competitive lending to dictators and demagogues has made French banks. But it's worth mulling the chicken and egg question here. As Mr. Moré suggests, perhaps in jest, it could be not that one should follow the money to discover French policy, but that the money has followed French foreign policy.

As with every country, some of France's lending practices can be explained away by its colonial past. It is preponderant in francophone Africa, while the U.K. is Asia's main lender and Spain Latin America's. The past could explain the leading position French banks have in the communist dictatorships and kleptocracies of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. But no colonial linkage could explain Cuba (a colony of Spain), Iraq (Britain), Sudan (Britain) or Somalia (Britain and Italy). There must be something else. Mr. Moré offers that it could be French "universalist thinking." U.S. banks could be restrained by laws against lending to certain countries. This is then where French banks find a niche. Leaving aside the pro/con positions on whether sanctions have proved to be ineffective, at least the policy that produced them is not amoral. The niche explanation points to how pervasive the positioning of France as an alternative to the U.S. has become. As a French banker reminded me recently, his government still asks banks to make loans to further its policy objectives.

That, alas, is what they call "vision" in Paris.



posted by James 8:40 AM

Thursday, November 20, 2003

Digital TVs - How consumer electronics companies are doing it

 
From the OpenDTV forum :

===============

Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 09:11:22 -0500
From: Craig Birkmaier
Subject: RE: [OpenDTV] VHS is dying...

At 4:29 PM +0000 11/18/03, Albert Manfredi wrote:
>I have no doubt that this will continue to happen. That's how you get
>the cheap TV sets that Mark Schubin lists, as a goal that DTV has to
>reach. It won't be there *immediately*, but no product ever matures
>*immediately*. I am as unsurprised about DTV products not being able to
>match the price of the cheapest of analog TVs tout de suite as I was
>unsurprised by the fact that TV stations would not be ready in time with
>their DTV transmitters (and equally unsurprised that not meeting that
>schedule ultimately wouldn't matter one whit).

Why is it in the interest of the CE industry to drive prices ever lower?

This is the business model that has gotten the big Japanese and
European CE manufacturers in trouble, as third world manufacturers
have used price to gain market share. In case you had not noticed,
these companies are executing a new strategy to drive future profits.
This strategy employs several elements:

1. The development of core technologies that may provide at least a
short term barrier to entry from low cost competitors. These
technologies typically require very large up front investments, both
in terms of R&D and manufacturing facilities, and they create
Intellectual Property that can be used to help control competition.

2. Use various International standards organizations and industry
alliances to control the evolution of core technologies and to
generate perpetual revenue streams. The end game here is to generate
millions in royalty income, without making anything!

3. Develop products and technologies that enable the collection of
use fees, and sales channels that produce royalty revenues from the
sale of "software" and subscriptions.

A good example of the first element is the rush by traditional CE
vendors to a next generation Blue laser technology for optical disc
players and recorder/players. It is worth mention that most of these
companies thought they were on the right path with DVD, based upon
the success of the DVD Industry Forum. The current DVD format is
optimized for both legacy and next generation HD capable displays,
generating royalty revenues for Forum members for each product sold.
Unfortunately, DVD suffers from its own "hole" in the system; the
Forum has had a very difficult time collecting royalties from third
world manufacturers, especially those in China.

But DVD has been a huge success, with respect to setting a precedent.
This is the first major CE format that imposes a "Use Fee" for a core
enabling technology - MPEG-2. Furthermore, there has been a very high
level of compliance with the collection of this royalty, as it is
collected by the disc manufacturers - and it is no small coincidence
that many of the big disc manufacturers are owned by the same
companies that are collecting royalties from the DVD Forum and
MPEG-LA.

It is VERY IMPORTANT to note that MPEG-LA is trying to extend the use
fee model with MPEG-4 Part 2 (AVC) by charging royalties on
subscription broadcast services including cable and DBS., and for
demand based services delivered by ANY distribution technology
including the Internet.

As for the second element, there is not much to say. ISO was co-opted
by the CE industry to control the development of video compression
technology. The entire suite of MPEG standards is a living testament
to the ways in which industries can use standards bodies to control
both the direction and pace of technical evolution of a "disruptive
technology."

And the third element has already been addressed in part. bottom
line, CE manufacturers are trying to generate perpetual revenue
streams based on the mass deployment of new products for which they
control the intellectual property. And CE retailers are participating
in royalty revenues based on the promotion of these products and
services that use the core technology.

This IS NOT the traditional model of selling millions of boxes that
help make money for the content producers. The CE industry is now
getting a share of the revenues after the box is sold. That being
said, we are seeing another new trend.

A significant portion of the cost of the hardware that supports
subscription services is often paid by the service provider, as an
incentive to gain new subscribers. This tends to cloud the cost
issue, making products that rely on free bits (radio, FTA TV etc.)
less attractive, as there is no source of revenues to buy down the
cost of the hardware required to receive the new digital service.

>The reason I have no doubt that this price reduction trend will continue
>to happen is that there is no way to prevent it from happening. Greater
>and greater integration (45 nm by 2007) means that at least some
>manufacturers will take advantage of the innovations and use them to
>compete. Others might hold on to older technology, but cut prices as
>they recoup their R&D investments. Those who doggedly hang on to high
>prices will simply go under. Who exactly can stop this from happening?

This is irrelevant. The BIG cost factor is still the display, a
technology that has stubbornly resisted the Moore's Law driven
digital revolution. I will concede that mass manufacturing of any
product will tend to drive down the price due to volume manufacturing
considerations.

So on one hand, there will be some cost savings due to chip level
integration, but displays will only respond to volume-based
manufacturing. The recent announcements of major new manufacturing
facilities for LCD panels suggests that the big CE manufacturers are
planning to migrate to displays that require a very large up-front
investment, in hopes that the third world manufacturers will be
content to accept the CRT bone that is being tossed their way, while
the traditional CE vendors move on to display products that carry
decent margins. (Note: the margins on HD capable displays account for
the lions share of profits from global TV manufacturing by companies
such as Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, Hitachi, Toshiba, RCA, etc. )

>
>> The royalties should be good for another decade.
>
>I was thinking that with the transition dragging out this long, the
>royalties might end before DTV even takes off. Who knows?

Or these patents may be almost as valuable as the patents on AM
stereo. It is far more likely that this grand experiment in
industrial policy will fail, and some other technology will replace
it.

>
>> Hopefully by the end of this decade we will
>> finally be ready to admit the mistakes made with the U.S. DTV system
>> - if not, U.S. DTTB will certainly be broadly viewed as a joke...on
>> broadcasters.
>
>I'm not sure what "mistake" you're talking about, unless you're
>continuing to make a bigger deal about the RF modulation scheme than it
>deserves. To me, this was always a transitory problem, and I think
>history is proving that to be the case with every new test. The biggest
>problem with 8-VSB now is the uncertainty a couple of years ago, that
>slowed down progress, and the fact that NTSC is still on the air.

The mistake is trying to extend the legacy business model while
making the transition to a MUCH MORE competitive digital television
industry. The mistake is trying to use industrial policy to control
the evolution of a huge marketplace.

The lack of progress has NOTHING to do with 8-VSB, except that it
perpetuates the problems that have caused 85% of U.S. homes to
subscribe to a multi-channel service. It's not worth the effort or
the investment to receive FTA DTV broadcasts - too much hassle, too
little choice.

There is no problem with 8-VSB. It is doing exactly what was
intended, protecting the valuable NTSC franchise.

Regards
Craig

posted by James 11:33 AM

Monday, November 17, 2003

Hating the Jews...

 
On Hating the Jews
by Natan Sharansky

"Hating" seems to be getting fashionably politic and chic. Hating Bush articles are openly discussed and analysed by otherwise respectable publications, while strong denunciations of "hate crime" can be found a few pages later. Hypocracy reigns, it seems.

Here, a soviet dissident, now part of the Israeli government, looks at the historical record and asks some good questions, like how can Israel be responsible for a phenomena found 2000 years ago?

Like Aunt Jean says, "We're all Jews."






posted by James 8:06 AM

Saturday, November 15, 2003

Just Ask WalMart....

 
From the Daily Reckoning
===================

Thursday morning, Wal-Mart announced somewhat disappointing
earnings for the third quarter. America's largest employer fell
short of Wall Street's consensus earnings estimate for the first
time in seven years. The company's earnings report wasn't really
so bad, it just wasn't so great.

"I don't think consumer spending is slowing," said President and
CEO Lee Scott, "but I also don't see the strength that many of
you in the investment community appear to see."

Forgive us our cynicism, but we would tend to trust Wal-Mart's
assessment of our economic condition over the government's
assessment.

"The best quarter of America GDP since the Reagan Revolution did
not turn heads at Wal-Mart stores," writes Jim Grant, editor of
Grant's Interest Rate Observer. "Gains in same-store sales, which
had been running at 6% in August and September, subsided to the
neighbor hood of 3% to 5% in the first three weeks of October.

"The 'paycheck-to-paycheck customer,'" a Wal-Mart spokesman tells
David Lane of this staff. "Always has been, always will be."

But clearly, this archetypal American consumer is not spending
money with the abandon that a 7.2% GDP would imply. "As a rule,"
Grant relates, "working people come into funds on the 15th of the
month or at the end of the month... Wal-Mart has devised an
elegantly simple calculation to measure the liquidity of Homo
americanus. It calculates the difference between sales on the
14th, when people are dry, and the 15th, when people are
liquid."

Currently, this simple indicator is flashing red. According to a
couple of Wall Street analysts who monitor Wal-Mart's
consumer-liquidity indicator, "The consumer's liquidity crisis is
the worst that Wal-Mart has seen and is the most pronounced in
the last five to seven years."

posted by James 9:06 PM

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

Master and Commander

 
The series of books were great, and this looks like it is a wonderful Movie.

Promo site is here -
Master and Commander - for clips and info and music and story outline...

and the Venerable Wm. F. Buckley Jr, a Noted Seaman Himself, contributes these comments:

Happily Seduced



posted by James 2:34 PM

Friday, November 07, 2003

Good Stuff

 
Chris Hutchins has dumped on Mother Theresa for years and is inspired by the recent papal beatification.

http://politics.slate.msn.com/id/2090772/

http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200311070835.asp


posted by James 8:02 AM