Sole "Made in France" Beret Manufacturer Making Last Stand

OK, here's a quick quiz for you: what's the difference between a genuine French beret and impostors? If you answered (a) made from wool, (b) weatherproof and (c) includes a leather interior ring to snugly fit one's head, you win. If you added (d) doesn't smell when wet, you get extra credit. (I suppose you can use that in the afterlife.)

Image: laulhere-france.com

According to a Bloomberg News story picked up by the Chicago Tribune, the traditional, authentic "made in France" beret is in danger of becoming commercially extinct. Only one manufacturer -- Laulhere -- remains from a once-thriving industry. France's issue is that cheaper Asian competitors produce berets for a fraction of what the real thing costs. (Full disclosure: I own two black impostor berets.)

The notion of a Frenchman or Frenchwoman wearing a cheap beret made 10,000 miles from Paris is a tough one to swallow. The French have historically protected firms from foreign acquisition. The government also subsidizes "strategic corporations," such as its aerospace enterprises. Sometimes national pride has a price. Is it time for the French government to protect a symbol of its Gallic identity?

Tom Perkins: "The Creative One Percent Are Threatened"

Tom Perkins
Photo: AP, from sfgate.com

Tom Perkins, something of an eminence grise among Silicon Valley's venture capital set, recently sent a controversial, three-paragraph submission to The Wall Street Journal's Letters to the Editor which managed to cause a media feeding frenzy. In his letter, Perkins alleged that progressive American political attempts to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans were analogous to the Nazi's anti-Semitic activities on Kristallnacht.

Perkins followed up this broadside with an interview on Bloomberg. His comments during the session were quite possibly more alarming than the disturbingly poor judgment Perkins demonstrated in his missive to the Journal.

His most revealing comments included his characterization of the richest Americans as "the creative one percent." I suppose that leaves over 195 million citizens of The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave as mindless cannon fodder for the wealthy's wizardry. In that sense, Perkins is very much in tune with big tech's data exploiters, who contemptuously disregard American citizens' right to privacy in the name of "creativity," "progress," and profit. "Creativity" generates its own rights that do not always adhere to the so-called rule of law.

Image: bn.com

Perkins felt strongly that the wealthiest Americans were the nation's principal job creators. At one point, he claimed Silicon Valley had created more than one million jobs. He did not mention the jobs that technological "progress" had wiped out, leaving many millions of Americans facing a diminished standard of living. Perkins did not allude to the tech industry's cynical focus on the globalization of production, which directly led to loss of American jobs to cheaper overseas labor.

Perkins' belief that supremely wealthy individuals generate new employment opportunities was shared by Michael Bloomberg during his twelve years as New York's mayor. This notion was a key conceptual hook in Hizzoner's drive to complete the transformation of classist Manhattan into a cross between Monaco and Las Vegas, while encouraging a Parisian Left Bank-style enclave in Whole Foods Brooklyn. How many jobs did these fabulously rich "citizens of the world" contribute to the Big Apple? Damn few, unless you count takeout delivery coolie labor and underpaid domestics as signs of economic "progress."

The Silicon Valley sage also stated his belief that Silicon Valley's psychological and material bubble was a very desirable state of affairs. Perkins felt that this wealthy, tech-centric, no-holds-barred playpen was essential to any sort of societal "progress." The inference was that high tech's engineers would lead the way into a certainly wonderful future. Other professions (such as medicine), a sense of communal initiative, and of course non-tech thinking simply did not register. What if you were a poet, a surgeon, a social worker, or a small business owner (of course, Valley enterprises are something more than just mom and pops)? Well, tough darts: you were just a ninety-nine percenter -- someone who would need the one percent's Midas touch to lift them into....well, just what?

And there's the rub. Perkins' vision of a just society revolves around getting rich in a world where libertarian ideals rule the day. While it's an alluring vision from the penthouse, it's an unappealing vista from the ground floor. Unfortunately for Perkins, the ninety-nine percenters are not buying his vision. I suppose if Perkins is looking for solace, he can call up Mitt Romney and compare notes.

Hertz Puts You in An Electric Car's Driver's Seat

Tesla Roadster.
I don't know if this is the model Hertz offers.

Bloomberg News, in a story the Mercury News picked up, reported that Hertz customers at LAX and San Francisco International Airport can rent a Tesla electric car. The price of curiosity? $500 per day. Presumably, the deal comes with unlimited free mileage.

The opportunity sounds like great fun. I admit I do have a bit of Tesla deprivation jealousy. Someone in my general area owns a Tesla. On occasion, I see the car quietly cruise down a Main Street normally filled with SUVs, and I want to drive it. I have actually looked into the innards, such as they are, of a Tesla. A floor model was showcased at a local shopping mall recently. I was quite curious and looked inside; my wife acted on her interest and sat in the driver's seat.

There are relatively few electric charging stations in northern New Jersey. In fact, I wonder if the Northeast will ever embrace electric automobiles. The region has a strong conservative streak in matters of consumption and taste (contrary to popular perception about NY and NJ). Automobiles are not an exception to that sentiment. How quickly Hertz offers Teslas in its New York area centers remains to be seen.

Feds Award IBM $1 Billion Cloud Computing Contract

IBM, which howled when Obama Administration-friendly Amazon won a lucrative CIA cloud computing contract, recently won a consolation prize from the federal government. Big Blue won a 10-year, $1 billion deal to provide the Interior Department with cloud computing services. The Interior pie was divided up more or less equally among a number of DC corporate power players, including Lockheed Martin, Verizon, and ATT. The story, originally posted by Bloomberg News, appeared in today's siliconvalley.com.

Why the Interior Department needs a multi-billion dollar, long-term investment in cloud computing was not stated. However, what has become evident is the federal government's role in creating the new millenium's version of the military-industrial complex. This juggernaut requires that tech heavyweights get de facto government subsidies via sweetheart contracts, often generated through corrupt business dealings. As long as Americans remain enthralled with technology and "the promise of tomorrow" (whatever that means), this corrosive situation is unlikely to change.

Wall Street vs. Bloomberg News

Bloomberg Terminal
(photo: wikipedia.com)

Recently, Bloomberg News acknowledged that some of its reporters used sensitive and presumably restricted data from the eponymous terminals in their journalistic pursuits. Bloomberg terminals, if you're unfamiliar with them, provide essential financial data and are vitually de rigueur on Wall Street. The price of entry into the world of Bloomberg terminals is $20,000 per year. No exceptions, including the Street's giants, as today's New York Times article on the Bloomberg News-Wall Street snafu observed.

The Times' story, released on a slow news Saturday, is a curious one. A key player, if the article is to be taken at face value, is a Goldman Sachs PR exec and managing director named Jake Siewert. His resume includes a stint as an aide to former Treasury secretary Tim Geithner during the Obama administration. He was also White House press secretary during the Clinton Administration. Siewert called his JP Morgan counterpart and they began comparing notes about Bloomberg News leads and activities that aroused suspicions regarding their origin.

Jake Siewert
(photo: The New York Post)

An upset Goldman began to, as the phrase goes, "look into the matter." Keep in mind this is the same firm that employed Chelsea Clinton's husband. Let's just say Goldman, unflatteringly known as "the squid," has many friends in the public, private, and shadow sectors. JP Morgan, meanwhile, was in the middle of Jamie Diamon's very visible fight to retain both his chairmanship and CEO status at the firm. Keeping the media in line, especially a snoopy Bloomberg News, would be in JP Morgan's interest. There's nothing quite like a scandal over news coverage techniques to temporarily diminish a news organization's sharper edges. All Diamon needed was a little time and a little less media curiosity.

According to the Times piece, Siewert or others associated with Goldman Sachs contacted former Bloomberg News reporters for confirmation regarding surreptitious news gathering activity on the Bloomberg terminals. Intriguingly, the anonymous reporters cited in the story worked for Bloomberg News competitor The Wall Street Journal. Now, you'll get extra credit if you can guess which media platform broke the Bloomberg News-Wall Street story. If you said The New York Post, you would be correct. If you're keeping score at home, Rupert Murdoch owns both the Journal and the Post.

Mark DeCambre
(photo: twitter.com)

Among the coincidences in this tale is Post reporter Mark DeCambre's role in the affair. He filed a piece on Goldman's hiring of Siewert in November, 2012, which highlighted his potential fast track path to managing partner (roughly equivalent to landing a place in Wall Street's Olympus). According to today's Times article, he also broke the story about the Bloomberg News-Goldman Sachs flap.

Bloomberg News eventually issued something of a half-hearted mea culpa for its journalistic faux pas. Whether Bloomberg has offered a deal on yearly rates for its terminals was not noted.

Survey Rates World's Top Airport Restaurants

Signage from Tortas Frontera, O'Hare Airport
(photo: Tim Hoey)

A blog called The Daily Meal recently released a ranking of airport dining around the globe. If you're hungry, the place to fly to for a meal near Gate Whatever is Barcelona's Porta Gaig restaurant. The establishment is owned by a chef whose main gig in the Catalan city has earned one star in the Michelin  firmament.

Winning the figurative bronze medal is Tortas Frontera, Rick Bayless' fun outpost at Chicago's O'Hare Airport. My wife and I ate there last month, and took some food home to New Jersey. Yes, it was worth it, especially as it was our main meal immediately after Hurricane Sandy.

The complete story summarizing The Daily Meal post appeared in Bloomberg News.

Florida Governor Terminates Reporter's Q&A About State's Unemployment Record

Florida governor Rick Scott

Florida governor Rick Scott's press conference today in Tallahassee got a bit testy when a Bloomberg reporter asked Scott to comment on a report from the state legislature's chief economist. The findings suggested the state's unemployment drop "is almost exclusively due to people leaving the workforce," according to a story in today's Miami Herald.

The Republican governor initially answered that 130,000 jobs were created, presumably as a result of his policies. When pressed to clarify how his position so strikingly differed from that of a professional economist, Scott curtly cut the reporter off.

It has been the Republican mantra that their so-called "pro-growth" policies generate significant employment opportunities. Ask a college grad what challenges they face getting an interview (never mind a job), and you'll get a taste of the "pro-growth" truth. Inquire among your acquaintances who've been laid off how their job prospects are. Go to a public library and count how many people are refining their resumes, researching firms, and hoping they'll get a break.

It's possible Governor Scott did not go far enough. Perhaps he should have taken a page from Mitt Romney's campaign playbook. As Mitt did, Scott can simply speak at a fund raiser attended by a room full of one-percenters. He can declare the unemployed deadbeats, burdened with a poor self-image, and motivated by government subsidies of their personal needs. Then he can ask for money.

New EPA Proposal Would KO Coal-Fired Power Plants

Coal (photo from Scientific American)

In a quiet story noted in Bloomberg News, the Environmental Protection Agency "proposed limits on greenhouse-gas emissions from  U.S. power plants." The EPA's apparent intent is to eliminate the construction of any new, coal-fired facilities and to encourage the use of natural gas.

Both sides of the proposition generate controversy. Coal-fired plants unquestionably contribute particularly nasty forms of air pollution. Ruinous coal mining techniques degrade the terrestrial environment. Meanwhile, domestic supplies of natural gas have become plentiful, partly through hydraulic fracturing, a/k/a "fracking." Concerns have been raised about fracking's deleterious environmental impact, suspected contribution to a sharp increase in earthquakes in previously seismically quiet zones, and use as financial blackmail in economically depressed regions.

The EPA, effectively closed during the Bush-Cheney years, faces an American public conditioned to dislike "government interference" and to accept corporate preferences, regardless of health or environmental impact. The anti-EPA crowd does not want to recall the bad old days, when major metro area air quality was hopeless, when mining interests disfigured wide swaths of the American West, and when the nation's waterways were rivers of shit.

Who would want a return to filthy Los Angeles air, a desecrated Great American Desert, or a revolting Schuylkill River in Philadelphia?

Former Exxon Valdez Sold for Scrap

Exxon Valdez (photo from US Coast Guard)

The Exxon Valdez, best known for shedding 11 million gallons of oil into an environmentally vital Alaskan sound, has reached the end of its seaborne role. According to a Bloomberg News story picked up in the LA Times, the infamous ship was sold for $16 million to an outfit called Global Marketing Systems Inc. No, it's not a telemarketing operation: the firm, according to the article, is "the world's biggest cash buyer of ships for demolition."

The years were harsh to the Exxon Valdez. The vessel ultimately had four other names and an equal number of owners since the 1989 Alaskan ecological disaster. The ship's original name became synonymous with apocalyptic catastrophes. Improved ship designs terminated its oil carrying usefulness. Eventually, it transported iron ore more or less in anonymity.

The Exxon Valdez incident, however, has not retreated into history's shadows. With disturbingly increasing frequency, some sort of industrial or military calamity diminishes the planet's environment. Some of the disasters dwarf the Exxon Valdez's deleterious impact: the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the ruinous destruction of the Amazon rainforest, and the impact of armed conflict on the Persian Gulf during the First Gulf War come to mind. While it's tempting to let the memory of the Exxon Valdez sleep, it's important to awaken its story and tell its cautionary tale to a new generation.

Nevada Hookers Lean Libertarian in GOP Prez Primary

Sign Outside Moonlite BunnyRanch

The Republican Party's race for Nevada's hooker votes has come to a head in recent days (puns very much intended). The surprise leader, up to this point, is Ron Paul. His libertarian ideology struck a sympathetic note with the state's legal prostitutes (no, we're not talking about its elected officials).

According to a bloomberg.com story, the customers and sex workers at Nevada's Moonlite BunnyRanch are ponying up for Paul's campaign. Intriguingly, they don't care for Mitt Romney, whom they view as "too square." That was not the case with Newton Leroy Gringrich, whose extra-marital affairs and tawdry divorce proceedings have generated more public debate than his policy positions have. Dennis Hof, the owner and self-proclaimed "pimp master" of the Moonlite BunnyRanch and other Nevada brothels, claimed his hooker poll (what a phrase to use in a political discussion!) indicated the women who play for pay liked Gingrich. "They don't have a problem with him being a womanizer," Hof said.

Milk Outduels Gold as 2011's Most Profitable Commodity

For all the drum beating about gold prices this year, the year's big winner in the commodity world's version of a gold rush was milk futures. Milk! In case you're wondering, milk futures rose forty percent, according to Bloomberg News reporter Courtney Donohoe's well done TV segment. She weaves export trends, global gender demographics, animal feed costs, and other factors into a cogent, crisp market overview. One conclusion from Donohoe's report is that milk prices are very likely to increase in the coming year.

Photo from Northwest Sustainable Dairies,
a partnership program in Oregon and Washington.

Along those lines, an article in today's New York Times noted how domestic demand for organic milk was outstripping supply. There are regional nuances to the story, and does mention that farmers are only seeing a fraction of any price increase. Since supermarkets often operate on narrow unit profit margins (they characteristically make their money on volume), where does the money go? I'm guessing, but distributors and wholesalers would be in position to cash in on milk's unending popularity.

The Times piece focused on milk in its most traditionally associated forms, such as the proverbial glass of milk. However, the Bloomberg News segment provided stronger details, including the use of dried milk in  other beverages, as drivers in the market price for milk futures.

Why would one care about any of this? Well, we still live in a world in which the message of "no inflation" or "low inflation" is disseminated on a daily basis. This insulting fiction, delivered via US government agencies and on-message Wall Street analysts, is consistently belied by simple fact. (Notably, in Donohoe's story, she did not directly quote any analyst or trader.) Meanwhile, everyday purchases, such as a quart of milk, are getting increasingly expensive, while wages are either stagnant or declining in the United States. These trends combine to create disbelief in institutions and anxiety about personal propsperity, a volatile mix that may be reflected in increased domestic social and political turmoil in 2012.

Three Christmas Eve Stealth Stories: GE Bid-Rigging, ATT Spectrum Bonanza, NFL TV Deals' Financial Impact on Fans

Saturdays have historically been a day for backdoor news. These stories typically involve unflattering stories about institutions, such as legal settlements, forced executive retirements, unpopular government actions, or poor corporate performance. Consequently, I make it a point to carefully read Saturday news stories.

This year, Saturday doubles down with Christmas Eve to create a nearly ideal "hidden news" environment. There are plenty of gifts under the holiday news tree today. Here are some examples:

*  GE settles SEC probe into municipal bond bid rigging. The Bloomberg News story provides the unsavory details. (The official SEC press release provides more details on the matter.) Remember when GE was considered the gold standard for corporate performance and behavior? The former "AAA" firm is now just another TBTF enterprise lusting for Federal corporate welfare. GE's saving grace is that it actually manufactures useful products, such as jet engines.

*  ATT gets final FCC approval for $1.93 billion purchase of Qualcomm spectrum. This is a great deal for ATT, and one hell of a consolation prize for ATT, in light of its highly public, abandoned bid for T-Mobile. The big losers in this deal are rural telephone providers, as Bloomberg News noted in its story on the ATT coup. The FCC originally recommended approving the deal on November 22nd, which just happened to be the beginning of the Thanksgiving holiday period.

* According to a Los Angeles Times blog post, the NFL's new and highly lucrative television deals could impact consumers with higher cable TV bills. The deals also threaten smaller cable distributors that don't offer a steady diet of pro sports. I find the fees for sports packages outrageously expensive. I stopped subscribing to them long ago, and as a result annually keep five hundred dollars for other purposes. And no, I don't spend the saved money on tickets to ball games. Do you really feel good spending hundreds of dollars for a nothing special seat at any pro sports event?

US Housing Establishment Tying Up Loose Ends From 2008 Crash

Remember when the housing bubble burst? Now that we're in the midst of a faintly felt and quite possibly illusory "recovery," apparently the US housing establishment intends to tie up loose ends from the debacle. The "establishment," in this case, refers to the unholy alliance of federal agencies, financial services firms, and propaganda arms (such as the National Association of Realtors) which created and fostered the housing disaster.

Exhibit A comes from the recent settlement of an FDIC lawsuit against three Washington Mutual (WaMu) executives for their impetuous, greedy risk taking in the housing market. In case you don't remember, WaMu was one of the more spectacular bank failures of the past half-dozen years. The three executives in question, however, earned more than $95 million between 2005 and 2008. The settlement, according to online editions of Bloomberg News, will pay $64 million to the FDIC. However, "the cash payments made by the three former officers," the Bloomberg News report states, will total about $400,000. The remainder will come from a WaMu insurance policy. The former execs' had chutzpah and a highly developed sense of entitlement: they had sued for retirement benefits and "golden parachute" payments totaling many millions of dollars. The settlement, meanwhile, is perceived as a face-saving expedient for the FDIC, whose boss at the time involved in the litigation, Sheila Bair, is something of a financial media darling.

Sheila Bair

Intriguingly, a December 11th Bloomberg Business Week story noted that Ms. Bair "is a top candidate among state officials to ensure banks comply with any settlement of a nationwide foreclosure probe."

Exhibit B centers on housing data supplied by the National Association of Realtors (NAR). It turns out the NAR has suddenly discovered it has "accidentally" pumped up housing sale figures for a number of years. The NAR's methodology and stats were publicly questioned in a February, 2011 Wall Street Journal article, according to a post in the financial blog Zero Hedge. Well, by gosh and by golly, it only took the NAR ten months to confirm there was gambling inside its own casino. What are some implications of the NAR's dip into glasnost?

Lawrence Yun

Let's hear it from NAR frontman Lawrence Yun: "For the real estate business, this means the housing market's downturn was deeper than what was initially thought." Meanwhile, left unsaid was that the below-the-surface portion of the housing iceberg -- the shadow foreclosure market -- is likely to emerge and become much more visible in 2012. The disruptive emergence of low-cost housing is a nightmare for American economic and social policy makers. Consequently, it may be time to get the public ready for "continued sluggishness in the housing market." Given that a home in most Americans' primary financial asset, the recast housing figures would imply continued devaluation of residential home prices. If you're among the 99% crowd, that's bad news.

Exhibit C is recondite, but gets to the heart of the corruption's machinery. According to a Bloomberg News report, Morgan Stanley has settled a lawsuit against MBIA over the latter firm's credit default swaps. The deal means Morgan Stanley gets paid over a billion dollars, while MBIA drops a $300 million-plus counterclaim against MS. The significance of MBIA's action was that it had targeted   $233 million of Morgan's residential mortgage-backed securities, and thus keeps them away from unwanted publicity.

As the Bloomberg News story notes, this litigation was just part of the many lawsuits major Wall Street and other financial services launched against MBIA. Basically, the contention was that MBIA created a "fraudulent conveyance" to ship out horseshit mortgage-backed securities, while keeping MBIA's valuable state and municipal bond guarantee business intact. (This episode was a very big deal in 2009, and then forgotten about, except in the war rooms of major money players.)

The question that arises is why issues associated with the housing market's corruption are being tidied up now?

"Big Six" US Banks Netted Billions Via Secret Federal Reserve Loans

Maybe Not.

Have you ever wanted to get a loan at a below-market interest rate? Well, not so long ago, one highly publicized way was to get a VIP mortgage from Countrywide Financial. Dozens of Fannie Mae officials did exactly that. However, that's small potatoes compared to the secret, below-market interest rate loans the Federal Reserve dished out to major US banks.

The Fed fought Bloomberg News in court -- and fought hard -- to keep the information about these loans from public access. Thankfully, Bloomberg won and has published a story about who got what. It's a very unsavory tale, in which banking titans and the Fed lied to the public and stonewalled Congress. The usual Wall Street suspects are at the top of this corporate welfare list. The stakes were enormous, but so were the rewards: $13 billion net profit for the banks that were treated to the Fed's dole.

It's understandable that the Fed wanted to prop up these bankrupt institutions. It is unacceptable that information about the use of tax money -- generations of tax money, given the scale of the bailouts -- be kept from the American people. What are these institutions afraid of? Their high-handed approach only contributes to suspicions that both the federal bureaucracy and major financial players are profoundly corrupt.

Meanwhile, to the reporters who fought the Fed and won -- thank you.

Patent Chase Resembles Napoleonic-Era Alliances and Conflict Scale

The Financial Times posted an interesting overview of big-time tech's current, high-stakes bidding for patents. Major players, such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft, recently concluded an auction for a substantial portion Nortel's intellectual property covered under U.S. patent law. To prevent Google from obtaining this rich vein of tech gold, a commercial alliance that resembled a Napoleonic Era-style alliance was formed to outbid the Mountain View, California search monolith. Among the friends of convenience were presumed adversaries Microsoft, Apple, and Research in Motion. Notably, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt complained after the fact about the investment in patent acquisition versus ponying up for (shades of Bill Gates) "innovation."

Why would the alliance be so desperate to stop Google? The FT article provides a startlingly simple answer: Google has a thin patent collection compared to its principal competitors. The financial implications of patent control have escalated as mobile computing and smartphone popularity dramatically increase on an annual basis. Microsoft, for example, is now charging a per-unit fee for each Android-capable unit made by selected handset manufacturers. It's a gold mine for Microsoft, which really doesn't have to do much of anything except litigate and collect. Apple, for its part, a story originally reported by Bloomberg News noted a recent FTC ruling in favor of Steve Jobs' firm against an Android handset maker for patent infringement.

As for these extra costs, expect a product price bump, so that these payments are embedded in the overall retail or wholesale rates.

When Yahoo's Jerry Yang stupidly torpedoed Microsoft's bid to acquire his firm, he opened the door to Google's continued drive to effectively become a search monopoly. We are now at the point where "google" is unthinkingly used as a transitive verb to generically identify online search technique. Once Google entered the smartphone business, its affected major competitors realized they were in for a fight. Ironically, the FT piece characterized the latest Nortel patent battle as Google's "Waterloo." What wasn't said was that it took a grand alliance to take on the Napoleon from Mountain View.

The image at the top of the post is from Ocean Tomo. According to its corporate website, Ocean Tomo "provides financial services and products related to intellectual property...." In April, 2011, an Ocean Tomo press release discussed in some detail the issues involving Google's conjectured bidding on Nortel patents.