Ed Koch is a damned idiot!

He has this to say:

"I have been a supporter of President Obama and went to Florida for him, urged Jews all over the country to vote for him saying that he would be just as good as John McCain on the security of Israel. I don't think it's true anymore," Koch told Fox News' Neil Cavuto.

Gee, I though his political expertise came from being mayor of NYC. Now I find out his only contribution is that he has friends in some obscure religious sect.

Is an interest rate hike pending?

Says Ashraft Laidi:

April 2, 2010 06:42 ET: YESTERDAY's ANNOUNCEMENT on the website of the Federal Reserve Board http://bit.ly/ bVCNAh about a closed meeting will be held on Monday, could signal the Fed will raise its discount by 25-bps to 1.0% as a way to further normalize the spread between the discount rate and fed funds rate back to pre-crisis levels. Making such a pre-announcement would reduce risks of upsetting markets as it is well telegraphed (not a surprise as was on the Feb 18 discount rate), but also would be done on Monday, when most European equity markets will be closed and US markets at thin liquidity.

Barro and the Financial Illusion

Barro and his five books, finally, two thirds of the way down he explains what caused the Great Depression.

No I think what is much clearer is the role of the financial system and the credit implosion, both in the 1930s and today. The rest of the stuff may just be a sideshow, it may not be that important.

I have a question for all the great experts on the Great Depression, find me a depression that did not have a credit cycle, or else explain to me how we could go through 200 years of great technological advance without a major leverage cycle?

When we measure crashes, ex post, using the unit of account, it has to be a leverage cycle if it is a crash. When we measure crashes, ex ante, using the unit of account, we have no crash, the prediction goes away. The question monetary economists might ask is why do bankers miss sudden changes in real constraints? How about sudden changes in real constraints are hidden from the banker, they are a technological change that has not appeared and is not measured.

More traffic bonds

Whoops:

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Fitch Ratings has assigned an 'AA-' rating to the approximately $215 million State of Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) turnpike revenue refunding bonds, series 2010A. In addition, Fitch has affirmed the 'AA-' rating on $2.7 billion in outstanding turnpike revenue and revenue refunding bonds. The Rating Outlook remains Negative.

The series 2010A bonds are expected to sell competitively during the week of March 29th. Bond proceeds will be used to refund a portion of the outstanding 1998A, 1999A and 2000B bonds and pay the costs of issuance.

The Negative Outlook reflects continued uncertainty of near-term traffic growth on the turnpike's facilities stemming from continued weak economic conditions in Florida and the expectation that there could potentially be erosion in historically robust debt coverage levels over the next several years. Furthermore, the Negative Outlook reflects Fitch's opinion that the economic conditions that fueled traffic growth over the past decade may not return, pressuring the turnpike to manage expenses and capital much more closely than before and potentially raise toll rates in excess of anticipated levels. Toll revenues declined to $590 million in fiscal year (FY) 2009 from $664 million in 2007, or 11%. However, Fitch notes that traffic declines have stabilized as transactions the first six months of FY 2010 are generally flat.

And:

WASHINGTON - The North Carolina Turnpike Authority expects to issue $616 million of bonds next week for the Triangle Expressway System - a project designed to relieve traffic in one of the nation's fastest-growing regions but delayed for months by the credit crisis.

The deal, the largest in North Carolina since September 2007, will include the state's first Build America Bonds and a large helping of insured toll-revenue bonds.

A retail pricing period is scheduled for Monday and the NCTA with its underwriters is holding an information session this afternoon for prospective investors.

North Carolina has not built a toll road in more than 100 years. Meanwhile, the state's population has soared, particularly in the Raleigh-Triangle Research area where the new expressway will be built. The Raleigh-Durham-Cary region, which includes three research universities and the state capital, was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the U.S. from 1985 to 2005, according to Moody's Investors Service.

And:

Connecticut’s Joint Committee on Transportation reported several bills out of committee earlier this week, including a Tri-State supported bill to increase penalties for careless driving and an amended bill directing ConnDOT to prepare a plan to implement electronic tolls.

VANET

The geeks use this for Vehicle AdHoc Networks, the wireless protocol that cars use to talk.

Location, location, location:

I now talk to the geeks abut this subject, my proposal to use unique location IDs to identify vehicles in the MAC layer. My point is that there are major scale and bandwidth advantages when vehicles and roadside nodes are identified by location.

Better bandwidth and routing:

My point is summarized in the basic problem being solved, a packet collision retains all senses of the word collision, traffic networks have location as fundamental. Location ID also aids in channel separation and is available to phased array antennas. Locations IDs allow intelligent hand offs between roadside nodes that minimizes link distances. All these together more than double the bit rates and allow continuous communications channels over distances. Make it much easier for sustained, multi hop connected applications.

Simplicity and net security:

I repeat here the anonymity of location IDs, they carry no further association to the car than its current location and class. Vehicles without location knowledge can revert to old style, location independent link layer. So much is gained and nothing lost.

Good Industry effects:

The market effect of a common tracking link layer is that we create the "TCP" architecture for the E Traffic industry, in the sense that multiple levels of industry resources can work around tracking engines, transmitter optimizing technology, safety algorithms, routing optimization, and applications from the single layer definition. Vendors can approach traffic planners with a unified, understandable single layer definition of what the mobile networking nodes can do for revenue generation.

Good Marketing:

When traffic planners, like the Oregon or Utah Departments of Transportation can rely on common industry consensus and simplicity, the their risk and cost of money drops way down. The contracts begin to flow.

War predictions

World War predictions at Zero Hedge. Over oil? Invest in war robots. Time to revisit the idea of the Jihadi.

Information Shock

I define it as the time when new information technology increases knowledge about the location of goods, rapidly.

The classic example, we suddenly mass produce penny press with graphics and stories by a thousand fold. England 1820. Newspapers are instructions on various methods to organize into efficient production. How other countries, other industries, and other technologies were being used, with profit and loss statements. Available at 1/6 the cost of prior print technology. Delivered daily. Soon came double sided printing.

Assets value across international boundaries would suddenly shift as each population made production shifts by copying the best practices of the other. Asymmetric information corrected.

The Pope's a damned idiot

He washes the feet of one of his fellow child molesters for no apparent reason except that stupid people are supposed to have sympathy.

The pope reminds me of Meg McArdle!

Why is Meg McArdle mailing out wedding invitations?

I went to the post office today to mail our wedding invitations. They are, I grant, a sort of odd shape--large and square. (This is what happens when you outsource your wedding invitations to India, apparently). So they take an odd amount of postage.

Then she complains about the Post Office not being efficient in mailing out these things.

Firsty, almost all, if not all, of her guests are likely people she talks to on the phone, e mails, or responds to via her blog.

Second, the invitations are great momentos of her wedding, but what the hell does having a post mark on them do for her friends. They could just as easily received a much better print brochure of her wedding upon arrival. She could contact them for invitations using the modern communications, and then give them something much better in person, using the modern invention of the laser printer, or color ink jet.

But no, she thinks the Post Office has no purpose in life except to tolerate useless paper conventions from 40 years ago.

It is Meg who is behind the times and showing bureaucratic inefficiency, not the post office. The post office would like nothing more than to exit an ancient service and get in with competition with Fedex and UPS.

Meg McArdle reveals herself to be a typical Big Government conservative, trying to subsidize government inefficiency because she fears change.

What inflation index to bond vigilantes watch?

This one

Investors and the Forex market have made the connection between nominal and real oil prices in America, and bond prices drop as long as the nominal and real prices remain in lockstep. Money will follow investment opportunities that can separate nominal and real oil prices.

Ten year TIPS will expect nominal 2% inflation because inflation is not determined by government action, it is out of the hands of fiscal or monetary policy. Inflation remains low because constrained oil supplies continue keep inflation restrained.