Quotulatiousness

January 21, 2010

Obama’s move to throttle the big banks

Filed under: Economics, Government, Law, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:18

Megan McArdle takes a first look at the Obama administration’s new initiative to control the big banks:

The administration’s new proposal has two core pieces, both of which are at least somewhat novel. First, banks that have access to the discount window will not be able to trade for their own account. That means no prop trading desk. No owning hedge funds or private equity funds. No investments of any kind to make profits for your shareholders. Financial institutions can make profits by servicing clients, or they can make profits by investing for their own book. But they can’t do both.

Senior administration officials I spoke to made it clear that this would not include market making activity, which the administration views as something you do for your clients. But while that may partially reassure banks, that seems to mean that market makers — i.e. Goldman Sachs — are very definitely included. That impression was reinforced by the way Indeed, if they pass this thing, they should probably call it the Hey Goldman Sachs! You’re Not Going to Be So Profitable Any More Act of 2010.

And yet more on passwords

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:11

This is becoming a quarterly topic around here. Imperva has done some statistical analysis of the 32 million passwords which were exposed in the Rockyou.com security breach:

Key findings of the study include:

* The shortness and simplicity of passwords means many users select credentials that will make them susceptible to basic forms of cyber attacks known as “brute force attacks.”

* Nearly 50% of users used names, slang words, dictionary words or trivial passwords (consecutive digits, adjacent keyboard keys, and so on). The most common password is “123456”.

* Recommendations for users and administrators for choosing strong passwords.

“Everyone needs to understand what the combination of poor passwords means in today’s world of automated cyber attacks: with only minimal effort, a hacker can gain access to one new account every second—or 1000 accounts every 17 minutes,” explained Imperva’s CTO Amichai Shulman.

The report identifies the most commonly used passwords:

1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123

So there you go — all the tools you need to be a world-class password cracker.

Vikings scheme to handle Reggie Bush

Filed under: Football, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:06

Just in case you thought they’d forgotten how Reggie Bush made them look plain awful on special teams last year — giving up a pair of punt return touchdowns in the same game — here’s some strong evidence that they’ve got plans in place to deal with Bush in Sunday’s NFC championship game:

Punter Chris Kluwe drew a lot of media attention Wednesday regarding his game plan for Saints punt returner Reggie Bush, who returned two punts for touchdowns against the Vikings last season.

“Actually, we were planning on first pooping our pants and running screaming toward the sidelines, and then Reggie would be able to just pick up the ball and run toward the end zone,” Kluwe said. “In retrospect, though, that might not be the best plan, so I’m sure we’ll come up with something else.”

Coach Brad Childress and Kluwe had a heated conversation on the sideline last season after Bush’s second touchdown return. Asked about it, Kluwe said: “It happens. Emotions run high during games and you go from there. Me and Coach are much more heavily medicated now, so hopefully we’ll be OK on the sidelines.”

Naval forces, estimated

Filed under: China, Military — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:44

Strategy Page summarizes the recent accidental release of US intelligence estimates about the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN):

The strength of the Chinese fleet was listed as;

Submarines- 62 (53 diesel Attack Submarines, six nuclear Attack Submarines, three nuclear Ballistic Missile Submarines). The U.S. has 72 submarines, all nuclear (53 attack and 18 ballistic missile.)

Destroyers-26. The U.S. has 52.

Frigates-48. The U.S. has 32, including two of the new LCS vessels.

Amphibious Ships 58. The U.S. has 30, all much larger and equipped with flight decks and helicopters, plus landing craft.

Coastal Patrol (Missile)- at least 80. The U.S. had a few of these, but got rid of them. China uses these for coastal patrol and defense, a concept they inherited from the Russians.

In addition, the U.S. has eleven aircraft carriers (ten of them nuclear powered) and 22 cruisers.

Most of the Chinese ships are older (in design, if not in the age of the vessels) than their American counterparts. China is building new classes of ships, with more modern equipment and weapons.

Planning for retirement

Filed under: Cancon, Economics — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:28

I’m one of those bad savers you keep reading about in the financial pages: I’m not saving enough for my retirement. Of course, depending on where you get your retirement advice from, few of us can save enough to retire comfortably. Here’s what I wrote about this back in 2004:

I’ve been saving money in my registered retirement savings plan, although I’ve never been able to afford to put away the legal maximum for my income (I’ve come close, but never hit the max). This is literally the only tax dodge available to Canadians earning less than $200,000 per year: the money you save in that year is deducted from your taxable income and the interest it earns is also tax-deferred until retirement.

This means I’m saving a theoretical 14% of my pre-tax income as provision against starvation once I retire. Sounds reasonable, no?

According to the banks, no. If you go to any of the major Canadian bank websites and look at their online retirement planning tools, you’ll discover that no Canadian can ever really afford to retire. In my case, going on the (doubtful) assumption that I continue to earn the same as I do now until I retire, I need to save approximately 105% of my pre-tax income in order to barely maintain my standard of living after retirement. If I manage to stay employed for a few years after age 65, I cut that down to needing to save only 94% of my pre-tax income.

In the most hopeful scenario, where I work until age 78 and die the same year, I won’t go bankrupt.

Okay, I’m exaggerating, but not by much. I’ve always found it depressing to do this sort of planning, and the bank websites (which of course are biased to encourage you to keep more money with them) sure don’t help. For example, the CIBC retirement calculator says I need to save just over 75% of my take-home pay every month in order to be able to retire at 65. Aaaaggghhh!!!

Since those balmy, optimistic days, I’ve gone through several jobs, and had no opportunity to match my earlier savings rate. The last couple of years, I’ve even had to draw down my savings to cover periods of unemployment. So maybe I need to work to age 81 before I can retire . . .

However, perhaps the situation isn’t quite as dire as all that. David Aston has an article in MoneySense magazine which at least avoids the typical “gotta save multi-millions” line the banks tend to give you:

This is the worst-case scenario, but it’s good to know what you’ll need if you just want to scrape by, if only because it gives you a starting point to build from. For this scenario, the costing has already been done for us in a recent study, called Basic Living Expenses for the Canadian Elderly, by three University of Waterloo researchers. The study describes a no-frills retirement as one in which a couple rents (rather than owns), has no vehicles (so they take public transit), and it doesn’t include spare cash for even minor indulgences such as cable TV or alcohol. This is not the stuff of most people’s retirement dreams, but the study does budget for three nutritious home-prepared meals a day, a one-bedroom apartment plus utilities, along with typical health-care costs and other essentials like clothing and personal-care products.

How much do you need?

The study’s authors conclude that the annual cost of such a retirement in five major Canadian cities ranges from $20,200 to $27,400. Here’s the good news: to achieve this bare-bones scenario you don’t have to save a penny. The combination of full Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) program for low-income seniors pretty much covers all your basic needs, at least outside the highest-rent cities. If you and your spouse are at least 65, those government programs would provide you with a combined $22,750 a year if you have no other income. “We’ve kind of made sure the Canadian elderly don’t live in poverty but we’ve given them, like, 50 cents more than the poverty line,” says study co-author Robert Brown.

The scenario does, however, require the Canadian government to make some pretty fast changes to how it’s funding the OAS, GIS, and CPP programs. CPP is, in theory, fully self-funded but the coming “bulge” in retirement rates from aging Baby Boomers will almost certainly require both increased premiums and top-up from other government revenue streams. Oh, and increased claw-backs from other income retired seniors may have.

Powered by WordPress