There is this great Japanese TV program that seeks to answer ridiculous questions. The first time I saw a clip from this program it revolved around the question of whether a Samurai sword could really deflect .50 bullets. I was sure that no sword could do that, but it turns out that they can if the bullets strike the sword on its edge. Admittedly this effect only lasts for a couple of bullets before the sword is fatally weakened. But that is still pretty impressive.
The program below seeks to answer the question of whether the world champion fast walker would run or walk if his life was in danger.
Police in Slovakia and Hungary have busted a black-market ring allegedly aiming to sell nuclear contraband on the eastern frontier of Europe, Slovak authorities said late Wednesday. Three people have been arrested for trying to sell 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of enriched uranium for for €680,000 ($1 million).
You know what cracks me up though (just a final word on FL vs. NY?) Forbes just listed Binghamton N.Y. as one of America’s hottest RE markets. Oh man I can’t get over THAT one.
It’s “hot” only because you won’t lose your shirt on a house you bought there last year…!
Since “Dale” is someone who is unknown to me, I had to check this out. I could not find the Forbes article that he mentioned online, but I did find this article that seems to back up his claim. It mentions a Forbes article and it shows that prices in Binghamton have gone up almost 20 percent since last year. That puts Binghamton in second place (just under Salt Lake City) in terms of real estate appreciation over the last year.
Who would have ever thought that Binghamton’s real estate market would one day do better then almost every where else in the country?
France is having trouble with rioters again. But this time it is different……
In one sense, the unrest seems to be more menacing than during the early days of the three weeks of rioting in 2005. Then, the youth seemed disorganized, their destruction largely caused by rock-throwing and arson and aimed at the closest and easiest targets, like cars. This time, hunting shotguns, as well as gasoline bombs and rocks, have been turned on the police.
“From what our colleagues on the scene tell us, this is a situation that is a lot worse than what we saw in 2005,” Patrice Ribeiro, a police officer and senior union official, told RTL radio Tuesday. He added, “A line was crossed last night, that is to say, they used weapons, they used weapons and fired on the police. This is a real guerrilla war.”
Ribeiro warned that the police, who have struggled to avoid excessive force, would not be fired upon indefinitely without responding.
More than 80 police officers already have been wounded the clashes, several of them seriously, Ribeiro said later by telephone. Thirty of them were hit with pellets from shotguns, and one of the wounded was hit with a type of bullet used to kill large game, he added. It is legal to own a shotgun in France – as long as the owner has a license – and police circles were swirling with rumors that the bands of youth were procuring more shotguns.
Here is a news clip from the early days of the rioting…
Here is more footage of the early rioting…
This is from the second day. Anti-France in its view point.
To be fair to the French, this time the riots did not last long. This from CNN…..
French suburbs stayed relatively calm Wednesday night after 1,000 riot police were deployed to quell disturbances that began when two teenagers died in a collision with a police car, French officials said.
Wednesday was the fourth night of unrest that on prior nights resulted in violent clashes between angry youths and police, and the burning of buildings and cars from the Paris suburbs to the southern city of Toulouse.
No injuries to police were reported, Laurente Wittek, a spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry, told CNN. She said Thursday that there had been a “clear reduction” in the rioting.
Meanwhile, French President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed to punish those responsible for shooting at police. Sarkozy met Wednesday with the families of the youths on the motorcycle who were killed.
The worst bouts of violence were Monday and Tuesday nights, when police made arrests in the northern Paris suburb of Villiers-le-Bel, where the collision occurred.
Nonetheless, this riot still seems to have marked a new high point for anti-state rioting in France. If this trend continues, will the French police still be willing to handle the problem? Or will they turn it over to the army?
Brad Setser calls this a scary graph. I think that fear factor is a little overdone. The graph only tracks long term flows and I think a lot of investors are parking their money in short term accounts until they figure out what’s safe and what’s not. Still, if there was a prize for dramatic drops this graph would take the prize for the year. And considering how this year went, that is saying something.
Plus, there is an implicit threat in this graph. If the fed does not start to value a sound currency then it is going to have to find 200 billion extra dollars a quarter to keep the US afloat.
Calculated Risk and Tanta have been on the war path. They are fed up with people who talk about the current problems as being sub prime problems. This is a pretty sick example of why they don’t think that the current problems should be blamed on poor people.
Is a newspaper doing its job when it presents two sets of statistics as being fact in the same article when the two figures are mutually exclusive? Felix Salmon points out that the reporting on the Black Friday sales just does not add up.
Knowledge is power. It is not safe to have power. You could hurt yourself or others with it. That is why we no longer give our kids the tools to learn.
The abbreviation stands for “No income, no assets.” It does not mean the loans went to people without either assets or income, only that the borrowers were not asked if they had either. I had known about “stated income” loans — also known as “liars’ loans” — in which the bank took a borrower’s word for how much he earned. But I had not realized you could borrow money without even being asked about your income.
Starting this month, Freddie won’t guarantee such loans, which seem to default more often than other loans.
If you don’t check to see if someone has any income or assets, the loan is more likely to default. Who would have thunk?
