Sony has set up an exhibit to showcase a room full of high-end GT5 driving rigs.
My buddy Rob sent me this photo a little earlier. It shows the GT showcase at the Sony PlayStation Lounge in Manhattan. Looks pretty cool.
If you’re curious, you can find more info here on 1UP.
“I had grossly underestimated the level of extraordinarily unethical and even fraudulent behavior that had occurred on such a large scale,” Ferguson tells All Things Considered host Melissa Block, in a conversation airing Friday.
via Inside Job Director Charles Ferguson, Taking Wall Street Firmly To Task : Monkey See : NPR.
The Block Party at the Paramount New York back lot was a lot of fun.
Thanks to my good pal Joe for hooking up the tickets.
It was weird thinking about how my mom used to work here.
And there was much rejoicing.
You can bet a bank CEO is going down when he tries to rip off New York’s upper crust.
When FDIC shuts down a bank they do it at the end of business on a Friday. This is what happened to Park Avenue Bank two Fridays back. Since then the regulatory body has discovered that the bank had phony CDs on record.
Since this is the first time criminal charges have been filed against someone for TARP infractions, the court and Antonucci himself are maneuvering in unchartered waters. The Park Avenue Bank was seized on Friday, March 12, making it one of three banks taken over by bank regulators. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation estimates its loss at $50.7 million for the Park Avenue Bank failure. The special inspector general assigned to oversee TARP says, “The charges today should send a powerful message to those who have tried to steal from the TARP, those who have stolen from the TARP and those who are contemplating similar fraudulent action.”
AT&T halts online iPhone sales to New York, say shoppers Boing Boing.
Bandwidth capacity issues: fixed.
I’m not certain why, but I was earlier reminded of a recent statement illustrating the rate at which Financial Services, as a component of US GDP, had grown dramatically in the post-Cold War period. I was startled by the figures I’d heard, but only this evening took it upon myself to actually research the claim.
The figures I discovered which best suited my inquiry are sourced to the Bank of International Settlements in Basil. Some of you may know this institute as the clearinghouse that allowed German and American financiers and industrialists to have financial interactions during World War II (AGFA, BASF, Bayer, I.G. Farbenindustrie, ITT, Deutsche Telekom, GM, IBM, GE, DuPont, Standard Oil, Coca Cola, Dow Chemical, it’s really silly how long the list gets). The bank was appropriately enough co-founded by Germany’s finance minister, and two-time appointee to head the Reichsbank, Hjalmar Schacht, who had, oddly enough, a rather American sounding full name: Horace Greeley Hjalmar Schacht.
He had this name because, although born in Germany, Schacht had grown up in New York.
I sort of remember reading somewhere that Schacht had once had some sort of minor social interaction once with FDR at the Harvard Club in New York. This all happened before FDR had fully entered politics.
The BIS was so publicly scandalous that in 1944, an organization no less august the the United Nations recommended its dissolution. See United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, Final Act (London et al., 1944), Article IV. Obviously this action was never undertaken.
Nevertheless, I digress. You can see the charts and figures at the BIS website. It’s all very interesting if you like that sort of thing.
It’s crazy when you read up on it and you realize, on a strategic level, what significance there was in the role of economics in World War II, particularly in the European theater. I suppose you can have a global total war between industrialized nations without a large amount of capital interactions between the opposing sides. This is particularly obvious in consideration of the entanglements resulting from Versailles.
Well look at that. I just saw this article in the New York Times.
In addition to the general dearth of housing properties that has been created in the So Cal real estate market over the last five years, there is also the specter of decreasing demand. As the unemployment/underemployment rate in Los Angeles hovers near 20% people are leaving California faster than they are arriving and we may start to see a stabilization in the population for the first time since Europeans started arriving here four-hundred fifty years ago (I looked it up).
LAist is reporting that this phenomenon has resulted in something many of us have been able to see first hand: in LA renters have gained the upper hand.
Since 2003 I’ve had to relocate twice due to “Demolition Eviction” notices (first in December of 2004 and again in March 2006). You get a Demolition Eviction” notice when your landlord decides to cash in on the boom in the real-estate market and turn your building into a condo complex. I’d been so traumatized by it I sought refuge in Santa Monica where the process almost never takes place.
These relocations gave me an opportunity to get a great feel for the West L.A. housing rental market. When I looked at it again in January I got to see how depressed the market had become in the last two years. Most monthly rental rates had decreased 10% in that period.
So, it’s nice to see some relief in this area. I’ve always been astounded at what we pay to rent property in this area. New York is really the only other major metropolitan area I can think of that outprices us.
Makes me weep with pride.