What the @$%?! Disney buying ‘Star Wars’ maker Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion from George Lucas

Posted on October 30, 2012 by jnc4p

Disney buying ‘Star Wars’ maker Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion from George Lucas
By Associated Press, Updated: Tuesday, October 30, 4:37 PM

LOS ANGELES — Disney is paying $4.05 billion to buy Lucasfilm Ltd., the production company behind “Star Wars,” from its chairman and founder, George Lucas. It’s also making a seventh movie in the “Star Wars” series called “Episode 7,” set for release in 2015, with plans to follow it with Episodes 8 and 9 and then one new movie every two or three years.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/disney-says-it-is-buying-star-wars-maker-lucasfilm-for-405-billion-from-george-lucas/2012/10/30/dc0ace18-22cc-11e2-92f8-7f9c4daf276a_story.html?hpid=z4

Filed under: Bits and Pieces, movies | Tagged: , | 11 Comments »

Monday Open Thread 10/29/2012

Posted on October 29, 2012 by jnc4p

On the off chance that Brent can’t do the morning report today due to the hurricane, here’s an open thread. Also, for those who haven’t seen it, I highly recommend the PBS Frontline episode on the 2012 election:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/choice-2012/

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MXOr3KELqE

Filed under: Open Thread | 29 Comments »

Weekend Non-Sports Open Thread

Posted on October 13, 2012 by jnc4p

Figured I’d put in a placeholder.

Filed under: Open Thread | Tagged: | 34 Comments »

Sunday Links

Posted on October 7, 2012 by jnc4p

Some reading material from the Internet today:

1. Interesting profile of Romney’s governorship of Massachusetts in the NYT:

“The Mitt Romney Who Might Have Been
By ROBERT DRAPER
Published: October 2, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/magazine/mitt-romney.html?hp

It appears to have been written prior to the debate.

2. I’m shocked that businesses would figure out how to circumvent the ACA’s mandates by self insuring.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/07/could-small-businesses-skirt-obamacares-mandates/

http://healthpolicyandmarket.blogspot.com/2012/10/will-smallest-employers-circumvent.html

3. Steve Pearlstein on job creators:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/i-am-a-job-creator-a-manifesto-for-the-entitled/2012/09/28/756f2e90-07ee-11e2-858a-5311df86ab04_story.html

and the side effects of cost reduction in non-labor intensive industries

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/steven-pearlstein-why-cheaper-computers-lead-to-higher-tuition/2012/10/05/5dced2a0-0fd6-11e2-acc1-e927767f41cd_story.html

Filed under: Bits and Pieces | 5 Comments »

Friday Open Thread: 8/17/2012

Posted on August 17, 2012 by jnc4p

Since we don’t have a Morning Report, I’ll start a new thread. If anyone has the Vital Statistics, feel free to add them.

This is worth a read:

Old Obama acquaintance voices South Side’s disillusionment with his former ally

Makes me wish Jack Kemp was still around.

Filed under: 2012 | 35 Comments »

Saturday Link Thread

Posted on August 4, 2012 by jnc4p

Economics vs culture as an explanation for rising living standards.

“The Bad History Behind ‘You Didn’t Build That’
By Virginia Postrel 2012-08-02T23:05:48Z”


“Capitalism, not culture, drives economies
By Fareed Zakaria, Published: August 1”

It's interesting that Zakaria considers capitalism to be something separate from Western culture, as opposed to being a part of it.

Also, this is probably how Mitt Romney meant to use the term "Anglo-Saxon" in contrast with continental Europe.

“Freer — and Less Free
By ROGER COHEN
Published: August 2, 2012

PARIS — On freedom and equality, two of three rallying cries of the revolution of 1789, the French and Anglo-Saxon worlds have differed. Each finds both important, at least if equality is defined as equality of opportunity, but disagrees on how they should be balanced.

Liberty unchecked by solidarity does not make a French heart beat faster the way freedom untrammeled lifts the American spirit. Here the state is cherished as protector rather than reviled as predator. It is seen as the balancer of economic opportunity, not the brake on it.

History and geography explain these differences: French borders have not changed much for centuries while an American’s imagination always stands at some new frontier. The Gallic cake, of static size, needs fraternal division while the U.S. cake demands eternal expansion. "

Filed under: Economy | 16 Comments »

LIBOR

Posted on June 29, 2012 by jnc4p

New thread for the LIBOR investigation:

Here are some links:

Matt Taibbi:

A Huge Break in the LIBOR Banking Investigation

Another Domino Falls in the LIBOR Banking Scam: Royal Bank of Scotland

Reuters:

Barclays’ gift to private antitrust plaintiffs in Libor case

Bloomberg:

Barclays Big-Boy Breaches Mean Libor Fixes Not Enough

Daily Mail:

“Earlier, Tan Chi Min, a former head of delta trading for RBS’s global banking and markets division in Singapore, alleged that managers at RBS condoned collusion between its staff to set the Libor rate artificially high or low to maximise profits.

He named five staff members he claims made requests for the Libor rate to be altered and three senior managers who he said knew what was going on.

 He also says the practice ‘was known to other members of [RBS]’s senior management’.

Mr Tan, who was eventually sacked for gross misconduct, worked for RBS from August 2006 to November 2011and alleges that senior members of staff knew about Libor fixing, and that the behaviour started while Fred Goodwin was chief executive”


British bankers now face criminal inquiry after 20 more banks are found to have rigged interest rates

My overarching question would be at what point do repeated patterns of criminal misconduct from the same organizations cease to be isolated incidents of specific bad actors and instead become a systemic problem with the organization itself?

Filed under: Big Banks, Europe | 10 Comments »

What’s Next

Posted on June 28, 2012 by jnc4p

The PPACA extends the current system to more people to increase coverage, but doesn’t fundamentally reform health care at the delivery level. As such, it will not succeed in bending the cost curve to make the growth rate of health care spending sustainable. The interesting question now is what path it takes when it inevitably collapses. I see one of two options: 
 
1. “Individual Market Based” – Some combination of Ron Wyden’s and Paul Ryan’s reforms are enacted eliminating the employer based tax preferences and replacing them with individual tax credits, thus eliminating the already tenuous “firewall” between the exchanges and the employer based system.  
 
Medicare and Medicaid (and potentially TriCare) are voucherized and integrated into the existing subsidy system in the exchanges so that all health insurance is purchased by individuals in the exchange system with varying levels of subsidies and tax credits based on age and income. About as close to “Free Market” as you are likely to get. 
 
2. “Single Payer (sort of)”. Medicaid for all is enacted replacing the exchange system entirely with a universal minimal standard insurance package provided by the government. Coverage and reimbursement is dictated by a more robust version of the Medicare Payment Advisory board that strictly limits name brand drugs and other expensive treatments in favor of generics and applies similar cost/benefit analysis to approved procedures (and reimbursement rates). The ability to see specialists without a referral or otherwise go “out of network” is curtailed, as are end of life procedures.  
 
In parallel with the public system, private insurance and medical care remain to provide enhanced care for those who can afford it.  
 
Eventually, the public system comes to resemble public schools vs private schools as taxpayers who opt for the private system are not receptive to tax increases to maintain and improve a public system that they themselves do not participate in, thus regulating the public system to a second tier level of care, much like Medicaid is today.

Filed under: aca, Affordable Care Act, healthcare, PPACA | 53 Comments »

An interesting defense of a different point of view on human rights/democracy

Posted on March 3, 2012 by jnc4p

An interesting defense of a different point of view on human rights/democracy: 
 
“Why China’s Political Model Is Superior 
By ERIC X. LI 
Published: February 16, 2012″ 
… 
 
“In the history of human governance, spanning thousands of years, there have been two major experiments in democracy. The first was Athens, which lasted a century and a half; the second is the modern West. If one defines democracy as one citizen one vote, American democracy is only 92 years old. In practice it is only 47 years old, if one begins counting after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — far more ephemeral than all but a handful of China’s dynasties. 
 
Why, then, do so many boldly claim they have discovered the ideal political system for all mankind and that its success is forever assured? 
 
The answer lies in the source of the current democratic experiment. It began with the European Enlightenment. Two fundamental ideas were at its core: the individual is rational, and the individual is endowed with inalienable rights. These two beliefs formed the basis of a secular faith in modernity, of which the ultimate political manifestation is democracy.” 
… 
 
“The fundamental difference between Washington’s view and Beijing’s is whether political rights are considered God-given and therefore absolute or whether they should be seen as privileges to be negotiated based on the needs and conditions of the nation. 
 
The West seems incapable of becoming less democratic even when its survival may depend on such a shift. In this sense, America today is similar to the old Soviet Union, which also viewed its political system as the ultimate end. 
 
History does not bode well for the American way. Indeed, faith-based ideological hubris may soon drive democracy over the cliff.” 
 
Eric X. Li is a venture capitalist. 

Edit: Link doesn’t seem to be working properly:

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | 6 Comments »

Andrew Sullivan & President Obama

Posted on January 17, 2012 by jnc4p

Courtesy Ezra Klein:

Andrew Sullivan’s 2007 profile of candidate Obama in the Atlantic is worth a reread in light of his most recent piece on the case for his reelection.

“Goodbye to All That: Why Obama Matters

Is Iraq Vietnam? Who really won in 2000? Which side are you on in the culture wars? These questions have divided the Baby Boomers and distorted our politics. One candidate could transcend them.
By Andrew Sullivan”

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/12/goodbye-to-all-that-why-obama-matters/6445/

“Andrew Sullivan: How Obama’s Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics
Jan 16, 2012 12:00 AM EST
The right calls him a socialist, the left says he sucks up to Wall Street, and independents think he’s a wimp. Andrew Sullivan on how the president may just end up outsmarting them all.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/01/15/andrew-sullivan-how-obama-s-long-game-will-outsmart-his-critics.html

Ezra’s take:

“The case for Obama comes by way of Andrew Sullivan. It’s worth reading, if for no other reason than if you run in circles that talk politics, you’ll probably be asked to discuss it sometime this week. It’s an agenda-setting article like that. And, in a sense, it’s one Sullivan has written twice. In 2007, he profiled Obama for The Atlantic, in a piece that did a better job articulating Obama’s postpartisan appeal than even the candidate himself. This year, he has written a defense of Obama’s record that is better than anything the campaign has produced itself. Much as the ideas in Sullivan’s original Atlantic article felt novel early in the 2007 campaign but became the standard case for Obama by the time Americans went to vote, the arguments in Sullivan’s Newsweek article feel unusual now but will soon become standard among, at the least, Obama’s supporters. ”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/wonkbook-the-case-for-obama-and-the-continent-that-stands-in-his-way/2012/01/17/gIQAB0UG5P_blog.html

This is mostly a test to see how top posting works here, including cutting and pasting hypertext links.

Filed under: Obama | Tagged: | 13 Comments »

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