Monthly Archives: June 2013

The Curious Death of Michael Hastings

I think the paranoia the government has sparked with all its secretive prosecution and spying allows for a little conspiracy theory to enter the minds of the american public.  The latest case involves Michael Hastings – the journalist who has written numerous articles critical of the US Government  and military personnel.

After he died in a 4:20 am car crash, it comes to light that he was on the trail of a new story:

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-hastings-crash-emails-20130621,0,2806628.story

So while I struggle to stay in the mindset that this is not another secretive government act of keeping America safe from whistleblowers – a few questions keep lingering with me.

  1.  Here is an interesting dash cam video that caught Hastings driving by and the subsequent accident.  Note the amount of traffic that is still out at that time of night.  Why would anybody drive ‘at maximum speed’ down this street – even at 4:20am?  I can’t believe he was just out for a joyride.  Most joyriders also don’t drive  a Mercedes C250.  Also,  The Mercedes burst into flames – fully engulfing the whole car in flames.  How often do you see that in footage of car crashes these days?
  2.  Michael Hastings contacted a Wikileaks lawyer hours before his death.  Today we learn that Wikileaks is assisting Edward Snowden escape extradition.  We know how this administration feels about wikileaks – just ask Bradley Manning.
  3.  Hours before his death Michael Hastings sent an email to close freinds and associates advising them that he was under investigation and they may be interviewed by the FBI.  The subject line on the email was “FBI investigation re: NSA,”.

 

Maybe this is just another story of a drunk driver speeding out of control and killing himself.  However, with  Americans already paranoid about Government  spying on American citizens, I think it’s healthy skepticism that perhaps there is something more going on here, rather than conspiracy thinking.

 

 

 

 

 

Apples Next Big Thing

An interesting theory from a seeking alpha contributor on what Apple is up to – a new search engine.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/1511322-apple-s-next-big-thing-probably-not-what-you-expected

Apple has been spending a huge amount on capital expenditures over the last few quarters – and it is not publicly known what ‘innovations’ they are spending it on.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/01/24/apple-to-spend-10-billion-on-innovation-expansion-in-2013

Apple is too dependent on competitors for search information for Siri – it would make sense to try to build some sort of Siri-optimized search engine.  As an Apple shareholder, that makes me nervous – Microsoft has proved how you can burn 500 million a quarter on trying to get search right.

I think the thesis presented in the Seeking Alpha article is flawed in certain respects, and it is just idle speculation, but it is one of the few theories I have read that makes sense as to what Apple is up.

The Japanese Economic Experiement

If you have any interest in economics, you have to pay attention to the grand experiment Japan is conducting on its economy.  This has to be the strongest test yet of using monetary policy to impact an economy, and the stakes are huge.

Lots of interesting articles on this – my recent favorite is this one:

http://www.businessinsider.com/mauldin-mortgage-in-yen-2013-6

To summarize, the stated Japanese policy is to print money and cut taxes until they achieve 2% inflation.  And this is a country who already has twice the Debt to GDP ratio as the US.

Note the effect that this policy has had on the Japanese stock market and the Yen:

Nikkei

dollartoyen

 

This article brings up several key points – that inflation is largely a factor of demographics.  This is my favorite chart of his article:

inflationdemographics

 

Looking at this chart – attacking inflation with monetary policy would appear to be futile – or risky at the very least.  Is Japan flirting with things spiraling out of control as their debt becomes too high and credit rating drops to junk?  Could this lead to hyper inflation as the Yen approaches worthlessness?  Remember – Japan is the third largest economy in the world.

Note that the charts of the Yen and the Nikkei show a reversal in recent days – the prevailing mood of the markets is that the government is going to back off this policy.  I think that would be the best of all possible results.  Why?  Because if Japan moves forward with this, and fails, I fear for the Japanese citizens and economy, which will ripple out to the rest of the world.  If this succeeds, then this will be the new model for the worlds economies – and everyone will start printing money to try to fight the demographics of aging.  It will be determined that deficits don’t matter.

So keep an eye on this Japanese situation – it could portend to be future of the American Economic policy.