Market Turmoil

First let’s agree that the acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America was a horrible move by one or the other. If Merrill doesn’t understand its exposure, then BoA now has an open exposure. Otherwise, why would they go running into the arms of BofA at such a turbulent point? It doesn’t bode particularly well for the industry either, when you have a maniac whacko at the top of BofA.

While President Bush sought to reassure investors that the market would recover, why would anyone believe that he has any understanding of what the market dynamics are at this point? Ben Bernanke clearly has misread the state of the economy from the outset of his stint as the Fed chairman, and he was the President’s best choice. The only person who seems to have made any sense of this at all is Secretary Paulson, who made it clear to Wall Street that the taxpayers cannot be expected to underwrite every company that would otherwise fail. But he has made no claims about understanding when and where the market will turn around. Good for him.

All of this having been said, clearly the president had to say something, and what he said was the least offensive. Had he real credibility he perhaps could have had more of an impact on prices, but that day is long past (if it ever was).

What Of Sarah Palin?

Up until today I haven’t said anything of Senator John McCain’s choice of a running mate. I have very little knowledge of Governor Sarah Palin. The press has gone into some detail about the fact that she was a beauty queen and that her 17 year old daughter is pregnant. I don’t think it is necessary to drag family into this race, when there apparently is plenty bad to say about the candidate herself. But before I go there, we should recognize at least some of the good. Getting to be governor of a state is no small achievement. Alaska is the largest state in the Union, and if you were to cut it in two, then Texas would be the third largest state.

Distance represents a serious problem for the people of Alaska, as they are isolated from the mainland of the United States and from each other. The average cost of education is well over $25,000 per student because of distance issues. These costs are offset by the revenue-sharing arrangement that Alaska has with oil companies. Governor Palin has been lauded by at least one editorial writer for putting some distance between her and the oil companies.

What’s more, she has a big fat target to run against. As I’ve written previously, I don’t think much of Senator Joseph Biden, although I do believe that he offers a humility worthy of the job, something that I suspect the governor doesn’t have, if for no other reason that she has fewer scars.

Because Alaska is so isolated its needs are unique and quite disparate from any other state. Its budget is easier to balance due to oil, and the population density perhaps the lowest in the nation. Hence, leading this state does not qualify one easily for the presidency, which is the quality one looks for in a vice president.

In addition, her questionable ethics and streak of vindictiveness, as reported by the New York Times, leaves me cold with memories of the still current administration, and President Bush, himself. We need leaders with unquestionable ethics.

By the way, here is a quick geography quiz: what are the northern most, eastern most, western most, and southern most states in the United States?

Answers in a future blog entry.

Doh Biden

Several weeks ago I wrote that Barack Obama’s choice for vice president compares with that of Spiro Agnew, and that he is a great pick if you like mediocrity, with a very undistinguished career in the Senate. The New York Times has picked up on some of Senator Biden’s less inspiring moments on the campaign trail. And now we can compare him to Dan Quayle. One wonders if Biden knows how to spell potato.

How Much Do You Value Privacy?

People in my company travel a lot, and they like to have their itineraries easily accessible. My wife wants to know when and where I will be, and that’s not at all unreasonable. So, how best to process and share that information? There are now several services that attempt to help you manage it. One of those services, TripIt.Com, will take an email message as input, organize your itinerary, generate appropriate calendar events, and share that information with those you authorize.

The service is based in the U.S., and might actually share information with those you do not authorize, to market something to you- or worse. If the information is stolen, as was the case with travel information from a hotel we discussed recently, it can be resold to burglars who know when you’re way. That can be particularly nasty if in fact only you are away, and the rest of your family is not.

But before we panic and refuse to let any of this information out, one should ask just how secure that information is. As it happens, travel itineraries are some of the least secure pieces of information you can possibly have. All a thief really needs is an old ticket stub that has one’s frequent flyer number, and we’re off to the races. In one case, it was shown that with this information a thief could even book a ticket for someone else.

So how, then, do we evaluate the risk of using a service like TripIt? First of all, TripIt does not use any form of encryption or certificate trust chain to verify their identity. That means that all of your itinerary details go over the network in the clear. But as it turns out, you’ve probably already transmitted all of your details in the clear to them by sending the itinerary in email. Having had a quick look at their mail servers, they do not in fact verify their server identities through the use of STARTTLS, not that you as a user can easily determine this in advance.

Some people might have stopped now, but others have more tolerance for risk.

Perhaps a bigger problem with TripIt is that neither its password change page nor its login page make use of SSL. That means that when enter your your password, the text of that password goes over the network in the clear, for all to see. It also means that you cannot be sure that the server on the other end is actually that of TripIt. To me this is a remarkable oversight.

For all of these concerns, you still get the ability to generate an iCal calendar subscription as well as the ability to share all of this information with friends and family. Is it worth it? One answer is that it depends on whether you actually want to enter the information yourself, whether you care about security concerns, and whether you like using calendaring clients. It also depends on what other services are available.

Another service that is available is Dopplr. It also attempts to be a social networking site, not unlike Linked In. Dopplr allows you to share you itineraries with other people, tells you about their upcoming trips (if they’re sharing with you), and it lets you create an iCal subscription.

Dopplr also has some security problems, in that they do not use SSL to protect your password. They also do not use SSL for their main pages. They do, however, support OpenId, an attempt to do away with site passwords entirely. I’ll say more about OpenId in the future, but for now I’ll state simply that just because something is new does not make it better. It may be better or worse.

And so there you have it. Two services, both with very similar offerings, and both with almost the same privacy risks. One of them, by the way, could distinguish themselves by improving their privacy offering. That would certainly win more of my business.

California Prison Guards Misfire

According to the Associated Press, California prison guards now want to recall Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger using the same procedure that removed the previous governor, Gray Davis. What great wrong has Arnold Schwarzenegger committed that he should deserve such an ignominious end? He didn’t give them special treatment, when he cut pay while the budget dispute there drags on.

The job of a prison guard is a miserable one, there can be no question. Some of the people who take the job aren’t far from the people their guarding in mentality. But their unions have been a huge force in California politics, with strong mobilization efforts.

By handing themselves to him on a silver platter, the unions have provided the governor exactly what he needs right now: a big target that people can dislike more than him. Not only will they succeed in their recall efforts, but by failing they will be politically neutered with their loss, making it possible for anyone to get elected without them. Now those are handcuffs worth throwing off.