polit2k

The other day developed a very stimulating exchange on Twitter after one enthusiast proposed to get into the ratings business. Since the contributions could be a useful addition to my recent pieces on rating agencies (here and here) I would like to share them with you (in reverse order as in my timeline):

As far as I am aware it all started with a simple question from Mike Parker …

Sysparatem Mike Parker

fancy starting our own CRA? “Twitrating” mybe

Frances_Coppola Frances Coppola

Voodoo Ratings Inc. Totally trustworthy of course

SysparatemMike Parker

bet U we cud beat agencies

pdacosta Pedro da Costa

LongShot Ratings LLC

lecreative Amy E. Buttell

Lastchance Ratings LLC

Sysparatem Mike Parker

“Ratings-R-US”

lecreativeAmy E. Buttell

How about “U-Pik-A-Rating LLC”

lecreative Amy E. Buttell

Or “Ratings For Rent LLC”

Sysparatem Mike Parker

like that cud B “U-Rate”

polit2k Tim Coldwell

“AAA-Ratings-R-US LLC”

polit2k Tim Coldwell

“iRate – no ID reqd. (Panama)

mikejcasey Michael Casey

Special offer: AAAA ratings for firstcomers?

Frances_Coppola Frances Coppola

Teaser rating. AAA for first 2 yrs then downgrade

lecreative Amy E. Buttell

After downgrade, discount surprise upgrade!

Frances_Coppola Frances Coppola

offer opportunity to “repair” rating for a fee

lecreative Amy E. Buttell

Special: buy one AAA rating get one free!

Contributors:

Amy E. Buttell (@lecreative),  Michael Casey (@mikejcasey), Tim Coldwell(@polit2k), Frances Coppola (@Frances_Coppola),  Pedro da Costa(@pdacosta),Mike Parker (@Sysparatem).

In my feeling this is a very rewarding debate which should be continued. How about:

rszbt Beate Reszat

Bonds for nothing and the rates for free

Further suggestions are very welcome. Leave a comment!

Rebuilding the Greek economy will require creative interaction with the underlying realities of Greek society: the family, the small business, the habits of rentocracy and of low-trust opportunism. (This article was first published in Greek in the Athens Review of Books, June 2010)

DISCOURSE

Formal and demotic language

The way we talk about the economy has changed dramatically in the past few months. Before our own debt crisis erupted, public discourse was not very different from that in western countries. We would discuss the merits of public vs private, of boosting demand vs cutting expenditure, of liberalism vs social democracy.

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President Obama recently scarfed a “super sub” to show his support for mom-and-pop businesses, crediting the little guy with the majority of U.S. job growth. Every modern president has done the same. There’s just one problem: it isn’t true, according to a new study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Read the rest of this entry »

BankAtlantic accused Richard Bove, a bank analyst, of defamation after he wrote a critical report. He received little support from his peers in the industry before the suit was settled.

RICHARD X. BOVE is a bank analyst who likes to take what he calls “extreme positions.” He occasionally moves the stock market, which has earned him a certain amount of prestige and notoriety — but has also gotten him fired several times.

One recent Tuesday morning, for instance, Mr. Bove opined from his bright-orange home office, in this town just north of Tampa, that new government rules would curb mortgage profits and, therefore, bank profits, too.

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AT&T has set off yet another net neutrality firestorm, claiming that a crucial internet standards-making body gave its blessing to ISP priority access deals way back at the beginning of it all. In the late 1990s, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) added the “DiffServ” field to Internet Protocol (IP), AT&T insists, “to facilitate paid prioritization as a means for encouraging the further growth and development of the internet.”

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The anti-science strain pervading the right wing in the United States is the last thing the country needs in a time of economic challenge.

“The four corners of deceit: government, academia, science and media. Those institutions are now corrupt and exist by virtue of deceit. That’s how they promulgate themselves; it is how they prosper.” It is tempting to laugh off this and other rhetoric broadcast by Rush Limbaugh, a conservative US radio host, but Limbaugh and similar voices are no laughing matter.

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IAC (NSDQ: IACI) notoriously let Bloglines deteriorate since buying it five years ago; the company outsourced the RSS reader’s engineering team to China several years ago and by the time it made the announcement today that it would shut down the service, Bloglines no longer had a dedicated staff at all. But Bloglines’ shut down was likely inevitable whether IAC had taken better care of it or not, as people have shifted away from RSS readers over the last two years. Read the rest of this entry »

The central banking and political world are up in arms about a planned John Maynard Keynes book burning.

The burning was announced by Jeff Berwick, Chief Editor of The Dollar Vigilante, to take place on December 23, the anniversary of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. The plan is to burn of a copy of John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest & Money.

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NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — If you want to know what paid content on the web can do for newspapers’ paid circulation, keep your eye on places such as Lima, Ohio and Bend, Ore. If pay walls can’t make it in these environments, they probably can’t make it anywhere else. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks for your reply and interest in the position of print designer with xxxx. If successful you will be expected to work a three-month, pro bono probationary period and will spend three days in the week labouring on site with our construction workers. It is possible that you will have to design the website during your lunch breaks on site, it’s ok the van is very comfortable although you will have to buy a laptop.

Let us know ASAP