plus 4, Fox News' Fuzzy Math: 193 Percent of the Public Support Palin, Romney ... - AlterNet

Fox News' Fuzzy Math: 193 Percent of the Public Support Palin, Romney ... - AlterNet
Smiles, star power to fuel annual Detroit Thanksgiving Day parade - Lansing State Journal
WestLB Wins Another Late-Game Rescue: FinMin - CNBC
Time For A Dose Of Protectionism? - CBS News
HP vs. Dell: Showdown at the Windows 7 upgrade corral - ZDNet Blogs

Fox News' Fuzzy Math: 193 Percent of the Public Support Palin, Romney ... - AlterNet

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 08:34 AM PST

In the film, The American President, the president's speechwriter Lewis Rothschild (played by Michael J Fox) appeals to the commander-in-chief to take a firm, clear stand against the Right. "People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone." he says. "They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand."

The president (played by Michael Douglas) retorts that the American electorate's problem is not a lack of leadership but an undiscerning palate.

"We've had presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight," he says. "People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference."

As the faithful wait in line in small towns across the country (some for more than a day) to see Sarah Palin on her book tour, the question of whether the U.S. is deprived of a competent political class or gets the leadership it both deserves and truly desires seems as pertinent as ever.

On the one hand there is roughly between a quarter and a third of America that will clearly believe anything. That is the figure that strongly approved of George Bush's handling of the economy last year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the bailout. That same figure, in the immediate aftermath of hurricane Katrina, believed that Bush's response to the disaster was "about right", and still supports the war in Iraq.

That also happens to be approximately the same proportion of Americans who back Palin for president. Most data suggest the overlap is considerable. Palin's rise to prominence, from little-known governor to one of the most popular and arguably most charismatic Republicans in the country in just a year, has been startling. She had a thin record when she was picked to run as vice-president. Today, having quit the Alaska governorship mid-term and published a bestseller, only her wallet is thicker.

Her resignation speech was so rambling that you would have struggled to find a coherent sentence with an industrial-strength searchlight. "Let me go back to a comfortable analogy for me – sports," she announced. "I use it because you're naive if you don't see the national full-court press picking away right now: A good point guard drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket ... and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can win." This was not the answer to a hostile interview from the "liberal media elite" but a prepared speech of her own making.

It would be easy to discount her as just a media phenomenon who would go away if we stopped talking about her. That would be a mistake. It would be even easier to poke fun at her as just a small town hick who has blundered into the limelight with a nod, wink and a "you betcha." That too would be a mistake.

For the very things that liberal commentators ridicule her for -- being inarticulate, unworldly, simplistic and hokey -- are the very things that make her attractive to her base. Indeed, every time she is taunted she becomes more popular because it reaffirms the (not entirely mistaken) view that the deeply held values of a sizable section of the population are being disparaged.

The same dynamic was true for George Bush, but with one crucial exception. Bush is the scion of a wealthy family who turned his back on the cultural trappings of his class while embracing the social confidence and political and financial entitlement that came with it. Palin had none of those advantages: she grew up far from power and privilege in every sense.

The difference in their comfort levels when put on the spot with simple questions was evident when each was asked about their newspaper reading habits. Bush was cocky: "The best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world." Palin froze: "I've read most of them … all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years."

In her world, Ivy League is a slur; cities are not the "real America"; and those who know the price of arugula but cannot handle a rifle are not to be trusted. Palin is the antithesis of an aspirational figure. Her supporters love her not because they want to be like her, but because they already are like her. So for better and for worse, Palin is an entirely self-made – and, if her book is anything to go by, self-invented – personification of the kind of political animal Bush sought to both emulate and nurture. Bush was Palin-lite.

To that extent her performance over the past year has been more tragic than comic. Palin represents the thwarted aspirations and brooding resentment of a large section of white working class Americans. That is not to suggest that her supporters are necessarily racist, but polls show her support is racially exclusive.

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Smiles, star power to fuel annual Detroit Thanksgiving Day parade - Lansing State Journal

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 07:58 AM PST

Downtown Detroit is about to get floatastic.

Balloonified.

Clowneried.

Shellacked with smiles, dazzled by drummers, held hostage by hopefulness.

It's a little slice of Thanksgiving that's just as inviting as pumpkin pie. It's the 83rd annual America's Thanksgiving Parade.

Get ready to let loose your inner child -- and your giving spirit.

Perhaps more than ever, Detroit needs the ray of sunshine that The Parade Co. serves up and down Woodward Avenue, parade president Tony Michaels said. That explains this year's theme: "Together We Shine."

"Thanksgiving brings people together more than any other holiday," Michaels said. "We want to get the message out that we need to support each other and be there for each other. As a community, when we come together, we really shine."

This year's parade features seven new floats and balloons, enough reality TV stars to get your voyeuristic nerves twitching and two new ways to help others, including a canned-food drive.

So before the stuffing, welcome Santa. Before watching the Lions, see the city, area and state win big.

And let us give thanks -- and play.

Celebrities

Art Van Eslander and Paul W. Smith will serve as co-grand marshals of the parade this year. This the 19th anniversary of Eslander's famous $200,000 check that saved the Thanksgiving parade in Detroit. Since 1990, he has donated more than $2 million to The Parade Co.

Smith, from WJR News/Talk 760 AM, has been the voice of the parade since 1996.

They'll be joined by a host of other celebs, most of them reality-TV alumni. There's Bethenny Frankel, a housewife from the Bravo series "Real Housewives of New York City." Cheryl Burke, a celebrity dancer from "Dancing with the Stars," will be there dancing with her new partner, a Hoover vacuum.

Evan and Ryan Kasprzak, brothers and West Bloomfield natives who competed on "So You Think You Can Dance" in Seasons 5 and 6, will also provide light-footed entertainment.

Musical acts include Day 26, an R&B/hip-hop group that was featured on MTV's "Making the Band 4," and Danny Gokey, a contestant from "American Idol" Season 8.

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WestLB Wins Another Late-Game Rescue: FinMin - CNBC

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 08:27 AM PST

Germany's Finance Ministry confirmed that an agreement had been reached to help stricken lender WestLB on Tuesday.

In a statement, a ministry spokesman said an AIDA, or bad bank, would be created and the core bank would be recapitalized.

A WestLB owner source confirmed the deal to Reuters, whose details were scheduled to emerge later on Tuesday.

The accord resolved a near bust-up as shareholders in crisis-rocked WestLB refused to blink in a poker game with Berlin and rival lenders over who should pay for a fresh bailout.

The brinkmanship could portend a wider shake-up of the banking landscape in Europe's largest economy if Berlin is forced take up the slack left by the bank's owners, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and local savings banks.

WestLB needs funds because guarantees on some of its toxic assets are set to expire by the end of the month, even as its savings bank owners say they are no longer prepared to shoulder the Duesseldorf-based lender's losses.

"We are not prepared in principle" to make additional funding available for WestLB, Rolf Gerlach, president of the WLSGV savings bank association that holds a 25 percent stake in the lender, told Boersen-Zeitung newspaper in an interview.

Germany's savings bank association DSGV said the country's landesbanks -- public-sector wholesale banks -- had agreed to give financial backing to WestLB's plan to spin off 85 billion euros ($127 billion) of risky investments to a "bad bank," where they will gradually be wound down.

The urgency of the talks underscored how the financial and economic crisis is still rumbling through Europe's biggest economy, amid wider concern by credit rating agency Standard & Poor's that banks across the globe are undercapitalized.

Concerns over WestLB's future weighed on the euro and five-year credit default swaps on the bank widened 60 basis points to about 150 points. But analysts said market fears that the bank could go under were overblown.

"It's a significant bank so it will have to be saved," said Merck Finck analyst Konrad Becker, "The question is who will pay for it this time."

WestLB had said on Tuesday it was in intensive talks with Germany's bank rescue fund about support for its restructuring.

A spokesman for financial watchdog Bafin said it was not involved in the talks but that it would review WestLB's resulting capital position as part of its supervisory duties.

Sources told Reuters this month that Berlin looked set to approve a capital injection into WestLB of around 3 billion euros.

But any additional aid will likely meet stiff resistance from the European Commission which needs to approve such measures.

Restructuring

EU competition commissioner Neelie Kroes has already demanded a change of ownership to end the WestLB "saga." WestLB's plan is to create a healthy core bank that will focus on corporate customers, once it has spun off its risky assets.

But for that it needs more funding, and its savings bank owners have said it must look elsewhere for the 3-4 billion euros in additional cash that sources familiar with the situation say it needs.

German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on Tuesday said up to 5 billion euros was required.

Banking industry observers have suggested the country's seven independent landesbank groups could be merged to form two or three big groups, though analysts remain sceptical.

"A merger between a bank with a chronic illness, a bank on its deathbed, and a slightly sick bank won't bring about a healthy lender," Becker said.

Landesbanks for years relied on public sector guarantees to provide treasury, capital markets and transaction processing services for local savings banks.

Many landesbanks expanded into higher-margin but risky investment banking activities after the European Commission imposed a ban on state guarantees in 2005, crimping their ability to lend to firms at razor-thin margins.

Like WestLB, Germany's No. 1 and No. 2 landesbanks, LBBW and BayernLB, as well as the smaller ship financier HSH Nordbank have been hit by billions of euros of writedowns in the financial crisis, forcing their owners to inject rescue funds to prop them up.

Since February 2008, WestLB has received 11 billion euros in guarantees from Soffin and the bank's owners to finance its sweeping restructuring program.

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Time For A Dose Of Protectionism? - CBS News

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 08:41 AM PST

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HP vs. Dell: Showdown at the Windows 7 upgrade corral - ZDNet Blogs

Posted: 24 Nov 2009 07:30 AM PST

HP vs. Dell: Showdown at the Windows 7 upgrade corral

Posted in:

Dell
General
Hardware Infrastructure
Hewlett-Packard

Here's a tale of two PC titans: HP and Dell. One executes well every quarter. The other doesn't. Both see big PC upgrade cycles ahead. Both are looking to ride a bump in enterprise spending courtesy of Windows 7. Place your bets. As enterprises ponder the PC upgrade cycle and a move to Windows 7 tech executives are likely to have two primary vendors pitted against each other: HP and Dell. The earnings conference calls from HP and Dell were very similar. Both talked services. Both talked upgrade cycles. And both talked up Windows 7 (see HP and Dell's financial results). HP CEO Mark Hurd said Monday on the company's fiscal fourth quarter conference call:

The personal systems group also delivered in Q4, extending its market leadership by more than a full point yet again. We saw good consumer acceptance of Windows 7, particularly in the U.S. Given that we gained double-digit points of market share in U.S. enterprise and have claimed the top market position, we are well-positioned to win when corporations upgrade to Windows 7. PSG delivered healthy operating margins despite increasing commodity costs.

Dell CEO Michael Dell also was bullish about Windows 7---and also saw component costs rise. He said a week ago that PC growth could be in the mid-teens:

I think there is an aging installed base for sure. You just have an accumulation of new technologies at the hardware, software, virtualized client and these IT managers really know they cannot extend the life of these client assets forever. While I don't think it is all going to occur at once, I think it will be a rolling refresh that occurs over perhaps 18 months, I can't remember a time when a very high percentage of them skipped an entire operating system.

And Hurd and Dell sounded like long-lost twins about the corporate upgrade cycle too. Here's Dell:

We think we are holding or gaining share in the right kind of price points. Our efforts on the cost side should expand our ability to profitably compete in a larger portion of the price points. What I would also tell you is that the pipeline of client opportunities we are already seeing more client activity in the last 30-60 days than we have in a long time and the pipeline for client activity kind of going forward into next year is the strongest it has been in a long time as well. So if I look at our commercial businesses the second quarter was kind of a bottom. The third quarter was certainly better. October was the best and November will be better than October.

Here's Hurd's at bat as he references HP's share gains and the corporate upgrade cycle:

I think it is important to note we don't usually start with an objective of gaining share. It's more the result of us just trying to do the right work for the customer and I think as we mentioned a couple of times, we have increased our sales coverage, which we think is part of the reason that you have seen this performance occur as it has. Second, we've worked really hard to work on our service experience and the service experience is a really big deal, So it's a combination of trying to get more at bats and frankly in the U.S., this is the place that we haven't had as many at bats as we'd like to have and we have increased sales coverage there. Secondly, trying to continue to focus on service, so yeah, we feel pretty well-positioned that as long as we can maintain the at-bat level and with the service experience that we are delivering now, that we think we will be in pretty good shape. I think you couple that with the product line-up that we have just announced and Windows 7, we think we've got a pretty compelling offer so yeah, we're optimistic about it.

Now it's possible that this Windows 7 upgrade cycle will be big enough to lift all PC players, but ultimately it's death match with Dell and HP---especially in the enterprise. The rub: Dell's financial performance is spotty and that reflects what could be a vicious crunch. HP squeezes Dell from above and Acer hurts the PC maker from below. Chris Whitmore, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, said that HP gained share at the expense of profit margins. Whitmore wrote:

Although HP's PC units grew 8% year over year, we estimate HP's operating profit per unit dropped 30% year over year as ASPs were down about 20% year over year and commodities tightened.

That fact could mean some bad news for Dell. HP is diversified enough to squeeze Dell with minimal impact on its overall profitability. Meanwhile, HP's scale means it can weather component pricing fluctuations better. No matter how you slice it HP has Dell outgunned with a larger services unit (acquiring EDS was the best move HP ever made), more foot soldiers and more momentum. Simply put, HP has the arsenal to squeeze Dell in the critical PC business. Dell may be optimistic about the PC buying cycle, but that doesn't necessarily mean it will harvest all the rewards.

posted by Larry Dignan
November 24, 2009 @ 5:44 am

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