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Well, this is not a case of cleaning up the party. Ma, as corrupt as they can get, is less cleaning house than he is knocking off a competing presidential candidate. Mr. Wang has been a rival for the throne of the KMT for a number of years now, and finding an excuse to throw him out of the KMT removes an important Taiwanese-faction (as opposed to Ma’s mainland backers) contender from the next Presidential election in Taiwan. Ma is serving his 2nd term and has to step down, so there is a fight coming up for top dog.

Go Wiener!
Its a mess and I hate to say it...

He’s the best Democrat running in the primary for Mayor.

Go Wiener!

I stood at a polling place in Forest Hills when it was Wiener against that loser from the Bronx in the hasty runoff a few years back. Sure, he’s off his rocker, but think of the competition. I have nothing against lesbians in particular, but that Quinn is real nasty piece of work who delights in belittling people over any slight, however real or imagined. And then there is John Liu, who gamed the matching election funds to near 100% efficiency.

They are all unqualified and incapable, but in the primary (not in the general of course), Wiener is the least of all evils. Think 7th century Rome, right before Alaric and the Goths made them pay for degeneracy.

Robert A. Heinlein wrote along similar lines in a number of his stories. I believe this school of thought, if memory servers me right, started in the 20s or 30s.

There are many parts of NY City where having a car is almost a necessity. It aint easy getting around after 8 if you have to depend on buses, or transferring buses, to get home.

I have to agree that the Daily Mail sent some clueless git, who probably lives in Manhattan, to compile this list. NY is expensive and the quality of the grocery stores and schools outside of the fancy areas can get dodgy.

Having said that, there are many places in Queens that are quite nice and not bad to live in, but on the average, one is best go somewhere else.

This is absolute bunk. The radiation levels are high by Japanese standards, but there were very low to begin with. Colorado and Rome both have higher radiation levels than all but the immediate vicinity around the plant at Fukushima.

More bozos getting their rocks off on trying to get people to run around screaming.

Sharks at Goldman Sachs thought they were getting away with it, but workers strike back using Japanese labor law and union support. Japanese unions are different than their US counterparts (excepting the few strident Communist controlled ones), so in this case I might have to let the workers have a pass here.

Pretty much its really difficult to fire someone outright in Japan, so it requires the voluntary consent of the affected employee. Technically, as the article explains, a firm is not allowed to hire or pay large bonuses if they are also laying off personnel at the same time. A best effort is also required to offer them other jobs in the firm.

Yes, it is processed goop molded into a mockery of meat.
However, its one of those foods that doesn’t taste too bad if you are drunk and need to fill your stomach. Had one a few weeks before heading off for round 3 of a heavy drinking night.

Not suprising for this to happen. Looking around, one can see more office space being needed to support COOs and bureaucrats across the organization, even more so in business than in IT/Back Office. We producers like to joke about the layers being added in and recent mergers with other entities always results in narrower or overlapping job definitions.

One Taiwanese bank where I knew people, sold off one of their main entities. Instead of saying goodbye, they promptly brought a large number of people over before the merger completed and then cut everyone’s responsibility in half. Even GS is bloated in spots with too many managers.

On the bottom, there are always enough idiots who manage to survive the first few years, but once the knives come out, they are really exposed.

GS also declared that they are moving a number of business people from NY to Singapore (they were not the first to see the value of the fascist corporate state with low taxes). As the UK and the US continue to flounder, expect to see more pushing to move people out to Bombay, Singapore and Shanghai.

The other issue is that they may also be heading away from fields of study where they can actually learn something, i.e. engineering or sciences. This can also be seen the implied fallacy where the article treats all degrees and colleges as equivalent and all actually meaning something.
As is being brought out on Instapundit frequently, the higher education bubble to a large degree is the result of the dumbing down of education in general, so that a college degree now is in too many cases, what a high school diploma was a mere 5 decades ago.

I was one of the only Americans in my computer science master’s (ok, it wasnt that good of a program, but it was ok) in NYC. I saw only 1 black guy there my entire time. Other than that it was Russians, Chinese, Indians, and Koreans. If the college that produced this article really wants to help its students and target groups, it would reduce the fluff degrees and start building a viable technical program.

Damn right! More than half our IT took a runner in the past couple
of weeks. This added even extra workload for those of us who soldiered
on. Our business side is very Japaenese and in the middle of last
week, our local president went ballistic on the trading floor about the foreigners who ran. The day after the quake, all the French and
nearly all of the foreign interns and fresh (college) grads fled, most
without asking permission.
More than a couple of senior gaijins were really unhappy about
being dragged back to the office.
Tough. I didn’t leave NY after 9/11.
And those of us who stayed behind will climb up the ranks faster.

Quite fun actually. In my new massive tower office,it shook and we all put on our silly white helmets. Our bldg sways, so that took away much of the effect, but still, the lights were swinging a bit.

We only had a row of short filing cabinets tip over.

The 2nd earthquake, about 20 minutes later, was also fun. We are still having light aftershocks just an hour after the main one.

Sendai is the closest major city to the epicenter and the tsunami that resulted hit a few coastal areas.

Actually, there has been a problem numerous times before with manipulation of wholesale food prices in Taiwan. A few years ago, when I was visiting Hsinchu, it was garlic that was in short supply.l Rumor was that the gangsters had bought it up and pulled it off the market to drive up prices. Taiwan is also susceptible to panics, such as the lines of retirees, who had nothing better to do, to purchase Rice liquor before the price went up due to the WTO.

The prosecutors are just blowing smoke, since they know who the local Mob is. They just have to have the appearance of doing something useful while palms are greased.

Well, the WSJ didn’t like it, mostly because they didn’t understand this novel.
This is not a fun book, but it is about adulthood and of course, death.
The WSJ did not understood Kreacher and the attention devoted to him.
Thinking about, the other movies excluded Kreacher, even though he is used
To trach a valuable lesson “you sow what you reap”, along with “do unto
Others as you will others do to you”.
This a a final book to the saga and for at least the first movie,
there is little fun. It is about as fun as Vichy France.

I will pay my 2300 yen and see it within a week. :aving read the books, I
Am ready for Harry to grow up.

Well, the WSJ didn’t like it, mostly because they didn’t understand this novel.
This is not a fun book, but it is about adulthood and of course, death.
The WSJ did not understood Kreacher and the attention devoted to him.
Thinking about, the other movies excluded Kreacher, even though he is used
To trach a valuable lesson “you sow what you reap”, along with “do unto
Others as you will others do to you”.
This a a final book to the saga and for at least the first movie,
there is little fun. It is about as fun as Vichy France.

I will pay my 2300 yen and see it within a week. :aving read the books, I
Am ready for Harry to grow up.

100 feet is the rule in NY state. The poll workers will usually go out with a tape measure ahead of time and place blue diamonds at the 100’ mark.

Quite possible.

If that happens, though, and the lien is properly cleared, then you should be able to request a deed from your county (or whatever jurisdiction handles that).

I suspect there will be a sudden investment in paperwork tracking by banks and servicers, so that this shouldnt happen. In general, the people who work at servicers arent paid very well and their equipment is 3rd rate. I used to work at an I Bank whose servicer was based in Arlington, TX and they only bought 2nd hand servers!

Not quite. There are a number of problems on both ends.
When I exiled myself from NY, my closing of the co-op sale was delayed by 2 weeks since Morgan Stanley, the loan originator and servicer, had trouble finding the actual deed.

In a legal system, it is entirely fair and reasonable to expect that proof, i.e. signed paperwork, be presented as evidence. I have worked on systems, many years ago, that were automated ticklers that would provide notice that a new UCC 7(?), or lien (which is what the bank holds on your property if you have a mtg), had to be renewed. This stuff used to be taken seriously. Then again, another place I worked at bid on mortgages that were faxed in, i.e. we had an address, an amount, a coupon, and a term; a scratch and dent loan. Made a ton of money of that garbage, and thankfully now out of business.

I declare a pox on both sides, but it looks really bad that major companies were sloppy in their handling of paperwork.

Sorry. I left bear stearns in 2005 and was at Lehman when it fell. Even in 2004, we were making fun of the sub-prime garbage Bear was spinning into deals. Yes it was hasty, but the brokerage side was complaining about the leverage many months before the fall, and the one member of the board who did the same was soon removed.

Lehman was playing games with its books at least 3 quarters before its bankruptcy. The FT had a great series on how only 1 law firm in the UK would sign off on the derivatives Lehman used to move liabilities off the books. On the floor, people were snickering in July when the CFo, Erin Callan, said we didn’t need support.

The shorts didn’t kill these firms, the arrogance of management did. Sorry, but Lehman at the very least deserved worse. Between Archstone and the sub-prime loans, LEH was a zombie by the spring.

Not even worth posting if in Tokyo. Monitor just barely swayed and the event is listed here as a 3.

Thing is, that was the second major earthquake off of Fukushima province today. There was one earlier that was over 5 that was within the vicinity of the 6.6.