Office space soon for rent at Greenwich Plaza

FrontPoint continues to wither. Dubling Road’s Chip Skowron, who pled guilty last (?) week to insider trading seems to have been responsible for literally billions of dollars being withdrawn from the fund and making it too small to survive and pay for all its teams.  Nice going, Chip, toss maybe a hundred people out of work, just to add to your car collection.

Costco yanks electric car chargers

No one uses them. Even in northern California, home of the granolies, no one’s used one in a year. I forget how many billions we’ve paid for these ridiculous cars, but it’s a lot. And we’ll be wasting far more in the next 18 months. I understand that the government couldn’t care less about what people want, but don’t car makers do group focus groups or anything like that? The market for cars with a fifteen mile range is zero. Screw the focus groups, they could have just called me.

Lobbyists worry about access to the cost-cutting “Super Committee”

The Committee members vow to keep K Street away, but then admit that they will attend fund raisers. Guess who’ll be hosting those? I’d guess that the lobbyists aren’t really all that worried.

Peter Madoff loses his Aston – Martin

Auctioned off for $247,500. Not the first toy he’s lost to Madoff Trustee Picard, and certainly not the last. I do wonder why he hasn’t lost his freedom, too. He was his brother’s compliance officer.

For sale: five star reviews for sale,$5 each

Trying to weed out phony reviews. Some smart computer science students have come up with an algorithm, which sounds promising, but it  remains a problem. I wrote a guide book for the U.S. Virgin Islands way back when and, while staying in a particular hotel, it was pretty easy, reading other guide books, which reviews were fake, but that’s because (a) I was there and (b) it became clear when a particular reviewer had never stepped foot in the place. But that was just one limited area and a limited sample of particular hotels. Impossible when reading a million reviews on all items offered by Amazon.

Still more on the “Green Jobs” fraud

Here’s a list of how few jobs were created and how much it’s cost (up to $2 million each).  If there were a market for this, private industry would rush to fill the demand. It’s similar to the “green” houses builders have been suckered into building. The fact is, consumers won’t pay a dime extra for such features, even though it makes great economic sense. Builders are just wasting their money.

What is it about this man and his urge to control?

Mayor Bloomberg loses bid to bar the use of food stamps to purchase “sugary” drinks. He’s the ultimate elitist, always knowing what’s best for po’folk and rich alike: no cigarettes, no transfats, no cars, no soda pop. I don’t like elitists.

Burger King drops “the King”

I always thought he was creepy, although I’m not much on clowns, either.

More trouble for Europe

Municipalities financed their debt with bonds pegged to the Swisss Franc and are about to see their interest rates soar from 3% to 30%. I don’t think this affects us, although the bonds are mostly held by banks so who knows? But these bonds, put together by the big banks, sound suspiciously like the financing packages put together by our brightest here – you know, the packages that are now bankrupting American cities. Great minds think alike.