Remember this when they come asking for bailouts

Paul Oberjuerge:

The biggest problem for American newspapers is this: It isn’t that they all are unprofitable, because even now most of them are. It’s that they are not profitable enough...

People go nuts when Exxon or other oil companies report billions of dollars of profit. But that profit almost always is 10 percent or under. The profit itself is huge because the numbers are so big.

Gannett papers worked on smaller scales, but the percentage of what was taken out of each of its communities and sent off to Arlington (and, later, Reston) was staggering. Not even the oil companies expect, ever, 40 percent profit.

Also.

Links Via:  Fading to Black

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 19:05:37 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Some encouraging words might be appropriate

New friend Joanna has been caught in the newspaper layoff mixmaster.

Related.

Elsewhere:

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 17:00:46 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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“You sold us the murder weapon. Now we’re orphans, and it’s all your fault!”

“...Wronged by the very system they worked hard to set up...”

...An association of community-based organizations has filed a federal civil rights complaint against two of the three largest Wall Street rating firms, charging that their inflated ratings on subprime mortgage bonds disproportionately caused financial harm to African American and Latino home buyers across the country.

The complaint, filed by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, alleges that Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings enriched themselves by assigning high ratings to bonds backed by mortgages “that were designed to fail” because of “unfair payment terms and insufficient borrower income levels.”

The firms “knew or should have known” that subprime loans disproportionately were marketed to minority consumers -- a process known as “reverse redlining” -- and that those borrowers would ultimately default and go into foreclosure at high rates- The Los Angeles Times

Mickey Kaus:

Didn’t community-based organizations push for exactly this sort of reverse-redlining?  I think they did.

Never satisfied, are they?

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 03:30:58 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Once upon a time, I thought the Catholic church knew what the hell it was doing

No, it’s not the government (this time)!

Muslim prayer rooms should be opened in every Roman Catholic school, church leaders have said.

The Catholic bishops of England and Wales also want facilities in schools for Islamic pre-prayer washing rituals.

The demands go way beyond legal requirements on catering for religious minorities.

But the bishops - who acknowledge 30 per cent of pupils at their schools hold a non-Christian faith - want to answer critics who say religious schools sow division.

Unbelievable.

Via: The Jawas

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 01:07:18 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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When in doubt, make stuff up

From a (mostly content-free) BBC story about the European Union’s  announcement of a new program to catch “cyber criminals:”

In a statement outlining the strategy the EU claimed “half of all internet crime involves the production, distribution and sale of child pornography”.

I’m sorry, but this is B.S.  Do “the EU” seriously expect me to believe that the amount of kiddie pr0n “production, distribution and sale” on the internet comes anywhere close to equaling the amount of credit-card fraud, data theft, Nigerian phishing scams, “illegal” gambling, junk e-mail, black-hat hacking, copyright infringement, and terrorist activity put together?  Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.

(And it’s not as if governments haven’t been caught making stuff up before.)

Via: Slashdot

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 19:52:03 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Sites linked - November, 2008

43 posts in November, down from October’s 60 and last year’s 58, but still better than the Y-T-D low of August (29).

The November linklist is below the jump...
more...

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