I did not support her for president, but I did watch her learn and grow over the course of the campaign. I think she would be good, as long as she can learn the fine art of negotiation. She would be better in State than the Supreme Court.

Hillary Clinton would be a huge improvement over the moron presently occupying the position.

When I first heard the speculation that Hillary Clinton might be the next Secretary of State, I thought it was a good idea. I did not support Clinton for the presidency but thought she could be a good Secretary of State. However, after the theatrics of the past few days, I am not really a supporter. The last thing we need is more drama, or narcissism. We need someone who loves his or her country, has knowledge of negotiation and other cultures, and wants to do the best thing for the American people.

I offer my condolences as well. I watched your father on CBS Sunday Morning for many years and marveled at his wonderful, "way with words." He was a treasure.

We are a typical private practice firm and are seeing collections slow, clients demanding discounts, and business generally start to drop off. Partners take a "haircut" in times like these because we do not get our hold-back--about one third of our base compensation, unless and until business picks up. As a result, the firm has more cash to make payroll. Our goal is to avoid having to lay anyone off.

The Financial Times today reported that 70% of the retail clothing manufacturers providing clothes to the US market have gone out of business! The decrease was from 22,099 suppliers in July to just 6,262 in October. Remaining suppliers are seeing a significant drop in orders. Many of these suppliers are Chinese.

This isn't just about China. We are all vulnerable to seeing this precipitous drop in demand for our goods and services.

Bernie Madoff apparently got out of jail by posting $10M in bail. Why is it that he got bail? We have our own Ponzi scam artist in Minnesota, Tom Petters, who has been denied bail. Mr. Petters is a bona fide flight risk. Why is Madoff not a flight risk, having "lost" $50B in client funds?

Oliver Wendell Holmes, in the "Path of the Law," said that in order to understand law in itself, we must consider it from the viewpoint of a "bad man." Whereas most of us connect law with moral ideals such as justice and fairness, a "bad man" who cares nothing for morality is interested only in what will happen to him if he violates the law: "If you want to know the law and nothing else, you must look at it as a bad man, who cares only for the material consequences which such knowledge enables him to predict. . . . A man who cares nothing for an ethical rule which is believed and practiced by his neighbors is likely nevertheless to care a good deal to avoid being made to pay money, and will want to keep out of jail if he can."

In other words, we have got to send the perps to f__ing jail!!

There has been an ongoing war of attrition in the DRAM memory business for some time. Competitors of the Taiwanese companies, which include Micron, located in Boise, Hynix, located in S. Korea,and Qimonda, a German company would be relieved if at least some of the Taiwanese companies were to capitulate and go out of business. All of these companies have been selling product below cost because of too much capacity. The actions of the Taiwan government and DRAM companies are as ridiculous as those of Detroit because both have been pumping out product for which there is insufficient demand.

It is quite possible that Micron will be acquired by a foreign company before this plays out. It is quite likely that Micron will be a US company in name only and move all of its manufacturing to Asia.

that we will end up like the Argentines. Its not pretty:

http://ferfal.blogspot.com/

A tax cut is just more money sent to China. For many of us, our taxes are already going to be a lot lower because we are taking a "haircut" on comp or have lost jobs outright. A tax cut won't solve the problem--the nitwit Bush already showed us that.