pkarnig’s posthaven

If it wasn't already blindingly obvious that pervasive fraud was at the heart of the financial crisis and the ensuing foreclosure catastrophe, you would think that the latest news -- that banks have routinely been lying their heads off in the rush to kick homeowners off the properties they fraudulently induced them to buy in the first place -- would pretty much clinch it.

And yet the mainstream media still by and large hasn't connected the dots.

Read what William K. Black has to say about what the Banks are doing and have been doing to the American people. They have been stealing and defrauding us for years. This is no joke. Why doesn't the Media pick up on this story?

Is Carly Fiorina "closing in" on Senator Barbara Boxer in California? That's the conclusion some draw from a new Reuters/Ipsos poll in California, although its small sample size prevents a definitive answer. Elsewhere yesterday's new Senate surveys confirm a close race in Nevada, a narrow Democratic advantage in Washington and a Republican lead in Missouri that may be closer than many assume.

The new Reuters/Ipsos California survey, released over the weekend but actually fielded in the middle of last week, shows Democrat Boxer at 46% and Republican Fiorina at 45%. Ten days earlier, Ipsos gave Boxer a four-point lead (49% to 45%), but both surveys involve samples of fewer than 500 interviews. As such, the apparent three-point decline in Boxer's support is not large enough to attain statistical significance -- it falls well within the more than four-point margin of error for each Ipsos poll.

Why do some people like Fiorina? If you do please let me know. I MUST be missing something.

Afghanistan's former ambassador to the United States, recalled to Kabul by an increasingly erratic Afghan President Hamid Karzai, says he's not going back. And he is critical of both the Afghan and U.S. leadership for not having a clear vision of what happens next in his benighted country.

All of our so called good intentions in Afghanistan are going for naught. American Citizens need to think clearly about why we are in Afghanistan and make up their minds if we should be there or not. I believe we should leave the country to it's own devices. Save the money and spend it on America: Teachers, Public Works, Healthcare, etc. We have so much good to do at home. Let's not waste it on making a bad situation worse in Afghanistan so Halliburton can make record profits.

If Google is a one-cent-at-a-time advertising machine, Facebook is a one-user-at-a-time engine. The social network is putting the highest possible value on two things: a) user data, b) the social graph, e.g. the connections between users.
For a European or American media, one user in, say, Turkey (23m Facebook users) carries little or no value as far as advertising is concerned. To Facebook, this person’s connections will be the key metric of his/her value. Especially if she is connected to others living outside Turkey. According to Justin Smith from the research firm Inside Facebook, in any given new market, the social network’s membership really takes off once the number of connections to the outside world exceeds domestic-only connections. A Turkish person whose contacts are solely located within the country is less valuable than an educated individual chatting with people abroad; the latter is expected to travel, has a significant purchasing power and carries a serious consumer influence over her network. As a result, Facebook extracts much more value from a remote consumer than any other type of media does.

Frederic provides some very interesting background data and insight as to why so many marketers are moving from Google to FaceBook for their promotional efforts. This is all still very much in its infancy, stay tuned for more fun and games in the socially connected new world.