Michael Gracie

The savings rate has been negative for an entire year only twice before — in 1932 and 1933 — two years when Americans were having to deplete savings to cope with the massive job layoffs and business failures caused by the Great Depression.

This time the reasons for the negative savings rate are vastly different. Americans are spending all their incomes and then some because they feel wealthier because of the soaring value of their homes, which for many Americans is the largest investment they own.

But analysts cautioned that this behavior was risky at a time when 78 million Americans are on the verge of retirement. The baby boomers start turning 60 this year, which means they can begin retiring with Social Security in just two more years.

So says the Associated Press, via Taipei Times (just in case some US media outlet screwed with the story).

After setting records for five straight years, sales of both existing and new homes are expected to decline this year under the impact of rising mortgage rates. The weaker sales will translate into slower price appreciation which in turn will slow consumer spending, analysts are forecasting.

And what if housing price “appreciation” goes negative as well? It’s not the first time I have heard the “D” word.

Politicians and their cohorts have once again proven they have little to do except cover their own butts. They’ve spent who-knows-how-many-taxpayer-dollars making false entries in Wikipedia, never realizing that their tracks were glowing flourescent green on a dark wooded path. The politicos still don’t get it, and they never will. It takes, at minimum, amoebic intelligence to figure it out, but that is something they simply do not possess.

“We already know, of course, that politicians live primarily for re-election and typically view the truth as an impediment to the higher purpose of unfettered self-aggrandizement,” said Declan McCullagh.

You may know, Mr. McCullagh, but most of the citizenry doesn’t quite get it yet. However, given enough time, enough distribution channels, and enough idiocy, they will.

Whether he actually sees that spam is beyond me. What’s good for the goose is not necessary good for the goslings, which is why I suggest everyone NOT follow Robert Scoble’s lead and post all their personal information on their blogs, like he did today.

Most people don’t have the luxury of hiding behind Microsoft’s myriad of firewalls, filters, and whatever else they employ that makes them so confident about security. Nor do they have a multi-billion dollar company to back them should a little internet dilly-dallying turn south on them.

The rest of the world is getting hammered, maybe because their address isn’t 1 Microsoft Way.

As a side note, I think the whole maneuver is a bit arrogant, and enormously irresponsible.

***UPDATE***

And now he is leaving Microsoft. I wonder whether the move is because he got tired of the spam, or spinning stories for the Redmond giant (?).

When someone simply walks from a big lawsuit, you know they either don’t have a case, or they don’t wan’t “something” to get disclosed in court. No telling which one it is here, but 180Solutions, who can’t seem to tell it straight, has now walked from their lawsuit against ZoneLabs.

While there is growing concern over phishing and hacking exploits that lead to identity theft, the fact remains that you are safer online that you are with personal acquaintances.
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Wendy Selzer proclaims she doesn’t like anti-spyware zealots, and is putting her backing behind the latest institutional effort. It is awfully easy to pump up a new initiative backed by big money and academic smarts, but StopBadware.org isn’t the end all, be all of anti-anything, and the effort isn’t exactly their sole brainchild either.

Like spam before it (long long before it), it was the anti-spyware zealots who were on the front lines, fighting the battle, and making everyone aware of its existence. It is about technology, not politics. It is obscure to most – it isn’t the core subject matter for talking heads on national television. The zealots brought the matter to the attention of “the man,” and they deserve a little more credit than Ms. Selzer is giving.

And don’t count on one organization to solve the problem either. Despite massive institutional intervention, I am getting more spam than ever.

According to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, phishing attacks almost doubled in 2005, and aren’t expected to subside anytime soon.

The growth in incoming threats has its good points and bad points. On the positive, the more crappy, faked emails users see, the more aware they become of the situation. That awareness generates the extra care so desperately needed among the layman. It’s the well thought out, well crafted attempt that people really need to watch out for.

What we don’t need, however, is paranoia. If users begin thinking the internet is more dangerous than walking around at night, everyone has a problem.

And again, its GMail users in the shackles. SpamCop recently added several Gmail servers to its blacklist. The reason: some spam came from those servers, and Google doesn’t pass the originating IP address of the email user. They prefer instead to push their own IP in place of the standard “X-Originating-IP” header line delivered from competing webmail providers, so SpamCop added the whole server(s).

I am not sure what Google’s beef over privacy is here, but it makes little sense to me.
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I am not exactly sure how Gmail’s spam filters work, and likely won’t figure it out anytime soon – I flunked out of my Astrophysics PhD program, don’t you know. But I do know that spam seems to be a very subjective thing at the Google service. Some people get it, and some don’t.
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Getting millions upon millions of users can be had through sheer brilliance – superior service, superior marketing, superior management. Those superiors cannot be credited to building zombie botnets, or buying spam lists. Nor can it be attributed to distributing spyware. MySpace and Facebook are being investigated by some diligent bloggers, who have found some shady dealings in and around the services. While a tarnished past can be redeemed, you just have to wonder here – how did those services grow so large, so fast?

By the way, you can be sure Fox News is NOT going to be following this story.
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