Inside the snake-pit

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From today’s Telegraph…

The Bank of England has demanded the Financial Services Authority investigate inaccurate rumours sweeping the market that a British lender is in crisis after being forced to issue a vehement denial that it has been called into emergency meetings.

Sources said the Bank was livid with what it believes are short sellers attempting to turn a profit by spreading false stories about distressed lenders that could undermine the stability of Britain’s financial system in these fragile markets.
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A Bank spokesman said: “No meeting has taken place or been scheduled with any financial institution in the UK.”

It added that it made no loans through its standing facility yesterday.

HBOS appeared to be the main target of this morning’s speculation. Its shares tumbled up to 11pc on rumours that it had applied for emergency central bank funding despite a clear denial.

An HBOS spokesman said: “There is not a shred of substance whatsoever in these unfounded and malicious rumours. This is a classic case of a lie being half way round the world before truth has its boots on. It is deeply concerning these rumours are circulating the markets.

“HBOS is one of the strongest financial institutions in the world with a balance sheet of £660bn the group has also had the largest deposit base in the UK. We are one of the most respected names in the wholesale and capital markets. HBOS is a very strong financial institution.”

50,000 a day!

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Competition Fuels Broadband Use in Europe – New York Times

BRUSSELS — Fierce competition from new providers has pushed the level of broadband subscriptions in eight European countries above the levels in the United States and Japan, according to figures to be released Wednesday.

Growth could accelerate further if the European Commission succeeds in a drive to jolt those countries still dominated by former state monopolies, according to the top telecommunications regulator in Brussels.

The commission says the European Union added 19 million broadband lines in 2007, the equivalent of more than 50,000 households per day…

Spitzer’s downfall

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From Technology Review…

If there is a lesson from former New York governor Eliot Spitzer’s scandal-driven fall (aside from the most obvious one), it is this: banks are paying attention to even the smallest of your transactions.

For this we can thank modern software, and post-9/11 U.S. government pressure to find evidence of money laundering and terrorist financing. Experts say that all major banks, and even most small ones, are running so-called anti-money-laundering software, which combs through as many as 50 million transactions a day looking for anything out of the ordinary.

In Spitzer’s case, according to newspaper reports, it was three wire transfers amounting to just $5,000 apiece that set alarm bells ringing. It helped that he was a prominent political figure. But even the most mundane activities of ordinary citizens are given the same initial scrutiny.

“All the big banks have these software systems,” says Pete Balint, a cofounder of the Dominion Advisory Group, which helps banks develop strategies for combatting money laundering and fraud. “Depending on their volume, they might have thousands of alerts a month.”

Long-Distance Wi-Fi

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Hmmm… This looks promising for those of us interested in ICT for development…

Intel has announced plans to sell a specialized Wi-Fi platform later this year that can send data from a city to outlying rural areas tens of miles away, connecting sparsely populated villages to the Internet. The wireless technology, called the rural connectivity platform (RCP), will be helpful to computer-equipped students in poor countries, says Jeff Galinovsky, a senior platform manager at Intel. And the data rates are high enough–up to about 6.5 megabits per second–that the connection could be used for video conferencing and telemedicine, he says.

The RCP, which essentially consists of a processor, radios, specialized software, and an antenna, is an appealing way to connect remote areas that otherwise would go without the Internet, says Galinovsky. Wireless satellite connections are expensive, he points out. And it’s impractical to wire up some villages in Asian and African countries. “You can’t lay cable,” he says. “It’s difficult, expensive, and someone is going to pull it up out of the ground to sell it.”

Already, Intel has installed and tested the hardware in India, Panama, Vietnam, and South Africa. Later this year, the company will sell the device in India, with a target price below $500. The point-to-point technology will require two nodes, which could provide “full back-end infrastructure” for less than $1,000, Galinovsky says.

One node is usually installed at the edge of an urban area, wired to a local-area network cable, he explains. Using a directional antenna, the device shoots data to a receiving antenna as far as 60 miles away. Any farther away, and the system encounters problems due to the curvature of the earth. Practically, most links will be set up less than 30 miles away from one another. Once a node is installed in a village, the connection can be dispersed using standard cables and wireless routers, Galinovsky says.

Anthony Minghella RIP

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Rats! A great talent snatched away…

Anthony Minghella has died aged 54.

Minghella’s films included The English Patient – which earned him an Oscar for best director in 1997 – as well as Truly, Madly, Deeply and Cold Mountain.

He had an operation for a growth in his neck last week and the operation seemed to have gone well. But he had a fatal haemorrhage at 0500 GMT on Monday…

The English Patient was one of the best films I’ve ever seen.

Tim Berners-Lee on Phorm

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From BBC NEWS…

The creator of the web has said consumers need to be protected against systems which can track their activity on the internet.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee told BBC News he would change his internet provider if it introduced such a system.

Plans by leading internet providers to use Phorm, a company which tracks web activity to create personalised adverts, have sparked controversy.

Sir Tim said he did not want his ISP to track which websites he visited.

“I want to know if I look up a whole lot of books about some form of cancer that that’s not going to get to my insurance company and I’m going to find my insurance premium is going to go up by 5% because they’ve figured I’m looking at those books,” he said.

Sir Tim said he did not want his ISP to track which websites he visited.

He said: “It’s mine – you can’t have it. If you want to use it for something, then you have to negotiate with me. I have to agree, I have to understand what I’m getting in return.”

Obama

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From Andrew Sullivan

I see no clear reason why the Michigan and Florida primaries should be re-done. Why should a party switch the rules halfway through a game? If Clinton were ahead by the amount Obama is, no one would give the argument for a re-do any credence. Just because the Clintons do not believe the rules ever apply to them, we don’t have to acquiesce to their self-serving arguments.

Obama has essentially won this thing already. He should use the next few weeks to demonstrate what a tough campaigner he can be; to broaden his appeal as he has done in every major primary as the campaign has gone on. The good news about the kitchen sink is that you can only throw it once. He just won Wyoming after being battered by a barrage of negativism and refusing to throw a much larger kitchen sink back. He should now focus on Mississippi. And on reality.

The Clintons just got into our heads. We need to get them out. Keep going; keep focused; remind people why only Obama can provide change in a way the Clintons never have and never will.

The longer this thing goes on, the more I dislike Hillary Clinton.

Tony Dye RIP

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Tony Dye, the only fund manager to talk sense during the first Internet bubble, has died. He withdrew his clients’ money from techbubble shares and put it into real companies and cash. For which service he was duly, er, retired. David Livesey pointed me at a generous obit in the Telegraph.

In March 2000, with the FTSE index at 6,400 and with Dye’s clients estimated to have lost some £8.5 billion in potential bull market gains, P&D finally lost patience. It was announced that Dye had taken “early retirement”. By this time the firm’s funds under management had fallen from £60 billion to less than £35 billion.

But Dye was – albeit belatedly – proved right. Within a month of his departure, and before P&D had had the chance to change its strategy, the stock market turned. Internet and telecom shares plunged, and the firm found itself rocketing from the bottom to the top of the pension fund performance tables.

The irony was that the hundreds of fund managers who had followed the herd and been proved disastrously wrong kept their jobs, while Dye paid the price for his independence of mind. Yet he remained philosophical, taking wry comfort from Keynes’s observation that “worldy wisdom teaches that it is better to fail conventionally than it is to succeed unconventionally”.