Over 80% of the world’s corporate and government data resides on mainframes. Over $5 trillion worth of corporate application and data assets rely on its mainframes today. Almost 95% of Fortune 1000 companies use its Information Management System (IMS) for their most critical data management needs. More than 50 billion transactions—including financial ATM sessions, healthcare record access, tax accounts and other critical information—are running through IMS databases on a daily basis.
All these statements refer to IBM – worldwide data manager with an absolute market power. Most essential global information is directly or indirectly controlled by IBM. Summary of the Computer & Communications Industry Association’s report follows.
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Aaron Russo – a film maker, political activist and conspiracy theorist. Some of his theses caught my eye, reminding “The Sims” video game. You may get familiar with them in this video.
11:23 Retroactive laws and whether to pay an income tax
16:10 In democracy 51% of the people controls 49% of the people
22:42 Rockefellers’ and banks manifesto
51:10 Money machine, debt, inflation, 1913
1:06:40 Carbon taxes monopoly
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Imagine Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, with 546 733 inhabitants, and only 50 new apartments sold in July. 50 – like one bottle of wine per day in the city’s most popular restaurant. Balsas.lt author suspects seasonalities.
However, in my opinion this factor is scrubby. There’s a winter season approaching, and many people already now start thinking how to maintain debts and public utility bills, new electricity prices and so on. Many apartments waiting to be sold now will become a true load for real estate brokers in winter and as a consequence of winterizing (and many other factors) prices is likely to be falling.
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Some time passed since the last post in this blog. One might say – nothing happened in Latvia, despite all the effort of the author, and things are going well. Despite huge drops in real GDP, budget deficit, all those real estate and labor problems, or IMF’s bickering regrading credit – Latvia will eventually get out from the hole. God bless those people. But the Latvian government will not. Neither will the central bank.
Now i started to believe that Latvia’s problems emerge due to lack of reliable official information. Let me explain.
Firstly, on 2 of April the Bank of Latvia (BoL) decided that it would be most convenient for all not to disclose where and how much foreign FX reserves of the country are held. It seems of low importance, BoL says, and will protect the country against the speculative attacks of investors. Yes, right, speculators most probably will invade into the financial system, but primarily due to its shitty fundamentals. Show me somebody who cares about where saving are of Latvia are held? Unless they are distributed to the local banks! This subsequently leads to the second thought.
Check one revealing graph:
This is how Latvia’s FX reserve change in how they should have changed according to the officials. The BoL says they only sold EUR 155mn in March. However, comparably FX reserves dropped more than EUR 1bn. Where do money flow? Nobody knows, I won’t be surprised if Mr. Rimsevics also doesn’t know. But I can assume from the current environment that this money is transfered to troubling local banks. The BoL intervenes into the market not directly, but through those arrogant little institutions, I assume. In exchange of being speechless, the banks could be allowed to use some of the FX reserves to sustain liquidity and minimize panic… Ah right! This money could also be stolen or missed in accounting! This leads us to the third and final (oh thanks) point – accounting in Latvian.
Today the press mentioned that foreign creditors of Latvia decided to audit its budget financial performance. Funny and sad they discovered two things. One – the Latvian government does not have any centralized database of revenue collection, its simply doesn’t know from which sources the money is fulfilling the budget. Two – it doesn’t know how many people are currently working in the government and each ministry in general, thus, the government doesn’t know how it spends its money. But they certainly know that devaluation is not possible and fat Santa Claus will visit them in December. I don’t know how they are going to tackle the crisis – cutting somebodies’ heads?
Swedbank and Latvia are major friends today. If you listen to someone speaking about Latvia just wait a few moments and you will enjoy expressions about Swedbank. Or other way, if someone is articulating about Swedbank, she will certainly stick few words about Latvia. Causality is uncertain but base is obvious: Swedbank and Latvia are major problems of each other. Latvian currency is losing value, Swedbank – confidence.
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Greetings to TEO LT!
This open letter deals with the security issue in your Internet connection system and potential threats it might cause for your customers.
As it is assumed, all competitive IT system administrators should know the fundamental rules on password security (one can read an article here, if it is a new thing). But somehow, I don’t know why – your administrators are using THE SAME PASSWORD on some type of hardware – which account for about 20% of long time using commercial Internet users (this information was collected by my self, and I have found about 168 IP addresses from 255×3 with the same password).
Just imagine if a villain is throwing an attack on this issue. First of all, he will have an opportunity to configure the hardware to be accessible only locally. This means that your engineers will have to visit every “hacked” customer and reconfigure the hardware “by hand”. I just wonder, how many companies are using this hardware about which I’m writing here…
To see an example of my words, please refer to the picture below.
Please find time and reconfigure the hardware remotely, change passwords and keep the security in high level. This will help to sustain reputation, profitability and capitalization either.
Best regards,
Anatolij
Real inflation in Lithuania reaches 6.0% in first five months of 2008 versus 5.8% officially published. Official data is adjusted by new weights structure introduced in the end of 2007, where food loses some contribution. If we use 1996 initial consumer products percentage contribution to total inflation, YTD CPI level reaches 7.1%, which is 1.3% higher than we are spoke by the department of statistics. This holds if official contributors inflation is taken.
To make matters worse, after conducting a small research on food prices I found another less pleasant number. Real current inflation in Lithuania piked by extra 0.6% during five months of 2008. In total, real inflation in Lithuania gets to 6.6%-7.7% level, depending on one of the several methodologies used by the department of statistics. Somewhat more than 5.8%.
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Today is the first time since September 26, 2007, when Latvian currency returned to its unpleasantly low position against Euro. However, if in autumn momentum was rising, this time it is the sharpest one day price drop of Lat against EU currency. In one day LVL depreciated more than 0.5%. Is it only a mystery happening each Friday the 13th or financial markets started to doubt in Lat?
Technically 0.7060 level is important for Lat, as it is a second 1-year lowest LVL-EUR rate. If it is broken, we should expect further depreciation until another important limit to test – 0.7074, which is 0.2% higher than Friday’s closing price. This point was reached when Latvia was flooded with SMS’s containing rumors about Lat devaluation. On short term-graph, resistance line is broken, and probably does not already play any significant role. Technically, the question is whether another 0.7060 is a strong resistance level. Economically, not necessarily.
Monday’s, opening price shall judge this interesting case.
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adamkus |
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britney spears |
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airija |
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infliacija |
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laime |
This is how Google perceives Lithuanians, or at least some parts of global network located in my country. Just to be on a save side, the keywords chosen by far do not represent the nature of the citizens of Lithuania, but those on a graph made me grin a little. Further analysis is left for your imagination.
Adamkus – is the president of the Republic of Lithuania
Airija – Ireland in Lithuanian language, currently one of the most appealing emigration places of our citizens
Infliacija – is inflation, a thing that a few still are thinking about here
Laime – happiness, something that we all need, but do not seek it, at least in Google.
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