September 2008 Archives

Google's made their 2001 index available for a month to see what the Web was like back when Google was first starting out. It was like a trip down memory lane: there I am at #7 in a search for my name.

Oh yes, I was on the Web since maybe 1996 back before there were blogs. We used to call them home pages, kiddos, and I called mine The Bill Brown Information Center. It used hover effects on the links and everything. It also reveals that I have loved yellow and blue for at least a decade now.

It's worth a look see: I used to have all of my essays available, exhaustive lists of my values, and a funny bio that is just so me. It's also interesting to note that back then Google and Northern Light were tied as my favorite search engines.

Man, I was so cool!

[UPDATE: Ooo, there's also this Bill Brown-designed club Web site that brings back a wave of nostalgia. I loved that font!]

Yesterday I released my latest project at work. I call it CheckBot and it is a Windows service that pulls down messages from a third-party service, checks them for domain names, and replies with whether those domain names are available. I built it using a plugin architecture, so adding third-party services is a breeze.

The first plugin was Twitter. A Twitter user just has to follow domaincheck and then send that bot account a domain name through the direct messaging system. Within seconds, CheckBot will respond with its availability and include a link to register it on GoDaddy.com if it is available.

I am very proud of this application because I did it fairly quickly and I like the simplicity of the design. There was only one bug that came up during testing and it was both minor and quickly resolved. This sort of thing is exactly the reason why I love my job and the Gadgets Team I lead.

[The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Go Daddy Software, Inc.]

That last entry marks the 37th post this month. This is the most frequent posting rate I've maintained since October 2003! I am pleased as punch by this because I love blogging and I enjoy the long format this blog provides. I cannot believe that I've been doing this for the last six years.

The bailout plan failed to pass the House. I didn't have a chance to comb through the text of the straight-out-of-Atlas Shrugged-named Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 but I read the highlights and it seemed to match quite well with Reich's plan. I think my arguments against that plan also work against the House's version.

House Republicans successfully repulsed this corporate welfare program—man it sounds weird saying that—but this isn't the last we've heard of this plan. Democrats see an opportunity for increased regulation over a sector that they particularly despise and the Bush Administration sees a chance to transfer wealth over to its cronies on Wall Street. The Republican objections generally were not on principled grounds so they may not have the wherewithal to stop the next iteration. I encourage you to write your representatives in both houses to let them know of your opposition.

Here's what I just wrote to Representative John Shadegg:

I am glad to read of your opposition to the bailout plan. You are my Representative and I have voted for you in the past at every opportunity. If you maintain your opposition, I will vote for you in November.

My only wish is that you base your argument against the bill on better grounds. Your statement reads like your disagreement is based on technicalities, not any firm defense of constitutional principles or freedom. I think your soft dissent, while producing the same end result, leaves open the possibility of a subsequent bill's passage.

I admire your father's work for Barry Goldwater. I expect you to maintain the family name as a bastion of freedom and individual rights. While the government has largely created this mess, it is not its place to absolve those who took advantage of their responsibilities. It is time to truly deregulate the financial sector, which has been one of the most regulated parts of our economy since the New Deal.

Please oppose future bills on the premise of limited government.

And here's what I wrote to Senator Jon Kyl:

In your press release dated 9/15 entitled "Bail Out" you speak of "allowing the free market system to work" and opined that you weren't going to support "writing a blank check with American taxpayer dollars." Yet in your weekly column of 9/22 entitled "Stabilizing the Economy" you contradict those very same statements.

I have voted for you ever since you started in the Senate. I think you are generally an advocate of the free market and you represent your state well in that regard. I think you are tremendously wrong in supporting this bailout, though.

This crisis was not the result of the housing bubble as you suggest in "Kyl on the Economy, Housing, Financial Markets." The housing bubble masked the consequences of the "moral hazard" of guaranteeing and encouraging fiscally irresponsible actions on the part of mortgage lenders. When housing valuations were on the rise, there were no problems because equity ratios were sufficient to make these mortgages look good. Once housing valuations returned to reasonable levels, the truth was laid bare and the risks inherent in the shaky loans were inescapable.

Bailing out these irresponsible lenders sends a horrible message and further insures that the "moral hazard" you rail against becomes enshrined as precedent.

But that's not the worst of it. In bailing out anyone, you are supporting the writing of a blank check on the taxpayer. I am more than my wallet: I am an American with individual rights that I elected you to protect. I am not the Peter you may shake down to help Paul out when he makes bad choices.

This is a government intervention not seen since the days of the New Deal. If you are truly in favor of a free market, you must oppose this bill (and inevitable subsequent bills) with every fiber and sinew of your convictions. If you do not, I may find myself having to vote you out. And I'd rather not do that.

And finally, here's my letter to Senator John McCain:

I have grudgingly voted for you ever since I've been eligible to vote. I am a Republican of the Barry Goldwater variety: we stand for limited government and individual rights. Your support of the bailout plan as put forward by Secretary Paulson and Congress is repugnant to Goldwater Republicans, as it should be to any individual who professes to support the free market.

The financial crisis was caused not by the greedy Wall Street financiers, though they took advantage of the situation, but by the very government regulations that were supposed to forestall such a calamity. In encouraging questionable mortgage lending and providing lenders a guarantee of immunity from the consequences of such irresponsibility, the federal government caused the situation in which we find ourselves.

The answer to this problem is not more government power or regulation. It is deregulation: the financial markets need to be left to succeed or fail on their own accord. The government prop has proven itself useless on countless occasions and it needs to be removed.

I know that it's politically expedient to play the demagogue and pander to what you think the American people want to hear about Wall Street fat cats. You are wrong: the American people don't want to be a wallet for the government to loot. They respect those who get rich of their own accord, who work hard and earn every penny they own. The thing they don't like are people who get rich through government-provided incentives and then cry when those dislocations come back to bite them.

I am going to vote against Barack Obama come November. Please don't make me reconsider that decision by supporting future bailout proposals.

I don't know if it will do any good, but it certainly can't hurt.

Last week saw the introduction of the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1. I've been following Android's progress with interest because it seems to be the most compelling competitor to Apple's iPhone so far.

This video by Engadget really helped me to understand the phone and operating system in a way that all of the specs and press releases have not. This particular video was better than most of the other ones I've come across because the phone's operator was quite familiar with its features.

Here are the things from the video that I really liked:

• That little drop-down panel notification that appears and disappears after a few seconds. It also appears to be able to be recalled at any time. It's especially handy for background processes and applications, neither of which are possible on the iPhone.
• The compass rose on the Google Maps application. This is a third-party integration, like a plugin or Greasemonkey script, that provides additional functionality not originally conceived by the app developers. This sort of customization is impossible on the iPhone and could be the basis for a much richer experience.
• The Street View responds to movement on all axes by changing the view accordingly. This is pretty sophisticated positional analysis. Like the compass rose, it appears that Android can tell the application not only the phone's coordinates but also its orientation on all axes. That's not available on the iPhone and could be very useful.

That being said, I believe that Android is doomed to failure. First, it has forsaken multitouch ubiquity. After the pioneering efforts of Jeff Han, Apple and Microsoft have clearly embraced multitouch as the user interface of the future. By not requiring hardware manufacturers to support multitouch (or touch at all, really), Google has seriously limited application developers. If a developer wants to do a multitouch application once Android supports that, he is either limited to a subset of the customer base or he has to make it degrade gracefully on phones that don't support multitouch—neither is an appealing option.

And openness has proven time and again to not be a huge selling point to the average consumer. There are already open mobile operating systems but people are clamoring for iPhones. There's a certain abstract benefit to openness that is hard to communicate to users. The freetards may whine but the average person just looks at the iPhone and drools. They don't particularly care that their phone isn't open. Why? Because most phones in the past never were.

I predict that Android will linger forever on cheaper phones where a free operating system could make for increased profits. The Big Three—Apple, Microsoft, and Nokia—will barely notice its share and Google will mostly abandon the project due to its corporate ADD.

I went to an MC Frontalot concert Saturday night with a friend and had an incredible time. Let me preface this all by saying that I am not a concertgoer: I don't enjoy crowds, am not a people-watcher, prefer studio-produced music, and am a cheapskate. The only concerts I have ever paid for was Public Enemy and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy twice; aside from that, I've either gotten free tickets or the concerts were entirely free. I do, however, love music and spend plenty of money buying it on CD, through iTunes, or, lately, Amazon MP3.

I'm a longtime fan of the Front and went to his concert last year when he came to town. He puts on a great show and so I just had to go. Plus you can't beat the price at $10. Also appearing were the Minibosses and MC Lars, whom I had heard of but never heard.

I knew it was going to be different this year as soon as we pulled into the parking lot. There was a line stretching through the entire strip mall and we were half an hour early. We passed the time joking about the various misfits we saw and most revolved around these weirdos with long hair who were wearing black jumpsuits with yellow pentagrams and dripping with fringe. They looked like Satanic disco goers.

Turns out those freaks were the unannounced opening act, Totally Radd!! (which they weren't, incidentally). I won't waste valuable electrons fully describing their set since they were really not worth mentioning.

The Minibosses were next. Apparently, they're a local band; their schtick is covering video game theme songs like Super Marios Brothers or Castlevania. Like last year, I appreciated their skill but couldn't identify of the video games they were re-creating. I had a Colecovision and a Nintendo in my childhood, but they never made a lasting impression on my because I wasn't very good.

The biggest surprise of the night was MC Lars. After listening to his set, I was annoyed that I had never listened to anything of his. The songs he played—"Mr. Raven," "iGeneration," "Download This Song," "Generic Crunk Rap Song," and "Hot Topic is Not Punk Rock"—were awesome and his stagecraft was perfect. He had his laptop powering two projectors and he amazingly never lost synchronization with their presentations.

MC Frontalot was excellent, as always. He even improvised for a bit while his guitarist changed instruments. He had a new drummer since his last tour and I didn't like him as well. The only bad thing I can say about his set versus last year's is that I think his vocals were sometimes overwhelmed by the band. He performed three songs from his new CD but due to the music I wouldn't have known what he was saying if I hadn't listened to the songs previously. It could be that he was just really tired since he didn't start until after midnight and finished around 1:30 AM.

If you ever have a chance to go to one of his concerts, I'd recommend it highly: $10 for four bands and 4½ hours of entertainment is an astounding value. I don't know how they make much money but they obviously do—they've earned it!

Wow. Microsoft will bundle the jQuery library with all ASP.NET MVC projects, enhance its interaction with Visual Studio through IntelliSense, use it in future ASP.NET Ajax controls, and provide support for the library itself. This is huge because most of the Microsoft universe doesn't take note of anything not provided by Microsoft in a standard distribution.

I've been a consumer of the Facebook.NET framework for a few months now as I've developed several Facebook applications in ASP.NET. I chose that framework instead of the official Microsoft one because it seemed more logical and straightforward.

Honestly, I'm not at all certain why I originally chose one over the other. I read all of the blog commentary about each, I looked over the source, and I checked out the sample applications included. Facebook.NET struck me as elegantly designed, well conceived, and actively developed. Sure, Microsoft had commissioned and paid for the development and maintenance of the Facebook Developer Toolkit, which meant it was more likely to be around in the future. This possible objection was easily dismissed since Facebook.NET was open source and could be extended privately as long as need be.

What I couldn't have foreseen were sweeping changes by Facebook to the underlying API within six months and a complete abandonment of the open-source project by its sole maintainer. Facebook has made a lot of mistakes in handling the transition but there's precious little that I, as a third-party application developer, can do about that. So my sole responsibility is to keep up with updates to the framework and alter my code to accommodate the new (or changed) functionality.

Faced with a framework that isn't getting updates, the responsibility expands considerably. One must either abandon the abandoned framework to search for greener pastures or one must take up the mantle of leadership by forking the project. Neither is a path to be chosen lightly for each entails considerable pain.

The choice was made easier for me by the fact that the Facebook Developer Toolkit was just as inactive at the time. I tried corresponding with the Facebook.NET maintainer and even succeeded a couple times: I would much rather have been a developer on a project than the man responsible. In the end, it became clear that the maintainer had moved on to other projects and that I was going to have to fork.

The result is fb.net. I largely brought it up to parity with the API changes in a span of two days but then I got distracted by work, family, and other projects myself. As it stands, there's just a little more to go and then I can make a release candidate.

My only hope is that I can get this framework ready for a full release and then start looking to build a community that can assist in its maintenance. The Facebook.NET maintainer got it off to a good start; now it's my turn to finish the job.

The Antiplanner takes on some meltdown myths. His perspective is microeconomic so it's a little more like Allison's than much of the other economic analysis I've linked to.

Washington Mutual was just closed down and its assets sold to JP Morgan Chase and Company. This means that I am once again a Chase customer. Is there no refuge from the customer service hell that is Chase?

To my mind, this reinforces the idea that a private solution exists in consolidation as well as that John Allison was exactly right in damning poorly-run banks. Washington Mutual was holding about $70 billion in bad mortgage debt and lost $3.3 billion in the second quarter.

Unfortunately, I'd wager that this episode will contribute to the sense of panic in our politicians, lending further urgency to get something—anything—done. Things are seeming increasingly inexorable—if this bailout takes place, we will feel the consequences for decades.

[UPDATE (9/26/2008): My mistake, it "has to happen."]

[UPDATE 2 (9/26/2008): I didn't really discuss it but JP Morgan is spending $1.9 billion to get $307 billion in deposits plus WaMu's significant lending portfolio. It's a fire sale and JP Morgan would have had to spend 10 times that six months ago. This bailout, though, won't work at fire sale prices so you'll see the government accepting above-market valuations when it purchases the "toxic" mortgage debts.]

John Allison, chairman of BB&T, has publicly opposed the bailout plan in a letter sent to all members of Congress. I'm a big fan of John Allison and I couldn't find the full text in any of the articles quoting from it. I did find a scan of the letter on a site that pulled it so I've hurriedly transcribed it below:

Dear Senator/Congressman/Representative:

BB&T is a $136 billion multi-state banking company. We have 1,500 branches throughout the mid-Atlantic and southeast states. While we have been impacted by the real estate markets, we continue to have healthy profitability and a strong capital position.

We think it is important that Congress hear from the well run financial institutions as most of the concerns have been focused on the problem companies. It is inappropriate that the debate is largely being shaped by the financial institutions who made very poor decisions.

Attached are the issues that we believe are relevant from the perspective of healthy banks. Your consideration of these issues is greatly appreciated.

Key Points on "Rescue" Plan From a Healthy Bank's Perspective

1. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are the primary cause of the mortgage crisis. These government supported enterprises distorted normal market risk mechanisms. While individual private financial institutions have made serious mistakes, the problems in the financial system have been caused by government policies including, affordable housing (now sub-prime), combined with the market disruptions caused by the Federal Reserve holding interest rates too low and then raising interest rates too high.
2. There is no panic on Main Street and in sound financial institutions. The problems are in high-risk financial institutions and on Wall Street.
3. While all financial intermediaries are being impacted by liquidity issues, this is primarily a bailout of poorly run financial institutions. It is extremely important that the bailout not damage well run companies.
4. Corrections are not all bad. The market correction process eliminates irrational competitors. There were a number of poorly managed institutions and poorly made financial decisions during the real estate boom. It is important that any rules post "rescue" punish the poorly run institutions and not punish the well run companies.
5. A significant and immediate tax credit for purchasing homes would be a far less expensive and more effective cure for the mortgage market and financial system than the proposed "rescue" plan.
6. This is a housing value crisis. It does not make economic sense to purchase credit card loans, automobile loans, etc. The goverment should directly purchase housing assets, not real estate bonds. This would include lots and houses under construction.
7. The guaranty of money funds by the U.S. Treasury creates enormous risk for the banking industry. Banks have been paying into the FDIC insurance fund since 1933. The fund has a limit of $100,000 per client. An arbitrary, "out of the blue" guarantee of money funds creates risk for the taxpayers and significantly distorts financial markets.
8. Protecting the banking system, which is fundamentally controlled by the Federal Reserve, is an established government function. It is completely unclear why the government needs to or should bail out insurance companies, investment banks, hedge funds and foreign companies.
9. It is extremely unclear how the government will price the problem real estate assets. Priced too low, the real estate markets will be worse off than if the bail out did not exist. Priced too high, the taxpayers will take huge losses. Without a market price, how can you rationally determine value?
10. The proposed bankruptcy "cram down" will severely negatively impact mortgage markets and will damage well run institutions. This will provide an incentive for homeowners who are able to pay their mortgages, but have a loss in their house, to take bankruptcy and force losses on banks. (Banks would not have received the gains had the houses appreciated.) This will substantially increase the risk in mortgage lending and make mortgage pricing much higher in the future.
11. Fair Value accounting should be changed immediately. It does not work when there are no market prices. If we had Fair Value accounting, as interpreted today, in the early 1990's the United States financial system would have crashed. Accounting should not drive economic activity, it should reflect it.
12. The proposed new merger accounting rules should be deferred for at least five years. The new merger accounting rules are creating uncertainty for high quality companies who might potentially purchase weaker companies.
13. The primary beneficiaries of the proposed rescue are Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. The Treasury has a number of smart individuals, including Hank Paulson. However, Treasury is totally dominated by Wall Street investment bankers. They do not have knowledge of the commercial banking industry. Therefore, they can not be relied on to objectively assess all the implications of government policy on all financial intermediaries. The decision to protect the money funds is a clear example of a material lack of insight into the risk to the total financial system.
14. Arbitrary limits on executive compensation will be self defeating. With these limits, only the failing financial institutions will participate in the "rescue," effectively making this plan a massive subsidy for incompetence. Also, how will companies attract the leadership talent to manage their business effectively with irrational compensation limits?

So much for Congress being the last bulwark to the Paulson plan. It sounds like the end result is going to be even worse than his blank check on the Treasury. As Mike Munger said, "Things aren't so bad that a panicked bunch of politicians can't make it much, much worse."

Once we get some specifics, I'll give it the ol' WTF analysis.

I was going to write something about McCain's "campaign suspension," which I regard as a brilliant, shrewd, and disgusting ploy, but then I saw Dave Galanter's entry and decided that he's pretty much nailed it.

I thought it was going to play out perfectly—though asking for a postponement of the debate was an overreach—but then David Letterman skewered him for cancelling. I think he picked up on the seeming desperation and that's going to resonate with voters, many of whom probably watch Letterman.

So what's left for McCain to do at this point? Congress is thankfully looking deliberative about the bailout and he's pledged to not campaign until a deal is brokered and the economy is "fixed." Back down and resume the campaign? Not show up to the debate? Hide? Run Palin in his stead? Each of those seems like blinking.

[UPDATE: Obama took the bait! Democrats should underestimate McCain to their peril. You don't spend nearly 30 years in Congress and rise above many scandals without being competent at politics.]

In the space of a couple of days, public opinion on the Paulson plan has shifted from grudging acceptance to incredulity. That is good: Congress should not accede to the Administration's naked power grab and I'm glad that point is fairly obvious to the layman. Unfortunately, it has engendered a realization by many liberals that this is a good opening for a power grab of their own.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to tap into that $700 billion line of credit to bail out homeowners. Representative Marcy Kaptur stopping short of calling for Wall Street executives' heads to be mounted on a pike in front of the Exchange, but not by much. The best (and most representative) grab for power by the left is by Clinton's Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich:

1. The government (i.e. taxpayers) gets an equity stake in every Wall Street financial company proportional to the amount of bad debt that company shoves onto the public. So when and if Wall Street shares rise, taxpayers are rewarded for accepting so much risk.

2. Wall Street executives and directors of Wall Street firms relinquish their current stock options and this year’s other forms of compensation, and agree to future compensation linked to a rolling five-year average of firm profitability. Why should taxpayers feather their already amply-feathered nests?

3. All Wall Street executives immediately cease making campaign contributions to any candidate for public office in this election cycle or next, all Wall Street PACs be closed, and Wall Street lobbyists curtail their activities unless specifically asked for information by policymakers. Why should taxpayers finance Wall Street’s outsized political power – especially when that power is being exercised to get favorable terms from taxpayers?

4. Wall Street firms agree to comply with new regulations over disclosure, capital requirements, conflicts of interest, and market manipulation. The regulations will emerge in ninety days from a bi-partisan working group, to be convened immediately. After all, inadequate regulation and lack of oversight got us into this mess.

5. Wall Street agrees to give bankruptcy judges the authority to modify the terms of primary mortgages, so homeowners have a fighting chance to keep their homes. Why should distressed homeowners lose their homes when Wall Streeters receive taxpayer money that helps them keep their fancy ones?

The wealthy have always served as a useful bogeyman for the left. In their world, someone is rich only because someone else is poor. The notion of a fixed pie underlies so much of their rhetoric and worldview. Reich is using this "crisis" as a pretext for evening things up a bit.

What he proposes is, in some ways, worse than Paulson's bailout plan. Paulson's corporate welfare is unprecedented, but mostly contained within the next two years and unlikely to be extended beyond that. Reich's plan, though, would be here to stay and would serve as a useful precedent for later interventions.

To wit, taking equity stakes in Wall Street firms that accept a bailout would make the federal government a significant shareholder and give it proxy power to do things that it can't do with regulation—"can't" because of general strictures and constraints of oversight. This model could be applied to automobile manufacturer and airline bailouts. Struggling companies might find it advantageous to petition the government for a salve in lieu of going bankrupt. Do we want the government owning businesses? Absolutely not.

Limiting or restricting employee's pay because of poor performance is the province of a firm's management or board of directors. The left has long had a hate-hate relationship with executive pay, but compensation is by contract and we should not allow the precedent of meddling with existing, lawful contracts because a politician doesn't like the terms. Or a judge, for that matter. Contract re-negotiation belongs to the two parties involved in the contract in the first place—I am terrified of the ramifications of subverting this most basic job of government.

Finally, Reich's suppression of executives' Constitutional protection to petition Congress is abhorrent. At a time when Reich has placed their necks under the jackboot, he's simultaneously muzzled their ability to complain. The average American is far removed from the Wall Street executive, but we must not lose sight of the fact that they're both still humans and Americans. Just because they're well paid doesn't mean that they waive their rights and mob rule becomes warranted.

The current situation did not arise because of a lack of regulation. George W. Bush is not—and never has been—an advocate of free markets. The financial sector is among the most heavily regulated parts of the economy; these problems stem from the very nature of regulation. Regulation is inherently imperfect: unintended consequences and unforeseen incentives rule the day. Bureaucrats aren't any more enlightened than those they oversee and they are insulated from the consequences of their actions, so they make decisions with imperfect knowledge for political reasons.

But all of that, while true, is secondary. The primary knock against regulation is individual rights. People have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and they don't give any of that up when they enter the financial sector, manage a company, or earn money. Much of the left ignores that fact and we can't let them blind us to it too.

[UPDATE (9/25/2008): Looks like Obama's loving Reich's folly. And McCain's cool with several of his planks.]

This is a fascinating, though likely apocryphal, story about Davy Crockett as Representative entitled "Not Yours to Give" that seems highly appropriate given recent events. It relates a dressing-down that Crockett received from a constituent who was disappointed at his vote for paying survivors of a Georgetown fire from the public purse. Other People's Money is never so dear as one's own and politicians have an even harder time managing it than do businessmen.

I'm also reminded of Joe Biden's miserliness with his own money compared to his generosity with the taxpayer's.

The A.V. Club had a feature asking a bunch of people I've never heard of the question "what's your most-rewatched movie?" Their responses were interesting—and would be more so if I were familiar with the individuals—so I thought I'd share my answer.

I've thought about the subject a lot because my favorite movies aren't necessarily the ones I watch regularly. It's a crucial distinction because there are several movies that I don't think are good or great by any stretch but I enjoy watching a lot. My favorite movies aren't necessarily those that I can (or do) watch regularly but they really resonate with me whenever I do.

My all-time most re-watched movie has to be Happy Gilmore, which I think most people who know me would be surprised to find out. I watch this at least once a month and sometimes more, I can quote from it liberally and extensively. My favorite scenes are definitely the ones with Ben Stiller as a nursing home orderly. It makes me laugh every time.

Aside from that, I like The Italian Job, Dumb and Dumber, and Back to the Future. I must say that getting rid of satellite and the three-at-a-time plan from Netflix have cut into the time I have to re-watch movies: I could have made a much more extensive list two years ago, for example.

The New York Times has obtained a copy of the proposal of the Treasury Department's bailout plan. I am not a lawyer nor am I an economist, but this strikes me as both unprecedented and chock a-block of moral hazard.

Section 2(a), for example, allows the Treasury Secretary to purchase mortgage-related assets from any financial institution. In other words, Treasury will now have the power to act as Lehman Brothers, Countrywide, Fannie Mae, and many other fallen companies. It will buy mortgages that companies want off their books for risk and chargeoff reasons. This will enable banks to avoid the consequences of their actions as well as saddle the Treasury with the absolute worst assets possible. How could that come back to bite us?

Section 2(b)(2) sets aside section 3109 of Title 5. By my reading of that section, this means that Paulson can hire consultants at whatever rate for whatever purpose without any oversight by the normal federal channels. He was previously chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs: I wonder if he's got some cronies that need some easy money from an advising gig.

Section 2(b)(3) allows Paulson to designate financial institutions as "financial agents" of the federal government and perform whatever duties that might entail. It seemed vague until I started looking around for what a "financial agent" does. The covering part of the code suggests that it just means that they can accept public money or public bonds. The Code of Federal Regulations goes into more detail, naturally, and I think I can see why this seemingly unimportant section was added to the proposal. The regulation expands on what the code means by "national banking association" and lists credit unions, commercial banks, and other financial instutions that are backed by governmental deposit insurance.

The proposal generalizes these specific references to just "financial institution" and I think this means that investment banks will be able to act in this regard. I am not an expert on this but I am fairly well-versed on how the Federal Reserve System operates—this might enable investment banks to participate in that System such that federal bonds created out of thin air could be routed through them. In other words, the Federal Reserve could "extend credit" (read: print money) to investment banks at the federal funds rate.

Section 4 says that Paulson will let Congress know what he's done in three months and then every six months after that. Section 8 further limits the oversight by making Paulson's actions "committed to agency discretion." Knowing that every word in this proposal has specific legal meanings, I discovered that "committed to agency discretion" basically takes the Supreme Court out of the equation. If Congress passes this proposal as law, it will have written off our precious system of checks and balances—all in the name of "doing something." Again, I can't see how this could possibly backfire.

Section 5(b) gives Paulson the right to manage the mortgage-related assets, which seems like a given, but expands it to include the revenues from those assets. (There could be something insidious about managing portfolio risks, but I'm not familiar enough with that side of the equation to speculate.) So Treasury gets to control the proceeds of these mortgages: if they can be rehabilitated, they could provide quite a funding source that's outside the province of the House of Representatives. That's a little conspiracy theorist, to be sure, but the words are there and they mean something.

Section 5(c) authorizes Paulson to sell the assets at whatever price and terms he decides. He can also do some other financial transactions with which I am unfamiliar. I can envision a day when things settle down and Paulson just repatriates the assets. Or makes a killing and secures a nest egg for the Executive to use at its discretion.

Section 5(d) indicates that though this authority will only last for two years—two years!!—on new assets, it will continue on existing assets for as long as they're held. Actually, it doesn't even have to be an existing asset so long as Paulson commits to buying the assets prior to the authority's expiration. This is about as "in for the long haul" as government gets.

Section 6 puts taxpayers on the hook for up to $700 billion. But it's not just a total of $700 billion, but $700 billion at any one time. So the amount actually spent could greatly exceed that depending on portfolio churn and decreasing valuation of those assets. Aside from the incredible size of the outlay, this amounts to a blank check on the taxpayers.

Section 10 raises the debt ceiling of the federal government to $11.315 trillion from $8.184 trillion—an increase of $3.131 trillion. Looking at 31 USC 3101, it's hard to believe that the debt ceiling was $2.8 trillion back in 1989 or $5.95 trillion as late as 2002. The amount of this increase is unprecedented and one wonders if $700 billion represents just the direct outlay. This $3.131 trillion expansion might represent the true costs of the bailout, hidden from general revenue through bond issuance.

Finally, section 11 asserts that this proposal conforms to the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990, which enables Paulson et al. to not have to adhere to its strictures and prove that it conforms. I wasn't at all familiar with the FCRA, but its purpose is to "provide a more realistic picture of the cost of U.S. government direct loans and loan guarantees." From what I can gather, the FCRA eliminated the cash accounting reporting of loans and loan guarantees in favor of a more accurate, long-term view of the funding. By asserting compliance, they may be able to circumvent this requirement and present a rosier picture of their activities.

In short, this proposal grants the Treasury Secretary far-reaching and unaccountable powers. It sets up extensive moral hazards for both public servants and private financial institutions and opens up an unlimited line of credit on the American economy. Most importantly, it is an overreach of the proper function of our constitutionally-limited government. The government has no business being so entwined with business: it is time for "a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church."

[UPDATE: There is now a lot more analysis of the proposal that suggests I'm reading things correctly.]

I'm a sucker for time-lapse sequences. Maybe it's my inner historian, but I love seeing the effects of time without taking a lot of it. I can still remember the day when I first encountered Noah Kalina's pioneering 6-year daily photo montage: I contemplated starting down that road myself but I quickly realized that I didn't particularly care to put forth the effort. I forgot about the genre until about an hour ago.

It was then that I caught Andy Baio link to Dan Hanna's Photo Aging Project wherein he took two photos a day for 17 years:

HOLY CRAP! That's some forethought and work. I was impressed. And so I started looking for similar, though less-formidable, videos. Boy did I find them!

[Programming note: I'm really torn between just providing links to the videos and actually embedding them inline. If I put them inline, then this is going to be one slow loading and long-ass entry. But if I just link to the video, then you're going to be a-clicking all day. I wonder which one I'll choose.]

• Ines Everyday: this is the one that got me interested in looking further into this. I guess it had seemed previously like a male thing and this made me realize that there was probably a bunch of interesting characters doing these videos. Main takeaways: she changes her hairstyle a lot and seems to enjoy covering her neck.
• Girl takes pic of herself every day for three years: a solid entry by an Asian lady. Main takeaway: she went through a lot of glasses in three years.
• She takes a photo every day: the 200-day entry in an ongoing project. Main takeaways: she really changes her hairstyle a lot, has a lot of earrings, and was that mime makeup? Yes, it was.
• Growing a beard: well-done piece. Main takeaway: he's a slow beard grower. My friend Larry could have made that video in a week tops.
• Ellora Daily Photo reaches 1282: photos from birth on of a little girl. Main takeaway: I wonder what happened that required her head to be shaved on day 915.
• 9 months of gestation in 20 seconds: it's like watching a bell curve form. Main takeaway: the guy behind it is quite a goober.
• Madeline, Five Years - Photo a Day: nice try, but 198 photos is not "Photo a Day." Still, pretty adorable.
• Lee takes a photo of himself every day for three years: nothing special until 50 seconds in. Yowza!
• Michael takes a photo of himself every day for 1 year: teenage boy going from 16 to 17. Main takeaways: lots of hairstyles and why would anyone have that clown picture on their wall.
• Puppy Photo Everyday: Labrador going from 7 weeks to 6 months and completely busting the "Everyday" claim. Still, it's a puppy. Come on!
• Amanda takes a photo of herself every day for 2 years: watch the transformation from 14 to 16. She's going to really appreciate this when she's older.
• Ryan takes a photo of himself every day for 400 days: a black guy takes on the project. Main takeaway: what's the deal with the purple hair at 23 seconds in?!
• Sven takes a picture of himself everyday for 3 years and Tobias takes a picture of himself everyday for 3 years: twin brothers from 27 to 30. Is it wrong that I only watched one?
• Living My Life Faster - 8 years of JK's Daily Photo Project: high quality with much better stabilization. He's also got the pictures if the video wasn't enough.

I left off the countless parodies, which were often funny. I think they're strangely compelling because the subjects are real people—not a seedling, for example—and they have the nostalgic appeal of a yearbook with the intervening, gradual tweening that's normally missing.

In case my recent entries have given anyone the impression that I'm a fan of John McCain, I am most assuredly not. My vote will go against Barack Obama, not for the maverick without a cause. McCain is a huge mess: he's strayed further and further from his misguided principles, looking more like the power luster grinning stupidly as the levers of power get within reach.

Describing the recent financial difficulties, McCain laid the blame squarely on the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox:

Mismanagement and greed became the operating standard while regulators were asleep at the switch. The primary regulator of Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) kept in place trading rules that let speculators and hedge funds turn our markets into a casino. They allowed naked short selling—which simply means that you can sell stock without ever owning it. They eliminated last year the uptick rule that has protected investors for 70 years. Speculators pounded the shares of even good companies into the ground.

The chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the President and has betrayed the public's trust. If I were President today, I would fire him.

Sigh. McCain has seen Obama's demagoguery and decided that he needed to get himself some of that action. His disgusting me-tooism has unmoored whatever "small government" ideals he may have ever co-opted during his lengthy tenure in the halls of Congress.

I haven't been following the SEC chairman since I waxed hopeful at his appointment but the blame for the current situation cannot possibly fall on one man or even one agency—it arises from a systemic shift towards government overreach. The candidates (and their vice presidents) talk about cleaning up government but it's always along the lines of making this overreach more efficient; it's never about questioning whether the government has any role in the first place.

I'm reminded of Barry Goldwater's now-anachronistic words from The Conscience of a Conservative:

I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents "interests," I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.

We would do well to remember these words and urge our representatives to take them to heart.

[UPDATE (9/22/2008): Here are two other grudging, hesitant expressions of McCain support.]

When the federal government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, I thought little of it since they were both quasi-governmental corporations anyhow. There was always an implied blank check on the taxpayers' wallets which was being made explicit. It bugs me that the government is in that business at all but that's water under the bridge and I figured that most people would not hold the free market responsible for the bailout.

When Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch failed without government intervention, I thought that maybe the government was going to let this situation run its course. I do not pretend to suggest that there weren't bevies of regulators overseeing these companies at every step of their fall—just that the government wasn't acting as guarantor with our money.

But this AIG failure and subsequent takeover by the government, where the federal government has an 80% equity stake, worries me considerably. Both presidential candidates are clamoring for greater regulation and pillorying Wall Street as if it was a free-for-all casino. Pundits are wondering "if financial behemoths like AIG are too large and/or too interconnected to fail but not too smart to get themselves into situations where they need to be bailed out, then what is the case for letting private firms engage in such kinds of activities in the first place?" Can the nationalization of our financial sector be far off with this sort of hue and cry?

"What is the case for letting private firms engage in such kinds of activities in the first place?" Have we degenerated so far that this is an honest question? The case is that it is not the government's job to manage or provide credit. The case is that people have the right to property and liberty: they can form financial institutions whose only safety net is prudent management and a sense of fiduciary obligation. In a world without a lender of last resort, they either make the right decisions or they go bust—so they don't take unnecessary risks with the knowledge that they won't be allowed to fail.

And what of the pretense that our financial sector is unregulated and out of control? I'd submit that it is one of the most overseen and regulated parts of the economy, second only to health care. With the Fannie Mae guarantee and the Community Reinvestment Act mandate, lenders made questionable loans because they were insulated from the accountability inherent in loans going bad. These actions provided an incentive to try for the most profit since the worst case wasn't detrimental to the lender.

Why is the government meddling in these transactions in the first place? When a transaction like this becomes politicized, it introduces unintended consequences and unforeseen distortions. The two parties in a transaction have financial incentives to mutually benefit; government interference inevitably favors one party over the other or punishes both parties. Its only role in financial transactions is to protect the sanctity of contract, thereby establishing recourse should either party fail to adhere to the contract.

In the end, this whole financial crisis comes down to financial participants being able to shunt away risk whether by exacting Fannie Mae guarantees, insurance policies, or willful blindness. In a free market, imprudence of that sort reaps its own consequences—businesses fail and the shareholders take a big hit. In a mixed economy, the taxpayers are left holding the bag.

[UPDATE (9/18/2008): Wait, Wall Street, you're supposed to be more confident now. Come on!]

[UPDATE (9/21/2008): Columnist Walter Williams agrees that this mess has the stink of government all over it.]

Time for some more Netflix queue reviewin' (long overdue from the looks of it):

• Pride and Prejudice (Netflix): a great adaptation of Austen's most famous novel. Keira Knightley is pretty good, but I was most impressed with Donald Sutherland's acting.
• Baby Mama (Netflix): I really liked this movie, but I'm predisposed to that on account of being a huge Tina Fey fan. Amy Poehler was much better than I expected and I found myself actually caring about the characters.
• Kiss the Girls (Netflix): good enough thriller. The plot was interesting but there were many distracting (and glaring) holes. Like, who allows a victim to participate in apprehending a serial killer? Come on.
• City Lights (Netflix): Charlie Chaplin's last silent film. I know plenty of people will defend silent movies as just as good as talkies—I'm not one of them. I've watched enough of them to have an informed disdain—except Buster Keaton, who gets a pass because his films are still hilarious.
• The List (Netflix): I like Wayne Brady. Wait, I liked Wayne Brady. This piece of crap belongs on Lifetime or the Hallmark Channel. The acting is terrible, the plot is predictable, and the characters are shallow. Awful—but seriously worth buying through my Amazon affiliate link.
• Shenandoah (Netflix): James Stewart is a Virginia farmer who vigorously tries to avoid the Civil War occurring around him. But then one of his five boys gets taken prisoner mistakenly and he's one pissed off actor. Very good, maybe a little slow, but plenty of wonderful lines.
• Trust the Man (Netflix): David Duchovny plays a sex addict—hmm—in this relationship movie. It wasn't bad though rather pointless. I did like Maggie Gyllenhaal's character.
• Hairspray (Netflix): excellent movie irrevocably marred by John Travolta in drag and fat suit. Seriously, I have no idea why they cast him as the wife of Christopher Walken. He was painful to watch and would have been perfect without him.
• Balls of Fury (Netflix): I had extremely low expectations going into this movie. I hoped that Christopher Walken would be funny—he was—but I found myself laughing hysterically often and drawn into the story. It's lowbrow, don't get me wrong, but high-quality slapstick.
• Mad Men Season 1 (Netflix): this came highly recommended from a number of sources. I watched one disc worth and had enough. The first couple episodes found me really wanting to like Don Draper, but then it got slimy and smarmy. Maybe a 60s advertising agency was like that, but it left me cold. I'm not a prude; I just don't like watching affair after affair after affair.
• Gone Baby Gone (Netflix): decent thriller about the kidnapping of a four-year-old that ends up being a lot more complicated than at first. I liked it but I don't need to ever watch it again.
• Be Kind Rewind (Netflix): Terrible. The preview made it look stupid but I thought it would be one of those "so stupid it's funny" movies. Nope, just stupid.
• Sunshine (Netflix): unique science fiction movie about a mission to re-light the sun, which is nearing burnout. I love the premise but then they had to mess it up with a horror twist that was wholly unnecessary. The race against time and technological limitation was compelling enough as it was.
• Sex and the City Season 1 (Netflix): entertaining fluff to watch. I can see why so many adored the show, but it didn't grab me. Again, maybe I just don't enjoy watching whiny, promiscuous women.
• Raise the Red Lantern (Netflix): incredible and beautiful film about polygamy and arranged marriages in China. The period is ambiguous. It focused on the interplay between the wives; I would have liked to see more about the master.
• Deadwood Season 1 (Netflix): I rented this once before and never got into it, which is surprising since I will watch any Western that crosses my transom. It's gritty and vile, making it perhaps more authentic to the real Deadwood.
• Assume the Position with Mr. Wuhl (Netflix): comedian Robert Wuhl channels Howard Zinn for the benefit of some NYU students. There's definitely a liberal slant here, but it is funny as hell nonetheless.
• Mrs. Henderson Presents (Netflix): Judi Dench decides to invest in a theater in World War II-era London, hiring Bob Hoskins as the manager. They turn the show into a continuous burlesque while conforming to the strict standards of the time and become a sensation. Hoskins is great and the movie is worth watching.
• August Rush (Netflix): This one was just a little too pat for my tastes with a resolution that was both utterly predictable and a horrible groaner. It could have been so much better, but they blew it.
• P.S. I Love You (Netflix): a husband finds out he has a brain tumor and writes a series of letters to his wife in an posthumous effort to help her through the grief. Very sweet, tender, and believable movie. I'd recommend it.

If you want in on my Netflix friendship (hey, buddy!), feel free.

My team just got moved to another group within Go Daddy on Monday. We had put a lot of information up on the old group's SharePoint Wiki and needed to put it somewhere. The new group didn't have a unified Wiki, leaving it up to each team. I hadn't really looked at the Wiki world in a while and I imagined that I'd need to go with something like MediaWiki.

Then I remembered that Jeff Atwood had written favorably about a .NET Wiki called ScrewTurn. A cursory investigation indicated that it was pretty damn awesome!

In no time, I had a solid Wiki system up and running. It's very easy to install and configure and it appears to hold to MediaWiki markup syntax, which is a big plus. I replaced its authentication system with Active Directory integration through an easily-installed plugin—enabling any employee to log in and edit pages.

The hardest part was migrating the content from SharePoint. It was brutal, tedious work but you only have to do it once. If you're an employee and reading this on our network, you're welcome to check out my handiwork. (If you need any help setting up your own ScrewTurn Wiki, let me know.)

[The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Go Daddy Software, Inc.]

“Swiftboating is not going to work this time. And the reason it’s not is, No. 1, I’m going to smack ‘em right square in the chops.” — Joseph Biden, "Biden: Hillary Clinton ‘might have been a better pick’ for VP"

"Swiftboating" is what Ayn Rand called an "anti-concept." Everyone on the left uses it indiscriminately but it's never really defined. People seem to use it to mean "character assassination" or "smear campaign" but it is often trotted out to stifle negative, though truthful, political discussions.

Dismissing an opponent's charges or attacks as "Swiftboating" is a sure way to squelch the attacker as well as plant the seeds of doubt in the listener without refuting or countering the attack. Whenever you hear the term bandied about, it's time to critically examine the attack rather than dismiss it out of hand. Also, be aware that the one invoking it may be trying to pull something over on you as well.

(Side note: is anyone else troubled by a Senator and VP candidate threatening violence on anyone attacking Obama? Maybe he's channeling Preston Brooks.)

[UPDATE: Here's a good examination of the term and its proper usage.]

I generally don't like to showcase other's inelegant code, but this couldn't be more timely given yesterday's Twitter created_at parsing tip. There's always more than one way to do something, I guess.

       private static DateTime ParseDateString(string DateString)
        {
            Regex re = new Regex(@"(?<DayName>[^ ]+) (?<MonthName>[^ ]+) (?<Day>[^ ]{1,2}) ↵
            (?<Hour>[0-9]{1,2}): (?<Minute>[0-9]{1,2}): (?<Second>[0-9]{1,2}) ↵
            (?<TimeZone>[+-][0-9]{4}) (?<Year>[0-9]{4})");
            Match CreatedAt = re.Match(DateString);
            DateTime parsedDate = DateTime.Parse(
                string.Format(
                    "{0} {1} {2} {3}:{4}:{5}",
                    CreatedAt.Groups["MonthName"].Value,
                    CreatedAt.Groups["Day"].Value,
                    CreatedAt.Groups["Year"].Value,
                    CreatedAt.Groups["Hour"].Value,
                    CreatedAt.Groups["Minute"].Value,
                    CreatedAt.Groups["Second"].Value));

            return parsedDate;
        }

For me, the lesson here is to know your libraries and always assume that someone else has done it better than you already. It then becomes a quest to find that better solution to the problem.

If you were wanting to interact with the Twitter API under .NET, you might find yourself trying to convert a date value from the XML results over to a DateTime in your code. Twitter uses a weird format for their dates—Thu Sep 04 11:09:28 +0000 2008—that doesn't get converted properly with just a good ol' DateTime.Parse. You could spend a lot of time iteratively trying to figure out the correct format to use. Or, you could just use the following (my free gift to you, dear Twitter-API-consuming reader):

directMessage here is an XmlNode representing a single direct message extracted from a list of direct messages. I found this out after many iterations since all of the .NET libraries for Twitter just punt on this conversion.

If only this were true. Something tells me that they'll have an expansive idea of "reform[ing] it." Or they'll take a statist notion of what's "in the interest of the American people."

In the spirit of Matthew Baldwin's Cliché Rotation Project, I offer the following:

I'll add to this list as they come to me.

Much hay has been made of McCain's ignorance of economics, but I submit that neither candidate has any grasp of the basics. Both bloviated today about the latest unemployment figures—pegged at 6.1%, which used to be considered full employment—and bemoaned the problems of the American economy. Further, this morning on NPR some pundit was wailing about how this trend was very unusual since it was a 0.4% jump in a single month and a lot of the "lost" jobs occurred in service sectors.

Warren Meyer hit it on the head: the federal minimum wage was increased on July 24th so August would have been the first full month under the new rate. Minimum wage laws have the natural effect of shedding jobs.

Politicians, however, are not fans of cause and effect. They like effects—we want higher wages for workers—without enacting the proper causes—ending regulation and taxation on businesses. The degree to which government interferes in the employer-employee relationship is the degree to which jobs and wages are depressed.

It's basic economics and neither candidate has a monopoly on ignorance of it.

Sarah Palin's speech tonight (transcript) was electrifying. I can't think of a campaign speech I've heard (and, sadly, I've listened to far too many of them) as masterfully delivered and resonant as the one she gave. I had my doubts about her addition to the ticket—nothing to do with her experience (the less time spent in government the better) and everything to do with her religious beliefs—but it's clear that she is McCain's presidential salvation. They are going to win in November if they can keep the fight at this level.

My trepidation about her beliefs is still very real. They're made even worse because of this speech before her hometown church earlier this year. The words from that video could have been uttered by any of millions of fundamentalist Christian women around this nation, but none of them might be second in line for the presidency. Her faith is a concern to me, but I would gladly excuse it if she came out and explicitly advocated the wall of separation. I will watch her in the coming months to see if there is any indication along those lines.

There is much to recommend her as a breath of fresh air in politics. She's strong, humorous, and eloquent. She's started businesses and lived a normal life outside of the rarefied air of government. She has clearly not had the characteristic political ambition that motivates most politicians. Her skewering of Obama was spot-on and trenchant. I would, for once, gladly tune in to the vice-presidential debates.

But she is not intellectually moored. Her values and ideology are helter-skelter. She taxes "windfall profits" on oil companies, wants clean government but doesn't mind big government, and never once mentions freedom, liberty, or individual rights. Transparency in government does nothing beyond letting you know exactly how much you're getting shafted. "Reformer" is like "atheist": it tells you nothing beyond what you're against.

If McCain/Palin wins in November, I suspect that we'll see a lot more politicians like her. Hollywood and Washington have a lot of similarities: they both revere image, attempt sequels, and copycat successes.

This article on cargo cult management really struck me. I can't say that I've seen much of that sort of thing at Go Daddy—that's the part where Go Daddy is more startup than big business—but I've definitely seen that theme running throughout the business and management literature. Mike Speiser also nailed the identification of Jim Collins' bilge, which I had always considered spurious but couldn't name what bothered me so much about his approach. Now I've got a formulation to use when I see this sort of activity.

[The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Go Daddy Software, Inc.]

I've just finished reading Scott McCloud's comic book introduction to Google Chrome, Google's new browser that will be released tomorrow in some fashion. I am very intrigued by this new player and I think McCloud's work is an accessible introduction to the basic ideas behind the design. (Of course, it could have been summarized in a single page or blog entry much more efficiently than being spread over 40 pages but McCloud did a great job in explaining things.)

When Jason Kottke first began speculating that Google was working on its own browser, I dismissed it just like I did his notion of Google OS—a Linux distro with Google branding. (I'm not sure Kottke can count this as a win, by the way, since five years worth of bupkis does not make for a successful prediction.) It seemed like an overreach for Google, well outside its focus. The intervening years have proven that Google views its mission as pretty much everything on or related to the Internet.

But I think Google Chrome makes a lot of sense. For one thing, Google now has some skin in the game. It can act in such a way that Microsoft and Apple have for so long: if there's some special feature that it would like to be prevalent, it can implement it in its browser and propose it as a standard to some friendly standards body. Microsoft got XMLHttpRequest in there early (among many other examples) and Apple got the canvas element accepted in exactly that way. Google, previously, had to work within the Microsoft-Apple-Mozilla constraints and now it gets to be the interloper, the mole. I think that's a powerful position and likely well worth whatever money Google is throwing at this project.

Also, it clearly has some innovations to bring forth. Putting each tab in its own process is genius. At once it solves the issue of memory leaks and the expansive memory footprint that afflicts every modern browser as well as protecting the user from malicious code in a very effective way. Google also developed its own Javascript virtual machine called V8 to couple to the open-source WebKit. Refactoring the Javascript engine has become a hobby with the browser makers: SquirrelFish from Apple, TraceMonkey from Mozilla, and excuses from Microsoft (paraphrased thusly: "Oh, Javascript isn't really that important. We focused our performance improvements in IE8 on everything else that stunk about IE.") The neat thing about Google's Javascript optimizations is that they took a completely different approach to speeding things up, which means the other browser makers will likely copy them. Innovation in the browser space is an unmitigated good thing.

Finally, as the most popular set of properties on the Internet, Google can drive adoption of its browser by offering improved performance and heightened functionality when visited using Chrome. It can tie its sites into the browser in a way that it never could if it weren't a browser maker itself.

In the end, each of these reasons for developing its own browser also benefit the user so I applaud Google's decision and hope that they can succeed in following through—which has always been a problem in Google's application ADD environment.

[UPDATE (9/2/2008): Google Books has a better version, so I've updated the Google Blogoscoped link to point there.]