The $33K 2007 Toyota Camry Hybrid

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Dan Nell takes a drive in the new Toyota Camry Hybrid:

Like a Trojan horse, Camry sneaks gas-saving radicalism into a trusted American staple.

By certain lights, the 2007 Camry Hybrid is not particularly revolutionary. Here we have a nicely equipped, 3,637-pound, five-passenger sedan with 192 horsepower, costing about $30,000 (final pricing has yet to be confirmed). Styling reminds me of the old Merle Travis song: So round, so firm, so fully packed. The ride and handling are straight-up Pink Floyd: comfortably numb.

Small Dairyman Shakes Up Milk Industry

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Ilan Brat:

The milk fight, which is being watched in the industry from coast to coast, started because Mr. Hettinga runs a rare hybrid operation. Most dairy businesses either only produce milk, or only process it. He does both. As a result, he falls into a protected class that isn’t bound by an arcane system of Depression-era federal rules. Under it, milk processors selling into specific geographical areas, which cover most of the country, must all pay into that area’s pool for subsidizing milk prices. But so-called producer-distributors have always been exempt.

The End of the Internet?

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Jeff Chester:

The nation’s largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.

Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the deepest pockets–corporations, special-interest groups and major advertisers–would get preferred treatment. Content from these providers would have first priority on our computer and television screens, while information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, could be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out.

Fed’s Bies Warns on Mortgage & Real Estate Lending

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Reuters:

Regulators are concerned about heavy commercial real estate exposures and risky mortgage lending practices at U.S. banks, Federal Reserve Board Governor Susan Bies said on Thursday.

“There are certain rapidly growing business lines in banking operations that are placing pressures on risk-management systems,” Bies told a financial services industry conference as she outlined guidance regulators have issued on commercial real estate and so-called nontraditional mortgage lending.

In discussing the guidance on exotic mortgage products, such as interest-only loans, Bies repeated that government regulators were concerned risk-management practices had not kept pace with the risks that these widely available loan products could present.

The $200B Broadband Scandal

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David Isenberg:

My friend Bruce Kushnick is a man on a mission. In The $200 Billion Broadband Scandal, he writes:

. . . in the early 1990’s . . . every Bell company . . . made commitments to rewire America, state by state. Fiber optic wires would replace the 100-year old copper wiring. The push caused techno-frenzy of major proportions. By 2006, 86 million households should have had a service capable of 45 Mbps in both directions . . . In order to pay for these upgrades, in state after state, the public service commissions and state legislatures acquiesced to the Bells’ promises by removing the constraints on the Bells’ profits as well as gave other financial perks . . . The phone companies collected over $200 billion in higher phone rates and tax perks, about $2000 per household.

The manipulations, deceptions and broken promises are documented in detail in New Jersey, Texas, Pennsylvania, California and Massachusetts. Book synopsis here.

More here.