Archive for December 30th, 2009
What Really Happened To Tiger Woods That Night (And Since)*
UPDATE 2: Wait, maybe retired sportswriter Furman Bisher actually does operate the site purporting to be his. Then why did he publish this story? Maybe he believed it? Maybe he published it as a joke (he doesn’t sound like he’s joking). Maybe he was bored? In any event, we still think this story is likely closer to the reality than the official ones.
UPDATE: Nice! We assumed the story might be fake AND that the “sportswriter” who published it might be fake. But we did not assume that the sportswriter might be real and that someone might have created a whole fake web site pretending to be him. Live and learn.
EARLIER: A self-described retired sportswriter named Furman Bisher has supposedly published a supposed fourth-hand account of what happened between Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren the night of Tiger’s accident–as well as what has happened since.
Bisher appears to think the account is accurate.
We have no idea whether it’s accurate, and it’s possible that the entire thing is fiction. The story does at least fit more of the the facts than the official ones do. And, in any event, we do not regret the 90 seconds we spent reading it.
The key points:
- Elin hit Tiger with a 9-iron inside the house, breaking a bone in his face and almost knocking out two of his teeth.
- Tiger ran from the house.
- Elin chased him, swinging.
- Elin smashed the windows of the car, contributing to the crash.
- Tiger flew to Phoenix the next day for emergency surgery on his face. He is still recovering from this surgery and won’t be seen in public for another month.
- The couple are undergoing full-time marriage counseling and want to stay together
- Rachel Uchitel is in Palm Beach, near Tiger’s boat, but she’s not staying on it.
- Tiger is staying in Bay Hill, where he hits balls at night.
Interestingly, “Bisher” seems dumbfounded by the amount of attention paid to his story, which he says was intended to be read only by a handful of friends. (A reader suggests that this itself is just another bogus detail designed to give the story cred).
Here’s how it begins:
The following is a legitimate message I received from a trustworthy journalist I have known for years. It’s the Tiger-Elin incident finally put into reliable form, and I send along for no purpose other than to present the picture in its clearest form. —Furman Bisher
Forwarded story:
I have a Member who lives 10 houses down from Tiger in Isleworth. As we know Tiger’s agent is Mark Steinberg. My Member plays golf and is real good friends with another IMG Agent; who is very good friends with Steinberg and they share the same office. This information came from the other IMG Agent to my Member, and then to me today, and according to them is up to date as yesterday when my Member left Orlando.
On Thanksgiving Day, after he and Elin and the family had turkey dinner, he spent the rest of the afternoon on the couch watching football and texting Rachel. After each received and sent text message he would clear his message box to rid himself of the evidence. Sometime in between there, one of his Orlando buds called him to see if he wanted to get together at the Clubhouse to play poker with the guys, to which Tiger said yes. Tiger left the house around 7:30 to go play poker, and left behind his cell phone….and one message he had forgot to delete from Rachel.
When Tiger returned home around 11:30 -12 that night, Elin confronted him about the text message in the phone, and the started a heated discussion to its regards.
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See Also:
- How Tiger Woods Bribed National Enquirer To Quash Early Sex-Scandal Story
- The Tiger Line: Gamblers Set Tiger’s Divorce Settlement Set Between $100-$500 Million
- Tiger’s Wife Hires Big Shot Divorce Attorney, Report Says
How To Game Cap And Trade, Destroy Jobs, Make Money, And Provide No Environmental Benefit
Conceptually, carbon credits are fine and could have potential, but their current application is horribly flawed.
Metal Miner highlights how Cap & Trade can be gamed whereby it destroys developed nation jobs and doesn’t protect the environment either.
The example of Corus’ Redcar plant is a case in point. The plant was closed because key clients reneged on long term contracts and the 3m ton facility was left without enough sales to cover its costs. European steel producers receive about 2 tons of carbon credits for every ton of steel produced. Closure of Redcar will mean Corus will reduce its carbon emission by the equivalent of 6m tons of carbon emissions.
But Tata, Corus’s owners, are rapidly expanding steel production in India where it could receive hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the Clean Development Fund by building new plants that are less polluting than existing Indian plants (not less polluting than Redcar you understand, just less polluting than older plants in India).
As we have written recently elsewhere, the Indian steel industry is set to more than double production to some 124 million tons a year by 2011-2012. Even environmentalists must see this is a disaster for the reduction of carbon emissions. It merely transfers production from western steel mills where steel is produced in a carbon constrained environment to a non constrained market
Thus carbon credits can be gamed so that they pay for companies to shut down factories in developed nations and simply rebuild them in developing ones. Even if the new factory isn’t more efficient than the one shut down back in the developed nation. It apparently just has to be more efficient than older local plants in the developing country.
Read the full article at Metal Miner
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See Also:
- I Was In The Room When China Purposely Ruined Copenhagen To Humiliate Obama
- Copenhagen Was A Total Failure And It’s Barack Obama’s Fault
- Carbon Offset Futures Tank After Copenhagen Fiasco
CHART OF THE DAY: Government Bonds Were The Dumbest Bet Of The Year
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If you bought a ten-year U.S. bond at the beginning of the year, it was a horrible bet. At the time, long-term interest rates had collapsed as much of the world looked for a ‘safe haven’ in U.S. government debt.
Yet 10-year bond buyers forgot that bonds do well in a crisis only if you own them before everyone has panicked, not after.
As shown below, the 10-year bond yield has increased substantially year to date, rising to about 3.8% from 2.5% in early January. That’s a huge move in 10-year bond terms.
Bond prices move in the opposite direction of market yields, thus the old 10-year bond that went for $100 in January would now go for about $90 (Using a simple bond calculator) given that it has to pay 3.8% yield with its old low coupon. Look at any U.S. long-term bond ETF, it’ll be down for the year. Meanwhile, stocks and even junk bonds have rallied.
Worse yet, if U.S. interest rates are hiked, or U.S. inflation picks up, the ten year bond in our example will likely fall even further in value. Simply put, it’s not a ‘safe haven’ investment when everyone is herding into it.
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See Also:
- Long Term Treasury Yields Scream 2007
- Eric Sprott: The Fed Is A Ponzi, The Treasury Purchase Data Is A Lie
- Even The U.S. Treasury Is Betting On Higher Inflation
China’s Year Of Executing White Collar Crooks
But what’s striking about the equivalent list published this week on China Daily is that several of their white collar criminals were sentenced to death. These include:
- Yang Yanming for embezzlement from Galaxy Securities
- Wu Ying for defrauding investors in Bense Holding Group
- Li Peiying for embezzlement from Capital Airport Holdings
- Li Shubiao for embezzlement from Administrative Center for Housing Accumulation Funds of Chenzhoo
- Chen Tonghai for accepting bribes as chairman of Sinopec
Although these executions show a strong commitment to prosecuting white collar crime, they are also just a drop in the bucket for the country that carries out by far the most executions per year.
Read the full list at China Daily.
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Alchemists Screwed As Lead Outperforms Gold In 2009
Bad news for alchemists who are in the business of transmuting lead into gold.
They made the wrong trade in 2009. It turns out, according to Bloomberg, that lead outperformed the shiny metal, having gained 145% compared to gold’s kind of pathetic 24% rise. That’s quite a big disparity when you consider, too, that the elements are just three protons apart.
And maybe alchemists should think twice before converting a useful element into something pretty.
(via John Lothian)
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See Also:
- The 60-Second Guide To Everything You Need To Know About Oil, Gold, Bonds, China, And Stocks In 2010
- UK PM Gordon Brown Sold Gold At Rock Bottom, Cost The UK $10 Billion
- If Gold Goes To $5000, John Paulson Could Become The Richest Man In The World