Finance Matters

Archive for January 23rd, 2010

Conan O’Brien’s final Tonight Show on NBC last night was a bit like watching a funeral. R.I.P. traditional TV and Conan’s 16-year career at the network.

Conan’s supporters tuned in for his final monologue and goodbye, featuring guests Tom Hanks, Will Ferrell, Steve Carrell and Neil Young. He received whopping TV viewers, scoring a 7 household rating, which triples what he had been averaging for the past few months, according to the New York Times.

Despite his rocky ending at the network, Conan thanked NBC for his opportunity to host the Tonight Show. He also choked up a bit while discussing how fans supported him.

Here’s the prepared text from his sign-off:

Yes, we have our differences right now and yes, we’re going to go our separate ways. But this company has been my home for most of my adult life. I am enormously proud of the work we have done together, and I want to thank NBC for making it all possible.

Walking away from The Tonight Show is the hardest thing I have ever had to do. Making this choice has been enormously difficult. This is the best job in the world, I absolutely love doing it, and I have the best staff and crew in the history of the medium. But despite this sense of loss, I really feel this should be a happy moment. Every comedian dreams of hosting The Tonight Show and, for seven months, I got to. I did it my way, with people I love, and I do not regret a second. I’ve had more good fortune than anyone I know and if our next gig is doing a show in a 7-11 parking lot, we’ll find a way to make it fun.

And finally, I have to say something to our fans. The massive outpouring of support and passion from so many people has been overwhelming. The rallies, the signs, all the goofy, outrageous creativity on the internet, and the fact that people have traveled long distances and camped out all night in the pouring rain to be in our audience, made a sad situation joyous and inspirational.

To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism- it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere.

Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.

So NBC’s redheaded host has flown the coop, as illustrated by this redesigned NBC logo, created by artist and comedian Danforth France. “I think I made it the day Conan put out his press release and I was just brimming with pride that Conan was going to walk and stick it to NBC,” France wrote us in an email. “He got such a raw deal, I was happy Conan was walking. I wanted the graphic to show that Conan was flying away from the Peacock not that he was drooping off or surrendering. Conan was the winner.”

Conan noted in his monologue: “As I set off for exciting new career opportunities, I just want to make one thing clear to everyone listening out there: I will do nudity.”

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See Also:

• Conan’s First Stop After ‘Tonight’: Heli-Skiing?
• Why Is USA Network, NBC’s Sister Station, Wooing Conan?
• Conan O’Brien’s Staff Say Their Final Goodbyes

The Nexus One’s voice recognition service which can transcribe spoken words into text censors out curse words, Reuters reports.

For instance, it turns “fuck” into “####.”

Google says the company just wanted to play it safe.

If you said “I’m in the mood for fudge for dessert” in text to a friend, and the voice recognition misheard you, it could be embarrassing.

Here’s Reuters:

One of the most innovative features of Google’s new Nexus One is the built-in voice recognition. But there’s one major limitation that Reuters discovered while putting the smartphone through its paces: the phone is a bit of a prig.

Try uttering a curse word into the Nexus One, and the well-mannered device will automatically replace the offensive expression with a string of # symbols.

Continue →

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See Also:

• Google Supports Censorship On Vevo So It Can Sell More Ads
• Motorola Working AROUND Google For Android Phones In China
• Google Already Seeking China Compromise

From Asia Times:

I have boundless regard for Paul Volcker, but the proposed restrictions on bank proprietary trading are, well, fixing the barn’s roof after the horse has bolted. The Obama administration really, really doesn’t get the joke. The banks went bankrupt by loading up on supposedly ultra-safe, AAA-rated assets, spawned out of the derivatives hatcheries with the collusion of corrupt rating agencies (who made most of their money rubber-stamping these time bombs).

They did NOT, NOT, NOT blow up taking risky proprietary bets. Yet the rating agencies (who claim no liability for mis-judgments on the grounds that they are exercising the same Constitutionally-protected free speech as a newspaper editorialist!) are in charge of rating credit quality.

Proprietary trading is what SAVED the banking system earlier this year. I laid this out in advance exactly a year ago — on Jan. 23, 2008 — in an essay for Asia Times entitled, “Fixing the bank crisis is the easy part.”

Read the whole story at Asia Times >

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See Also:

• Is Goldman Materially Misrepresenting Its Prop Trading Exposure?
• Trade Prop Trading’s Death
• Prop Trading Is Like Pornography

In this week’s distracted app roundup: Grand Theft Auto, committed! Live video, streamed over 3G! Photos, psycedelicized! Blocks, stacked, smashed, and squeezed through holes! Casual gaming norms, subtly subverted! Spying spouses, caught! Songs, made with magic! Barack, Obama’d! And more…

The Week’s Best iPhone Apps →

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• The Week’s Best iPhone Apps
• This Week’s Best iPhone Apps
• The Week’s Best iPhone Apps

The Supreme Court’s decision to allow limitless spending by corporations to support or oppose political candidates means state laws that ban or limit such contributions now need to be rewritten or throw out.

And in Texas, former House speaker Tom Delay’s lawyer is saying the case against him, including money laundering charges — should be thrown out. 

Ian Urbina of has full coverage in today’s New York Times. 

“The money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering charges will definitely be undermined,” DeLay’s lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, told NYT. “The reason is that the foundation of the prosecution’s argument is that corporate donations are illegal in any part of the political process, but the Supreme Court just struck that idea down.”

Not surprisingly, the district attorney’s office prosecuting the case disagrees. “The indictments against Mr. DeLay describe corporate contributions to a political campaign,” Carl Bryan Case, the director of the Appellate Division at the Travis County District Attorney’s Office, said. “What the Supreme Court addressed was independent expenditures made by third parties on their own and without having to do with campaigns.”

Read the entire story here.

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See Also:

• Quotes Of The Day, Campaign Finance Edition: Obama Angry, Abrams Thrilled And Schumer Thinks A Hearing Would Change The "Un-American" Decision
• Supreme Court Overrules Decision Limiting Corporate Expenditures On Political Campaigns*
• Cuomo Accepts Campaign Donations From Firms Whose Clients Have Matters Before Him