Rhinocrisy

Sometimes I think that rather than becoming an investigative reporter who covers business, I should have just gone into finance myself. Instead, I get to watch as the wealth of the world is sucked up into vanity while billions of people shiver and lose their teeth. Our teeth, I should say, as I have not been to a dentist in way too long. Wall St Journal (subscription):

Overall, compensation on Wall Street is expected to go up an average of 20% this year and many executives will see even bigger gains, according to a soon-to-be-released study by New York-based executive search firm Options Group.

Investment bankers, who arrange mergers and stock offerings for corporations and have received a smaller percentage of the bonus pie in recent years, are expected to be among the Street’s biggest winners this year, with compensation rising 20% to 25% on average, according to the study.

For an investment banker at the managing director level, a senior post on Wall Street, that will translate into an average pay package of between $2.2 million to $3.3 million this year. A global head of investment banking could pull in on average anywhere between $7 million to $10 million.

The study estimates that bonuses won’t be so hot for some in the bond crowd. Traders and others who focus on convertible and junk, or “high yield,” bonds are more likely to see their paychecks shrink by about 10% on average as their business wasn’t as good in 2005 as in previous years. For a managing director level convertible-bond trader that will translate into a 2004 pay package of $700,000 to $900,000 on average.

This information does not make me envious. Instead it fires me with an emotion in which I take no pride. I am fueled with destructive hate.

It’s nice to see a potential flashpoint getting potentially defused. I have a pet obsession with the Spratly Islands, an archipelago of tiny rocks and atolls in the South China Sea. They are disputed among 6.5 sovereign countries. China and Taiwan are the 1.5., adding to the Philippines, Vietnam, and partial claims by Malaysia and Brunei. I have been wondering for a while whether there was some sort of intrigue in the fact that China, Vietnam, and the Philippines signed a joint oil-exploration pact last year, cutting out the other claimants. Turns out I was being paranoid. The Philippines are now inviting the other claimants to join in. So if there is going to be war there, it won’t be over oil, but rather over fish or shipping lanes. Awwww.

According to the Democrats, the White House has once again changed something on its website to avoid embarrassment. This wouldn’t be the first time — during the last Presidential campaign, quite a few pages disappeared.

At the same moment — as I write — two of the Internet’s greates pioneers are on the White House website responding to “Ask the White House” questions from the public. Somehow I doubt they will respond to my question:

How can we ensure that history remains accurately recorded when pages on the Internet can so easily be changed? Does the Internet make it easier or harder to change recorded history?

UPDATE: They did take it. Their vaguely satisfying response:

That’s a really good question! There are projects underway to capture the dynamic contents of the World Wide Web. Brewster Kahle is running an Internet Archive project for example. The content of the WWW is dynamic and often ephemeral and potentially modifiable, as you suggest. Digital Signature technology is one way of protecting information by exposing any attempt to modify it. But even that may not guarantee absolute integrity protection forever. The use of digital objects and its underlying ability to verify the integrity of digital content through the use of the Handle System that Bob Kahn has been working on at CNRI offers another fruitful avenue towards solving this problem. In addition efforts such as the American Memory project at the Library of Congress and recent efforts to automate the National Archives represent institutional approaches to this problem.

Draft-dodger gives Presidential Medal of Freedom to draft resister. Compared to last year, anyway, this year’s list of awardees should be cause for celebration. Better a lame comedian, a very skilled golfer, and just one war-criminal.

Woops. Past time to take down that old poll. I guess those fetus jokes weren’t as funny as they sounded.

Continuing in that vein, new lackadaisical poll up. In case you can’t tell, my creative energies are running at a low ebb, here. I think they’re actually being funneled into graduate school. (Can you imagine? What, me, conscientious?) Next time I’m going to make Hedgehog do the poll.