I have been arguing a lot lately that companies who run MMORPG’s like Activision-Blizzard (ATVI) are going to really profit during this recession, due to the lower cost of entertainment (the more bang for your buck). Paying $15 a month for unlimited (and addicting) entertainment is a great deal!

But this is the best line, where Mike [Morhaime, Blizzard's CEO] defends WoW’s monthly fee as a lot of bang for your buck: “If you look at other choices that you can make — like going to a movie with a date — you’ve already over your 15 dollars for two hours.” Mike may have a point, but we’d suggest to any World of Warcraft players reading this that while dates are indeed expensive, it’s worth stepping away from the land of Azertoth now and again.

SAI- World Of Warcraft Expansions To Continue Forever, iPhone Apps Coming, Says Blizzard CEO

This chart probably best sums up most of my sentiment on the current crisis.

This is my second most-favorite chart.

My favorite relation is looking at the rate of credit increase, versus the industrial goods our economy produced in the last 7 years.

With the relative success of projects such as OpenID, Adobe has decided to create a similar Open Screen Project, that will attempt to bring all media devices under the same communications umbrella. Ideally, devices across all platforms will be able to share media and create a more open and useful web of all of your electronics devices. This is certainly going to be useful when Ultra Wideband Wireless technologies begin to emerge, alongside LTE and WiMax. If this streamlining were to be put in place, there would need to either be a lot of work to enhance, or dissolve current DRM schemes. It would also create a much more competitive environment for platforms.

The current trend that Adobe seems to be on, with their Air platform, and now this, is a strategic way to gain market share with a platform. Its a  pretty good idea, as long as Microsoft doesn’t come up with something better. Live Mesh anyone?

Open Screen Project

Probably one of the most important lifehacker posts I have seen in a while has been their latest on how to customize a kick-ass desktop. Using a few simple tools like Rainmeter and Samurize, you can create an incredibly functional and uniquely-styled setup.

According to a nice little graphic the NYT tossed up on their website today, you can see many interesting Federal budget deficit factors popping up around the country. Luckily our little state of Washington hasn’t been highlighted under “troubled” status yet.

With abnormally sized returns based on backward-looking macro models, there are more than enough reasons why Quants should fail in this environment. The Economist’s View blog has more on this.

I think the real profitable opportunities for Quants in this market environment are based on extremely short-term stat arb strategies. Any modeling done with regard to the greater macro economy seems like it would have a high probability of being susceptible to the “garbage-in, garbage-out” law of statistics.

Will all this American car manufacturing bailout money going around, its no surprise that foreign car manufacturers with plants in the US are complaining. From their point of view, its completely unfair for other Auto manufacturers to be propped up, when they receive little or no government help (which is questionable).

Toyota, BMW, Hyundai Workers’ Senators Oppose Rescue - Bloomberg

The other day, a friend of mine asked where I wanted to be in 10 years.

I’m not the kind of person who usually plans ahead or hopes for some sort of certainty in his life, but this question got me to thinking about what my life philosophy is. I would like to attempt to share one small piece of it, starting with a simple analogy.

In rowing, you work extremely hard every day to improve your technique, your fitness, and your psyche. Unlike most sports, the chances to compete are rare and brief. In those rare occasions where you finally show your hard work, you are still entirely uncertain about the outcome of the race until the end.

The only confidence that you can build within yourself during these long training intervals between races, is based on the fact that you are doing your best to position yourself to win. Again, you have no idea what is going to occur in the race, you have little or no idea of how fast your opponents will be, and in the end, you can only control what happens to your boat.

I think about organizing my life around planning some sort of trajectory. I’m going to do my best to end up where I think I should be, but obviously, I have no idea where I ultimately will end up.

The best approach I can take is to acquire the skills and tools that, to the best of my knowledge, will allow me to better understand the workings of this world, its people, and its general organization. These fundamentals not only prepare me for the unknown, but also provide more flexibility for taking advantage of unforeseen opportunities that may lie ahead.

I know many people who attempt to define their path through life and, to an extent, I feel sorry for them. Life is about exploration, admiration, and inspiration. To feel entirely satisfied, I must take risks, find new elements to incorporate into my life, and allow them to inspire the way I live. This process will keep my mind young, and my soul rich.

What do lawyers invest in? Nice pens? BMW’s? I don’t know but I sure know that legal consulting firms specializing in finance may benefit from this massive financial litigation exodus. Check out WW.

“Oct. 30 (Bloomberg) — Law firms could get $5.2 billion in legal fees from the U.S. government’s bank bailout bill, according to a survey by BTI Consulting Group. Lawyers would earn the fees over the next seven to 10 years by helping banks buy and sell assets under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, as the $700 billion bailout bill is known, according to the survey released today. Legal work stemming from TARP will include advising financial institutions on mergers and acquisitions, equity investments and other financings, BTI said.”

-Bloomberg

Bloomberg reports that demand for credit card ABS has fallen dramatically YoY. I think this is maybe a corollary, about what I spoke to the other week when I posted some consumer lending firm CDS’s.

“Sales of credit card asset-backed debt are down 29 percent to $60.3 billion from a year ago, according to JPMorgan. American Express used the Federal Reserve’s commercial facility program for the first time on Oct. 29 as available funding shrank. The lender is slashing 10 percent of its work force as part of a plan to cut costs as cardholders failed to repay loans at almost twice the rate of a year earlier. The job cuts “will help us to manage through one of the most challenging economic environments we’ve seen in many decades,” Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Chenault said in an Oct. 30 statement.”

-Bloomberg

Also on another note, it looks like LVS may trigger a bankruptcy event. Check out the CDS chart I posted for gaming earlier this week as well.