Kickstarter Campaigns Reap $319M in 2012

While Kickstarter’s hardware projects made headlines in 2012, film and gaming ideas (of both the video and board variety) were the real cash magnets for the crowdfunding site, raising a combined $176 million.

That’s just one of the many stats Kickstarter recently released on its crowdfunding activity in 2012, arguably the year the online service, and the notion of crowdfunding, went mainstream. In 2012 Kickstarter attracted more than 2 million backers who pledged a combined $319 million on everything from one-woman comedy shows to iPhone-enabled watches and electronic banana pianos. The money total blew away 2011 by 221 percent, and the number of backers grew a corresponding 238 percent.

But just because a campaign launched didn’t mean it was successful, in fact, it got harder as the year went on (especially for hardware projects), both by Kickstarter’s design and as the public wised up to beautiful-looking renderings of gadgets that would never get shipped. Of the 41,765 projects launched on Kickstarter, only 18,109 campaigns (about 43 percent) were successful.

Across project categories, gaming projects took in the most money, $83 million, thanks in large part to the Ouya gaming console, which raised $8.6 million in August. Film and video projects raised close to $58 million, the second-highest amount of cash, and Kickstarter notes that 10 percent of films at the January 2012 Sundance film festival were funded on the site. In third place were design projects (including furniture, iPhone cases, and bike accessories), which raised $50.1 million.

The single biggest Kickstarter star last year was the Pebble watch, which pulled in a record-shattering $10 million in May. However, in Kickstarter’s 50 slide “Best of 2012” presentation, there’s no mention of the e-paper watch nor hardly any other physical goods. The spotlight is clearly on art and performance campaigns; a not so subtle hint at Kickstarter’s growing fatigue with design and technology projects, which caused the crowdfunding site considerable pain in 2012.

Here was the problem: fully 84 percent of the top physical product-based projects were delayed. That in turn led to a wave of unhappy backers who mistakenly thought pledging amounted to online shopping. As a result, Kickstarter laid out stricter guidelines for campaigns in the design and technology categories, where you find nearly all of the non-food consumer products on the site.

Product inventors must now have photographs of their working prototypes instead of computer renderings, and clearly articulate to backers the risks of their project. Even if you follow these guidelines perfectly, the odds you’ll get your product accepted on Kickstarter have diminished. The startup’s widely-discussed “Kickstarter is Not A Store” blog post from September made it clear that Kickstarter doesn’t know how to handle million-dollar hardware projects and has no desire to figure it out.

In many ways, the decisions about what to include and exclude in its 2012 roundup are an indication of where Kickstarter wants to place its emphasis going forward. It’s projects like this video game proposal, the XOXO Festival (one of the first major festivals funded on the site), and a community hackerspace in Baghdad.

As cool as the Pebble watch may be, it’s not likely you’ll see the likes of it rise up again on Kickstarter, especially as other crowdfunding sites emerge and start to specialize in the categories and projects with which Kickstarter would rather not bother.

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TV drama production in L.A. plunges by 20% in 2012

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – The filming of TV dramas and reality shows in Los Angeles plummeted in 2012, according to figures released Tuesday by FilmL.A., the non-profit agency that coordinates location shoots in the region.

TV drama shoots were off by 20 percent from 2011, while the filming of reality shows dropped by 11.8 percent. Those numbers overshadowed the report’s good news on overall location shooting, movie production and commercial filming, all of which were up from the previous year.

The TV drama number is critical to the overall health of local filming, because those shows — mainly hour-long, high-end and multiple episodes – employ more people and bring more economic benefits than other types of productions. A typical 22-episode-a-year network series has a budget of $ 60 million and generates 840 direct and indirect jobs, according to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

The numbers confirm what many had feared since a midyear FilmL.A. report indicated that L.A. was losing its grip on this critical production sector.

Of 23 TV drama pilots launched last year, just two were based in L.A., with the rest being shot in Canada, and other U.S. states including New York and North Carolina.

The TV drama figures clouded the otherwise positive report. Paced by upticks in feature film and commercial shoots, overall on-location production in 2012 rose 4.7 percent from the previous year, to its highest level since 2008.

FilmLA measures filming activity by permitted production days. Last year there were 46,254, compared to 45,484 in the previous year.

Overall TV production was dragged down by the drama and reality losses, falling 3.4 percent for the year (16,762 PPD in 2012 vs.17,349 in 2011). It would have been worse, but for a surge in sitcom production that powered an 11.9 percent fourth quarter increase.

L.A. still dominates in terms of sitcom production, but those are mainly half-hour shows shot primarily on soundstages. Comedy pilots employ fewer people and cost about $ 2 million to produce, compared to $ 5.5 million for drama pilots, the agency said.

“We know that part of the decline in our TV drama figures stems from producers’ desire to cut costs by filming more on studio back-lots and soundstages,” said FilmLA president Paul Audley. “Unfortunately, last year we also saw a record number of new TV drama series shot out of state, resulting in negative economic consequences.”

On-location movie production increased 3.7 percent for the year (5,892 PPD in 2012 vs. 5,682 PPD in 2011). This was the category’s best year since 2008, the year before feature production declined precipitously and state lawmakers enacted the California Film & Television Tax Credit Program.

The Warner Bros.’ movie “Gangster Squad,” which qualified for the state tax credit, provided a bright spot for the program.

The film, which opens Friday, was shot entirely in the city of Los Angeles and prominently features a number of local landmarks including City Hall and Union Station.

It reversed a trend that had seen L.A.-set period films “Hollywoodland” and “Black Dahlia” go elsewhere to film. Those 2006 movies shot some exteriors in Los Angeles, but “Hollywoodland” was produced mainly in Toronto and “The Black Dahlia” was filmed in Bulgaria.

In all, projects that qualified for the state tax credit accounted for 5.9 percent of the total movie shoots last year. Among the films that were shot utilizing the program were “10 Things I Hate About Life,” “Baggage Claim,” “The Bling Ring,” “Dark Skies,” “The Hive,” “Jesus in Cowboy Boots,” “Look of Love,” and “Plush.”

“Last year saw our industry rocked by dramatic changes in the local production landscape,” Audley said. “If we seek a more secure future for filming in Los Angeles, we must continue to innovate and expand upon the programs proven to attract new projects to California.”

Lawmakers last year voted to extend the program, which has been over-subscribed and provides lesser breaks than several competing states, through the 2016-17 fiscal year. New York in particular has become a major lure for producers, having added post-production tax credits last year, on top of filming incentives.

Other projects driving a significant amount of location filming in the L.A..area in 2012 included “Bad Words” and “Star Trek Into Darkness” from director J.J. Abrams.

Commercials production was another bright spot. Commercial shoots increased 14.1 percent for the year (8,078 PPD in 2012 vs. 7,079 in 2011), driven in part by a surge in the number of locally produced Internet commercial projects. Their production accounted for 7.9 percent of the commercials total, well up from the 1.7 percent web-based commercials generated when FilmL.A. first began tracking them in 2008.

Roughly 585,850 jobs directly or indirectly tied to the entertainment industry brought in $ 43.3 billion in labor income in 2011, according to the most recent figures from the Los Angeles County Economic Development Commission. That’s equivalent to 17.6 percent of L.A. County’s 3.3 million jobs. The industry generated $ 5.6 billion in state and local taxes that year.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Recipes for Health: Cauliflower and Tuna Salad — Recipes for Health

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

I have added tuna to a classic Italian antipasto of cauliflower and capers dressed with vinegar and olive oil. For the best results give the cauliflower lots of time to marinate.

1 large or 2 small or medium cauliflowers, broken into small florets

1 5-ounce can water-packed light (not albacore) tuna, drained

1 plump garlic clove, minced or pureéd

1/3 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley

3 tablespoons capers, drained and rinsed

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

3 tablespoons sherry vinegar or champagne vinegar

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Place the cauliflower in a steaming basket over 1 inch of boiling water, cover and steam 1 minute. Lift the lid for 15 seconds, then cover again and steam for 5 to 8 minutes, until tender. Refresh with cold water, then drain on paper towels.

2. In a large bowl, break up the tuna fish and add the cauliflower.

3. In a small bowl or measuring cup, mix together the garlic, parsley, capers, lemon juice, vinegar, and olive oil. Season generously with salt and pepper. Add the cauliflower and toss together. Marinate, stirring from time to time, for 30 minutes if possible before serving. Serve warm, cold, or at room temperature.

Yield: Serves 6 as a starter or side dish

Advance preparation: You can make this up to a day ahead, but omit the parsley until shortly before serving so that it doesn’t fade. It keeps well in the refrigerator for up to 5 days.

Nutritional information per serving: 188 calories; 15 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 10 grams monounsaturated fat; 10 milligrams cholesterol; 8 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams dietary fiber; 261 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 9 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

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DealBook: Ping An Shares Fall for 2nd Straight Day

SHANGHAI – Shares in the Ping An Group, the Chinese insurance and banking giant, fell in Shanghai trading for the second consecutive day on Wednesday over concerns that the British bank HSBC was having trouble selling its 15.6 percent stake in the company.

HSBC had announced plans in December to sell a $9.4 billion stake in Ping An to the Charoen Pokphand Group of Thailand. Part of that sale has already been completed. But media outlets have reported this week that the China Development Bank, a big state lender, has decided not to finance the rest of the deal and that the China Insurance Regulatory Commission is likely to reject the deal.

The report, first published by The South China Morning Post, could not be independently confirmed. The parties involved all declined to comment on Wednesday. A spokesman for Ping An, which is based in Shenzhen, China, would say only that approval of the deal was proceeding normally.

But several analysts have expressed doubts that the full deal will go through on time. In Hong Kong, Ping An shares rebounded on Wednesday from a sharp drop on Tuesday, while Ping An’s share price continued to decline for a second day in trading on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

The deal is facing difficulty at a time of growing scrutiny of Ping An. The company, which is one of the largest insurers in China and a financial conglomerate worth about $60 billion, has longstanding financial ties to the relatives of China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.

The Times reported in October and November that the relatives of China’s prime minister had amassed a multibillion-dollar stake in Ping An before the company’s initial public stock offering in 2004.

The stake was bought from a Chinese state-owned company for about $65 million in late 2002, and was at one time worth as much as $3.7 billion. The relatives of Mr. Wen owned a portion of those shares through a series of holding companies. It is unclear whether they have sold their entire stake.

The relatives of China’s former Central Bank chief, Dai Xianglong, also held a Ping An stake through holding companies during the same period. At one time, the companies controlled about $3.1 billion in Ping An shares, according to corporate documents obtained by The Times.

The relatives obtained the shares at a time when the two senior government officials were effectively acting as financial regulators with oversight of Ping An during a crucial period before its I.P.O. in 2004.

The relatives of the two senior officials have denied holding the stakes.

HSBC acquired its initial stake in Ping An in September 2002, and bought additional stakes in Ping An from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. On Dec. 5, HSBC said it planned to sell its entire 15.6 percent stake to the Charoen Pokphand Group of Thailand to increase capital.

Soon after, one of China’s top business publications, Caixin, reported that a large part of the payment for the first part of the purchase would come from a group of Chinese investors and Ping An’s management team, as well as the former president of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra. Ping An and Charoen Pokphand disputed the Caixin magazine report.

Ping An is widely regarded as one of the most successful financial services firms in China. The company was founded in 1988, and has operated as a shareholding company since shortly after that time. It is not considered a state- owned company, but the government of Shenzhen has always held a big stake in Ping An, which operates the country’s second-largest insurer.

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LAPD force exceeds 10,000 for the first time, officials say

For the first time in the city's history, Los Angeles' police force now exceeds 10,000 officers, city officials said Monday.

Appearing with LAPD Chief Charlie Beck to discuss the continued drop in crime last year, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said the department is budgeted for 10,023 officers, up from the 9,963 authorized over the last three years, during a deep budget crisis.

The staffing increase took effect Jan. 1, when 60 sworn officers moved into the LAPD from the General Services Department, which patrols parks, libraries and other municipal buildings, said Villaraigosa spokesman Peter Sanders. Those officers will continue to patrol city facilities, budget officials said.

Some questioned the significance of the staffing milestone, since the overall number of sworn officers employed by the city hasn't grown.

"It's an increase for show," said Kevin James, a candidate for mayor in the March 5 election who has questioned Villaraigosa's LAPD hiring goals. "The mayor really wanted to get to 10,000 one way or the other before he left office, and this was the way he could do it under the current budget constraints."

Los Angeles experienced a 10.5% decrease in gang crime and an 8.2% drop in violent crime last year, compared with 2011. The city had the lowest number of violent crimes per capita of any major city, including New York and Chicago, Villaraigosa said.

The mayor attributed those numbers — and a decade-long decline in crime — in large part to the expansion of the police force.

Villaraigosa originally promised to add 1,000 new officers to the department during the 2005 election campaign, criticizing then-Mayor James K. Hahn for failing to do so. Since then, he has succeeded in adding 800 officers, Sanders said. On Monday, Villaraigosa suggested that the addition of the final 200 will not be achieved until after June 30, when he leaves office.

"I would hope that the next mayor would, as we get out of this economic crisis, increase our Police Department to that 1,000," he said.

While Villaraigosa has been pushing for continued hiring at the LAPD, Beck has warned in recent weeks that the LAPD would lose 500 officers if voters fail to approve Proposition A, a half-cent sales tax measure on the March 5 ballot. That would represent more than half of the LAPD buildup accomplished by Villaraigosa.

Despite Beck's warnings, Villaraigosa said he is not ready to endorse Proposition A until the council makes a series of cost-cutting moves, such as turning over operation of the city zoo to a private entity.

Since Villaraigosa took office, homicides have decreased 38% and gang crime has dropped by a similar amount. The number of slayings has stayed largely the same over the last three years, with 297 homicides in 2010, 297 in 2011 and 298 last year. Overall crime dropped 1.4% last year. Property crimes, which are more numerous than violent crimes, increased for the first time in several years — driven in part by a 30% increase in cell phone thefts, officials said.

With little money to pay officers for overtime, the department has been compensating them with time off. The resulting staffing loss has been the equivalent of about 450 officers at any given time, according to department figures — a hit that has complicated crime-fighting strategies.

Preserving LAPD funding has become increasingly challenging for council members. For nine months they have debated whether to lay off dozens of civilian LAPD employees while continuing to hire enough police officers to maintain current staffing levels.

Councilman Paul Koretz, who opposed the layoffs, said the movement of the 60 building patrol officers to the LAPD was "a little smoke and mirrors." He questioned whether the LAPD buildup in the Villaraigosa era was financially sustainable.

"It just seems like we really never did the analysis to see if we could afford it," he said.

A defeat of the sales tax increase, which is projected to generate roughly $215 million in new revenue, would leave council members no choice but to roll back the size of the LAPD, Koretz said.

But Villaraigosa warned that would be dangerous, saying other California cities have seen upticks in crime after cutting back on officers.

"I know some people think that 10,000 cops is a magical illusion, a meaningless number, that more officers don't necessarily lead to a reduction in crime," said the mayor, adding: "Those critics talk a lot, but they're just plain wrong."

david.zahniser@latimes.com

richard.winton@latimes.com

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Bare-Bones Photo Tour of London Squat Proves Content Is King

While flashy animations and interactions are fun to play with on the web, photographers don’t always need to think big-budget to tell their story online. With just a little bit of HTML and jQuery, photographer Adrian Nettleship has churned out a timely and purpose-built web experience that lets users explore a London squat and meet its inhabitants.

Nettleship’s photos and audio are combined into a simple choose-your-own-adventure walk-through of the squat that lacks gloss, but is nonetheless captivating.

“I’ve sometimes found the medium of photography slightly frustrating, almost limiting, in its ability to show the relation of one image to another,” he says. “I’ve never liked to use captions to [solely] explain context.”

Occupy and Explore is a response to new amendments to U.K. law that re-categorize squatting as a criminal offense, punishable by a six-month jail term and fines up to £5,000 ($8,000). The new laws increase the power of property owners in legal dispute with squatters, who according to the U.K. government number 20,000. Squatting groups say the real number is more. 

Pro-squatter campaign group Squatters’ Action for Secure Homes (SQUASH) says there are an estimated 650,000 empty properties, that it is society’s most vulnerable who squat and that the new laws will lead to increased homelessness. Furthermore, SQUASH says the new laws will, over five years, cost $790 million to enforce and that mass evictions and prosecution of peaceful squatters will burden the police, courts and charities for years to come.

In the U.K., squatters’ lifestyles have long divided opinion, but Nettleship feels some sections of the British media leading up to the law change demonized squatters.

“There was a huge amount of misinformation about the subject, such as tabloid stories about eastern European home invaders seizing houses while their owners were away for the weekend,” says Nettleship. “It has always been illegal to invade someone else’s home, but this was being omitted from the discussion. I wanted to counter the stereotype, to show how squatters can be thoughtful people who maintain and improve abandoned buildings.”

Nettleship’s use of software tools is as resourceful as his subjects’ use and reuse of spaces and materials. Over a number of weeks, he taught himself to use Dreamweaver and jQuery to complement his basic HTML knowledge. For those photographers balking at tackling an interactive project, Occupy is an example of basic navigation enriching a simple story — a success due in no small part to the way it addresses the context of the issue. It’s more difficult to unfairly lambast a population in the abstract after meeting its individual people.

The project also comes at a time of larger political shifts. Since coming to power, the coalition Conservative/Liberal Democrat government has steadily lost public support. Repeated austerity measures and service cuts have hit some communities hard and not since the ’80s has talk of class division been so prevalent.

“There’s so much to say at the moment,” says Nettleship. “The balance of power between government, people and large organizations is undergoing adjustment, as is the United Kingdom’s role in world affairs. We need to be clear on what values are important to us, and defend them. As with the changes of the Thatcher years, the effects will be felt for many years to come.”

Nettleship admits that he was only able to make it through the early years of his photography career by living with his parents and eating their food. From looking at the lives of his friends, he says his longish route to self reliance was not — and increasingly is not — unusual.

“Divisions [between the haves and have-nots] seem to lie along who your parents were, and most importantly how much they accumulated during the prosperous years of North Sea oil and property growth,” says Nettleship. “It’s not uncommon for people to live at home into their 30s enabling them to study or work an unpaid internship in order to get the job they want. My friends who didn’t take or didn’t have those opportunities are finding it much harder. People are starting to buy houses, but I know very few who have done it without a helping hand on the deposit. The baby-boomer generation are soaking up the impact of austerity on their children. The middle classes won’t feel the full impact until a generation down the line, when the money runs out.”

Nettleship is exhibiting a physical adaptation of Occupy and Explore, whereby his photographs will be sectioned out in space and joined by colored string to show paths through the squat.

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David Bowie breaks long silence with new music release

LONDON (Reuters) – British singer David Bowie released his first new song in nearly a decade on Tuesday in a surprise launch coinciding with his 66th birthday.

“Where Are We Now?”, produced by his long-term collaborator Tony Visconti, is a mournful look back to the time he spent in Berlin in the 1970s with an accompanying video featuring black-and-white footage of the city when it was still divided.

The song, available on iTunes and free to view on his re-launched website, was recorded in New York and will be followed by his first studio album since 2003, “The Next Day”, due to hit shelves in March.

Bowie’s label Columbia Records said the new song was a “treasure” that appeared “as if out of nowhere”, underlining the element of surprise from a release that ends years of speculation among fans over whether he would record again.

“Throwing shadows and avoiding the industry treadmill is very David Bowie despite his extraordinary track record that includes album sales in excess of 130 million not to mention his massive contributions in the area of art, fashion, style, sexual exploration and social commentary,” the label said.

The album will consist of 14 songs, and a deluxe edition will feature three bonus tracks.

The glam-rock star shot to fame with “Space Oddity” in 1969, and later with his alter ego Ziggy Stardust, before establishing himself as a chart-topping force in the early 1980s.

Known for his constant desire to re-invent and experiment with different musical genres, Bowie is considered one of the most influential, and unusual stars of the pop era.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The New Old Age Blog: Who Should Receive Organ Transplants?

Joe Gammalo had been contending with pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lungs, for more than a decade when he came to the Cleveland Clinic in 2008 seeking a lung transplant.

“It had gotten to the point where I was on oxygen all the time and in a wheelchair,” he told me in an interview. “I didn’t expect to live.”

Lung transplants are a dicey proposition, involving a huge surgical procedure, arduous follow-up, the lifelong use of potent immunosuppressive drugs and high rates of serious side effects. “It’s not like taking out an appendix,” said Dr. Marie Budev, the medical director of the clinic’s lung transplant program.

Only 50 to 57 percent of all recipients live for five years, she noted, and they will still die of their disease. But there’s no other treatment for pulmonary fibrosis.

Some medical centers would have turned Mr. Gammalo away. Because survival rates are even lower for older patients, guidelines from the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation caution against lung transplants for those over 65, though they set no age limit.

But “we are known as an aggressive, high-risk center,” said Dr. Budev. So Mr. Gammalo was 66 when he received a lung; his newly found buddy, Clyde Conn, who received the other lung from the same donor, was 69.

You can’t mistake the trend: A graying population and revised policies determining who gets priority for donated organs, have led to a rising proportion of older adults receiving transplants.

My colleague Judith Graham has reported on the increase in heart transplants, but the pattern extends to other organs, too.

The number of kidney transplants performed annually on adults over 65 tripled between 1998 and last year, according to data from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients. In 2001, 7.4 percent of liver transplant recipients were over 65; last year, that rose to 13 percent.

The rise in elderly lung transplant candidates is particularly dramatic because, since 2005, a “lung allocation score” puts those at the highest mortality risk, rather than those who’ve waited longest, at the top of the list.

In 2001, about 3 percent of those on the wait list and of those transplanted were over 65; last year, older patients represented almost 18 percent of wait-listed candidates and more than a quarter of transplant recipients. (Medicare pays for the surgery, though patients face co-pays and considerable out-of-pocket costs, including for drugs and travel.)

The debate has grown, too: When the number of adults awaiting transplants keeps growing, but organ donations stay flat, is it desirable or even ethical that an increasing proportion of recipients are elderly?

Dr. Budev, who estimated that a third of her program’s patients are over 65, votes yes. As long as a program selects candidates carefully, “how can you deny them a therapy?” she asked. So the Cleveland Clinic has no age limit. “We feel that everyone should have a chance.”

At the University of Michigan, by contrast, the age limit remains 65, though Dr. Kevin Chan, the transplant program’s medical director, acknowledged that some fit older patients get transplanted.

“You can talk about this all day — it’s a tough one,” Dr. Chan said. Younger recipients have greater physiologic reserve to aid in the arduous recovery; older ones face higher risk of subsequent kidney failure, stroke, diabetes and other diseases, and, of course, their lifespans are shorter to begin with.

Donated lungs, fragile and prone to injury, are a particularly scarce commodity. Last year, surgeons performed 16,055 kidney transplants, 5,805 liver transplants and 1,949 heart transplants. Only1,830 patients received lung transplants.

“What if there’s a 35-year-old on a ventilator who needs the lung just as much?” Dr. Chan said. “Why should a 72-year-old possibly take away a lung from a 35-year-old?” Yet, he acknowledged, “it’s easy to look at the statistics and say, ‘Give the lungs to younger patients.’ At the bedside, when you meet this patient and family, it’s a lot different.”

These questions about who deserves scarce resources — those most likely to die without them? or those most likely to live longer with them? — will persist as the population ages. They’re also likely to arise when the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation begins working towards revised guidelines this spring. (I’d also like to hear your take, below.)

Lots of 65- and 75-year-olds are very healthy. Yet transplants themselves can cause harm and there’s no backup, like dialysis. Without the transplant, they die. But when the transplant goes wrong, they also die.

More than four years post-transplant, the Cleveland Clinic’s “lung brothers” are success stories. Mr. Conn, who lives near Dayton, Ohio, can’t walk very far or lift more than 10 pounds, but he works part time as a real-estate appraiser and enjoys cruises with his wife.

Mr. Gammalo, a onetime musician, has developed diabetes, like nearly half of all lung recipients. But he went onstage a few weeks back to sing “Don’t Be Cruel” with his son’s rock band, “a highlight of both our lives,” he said.

Yet when I asked Mr. Conn, now 73, how he felt about having priority over a younger but healthier person, he paused. “It’s a good question,” he said, to which he had no answer.

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Paula Span is the author of “When the Time Comes: Families With Aging Parents Share Their Struggles and Solutions.”

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DealBook: Easing of Rules for Banks Acknowledges Reality

When a global committee of regulators and central bankers agreed to a new set of rules for the banking system a year and a half ago, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, told The Financial Times, “I’m very close to thinking the United States shouldn’t be in Basel anymore. I would not have agreed to rules that are blatantly anti-American.”

Over the last weekend, Mr. Dimon finally got what he had wanted: a form of deregulation of sorts. The new international capital requirements for banks, known as Basel III — apologies if your eyes are glazing over — were significantly relaxed by regulators.

Instead of requiring banks to maintain, by 2015, a certain amount of assets that can quickly be turned into cash, the most stringent deadline was pushed to 2019. Perhaps more important, the type of assets that could be counted in a bank’s liquidity requirement was changed to be more flexible, including securities backed by mortgages, for example, instead of simply sovereign debt.

This sounds boring, but it is important stuff. Increasing bank capital and liquidity requirements — think of it as the size of a bank’s rainy day fund — is arguably more significant than all of the new laws in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The more capital a bank is required to hold, the lower the chance it could suffer a run on the bank like Lehman Brothers did in 2008.

Given memories of the financial crisis, the idea that regulators would loosen rules even a smidgen is considered a huge giveaway. The conventional wisdom is that the banks are the big winners and the regulators are, once again, patsies, capitulating under pressure to the all-powerful financial industry. The headlines tell the story: “Banks Win 4-Year Delay as Basel Liquidity Rule Loosened,” Bloomberg declared. The Financial Times splashed, “ ‘Massive Softening’ of Basel Rules.” “Bank Regulators Retreat,” the Huffington Post said. Reuters described the new regulations as a “light touch.”

Mayra Rodríguez Valladares, a managing principal at MRV Associates, a regulatory consulting firm, put it this way, “With every part of Basel III that is gutted, we are increasingly back where we were at the eve of the crisis.” She went on to say, “In today’s financial world, regulators pretend to supervise while banks pretend to be liquid.”

But this is a knee-jerk response.

While there is no question that the original rules would do a better job preventing the next 100-year flood in the banking system, their quick adoption most likely would have created their own drag on the economy because bank lending would most likely have been curtailed.

“If Basel had been implemented this year as written, it almost certainly would have thrown the U.S. and other economies into a recession more than going over the fiscal cliff ever would have,” John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a research organization promoting free markets, wrote. Mr. Berlau, who may have a penchant for hyperbole, had been calling the deadline the Basel cliff. He added, “Basel III has been delayed, and for Main Street growth and financial stability, that is all to the good.”

Mr. Berlau is right. In truth, the reason that regulators ultimately chose to relax the rules was simple practicality: many banks in Europe and some in the United States would have never been able to meet the requirements without significantly reducing the amount of credit they were to extend to Main Street over the next two years, according to people involved in the Basel decision process.

That’s the other side of the regulatory coin that Main Street often forgets about. At the time that the original rules were written in 2010, the consensus among economists was that the global economy would be in much better shape today than it is.

“Nobody set out to make it stronger or weaker, but to make it more realistic,” Mervyn A. King, governor of the Bank of England, explained.

Let’s be clear: high capital requirements are a good thing to do to reduce risk in the system. And there is no question that the banks, especially in the United States, are in a much stronger position than they were. Let’s also stipulate that the Basel committee did a horrible job before the financial crisis in setting and enforcing proper standards. Basel’s loosening of rules before the crisis that worsened the pain of the global banking system.

But the push for stricter rules just as the global economy is trying to nurse itself back to health, simply to satisfy the public, rather to find a solution that balances the risks to the economy and the banking system, would have been a mistake. The chances of a leverage-induced crisis from Wall Street banks right now is quite low.

The challenge for regulators is making sure their memories aren’t so short that they seek to scale back the rules again.

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This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 8, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the affiliation of John Berlau. He is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, not the Bastiat Institute.

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'Zero Dark Thirty' renews pressure on CIA over torture claims

WASHINGTON — Nearly a decade after the last Al Qaeda detainee was waterboarded, Americans still know little about what the CIA did to its prisoners, or whether it worked.

President Obama decided against an investigation to hold accountable George W. Bush administration and CIA officials who conceived and carried out what he and others believed were acts of torture. And a criminal investigation ended last year with no charges and no public report.

But now, a Hollywood movie has put renewed pressure on CIA officials to reveal whether simulated drowning and other harsh techniques elicited valuable intelligence, as the agency has long contended.

"Zero Dark Thirty," made by Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal after extensive consultation with CIA officers, is sparking a new quest for answers, in part because it suggests that torture by CIA officers was instrumental in pinpointing Osama bin Laden's hide-out in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

A senior CIA official on the short list to be the agency's next head, acting Director Michael Morell, has been caught in the maelstrom in a way that could complicate his bid for the job.

On Thursday, senators on the Intelligence Committee sent Morell a sharply worded letter demanding he explain his assertion in a Dec. 21 message to CIA employees that "some information" leading to the Al Qaeda chief "came from detainees subjected to enhanced techniques."

Democrats on the committee, who produced their own 6,000-page, still-secret report on the CIA interrogation program, contend the agency's records don't support that conclusion.

CIA officials and Washington politicians care so deeply about the movie's depiction because "Zero Dark Thirty" will influence how people understand the Bin Laden operation, said Tricia Jenkins, an assistant professor at Texas Christian University and author of "The CIA in Hollywood," an examination of the agency's role in shaping its image through film.

"The CIA has long said that most people in the general public get their information about the CIA and its activities from film and television," she said. "The film will be a key shaper of public opinion and historical memory about this event."

Both critics and defenders with knowledge of the CIA program say the movie's torture scenes are grossly inaccurate — a cartoonish depiction that bears little resemblance to reality.

But defenders endorse the film's suggestion that harsh techniques, such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation and slapping, yielded clues that helped the CIA find Bin Laden. They say detainees subject to duress offered information that helped the CIA track down Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, the Al Qaeda courier who was helping hide Bin Laden.

Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats, however, contend that no significant information about the courier came from detainees after they were subject to coercive techniques.

Morell was among several senior agency officials who consulted closely with Boal, the screenwriter, as he researched the project. He met with Boal for 40 minutes at CIA headquarters, records show. One email from a CIA public affairs officer says Boal "agreed to share scripts and details about the movie with us so we're absolutely comfortable with what he will be showing."

Yet CIA officials were troubled by some scenes in the movie, prompting Morell's message to employees that the film "takes significant artistic license." In the message, Morell repeated what has been the CIA line since Bin Laden was killed in May 2011 — that "enhanced interrogations" weren't key to finding the terrorist leader. But he also said the CIA learned about the courier in part from detainees who were roughed up.

In their letter, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) demand that Morell explain exactly what he meant. But Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the panel's ranking Republican, said in a statement that he was perplexed by his colleagues' concerns. "It is entertainment, not a documentary," he said. "What's next — a Senate inquiry of the Bourne trilogy or '24'?"

If Morell wants to be CIA director, however, he will need the support of the Intelligence Committee — particularly Feinstein. "This could really hurt his nomination process," said a congressional aide familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified to talk about internal discussions.

Morell is in a tough spot. He does not want to repudiate coercive interrogations entirely, because "it's a tool that you might want to use and you don't want to give it away," a former CIA officer said. And he doesn't want to impugn CIA employees who were involved.

Republicans on the committee believe coercive interrogations worked, a GOP aide said, and Morell might lose their support should he say otherwise.

What's not much in dispute is that, despite the aspirations of "Zero Dark Thirty" to accuracy, it gets the interrogation scenes wrong. Boal has responded that the film is not a documentary.

The film shows CIA officers in a Hollywood idea of a tough interrogation, beating a detainee in a decrepit building, making him wear a dog collar and, on the spur of the moment, deciding to waterboard him.

According to a 2004 CIA inspector general report and other sources, the program was more methodical, which is not to say any less brutal. Each harsh technique was approved by Justice Department lawyers and briefed at the highest levels of President Bush's White House.

Three detainees were waterboarded in 2002 and 2003. They were strapped to gurneys and their medical conditions monitored. No dog collars were used, former officers say.

The movie also errs when it shows a detainee who had been waterboarded giving information about Al-Kuwaiti. One of the three waterboarded, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the purported mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, discussed the courier, U.S. officials have said. He denied Al-Kuwaiti was an Al Qaeda member. CIA officers found this telling because other detainees said he had an important role.

Feinstein, McCain and Levin say the detainee who provided crucial information about the courier in 2004, identified by U.S. officials as Hassan Ghul, did so before he was subjected to coercive interrogation techniques. He was never waterboarded, officials have said.

Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, suggested one way to get at the truth would be for Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats to release their report.

"False claims about the interrogation program are dangerous," he said, "in large part because there is a vacuum where there ought to be a public record."

ken.dilanian@latimes.com

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