The Housing Bubble

Same in Missoula. Actually once you get on the bike, assuming you’re properly dressed, you don’t really even feel the cold. Just a little sting on your face.

Hard to carry lots of stuff from Wal Mart though.

“Hard to carry lots of stuff from Wal Mart though.”

That’s OK. Stuff’s too expensive these days, anyway.

Yes; so I say.
The nine-banded Armadillo is already well established in S/E Illinois with reports of them in S. Indiana and S. Nebraska.
But please, do not look it up for yourself; you might learn something.

Climate change or whatever it is, Armadillos are certainly making their trek up north as are fire ants.

I hit one with my car on the Interstate about a year ago (Eastern Kansas).

At least they are better than possums. Possums are just nasty.

I’m not saying Armadillos aren’t moving north. I know they’ve reached northern Kansas. However, to associate that directly with man-induced climate change is a red herring. Climate does change. This is normal. I’m tired of the Al Gore wannabes thinking that a) it is all the result of human activity and b) we have the resources to offset it to any significant degree. Many of the consequences of so-called “global warming” are feedback loops: you increase the surface temperature of the planet, you indeed get more evaporation from the oceans, likely producing more clouds and effectively lowering the surface temperature of areas with more cloudiness. Like I said before, I don’t pawn legal advice because I’m not qualified to do so, but I am a scientist by trade and have done plenty of research in this area.

I was driving up your way this weekend (Eureka CA). There are some people who just dont get it. RV-s the size of a greyhound bus towning a ford explorer. Ford F350 towing giant boat, and 2 ORVs in the pickup bed. Still lots of F350s, Hummers, Dakotas, RVs, Escalades, Expiditions; but maybe slightlly less than last year. I did notice about 10 full size pickups parked along the side of the road with For Sale signs.

I worry about human-induced climate change.

At the same time, I remember seeing (usually dead on the road) the occasional armadillo in KS while growing up there in the 50s and 60s.

David, what you’re noticing is indeed true. People in northwest California are a very strange breed indeed. And, the fact that housing prices are collapsing in the rest of the state and not here has only given the realtor crowd more ammunition to suggest this place will escape from the downturn. Just today, I saw a very nice ocean view house (1200 square feet) put on the market for $1,199,000. A check of Zillow confirms it was bought in the summer of 2000 for…$425,000. Denial runs very deep in coastal NW Cal.

I use a different “eff” word to describe those pointless, poserly behemoths and their ilk.

They love to tailgate my little car on the highway. I slow down so they are forced to pass. Then I wave at them and say: “See you at the pump!!”

Having taken more than a few physics classes, I don’t let them tailgate me. I do, however, like to use them as lead blockers when the traffic gets a bit sketchy. My stopping distance vs. theirs is no contest at all.

“use them as lead blockers”

See in Florida this doesn’t work. If you are following at a safe distance, that means at least 4 cars can fit, and 5 will try…

RE: I do, however, like to use them as lead blockers when the traffic gets a bit sketchy. My stopping distance vs. theirs is no contest at all.

I detest the MF’s, especially the big pigs, like the Excusions, Tahoes, and Escalades.

The are a safety menace by blocking your vision of what’s going on ahead and blinding you at night with their head light height.

Anybody notice that the driver’s are usually “big pigs” themselves? They must buy these things because they are the only motor vehicles equipped with appropriate weight ratings and safety belts which fit.

It’s funny that they had to put those little steps in the large SUVs because the fatties had trouble getting in.

Now what Detroit needs is to design them with a side lift so that the drivers can pilot their little motorized wheelchairs right into driving position.

That modification will be a big hit with the “disability” crowd. You know the ones - 45-50 y.o. and can’t move under their own power anymore.

As far as tailgating goes, I do it sometimes in back of tractor trailers on the highways. The drafting effect helps save on gas. I was getting about an extra 5 mpg on a long stretch of the interstate.

If you count elevators, escalators and the like as motorized too, what fraction of 45-50 yo can move under their own power any more?

And the Good part is i almost ran over a mother and child the other day while she was talking on the phone and darted out past the parked tahoe when i had the green light.

But did i yell at her and used more 4 letter words then i have in the past month… “get off the GD phone you MORON, How dare you act like a stupid MF parent putting your kid in harms way……get off the GD phone bitttch!

—————————————–
I detest the MF’s, especially the big pigs, like the Excusions, Tahoes, and Escalades.

I am counting the days until CA’s new hands-free law takes effect. I sincerely hope the CHP is in full revenue generation mode come July 1. The monstrous Earthfookers are dangerous enough as built without being piloted by some halfwitted dolt who is intently yakking away on a cell phone with left elbow propped on the window ledge, right hand holding a Double-Double, right foot all the way on the gas, and left knee wedged against the steering wheel.

It is so true . . . I don’t know why, but its always the people in SUVs that are gabbing on the phone and driving poorly. They go slow, swerve, block your vision, etc. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt . . . they are looking for their turn, etc., but a lot of the time, when I finally pass them, I realize that they are just chatting away on the phone . . . just barely oblivious to their driving! This is supposed to be illegal in CA on July 1, so I hope it actually has an effect.

Also: it is both male and female, both young and old. A very cool looking young dude — must have been chatting with his girlfriend, was driving real slow ahead of me, and for some reason had to do this while leaning way over to the side, towards the phone, away from the wheel . . . it looked real funny from behind.

I have a theory about people who drive large vehicles. They are people want to feel safe, so they buy these huge SUVs as their personal safety devices and think that if they hit anything or anything hits them, they at least will be safe because they are in the bigger, heavier vehicle. This gives them an invincibility complex and makes them even worse drivers. As for what will happen to the poor sap they run into with their huge vehicle and poor driving skills, well that’s not their problem.

“I have a theory about people who drive large vehicles. They are people want to feel safe, so they buy these huge SUVs as their personal safety devices and think that if they hit anything or anything hits them, they at least will be safe because they are in the bigger, heavier vehicle.”

And they are the same crowd who think they need Brinks “home security”, sidearms hidden in in every room, OnStar and yammer on and on how they need to be protected from media and whitehouse induced hob goblin.

“That’s not their problem”

Sums up the whole culture for many years now: take what you can and to h*ck with everyone else.

As far as tailgating goes, I do it sometimes in back of tractor trailers on the highways. The drafting effect helps save on gas. I was getting about an extra 5 mpg on a long stretch of the interstate.

I have done that too but some truckers don’t like it. One swerved repeatedly into the shoulder to try and spray me with gravel. It seemed like the aerodynamics on my 81 grand prix were especially good at creating a strong updraft over the roof causing most bugs, rocks, gravel, etc to miss the windshield.

“want to feel safe, so they buy these huge SUVs as their personal safety devices and think that if they hit anything or anything hits them, they at least will be safe because they are in the bigger, heavier vehicle. This gives them an invincibility complex and makes them even worse drivers. As for what will happen to the poor sap they run into with their huge vehicle and poor driving skills, well that’s not their problem.”

What’s truly ironic is that a) the iron pigs are more likely to be involved in an accident in the first place (higher center of gravity + more weight + generally sloppier handling than even your most basic sedan-o-box = craptacular hazard avoidance) and b) they don’t really do that great a job of protecting their occupants in the event of a crash (most domestic EFs are still based on pickup truck frames that lack crumple zones and reinforced passenger compartments).

Only thing worse than an invincibility complex is a completely illogical invincibility complex.

Yes, I asked this fellow many years ago: why do you own a big SUV, and he says ‘because my wife is a really bad driver’.

“want to feel afe…”

When I was in Sydney (Australia), the common term there was “bloody Volvo driver!” because as I later found out, the ones who couldn’t drive worth a damn went out and at least bought the safest car they could find — a Volvo. Or bought their wife one.

I thought it was a baseless stereotype at first, but living near a day care center with all the dropoffs in the morning made it very obvious. I guess here in the USA the equivalent at the time was “minivan driver” and now it’s “SUV driver”. And yeah, same type of careless, blundering idiot, just a different vehicle.

Funny thing is, I didn’t see quite as much of that in my time in Europe. Maybe those tight city roads and Autobahns weeded them out.

Oh, it’s totally true NoVa. If I see a Volvo ahead of me I get past it as fast as possible, because most people who drive them seem to be almost lethally un-talented when it comes to driving.

THat’s funny because the only really near-death experience was in a Volvo, when my band was coming home from a job way out of town and the thing spun out on an icy road and rolled backwards into the borrow pit. We had all been yakking, and as we spun the driver-dope-bass player said “sorry, guys!”

We were able to push and launch it back onto the highway. But yeah, shitty driver, going too fast, thinks the car will take care of it for him.

RE: They are people want to feel safe, so they buy these huge SUVs as their personal safety devices and think that if they hit anything or anything hits them, they at least will be safe because they are in the bigger, heavier vehicle.

LMAO!

Yeah they want to stay safe…while at the same time they’re at the Burgher King drive-thru window ordering a few Triple Bacon Whoppers (AND SUPERSIZE THOSE FRIES & THAT DIET COKE WILL YA?) clogging up them heart arteries and sending their cholesterol levels into the stratosphere.

Whatta bunch of maroons.

Driving while celling has been illegal on Long Island for a couple of years, hasn’t stopped them from doing it.

RE: she was filling the back with toilet pare she just purchased.

Now she’s what you call a prepared SURVIVALIST!

She’ll definitely be able to spare a square!

states are simply raising tax ??

Yes…And they are doing it in niche area’s of least resistance….ala; Beer tax, car repair service tax, cigarette tax, fishing & hunting lic. fees, boat sales excise tax…

Driving on the 5 freeway from the SFV to the bottom of the grapevine, I saw 9 cars stopped by CHP for moving violations…

I wonder if officers are equiped with ATMs in their patrol cars yet?

I’ve noted an increase in the number of CHP sightings on San Diego area freeways. Been painted with LIDAR twice in the past three weeks (both times emerging unscathed).

Government budget crunch = raise revenue however you can. I was discussing the new cell phone law with some coworkers who believed it would be a non-issue (”like the CHP doesn’t have better things to do than pull people over for talking on the phone?”). I bet that just the opposite occurs. Many many people who use their cell phones while driving in the coming month will be making a special donation toward alleviating the state’s deficit problem.

70s back with a vengeance, baby.

The last few times I’ve been clothes browsing, I feel like I’ve stepped back in time 30 years. No sooner had I mentioned it to my companion, when a sistah came through the store sporting a “natural”.

I’m upset I didn’t save my platform shoes and gypsy shirts. Although my hairdresser and I are conspiring to grow/cut my hair into a long shag. Might as well roll with it…

Well they’ve already done a remake of Cattlecar Ponderosa, er, Battlestar Galactica.

RE: 70s back with a vengeance, baby.

Yup, it’s back to ‘73/74 again.

Energy prices blasting thru the roof, a non-existent job market, and a war that’s not being paid for.

And to add to the mix this time around, is the exploding welfare tab for the millions of illegals, and assorted other deadbeat non-producers who weren’t around 3 decades ago.

Monster inflation is baked into this pie.

Gonna be interesting when all the Gen XYZ’ers get to see a 21% prime rate and 16% mortgage interest rates.

LMAO…And O’ Bama Boy will be the next Jimi Carter

Lordy, lordy, lordy…We are in it up to our wazoo’s.

“Energy prices blasting thru the roof, a non-existent job market, and a war that’s not being paid for.

Monster inflation is baked into this pie.”

Grand Slam!

HD…That post hit a nerve here….

Eerily similar but much scarier this time due to the low interest rate leverage in place…A spike in interest rates like we saw in 81 would half the valuations of bond holders (China ?)….I hope it does not happen…You had to go through it to understand just how much fear there was…Lots of sleepless nights for scdave worrying about the family…

RE: You had to go through it to understand just how much fear there was…Lots of sleepless nights for scdave worrying about the family…

Yup, SCDave…

‘72 thru ‘82 was a brutal decade. Suck cars, bad music, high gas (if you could find it), double digit inflation, absurb interest rates. Only those who were around can understand.

Damn scary times.

But at least the country was still making stuff back then.
It was the ‘90/’91 recession which took out all the shoe shops, Hathaway Shirt, and other light manufacturers.

Even the toothpick mfg.’er in biz for over 100 years went down the crapper!

3 decades later we’re in exactly the same mess only 10x worse. This time it isn’t gonna be some piddly shoe manufacturer in ME goin’ down-it’ll be the airlines and Big 3.

But as the saying goes, those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.

I can see that in Cali but they seem stupid in MT. Cathedral ceilings, alive with fans to drive the heat back down to earth…

“18′ ceilings– as pretentious as they may seem– DO serve to draw off heat from downstairs rooms in the summer and collect it upstairs in the winter, thus saving on heating and cooling costs.?

You are looking at it the wrong way.
In the winter you are paying to heat an extra 9 feet.
In the summer you are paying to cool an extra 9 feet.
Plus due to the slope of the ceiling the air does not move aswell as a flat ceiling. You need the movement of heated or cooled air to make the effect efficient.

“But a point was reached where requests were turned down.. couldnt even get a secured credit card from his own bank, in which he had lots of cash.”

The opening scene in Requiem for a Dream has a drug addled teenager threatening his mother for the key to the TV set she had to chain to the wall because her loser son would cart it away to the pawn shop for drug money.

Here’s my favorite chicken-or-egg conversation starter.

If you look at a chart showing the percentage of women entering the workforce, the steepest rise occurred during the 1970’s. That’s also when we had an extended period of really high inflation.

So, did the high inflation force women into the workforce, or did women entering the workforce cause that inflationary period? (Due to greater household income chasing the same amount of goods and services)

Most economists will blame the former. I believe it was the latter.

Of course, and going off the gold standard, and printing money to pay off the debt had nothing to do with it.

Must’ve been the women.

“Of course, and going off the gold standard, and printing money to pay off the debt had nothing to do with it.”

No. It was Roe Vs. Wade! Just kidding…but a few weeks back someone actually tried to pin our emergent culture of inflation and debt in the 70’s on R Vs W. Amazing.

WTF?!?

Inflation (and deflation) are monetary phenomenon.

Working women, floods, rice harvests, tsunamis, mass murder, the Rapture, new gold being mined — none of these has any consequence on a purely monetary phenomenon.

Chicken and egg does not make sense at all.

If a bunch of additional labor force entered the market place it would press wages down.

James, please don’t argue Econ 101 to someone whose mind is already made up with a pre-determined answer.

Arguing reason? What are you, a commie?

yeah, and the oil embargo and financing a war had nothing to do with it…nada. It was all them womens fault, pushing them prices up and all…. But you are right Faster when people get their head out of their a** maybe they can see some light.

Working class women had been working all along: the ratios on women in the workforce for the 50’s are surprisingly high.

The magical notion that women should stay at home and consume rather than work and produce started being eroded after WWI, not in the 70’s.

The 70’s brought the idea that women should be paid at the same level as men, which was brand new.

did women entering the workforce cause that inflationary period? (Due to greater household income chasing the same amount of goods and services)

But the extra workers were producing more goods and services too. Labor force increase is not inflationary. Quite the contrary, it puts downward pressure on wages if demand for labor does not keep up with supply.

jrochest,

Right arm.

The “sudden flood” of women entering the 70’s workforce was a demographic tsunami (graduating baby boomers,) demanding equal pay for equal work, and more importantly, access to higher paying jobs that had (in peacetime economies, at least,) gone almost exclusively to males. Many of us would have preferred not to, but as now, it was not possible to support a household on one, (or two, or three or more–hence communes,) paycheck.

Recall that slightly over half of the baby boom were FEMALE– who had to eat, too.

As you rightly note, women worked for wages in significant proportion during the 40’s, 50’s, and 60’s. They did not, however, seriously compete economically (work for salaries,) until our reproductive tracts came reliably and accessibly under our own technological control circa 1967-68.

Actually, I have read several articles where the issue isn’t so much one about equity but about people choosing to be current with their CC because they use it to support their day-to-day life so much and that the house is less of a priority since the CC is paying for their food, kid junk, lifestyle choices, gas, etc…

support their day-to-day life

yeah.. that was my impression as well.
I guess that people just can’t keep enough cash available to pay for daily living expenses in between paychecks… Write a check and the chances are 50/50 it’ll bounce.

Add in the fact that banks are taking longer and longer (some reports have folks living in homes they haven’t paid on for almost two years now) to foreclose and it doesn’t make any sense to keep paying the mortgage in lieu of CC debt. Hell, keep the CC current and utilities current and I won’t be surprised to learn of folks living in their homes for 4-5 years free of charge at some point in the future. The banks are overwhelmed and not in a hurry to book losses.

When a homeowner has some equity, a bankruptcy procedure does not typically forgive any mortgage debt. You get to keep the equity in your home so long as you are still current with your mortgagee. Have posted before, a great many of my mortgage clients have gone through bankruptcy but have excluded their mortgage debt from the bankruptcy proceeding. Usually they are trying to get out of medical debt or CC debt or some combo thereof. They go right on making their payments to me, and the only way I know of their troubles is through the notices I get from the BK court (to which I react by asking mortgagors to send me letters affirming their intent to exclude the RE from the BK process).

I think it will be over in the next couple of years. Its still going for now as the 3% FHA loans are still humming.

Not to mention we will probably get most/all of our Army guys home soon. They might get VA loans.

RE: Not to mention we will probably get most/all of our Army guys home soon. They might get VA loans.

They’ll wish they were all back in Iraq because you’re gonna see some massive military downsizing when the roller bearings finally burn out on the Federal fiat currency printing presses.

“one year seems to be a more palatable number, and I figure I can keep extending as long as needed”

Ditto here. I think DH would s@#t a brick if he knew we’ll be renting for two more years. Fact is, this area has spent two years in the denial phase and there are three more phases between denial and acceptance.

Or Jesse Livermore.

Or Jesse Livermore.

All cash, all the time. Watch the tape, and trade accordingly.

He also correctly anticipated what is now being “discovered” as “behavioral economics”. He states every single phenomenon concisely and correctly.

Great speculator, great book.

What book ??

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefèvre.

Lefèvre was a journalist, but everyone “knew then” and “knows now” that the stock operator in the book, Larry Livingston, was a barely veiled version of Jesse Livermore.

The book was written in 1923, and hence ends there.

Livermore’s own life after that had more than its share of ups and downs (to put it mildly.) He purportedly made $100M in the 1929 crash, and subsequently lost it all. In 1940, he committed suicide.

Livermore died a pauper, or damn close to it.

Actually, he left something like $5M in various assorted blind trusts, cash accounts, etc. This is not an insignificant amount in 1940.

He didn’t kill himself because he was a pauper.

He was, what we would call clinically depressed most of his life, and his note made clear that he killed himself because he had lost his “trading mojo” (to use a neologism), and he felt himself to be a “failure”.

Livermore became rich because:

#1. He did his own homework, and

#2. He allowed the Market to show him the way it wanted to go.

He went broke several times because he went counter to #2.

Ah, I remember reading that he died without much money, but maybe that was actually “he died with barely any money … compared to the money he used to have.”

That isn’t the point. The problem with the statistics is that they are measured differently in different countries, so saying we’re #37 based on fifty different sets of books is absurd. We count as hospital-related deaths WAY more deaths than other countries do.

If the exact same criteria are applied to all healthcare systems survyed, with all subjective nonsense deleted, we do not rank 37th; we rank #1 in hospital survival rates.

I’ve always been in favor of National Health Care, and am not trying to argue against it.

No, I haven’t, but thanks for alerting me to it. Looks good. Very good, in fact.

Which makes me wonder how much longer M$ will be able to get away with this malarkey.

Word in the nerd business is that Microsoft is now incapable of creating a new or upgraded operating system (after Vista) because of its internal corporate culture.

They’ve just become too big, too many managers, too many fragmented development teams, too much entrenched technology that even their top programmers don’t really understand anymore, poor communication and internal documentation.

The speculation is that Vista is MS’s last new OS, and I kinda believe it. I’m in a computer-heavy industry, and nobody I know uses it. Everyone buys their Dells with XP only and are keeping it that way, because Vista is a proven productivity and IT staff killer in enterprise situations.

Not true. They have Windows 7 in development due for release in 2010.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7

Of course they have it in development. They have to have something in development, they’re a giant corporation. But the scuttlebutt is that there really won’t be anything new in it, it will just look a bit different. They simply can’t innovate.

The only reason Vista’s seeing anything in the way of sales is that it’s OEM on every major PC delivered. Hardly anyone is going out to buy it.

Until they were able to get Dell to go back to pre-installing XP on all our boxes, our IT guys would simply wipe every new box’s hard drive and install XP. They’re accumulating quite a pile of Vista OEM install discs in a crate in the equipment room, because they still come with the PCs anyway.

I’m pretty sure that in 2010, most users still be using XP. I know I will be, right here on my Intel Mac.

About as long as it takes for Apple to push hard into the sub $1000 Macbook and iMac. The demand for Wintel from corporations and consumers is primarily sub-$1000 these days and Apple products are notoriously pricey. They have some inertia with the move to an x86 hardware platform and MS’s Vista mistakes, so we’ll see if they capitalize on it.

It also helps that you can now run most Windows programs via virtualization… no need to buy new software when you make the shift to OSX.

LOL!! It’s just money, anyway, right? Here today, gone tomorrow.

Whoops, here today, gone today I meant to say.

I bought a Smith & Wesson 1911PD .45 and it kicks like a mule!

How was the wedding?

9-11 is a very interesting case study in massive group psychology. People who loathe Bush and question his motives for most everything flat out refuse to question the official version of the 9-11 story created by the Government.

I’m not trying to start a topic about 9-11 just trying to say that people ideologies and ideas about their world are so firmly entrenched that to begin to think that the Government could possibly have had any complicity into those events would flat out ruin everything they hold dear about America. I hope they’re right.

The 9/11 “Truth Movement” is anything but. It’s crackpot pseudoscience combined with political fanaticism, and the deliberate manipulation of facts, figures, quotations, video footage, and on and on. It’s making its luminaries wealthy, however.

http://www.debunking911.com/links.htm

I don’t trust the Government about anything, but believing a half million people could be involved in a conspiracy (and keeping mum) is more ridiculous than praying to a rock.

http://www.debunking911.com/massivect.htm

What’s “firmly entrenched” is the sight of a plane flying into a friggin building during the Today Show.

I believ the complicity goes back to the soviets in Afganistan. During that war, the US was supporting the insurgents against the soviets. Osama Bin Laden was one of the insurgents on our payroll. When the soviets pulled out, we left the country to tatal chaos. No economic aid to rebuild from the US…the taliban took over and we were blamed for their plight. So, what goes round comes round. It was all about giving the soviets their own Vietnam…

Not exactly.

Since the 1800s, the Russians had been on a major expansionist drive. Several times they had tried to invade and capture territories in Afghanistan, Iran and even as far as Tibet and India. Britain’s interests in India led them to repulse the Russian land grabs time and again. This was called the Great Game.

The Soviet foray into Afghanistan in 1979 was just the latest attempt to capture that area. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arab states contributed $600M a year to the resistance, about the same as the US. But while the Saudi aid concentrated on Islamic fighters (the precursors to Taliban and Al-Quaeda), the US concentrated support on Massoud, the leader of the Northern Alliance. (Who was later killed by Al-Quaeda 2 days before 9/11.)

To repeat: the Taliban were created and funded by the Arab States in order to turn Afghanistan into an Islamic State. The Al Quaeda attacks were not an example of biting the hand that feeds you.

The Soviet invasion led to 1M Afghans dead and 1.2M disabled and the subsequent power vacuum. To blame the US for the anarchy that followed is like blaming the treating doctor for the patient’s recovery from a car wreck. All blame rests with the Soviets for going in and massacring Afghans and destroying the Afghan state.

To suggest that the US deserved the Taliban and Al-Quaeda reaction is also ignoring history. The US never funded them: the Arab states did. The US strived to kick out the Taliban in favor of the more moderate Northern Alliance. That is, in fact, one of the major reasons for Al-Quaeda attacks on the US including 9/11. While the US military presence in Saudi Arabia very much bothered staunch Muslims, to a military group like the Taliban and Al-Quaeda, what mattered most was the US support for their real enemies - the Northern Alliance. The Northern Alliance was a very effective fighting group and was getting close to overthrowing the Taliban and kicking out Al-Quaeda.

A clear reading of history will show you that Afghanistan was the site of 2 proxy battles involving the US. The first, a Soviet-US battle. And the second, a Saudi-US battle. A lot of energy has gone into hiding the full extent of Saudi complicity in and funding for anti-US military actions (aka terrorism).

“is more ridiculous than praying to a rock.”

Hey, you dissin’ my tribe?

Ill-informed and entrenched, guys. Not good. Not good at all.

For scholarly research without editorial conclusions:

9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism. ISBN#1-56656-596-0

-Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed/Institute of Policy Studies at Brighton

Hey, I was born in that hospital, hope it makes it. I understand the paper mill (finch & pryne?) was purchased or closed recently, any truth to that rumor? It sounds like upstate NY is entering a world of hurt.

Cmon auger… It’s been in a world of hurt for 30 years. Since the strike at Finch, it is nothing more than a shell of its former self. IP Corinth shutdown in 2002 but the Ti mill is still operating. Look…… I’ve said it a hundred times here….. the housing bubble in northern new england/upstate NY was merely a brief reprieve from the long term economic decline. The natives won’t let go of the housing bubble until every last square inch of skin has been abraded from their bodies.

I warn them to let go or be dragged but they don’t listen.

He he, I moved from that area in 65 when I was 8, I don’t have much contact with that area except for I occasionally roll by the old house every 10 years or so. Here’s what I can tell you though. My dad bought a small house,900 sqft, and finished off the attic and built on an additional 400 sqft or so before we moved. He sold it for what he had into it, which was about 7-8K or so in 65. I zillowed it and saw that it sold for 165K in 2005. This is in So. Glens Falls. Totally nuts.

“This is in So. Glens Falls. Totally nuts.”

165k in SGF is completely unimaginable even in 2003. I’d wager 40k would have been the price in 2000.

But my realtor said this market is different and housing prices wont get any lower because . . . You may know a lot about national real estate trends but this place is unique.

I should add my mom and sister told me that regarding Carroll County, Maryland (Westminster area), about 2 years ago. Last time I looked, Carroll County was leading Maryland as the number one decliner. Real freaking special over-priced exurb.

Meh. Don’t be so hard on yourself, PB, Tim, etc.

But be sure to make the nyaah-nyaah-nyaah-naaa dance with the fingers and wagging side to side after you do the I-told-you-so routine.

That, and a no bailouts policy does wonders for your relatives.

“At least they aren’t your relatives (the sign of a true HBB failure is when your relatives ignore your sage advice ).”

I wouldn’t feel so bad about that Professor. My sibs would jump off that bridge simply BECAUSE I suggested it was not wise to. :0

Ah man, I must be the king of failed HBB’ers. My relatives didn’t listen, my friends didn’t listen, my co-workers didn’t listen - nobody listened.

All I can say is the Kool-Aid is potent, my friends.

I’m situated anywhere I want - all over. I’m doing a biological survey of the area, amongst other things. I’m thrilled to be there.

He’s not making a prediction. He’s stating what he claims to be a current fact, which I know is BS.

Statements about the future (”going to”) are predictions, not facts.

Facts relate only to the present (”is”) and past (”was”).

What hasn’t been determined was the amount of cash that changed hands. Unless they’re willing to sacrifice their own, we’ll never know.

So you were bullsh*ting.

Fact is still a fact regardless if one believes it to be truth.

right, Blano

You’ve never been more dead on Blano.

Yeah, and you don’t want a situation where the bondholders can effectively be elbowed out by the shareholders in court.

That is a lot trickier, and I’m not a lawyer.

I can’t remember the last time I saw that happen.

Could it be those below-market discount window loan rates that are fouling up the LIBOR’s ability to gauge the degree of credit tightness?

If the central banks change the rules each time LIBOR tightens, it’s hard to tell.

However, if you talk to the traders, it’s pretty freakin’ obvious.

How many acronyms are we at now? I’ve lost track.

All I know is that the Fed seems to have trashed half its balance sheet, and the credit tightening is nowhere near its end.

hmm.. zero google hits on “zoometric” but a ton of google/images of geodesic homes.

interesting history on the house.. Well, if theres a lot of windows it’s going to cost real money. Off the top of my head i’ll guess each window will cost upwards of $250.

If it were me and i’d already done extensive work on the house, (have tools and skills) i might buy one shutter, reverse-engineer it and build them myself.. But i’m a real cheapskate and get a kick out of doing things like that, even if it takes forever.

another thing is interior insulated shades and shutters… verticle or horizontal slats, different R values, etc etc.. but they offer no storm protection and are not likely to be any less expensive.

good luck with it.

Hmm. Thanks for the astute comment and for the wisdom of the bimbo supermodel (we so seldom get to benefit from such).