The Housing Bubble

so I take it you would have raised your hand on the CME floor then?

so I take it you would have raised your hand on the CME floor then?

Unlike Lil’ Ricky, I would’ve disparaged the 10x larger (and counting) giveaway to financial institutions as well.

What would his asshat trader glee club think about that? They’re different, right? Special? A superior breed of man? More deserving than the little guy? The very glue that holds our society together?

That’s what bothers me about all this Santelli hoohah, the rank hypocrisy in the good ol’ boy finance club.

To clarify, I thought cashed05 was saying I was outraged about Mr. Santelli’s statements on Liddy’s show (which I’m not, just amused), not Mr. Santelli’s rant (which doesn’t outrage me either, even though I thought it was grandstanding BS), or the premise that the pay out for homeowners is wrong (which I agree with in principle).

I think you’re rankled by the criticism of Obama and his bailout plan. Save your ammo there’s more to come.

… the pay out for homeowners is wrong (which I agree with in principle) …

Um, I agree that the payout itself is wrong in principle, not that I like the payout. Perhaps unclear.

Whew.

Enough about me …

The distinction is In a capitalism the sheeple are fleeced willingly; in a socialism it is unwillingly. Nationalization of banks, bailouts, stimulus etc. are the latter - the fleecing is forced on us by taxes and inflation. The money is not given willingly. So no - this is not capitalism.

The willingness or unwillingness of an individual to be fleeced has nothing to do with the issue, nor are the policies in question designed to protect an individual, other than as a side effect.

Corporate entities have decided for us what the outcome will be, protecting themselves from the pitfalls of the system they pretend to embrace. When the danger is over, the corporate entities will assert themselves once again. Thus (faux) capitalism — or, more accurately, a failure of capitalism — not socialism.

I would agree that it’s faux capitalism, but I would disagree that it’s not socialism. Let’s call it “corporate socialism” vs. “government socialism”. Either way the PTB call the shots and force the losses to be socialized to all of society, rather than just to those that were willing to put their skin into the money risk game. The only difference between the two (”corporate socialism” vs. “government socialism”) is whether the PTB are officially government employees or not. These days there’s enough swapping of employees between the two that it matters virtually not.

“Corporate socialism”???

Talk about Orwellian.

It’s corporatism, fascism’s BFF. I think the bankers set their sights on the social security trust fund back when W was in office and once it became apparent that that wasn’t going to happen, they devised another way to loot our treasury.

are we still running around in circles with this capitalism v. socialism debate? why bother? capitalism is an always receding mirage.

I guess I don’t get the tragedy of a local bank shutting down. You should be glad it’s shut if it’s being run so ineffectively. It only got itself into trouble, and only has itself to blame.

“That’s Charlie’s point”
“Charlie don’t surf……”

Willard: They told me.. That you had gone totally insane..and uh.. that your methods were unsound.
Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?
Willard: I don’t see..any..method…at all, sir.

And that is the goal.

“Free” houses for the sheeple, paid for by the prudent.

Is someone knocking at your door?

*assumes sinister and creaky sort of evil whisper *

If not right now, they will be sooooooooon…

I had a knock over the weekend, but it was just a Girl Scout selling Girl Scout cookies …….or so she said.

Maybe I’d better take a closer look at those Thin Mints……

RE: it was just a Girl Scout selling Girl Scout cookies …….or so she said.

The MSM nightly ditz news ran a blurb about how the tight times were affecting girl scout cookie sales.

The reporter interviewed a cute-as-button little 6 year old, who could not understand why the doors were being shut in her face.

Man, ya gotta be some cold not to pony up a ten spot for the Girl Scouts.

‘I had a knock over the weekend, but it was just a Girl Scout selling Girl Scout cookies …….or so she said.’

What’d you do with the Girl Scout? I bet that WAS no Girl Scout! It was a cleverly disguised alien!

I bet that WAS no Girl Scout! When you see a green beret, make sure there’s no 5 o’clock shadow.

Lordy, have you looked at the contents of a Girl Scout Expensive Cookie pack lately ? There’s like 7 cookies in there. Well, maybe a few more than that, but not many.

You got that right, buddyboy.

I have to admit I love the potato chips. Salt n Vinegar and Ruffle has ridges are a couple of my favorite.

Not much of a beer drinker. Just never developed a taste for it. I do like my Baileys, Kahlua and wine.

Doesn’t matter, he signed up for the job, it’s his economy now. No one forced him to come up with a $900 Billion stimulus plan that doesn’t stimulate anything, or a $275 billion housing bailout plan that rewards bad behavior. The market obviously isn’t impressed with his decisions so far, it can tell he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Maybe we should have elected someone with experience beyond community organizer and voting “present” in the Senate.

To the extent that the stimulus is encouraging new business and not propping up failed old ones, I actually think it’s a good idea.

Saying that the stimulus “does nothing” is pure political posturing and hypocrisy from the supposedly fiscally conservative party that had no problem spending and borrowing more than all the preceding administrations combined…on nothing useful.

The market isn’t impressed? Are you serious? The same boneheads that got us INTO this mess?

Who the f*”k cares what they think?! They are about to find out they are NOT the center of the universe.

Oh I forgot, Obama is the center of the universe. Since we don’t need the markets anymore, when is he going to wave his magic wand and fix everything? I don’t want to miss it.

Great posts SFC! Too bad some of the locals are still guilt-laden blind faith OBammy worshipers. They still do not see the ineptitude that is becoming more clear in Bammy the clown. Too much glare manufactured by the MSM who gave him God-like status.

How long has he been in the Senate?

You must leave the “I hate Bush” echo chamber at some point DD. Even my curiosity isn’t strong enough to ask what twisted logic paths you could possible have pursued to come to a conclusion like that with Pelosi and Reid the two majority leaders. I think my brain might explode.

Righhhhhht. A Democratically controlled congress that is terrible is REALLY a Republican congress. Well they’re still terrible, so are you saying the Republicans are still in control? Someone should tell Nancy Pelosi to start packing. And that guy making all those horrible decisions for the past month is a Republican lookalike posing as Barack Obama? The real Obama couldn’t possibly be this bad.

RE: You must leave the “I hate Bush” echo chamber at some point DD.

The “Dirty 25″…cast your vote today!

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1877351_1877350_1877339,00.html

“Leave the hate Bush echo chamber?”

That assh0le and the Repub controlled congress of the last 10 years has damn near destroyed this country.

You may love the traitor if you like, but the rest of will never forget who is really to blame and NEVER let anyone else forget.

As for the Dems of the last 2 years, they never had a majority. The best they could do was cause gridlock which helped to at least stop the bleeding.

Phil Gramm - REPUBLICAN

As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee from 1995 through 2000, Gramm was Washington’s most prominent and outspoken champion of financial deregulation. He played a leading role in writing and pushing through Congress the 1999 repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which separated commercial banks from Wall Street. He also inserted a key provision into the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act that exempted over-the-counter derivatives like credit-default swaps from regulation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Credit-default swaps took down AIG, which has cost the U.S. $150 billion thus far.

Phil Gramm got the government off of the financial sector’s backs. Greenspan praised their “innovations” and did more of the same. Bush underfunded regulatory agencies to the point that FEMA became a joke by the time Katrina hit. Paulson orchestrated a number of costly misadventures in the name of saving our financial system. That money was already spent long before it was clear that Obama would ever take office.

These four Republican musketeers keep getting missed by our omniscient right-leaning partisans as they dredge up their usual bogeymen. I’m thinking they were the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

I think they need jobs first.

That was one fun movie.

Assuming you meant “global thermonuclear war” here.

Gotta love a blog where that many people get the War Games reference that quickly. You guys are awsome.

I only got it cos The Husband has the T-Shirt, with the lovingly hand-drawn 1982 graphics.

‘No I’m not a ST nerd.’

I am. I have a plastic ‘Data’ doll on my desk. I mean, I can’t see it this instant, but it’s here, somewhere. I used to lick it every now and then, for good luck.

Interesting. Is it “fully functional”?

Oh, if only! I’d be a lot more diligent about when I arrived to work. Of course, the trade-off would be that the office would exist in even more of an uproar.

Okay, okay, I’ll admit it. I have a couple of ST posters, pewter models of the Enterprise, Klingon and Romulan ship. Deep Space Nine station ornament, Sisko ornament, OMG, I am a ST geek. I NEED TO GET A LIFE.

So if I borrow $100,000 from a line of credit at my bank and then immediately deposit it into my bank account at the same bank, am I well capitalized? I guess I am, but it still seems like I’m on the hook for $100,000. What are the banks on hook for?

Just asking, as it seem this is what certain banks are doing right now.

Well, the assets that the banks swapped with the fed are worthless. If the banks ever swap back then they are insolvent and get an FDIC bailout which equals printing money.

In this sense the Fed has created a situation it cannot get out of without monetizing those assets and making the increase in the monetary base permanent.

Well I guess the big banks aren’t on the hook for anything if you look at it closely enough. Without the lifeline from the FED many are essentially insolvent and the worst that may happen to them is some shareholder dilution. Pretty darn sickening if you ask me as too big to fail doesn’t play in my brain.

Does anyone have the metrics on the so-called stress test? I haven’t seen anything except for Geithner’s plan which stated that conservative estimates shouldn’t be used. Nary a number to be seen.

Yeah, BOHICA!

Prof, I am sure they have already made large contributions to Dodd and Frank. Perhaps they need to redouble their “efforts”…

Thats pretty generous. In the US unemployement is usually capped at $500 a week, and in some states is even less (as low as $300 a week).

Its always a fraction of what you were getting paid. Plus, if you get a severance package it counts against your unemployment. When I was laid off in 2001 I was eligible to collect UE for about 3 months. By that time I had already found a new job.

You can’t survive on your UE alone. You need savings to dip into, or absent that some low balance credit cards. I once met a guy (software engineer) who was unemployed for 18 months after he was laid off by a well known desktop publishing software vendor (his entire dept. was offshored to India). He ran up about 100K on his credit cards.

$214/week max in AZ

100K on credit cards in 18 months? Are you sure he didn’t have a balance on them already? ‘Cause that is one heck of a burn rate.

He was making about 100K per year before being laid off. He had a mortgage, car payments, etc. At 18 months that’s about 5k per month, a lot less than his former salary. He was in poor health, so I don’t know if he went with Cobra or just paid the doctor and pharmacy out of pocket. He had a house in Boulder, so I’m sure his mortgage payment wasn’t trivial. He did get his $400 per week UE for the first few months. He said his severance was a joke (4 weeks or so). So I could see him burning throught that much in over a year and a half.

4 weeks of severance a joke? Hah..I’d take that. I got to keep my laptop - that was it (going on 5 months unemployed now)

For TX, the cap of UE is just short of $400 ($380 I think). It helps, to be sure, but yes, without savings it’s hard to gear down from $100k/year to $1600/month.

When I was laid off in 2001 I got 20 weeks. For some reason the UE office here converted that into a 3 month wait.

Honestly, a lot of people in Mich/IL/Ohio have run thru their unemployment benefit elegibility periods, and due to the lack of jobs being available haven’t been able to become re-employed, and would kill to be living on $1600 a month right now.

Would I get to date the young, nubile Gina Davis or would it be the haggard older version?

‘Would I get to date the young, nubile Gina Davis or would it be the haggard older version?’

It wouldn’t matter for too long which version it was. Jeeze, man, don’t you recall that once he became fly-ized his body bits started to alla time pop off him in startling ways?

It wouldn’t matter for too long which version it was. Jeeze, man, don’t you recall that once he became fly-ized his body bits started to alla time pop off him in startling ways?

Well, yeah, but his menu options increased. And if women nowadays expect men to put up with gels and pouches injected into various places on the female body, surely they can put up with a few extra legs and a pair of wings.

Hmmmm. You gotta point…

Oh, but you know what, here’s a further complication I just thought of; either version of Gina David is a giantess, a lovely giantess, but still a giantess, and would probably squish your frogs and crumple your wings just on accident here and there when she rolled on ya. So bear that in mind, Mr-Big-Plans.

I’m buying Geena Davis circa 1988 in the bikini in Earth Girls Are Easy. Specific enough?

MrBubble

You have a positive attitude. I admire that.

No.

“He is advocating for a short term nationalization Is that like being a little bit pregnant?”

No. He’s advocating the Swedish approach of the early 90’s as have Roubini and others.

You missed that the smart guys get paid a lot even when the bets don’t work (though it is a lot less than if they do work - 2% of capital invested instead of both 2% of capital invested and 20% of profits).

And the less smart guys have to be very very rich, so the smart guys don’t have to comply with any nasty regulations. The assumption is that if the less smart guys are very rich, they are either smart enough or have hired people who are smart enough so that the really smart guys don’t completely take advantage of them.

Would you like to see this bridge I have for sale?

“The assumption is that if the less smart guys are very rich, they are either smart enough to have hired people who are smart enough so that the really smart guys don’t completely take advantage of them.”

So where does Madoff fit in this assumption?

His investors were rich enough to be allowed to invest in stuff not regulated by the SEC. I believe the term is “sophisticated” but I think the requirement is just that you have at least $1.5 million in investable assets. I don’t think personal residence(s) is/are included in the formula, but I could be wrong on that.

The kewl part for Madoff ( I pointed out to my husband that his name is really Made-Off - as in with other people’s money ) is that although he and his buds stole and hid billions, he’s still under house arrest in his townhouse in Manhattan instead of languishing in some moldy jail cell. Two investor billionaire suicides and $50Bn missing, and he’s in his town house ? I want some of that, minus the suicides. Seriously. It’s 4:53 a.m. and I’m ready to go to my (thank God I have it ) cubicle job. I think I make .000000001 percent of what he lost, or at least what his living room coffee table is worth.

What about the book value of liabilities? A stock could have a negative value if the share holders were individually liable for the debts of a company and the company could not use the government to discharge the debt and screw the creditors.

In my opinion, it would be very good for the market if owners of stock were liable for all debts of the company. This would force the stock price down very quickly for companies with too much debt and discourage management from taking on debt.

Don’t be caught “holding the bag” of a company that goes bankrupt!

it would be very good for the market if owners of stock were liable for all debts of the company You’re only asking for a complete revolution in corporate law. Might as well go back to the Gold Standard.

Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) — A global stock slump may have further to go, according to Tobin’s Q ratio, which compares the market value of companies to the cost of their constituent parts, CLSA Ltd. strategist Russell Napier said.

The ratio, developed in 1969 by Nobel Prize-winning economist James Tobin, shows the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index is still too expensive relative to the cost of replacing assets, said Napier. While the 39 percent drop in the index this year pushed equity prices below replacement cost, history suggests the ratio must sink further as deflation sets in, he said. The S&P may plunge another 55 percent to 400 by 2014, Napier said.

“The Q has come down to its average, however it’s not always stopped at the average,” said Napier, Institutional Investor’s top-ranked Asia strategist from 1997-1999. “It has tended to go significantly below that in long bear markets.”
…
The Q ratio on U.S. equities has dropped to 0.7 from a peak of 2.9 in 1999, and reaching 0.3 has always signaled the end of a bear market, said Napier, 44, the author of “Anatomy of the Bear,” a study of how business cycles change course. The Q ratio for U.S. equities has fluctuated between 0.3 and 3 in the past 130 years.

When the gauge is more than one, it indicates the market is overvaluing company assets, while a Q ratio of less than one signifies shares are undervalued because it is cheaper to buy companies than to build them from the ground up.
…
At the end of the four largest U.S. bear markets in 1921, 1932, 1949 and 1982, the Q ratio fell to 0.3 or lower, and history is likely to repeat, said Napier. From the 1982 trough, the S&P 500 grew more than 14-fold to the middle of 2000, when Napier says the last bull market ended.

Bloomberg: Q Ratio Signals ‘Horrific’ Market Bottom, CLSA Says

It’s about income generating ability or growth potential NOT book value. Many homes had 300K book values at the peak of the housing bubble but only 1K income generating ability. Hence, they were overpriced.

During hard times, a firms ability to generate income gets even tougher. Some firms are over-levered and can’t even generate enough income to cover total costs. Other firms have too much capacity for the recessionary environment and need to idle plant and equipment.

Book value don’t mean a damn thing if you can’t pay day to day bills with the asset.

Maybe I should have said “liquidation value”– hard assets (not stuff like goodwill, etc.) minus liabilities. And yes, I understand that the valuation of underlying assets is fluid, but still, it would be interesting to try to estimate. Someone must have done this for the S&P 500, maybe I’ll try to research it.

And VATechDan, you’re absolutely right:

“In my opinion, it would be very good for the market if owners of stock were liable for all debts of the company.”

Yes, this would be a revolution in corporate law, and a much needed one. It’s time people started looking at stock investing as a serious business, not a way to play craps with an artificial floor on losses.

You wouldn’t be able to raise capital, and you would have a version of the Lloyds “recruit to dilute” scandal.

Unliabilited liability is a free-call to action to absurd fraudulent schemes that would make the madcap Roaring 20’s and the current bubble look positively sane by comparison.

FPSS,
I think you are missing something critical by *assuming* that making owners who receive profits responsible for losses invites fraud. Just the opposite. Think of all the fraud that “investors” can commit knowing they are not liable for the losses their investments created? Any time your introduce government created entities to ‘limit liability’ you create moral hazard.

Imagine getting a bunch of friends together and you all put $1000 into a pot and hire a management firm to manage your assets and take huge risks (at your direction) by leveraging your assets 30 to 1. When your investments go well you keep the profits, if they fail then you only lost your $1000 and not held accountable for the loans that you technically own. It is like pointing a gun at the creditors and saying, sorry, we have this here “company” and that means you cannot come after us owners even though we are responsible for the losses!

Bottom line is that anytime government force is used shift liability you are creating massive problems. All government created entities (companies) create this moral hazard.

Tresho,
As a matter of fact, I think we should move forward to a market based money (probably gold or silver) with no “government enforced standard” . We didn’t leave the gold standard because it was bad, we left it because we defaulted on our debts! Leaving the gold standard kicked the can down the road by 80 years or so, ultimately the debt will be paid and society will be broke!

In effect, a companies credit rating should be related to the total credit of the share holders. This is how companies start. A young company seeking a loan gets it’s credit from the “share holders”. For some reason after a company gets “big enough” people (banks) want to give credit to a fictitious organization that is not backed by real people.

The managers of said fictitious organization have every incentive to load the company up with debt, profit in the short term, and then take the golden parashute when it comes crashing down.

I think you are missing something critical by *assuming* that making owners who receive profits responsible for losses invites fraud.

I am missing NOTHING. I gave a specific example: Lloyds of London.

It was the biggest scandal in the freakin’ world at the time. Hardly the first one either. The history of London is littered with these schemes. Why do you think they invented the concept of limited liability in the first place?

You’re the one lacking the historical clue.

Frauds can happen… but you fail to show cause and effect. How does increasing liability of share holders invite fraud? I guess management could sucker in some share holders and leave them holding the bag. This would involve fraud on the part of “management” and would be a result of share holders not doing due diligence. Either way the only thing limiting liability of share holders does is create moral hazard and remove responsibility from investing.

All you have done by supporting limited shareholder liability is shift the losses of fraud from shareholders to creditors. While both (shareholders and creditors) should do their due diligence, being a share holder you are more responsible for the actions of a company than being a creditor. Therefore, the shareholder should be the one responsible for the actions of the company and should be responsible for losses before the creditors are.

FPSS,

Given the number of corporate scandals in the last decade– most involving limited liability corps– you need a lot more than one data point to convince me that general partnerships are more prone to scandals than corporations.

Also, I never heard that limited liability was enacted to prevent scandals. The justifications I’ve seen are that it enables efficient capital raising and promotes economies of scale. Which, even if true, do not outweigh the social costs of creating large cartels with unlimited lobbying and litigating power, while giving shareholders an incentive to turn a blind eye towards business misconduct.

Are you familiar with the intermediate concept of “double liability”? Do you have links or anything further to back up your view of corporate history?

I have read that “limited liability” & the concept of incorporation have always been linked. One wasn’t invented to prevent scandals in the other. It makes no sense, there is no advantage, in incorporation when the stockholders/board members are all liable in the same way as if they were forming a partnership.
On the other hand, corporations can do an incredible amount of damage to society & to the world as a whole, as we are now experiencing.

Well, I say that ANYONE who EVER uses the phrase “new paradigm” should immediately be briskly b*tch-slapped silly. Just a straight, across the board rule. No exceptions.

Segway is currently headquartered in Bedford, NH. They were originally in Manchester, NH. Former neighbor worked there.

A working product that is currently (?) illegal to sell, because it doesn’t comply with various government regulation applying to motor vehicles.

I don’t follow Tesla too much. I have no plans to buy one, even if they manage to get them “affordable” (affordable = approx. $20-25K)

Nothing short of a German 88 will stop a horde after your hoard. Should you acquire a German 88, the next horde with show up with their horde of hoarded 88s.

Bingo, just like it is not just the supply of weed, but the FLOW of the weed that really matters.

The spice must flow.

–Dune–

Or in Oly’s case, the MUSHROOM must flow.

Weed……spice…….mushrooms…….sounds like a good time to me.

Same thing.

‘Or in Oly’s case, the MUSHROOM must flow.’

Yar. Absolutely.

Spice, weed, shrooms. Its all just a matter of perspective when you get right down to it.

Comer to think, some big ass sandworms might be just the thing to get rid of the ‘overhang’ in the Inland Empire

The spice will flow

‘Same thing.’

Nuh-UHH! Nohow. You’ve either partied waaaaay too much, or else not enough.

Shame on you. Managing a good financial system with minimal debt is un-American.

Energy consumption:

Train = 0.7 MJ Mg-1 km-1
Truck = 1.4 MJ Mg-1 km-1

(Borgesson, 1996)

Am long BNI. Do I wish that I had sold north of 100 so that I could re-buy now? Yes.

And tresho below, “The national consensus, however, seems to point at pouring more billions into auto & truck production & traffic”

Nobody has gotten the memo that we don’t want any of that crap anymore. Bunch of dingbats.

MrBubble

I’d like to invest in BNI down the road but they have a mountain of debt.

True. Bought my shares a long while back and it’s been forever since I checked out the financials. Weekend task #564.

I wouldn’t say that trucking ‘out-competed’ rail, except in the field of public relations!

Trucking has relied on enormous public subsidy from the get-go, much more than the RR’s got. In fact, today the RR’s are subject to a number of unfunded mandates which they are forced to make good on, while trucks still don’t have to pay tolls on the true damage they do to the roads. (Essentially ALL of the routine damage that requires Interstate road maintenance is due to truck traffic–it takes something like 5000 cars to equal the impact of a single 18 wheeler.)

RR’s were run into the ground in the early 20th century. Now they are in a growth phase again (which predates the runup in oil prices–but fortunately they were able to capitalize on that as well). They have shed miles and miles of local routes and have rebuilt their infrastructure (sometimes with local help, sometimes not) so they can run intermodal traffic, from barge to railcar to truck for local delivery. One growing item has been car transports.

BNSF in particular is probably the best managed of the large RR’s. Several years back they invested in refridgerator cars and have entered the time-sensitive delivery market. Amtrak was in that business in a small for a few years but didn’t make money (and ran into a LOT of friction from the for-profit RR’s). They could handle the timelines but it required too much staff handling to be profitable. Anyway, a 70 car produce train from Cali to Chicago has the potential to make a nice profit–Warren thought so!

Trucks and trains work together now. Trains are killer for long haul and mountain ranges. The RR’s have earned their awful rep for letting cars idle in switching yards for days … weeks… though industry leaders like BNSF are trying to turn this around. RR’s don’t want so much local traffic (some short lines are still in operation, though), but sometimes the “locals” would rather have that rail line running than trucks under their windows. The public will weigh in one way or another. Some hate mega-trucks on the interstate with them, others are worried about trains and grade crossings. Somehow, the freight will get through.

Keep this in mind: RR’s had some of the most horrible management in the history of American business during the early to mid 20th century, but they’re still around because they are the only practical way to transport coal. We are starting to see some good things from the RRs. Let’s hope it keeps up.

It would also be good to see a high speed rail cross country. Special corridors and such. That would be a large stimulus. Germany/France just did a collaborative venture.

I wouldn’t say that trucking ‘out-competed’ rail It’s easy to win against your business rivals if you get enormous public subsidies, such as free highways.

Short term or not remains to be seen but none of those expenses VTdan mentioned make any sense with oil at 30-40/bbl. It’s nearly as dumb as trading in your SLOBurban for an econo-box.

The point is that you are *dependent* upon a source of income to buy those products… if you lose your job or can only find limited employment then those “expenses” are all of a sudden a much larger part of your income. Your savings can only last so long.

There are two ways to escape the rat-race, reduce you income needs or save a ton of money so you can live on the interest. The first option is sustainable regardless of economic conditions, the second can be wiped out in a single day. I guess both could be wiped out in a single day with a nuke, fire, etc. But the first option is much more in your control.

If the dollar hyper-inflates, then all of those expenses become *huge* and in many cases you may not be able to secure what you need at any price… it simply won’t be available.

The problem most people today have is that the world as it has existed over the past 70 years is based on so many unsustainable factors that to believe that the next 20 years will look anything like the past 70 is to be totally ignorant of reality and lacking a long-term perspective. It is proven that people tend to significantly overweigh recent experiences in predicting future events. This means that most people never see the sharp corrections or major changes coming simply because of a built in bias toward the recent past.

Dan,

The doomsday scenario may or may not happen. You’re convinced it will and I’m not convinced either way. As far as your characterization of various heating alternatives as “cheap” regardless of employment status, all of them are more costly than fuel oil in $/BTU. Every single one of them. If you’re unemployed with nothing better to do than to forage for sources of wood, of course you’ll “save”. Add in the capital costs of material and labor for conversion to one of these so called alternatives and you’re betting on a losing horse. The Mother Earth movement failed for no other reason than economic.

What is Negotiate?

Or move to a warmer climate and simplify.

I would invest absolutely nothing in terms of “improvements” in an asset which is rapidly depreciating except for routine maintenance, or unless your current furnace blows up. Actually, most of the improvements listed above will take 5-20 years to pay for themselves, and you may be gone from your current dwelling by then. Personally, I’d keep the money in the bank, gold, pay off some debt if you have any, or go on a nice vacation with your sweetie.

he said ING Mmkt not the Orange savings acct

Contract on Americans.

Said contract was executed.

Didja ever try cleanin’ one of them things?

At less when times were good Fiorina shared the wealth.

Yep, wasn’t Fiorina one of the ‘brains’ behind McCain’s pres bid?

yeah Robert Toll is part-owner of the 2 biggest papers in Philly: the Inquirer and the Daily News. My tinfoil hat suspicion for years has been that’s one of the main reasons Philadelphia has been slow to correct. The papers simply do not run any negative housing stories.

Bob’s resident RE sock puppet columnist Alan J. Heavens has yet to report anything honest about the housing bubble. His column yesterday was entitled “Time to Kick-Start the Buying”. A suggestion made in the column was to drop the City RE transfer tax for a couple months. I guess he doesn’t actually read the paper he writes for: the City has projected a 1billion dollar budget shortfall from the drop in re transfer taxes in the next 5 years alone.

Friggin sock puppet…

And I in yours.

For someone who repeatedly and emphatically bashed the previous administration, your desire now to [politely] silence everyone regarding today’s administration is striking.

Big difference between exposing moonbat fantasized hobgoblins and silencing but do keep squealin’.

I don’t care if it’s actually a weed, I love dandilions (sp?). They’re my favorite “flower.” The more, the better.

At some point, did you go from “flat” (or “floppy”) to “fluffy”? Perhaps with Prell concentrate? In the glass bottle, of course.

I wish that I had done something crazy with my hair before it went the way of the dodo. Sniff. R.I.P. my hair. I got a good skull though. Sweet sagittal crest, ‘m’ everything!

Nothing wrong with parrots. Crawk! Nothing wrong with parrots. Crawk!

When is National Talk Like A Pirate Day? I may never be a shellback but I can sing a mean shanty. Yeargh!

My hair always sticks right up all perky-like, and it always did. It doesn’t matter how long it gets. My elementary school photos are pretty funny. (Before my dad buzzed my head like a Marine. Thats a long story I will tell you later.) Now that I think of it, ALL my photos are pretty funny, unless my hair has left for the day to do some stuff.

That’s so it can see what’s going on. My hair hates to not see what’s going on.

Where’d you hair go, anyway? You shoulda captured it, showed it who was boss. Although I am very excited to hear about your sagittal crest. Does that mean that your roars of anger and/or random mating calls resound loudly around the whole town?

PS. EVERY day is ‘Talk Like a Pirate Day’, to the right-thinking.

Thunderous roars from this silverback (apologies to silverback101). I usually time them to coincide with the BART passing by. The neighbors have enough to stare at already.

My hair just looked so forlorn lying there in the drain every day, I had to let it go. I wasn’t bummed until I recently found a comb. O cruel fate! The gods — they mock me with irony (and litotes)!

The only parrot I’ve ever known was a total jerk. He kept flying at my head and trying to make a nest out of my hair (this was short hair, too). I still have some pics of him from times when he was in a good mood. His name was Paco, but I called him taco. That’s probably why he hated me so much.

Ben will tell us in a few months.

ok,

scuttlebutt says that AIG has netted a ton of Chinese savings for retirement, and China is calling the shots on the AIG bailout…..AIG money will flow from US taxpayers pockets into Chinese National retirment accounts, or China will NOT buy US treasuries…..

a little tinfoilish, but keep following the moneys.

clue,

where’s your compatriot. Haven’t seen him posting in a while. Has he been banned?

hoz is ill, but he will be back….

see, when property rights based on claims on money are confiscated, rules changed on what seems like a daily basis, people panic and bad things happen….

bad things like the market gettign oversold, and crashing…

its hard on people who follow the rules…

I cant even figure out the rules. The world has stopped working for the good.

tough,
crowded,
and impossible to control.

I think that was in Detroit, this week.

“Remember when you could buy a city block for 32 dollars?”

Or Manhatten Island for $26?