The Housing Bubble

See, now, I’m curious. Why the ‘ “misery ‘? Was the oddly inserted single quotation mark randomly placed, or was it, as I am coming to suspect, some sort of secret communication with arcane forces, perhaps the Illuminati? Or aliens?
And then the other day you sprinkled slash marks around here and there like confetti throughout your otherwise uncapitalized and unpunctuated and creatively verbed post.
Again, is this accidental, or just taxmebootay playing friskily with English usage, or maybe only your shaky fingers—and I’ve typed many a word when my hands was a’flutterin like car-lot banners in a tornado, thanks to my various bad habits and their effects upon my nervous system, so I understand that, and would sympathize—or was it more secret code stuff?
Come on! Tell!

Oly, consider the source.

Oly, I have tears in my eyes from LMAO at your last post.

Sometimes I envision taxmeupthebooty typing hurriedly, dressed in hospital garb, grabbing quick peaks at the nurses station door.

black labs rule..

Nuh uhhh! Golden labs rule!
*looks fondly at photo on desk of Murphy, aka ‘Portly McFatty’*
Good old Murph. Now he’s stinking up Heaven with his incredibly potent dog-farts.

Besides being sweeties, black labs make good watchdogs and perimeter-checkers. They earn their dinner.

‘Melodrama with more booms wouldn’t be so much like a soap opera.’

Let’s have more melodrama with booms!

Big booms

Big booms are coming.

It’s called reading a bunch of boring balance sheets and trolling the internet for useful info… fun summer reading (not)…

Might even use the advice of Warren Buffet’s old mentor. If enough fat drips out of stocks as they roast over the coals, those “outdated” 1950’s metrics may come back in fashion.

I don’t have to be the smartest guy in the room, just smarter than the 90th percentile.

If anything, I tend to be too cautious, but as we’ve seen on HBB, NOT screwing up (like, say, buying a house in early 2006) pays very well!

“It’s called reading a bunch of boring balance sheets and trolling the internet for useful info… fun summer reading (not)…”

Given the pain involved, you ought to expect to earn something in return for your effort. But do you really expect to outperform dumb dollar cost averaging into index funds at the end of the day? Especially by an amount that justifies the labor involved?

If you are into that sort of thing, then more power to you…

Yessir. Anyone buying “the dips” now should be well stocked on Dorritos.

PB, I make $12.50 an hour at my day job. It is CERTAINLY worth the labor involved!

And given the steaming heaps of crapola those automatic indexes buy, I’m quite certain I can do better than the indices over time. Remember all those private equity IPO’s in 2007?!?

Note that I am not implying that if stocks go up housing will fall which would be counter-intuitive. I am just saying stocks may go up so I am hedged. With respect to housing, short term appreciation is impossible at these levels no matter what the government does IMO, so housing going up near term is out of the question and not a consideration for me.

Tim — You are preaching to the choir, bro’…

“Note that I am not implying that if stocks go up housing will fall which would be counter-intuitive.”

Why is that counter intuitive? I watched housing fall or stay flat throughout the tech bubble, circa 1995-2000.

I was referring to a direct relationship. One might normally think if wealth is increasing housing would go up, but because of the over supply and increased lending standards, this will not be the case in the short-term.

Wonderful point, and to add to it, the sheeple who are addicted to teevee also enjoy stories about endless stock and housing market rallies. So it is natural for the MSM to exaggerate both the upside and downside to the extreme.

I still see people employed at those service sector jobs. They or their family own the business; all their wealth is tied up there. So they will cut back and keep it rolling.

Who is out of work? Construction sector, real estate agents, mtg brokers (maybe they go back to spam scams?), “stagers”, “feng shui experts”, furniture factory floor workers, furniture salesmen, car salesmen, artists, musicians … all hustlers, all will find their bread somehow.

Except construction, but they will get in on the stimulus bread one way or another.

May be hard to do since infrastructure spending makes up less than 10% of the stimulus plan.

Well, that or get back into pot dealing…

‘I still see people employed at those service sector jobs. They or their family own the business; all their wealth is tied up there’

How can that be? you mean govt contractors?

“Oh, that’s right, everybody’s gonna have a $50k, paper shuffling bureaucracy job, with 5 week paid vacations, 12 paid holidays, top-line health care with a 5% contribution, reimbursed sick leave, family care off-days, and a big fat pension @ 50 working for the federal government in O’Bama’s Brave New World.”

Just for the sake of accuracy:

Five weeks of paid vacation (actually 26 days - 8 hours per two week pay period) doesn’t start until you have 15 years of service - first three years it is 13 days. Between three years and 15 years, it is 20 days.

It is 10 days paid holiday, not 12 - New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day. Every once in a while, the president will give federal workers Christmas Eve or Boxing Day off, but only if the former is a Monday or the later is a Friday. Federal workers never get the day after Thanksgiving off without using leave.

On average, federal workers pay 25 to 30% of their health insurance premiums and 100% of dental if they choose to purchase it. Dental has only been available in the last few years. Children are dumped off parental health insurance the day they turn 22, even if they are full time students.

Family care days off come out of your sick leave or your annual leave. No accumulated sick leave (like a woman who used all of hers up after having a baby) or regular leave means no pay for taking a day off to care for sick family is available. Unpaid leave is available in exactly the same way that it is under the Family and Medical Leave Act for other employees of large employers. Oh, and zero paid maternity leave.

You cannot retire with a pension at 50. The lowest age is 55 and that is only if you have 30 years of service. Since most long-term federal workers start with the government in their 30’s, they don’t hit retirement eligibility at anything like 55, though, of course, there are exceptions. Also, for anyone who started in the federal government after sometime in the early 80’s, the pension is only 1% of last year’s pay for each year of service, so after 30 years you are only getting 30% of your last year’s pay. Not all that juicy a pension, at least not compared with state and local employees. In the old retirement system, pension was 2% per year up to an absolute maximum of 80% after 40 years (maybe a smidge more if you had a lot of accumulated sick leave), so that was better, but you can’t get that anymore. For workers in the newer system, there is a 401(k) program (with up to 5% matching) to make up for the lower pensions.

Not all federal workers are paper pushers, but plenty are. So are lots of people in the private sector.

O’Bama - Could someone explain to me the appeal of pretending the president’s last name is Irish? I don’t get it.

My county in western WA just registered an unemployment rate of 13.1% for January, with expectations it will only worsen over the coming months. Realistically, it’s over 20%. I have never seen so many businesses close so quickly in my life. All of the little espresso huts are shut down, numerous eateries and small shops, as well as other businesses.

A friend who is a contractor called to say he and his wife are splitting up. She is a realtor, and they are really hurting financially. The sad thing is they have 3 young kids.

Interestingly, the small taco shop on wheels (parked in the lot of a convenience store and gas station) has been bustling. Why? I think it’s their prices. They are very affordable, with quick service. Other eateries with high overhead are done. They depression is here, in these parts.

He is part Irish; Irish people are clannish as heck. (I’m one too.) Irish Democrats of my acquaintance were quite pleased to find out he was Irish (using the one-drop rule–but Irish do indeed do this, witness Pat “3/4 German” Buchanan) and adopted him as one of their own.

Plus, he ran with the big dogs in the Senate, including some big time Irish Catholic legislators.

Want to comment about paper pushers: when I worked in the white collar world, many of my coworkers were either doing the work they were paid for but spending hours goofing off (ie, they could have been finished in about half the day) or they weren’t doing the work they were paid for (ie, skating until they got canned/caught).

I was such an idiot that I worked my tail off, actually asked for more assignments and wowed my bosses (although I made some idiots among the incompetents/lazy/ne’erdowells).

I can see why a lot of smart people get frustrated and go to work for themselves.

It amazes me that in the blue collar world you MUST work to get paid–yes, even the lazy asses must actually SHOW UP and then WORK THEIR HOURS–yet we are called lazy, cheaters, don’t deserve to get paid. Even on this blog I’ve been told we deserve to live in poverty, etc.

If your excuse for why you should surf the internet from your desk and get paid much more than blue collar AND pay less taxes AND tell us we’re lazy is that you spent years in school, I have news for you buddy: so did I. In fact, I got a phys degree, which is a HELL of a lot more work than English, Spanish, History, or Classics.

Heck, I took Classics classes in college and got MUCH HIGHER grades than the majors.

But it’s okay if you make more money than I do, because I keep more of it.

Once again polly I learned from you and you are a voice of reason.

Welcome, SFBAreaGal, but seriously, there isn’t much of interest there. I guess it is sort of interesting that fed workers don’t really have the benefits that people assume we have, and that state and local benefits are much better. Just remember, federal unions have to negotiate against the federal government, not some two bit local county administrator. It isn’t always easy.

The real interesting thing is to ask what good is paper pushing? Now I admit that there’s a whole lot of wasteful paper pushing in the world. Lots. But some paper pushing is meant to gather information and send it on to people who have to make important decisions. With the information, they at least have a chance of making a good decision. Without that information is it a total crap shoot, and with lobbyists all over the place, worse than a crap shoot. I prefer to live in a world where senior members of the executive branch and members of congress and their staffs have the opportunity to make decisions based on statistically valid facts, not anecdotes from a few loud, well-connected constituents and hugely well funded industry lobbyists.

Now, just like you can lead a horse to water but can’t make him drink, you can lead a politician to facts, but you can’t make him or her put aside ideology or financial interests. But I do believe we can have a better world when the watering hole exists.

Then there is all that enforcement stuff we also do while maintaining a - guess what? - a paper trail. Yup. There it is. More paper.

I’ve pushed paper for both the feds and in private industry most of my life, and while I haven’t made millions, it’s kept a roof over my head a lot of the time, with due credit to my 2 husbands also, made the car payment, kept the family in health insurance, and sometimes was the only way we put food on the table. Yay to paper pushing, I sez. And I believe that any blue collar worker whose slaving away certainly deserves his or her pay, plus benefits, by the way. NAFTA was the worst piece of legislation passed in this country in the last 50 years, in my opinion.

Silverback, that’s about all I’m doing right now by Metro Airport today, pushing paper, but hey it’s a job, and gives me time also to learn trading to boot.

Don’t make a lot, and thinking about being a desk jockey for another 20-30 years makes me die emotionally, but as far as a “place” to work, it’s tough to beat.

‘My county in western WA just registered an unemployment rate of 13.1% for January, with expectations it will only worsen over the coming months’

Yar, I saw that too. So you live in either Lewis, Gray’s Harbor, and what was the other county with 13%?
And I agree–it’s more than 13% actually.

“Welcome, SFBAreaGal, but seriously, there isn’t much of interest there. I guess it is sort of interesting that fed workers don’t really have the benefits that people assume we have, and that state and local benefits are much better. Just remember, federal unions have to negotiate against the federal government, not some two bit local county administrator. It isn’t always easy.”

polly,
That’s an excellent post on federal workers. What I find most astounding are the benefits of some state and local workers, much better than even the best benefits for any federal workers ever. I also find it amazing that California state workers get 14 paid holidays, almost three weeks off every year just for “holidays”!

Another thing that’s misunderstood is that unions for federal workers are often quite different than those for state and local workers. Most unions for federal workers don’t bargain over pay and benefits, only working conditions, and membership is voluntary though every worker in the bargaining unit is covered by the union whether they pay dues or not. My experience has been that federal unions often serve as a useful check on management actions that could be harmful to the public.

In general, I’d say the pay and benefits for higher-skilled federal workers lags somewhat higher-skilled workers for the better private sector companies while for lower-skilled workers, compensation is probably better for the feds than the private sector. At the executive level, there is no comparison - the private sector is mostly greatly overcompensated.

Hey Blano, when are we going to start a Michigan HBB’er meet-up ? We are only miles apart and I’m not really sure what to do about the $ 69,900 repo in my neighborhood, if anything…..this is at 40 percent of where it was at its peak.

Prof?
I have always felt the bottom of prices will be 2012. After that, the bad mortgages dry up considerably. Do you feel the RE market will dip below 96′ lows adjusted for inflation?

Or could something slightly more sinister be slouching our way with a rogue state unleashing their nuclear strength or civil war in previously stable regimes?

Same thing happened with shareholders of Citi, Bank of America, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, AIG, etc. etc. They waited and waited and waited, hoping the government would save them.

“Do you feel the RE market will dip below 96′ lows adjusted for inflation?”

I’m not the Professor, but I think that 1996 prices in nominal dollars are a given. In Reno, NV, there are condos selling for 1975 prices in nominal dollars. Consider that. It’s ugly out there.

“Do you feel the RE market will dip below 96′ lows adjusted for inflation?”

FPSS has been forecasting a return to 1983 prices, but I am unclear whether this is in nominal or inflation-adjusted terms. I personally don’t see why prices at the bottom should be any higher than 1983 levels in inflation-adjusted terms, given the
end of easy money crazy lending, but nominal may be a stretch. I am also not sure how many years into the past we are talking about to get to the inflation-adjusted 1983 level.

“I’m not the Professor, …”

That should work to your advantage. So far as I can tell, most professors consistently produce overly optimistic forecasts, compared to which all data releases turn out ‘worse than expected.’

For the past few years I took a vacation after I teach summer school on the Oregon coast. In years past I would have had to book my early August vacation almost 2 months ago. Not this year as the rental agency is offering discounts up to May 15 right now and none of my favorite houses are currently rented in June, July or August right now!

the devil’s in the details Jimbo: I read a similar article about the Wildwoods that hyped the booming rental activity. The numbers? An 8% increase over activity this time last year: hardly boom-times after 2008’s performance…

Jersey shore rentals w/in a block or two of the ocean can set a family back $3500-$4000 for the week, and thats minus food, entertainment, gas, etc. That kind of money would go a long way on a cruise or all-inclusive resort.

Here’s an alternative: last spring I got a deal on a bay-fishing boat off ebay. I sanded the boat & trailer down to bare metal and rivets, and rebuilt them with stuff from ebaymotors and harbor freight and other less-reputable sources (almost named it “No Left Turn” for the traffic signs I used to reinforce the seat mounts).

My Jersey Shore outings set me back the price of a few gallons of gas, food for either end of the fishing line, and the odd toll or ramp fee. There’s a great sense of adventure for kids, or adults who haven’t done it before. Plus traffic is circumvented, I’m never commited to go if the weathers bad, and always a fresh seafood dinner at the end of the day (brine up the baitfish then add oil and you’ll swear you’re eating anchovies!)

Love the handle, Hunk.
I assumed that’s what you named your floating “project?”

I did indeed, my courageous friend!

I really doubt that Buffett is this foolish.

While he may have invested in these things, that money was probably yanked a long time ago.

There is still a ways to go before junk bonds become attractive. We’re not there yet.

Buy the bonds and short the stock?

Most likely scenario is they barely survive stock collapses and you make a killing.

Worst case scenario is they collapse completely so you get some money back on bonds, and make money with your short.

No chance scenario - Their stock goes to the moon.

Yeah, capital structure arbitrage. He’s done it before.

Well, there you go. (I read 82% the other day, or I think I did, or for some reason that stuck in my mind … my memory is not terribly reliable.)

PP1 - Once you’re down 50%, you’ve lost .5x can’t lose more than another .5x. Check.

PP2 - If the market is down 50%, but ends up losing more than 75% from the top, the person beginning his investment when it is down 50% loses a greater percentage of his money from top to bottom than the person who invested at the top has lost until today. Simple percentage arithmetic. Check.

Upon re-reading, it seems perfectly clear, except perhaps the last paragraph: change “today” in the 2nd-to-last line to “at a comparable stage in the 1929-1932 downturn.”

I agree with gator. That makes no sense at all.

Plug in a number.

Person A invested $100 at the top. Has already lost about 50%. Continues to hold. Market goes down to 10% of the top and he loses more to having lost 90%.

Person B buys now and market goes down to 10% of the top, he has lost 80%.

Person A loses 90%. Person B loses 80%. Person B is better off, but I don’t want to be either one.

Did you mean that Person A sells right now? ‘Cause your example says “continues to hold.”

He’s smoking the Maui-Wowie, dude!

Only amount of money invested and percentage returns matter. That’s it.

Polly - why do you say plug in a number and immediately revert to percentages? My statements are all correct.

Person A starts with 100, now has 50. Maximum additional loss is 50.

Person B now invests 100. Market goes down 75% from top, meaning 50% from here, he then has 50. Market goes down more than 75% from top, meaning more than 50% from here, he now has less than 50.

His loss investing THE SAME AMOUNT as Person A is greater than Person A’s loss UNTIL NOW.

Jeez.

But you said that Person A “continues to hold.” Who cares if he loses the same that he lost before on the way down? When you are losing 100%. who cares where the 50% mark falls?

Your reading is flawed. I made a point in PP1 that had to do with Person A’s situation through time relative to himself. I made a SEPARATE point in PP2 that involved the relationship of Person B to Person A. It is VERY CLEAR that my point in PP2 relates to Person B with a beginning time frame today and Person A with an ending time frame today. Do you not understand the words “UNTIL TODAY”? Please re-read my original post. Also, both of these points were related to the initial posting and were not ad hoc postings.

Person A is an apple and person B is an orange. Why dwell on apples-to-oranges comparisons?

PB - To show that the person getting in today can still lose more than the person getting out today - something that is proven by historical precedent but is not intuitive to many people. Apples-to-orange is not a good characterization.

“Your reading is flawed.”

LMAO… Yeah Polly. How did you get that J.D. with that “flawed reading”?

“To show that the person getting in today can still lose more than the person getting out today…”

Now I get your point. Sorry to be dense (I am some times…).

I think you’re talking about absolute value. With absolute value a large negative P/E (large distance from zero) is greater than a small positive P/E (short distance from zero). However, without applying absolute value, a negative P/E is ALWAYS less than a positive P/E, no matter how small.

-20 < 0 < 5

Does that explain it?

Yah know, Paul, you being a bad writer doesn’t make gator, Faster and me bad at math. But tell me what your highest ever score on the Putnam Exam was, and we can talk about it.

Smaller means “farther to the left on a number line.” Since P must be greater than or equal to zero, E must be negative. Thus the larger the P, the smaller the number, and the greater the market valuation.

You’re the one talking about absolute value. If you convert to absolute value my statement does not hold.

Polly - I’m not a bad writer, and I’m better than you at math. Get over it.

Paul, you are making no sense at all. A negative P/E is still negative. Are you trying to compare negative P/E’s for their relative less-sh*ttiness? If so, I apologize. I thought you were implying that some Yahoo!Finance style analysis tool might break, mixing up the money makers and money bleeders.

Hmm, I was sleepier than I thought this morning.

I will add, once the P/E goes negative it’s a rather useless metric. I would suggest comparing value of outstanding shares to net liquidation value instead.

“Ditto.”

Perhaps my feeble attempt at humor was a bit too dry for you?

Yeah, why are people going easy on the schadenfreude? We’re just warming up for the real event.

Pension funds, baby!!! It ain’t over until a few big ones croak and the PBGC needs to get bailed out.

Speaking of ditto heads, do you see the connection between followers of Rush and members of the LDS fold? In both cases, we see large masses of people who can’t think independently priding themselves on blindly following what someone else says is true. Since when did blindly following demagogues become a badge of honor? Isn’t this what got Germany into trouble around the mid-20th century?

PB, you’re killing me. But don’t forget that loyalty is considered a virtue. Dawkins, who grew up in England, speaks of being told that those who followed orders which led to their unnecessary, even stupid death, were the epitome of virtue. (As an evolutionary biologist, this concept interested him a great deal.)

FPSS–too true! I tried telling my coworkers two years ago that pensions were not, repeat, were not safe. They believed me about money market funds but not pensions. Egads!

Of course, working for the city we always have taxpayers to fall back upon … ha ha. Taxpayers are sick of paying more and more (especially when their money is being burned in the Ironwood swamp gas), no pay raise for us … hmm, screw the new workers (not all of them are young, I might add!) for the pension holders?

‘…do you see the connection between followers of Rush and members of the LDS fold?’

There’s a difference?
No, really. I would think the overlap would be complete. I don’t know even one Democrat Mormon. Oh, wait, yes, I do, two of my sisters. They are. ‘Course, I raised them right, first of all, and also they like to be difficult and upset my Mormon mom, so that’s why. This is in Utarr, so I suppose there could be some Democrat Mormons living somewhere else, although I find that hard to believe, and of course they would be denied a temple recommend, I should think.

Seriously, I don’t know why Rush wasn’t called upon to become the next LDS Profit when the last old guy was called to the Celestial Kingdom. Oh, wait, I meant ‘Prophet’. Oh, wait, no—I did in fact mean ‘Profit’.

The bloggers here who hate me know what gets my goat when they call me a Republican or a Rush Limbaugh dittohead. I cannot stand Rush Limbaugh. He’s a social conservative and I puke at social conservatives. I’m an atheist hedonist.

I did in fact mean ‘Profit’. “Beware of false profits.” Matthew 7:15-20

“But don’t forget that loyalty is considered a virtue.”

For this reason a prince ought to take care that he never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality, inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by result.

– Niccolo Machiavelli –

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be;
and that which is done is that which shall be done:
and there is no new thing under the sun.”

Ecclesiastes 1:9-14

“…large masses of people who can’t think independently priding themselves on blindly following what someone else says is true.”

This description applies to a whole lot more groups than Rush followers and is certainly not confined to conservative or right wing opinion holders.

What about people who say an invisible voice from the sky tells them what is right and wrong? Sounds to me like a lot of the world’s problems would disappear entirely if they would do the same.

I wish the people who believe that all corporations are good and hiding behind the skirts of the “free market” would get raptured as well.

Here’s to atheistic hedonism!

When freedom fails
the best men rot in stinking jails,
and those who cry Appease! Appease!
are hung by those they tried to please.

–Horace Mann (as I recall)

“What about people who say an invisible voice from the sky tells them what is right and wrong?”

I already mentioned religion (at least the LDS variant).

“Speaking of ditto heads, do you see the connection between followers of Rush and members of the LDS fold?”

It’s a good thing that church leaders have been preaching self-reliance, avoiding debt like the plague, and food storage then, isn’t it?

You don’t shine when you single out a group for attack. I’m astonished you can’t see what you are participating in when you do so and then reference the Nazis.

BTW OG, a member of my stake presidency is a card carrying Dem, and I think none the less of him for it. Also, while I’m a registered pub I didn’t vote for a single one in the last election, and my rep. is LDS!

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are advised from the pulpit to study the issues and vote for the candidate that best adheres to the principles in which they believe. They are not advised from the pulpit to vote for any individual or party.

“I’m astonished you can’t see what you are participating in when you do so and then reference the Nazis.”

You missed the point. I was throwing out the Nazis as an example of where blind adherence to demagogues can lead the populace. I was not singling out the LDS church in my example. In fact, it was Lutherans and Catholics in Nazi Germany who were Hitler’s dupes.

Seriously, who came up with this whole pale skin idea in the first place? I mean, yeah, it ups the amount of vitamin D you make in your skin and thereby keeps the kiddies from getting crippling rickets in northern climes, but other than that, what good is it? it wrinkles at a younger age, it burns easily and it gets cancer more readily. Dump the pale skin and pick up some fortified milk or some fish already.

But it’s so cuuuuute on a baby, lol.

Ice age –> pale is in.

Thinned O3 layer –> melanin is the new black.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!! My eyes!!!!!!

… paint your whole entire white body orange and silver using house-paint and a roller brush.

Oly, Oly, I’m surprised at you.

The Creamsicle Superhero bodypaint is a fabulous birthday idea, of course. I wish I’d thought of it myself. Kudos!

But you forgot to say “Make sure to add copious amounts of glitter to the housepaint, ’cause glitter makes everything better.”

‘But you forgot to say “Make sure to add copious amounts of glitter to the housepaint, ’cause glitter makes everything better.”

And it really does, too.
I’m glad you’re here to remember these details.

Heck, I forgot to say something, too: if you have any housepets (say cats) or lil’ babies handy, well, rope ‘em in.

They make excellent sidekicks. I can say with a high degree of certainty that they enjoy being dipped in glitter-infused housepaint and trundled around as second bananas to your badassed birthday superhero self.

ET,

A late happy birthday to you.

Yeah, but glitter itches when you sit on it naked. Especially in your personal area. I found this out when I woke up in the drunk tank down in N.O. during Mardi Gras buck naked when I was about 22. ( Well, it makes a fabulous story anyhow . )

Thanks, SanFranciscoBayAreaGal.

Note: I did not actually glitterify any cats or babies on my birthday, though we did reenact scenes from Gone With The Wind and the original Star Trek (the episode with the doppelgangers).

Silverback, don’t let one drunken blowout sour you on the ineffable pleasures of glitter. (Though, yes, one should be mindful of where shiny abrasive particles should or shouldn’t be. Ahem.)

Give it another whirl, I say.

Comment by Silverback1011
“Yeah, but glitter itches when you sit on it naked. Especially in your personal area. I found this out when I woke up in the drunk tank down in N.O. during Mardi Gras buck naked when I was about 22. ( Well, it makes a fabulous story anyhow . )”

well that explains the silver in your back, but it doesn’t explain how it got wedged in permanently… did you ever manage to find out??

ET–the episode with doppelgäaut;ngers? That’s like every third episode!

&auml; … d’oh

Doppelgänger

still sleepy now… god, I’m lazy…

What can I say? I’m naiive and gullible. And a perky optimist most of the time.

I think the thing I really wasn’t taking into account is the fantastic number of jobs that have been lost.

CA’s unemployment numbers came out yesterday - 10.1% - that’s one in ten of the working population.

While I had popcorn ready for the inevitable demise of the construction/RE/Lending industry, I guess I didn’t see how bad the collateral damage would be for all other employment in the state.
No matter if you’re a proud homemoaner, or a renter, its got to be tough.

I hope all you optimists will endeavor to persevere, but keep yourselves well informed.

Tab is plenty good enough for playing contemporary stuff. The difference between me and a trained musician is that it takes me 3x longer to learn a song and fill in with the band.

Cool, ex. I remembered you play the guitar. Actually, it seems there are many here who do. I’m just a hack, but I’m happy with my improvement. One day I’m going to treat myself to a nice acoustic (would love a used Martin). I’m not worthy yet.

“It’s going quite well, actually, but on a completely different level than what you’re used to, though thirty something year old fingers just don’t respond the way I had hoped.”

I am a string player — guitar was first, followed by violin, viola and most recently, mandolin.

Regarding the thirty-something fingers, I have often heard people say that only kids can learn to play a musical instrument well, not so adults. But I have seen notable counter examples; for one, my wife has taught adults who did admirably well. Secondly, a friend of my sister’s took up piano around age 40, and invested a couple of hours a day of practice time to it. He played Chopin for us when I visited her a couple of years back, and at a level that very few kids would be able to play after a similar duration of lessons.

I am convinced that (after controlling for innate ability) the key difference between child and adult music students is the opportunity cost of practice time. Unless they are independently wealthy, adults have to give up free time of high value to invest in practicing. Kids have more time than they know what to do with — mine frequently complain of being bored, in fact — but trying to get them to channel a little of that time into practicing can be as fun as pulling teeth! I believe if one conducted a controlled experiment, using as subjects children and adults of similar musical aptitude and no music lessons in their background and giving both treatment groups music lessons with the same teacher and having them practice equal amounts, the adults would progress more quickly. The problem for most adult learners is the willingness and/or ability to allocate the practice time.

I taught myself to play recorder as a teenager and found it far easier than the recorder lessons in class in third grade. (I love me my alto recorder, BTW. It is a thing of beauty.) The increase in dexterity more than offset the decrease in absorption level.

Furthermore, if you keep up your learning as an adult, the process of teaching yourself a new skill is not as rusty as it is for some people who stop aggressively learning once they leave school.

Honestly, a kid will learn faster in general, but an adult will learn the subtleties faster. It’s never too late. If you want to learn an instrument, go for it!

Tonight is the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for us. Going to hear a straight baroque concert - my favorite - with Pachebel’s Canon, Bach’s Brandenburg #1, & Handel’s Water Music. It’s so baroque that it don’t need any fixin’.
I only have to go see “The Watchmen” with my husband next week as a fair exchange. Oh yes.

Watchmen is an awesome story; I hope they didn’t mess it up too much for the movie.

The Dvorak Serenade is not really a closer, unless for strictly a string orchestra concert. The New World Symphony or the G Major Symphony (No. 8, I believe) are another story entirely.

Has anyone in Wisconsin been watching the M&I bank. In Eagle River, they took a 5 million bath on a marina, and in Three lakes the bank forclosed on a 14 million dollar condo complex. The condo complex is about three years old and none sold. M&I stock was trading for about $44.00.
I think this is the next regional bank to bite the dust.

Watching them closely. They sucked up around 1.7 billion of Fed money in the last 4-5 months.

But they DID cancel a few freebie Country Club golf memberships.

Oh..the many scarifices the M&I exec’s makes for the little people

“Price changes are not yelds.”

Surely you understand that investment returns consist of both yields and capital gains (losses)? If you have to sell because you lost your job when home prices are off by 50 percent from the peak, you could easily take a capital loss that wiped out a lifetime of 2 percent yields (and all the worse if, as in your example, the yields are negative because they are ownership costs).

I suspected that, like myself, you were merely razzing our resident gold dealers. No asset class is sacred, but convincing greater fools that some asset classes are better than others is a good way to separate them from their money. It has happened a lot in recent years — the cases of tech stocks, houses, gold and oil all come to mind.

Muggy, my daughter is a 1st year teacher of language at a middle school on the east coast. She’s taught for 1 year prior to this job. She’s in there swinging but the kids are “socially disadvantage” and have very little idea of how to behave in a classroom = talking constantly, being sassy, telling her she’s a racist, etc. She’s actually doing pretty well. I come from a family that has many generations in the teaching field, so I’m not unaware of the challenges. Fascinatingly, although 3 of the teachers on staff have cancer and 2 more have bad cases of rheumatoid arthritis, rendering them practically immobile, and although the average age of the staff being around 40, the principal took away her classes for 1 1/2 months because the average score of the preliminary testing for the big “No Child Left Behind Act” testing was a little under average, and they’re afraid that the school will fail. The principal did it to her and 2 other newbie teachers. The other two never came back, but she’s made of sterner stuff. She went to see him to find out what was going on, and he shoved a box of Kleenex at her and told her the news. She shoved the Kleenex right back at him, and said, ” I have a class to teach.” He still put he into tutoring failing kids and put in a teacher employed by the district especially to raise kids’ scores. She’s getting her classes back in 3 weeks. I told her ” buck up” and all that, but it really amazes me that with the age and illness level of their staff, that administration doesn’t get it that they have to make these new teachers want to stick around. The teacher next door to her who is dying of cancer told her that she’s a lot better than he was when he was starting out, and that his kids are so bad that he would have been overjoyed with her test scores in his classes. They don’t mess with him, though - been there too long and he’s very ill. I think she’ll be a principal some day. Man, she’s got the iron in her spine. Everybody thinks she’s a softie because she’s blonde, blue-eyed knockout, but they don’t know her too well.

Muggy, there’s something to be said for being able to retire after 30 years with lifetime health insurance and a great pension. I’d think about it if you already have a lot of years in, but I’d never blame you if you got out. Good luck, man. How’s Little Muggy doing ?

Such as “No child left behind?”

I am a very happy teacher and I have been teaching for almost 8 years now. I teach in a high poverty area where 78% are on free and reduced lunch. I teach science at the high school level. Each year I start out by giving the students a homework assignment on day 1. The assignment is to write down what respect looks like from a teacher to a student, student to a teacher, and student to student. The next day they work in groups of 4 and make a poster and present their ideas to the class. Over the next few days I talk about respect on multiple ocassions. I have very few problems the rest of the year!

Good plan!

In general, I found the teachers who garnered the most respect were those who assigned a real assignment on day one, to be turned in the next day. Those that didn’t, had trouble keeping the class moving along for the rest of the semester.

WHOA …From a DJ point of view something is very wrong because i am in Shock and Awe how many kids today can’t read write or speak English. Do we have such mediocre teachers?

I get dozens of emails a week from music people bands dj’s etc. NONE of them seem to know how to communicate properly and sound at least like they finshed the 8th grade.

I would probably get fired the first day for demanding students speak English without swearing and not GHETTO

————————–
Such as “No child left behind?”

I always taught a full class on the first day (mostly undergrad econ in a middle-tier state u.). I spent about 10 minutes on the syllabus only - mainly explaining the testing and cheating policy, and warned them that this would be the most intellectually challenging class that most of them had ever taken. If any first-semester freshman signed up for the class, I had him see me after class and generally encouraged him to drop.

A question you often (used to) get in college is: how many classes can we miss? I simply said, you are expected to attend ALL classes. (This was pre-attendance policies - I called roll two or three times to learn names and then would quit.) The hour you spend in here will be the most productive hour you can spend in this course almost all the time. Occasionally I might have an unproductive teaching day, but that’s a bad bet to make.

I had always heard that you should teach to the middle of the class. I rejected this philosophy and taught the class on as high a level as reasonable, digressing as necessary.

I always showed up 30 seconds to a minute late to class (except on test days) so that I could start immediately and it was clear that anyone who arrived after me was disrupting class by causing me to lose my train of thought, which I invariably pointed out.

The most important thing I know about teaching: never underestimate the level to which your students will fall if allowed to do so. This is the reason I am disgusted with the education system and, by extension, politically an anti-socialist.

One of the good ones. Right arm!

“WAman: The assignment is to write down what respect looks like from a teacher to a student, student to a teacher, and student to student. The next day they work in groups of 4 and make a poster and present their ideas to the class. Over the next few days I talk about respect on multiple occasions.”

What a great idea WAman! I can’t see how that plan could ever fail. The concetpual 3rd party between student & teacher goes from ’society’ to ’society’s critic’, and has them (and, just as importantly, you) focused instead on how respect works. It’s sets you apart as someone who’s not only capable of teaching something like that right, but would even SUGGEST such a thing!

Kudos to you and Paul in Florida. That’s the fix right under everyone’s nose: takes evolutionary ideas from smart teachers like you, and simply make them the new system. Heck, you could test it right where you teach, just have some peers of yours use your idea and see if it works. If it does, then everyone stick with it.

The better the teaching, the better the learning!! Not sure what the Latin is for that… “Sic wamanus paulus Floridus”!!

Thank you for your nice comments!

I emailed WAman’s 1st day assignment for his students. I think it’s a great idea too.

WaMan: Between me and my wife, we have five boys, er– young men between 19 and 26. I know very well how much the world has changed, and, of course, some course content changes to keep things relevant. But I believe there are some fundamental, time-tested teaching techniques on which not many improvements really can be made. To take an extreme example, having students actually read some work or document before they express an opinion on it. My students seem to have been rewarded in the past for saying whatever they think about this or that, and they are a little taken aback when I tell them I’m not going to entertain any opinions on a topic until they do the hard work of reading up on it. They are all eager passionately to express their opinions in a “break-out session”; but, alas, they do not know what they don’t know. It’s the roughly half-dozen to whom I get through every semester that keep me in the game.

Not surprised, Gator, just discouraged.

After all, didn’t The Decider say it was “just a goddamm piece of paper?” Stuff rolls downhill.

My experience with public school admin is that they are the worst of the worst… and those that aren’t get punished by the parents for it.

Definitely an environment where kissing the right *sses and playing political hardball gets you ahead; improving education, giving a fig about students, and generally being a good person will get you pushed out.

Casandra it is you that has to take control of the classroom. Not the principal or any other administrator. If you cannot control a classroom then teaching is not for you.

LOL, Muggy. There I was a couple weeks ago suggesting you get into education as a result of the stimulus package and you are knee deep in it. What gives? Does it not help as much as billed? BTW, I’m in Jax. Are you down in Naples?

Muggy, I have two sisters that teach in FL. The salaries are outrageously bad and it’s no wonder you were priced out of buying a house.

“There I was a couple weeks ago suggesting you get into education as a result of the stimulus package and you are knee deep in it. What gives? Does it not help as much as billed? BTW, I’m in Jax. Are you down in Naples?”

Naw, it doesn’t really help long-term, it just lesson the short and medium-term blow. I am in the Clearwater area.

“it’s no wonder you were priced out of buying a house.”

Yup, but we wouldn’t be priced out of a house at, say, 2001 levels. I am content with a 1,500 sqft 3/2. We spend most of our time outside anyways. After 9/11 I thought I had it all figured out: be in education, use the free time for arts and hiking… chillin’ with my family.

I dunno, sorry if I am not my usual ZING! self, but I’m feeling a little blue today. :frown:

lessons = lessens

Lol…

I second that - a change of scenery and co-workers can make a world of difference. Sometimes you don’t realize how far things have deteriorated until you are out of the environment.

I have been going through the same thing. At one point, we were hired to write software that solved real problems and given sufficient respect and included in the estimages of time to complete the task and complete it well. Don’t get me wrong I am fast, experienced and accurate, but when tasks were suddenly estimated by managers who knew nothing of the real problems that needed to be addressed and I was told I had 5 hours and 18 minutes to complete a task I would tell them this was a 16 hour task - I could complete it in 12 … No there is only 5 hours and 18 minutes … UGG.
Really, apart from my own projects I don’t care if I never write another line of code.

My two cents.

End public education. End mandatory school attendance. Most importantly, end the regimentation.

Let parents who want their kids to get an education pay directly for the kids’ schooling. And of course let them choose the proper school for each. Some kids would be ready to start when they are 5 years old. Others might not start their education until they hit 20.

But why attend any physical school at all? We have the internet.

No problem requesting a do-over. Just pay the tuition and take the course again, perhaps from an entity that uses a different teaching method (we all learn differently).

Would things be any worse than they are now? How would they be worse?

Are you nuts?

Extra hands don’t go to work on the farm anymore, you know.

‘Let parents who want their kids to get an education pay directly for the kids’ schooling. And of course let them choose the proper school for each.’

Sigh. I recall when last you promulgated this utter-nutter idea. And I asked then, Bill, and I ask again now, Bill:
What about the children who get born, through no fault of their own, to (for example) religious fundamentalist whack-job parents who can’t even manage their OWN lives effectively, and who don’t give a crap if their kids gain the tools to function effectively in the world and/or realize their potential or even learn how to freakin’ read and write, lessen’ it’s the Holy Scriptures? What about those kids, Bill? Just too dam*n bad for them, huh, Bill?

Oh, and btw, did you go to private schools, Bill? Or did you learn how to read and write, for I perceive that you do know how, from public school?

Oops, sorry, didn’t turn off the italics thingie.

Extra hands don’t go to work on the farm anymore, you know. They may be forced to when motor fuel rationing begins. They may have to move back to the farm, for that matter. On foot.

Totally agree. People only value education,health etc. If they have to pay for it directly. That is why I hate socialism.

My sister taught me to read the summer between 1st & 2nd grade. We sat side by side on the back porch & she read comic books to me, then graduated me to reading cool stuff like “Voyage to the Mushroom Planet” By 3rd grade I was reading Ray Bradbury’s “The Fog Horn” I learned about Virtual Reality in his story “The Veldt” in 1955. By then my sister had read all the books in the kid’s section of the local library & the librarians wouldn’t let her into the grown-up’s section. Other kids that I knew in town needed some prodding, others needed guidance, others needed protection, some needed to be sent into foster care. YMMV.

Lucky Tresho. Your sister sounds AWESOME.
Plus, she has wonderful taste in literature, obviously.

tresho,

Mom introduced me to sci-fi. Mom was introduced to sci-fi by a librarian at her local public library.

The “Veldt” by Bradbury was ahead of its time.

What about the children who get born, through no fault of their own, to (for example) religious fundamentalist whack-job parents who can’t even manage their OWN lives effectively, and who don’t give a crap if their kids gain the tools to function effectively in the world and/or realize their potential or even learn how to freakin’ read and write, lessen’ it’s the Holy Scriptures? What about those kids, Bill? Just too dam*n bad for them, huh, Bill?

To be fair Oly, the Supreme Court has upheld the Amish right to only allow children to be educated through the 6th grade.

In Dallas, if parents had to pay anything for schooling, 1/2 the schools would be empty and 1/2 school age kids in the city would only speak Spanish.

So, regimentation is the goal. Kids must be forced to learn, and learn at the gubmint’s pace, not theirs.

They have to be forced to learn, or at least be forced to exposed to something besides “Pimp My Ride” and “Cribs of the Temporarily Rich and Famous,” yes. I am very sympathetic towards the 7th grader my daughter had this year who was living with his grandma because BOTH his parents were in jail. Geeze. He had hostility problems. I would too. Her students keep stopping her in the hall and asking her, ” Ms. So-and-So, when you coming back ? ” My father spent 42 years in the Detroit Public School system before retiring as the admin of the adult education program, which was second in size only to New York’s when he retired. They had a fantastic graduation rate and very thorough job-training programs, too. Now ? Well….he too has echoed the “challenge authority” ethos the kids seem to come in with nowadays, even though they can hardly string two words together in a decent sentence. That being said, daughter has it in her blood (fourth generation teacher), and I can tell from the way she handles many situations and students that she’s going to keep on keeping on. Heck, her great-aunt is still subbing at the age of 76. That’s how she pays for the trips abroad that she & my undle love to take. But getting started is hard.

Muggy, I think you’re too good at what you do to ever walk away completely. I figured out early in life that my daughter is not a cubicle person. You probably aren’t either. Maybe a better school district in a different state would be a wonderful change for you. I couldn’t begin what beginning teachers make in my daughter’s state make. With your experience you’d be making a lot more.

“Kids must be forced to learn, and learn at the gubmint’s pace, not theirs.”

Yeah… why bother having education standards. Who needs them? Thats right…. we need a country full of illiterates. /sarcasm

Sounds like a authoritarians dream date.

Oly, many of your posts on this site lead me to believe you’re a free spirit. Did you actually enjoy sitting at your desk in row 3, or was it row 4, while the teacher tried to help some of the other 30 or so kids read what you already knew how to read, or do a math problem you could already solve? Did you find the study of different types of rocks to be boring because you were more interested in living creatures (or vice-versa)? Did you enjoy getting into line to march to the lunch room and board the school bus?

Ons-size-fits-all only worked when we needed lots of mindless worker bees for our factories. The system we have today (you go to this building on these days between these hours and do these tasks) is an ugly leftover from that long-gone era.

Society (and life itself) requires rules. Don’t like it? Too bad.

To be fair, too much regimentation is a bad thing. Not enough is also bad.

But until you can at least spell discretion, you must follow the rules.

Can’t answer for Oly, but when I was champing at the bit in 2nd grade, my very old-school teacher Mr. Utka had extra assignments available and when I had exhausted those, he sent me (as he had sent other students before me) into the 3rd grade classroom to audit whatever they were learning. You don’t have to bore the smart kids.

My worst year in school was 4th grade. The teacher (who was a real ‘winner’, I say this sarcastically) was going through a divorce and spent mucho time away from the classroom having girl chats with the principal. She was absolutely horrible: knew nothing, taught nothing, although she was up on whatever new fancy stuff was in the air. I remember we had “discussion groups” which was utter inanity because a 4th grader can only parrot what they heard at home. She couldn’t even figure out what curriculum to present to us, skipping whole sections of maths while running over the 5th grade history (and presumably skipping the 4th grade social studies). Oh, and there was the one time she decided to read us a story and it turned out to be a Catholic folk tale involving the Virgin Mary chastising a child and turning her finger into a carrot, or something, I don’t really remember. Even she knew she messed up on that one.

I went to school to learn. Sure, I may have fallen out of a lot of student desks because I couldn’t sit still in them, but I was very grateful for the education (and to be out of the house with my crazy mother!!!).

I invite all of you to read the Wikipedia article on “Compulsory Education.” I side with the critics that are mentioned in the article, especially Illich and O’Keeffe.

“…the undertaker would be overwhelmed with the spike in business.”

The president can authorize a mass grave; the undertaker would be a heavy equipment operator.

Burn the bodies to stem the spread of the contagion any further.

which could lead to our untimely demise. This sounds like Woody Allen’s famous dilemma.

Okay, I’ll take my Lada in flat black!

And some on this blog predict violence in the streets. Ain’t gonna happen. Americans are wusses and have been whipped. If we had any collective spine left there would be mass demonstrations.

Where I work we had a minor profit hiccup. The firm is still unbelievably profitable. Yet they just cut or wages and benefits (but only in the US). The only sound heard was a big collective “thank you”.

previous results are no guarantee of future returns….

God! Reading this blog is like inhaling pure O2 after living in a PortaPotty.

[Nothing to add to the thread--just a moment of elation . . . ;-)]

Even pussycats turn into tigers if they get hungrrrry enough.

Lots of guys I knew in music and the building trades went into trucking and it turned out to be a pretty good escape hatch for a lot of other displaced workers to.

I wonder how that’s all working out now.

…that’s workers too.

a fabulous site to look at for analysis of the Bureau of Labor Statistics BLS, is at shadowstats dot com. Look at the alternate data series on that site. Unemployment measured the “old” way is about 18%.

scary.

I’m pretty sure the guy from the outplacement firm Challenger, Grey & Christmas has been saying the real unemployment rate is significantly higher than stated for years.
Besides those who run out of unemployment the stats
don’t count all those “discouraged workers” who go on SS disability. If you watch some daytome or late night TV you’ll see ads for law firms that specialize in getting people SS Disability. A new cottage industry i think.
Had a cousin (mid-50’s) go that route after being laid off.
Health had not changed that much, the job market had

Cash rules the day for tomorrow’s middle class, but debt creating businesses and debt creating goverments rules the media, which is my point…. last I checked, we’re projecting a $1.75T dollar debt for FY09… those billions being wiped out evey day are baby poop..