Recent comments by Mook

Finance_Fan wrote:

if you saw the craziness of the housing bubble, what stopped you from using part of your savings to short the hell out of it?

"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."

You do realize that's not just a cute quote that value investors put up in their blog headers, right?

Outsider wrote:

You have to admit, .05% is not much incentive for saving.

It's true. But the sad part is that the reverse argument was being used to justify wanton spending 30 years ago.

"Sure, CD rates are high, but inflation is higher! Why lock in a long-term loss after inflation? Spend the money now, before it loses further value!"

KarmaPolice wrote:

"Many tea-party activists say they remain dumbfounded by the Nov. 6 defeat of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and favored GOP candidates for the Senate, and opinions are swirling over how the movement should push forward."

I think it'll take one more wholesale repudiation before (T) gets the message.

I hope that saner voices will prevail; but I expect they'll respond by moving even further out to the lunatic fringe in preparation for the 2014 mid-terms, in expectation of the typical pickup of seats by the party not in the White House.

In which case they'll lose 60 seats and control of the House. Then - maybe - they'll start to understand.

BarleyReturns wrote:

Solution get the SIL to turn up the temp to 450 or so.

Gotta do that towards the end anyway to bronze the skin (well, that 'n' a whole lotta butter). Too early and you scorch the sucker. Been there, done that.

S'alright .. came prepared with some fresh mozzarella, roasted red peppers, and balsamic vinegar to tide us over.

ResistanceIsFeudal wrote:

Why should you be able to? The insurance companies will pay what the market will bear. You'll pay five or ten times that amount.

yuan wrote:

A record on civil liberties that only a fascist would be proud of.
Massive and opaque bailouts of investment banks and insurers.
Putting banksters and hedge fundies in charge of our economic policy. (Geithner, Summers, Orzag, and Emmanuel.)
Not a single high profile trial of a major executive for financial fraud.
Guantanamo and CIA torture prisons in Romania, Egypt, etc.
Murder and detention of US citizens without due process.
Increased military spending and militarism (the Surge).
Deficit fear-mongering (A deficit that is almost entirely due to rampant militarism, the cratering of our economy by private enterprise, and gluttonous tax brakes.)
Enthusiastic support for the gutting of a SOLVENT defined benefit program that provides a major source of income for ~50 million citizens.
Cynical use of military force for political purposes (execution of bin laden when he could have been a treasure trove of intelligence information).
A health care plan that will do virtually nothing to control the unsustainable healthcare spending that is the single most important USAnian fiscal issue.
Turning a blind eye to economically destructive currency manipulation by the Chinese and Japanese.
Enthusiastic support of some of the most brutal authoritarian regimes on this planet.
Disdain for labor rights and labor movements.

Good thing we elected the socialist Democrat this time around!

... what?

yagij wrote:

3 bubbles are enough for me.

I know what you're thinking. "We're in a commodity bubble, and a higher-ed bubble ... so does that make four bubbles, or just three?" Well ... to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself.

Finance_Fan wrote:

and that's the whole point, "RIGHT NOW".

Well, yeah. But that's not unique to farming.

Those who were small-scale commercial landlords on the front end of the CRE bubble made millions ... if they used the net proceeds from those ballooning rents to pay down the mortgages and make sensible capital improvements. A whole bunch of 'em decided to flip the proceeds into leveraging up their would-be empire instead.

It always pencils out, as long as you assume high rents forever. If that doesn't come to pass ... you go broke.

Substitute "commodity prices" for "rents" and there are thousands of medium-scale farmers in exactly the same situation now. Some will make enough in this decade to retire on, several times over. Many others will go bust.

Same as it ever was.

dryfly wrote:

Actually I think YOU are. The upside earning potential from modern high tech farming here is absolutely obvious to local kids. Its like getting a contract in the NBA - only unlike NBA it stays with you for life.

Or, rather, it would be if the agreement required you to pay the league the total amount of your first contract in order to be eligible for the draft.

Finance_Fan wrote:

amazing. how much is their "housing + transportation" as % of disposable income with high gas prices... has to be a balance budget killer for them.

In the middle of nowhere, when you're a 5-hour round-trip from the nearest real mall, shopping is a few-times-a-year experience ... back to school, Christmas, maybe once in springtime, that sort of thing. You'll get 10-car caravans of friends and relatives all making the trip together, loading their cars to the brim, making a full day or even a weekend out of it. Whether gas is $1 or $4 a gallon doesn't affect that sort of thing too much.

What it does affect is commuting ... the person living 60 or 80 miles outside Sioux Falls, or Omaha, or Des Moines who wouldn't have thought twice about making the daily round-trip to a $40k-a-year job downtown 10 years ago. Now? He or she is probably pulling up stakes and moving to a closer-in suburb. Result: suburban sprawl (and to a lesser extent downtowns) get even more crowded, and the empty spaces in between get even emptier. Just as Dryfly noted.

ResistanceIsFeudal wrote:

In San Fran, you can profitably move high income earners between relatively short distances in high concentration and pretty cost-effectively. Here, it's exactly the same, but with lower income earners, long distances, and sparse crowds

NJ has a population density 110 times that of SD, and yet our "latest and greatest" light rail system, after costing $30M+ per mile to build, manages to cover something like 15% of operating costs via fares.

Bernie Madoff himself couldn't make a South Dakotan light rail system pencil out.

vtcodger wrote:

Nothing statistical works quite right during the holidays?

Au contraire, mon cherie!

The annual B/D rate adjustment is made over the holidays and works quite right indeed - if by "right" you mean "in a way that makes the overall numbers look improbably sanguine year after year".

1 currency now -yogi wrote:

This must mean labor is taking back gains from capital.

I'll reiterate my prediction from 2+ years ago: When the smoke clears and all the data are analyzed, it will be determined that, from the bottom of this recession to this latest peak, more than 100% of the overall net income gain will have accrued to corporations and their ilk - IOW labor's share of the gains will have been less than zero.

ResistanceIsFeudal wrote:

At the same time? That sounds like a total win-win. Talk about synergizing!

It's a Pierre-less opportunity.

(As an aside, the only reason I remember the pronunciation of SD's capital is that I dated a girl from there shortly after college. Ironically - now that I think about it - the first time I ever went to Zed's was on a date with her. Wow, this thread is just lousy with personal synergies.)

ResistanceIsFeudal wrote:

It's mainly the hunting and those big stone heads.

I've always wanted to meet someone who works in "marketing" something like Mt. Rushmore.

I mean, it's kinda like marketing the Eiffel Tower, isn't it? Not as though you have to work on increasing the ol' Q-factor.

HomeGnome wrote:

Ethiopian cuisine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
//tunes in and drops out

Das Ethiopian - Georgetown - Washington | Urbanspoon

Do yourself a favor and hit this place up if you're ever in the nation's capital.

Fun fact: back when I lived there, this place used to be called "Zed's". Insert your own Pulp Fiction joke here.

Citizen AllenM wrote:

You are too educated. You are not in the true middle of America.
The truth of it is just what dryfly says, they should discount heavily, because they die quite a bit sooner, and with no assets.
You should work with folks making $25k a year, and deciding what they will pay, and what bills they will ignore, and trying to help their kids out, while trying to keep a roof over their heads in a slum.

FF, you should read AllenM's post, then read it again. It says everything I wanted to say, but better.

I grew up in a middle-class suburb in the Northeast. I thought that's what American middle-class was.

Four years living in the rural South and being a plant engineer disabused me of that notion, but good.

I chide instead of mocking, because absent those 4 years, I'd have been in your shoes - many of my friends still are.

Anyone who hasn't been up close and personal with heartland America would find it hard to believe, and impossible to understand.

Antipodes wrote:

Wait a minute... What is a pension?

It's something my wife thinks she'll be getting when she retires from her teaching job in 25 years or so.

I don't have the heart to tell her I have that line item zeroed out in our long-term financial plan. It's right next to the zero I have for another hoary chestnut that goes by the name "Social Security".

Finance_Fan wrote:

costa rica, why not?

No offense FF, but if you moved to Peoria for a couple of years and spent that time working on a shop floor, the absurdity inherent in that question would be pretty obvious to you.

RiF wrote:

Though diarrhea does give some amount of insight into the political process, I suppose.

"Ah. So that's what they mean by 'trickle down'!"

josap wrote:

Name calling.
F-

vs

So in other words: "I wouldn't say I've been missing it, Bob..." ?

I hope not. That would be a shame, honestly.

Comrade Kristina wrote:

There was actually a Letter to the Editor in the local paper today from a pissed off Independent basically saying the GOP has to divorce itself from the Tea Party to be taken seriously.

And then what? Run back to slightly right of center? Ooh ... so sorry, looks like Obama's already got a hotel on that space.

Personally I hope the (T)'s keep pulling the GOP right and, further, that starting in '14 the 99%ers start pulling the D's over to the extreme left. It's the only way we have a hope of seeing a viable third party emerge in my lifetime.

HomeGnome wrote:

Gang Activity in the U.S. Military

I'm still waiting for the logical link between those and "military service means volunteering to murder people for a paycheck".

There are 1.5 million U.S. active duty service members. You want to tar every one of them with the actions of a small fraction of a percent of the group, go right ahead, but it's gonna make you look silly.

Haralambos wrote:

The money quote: "Recently, an experienced US analyst spoke of a rather worrying exchange that he had in Berlin. The American had supposedly argued in front of some German officials that it would be cheaper to back Greece for a while longer since it was nearing the end of its fiscal tunnel, rather than shoulder the big, and quite unpredictable, cost of a euro exit. Their response was that, first, Greece should be punished for not making good on its pledges and, secondly, that the markets would be stunned by a possible Grexit and therefore make things easier for the eurozone to support the rest of the debt-hit periphery."

I thought for sure when you posted this that it had been transcribed wrong. Surely they couldn't be that short-sighted, could they?

But here's another example from that same article, my emphasis added:

Having experienced the Lehman crisis and its unpredictable fallout, American officials are warning Berlin that a Greek euro exit would not be a simple affair.

Officials on the other [i.e. German] side however argue that the markets have already priced in the scenario, thus easing its impact on the global financial system. Also, they think that the crisis is not likely to spread to the rest of the continent.

I can only assume - can only hope - that this verbage reflects American officials' after-the-fact psychological interpretations of their counterparts rather than anything that was actually said. Because if not: EISS.