patrick.net

frank,

that was brilliant. Employers and immigration lawyers colluding to get H1B applicants approved and citizens excluded. I wonder how long before youtube has to take the video down, or is this work a parody and therefore protected?

Another thought: I think IEEE Spectrum magazine have been running the fake/bad-faith job ads for years now, maybe 20 years or more.

Should not IEEE and ACM refuse to run these ads in their publications?

can they tell the fake ads from the real ones?

For all you boomer-haters out there, I'd have to agree that the halftime show was lame and self-indulgent on the part of Bruce Springsteen. "Boss time" -- NOT!

Has he done anything useful since, oh, 1978??

Today we visited Kentwood Place, West San Jose (Cupertino school district). They are selling 1900 sq ft townhome for 850K.

What do you think, good deal?

http://www.braddockandloganhomes.com/communities/index.cfm?community_id=39

I dunno, personally I think those super-narrow 3-story townhouses are very impractical. And 850k in San Jose? I'd wait for it to be 600k max.

850K hmm.

I reckon the property tax will approach 10K per year on that one. Surely longtime residents (and renters) in that school district will be most grateful for your contribution.

>> I reckon the property tax will approach 10K per year on that one.

I plan to stay there for 8n years ... so 80K in property tax.
Is there a risk of getting zoned out of Monta Vista High School after buying. If so, it will be a disater .. at least 150K hit in finance.

>> Micheal Steele: hot or not?

I predicted this ... they needed him to counter Obama ...

Yes We Can!

Michael Steele, a black person the Republicans found somewhere, was elected leader of the Republican National Committee on Friday, after a daylong battle against traditional Republican party leaders (middle-aged white guys who dream of somehow owning slaves). America is healed.

Steele's victory is especially poignant because his main rival was an actual South Carolina plantation owner from one of those "whites only" golf clubs for the white racists.

This confederate country clubber, Katon Dawson, hoped to bring the party back to its White Power roots, but he was narrowly defeated by this legendary civil-rights leader, after hours and hours of grim-faced balloting by the RNC. This painful banquet-room contest between pinched-face cretins was, without doubt, the worst C-SPAN broadcast of all time.

Well if Monte Vista is what it's all about, that's only 4 yrs per kid, I'd pencil out the scenarios like renting in Monte Vista for those four years vs the cost of owning.

You could work Real Estate Only Goes Up in The Fortress into your scenarios, and future scenarios of the dollar vs Asian currencies which could dampen or amplify your Monte Vista projections, since in all likelihood the people you'd sell it to in 8 yrs will be wealthy Asians.

Sad news for chocolate fans.

Scharffen Berger Berkeley will be closed and moved to Illinois. I hope Hershey's is not going to shut it down eventually.

Permarenter,

the location is not bad, sandwiched between Cupertino and Saratoga, but that area seems to be a bit more commercial than residential.

I don't know about the school district, but why do you have to buy new? I'd be more worried about the HOA. HOAs of new condo/townhomes are running at $400-600 at least, that to me is a big turn off.

OO,

HOA is 195.00 per month ... material quality seemed to be good in model homes ...

>> Perma, did you write that?

No my style is to copy & paste ...... that I feel will cause debate ...

OO Says:
Sad news for chocolate fans. Scharffen Berger Berkeley will be closed and moved to Illinois. I hope Hershey’s is not going to shut it down eventually.

I was pretty outraged (at the bean counters in Hershey's) when I heard that on the news last week. The sad reality is that over time, one biz-school MBA reptile after another will chip away at the brand's quality - replacing suppliers, firing the original creators, "improving" manufacturing processes, etc. until there is nothing left but the carcass of a brand whose insides have been ripped out and restuffed with marketing bullshit. The final nail will be moving the factory to Mexico or China. Fucking Corporapists.

Hershey's might as well shut it down now - why the fuck will I want to pay extra for crappy corporate chocolate just because it has the Scharffen Berger name on it?

"Has he done anything useful since, oh, 1978??"

Uh... no. Evidently the SB "entertainment" guys have a knack for dredging up people who's careers should have long ended years ago. Janet Jackson, ZZ Top, Aerosmith ( who boy ) amongst countless others.

If it was up to me the stage would be set for true, hidden American gems and purists like Dick Dale ( King of the Surf Guitar ) or Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels etc. I say bring on the folks that -started- a genre ( not the ones that ended it ) That or bring on some young guys that are starting up.

I didn't see any comments on the new forclosure data http://economybust.blogspot.com/2009/02/forclosures-data-for-california.html
Is this good or bad for us long term bubble sitters?

Sad news for chocolate fans. Scharffen Berger Berkeley will be closed and moved to Illinois.
News flash! Cost of doing business is high in the Bay Area. Companies moving production to flyover country. Who would have guessed?
FWIW, they (the evil Hershey empire) claim most of the Scharffen Berger products are already made in Illinois. That said, it was great place to run by as chocolate permeated the air... Sigh...

I seriously doubt how big of a labor cost difference it is between Berkeley and Illinois, particularly in a business where cocoa beans (materials) makes the most difference. Scharffen Berger is good because the cocoa content is highly concentrated, unlike the high-fructose-corn-syrup Hershey's with very watered down cocoa content. People who pay 3x the price for a small can of cocoa expect that kind of quality. They are also one of very few undutched cocoa suppliers, if they take away that SKU, I am outta there.

You provide high quality, you charge a high price, and even in a depressionary situation, there will be people who care enough and make enough to afford these things, especially for these little luxury that are sold at discount outfits like Trader Joe's. I cannot afford a personal jet, but I sure can afford some kick-ass chocolates to brighten up my days. I honestly see a brand already on its dying path.

Is this good or bad for us long term bubble sitters?

When more people are throwing money at the pit... you tell us if this is good or bad for the housing market in the medium to long term.

Scharffen Berger is good because the cocoa content is highly concentrated...
I believe that the Scharffen Berger folks are single-handly responsible for the cacao wars (that is, getting high end bar manufacturers to state cacao percentage on their labels). Quite frankly, they "spoiled" my taste buds, and I can no longer eat the cheap cr@p.

European chocolate bars have had the cacao percentage on them for a long time, more than a decade at least.

I'm a bit worried about Scharffen Berger quality since Hershey's bought them, but I assume they know full well that people won't be fooled by any reduction in quality. I have a cup of Scharffen Berger cocoa each morning, no sugar. It's really great. Valrhona tastes rather burnt.

From 2006:
With little fanfare, American chocolate companies have begun labeling their bars according to cacao (pronounced KA-cow) content, the blend of cocoa solids and cocoa butter that makes chocolate — and makes it so irresistible. Already common in Europe, this system brings to the industry a uniformity praised by bakers and chocolate experts.
Interestingly enough: "Too much emphasis is being placed on the number," says Robert Steinberg, co-founder of Berkeley, Calif.-based Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker.

TOB, :-) (George likes his Kung-Pao chicken. George is getting upset!)

I'm good with some Fruit+Nut as well, works for me.

Some drastic predictions -

http://mises.org/story/3318

These new times are not the 1930s when a few eggheads in Washington could set most prices and wages and gather the captains of industry to cobble together business cartels. The economic and financial world moves at the speed of light and is so diffuse that no political authority can act quickly enough to control it. The establishment is going down. This is another reason that all believers in freedom have reason to rejoice today.

Twelve to 18 months from now, it will be obvious that there is nothing the new administration can do to patch things up. Obama will be humbled by the market just as Bush and Clinton were before him, but this time the humbling will overwhelm any attempts to patch things up or put a spin on the much-needed upheaval.

I agree with everything except his prediction about gold. Something along the lines of Paypal would be far more likely. Some sort of self regulating system of credits would be ideal.

Some drastic predictions ...

Wow, over-leveraged douchebags with a million-plus in debt are finally going to figure out negative equity.

Going back to a gold standard will just make things worse. There were more bubbles and panics when we had hard currencies; the last 70 years have been remarkably stable.

The solution is we need to put caps on federal, business and consumer debt; and make sure what new debt is created is secured against something tangible. Including the capacity for future work.

Bubbles are not bad or harmful. Overzealous policy reactions to bubbles are.

Really I don't see any way out for us except to devalue the dollar. But our friends in other nations won't let us do that in the race to the bottom.

So what's a girl to do? We'll have to devalue the dollar vs. gold, implying a return to the gold standard.

But this won't be your father's gold standard, which kept the dollar strong. The purpose of new gold standard would be to keep the dollar weak.

Or we just let the global leveraged asset bubble collapse and deal with a few years of high unemployment until the market soaks up all the excess.

Peter, are we back to these one liners again?

Don't you like them? :)

Really I don’t see any way out for us except to devalue the dollar.

Devalue against whom? It is all relative.

Devalue against gold.

we need to put caps on federal, business and consumer debt; and make sure what new debt is created is secured against something tangible

Damn, here I go again agreeing with 33% of what Kewp said. Must be bad Shahi Paneer.

So yeah, Federal debt cap. Don't we have one of those? You're going to have to Constitutionalize that to put it beyond the Congress Bozos who raise it every 15 minutes. As far as business and consumer debt, yep, we've got to stop backstopping the loans (notice the most recent "guarantees"?), so banks will do what banks used to do all the time: say NO! beause they wanted to be repaid. You might not notice, but those little traditional regional and local banks, the ones who haven't been out there securitizing every Tuesday night poker game IOU on the planet and have been lending based on, well, "equity" and "ability to repay," haven't been getting chewed up and spat out in the FDIC Friday Afternoon Massacres. Leave that to the big boys.

Back when I knew every banker in my home town by the name of their children's dolls, my hometown bank gave me a credit card with a line of $1,500. At the same time Citi had $14,000 in cards to me, Chase another $5,000, some other bank another $10,000, and yet another $3,500. I damn near could've bought the property I was living on for what the "Big" banks had out to me.

EBGuy Says:
Already common in Europe, this system brings to the industry a uniformity praised by bakers and chocolate experts.

The cacao content number is just a starting point. The rest of it depends on how it is blended and some arcane things like granularity and the quantity of froth as the chocolate is poured. I have no idea about the actual science here, but like EBGuy said, once you've had good chocolate, you can't go back to the corn-syrup infused dogshit that Hershey's peddles in their more pedestrian brands.

The sad part of this is that there was enough high-end business to maintain Scharffen Berger's Berkeley plant as a boutique factory - higher prices, smaller volumes - there are a enough people who will pay the premium for this small luxury. I suspect that the prime reason for Hershey to shut it down is that they want to take the brand "mainstream" - lower its cost-basis, and carpet-bomb the country with vast quantities of inferior chocolate with a premium name.

In partial atonement for my off-topic chocolate ranting... here is a thought that is relevant to the original thread topic...

Any ideas for the form of a barter system for labor-to-goods that could be built along the lines of a peer-to-peer network?

Re:Cacao

I use raw organic cacao nibs in my smoothies. Highly recommended.

Not sure if this link will work,

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_10965922

but the merc has per-zipcode database of what fractions of mrtgages are underwater in silicon valley.

one liners are the work of the devil.

I never knew you had such an high opinion of me. :)

RE: Cocoa

It is making highs after recovering from last year's commodity armageddon:

http://new.quote.com/us/futures/chart.action?s=CC+H9&chartUi.period=W&chartUi.bardensity=LOW&chartUi.bartype=AREA&chartUi.size=620x300&chartUi.minutes=

What are the units of that plot?