patrick.net

HARM,

It's all good. I was just trying to spout my typical "don't worry about China too much" diatribe before people launched into the typical doomsday predictions for the US economy. I do find great tragic comedy in China's posturing. However, it is probably timed to coincide with Congress' annual "beat up the RMB peg" theatre.

her irony/humor

@newsfreak,

Ahh... the old "which gender do I use" pronoun issue. That's the problem with English --there's no truly gender neutral singular pronoun, aside from the awkward (and inappropriate) "its", or "their", his/her, s/he. The rule when I was in grammar school was to always use the male pronoun, but that was back during prehistory/pre-PC.

Oops --forgot "one's".

Freddie Mac CFO resigns, shares fall
Wed Mar 22, 2006 11:26 AM ET

By Ed Leefeldt
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Martin Baumann, the respected chief financial officer of Freddie Mac (FRE.N: Quote, Profile, Research), has resigned less than three years after taking the job at the second-largest U.S. mortgage funding company, which is still recovering from an accounting scandal.

On March 10 Freddie Mac said it would delay until May the release of its quarterly and full-year financial results in order to implement an accounting change. It said it would hold a conference call with investors on March 30 to discuss this.

Japan is certainly doing some interesting things, and politically they are unaligned with either India or China. They also have an interesting relationship to Israel, as having almost no muslim demographic.

Best beef in the world too! Their seafoods are also top notch.

you Kalis care obsessed with food. I have no such obsesssion. As long as it was grown by mexicans, its ok.

Actually, it is just me.

The main reason Japan has better food in general is that they are willing to pay premium for quality.

what about Bacon Avocado? MARINA IS PRIME.

How much bacon avocado can you eat? Two portions and you are probably sicked-out.

Food (meals) should be designed to leave you in a balanced and harmonic state. So lobster-and-watercress is probably a better idea. Prawns-and-grapefruit should be great too.

DinOr
Yes, I was clear as to what Surfer X was saying. And I agree with him...the realtors twist stats to the point that their message essentially becomes a lie. Damn them! Scoundrels!
Yes, the realturds suck and are contributing the demise of the recent home purchaser by weaving lies about what is really happening.
BTW, Surfer X, some of your posts in the past are my favorite posts on this blog. I love how you tell it like it is...as crudely as you want...no holds barred rants. The world needs more of that...The God awful honest truth. And the outrage :)

but will April be the cruelest month?

Unreal estates,
Under the brown fog of a spring noon.

@Linda in LA-LA-LAND

I'm actually 37% less offensive in person.

All the hype about Iranian Oil Bourses was for nothing. I read they have postponed it as part of their 5 yr plan to somewhere in the middle of this year and that they wont start trading oil but something else. Seems like all the threatening has finally paid off, damn iranians without proper back bones. I wanted to see how it would have played out when all the other countries start to dump their dollar reserves for Euros but then there are not enough Euros to go around. Will have to be a tight demand supply chain.
Also read Germany and China is in surplus while US is in deficit and thats how the balance sheet is balanced all over the world. No wonder so many BMW's and Mercs on the road and Walmarts springing up like crazy.

@SFWoman,

Why do you hate Amerika?

HARM, are you suggesting that SFWoman is a "fifth columnist"? :-O

@Peter P,

No, not all. Perhaps I didn't express my thoughts clearly. I just feel that unpatriotic people like her are destroying the social fabric of this country --that's all. Sorry for any confusion. ;-)

HOMO AMERICANUS: therefore more food means it will be more harmonic.

I have this "never-ending meal" idea in mind. If we carefully size the portion and time the arrival of each course, an infinite meal can become a possibility. Of course, there needs to be bathroom and napping breaks between courses.

No, not all. Perhaps I didn’t express my thoughts clearly. I just feel that unpatriotic people like her are destroying the social fabric of this country –that’s all. Sorry for any confusion.

Oh no! What are we going to do?

Fortunately, work will make us free. ;)

@Hymie,
I am not good at stocks either but when you say you are dumping stocks - you mean you are selling them at cheaper price than what you bought it for but there has to be someone out there to buy it at that cheaper price - or else how are you selling it ? So there is someone out there that thinks that that stock has some value at that cheap low price and will buy and hold on to it till it increases in value.
So stocks and RE are the same.

Of course real estate can only go up. Are you attempting to destroy everything we stand for? They make no more land.

Right. I am glad that you see the light. Every bubblehead is a fifth columnist. ;)

This is already happening. Have you eaten at MM (Michael Minna) in the St. Francis?

I will try...

Is it better than Gary Danko's and/or Silks? But I believe most tasting menus last only a few hours. Perhaps we need to introduce multi-day tasting menus.

@Davis_renter,

Out of moderation.

I just love this double-speak

California had more unsold homes in February than at any other time in the past eight years, as sales of existing houses slowed further with rising mortgage rates and high prices, according to a report released on Thursday.

"There are a lot of people who can't afford to buy at today's prices," said John Burns, an Irvine, California-based consultant to home builders. "It looks to me like the market is headed for a soft landing."

Ok, lets shift the order a bit,

The inventory of unsold homes rose to a 6.7-month supply last month. "There are a lot of people who can't afford to buy at today's prices," said John Burns, an Irvine, California-based consultant to home builders. California had more unsold homes in February than at any other time in the past eight years, as sales of existing houses slowed further with rising mortgage rates and high prices. "It looks to me like the market is headed for a soft landing."

No actually it looks like your soon to get your ass handed to you.

-your
+you're

SFWoman, do you know of a good place to have High Tea in the city?

SFWoman,

Juku is not a real person. Nor are his aliases.

It is an automated NLP using such sophisticated AI algorithms that it is almost entirely indistinguishable from a knee-jerk, jingoistic, reactionary demagogue ideologue. I actually have my suspicions that it was developed by Felwesh, who derived it as a complex Bayesian network one weekend when he was attempting to disprove the utility of Neural Networks. However, Peter P and I have developed Genetic Algorithms which carefully select testing parameters and are able to see through Fewlesh's evil blogbots.

The battle only now just begun.

NLP = neuro-linguistic programming?

Surfer-X
Does that mean you're 67%more offensive while blogging??? :)
BTW, I've never actually found you offensive...though the day is young!

NLP = Natural Language Processing/Processor, but I like yours too.

How about NLP^2?

It would be a bot using Natural Language Processing and Neuro Linguistic Programming to brainwash people.

Does that mean you’re 67%more offensive while blogging???

No, just 37% less offensive in person*

*Note: not investment advice.

OK, now, when I lived in London ‘High Tea’ wasn’t the sandwich/scone clotted cream thing we think about here. It was a children’s supper at about 5:00 and consisted of fish fingers or a sausage and beans, or something like that.

Yes, I have watched a documentary about that a while ago.

I do like rich and heavy food occasionally and I do like fish fingers. ;)

It’s like golf, fun, but who has the time?

Now I hate golf. Can't hit anything at all recently.

Wow, do you mean I have entered a battle with an evil robot? I hope my training will enable me to prevail.

I am sure the evil robot uses evolutionary algorithms. Your training in microbiology will come in handy.

I can have a heavy dinner only once every a few weeks.

On the other hand, scones are not that difficult to prepare yourself anyway. The key is Devonshire cream (or any cream with 50% fat ;) ) which is readily available.

Molecular biology. Sheesh.

My bad. I am very ignorant in science.

@Hymie
I didnt have stocks during the stock bubble burst but I am thinking, did we have the same scenario where people were trying to unload their accumulated tech stocks during the beginning of the crash but they couldnt find buyers and had to hold on it and watch while the value went down ?
I do agree that stocks tend to trade faster because it is a much smaller asset compared to a RE and also because of the advances in Tech.

SFWoman,

With your molecular biology background, you are well equipped to join the battle. Peter P and I will attempt to provide you with the tools necessary to emerge victorious. But I warn you that if, as we suspect, Fewlesh is behind this evil, your opponent is worthy and capable. Might I recommend using Surfer-X as your benchmark Turing Machine.

I am up for the challenge!

Make sure that planets align at the time of the battle.

So the Juku roboto is a fifth columnist?

a government that is clearly not an ideal one.

hmm, so we trust our own politicians now? are dubya and rice and rumsfeld and wolfowitz and powell and the whole lying conniving gas/oil junta who got in on 2 rigged, undemocratic elections a preferred option? is FEMA an effective institution? how well did they deal with the aftermath of katrina? what about the reading of 'my pet goat' while the WTCs were being attacked, and the general disappearance of the leadership for several days? interesting how little interest for the people is being shown by the so-called 'leadership', hmm. seems more like a kleptocracy to me - loot the coffers for our cronies while we're in power... even if dubya's popularity is at an all-time low, are you convinced that the diebold machines with their 'commercial-in-confidence' code are going to allow a better alternative to be elected next time? 1984, here we come...

under the surface, china is actually a tremendously commercial culture - they are born mercantilists. note that the industrialising south of china, far removed from beijing, is the engine-room of the chinese economy, and taking over the world - at least while labour is cheap. many chinese factory owners, and others, are getting wildly rich from the manufacturing boom. however, they are just culturally different, and starting from a different place and a different set of understandings. remember things only started to get better for people in the 'western world' and people started to develop a sense of 'fair play' once they could accumulate relatively large and stable surpluses and thus gain reasonably assured levels of wellbeing.

The inventory of unsold homes rose to a 6.7-month supply last month. “There are a lot of people who can’t afford to buy at today’s prices,” said John Burns.

Interesting ratchet effect with property prices - people are very loathe to see prices drop, defying a traditional supply/demand economic model... And some of these people bought their houses for chickenfeed prices decades ago, and still want to get top dollar, it's not as tho they bought last year and are going to get a complete soaking if they sell for only 8 times what they originally paid instead of 12.

Juku roboto, it's all making sense now.

The conspiracy ranges beyond Jukubot, I'm afraid. I fear it is in fact a syndicate of Orwellian bots, coordinated and working towards the same goal of undermining Western Democratic Liberal Market Capitalism. [Note I have purposefully interjected an ambiguous usage of the "L" word to test the Turning merits of monitoring Jukubots.]

Could this all be emanating from "The Futurist". Is "The Futurist" itself a mocking title, in grand Orwellian style, which foretells the distortions we can expect in this yet free media of the blogosphere?

I need a drink.

[Note I have purposefully interjected an ambiguous usage of the “L” word to test the Turning merits of monitoring Jukubots.]

Do you think it is goog enough to defeat captcha? If it is, perhaps we can turn it into the ultimate spamming machine.