patrick.net

Seriously-

I don't have the answer and nobody is talking about it! Anybody, what do you think a GM bailout looks like????

Also, does C and BAC end up in JPM?

Does JPM become the USA bank!

Merge all US auto makers and name them AmCar

Merger all US airlines and call them AmAir

and finally fund passenger rail in this country and call it success!

Great call, Duke on the 11,500. At the beginning of the month I said there's no doubt we'll test the year's lows. Now, that we're testing them, I got the funny feeling the lows will not hold.

It's too bad that a nice guy like Skibum appears to have gone to the dark-side and bought an over-priced piece of crap Bay Area property. My wife and I will buy when the Case-Shiller shows a 25% decline. It's pretty apparent now that we have a lot further to go. I say Case-Shiller will drop 25 - 30% nationally before prices turn up. At 25% we may be 5% too early, but that's a risk we'll take. It's looking like we have a year and a half more to go. Winter '09-'10.

I haven't read this thread fully, but the question I want to ask the Libertarian breed here is how would you see 'fees' being used to pay for our current 800+ fires burning in California? If the forrest is on fire, and there are no structures there for which a paying customer would provide the fees (and the State is not gathering the dreaded 'taxes' to pay the costs), then who exactly pays to put those out? Do we just wait for the fires to reach actual homes before the fire fighters get engaged with these 'fees'?

LSR,

I'm pretty sure they would pull natural disaster funding from the same pool as the military (by state).

Note that taxes are still there to support the small governments and military. And in a true non-Intervention military policy there should be a large budget overflow for the military ready to pull funds from for natural disasters.

Personally, I would be happy if they just canned welfare, social security, medicare, and the income tax (replaced with a flat sales tax), then lowered our taxes with the savings. These are obvious improvements. Any argument to keep our social programs seems to ignore the fact that in 10 years they will cost more than our entire GDP to run.

But of course, I'm a d-bag for not wanting to bankrupt our country, blah blah.

If the forrest is on fire, and there are no structures there for which a paying customer would provide the fees (and the State is not gathering the dreaded ‘taxes’ to pay the costs), then who exactly pays to put those out?

Who put out forest fires during the Jurassic Age? That T-Rex?

I'm with you FuzzyMath. I pay taxes, income and payroll, and still have to support one parent living on Social Security, Medicare, and HUD Section-8. Taxes so high and benefits so low, it seems a raw deal to me. I do not believe taxes are inherently evil, but a poorly structured tax code that does not deliver on promises, that I have a problem with. And here we are some 9 trillion dollars in deficit. Where does it all go?

As many have said, if the government were a private organization, they would have been out of business many years ago.

I am intrigued by the ideals of privatization and other Libertarian goals. I am just not yet sold on the idea that it is a better solution than our current [broken] system. I am adverse to jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

I am just not yet sold on the idea that it is a better solution than our current [broken] system.

Again, the human problem is intractable.

Is that an official notice that Fed will start “massaging” ugly H3 number?
You'd need a pretty big fig leaf to hide that mess. This weeks TSLF auction showed a slight decrease in the bid-to-cover ratio over the one 28 days ago. Ben says: Set your phasers on stun... shoot to kill.

waaal, they banned guns here altogether and no-one is much worse off for it. same in UK, same in many parts of europe.

they have 'socia1ised medicine' here and it costs half as much to run per capitsa as the privatised insurance-based system in the US, as in the UK, as in many parts of europe.

an american friend of mine living in oz says that at least she can send her kids to school here without constantly worrying about what might happen today. and she gets free health care...

just my 2¢
:roll:

Anyone know how I can search old threads?

Just go to www.patrick.net/wp, look to the right under archives and they are listed by month and year. Hit the link and you are good to go.

The comma after the wp is messing up that link. Sorry. Omit it and it should work.

The privatized medical insurance in the US is not working well because it is not privatized enough.

Emergency rooms needs to charge entrance fees to people with non-critical conditions.

Socialized medicine for special interest groups (e.g. Medicare) must be severely curtailed.

Employers should be encouraged to provide high-deductible plans together with health saving plans.

In short, people should take responsibility of their bodies. If they do not, no one else should care.

Sean, perhaps a resource-rich country like yours can thrive without private gun ownership. Perhaps the USA can do the same. Perhaps not. I do not know.

The only issue here is that the right to bear arms is a constitutional right.

Duke Says:

April 3rd, 2008 at 1:16 pm
The fact the market continues to rise on bad news just amazes me.

Here is my prediction:

In 6 weeks time (May 21) the Dow will drop below 11,500.
By years end it will drop Below 10,000.

Yea - I am sticking with that.

In fact, my re-investment point is likely 8,500 pending a whole bunch of data between now and the end of the year.

Bap33,

I agree with you regarding the pushrod V8 comments, but that is the type of engine that comes to mind when you start talking HP contests. Definitely not the best example of forward thinking engine technology.

I don't agree about sacrificing reliability or emissions for mpg though. I think of it as overall environmental efficiency. An efficient engine or battery does you no good if it ends up in a landfill after 75k miles. On the rotaries, the seals just don't hold up. You can say it is b/c lazy americans don't check their oil or whatever you want, but rotaries use a lot of oil and fuel, and they don't last. They make great power for their size, but not great torque- the exact opposite of what most ppl need.

One of my cousins has a sand rail with a Wankle. Twin turbos. Wholly crap!!! A 1600 lb. car with close to 500 hp. We were at Pismo and he took me for a ride in that thing. Whine, unloader,whine, unloader... what's this mid-air shit. I was never so darn scared in my life. Took me two hours to wipe the shit eatin' grin off of my face. And all from a 1.5L engine.

TOB,

As more time goes by, I still find it hard to believe that this whole credit mess was allowed to happen in the first place. Blind investment made it all possible. Good example of managers capitalism vs. owners' capitalism. The pain is sooooo far from being over.

Every once in a while, we will have a wacko whose goal is to take down as many people as possible. Japan just had an incident of a jobless, hopeless "loser"who went to Tokyo's electronics mecca to carry out his massacre. Luckily guns are banned in Japan so he only managed to kill 5 with his recently purchased knife. Can you imagine what the death toll could be if he were allowed to buy AK47?

I know that there will be more and more violence in this country as we sink further economically. Unlike other countries, Americans have a very strong sense of entitlement, I deserve a McMansion, I deserve a Hummer, I deserve a vacation to Europe, I deserve to eat out every week. So when they lose what they think they "deserve", a certain proportion of them will turn to violence. Mark my words.

On top of this, this country mistreats vets. Some astounding number of vets end up being homeless (something like 30% or so). Iraq war aggravates this problem by enlisting the bottom-of-the-barrel gang members, train them on how to use weapons, and then spew the survivors out back to the American society, jobless and hopeless. What will happen next is just a matter of time.

Don't think that as long as we live in good neighborhoods, we are sheltered. There is certainly much more hatred towards the moneyed in America compared to, say, a decade ago.

All it takes is for one guy to go non-linear to take down many lives, and the US has become a breeding ground for such kind of guy. I am far more afraid of a Timothy McVeigh II than a terrorist attack from a foreign country. McVeighs of the world are around us, they can attack anything they are familiar with, and it can be my workplace, where I go shopping, my kids'school etc. To minimize the exposure to terrorist attack, I just stop going to SF.

Can you imagine what the death toll could be if he were allowed to buy AK47?

Now, what if one of his victims had a licensed concealed handgun? Better yet, what if the shop-owner had a 12-gauge shotgun?

We cannot outlaw human flaws. We can only foster a balance of power.

There is certainly much more hatred towards the moneyed in America compared to, say, a decade ago.

The Supreme Court provided the answer yesterday.

If hatred should grow, there will be a huge demand for armed private security forces. I really think such firms should be allowed to carry automatic weapons.

OO,

I think that the nine wisemen uptown see the same thing that you do. I've expected a McVeigh style loonytoon to do something stupid, but not quite yet. I pray to God that it doesn't go that way, but I wouldn't be shocked if something like that happened again. There is alot of hopelessness out there right now and it's only getting worse. It will manifest itself in one way or another. Let's hope that it is benign.

Five with a knife. That guy was pretty motivated. Yuk.

There is alot of hopelessness out there right now and it’s only getting worse.

It must be related to that 2012 Mayan thing.

If I were truly hopeless, I would be taking a mega vacation. I would eat lobsters until I go bust.

It is nice being a misanthropist in these interesting times. At least I can take a comical view of human futility. :)

Humanity is really laughable.

I believe vets deserve good benefits. These are the heroes who defend our values.

I am convinced this whole thing was entirely deliberate.

I think so as well. The bankruptcy reform act in 2005 being passed just at the peak of the credit bubble is just too much of a coincidence for me.

There is no such thing as a coincidence. However, I do not subscribe to conspiracy theories.

It is just fate or destiny.

Law-breakers break laws. What good can come from more laws?

Classic! I agree 100%!

Subscribing to conspiracy theories brings me no value.

Peter,

Didn't you read Uncle Al's book. (don't hate me folks, but yeah, I did) One recurring theme that jumped out at me was how he is so hung up on property ownership as a cure for so many economic ills. It adds stability, wealth, pride, he says. What he didn't say was: Lets get a bunch of idiots into houses that they cannot afford, let them HELOC the daylights out of them because they'll spend every dime and hold off the recession until I'm outta' here.

Was it deliberate? Gee, I gotta ponder that one. :)

I still have a big stack of books to read... I do not like Uncle Al. (Believe it or not, I admire Oprah though!)

Ownership is not a well-defined word. (Renters own the use of their apartments for a specified period of time.)

To me, rent vs own is merely a matter of financing arrangement.

The best way to improve social stability is to encourage enterprising behaviors and to incentivize production. This can only be achieved with minimal taxation and minimal welfare.

He ties it into Governmentally protected private property rights in terms of increasing the overall wealth of a nation by allowing private parties to own land or homes or whatever. If it has value and they own it, they can borrow against it and spend. It's too cowinkydinky.

If it has value and they own it, they can borrow against it and spend.

Then this is all borrowing and leverage, not ownership.

Absolutely true. There in lies the rub.

...the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land...

Why should these projects be carried out on public land in the first place?

Are they public projects? If they are public projects, why not. And by public projects, I mean a public utility.