patrick.net

i-Think you think too much about Ol' i-wog. Is he really so important to spend that much time?

Bay Arean Cool And Hip

After reading all our threads & comments,everyday, We all can't use the handle, ASSHOLE.

If it was possible to quantify the unquantifiable, it's likely that Goldman Sachs with their countless Math PhDs would have crunched it by now. Anybody remember Black-Shoales?

Also, doesn't capitalist theory say that once you identify a need, the margin disappears? The Tool Booth Situation?

I think my new tactic is to simply by garbage that has been oversold. Anybody seen the Greek ETF over the past few years? Buy when there is blood on the streets, sell when everybody is talking the asset to the moon and possibly beyond to the next parsec.

When Gold goes back to $300-400/oz. I'm a buyer. When Silver falls into the mid-teens, I'm a buyer.

When did Walmart begin the downward spiral? When the founder died, and the new management fired or drove to quitting the thousands of long time employees making teens per hour with benefits.

They pursued a policy of aggressive expansion that drove tons of local businesses out of business. Fine, competition.

But then, they ate themselves. The multiple checkout lines were useless, since they were only partially staffed. The stores fell apart, disorganized shelves, filthy floors, overworked, hateful staff - the only people who wanted to work at Walmart were those who had no choice.

The lack of substitutes in rural areas makes Walmart a mad house at certain times (like all weekend long).

Having cut the staff to the bone, even Forbes noticed that Walmart seems to be cutting store management, too:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/walterloeb/2013/07/17/why-are-walmart-stores-such-a-mess/

In the past few years, people started to get wise to Walmart's trickery. People now make sure there is no "W" at the end of a model identifier when comparing Walmart prices to competitors - although Walmart got wise to that and got manufacturers to drop any serial number ID for their inferior Wally Versions:

I wanted an inexpensive digital camera for my daughter. After finding one with the basic features I wanted, I went to sears, target and walmart to check prices. All 3 stores sold the a camera with the exact same model number. Sears -$119 target -$109 walmart - $99 . I bought it at the manufactures online store but when the camera was delivered it DID NOT have all the features that the Sears and Target salesperson had shown me (couldn’t get help at the Walmart store). I contacted the factory store and asked them if perhaps the one I got was an older version of this camera since the model number on the unit was the correct. The customer service agent apologized and said I must have gotten one of the “WALMART” cameras. These units were manufactured just for them with the same model number but with reduced features. So while the price was a little lower at walmart, the value was worse since it was a stripped down version.

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2007/02/can_this_be_true_of_wal-mart.html

TL;DR: They'll find the cheaper price is due to reduced features, not better prices than the competition.

She is hiding a co-conspirator in there.

Child bearing hips. Looks like she's good for a battalion of sociopathic Scotsmen.

BABY GOT BACK!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=reTx5sqvVJ4

No way that could be hard to trace.

Satellite imagery can be cross-referenced with data on gravitational anomalies. That can't just fade into the landscape.

It's the BUTTAPOCALYPSE!

Hippopotta-POW!

Catapult her into space, and wherever she lands, it will be the Tunguska-Butt Event. The crater will be legendary.

Butt, butt, butt... She paid off a $2,600 tax lien while on the run. Probably pulled the money out of her ass.

There's gold in them thar hills!

Oops, forgot a keypoint - thanks sbh for the sociopath analogy.

Walmart stores began cannibalizing sales from other Walmarts, too.

Wallyword is a dying business. Even with all the preferential local tax treatments (localities often got into bidding wars, making all other businesses pay full tax with old infrastructure, while promising Walmart no property taxes and improved infrastructure for car traffic), the full bore PR campaign, all the CATO and Heritage help, it got too greedy and pissed off the customer.

Increasingly, Wallyworld is getting the bottom rungs of consumers; whereas before they had a much more diverse (and profitable) customer base. With that bottom rung base comes more security problems, as well. Walmart Parking Lots are often huge black spots in otherwise crime free locales.

Why did Walmart never sell real estate?

thunderlips11 says

Wallyword is a dying business.

Really? Their financials say otherwise. Are you also considering their business OUTSIDE the US? This is where they will find very good growth moving forward.

You may not like Walmart as a consumer, or for moral reasons; but you can't deny it as an investment juggernaut....

thunderlips11 says

When did Walmart begin the downward spiral?

If a company is in a downward spiral, why do they keep raising their dividends? One of the best dividend growth companies, and they are in a downward spiral? What am I missing?

It's listed in the MLS.

NAZI 2.0 aka Obamageddon.

bg.. you really hit a new low.

When she says her listing includes an acre, she's talking about her butt.

When she asks her husband, "Does this make my butt look fat", he runs and hides for days.

When she asks the photographer to take a picture of her next to her listing, he asks her if she wants an aerial shot.

I wanted to buy the dip but didn't have the cash. It was back above $1300 before I made my purchase - three Kangaroos. So far so good though.

She's pulling it off. But she needs to do something about the puss on her face though.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/897zysJHE74

sbh says

Which is why your observations are worth considering, unlike some posters, on other matters, who will deny the tape and keep saying just wait.....just wait....just wait. One wonders if they really even make trades or have money bet on their line. The tape is all that matters.

His observations aren't worth crap when it comes to gold. He may have gotten lucky with housing (thanks only to Benny and the Inkjets), but he's thinking like a HFT algo when it comes to gold. That no longer applies. And yes, I've put my money where my mouth is in this case.

sbh says

AverageBear says

why do they keep raising their dividends?

Because, as with most publicly traded companies, the only thing that matters is the stock ownership. Wealth in America doesn't come from labor, it comes from ownership. That's been the case for a long time, so nobody is surprised. The hard part is watching the whole economy re-balance and retool around an impoverished population of mainstay consumers. We all know that a large component of their fate is their own responsibility, but it's like watching a slow moving train wreck as these new crap jobs flesh out the new crap business model of crap American wages.

SBH,

Sooooo, your argument has mutated into a broad rant about the macro economy, that has nothing to do w/ my original comment about Walmart being a in a downward spiral and its overall fiscal heath.

But you are correct in one aspect: as with most (ie, ALL) publicly traded companies, the only thing that matters (or more correctly, the first or most important thing) is making money. It's why they exist, and it's called self preservation.

Blaming one company (and its success) on our nation's 'crap' business model/wages/etc, is a pretty narrow view of things.

Walmart is one of the elite dividend payers in a sea of American companies. It helps retired folks (rich and poor, and every one inbetween) live better off the fixed income stream (dividends) that Walmart provides. Do you have a problem with this aspect of Walmart as well?

your turban too tight bg? craving those 72 virgins?

there is only one way Isreal becomes a threat to a country: When that country is infected by islamuslamists who try to harm Isreal. If the crazy arabs would just concentrate on murdering eachother and leave all non-arabs out of their target list, the world would be a much saferand happier place.

A world full of Jews is a calm and quiet world. A world full of islamuslamists is a constant war.

SBH, OK, I wasn't sure were you were going on the topic: economy vs WMT vs capitalism. I see what you are saying about those that work and shop in Walmart, or really any retail chain for that matter.

Not to sound depressing, but working in retail is supposed to suck. It requires no skill, and pays the least. It should be a 'negative reinforcement' experience to get the hell outta there, and find better work, or work on improving your skillset to get that better job. And depressing as it is to go into a store (walmart or otherwise) and experience the lowered standards as time marches on, it is what it is. I'd like to think that there were the same zombie-like, unattentive,people in the 60s/70s/80s that worked in retail. Maybe we just put those bad retail experiences out of our minds over time? Maybe the retail experience is different by location?

Not to get too political, but our welfare 'goodie quotient' has expanded big time the last 20+ years (under BOTH parties), so the pool of hungry, motivated workers has shrunk or disappeared.

I'm going to teach my kids to attack each menial/shit job like his life depended on it. Make it a game to see how fast they can get out of it (via promotion or a bounce to a better job), within that company or somewhere else. I want them to experience that work as I did, and appreciate and use your skills to improve yourself, so that retail/shit work will be a faint memory in the rearview mirror.... Kinda goes against the grain of those fast-food workers that went on strike last week, eh?

One final note (and story)... I took my kids to McDonalds last Friday night (I know, unhealthy, blablabla; it's a treat I give them about 5-6 times a year)... Anyway, I had a tray of garbage I was trying to throw out, into the tiny-slotted garbage can. I spilled everything on the floor, even a good amount of milk left in a bottle. I cleaned it up, and got napkins to clean up the spilled milk. The cashier was nice, and told me that they'd clean it up, but i did it anyway, feeling bad about them cleaning my mess. I checked on my kids (5 and 8), then went back to get shakes. The cashier didn't charge me for mine (1 of the 3) because she saw that I cleaned my mess myself. She was pleasant when i picked up my food before my spaz event, and she was pleasant during, and after. I thought that was a cool move that I didn't even expect. Moral of story? Sometimes you'll find people that really care, or are nice in places you'd never expect (retail)....

yep, mccain is junk.

The Jews are DEFENDING themselves from crazy arabs that whack-off with thoughts of chopping off Jew heads. The arabs are just tanned NAZI.

I've come to believe bgamall is the son of Kommadant Klink, or Sargent Shultz...one of the two...

APOCALYPSEFUCK is Comptroller says

Fibbing? Really? In international politics?

once again, pow-zoom-right to the moon, Alice!

bgamall4 says

I suppose, Softshell and Bap that you forgot the images of people falling to their deaths out of the towers. I haven't forgotten and I know who to blame, oil men, neocons, and militant Zionists.

Rather than the people who actually flew the planes into the towers...

yea .... that one little fact slipped past

It doesn't matter.
It shouldn't matter.
That's your problem. You look at ethnicity, not individual people.

but...if you must know....

bgamall4 says

SoftShell says

I've come to believe bgamall is the son of Kommadant Klink, or Sargent Shultz...one of the two...

And who are you the son of softshell, a crab or a lobster? Tell us what your ethnic background is. I would like to know.

yeah yeah yeah blah blah blah...
u sound like a broken record....

bgamall4 says

I suppose, Softshell and Bap that you forgot the images of people falling to their deaths out of the towers. I haven't forgotten and I know who to blame, oil men, neocons, and militant Zionists

Sounds like the time honored tradition of black marketing government goods.

Yossarian's Milo, anyone?

When you are trained by education and temperament to be a parasitic entity with no long term moral horizon, you just do what comes naturally.

National Association of Rodents

Shostakovich visited U.S.; Comptroller traveled to other cities

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19590717&id=OeQeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ySUEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4810,3639589

http://www.youtube.com/embed/U7o_3aBIeyU