patrick.net

By the way, despite what many Americans think, the Vietnamese people aren't diehard communists at heart. I have been there. The Vietnamese were tired of foreign powers in their country (China -at times in the past centuries), France and finally the US).

Some people will remain ignorant of scientific process, willfully or otherwise. More than just deny they may in fact fight tooth and nail against findings that don't fit their world view.

Without support at the policy level individuals can do little to affect any outcomes from climate change. Sure we can reduce our own carbon footprint, but that does not matter unless everyone is doing it.

Do you see any significant changes coming at the policy level? I don't, and with climate change there is about a 30 year lag between action and consequences. Policy changes don't tend to happen until the consequences are right in our faces. Humans just are not built to think that long in the future. By the time any real policy changes have been made it is going to be waaaayyyyy too late to avoid any disaster scenarios you see coming as a result of climate change.

Of course anti-climate change people tell you to do nothing, and climate change advocates tell you to affect policy change, and reduce your own carbon output. No one is advising on what the average person should do to prepare themselves and family for the, what I see as, inevitable results of climate change.

Whether you see the results as severe or relatively minor, hell even if you think climate change is not man made, there is bound to be some resource restriction, and migration. Most will not do anything about it until they have to.

The more people that are unprepared, the better off those that are prepared will be.

So, wormwood, et al. please as you were. Climate change is a hoax. You need not even concern yourselves with responding to a thread like this.

rubyrae says

The logic is that the market is descending. So the property value (what you think the property is worth) in Sept would be much lower in Dec or March. A considerable amount of time has passed and the market and value of the home has gone down so you would have to adjust the price offered accordingly.

I guess this goes back to what others have said in the past (one of the few times I agree with Klarek). You should be doing thorough analysis and make offers based on that full analysis not some small amount of data. If your offer was good "several months" ago based on your thorough historical analysis, realistically it should still be a good offer. Otherwise, why the hell were you making that offer in a descending market? You knew the market was descending; you thought the number was good then, you should account for potential declines.

Maybe if you take the example to the extreme and change "several months" to almost a year and put the time frame when our country may have on the brink of financial collapse (2008-2009), then there could have been a big enough decline where market values actually dropped significantly and the offer is now too high. But in today's market, in the better parts of the BA, this is BS for you to wait, then the bank agrees to your price and then you go lower. Follow this plan and you'll likely never buy, even though just 3 months ago, you would have been perfectly happy buying that house for that price. Whatever happened to the view that buying a house is a multi-year commitment? Now you guys are looking at it in terms of months.

Bachmann/Palin 2012: Go With The Mayans

shrekgrinch says

What do you mean 'no proof'? There's more than enough evidence around that proves that you rabid Bush-haters blame him for everything including the kitchen sink...especially if you think it will deflect from Obambi's fuck-ups.

Then it should be no problem for you to provide some, right?

I mean, it's everywhere...

Tenouncetrout says

The Taxis here spend about 1200 USD, to convert their '92 Nissan hoopties to Natural Gas. Yup just old USA discarded junk they are taking out the icky parts and putting in the LP gas parts. The taxi driver says he drives all day long on 20 soles. or $6.00 that's about 300 miles of driving. Yep no Eggmobiles no Liberals bitching about foreign Oil they do it, because it makes economic sense and the conversion industry is mom and pops industry, not Big Brother's Company Store Incorporated.

Umm... you can do or get (mom and pop if you wish) natural gas conversions in the US. There are even filling stations around that will fill you up with natural gas.

You are correct, it is a great way to make older cars "clean". People often forget that recycling should be the last option in the "Reduce -> Reuse -> Recycle" conservation steps.

It's because most people are horribly lazy. As in too lazy to make themselves even a sandwich these days.

As to why they eat McDonalds crap, probably because it's convenient and cheap, and they have no taste buds.

In so far as your memories as a kid, yes McDonalds was better then. Their buns were made of real bread instead of leftover sawdust, etc. They have cheaped the quality of pretty much all of the ingredients used over the years.

state says

TOT why do you think I am a democrat or like obama or want people to drive "eggmobiles" whatever the fuck that means

Because you do not prescribe to a teabagging, ultra-right world view.

Anyone who does not whole heatedly buy into, and vigorously promote, the FOX "news" propaganda is by definition an insane lunatic liberal.

state says

zzyzzx says

It's because most people are horribly lazy.

I'm not sure I buy this argument. is it really easier to go out to the car, drive to a mcdonalds, wait in line, get your food, drive home than to slap 4 ingredients together on some bread?

If you are at home, and it's just you, of course it's easier at home. Now if you you have a bunch of annoying kids to feed, or are already in your car doing other errands, that's a different story.

zzyzzx says

state says

zzyzzx says

It's because most people are horribly lazy.

I'm not sure I buy this argument. is it really easier to go out to the car, drive to a mcdonalds, wait in line, get your food, drive home than to slap 4 ingredients together on some bread?

If you are at home, and it's just you, of course it's easier at home. Now if you you have a bunch of annoying kids to feed, or are already in your car doing other errands, that's a different story.

Yes, have you ever tried to cook, even just for 5 minutes, with screaming kids?

I think that it is laziness, and the health education in our county is pitiful. People have grown accustomed to the taste, and do not realize the crap they are putting in their (and their children) bodies.

That said advertising has a much greater influence on people than they think.

state says

"eggmobiles" whatever the fuck that means

Tenoz likes cars that are big and blocky, and resists the physics of aerodynamic efficiency in cars as liberal propaganda:
http://patrick.net/?p=795306

I think that if he were forced to drive an aerodynamic vehicle he would be the guy with a plywood cutout strapped to the front bumper catching as much air as possible. Just to stick it to the "liberals".

xxxxx says

First Golden Rule of invesitng in RE is never ever buy a Condo or Townhouse. The HOA will kill you and you compete against apts. Buy a house, that is where the demand is now.

Could you elaborate? I would think that buying a house to rent out would be more risky.

1. It's a far larger investment.
2. Carrying costs would be greater.
3. You have to maintain both the interior and exterior. With a condo, you only have to maintain the interior.
4. In many places, like pretty much all of south Florida, you still have to deal with an HOA and sometimes they restrict your right to rent out. One house I rented had an HOA rule that an owner can only rent out for two years.

Of course, apartment HOAs can also restrict rental periods and can require HOA approval of tennants.

Still, I'd think that buying and renting a house would carry larger risks than a condo. The main concern I'd have over investing in condos are all the condo vultures that you are competing with. I suspect they have far more time and expertise to determine what condos are prices under market and which ones are over market.

state says

The screaming kids argument is a little better, but i dunno, there weren't any kids at the mcd's i went to

They are all either at home impatiently waiting for a home cooked meal, or in the drive through watching a DVD.

state says

I think part of it is you get addicted to fatty/sugary foods.

Yep, totally.

state says

My office always gets pizza at the same place and I had always liked it before. I'm guessing I had come down off my fat/sugar addiction and fatty stuff no longer tasted good.

You also got used to eating fresh unprocessed food. Dominoes (not saying that is where you ate at, but it is the "low bar") is a far cry from some pizza places where you can get fresh ingredients that don't rely too much on grease and sugar.

leoj707 says

Yes, have you ever tried to cook, even just for 5 minutes, with screaming kids?

Of course not! I know better than to have kids or let one in my house!

shrekgrinch says

But don't worry! The Denial Express always has train waiting for you at the station:
Top Obama adviser says unemployment won't be key in 2012
By Ian Swanson - 07/07/11 08:25 PM ET
President Obama’s senior political adviser David Plouffe said Wednesday that people won’t vote in 2012 based on the unemployment rate.

I saw that and was thinking what a moron Obama and his advisors must be. Either that or delusional. In either event I end up with a mental image of Obama in the Furherbunker

leoj707 says

Umm... you can do or get (mom and pop if you wish) natural gas conversions in the US. There are even filling stations around that will fill you up with natural gas.

I'm in Florida not in California. The only cars in Florida with Gas powered cars are large corporations with fleets. They have their own filling station location that is just for their companies cars.
I'm quite sure that if I rolled up on Peoples Gas and asked them to fill me with BBQ juice, they'd conch me on the head and call it a day.

i refuse to believe there are people who are so busy they do not have time to buy some turkey, cheese, lettuce, tomato and bread and make some sandwiches. or buy some frozen chicken breast and throw it on a foreman grill, which takes about 5 minutes.

A bit off topic, but worth addressing...

Although I usually avoid fast foods, the few times I eat them are during lunch, not dinner. I suspect this is true for most people. And since most of us have day jobs, a Foreman grill isn't an option.

I like to get fruit during lunch at a local supermarket, but fruit is a hit-and-miss. They either have 5,000 ripe bananas or 0. Never anything in between. Strawberries aren't an option since you have to clean them.

So, I suspect that people eat at fast-food restaurants during lunch simply because they are strapped for time. I'm not sure that eating a cold-cut sandwich for lunch every day is much better.

As for taste, although you might find the fast food disgusting tasting, most people don't. Fast food is bad precisely because most people find it tastes good. Fast food exploits the evolutionary food preferences of humans. Our stone-age ancestors survived because they valued sweet and fatty foods. Sweet fruits are ripe and have more vitamins, and fatty foods are high in calories, which were hard to get back in the stone age. The fast food industry is highly competitive and any restaurant that didn't invest in finding out exactly what foods their customers like, wouldn't stay in business.

Tenouncetrout says

Greetings from Pachacama.

Thanks for the info there, 10 oz.

Troy says

Actually, I don\'t think I do. The war was arguably a mistake -- or at least mistakes were made -- but it was never unwinnable. Westmoreland just fought it wrong.

If you believe that then you do need to read more. You sound just like the clueless warmongers of the time. If we just sent in more men, bombed more, sent more money, etc., etc. we would have won. Read some of the North Vietnam viewpoint sometime. Most people in the North truly believed they were fighting a war of liberation. They were committed to the cause. In the south the only people who believed in the war were the corrupt leaders trying to hold onto power and wealth. The rest of the south was divided between people believed in communism and people who didn't care one way or another. The war was unwinnable in any kind of practical terms short of the US committing to total war and overrunning the north.

Troy says

We\'d won the war against the VC by 1972,

We won the war against the VC in 1968. The tet offensive destroyed the VC. The NV leaders cynically sacrificed the VC at tet to make political gains in US public opinion. They of course hoped to win with tet but would settle for a major embaressment of the US. After that the war was between us army and nv army.

Troy says

The military geography of Vietnam made it very difficult to secure the Saigon regime\'s control over the hinterlands,

The fact that the army of sv was corrupt, incompetent, and frequently refused to fight made it impossible to control most of the country.

Troy says

The territory PAVN controlled wasn\'t significant in population terms, but it was strategically useful in that they had \"inside lines\" of communication and the freedom to concentrate their forces anywhere they desired

After 13 years of US forces at war that situation didn't change one bit. At what point would that be winnable? The only way to win would have been to commit 30+ US divisions, stop all shipping into Cambodia (nv was NOT supplying the 20+ divisions they had in Cambodia from the Ho Chi Min trail, our Cambodian "allies" were looking the other way while cargo ships delivered hundreds of tons of supplies), stop all shipping into haiphong, attack the nv forces in Cambodia, attack the nv forces in laos, and launch a full scale invasion of north vietnam. Since the American people had been told (lied to) for years we were just assisting SV with VC guerrilla forces as opposed to what we were actually doing, fighting a full scale war with against another countries standing army, this would have been a pretty hard course of action to sell.

zzyzzx says

I saw that and was thinking what a moron Obama and his advisors must be. Either that or delusional. In either event I end up with a mental image of Obama in the Furherbunker

Oh Well there's always Cake.
If you can afford Sugar and Wheat Flour.

Bang up job, the other person that is not Obama responsible for the National quality of life and well being, and overall world peace and stability.

No not you stupid you're just the President, I'm supposed to be pissed off anyone other than the One single Person who's responsibility it is to ensure there are an abundant job and the Citizens can afford adequate nutrition. And is wise enough to know that when that is broken it effects the rest of the world and creates Angry protesting Mobs, that wants to bring down their regime so they get at the Air Planes, so they can fly them up Lady Liberties Ass. That person shouldn't be standing stoic with his other clueless Liberal butt cheeks, observing the Cute display of a rabble clawing for food and a voice and calling it, the Arab Spring.

It's the Arab Spring cleaning is what it is. Them belly full but dem hungry and a hungry Mob is an Angry Mob.

bob2356 says

The war was unwinnable in any kind of practical terms short of the US committing to total war and overrunning the north.

Nah, by 1972 we'd cleaned out the South pretty well. The problem was we couldn't isolate the south from the north.

The Saigon regime was still very immature politically and that was the main problem in the 1970s. But the mistakes we had made in the 1960s produced the situation with Thieu in the 1970s.

ROK and Taiwan were also basket cases for the first few decades. ROK up to the mid-1980s even.

The fact that the army of sv was corrupt, incompetent, and frequently refused to fight made it impossible to control most of the country.

No, ARVN controlled most of the country by 1972. The problem was they couldn't project their power to take on the border strongholds at the DMZ and the hinterland down to the Saigon area. ARVN didn't have the time to mature politically and socially, and we moved in too quick in the 1960s, pushing them aside and taking over their job for them. This was one of our mistakes.

After 13 years of US forces at war that situation didn't change one bit.

Actually between 1962 and 1975 things had changed immensely. It was relatively safe for GVN to serve 90%+ of the population (but part of the problem was that much of the population had been resettled into cities and had otherwise become refugees).

(nv was NOT supplying the 20+ divisions they had in Cambodia from the Ho Chi Min trail, our Cambodian "allies" were looking the other way while cargo ships delivered hundreds of tons of supplies)

This was largely stopped after Lon Nol took over. What was needed in 1971-73 was to physically and permanently occupy Laos and fight PAVN there, much like the US Army physically occupied the truce line after the Korean war.

Not that an attractive a military proposition (given the geography), but without that as the next move, leaving SE Asia was abandoning Saigon to its fate (especially after we pulled all our advisors out in 1973).

I'm not saying it was worth it in 1971-74, or I would have sent draftees to continue dying for S Vietnamese, but if the nation still had the commitment to Saigon in the 1970s that we had in the 1960s, it would have been doable.

The main problem is that Westmoreland burned up the national morale way too quick going toe-to-toe in combat, 1965-68. The gung-ho stuff worked, but it was too costly. We were trying to win the war in two years not twenty.

Why worry? Obama's campaign manager just told everyone that his re-election will no longer hinge on job creation.

The President doesn't get it. Not that he can. He's got no experience for the office. Now he's so terrible we may end up with President Bachmann.

I like Bachmann, but no chance in hell can she be an effective President.

as long as this government keeps on bailing out bad businesses (at expense to good business) we'll be sitting ducks in this economy.

all that good capital is tied up in crap still, and will as long as the congress keeps on extending the life of this debt bubble.

I think the problems this country faces are greater than any president can solve alone.

FDR had immense majorities in 1936. The Republicans in the Senate lost 25% of their seats and were reduced to just a 1/6th presence in the chamber.

They lost 15% of their seats in the House and were down to a 20% minority.

I almost think things were better then than now, macro-wise, since we know how things turned around in the 1940s-1970s (global oil boom, electronics, data processing, jet air travel, telecommunication, satellites).

Maybe we won't see any deus-ex-machina technology improvements this century to save our bacon.

We're much richer now than then, but our economy is a lot more fragile I think -- a lot more useless people in the current economy.

shrekgrinch says

And it gets even BETTER!

Only an ignorant hyper right wing troll such as Shirkworm, would be so gleeful about the economy being bad, because it fits his one dimensional db ideological view. Democrats bad - Republicans good,...

I'm nearly convinced that it may indeed be true that we need a Republican President simply because we have huge problems to solve, and the democrats are adult enough to work with a republican president to solve them (note: I said nearly)

Sherk, speaking of denial, how would you rate the economic situation of late 2008 right before Obama started, and the economy since? Is this sort of just another standard recession that Obama botched up? Or is this one of those once a century deep lasting recessions triggered by a massive financial crisis? What do you think would have worked better, as economic policy to put us in a better situation now ?

One thing you might want to factor in, which I am quite sure the GOP takes in to account. Will the next president be able to put us in a better position? If not then they might want to wait until 2016. Then again, if current GOP policies destroy our economy terribly enough by 2012/2013 then I guess a republican President could maybe preside over an improvement before 2016.

It's all too Machiavellian for my taste, but fits quite well with the patterns we have observed in the GOP the last 40 years.

Or is this one of those once a century deep lasting recessions triggered by a massive financial crisis?

The crisis did not appear like an earthquake, it was engineered -- the damage was done 2002-2007:

YOY rise in consumer debt: (in billions)

2001-01-01 649.89
2002-01-01 751.12
2003-01-01 965.04
2004-01-01 1030.45
2005-01-01 1155.93
2006-01-01 1248.64
2007-01-01 950.67
2008-01-01 396.52
2009-01-01 -187.59
2010-01-01 -262.71

The Bush Boom featured Americans going into debt at over $1T/yr.

Now we are going out of debt at $250B+ per year, this is over a $100B/MONTH change.

The economy would be a lot nicer now if everyone had an extra $100B/month of free money to spend, like we did during the bubble years. (that works out to around $1000/mo/household)

Corporate borrowing is similar:

2001-01-01 1004.77
2002-01-01 1303.45
2003-01-01 1636.08
2004-01-01 1873.52
2005-01-01 2205.09
2006-01-01 2461.31
2007-01-01 2440.28
2008-01-01 2085.68
2009-01-01 1537.85
2010-01-01 1144.79

But the boom came a year later, 2005-2008. That was a $9T credit bubble, and current corporate debt draws are over $1T/yr less than the peak.

This is simply a deflationary economy. The cackling idiots here don't want Obama to tax, or spend, they apparently want the entire economy to crater like it did in the 1930s.

Well, they seem to be getting their wish now.

Or, now that my links to FRED are working again, here's the mountain of debt we made, 1970 - 2008:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=12I

Troy says

The crisis did not appear like an earthquake, it was engineered

I agree that it was engineered, although I don't actually attribute total malicious intentions to it. More like stupidity and hubris. They were mistakenly trying to navigate conditions after the millennium that were very ripe for a recession. We've discussed this before. The premillennial stock market enthusiasm (irrational exuberance), followed by the reality of of 2000 and 2001 (no jetsons). IT was a natural time for a pretty severe but normal recession. Instead the govt and the fed stimulated the hell out of things and we went to war. It looked like possibly a last ditch effort to stimulate inflation (at least a side motive) in the oil markets in 2005 was made by idiots who didn't know this isn't the seventies.

I think they probably hoped to pay that inflation would pay for it. Maybe it will eventually, but as others say, it costs us in terms of standard of living.

It would be a far more cynical view that what is happening now was understood and even planned.

Not everyone buying with cash are "investors". I just bought a house in San Diego in a really high end area. Just shy of $1 million and I paid cash. I wasn't buying as an "investment". I bought to live in for the long haul. I was able to negotiate 15% lower than median prices in the area with the cash offer. Part of my pitch was prices are DEFINITELY going to fall lower in 2011 and I could close quickly. From the offer to closing it was 3 weeks.

I'm not worried about prices falling lower (which I'm sure they will). For me it makes sense. I leased it back to the previous owners a few months for $6,000 a month while they look for something else. I am renting a house for several more months so it worked out perfectly for me and we'll really enjoy living in it

What they say about sometimes the first offer being the best offer holds true. Back in 2007 they had an offer for $1.38 million and they turned it down trying to get $1.5 million which was the asking price at the time. Needless to say they felt a bit sick selling for under $1 million.

unbelievable promises the ObambiCrats have made and keep on making

What promises? They did what they could in 2009-2010. It wasn't enough. The economy is your baby now that the Republicans are back in control.

Yeah, I'll admit it, I have this particular one of your identities off ignore again. You are sometimes amusing (although I'm no psychologist).

shrekgrinch says

this idiocy is not about me, despite all the attempts here to make it so

Oh, I see it's all of us who think that everything is about you.

shrekgrinch says

These people are effin' CLUELESS.

And yes people, I am quite happy that they are so damn stupid. So what?

You can't back pedal on this. It's not their stupidity that you enjoy. IT's just how bad the economy is, and that they haven't been more successful in bringing about growth and employment, and undoing the unwinding of debt, the overcapacity, and the deflationary forces. Whether a republican could have done better is irrelevant to you. Problem solving and analysis is irrelevant to you. It's just "yeah baby, the democrats aren't succeeding. wooowooo !!"

marcus says

It would be a far more cynical view that what is happening now was understood and even planned.

I tend to the opinion that 2002-2007 was a simple pump & dump; not by the politicians but by everyone else. If you can bank $50M+ overseas, what do you really care what happens afterwards.

Back in 2006, I, too, thought wage inflation would arrive to save the day, for housing at least. But NAFTA and MFN with the PRC changed the rules in the 1990s. It wasn't until late 2006 that I got an inkling as to how much fraud had been going on, thanks to the housing bubble blogs breaking the Casey Serin story.

^ ain't it the truth. Thing is, this kind of argumentation from the right is not hard to find on the internet. Dunno why that is, really. One would like to think folks like Shrek are getting paid to post their BS, cuz the alternative is rather . . . worse.

Troy says

One would like to think folks like Shrek are getting paid to post their BS

I have often suspected this. Or hoped rather, because yeah the alternative is worse.

marcus says

IT's just how bad the economy is, and that they haven't been more successful in bringing about growth and employment, and undoing the unwinding of debt, the overcapacity, and the deflationary forces. Whether a republican could have done better is irrelevant to you. Problem solving and analysis is irrelevant to you. It's just "yeah baby, the democrats aren't succeeding. wooowooo !!"

Yeah, what makes me shake my head more that the willful ignorance of facts, and lack of desire for any genuine truth; is that they (shrekgrinch, et al.) want to see America fail.

Right, wrong or what are the causes are is irrelevant, as long as a Democrat is in the White House they gleefully giggle and clap as the economy of the US flounders and crumbles.

leoj707 says

is that they (shrekgrinch, et al.) want to see America fail.

Well, if I were a rich retired bastard I'd probably be cheering on the Republicans too. "Got mine f- you" and all that. Probably 20% of the population breaks this way.

Troy says

leoj707 says

is that they (shrekgrinch, et al.) want to see America fail.

Well, if I were a rich retired bastard I'd probably be cheering on the Republicans too. "Got mine f- you" and all that. Probably 20% of the population breaks this way.

“Nessuna soluzione . . . nessun problema!„

The key word there being bastard.

bubblesburst says

Not everyone buying with cash are "investors". I just bought a house in San Diego in a really high end area. Just shy of $1 million and I paid cash.

Whatever. WTF are you doing on here? WTF are you even on the internet for? 1 million in cash to drop on a house and you ever lay eyes on a f'ing computer let alone post on a internet forum?

Sybrib says

Ahem, investor, it's Realtor®, okay?

Oh, thank you for protecting all of us from legal suits! So how do you get the little circled thingie registration mark and are these people worth the extra trouble of learning additional Alt- key combos? Heh.

Tude says

bubblesburst says

Not everyone buying with cash are "investors". I just bought a house in San Diego in a really high end area. Just shy of $1 million and I paid cash.

Whatever. WTF are you doing on here? WTF are you even on the internet for? 1 million in cash to drop on a house and you ever lay eyes on a f'ing computer let alone post on a internet forum?

Gee, thanks for the warm welcome. Contrary to your belief that millionaires or multimillionaires don't hang out on Patrick's site. You're dead wrong. The internet is for everyone. Your post comes across as very ignorant.

Guys like me sold before the crash...have been waiting a few years and buying excellent properties 30% to 35% less than a few years ago with cash. I'd call that intelligent.