patrick.net

Sorry about comments held in moderation. I really do not understand the algorithm. It' s not just keywords. I have now approved every comment that was not spam.

Please write me directly at p@patrick.net if you get a comment held, and I'll release it. Unless you're a spammer, in which case you should go abuse yourself.

Patrick

Ah, we might get the DOW under under 13,000 again! That is wonderful news, since everyone who has dollars is seeing them get worth more shares by the minute.

Patrick

Did you stop at Red’s Eats? Man, I still dream about their lobstah rolls.
Much to my shame (given the number of times I've been to Maine), I've never (gasp!) even had a lobstah roll. I must admit, since it is past my lunch time, my mouth is watering (oh, and I did go the the RoadFood website). Most of the time when we are passing Red's I am comatose in the back seat after taking a redeye (which allows you to catch a ferry after landing, since you "lose" a day flying) -- doubly so now that we are traveling with kids. Red's is also ground zero for the dreaded Wiscasset traffic jam (which wasn't all that bad this year -- coincidence?)
Our "food pilgrimage" (more like tradition) is a stop at Moody's Diner.

Man, I still dream about their lobstah rolls.

Where can I find good lobstah roll in the Bay Area? :(

EBGuy,

Yeah, I think the Wicasset traffic jam is in large part the fault of Red's! Don't know if you've been to these places, but some other places up there worth trying (pretty geographically diverse):

- Maine Diner (I think it's in or near Wells)
- Duck Fat in Portland
- Hurricaine's in Ogunquit

Peter P,
Have you tried Woodhouse Fish Co. in the Castro? Not bad, considering.

Rumors of Crapertino's demise have been greatly exaggerated. June's numbers, unfortunately, were a statistical anomaly. Hopefully, August will give us some "downward" inertia.

Have you tried Woodhouse Fish Co. in the Castro? Not bad, considering.

Castro St in Mountain View or San Francisco?

Rumors of Crapertino’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

It can definitely rise again from its ashes. It can become another Dubai if it will simply franchise Monta Vista.

SP,

I was wrong, the graveyard is located off Big Basin / Highway 9, a bit off the downtown. Therefore, that is a pocket where you see almost no Asian buyers at all.

Peter P,

Castro in SF:

http://www.woodhousefish.com/

Rumors of Crapertino’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. June’s numbers, unfortunately, were a statistical anomaly. Hopefully, August will give us some “downward” inertia.

Looking at those stats, I have 3 things to say:

- It goes to show you how volatile the data is when the "n" is so small
- Who the fu(k buys a $4.2M place in Crapatino?
- Crapatino, welcome back to the Bay Area. You are officially on probation. Any more price declines, and "see ya!"

Castro in SF

Thanks!

StuckInBA,

Also they definitely need at least some customers to pay a lot more than minimum. Else they will have a cash flow problem. So although people like me don’t give them a boost in profit, we help them with the cash flow so that they can earn the profit from people who carry a balance. It’s arguments like these that create the problem with the analogy.

Except that the transaction fees go to the transaction network provider, and the issuing bank is left with annual fees and interest + penalties. Since they cannot charge different annual fees based upon your average balance (in most states & cases), they are forced to have low or no fees because of competition, as you point out. But you are missing the fact that they cannot recover their margins in annual fees by and large.

Also, your low/no average balance is a net flow problem for them, not a benefit. Their working capital is tuned to receivables and collections. It's only because these banks earn such tremendous margins on interest and penalties that they can carry the free-riders along without much trouble. We should see proof of this in the coming months as many issuing banks have problems collecting bad credit, and end up writing off as much as 1/3 so I heard last. At this point many of the banks will try to do things to eliminate the free rider problem, yet again, in order to preserve margins.

Details aside, I am a bit puzzled by the insatiable need people have to always think of their own actions and judgments as righteous. I may be odd, but I really could care less if my paying off my balance in full every month on a credit card is "greedy", "moral", or "anti-social". I am happy with the choices I make to maximize the security, wealth and happiness of my own family and community as best I can. I really care squat if it's moral or not. If I'm acting unethically in someone else's eyes, well, too bad. I don't need to prove their logic wrong -- in fact I might be wrong. That still won't change my course of action. Be I evil or good is irrelevant when it comes to doing right by my family.

Details aside, I am a bit puzzled by the insatiable need people have to always think of their own actions and judgments as righteous.

I find it funny too. I do not mind preaching other people about right and wrong if that improves my position though. :twisted:

If I’m acting unethically in someone else’s eyes, well, too bad. I don’t need to prove their logic wrong — in fact I might be wrong. That still won’t change my course of action. Be I evil or good is irrelevant when it comes to doing right by my family.

Randy, do you want to start a cult with me? I think this line of thinking can be highly marketable. :)

Only if it involves 3d avatars and clunky streaming content client interfaces.

Let's mash that up over the long weekend in RoR, playa!

mosquitoes breeding in stagnant koi ponds...

skibum,

actually I looked at that $4.2M place, it was initially offered for $6M, on the market for over 18 months. It's in the Crappertino foothills bordering Saratoga hills backing into a natural reserve, the house itself is not spectacular, but to me the attraction is it has 10+ acres land with a commanding view, so from the land perspective, I think it is a much better deal than buying a new house on 1/4 acre land in Los Altos for $2.5M.

Only if it involves 3d avatars and clunky streaming content client interfaces.

That is the only way to start a cult in Web 2.0 times.

credit cards are a discretionary luxury item, not a necessity. they are sometimes handy, but once upon a time people used to pay for things with savings. if they were a necessity, the govt would hand out credit cards to the needy. they are a short term personal loan with very high interest that are very lucrative for the CC cards thank you very much, despite the existence of early payers. the CC companies have provided, sometimes, for interest-free periods of up to 55 days in their business model in order to get consumers in (then get them on the debt treadmill) and have factored it into their business model. paying off early is more than allowable in their system under their own deliberate intentional rules. if early payers were unwelcome, they would not create 55 days interest free in the model, they would charge interest from the time of purchase, end of story. and they would probably get fewer customers as a result.

further, there is far more earnest discussion over the evils of credit cards as a debt trap than there are over early payers, much like the evils of poker machines and gambling addiction. we're talking 14-18% interest rates here. household savings are at an all-time low right now, and indebtedness at an all-time high thanks to banks pushing higher and higher credit limits these days. more and more people are being sucked into the credit trap in both housing and consumer goods -- there are people showing up in dire straits for financial counselling and assistance buying mcmansions and plasma screen TVs, i kid you not.

it's ludicrous, for how many months should we pay interest on a balance to reach the moral and ethical stance of not being a 'freeloader' on a personal loan? why not just front-end load the payment instead then? it's not a social system, it's a banking product of convenience designed to make money for CC cos and the banks, in the 'must have it now' society.

show me an article written and published somewhere reputable which claims that early CC payers are somehow immoral (doing something totally legitimate) and i'll show you an off-the-rails idiot with no clue...

credit cards are a discretionary luxury item, not a necessity.

Anything not needed by a caveman is a luxury item.

Better yet, luxury is a necessity.

Btw, I am curious if anyone knows of the Quito Village in Saratoga? Is it going to be a Chinese mall development? The buyer of Quito Village, Peter Pau, is the same developer who did the Cupertino Village, the home of Ranch 99 and a whole array of Chinese retaurants. Looks like Saratoga is following suit of Cupertino. Peter is known to have a very good relationship with Chinese retailers.

http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2007/07/16/daily24.html

Anything not needed by a caveman is a luxury item.

actually, yes. we can survive on very little. however, there is a minimum level of material wellbeing we need to participate effectively in a society. hence the vexed problem of what constitutes a definition of 'poverty'.

it's unlikely people lived in caves much, btw, the pattern seems to have been more of nomadism with retreats to sacred sites like caves for ritualistic purposes. it was certainly very far from universal in history, when you look at the sheltering habits of african, australian and other palaeolithic-type societies today. perhaps in the case of the last Ice Age in Europe about 10,000 years ago where it was just bloody freezing and you got insulation effects from blocking up cave-like structures, once you kicked out the hibernating bears...

So caves were not a necessity, but a luxury. Therefore it follows that kicking bears out of caves was not unethical either.

By the way, many not at all "off the rails" authors of scholarly work related to free rider problems:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem

Summary, emphasis added:

In economics, collective bargaining, psychology and political science, free riders are actors who consume more than their fair share of a resource, or shoulder less than a fair share of the costs of its production. The free rider problem is the question of how to prevent free riding from taking place, or at least limit its negative effects.

Necessity is entirely irrelevant.

The point of this argument, from my perspective, was to draw out the futility and arbitrariness of making relative moral judgments about personal financial or economic decisions.

yes. i note the wiki free rider article doesn't make reference to the CC enigma as a case in point. i don't question the notion of 'free riding' per se. (is that one of brand's 'straw men'?)

btw, pubs here put on free coffee machines in the incredibly lucrative poker machine areas. i don't gamble on poker machines, i have no idea why, it's so compelling, but sometimes i take the free coffee into the dining area for a laugh. no staffer has ever told me not to. ethically, is that freeloading off the pub or teaching them a lesson? discuss, with reference to kohlberg's 6 stage of development of ethical reasoning. ;)

Anything not needed by a caveman is a luxury item.

I find this offensive.

Necessity is entirely irrelevant.

Very true.

Necessity belongs to Modal Logic, not Economics.

ethical reasoning

Is it even possible to reason ethics?

very funny, HARM. that appears to be homo neanderthalis, not cro-magnon man aka homo sapiens sapiens

The point of this argument, from my perspective, was to draw out the futility and arbitrariness of making relative moral judgments about personal financial or economic decisions.

Arbitrary or not, I'm sure you'll agree that some basic moral judgments must be made and applied by law* or you eventually end up with chaos and/or kleptocracy. And specifically what kind of judgments/laws we make says something important about who we are and what we collectively value.

*(and ideally, the law applies to everyone, irrespective of social caste)

Is it ok to sell heroin to minors? Y/N
Is it ok to sell WMDs to unhinged religious fanatics? Y/N
Is it ok to sell neg-am NINJAs to unemployed 24-year-old sociopaths? Y/N

Ok, that last one is little more ambiguous, but you get the general idea.

@DS,

I don't know if you get the same TV commercials in Oz, but that's one of the GEICO cavemen.

Except that the transaction fees go to the transaction network provider, and the issuing bank is left with annual fees and interest + penalties.

Then why the heck do the banks direct-mail market me so aggressively? I've had credit cards since the 1970's and have never paid any interest. If they lose money on me, why don't they just stop sending me enticing offers to cards? I was a BofA customer since forever, and dropped their Visa card, which at the time had an $18 annual fee, for compeditors' cards. BofA knew all the details of my history...I had paid no interest on their old card for over a decade....but they kept sending me adverts in the mail until I took them up on their offer. Did they think I would become less frugal with age?

* * * *

I have a dumb question for the gang. This has been driving me nuts. There's a lot of talk about FB's getting a 1099 after a short-sale and owing the IRS big bucks. This confuses me.

Say FB bought a house for $400K, and had to short sell it for $300K. The lender gives him a 1099 for $100 capital gains. BUT the FB can document a $100 capital LOSS on the sale of his house, so why isn't this a wash as far as the FB is concerned? It's actually fair, otherwise the FB would have a non-offset capital loss to play with in his future taxes.

HARM

But of course. And so long as I'm in charge of setting the minimum ethical code, I'd include a prohibition on anything referred to (oxymoronically) as "American Cheese".

Sir Randall,

I hereby appoint you my Deputy Minister of Economic Morality and Fiscal Responsibility.

BUT the FB can document a $100 capital LOSS on the sale of his house, so why isn’t this a wash as far as the FB is concerned?

I don't think you can claim that capital loss, at least not personally. If you're running a real estate investment business, and your business owns the home, then you might be able to get away with it.

As to the "why" banks still market ccards to you, there are a number of explanations:

* They are unorganized. You'd be surprised at how such sausage is made.

* They are regulated. Once upon a time, they couldn't use your historical data freely; departments were firewalled off from one another.

* They have calculated that enough "free riders" can be converted and/or make occasional mistakes and suffer penalties. How many out there who pay in full like me haven't at least once paid a day or two late due to simple disorganization or forgetfulness? If you cycle huge amounts of $ per month, like many pay-in-fullers, then you get slammed with penalties in that one month which goes a long way towards covering your free-ride.