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In an attempt to try and get us back (or slightly back) on focus -- I was talking to someone who was in town for the HQ biotech gathering a couple of weeks ago. He said the downturn is bringing more money into his VC firm. Pensions/retirement funds usually have two different pools dedicated to venture capital and private equity firms (that were relying on cheap money to do the buyouts that were all the rage the past couple of years). As the credit crunch hit, the money dedicated to funding private equity firms is now going into the VC pool as the buyout opportunities fade away. Anecdotely, I know someone laid off from a biotech firm that got another job rather quickly. I don't think that biotech will save the Bay Area, but we do tend to be a bit internet/tech centric on this board. Remember, as someone once said, tech innovation (networking/computers) is not an end in itself, but all about creating the infrastructure for the biotech revolution.
I am not so -ve on startups although I wrote that most fail to make any money for foot soldiers. Not every food soldier is hoping to make millions and millions. Even with a moderate success a foot soldier can pocket 3-4 years of annual pay - and that to me is a reasonable reward for the risk of working 80 hours.
But after the dot com bust, even that has become difficult. Hence I am staying away from startups.
Banks have free pass tp print money and charge interest on printed money .... go ask FEDERAL RESERVE .....
I could walk into the door of a hi-tech place in Ohio and be fairly considered for a job.
I think that everyone who wants to move to Ohio, should, without further hesitation. I know a number of people in the southern part of the state who'd be happy to trade places with you right now...
NorCal makes the tech innovations which allow SoCal to make use of them with high quality internet porn(oh and tv/movies/music too).
Flyover has limited access to porn so they utilize internet technology (innovated in norcal) to access porn that comes from SoCal(los angeles).
Smart Techies flock to Norcal to work on internet tech, attractive people flock to LA to work in movies/porn.
So with CA a magnet for smart and attractive people what could be better? its a great situation - every state is dying to attract these people/companies/jobs.
I think that everyone who wants to move to Ohio, should, without further hesitation.
I think that everyone who wants to move to Ohio, should, without further hesitation.
Be aware:
Ohio has state and local income tax
Ohio has horrible winters
Ohio is inundated with ugly people (the attractive must have left for socal)
Headset, it is a lot more complicated than that, but my understanding is that banks can't just tap the treasury through the reserve system. They buy and sell securities brokered by the federal reserve banks which increase or decrease money supply. My description was simplistic, but is the basic model for the banking system barring the regualtory infusions of cash for monetary policy.
Running a biz in Ohio requires you pay many levels of taxes. Income is taxed, in the worst cases, at the Fed, State, County, City and School District level. Yes, 5 income taxes, each with their own bureaucracy. Then there's the normal litany of workers comp, unemployment insurance, and usually a couple of special state tax initiatives. The employer has to manage all these withholdings, deal with all these agencies, and suffer from employees which generally lack a strong "employment at will" mentality.
If you really want to start a high tech biz in the salt-of-the-earth Midwest, I'd recommend Chicagoland.
DQ numbers are out for SoCal. More pain - bring it on!
:-) And Intel numbers for Q4 are out and cause a huge disappointment. Stock down more than 14% after hours. The crash of 2008 - bring it on !
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=intc
Can we come up with some nice names for this January ? How about
1. The January Jolt
2. The Year We Woke Up
3. Boom to Doom in a month
What say you ?
Austin is popular too for start ups. But if you need to smooze with VC/investor to start or end(sell) your company and or product you will be flying to San Jose every week.
So I suppose the management in bay area with worker bees in india model is ideal for many companies but 100% india based workers is difficult to manage .... it aint ez.
My ideal start up is with me as only employee and creating a wildly popular software product and or site. For example - I beleive the bit-torrent base code is done by one guy. Other programs (like azureus) use this code to manage the torrents. Also I imagine lots of shareware software companies are now or at least started this way. dont get funding unless you need it and you avoid the 100 hour work weeks.
physical media for music/movies/tv/books will soon be the minority way to enjoy it - that means tons of software jobs, companies, and projects will be around for a long, long time. Then when this technology matures the buyouts start and there are tons of jobs merging code and systems - just like always.
I'm so glad I dumped all my INTC back a month or so ago at 27.24....
Hello Kitty,
"attractive people flock to SoCal to work in movies/_ _ _ _"
LOL! Yes we certainly seem to be putting all that great technology to wonderful use!
Seriously though, I thought SP said most of the VC money/start-ups are geared to endless... "e-mail search engines". I know we have a glut of them here in PDX.
A movie studio is being built here in San Marcos. Lord knows this city needs more attractive people.
Is the yen carry trade unwinding picking up speed ? Nikkei is down more than 300 points or about 2.5% at the open.
Check out the DOW, wow that was a hell of a day. Down 277 to 12,500. Kind of a useless factoid for people to track but it shows some negative sentiment since that is what it was at something like 6 months ago. It will be fun to watch the composite drop below 12,000.
I know a number of people in the southern part of the state who’d be happy to trade places with you right now…
Hmmm... my brother seems to be enjoying Cincinnati: living the vaunted urban lifestyle, walking to work, putting less than 2000 miles per year on his car. Your mileage my vary :-)
@StuckInBA
How about some catch phrases for the near term future:
The Superbowl of Pent-up Supply
I'd like to live somewhere I could carry a bag of groceries home, maybe even say hello to regular faces as I walk by.
Uh-oh, looks like we need a "Don't 1099 me, Ahhhnold" law.
California homeowners who sell their properties at a loss still face state income tax charges, according to the Franchise Tax Board, the state agency in charge of tax collections.
Whaaa? No, that can't be. You do mean if there is some sort of loan forgiveness right? Ha ha, no one thought of the state tax code. LOL
I’d like to live somewhere I could carry a bag of groceries home, maybe even say hello to regular faces as I walk by.
Walking is what terrorists and communists do. It's for people who hate the freedom that cars provide us.
Well, Peter P accused me of hating America once, probably for saying something like I don't carry credit card debt so I guess I hate America. :)
Galloping Cheetah - explanation: Chindians get into dept manager positions and only hire other Chindians. Only.
This is why whites need to get to the local shooting range and get their training up to a high level. The clean-up ain't gonna be pretty and the economy's tanking so badly the clean-up's not all that far off.
Essentially the BA's developing the same race-caste system I saw growing up in Hawaii. You were born into a certain race group, at a certain social level within that group, and that determined what jobs you could and could not get.
Walking is what terrorists and communists do. It’s for people who hate the freedom that cars provide us.
That joke stopped being funny around the 10th time you used it...
You were born into a certain race group, at a certain social level within that group, and that determined what jobs you could and could not get.
Well, America is about free enterprises and businesses. We should not restrict ourselves to the concept of a job.
This is why whites need to get to the local shooting range and get their training up to a high level. The clean-up ain’t gonna be pretty and the economy’s tanking so badly the clean-up’s not all that far off.
Where can we go to discuss real estate that isn't clogged up with this sort of ignorant shit?
Some of you are no better than the worst of the realtor scumbags I found infesting the Zillow groups. ... I retract that. You're worse.
SF is quite pretty too, but only if you get the bridge-to-bridge view. Now that is really going to cost the moon.
I am staring out the window looking at China (through the Golden Gate bridge) and the sun just set over the City. The Bay Bridge is partially blocked by buildings in Emeryville -- you can't have everything, but it certainly beats looking at the dump in Sunnyvale. All this for less than $2.50/sq.ft.
Know some folks who live on Yerba Buena Island; now that is a case where renting beats buying (can't buy anway). Talk about zillion dollar Ess Eff views; they had a neighbor in an end unit who put in a picture window (yes, he is a renter).
Where can we go to discuss real estate that isn’t clogged up with this sort of ignorant shit?
Let's go to astrid's food blog. Let's hope it is still up. :)
Randy H Says:
> Financial & economic illiteracy will be the downfall of
> free market capitalism.
I knew we were in trouble when my Dad told me (as a small child) that many of his co-workers (at a Fortune 500 company) didn’t care about higher taxes since they don’t pay them, and actually get paid by the government every year when they get a check in the mail after paying the H&R Block guy to send in their W2…
I knew we were in trouble...
Can't change human nature...
I abhor anyone who wants higher tax. Those people should voluntarily pay extra to the IRS first!
Oops, the illiteracy mentioned by FAB was so severe that I totally missed the point.
LOL
Randy :
Where can we go to discuss real estate that isn’t clogged up with this sort of ignorant shit?
Are you resurrecting your blog ? I have learned to skip such comments on this blog, but there are many days, when there is nothing to read after skipping such comments.
Peter P :
I was confused by your comment too.
FAB : Excellent ! One of the better ones I heard in a while.
Galloping Cheetah - explanation: Chindians get into dept manager positions and only hire other Chindians. Only.
I don't know what to say. It used to be the whites hired only the whites, for a different reason. Racism. But the reason why some Chindians hire their own kind -- I've noticed the same -- is that it's just easier to manage. A white boy probably won't listen to a Chindian manager who tends to be more authoritarian. I've had American and Chinese interns and led projects with junior american students back in grad school. I tend to be hands-off and just encourage people to try -- and I don't take their credits. Things worked out pretty well. but I don't like to manage. Too much work.
Whenever something is started, usually the hobbists and gentleman-amateurs are at the forefront. As that thing becomes trendy, every mo'fcker wants to get in. The quality of the work, innovativeness, cleverness and beauty goes down. That's the time when you feel the Chindian effect.
Cheetah - nope it's racism, and I will fight for my side and I can tell you, plenty more of my tribe will too. Do you realize what we're heading into? We're heading into the kind of Depression that brought about a revolution in Germany and almost did in the US. Nope I've felt the Chindian effect, the whole US has, and we're sick of it.
Racism is real, it's this weird idea of multiculturalism, level playing field among all the different racial teams, that's pie-in-the-sky. One group has to be on top, and they get to be on top only if they are bloodthirsty enough to get there and stay there. They lose position, and fall into actual starvation, if they lose their killer instinct. Sadly, but truly, this is what the philosophers behind the movement in Germany realized - among the different teams in this game, it's truly Nature red in tooth and claw.
There are going to be millions displaced from their homes in this RE bubble collapse we're seeing and laughing over, and while it's just RE after all, this is real life to most people. When the economy collapses you end up with a lot of really pissed off people, and things get rather serious.
FAB - by the way I remember that way of thinking too ..... working-class US'ians are paying something like 25% in taxes out of their pay and getting back a few hundred at the end of the year, and it's all considered good!
Meanwhile the big boys are paying something between 15% and 0%.
Automatic witholding and then giving back just enough at the end of the year for a treat or a 2-day vacation or a really good drunk...... brilliant.
Elamite Says:
> My first wife was a commercial real estate broker but she
> sold high end residential as well (Beverly Hills, Malibu, etc.)
> She said that if a piece of property was on the market for
> more than 30 days with no offers then the asking price was
> simply too high.
Back in the 80’s many brokers did something called “buying listingsâ€. If an apartment was worth $50K/unit most brokers would want to list of for $50K/unit so it would actually sell. Brokers that “bought listings†would promise $55K/unit and actually got a lot of listings. When market values were rising they ended up selling a lot of listings (when values caught up to their asking price at the end of their one year exclusive right to sell period). In a down market like we had in the 90’s (and like we have now) buying listings does not work…
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Sale prices are always given as an absolute number, without context. The reality is that falling prices can be masked to some extent by a longer number of days on the market.
Getting $500,000 within a week of listing is not at all the same thing as getting $500,000 after having the house on the market for 2 years, yet both are recorded as the same price. Ultimately, you can pretend your house is worth whatever you want by letting days on market go to infinity -- just pulling it off the market. No one will buy it for your dream price, but you don't have to face the reality that it is not worth what you thought either. Assuming you can pay the mortgage.
Realtors know that increasing days on market proves that a house is not worth the asking price. That's why they commonly try to scam users by re-listing a house as if it just came on the market.
Patrick
#housing