patrick.net

My hairdresser has the same complaint, but my haircut only cost $25 including tips. She said the her business suddenly fell off the cliff in the last two months, not because her customers stopped coming, but because they are all stretching out from 2 months to 3 or 4 months.

It seems true luxury goods (e.g. jets) are still selling very well. However, I heard that sales of "affordable" luxury goods are starting to hurt.

OO Says:
My hairdresser ... said the her business suddenly fell off the cliff in the last two months

My neighbor's sister lost her job in some backwater of the financial "industry" a few months ago and my neighbor just helped her buy a partner share in a hair-salon in Cupertino. You can't time the market, but timing a freight train to get hit by is not that difficult...

Peter P Says:
“affordable” luxury

Oxymoron.

Peter P Says:
“affordable” luxury

Oxymoron. True luxury is when affordability is not a criterion.

If one has to worry about 'affordability', then it ceases to be a luxury and merely becomes an ill-advised indulgence of expensive temptations.

RE: Oxymoron

True, but the affordable "luxury" market used to be lucrative.

From OO's link:

THEIR spouses could leave them when they discover that their net worth has collapsed to eight figures from nine. Friends and business associates could avoid them as they pass their lunchtime tables at Barney’s or the Four Seasons. And these snubs could trickle down to their children.

How could such weak, socially conscious sheep have the courage, disipline, and smarts to make a fortune in the first place? I thought a succesful type would just take the lumps and accept a new challenge. Must have been an article on inheritees.

Anyway, divorces should be outlawed. We should not even recognize divorces carried out overseas.

I am not entirely against gay marriages, but I think something must be done to fix the institution of marriage.

We need a constitution amendment to define marriage as a contract that lasts as long as the natural lives of its participants.

How could such weak, socially conscious sheep have the courage, disipline, and smarts to make a fortune in the first place?

9-digit is hardly a fortune. IIRC the Forbes 400 list now starts at $2B.

Good point Peter. Even so, your income is just a rounding error to "nine figures."

Everyone notice the 1:30 selloff in the stock market? Some pundits suggest the cause was the news that the Fed will hold on rate cuts for a while.

Even so, your income is just a rounding error to “nine figures.”

More like the rounding error of a rounding error. ;)

Some pundits suggest the cause was the news that the Fed will hold on rate cuts for a while.

The market is the cause AND the effect.

The market has priced a pause in rate cuts at 96% probability for weeks. So no, I don't think the Fed has anything to do with the selloff.

What I am lookng for is the de-leveraging.

Interesting article that noted that banks are lending money to people to help them afford to buy the banks' troubled assets.

When those banks pop there is going to be a very loud kaboom.

As I look at asset re-pricing I do not see the rest of the world absorbing the current market cap of US stocks, so net loss will be real and large. Best I can guess is $2t to $5t of contraction.

When cheap money was everywhere, if you were positioned close to the spigot known as the Wall Street, you didn't need to be that smart to make 7 or 8 figures a year. I know a few real-life examples like that. One of them is particularly "smart" to have bought a $4.xM house in 06 thinking that his 7-figure bonus could grow and last forever. I will check back with him to see if he still holds on to his depreciating asset in 12 months.

To be honest, I really enjoy watching how they will crawl out of their highly leveraged lifestyle as the great de-leveraging unfolds.

The weak snobs who never had the true courage, insight and smarts to make their fortune last will get wiped out in this financial tsunami, bring it on, let's have some redistribution of wealth from the paper-pushers to people who create real values.

Thanks OO, you made my day.

How is everyone? It's been a while. I hope you all are well.

If Hilary concedes now, I would be very disappointed. :(

I heard that she would be open to a vice-pres. nomination to "keep the party together". This is gonna be fun to watch.

I heard that she would be open to a vice-pres. nomination to “keep the party together”. This is gonna be fun to watch.

Fun indeed. I thought it will drag all the way to August. :roll:

I like Obama as a person but somehow I am still afraid of him.

Peter,

Is it because you, like many West Virginians think he is Muslim?

Or is it that he supports high speed rail like this!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw4zn-qw1oM

Is it because you, like many West Virginians think he is Muslim?

No. I am more worried about tax and welfare. But I guess he is much better than Clinton in these areas.

High speed rail is NOT for America. Fancy trains cannot change who we are.

Do we really want to become France?

Peter P,

Maybe we should not have made any rail roads and stuck to horses until we could invent the airplane.

High speed rail is not just an economic issue. It is a National Security issue. People can deny the peak oil theory and it will not change the fact that oil is getting more expensive to dig out of the ground. It will not change the fact that big oil fields all over are suffering from declining production. National security is one of the major reasons for making the interstate system. If you had had your way throughout history, we would have NOTHING.

"High speed rail is NOT for America."

WOW!!!

FYI - The ACELA is sold out on the east coast and it really isn't even high speed.

Good luck in CA if you don't vote for it this fall. Your grid lock is just starting!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD1QGNsRg74

Invest 10 minutes in this video

"High speed rail is NOT for America."

Also not for America - Banking regulations that are reasonable and ask that borrowers be able to pay the mortgage!

“High speed rail is NOT for America.”

Also not for America - Wall street bankers that do not lend money to people with jobs or assets!

meant - "NO" jobs or assets

A bit off topic but funny-

My wife called me at work on Monday and said she came across a bike traffic jam a few blocks from home the likes of which she had never seen. Clearly there are more people using mass transit and riding bikes these days!

If it makes me a bad person or un Amerikan for saying so TOUGH!

High speed rail isn't for California. That is for sure. You would have gridlock trying to get to the train station and land prices prevent reasonable cost. The government subsidies would have to be so huge the net gain would be negative. Not to mention that they have to run hub to hub and every town would want a hub. Given the likelyhood that it wouldn't be able to stretch its legs, efficiency based on speed would be lost. I think that what is left is called BART. I love BART. BART kicks ass.

Funny Richmand,

When I arrived at the LA train station last fall, I was struck with how little was going on in the area in terms of traffic and property development!

I think in the end the debate will not matter as the reality will take over just like we are seeing in the mortgage market market!

Paul,

True enough. Things will happen when they have to happen. I just keep thinking about the 6 billion + bucks for half darn bridge over here and I can't imagine what hundreds of miles of track would cost. Heck, for six billion dollars I could drain the Bay and build a friggin road. Oh well. Time will tell.

Eh, so the trains have to run hub to hub. This is not a problem. It would be possible to have a handful of major hubs--those hubs could then serve the surrounding area via high speed or other public transit.

Yes, people would prefer to have the train come to their doors. But trains can't be everywhere. And a good network of public transit is quite possibly inevitable. Already, the buses around here are getting full. And just last year there were tumbleweeds rolling down the aisles.

The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill

... cribbed from a guy on greencarcongress.com commenting on GM shuttering SUV/truck plants and vowing to build more small cars.

BART was supposed to go to San Jose in the mid 1960's. I was a child then. I'm now old and retired and still no BART to San Jose, even though it's now the largest city in the Bay Area. I doubt BART will really make it to San Jose in the next 100 years. By that I mean REAL BART, not some cockamamie link to light rail/bus services. And it will have to come down the Peninsula, NOT the East Bay, to make it worth people's time.