March 2012
333 posts
2 tags
February 2012
227 posts
capitalistconcept asked: Hey, I'm a big fan of your site. Mainly because I sympathize with being liberal and working in finance (even though I haven't started full-time as yet). That said, here's my question: Obama recently suggested for everyone to get an additional year of schooling (technical or whatever). A) Do you think this will increase demand for for-profit eduction? B) What what's your opinion...
2 tags
“The idea was to implement a “peer-to-peer money” system. However,...”
– Google once considered issuing currency | ITworld
Do we know, officially, that Eric Schmidt and Newt Gingrich are different people? We’ve seen them in the same room, right?
Sherlockians' REAL Problem
jillsragingbileduct:
kelsium:
Oh my god I am going to punch everyone in the face. Seriously? You are mad that someone other than a white dude might play a part in a modernized version of a part originally written for a white dude? What is your argument? That there are no Asian women in modern New York? Cause that shit is not even true when you try to push it for medieval England.
Somebody...
BEST Wife
Fact:
Karen knew to add the “ai-eee, ai-eee” when the bathtub duck was done quacking the bassline to “Crazy Train” at my son. Voice of bathtub duck? Some lame blogger guy. Ozzy’s solo career keeps parenting sane, y’all.
Rush Limbaugh: Maybe It's Time To Say "The Hell"... →
jasencomstock:
Sweet, let’s go. all in agreement?
Meanwhile, the Federal Government is withholding F35 payments to Lockheed. What the hell is going on? I feel like I woke up in a bizarrely sane place today. Facts mattered and people were accountable!
Of course, then I realize tomorrow will be all “WHY WON’T OBUMMER GET US OUT OF AFGHANISTAN? Is that where they hide all the copies...
Inflation Mechanics
1. Raw materials get expensive, because of supply or demand issues. More mouths or less food are two sides of the same coin.
2. Workers at the bottom of the social pyramid begin to experience distress as their wages fail to keep pace with living expenses.
3. Initial requests for higher wages fail. Workers get angry and get organized. All the worst of capitalist political scumfuckery...
jgreendc asked: Light rail and trains require density to be efficient uses of the public dollar. If we can restrain growth and build up instead of out, then I'm all for it.
1 tag
High Oil Prices Are A Really Regressive Tax On...
So do something about it:
1. Offer affordable housing near employers by zoning land properly for the last 75 years instead of trying to wall off brown poor people from white poor people. If you’re too late and you’ve already cocked this up, go to 2. Chastise yourself for being awful and racist.
2. Build some cheap alternatives to gas-based transportation. I hear electric trains and...
3 tags
Things That Are Exactly The Fucking Same
1. Buying a bunch of oil because I think people will want oil later and I want to have some to sell them when they do.
2. Funding a solar power company because I think we will need green energy and I want to be able to produce it domestically.
3. Spending many hours preparing for and taking the CPA because I think people will want to pay certified public accountants money to do certified...
“Independent reports confirm that speculators are driving up the cost of oil,...”
– JPM Pwns Nancy Pelosi | ZeroHedge
JPM does a better job than I could of dissecting Pelosi, but just for the record: this is something I’d expect to hear out of Hugo Chavez. Blaming “speculators” is a classic deflection in case of failed economic policy. Everyone fucking warned us...
“If you weren’t shorting Yahoo’s stock already, start now.”
– Back to Innovation? Scott Thompson’s First Shameful Move | PandoDaily
Above statement should not be legal. Especially in a clear opinion piece with less than rudimentary analysis of Yahoo! as a firm. I’d lose my license for a piece of crap like this. And the public is more likely to listen...
jgreendc asked: Clearly I'm not a fan of our drug policies. You're preaching to the choir on that point.
“It is our responsibility as lawmakers and educators to make this system work....”
– Barack Obama
Notice he’s not talking about just four-year college. What a snob.
(via soupsoup)
Excellent. If it’s people’s patriotic duty to get a post high school education/job training, guess who will end up on the line for the bill?
If you guess “The Taxypayer,” well done.
(via huskerred)
...
Someone actually studied it, and it turns out that... →
shortformblog:
And Ezra Klein brings the kicker:
Bloomberg has more details on the findings here, including interviews with the authors. They also note that the study isn’t alone. It “builds on previous research that has shown wealthy people are worse at recognizing how others feel and are more likely to be disengaged during social interactions than others.”
Of course, left unanswered is a...
“Under the circumstances, the combination of bailout and bankruptcy was right....”
– Obama, Romney Should Tell the Truth About Saving Detroit: View - Bloomberg
Why do we think this, about GM especially? I can’t justify the opinion that any creditor would have preferred the arduous task of seizing and selling GM’s assets over finding more money to keep it solvent. At...
Energy Prices and Politics
muppetpants:
Energy prices rise in the summer and drop in the fall. Every. Single. Year. They will rarely drop to the prices they were prior, but they will, certainly, drop after Labor Day.
Republicans making this an election issue is dumb. Energy prices will drop in the fall, Obama will be able to take credit and the Republicans will look dumb, in spite of their policies being better for...
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GM's Sticky Green Issue
You talkin’ ‘bout the car or the cash?
The excellent author of Climate Adaptation asked for my take on GM’s new green branding. Specifically, GM is rolling out new labeling on its Chevrolet brand, starting with the Chevy Sonic. The label is designed to indicate that the manufacturing processes used to produce the car are “green”:
The company said the Ecologic...
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Why Investor Accreditation Exists And What Parts...
Private placements are very different creatures.
Imagine you owned 100 shares of IBM stock, and you just found out on the news that IBM’s CEO fell down a well into a shark’s mouth. Or, rather, was pushed because she had a network of sex workers that she was extorting. Turmoil imminent, right? You might want to sell your stock in these circumstances.
Now, imagine being told when you...
“If you don’t have $1 million in assets or $200,000 in annual income, you don’t...”
– Dominic Basulto (via soupsoup)
Regulation D! This is a hobby horse of mine. Private capital should be available to more citizens. But removing safeguards may not (is not) be the answer - these securities / vehicles are very, very different than most investments that Americans readily understand.
...
But Yeah, You're Right, 1950-1970 Detroit Was A...
America was awesome back then!
I’m just going to leave this here. It’s a book called “Unsafe At Any Speed”. Note that its publication date punctuates the glorious 1950’s era of manufacturing in which everything in America was fantastic and life was grand.
There was no smog in Los Angeles, all the cars got 09823049823 miles per gallon, and brave Americans with...
GM Cars Are Expensive Trash
Don’t buy American.
Not one - not one - legitimate source of information on cars has any praise for GM vehicles. They are based on aging technology, old platforms, inefficient designs, and subpar materials prone to higher failure rates. The very best General Motors car in a given segment is still 5-10 years behind a comparable Japanese or Korean vehicle, on top of being several thousand...
1 tag
“This critique is detached from reality. Steven Rattner, who was Mr. Obama’s lead...”
– A Million Jobs - NYTimes.com
Rattner never once asked private investors if they wanted a piece of GM to save it. In fact, that option was never placed on the table by simple virtue of the fact that GM was not allowed a normal negotiation with shareholders. But the government’s behavior in the...
Saturday Night
“Excuse me?”
Huh?
“You were saying something.”
Was I?
“Yeah, it sounded like…”
Oh. I pick things up and put them down.
“Oh, like the commercial.”
Yeah, like the commercial.
“You say that during squats?”
Apparently.
It Happens Fast
Monday: installed Ubuntu because my Windows key stopped working.
Tuesday: began my renaissance as a coder, hoping not much has changed since HTML 2.0 (god).
Wednesday: began having self-righteous feelings about copyright law and digital content distribution.
Thursday: spent 90% of my time in a terminal session.
Friday: stayed up late trying to compile my own Gentoo kernel.
I am going to...
Dresden and Hiroshima Were the Same
A nuke is just scope. It’s using email instead of a telegram.
The fundamental problem with nuclear weaponry, or any weaponry, is intent. It’s the intent to kill that we have to keep from proliferating. The means of killing are simply scale.
Nuclear Proliferation Is Awesome
You can’t prevent the spread of knowledge.
Nuclear technology is waiting under a rock to be discovered. It’s like electricity - eventually we will all understand nuclear power and the associated technologies. In every nation.
Globally we have sought to suppress the spread of this knowledge for “security” reasons. This may satisfy jingoistic impulses, but it’s...
“That is why I am upset by many Americans’ thinking. We do not have the same...”
– What Cameras Inside Foxconn Found - NYTimes.com
This line of thinking is so depressing. The incremental improvements offered by the mindless Foxconn “company store” model are undeniably better than rural farm labor. No one disputes that.
But Apple’s margins are north of 30% -...
4 tags
“This decision will not affect the credit available to our customers, and we will...”
– BofA Halts Routing New Mortgages to Fannie Mae - Bloomberg
Re: Charts
Let’s talk, charters and infographers.
The next time I see a chart of a security (eg gas, S&P 500, bitcoins) mapped against a president or political party, I will slightly increase the gravity at the center of the universe. Yes, I have the power. Don’t annoy me into demonstrating it.
Each time I do this, it will take exactly 1000 years off of the time we have left until the...
“This should be a matter of concern and a cautionary tale for the smaller presses...”
– Amazon Pulls Thousands of E-Books in Dispute - NYTimes.com
The idea that lower prices for E-Books are “unsustainable” is absurd. But will Amazon lose its dominant position to other players? E-Books have lots and lots of distribution networks with indistinguishable feature sets. Retail...
1 tag
“If they (federal government), can give me my son back, I’ll pay my taxes,...”
– Feds sue anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan over back taxes | wtsp.com
“April 07, 2011
No data published for new car loans at auto finance...”
– FRB: DDP: Consumer Credit (G.19)
Don’t worry guys, they’re on this.
“Superficially, it was all smiles following the announcement of the September...”
– Consumer Credit Rises As Uncle Sam Funds More Subprime Car And Student Loans; Revolving Credit Drops | ZeroHedge
Imported from Debtroit
“Moses’s case exposed other problems reminiscent of the days of mortgage mania....”
– The Cutting Edge News
La la la, everything is fine, Detroit recovered.
Investors place big bets on Buy Here Pay Here... →
Leavin’ this here.
Hey So Hate To Break This To Everyone
Hold up on the magical auto industry recovery.
Detroit “recovered” to well under the equity payback mark because of a whole mess of awful subprime auto loans. The G.19 reports revealed a massive increase in credit extension that drove the big Q4 that Obama is crowing about and the Republicans are idiotically saying “would have happened anyway”. Herp a doo: guys,we’re...
Squashed: To catch a predatory lenderTo catch a... →
squashed:
So housing prices are low. But credit is tight. When people can’t get financing from a reputable source, they sometimes turn to less conventional—and generally predatory—options.
A lot of the scuzzy mortgage brokers turned into foreclosure rescue scammers, but now that game is running dry too….
Auto lending
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We Can Definitely Close The Deficit Voluntarily...
We just have to call on that benevolent American spirit!
After all, the only reason we’re 15 trillion in debt is because the kind, wise American people were never made aware that we’ve got a revenue problem. I’m sure donations will start pouring in any minute now to cover the gap. Would you like that in cash or check?
“New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who...”
– Christie: Buffett Write a Check, ’Shut Up’ - Bloomberg
Hey guys, let’s close the deficit with a fucking bake sale.
Tax reform is really, really, really hard
In a sense, this [White House’s corporate tax reform framework] is making two, somewhat contradictory, points simultaneously: Yes, we should reform the corporate tax code. That piece of conventional wisdom is true. But no, it’s not obvious how we should to do it, and it won’t be easy. The mantra “broaden the base and lower the rates” is nice, but a mantra is not actually a plan.
Whether...
Surprising Fact
See, the thing is, someone had to buy that bond. There was a market in Greek one years yesterday. Someone was buyin’ them dips in Greek sovvies. Of course, this was more akin to those weird price spikes in Fannie stock after it was on the pink sheets, but.
Still worth a LOL to think of some poor modern-day Jimmy Cayne thinking he’s got himself the modern-day version of a New York muni...
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