What's Wrong Here?

That reminds me of these Morons who actually think they don't pay income taxes because they get a $500 refund or something....

Who Is Susan Boyle?

I had seen the name a couple of times with my *peripheral vision* on news sites and whatnot. And then today my golf buddy mentioned her. So I just had to google her and find out.

Watch the clip here. (Sorry, YouTube is not allowing embedding with this gal.)

Simon's comment (at 5:30 or so) was uproarious - as usual.

It looks like Susan Boyle had a predecessor. Check out 2007 contestant Paul Potts here. That clip has received a mere 45 million stinkin' hits so far!

Who's Teaching Your Kid?

So the other night I was out boozing locally....

There was a band, and some tattooed, whack-a-do chick-a-dee in our proximity who let it be known (to us) that she was one of their gals.

In fact, after a few drinks and over the din of the live music, she confessed (bragged?) that she had slept with each of the band members. She even told us about one band member's anomalous testicle count. What a lady!

So whatever, right?

Later that night, as the barkeep was kicking me out at closing, and after most everyone had left, one of that chick-a-dee's friends informed me that her skanky friend was a teacher at one of the most expensive and *prestigious* pre-schools around.

Hah! Man did I get a good laugh out of that.

And so have all fifty *moms* at the parks with whom I've charitably shared that gossip.

You see, the commoners love to deprecate what they can't afford or have.

While I enjoy deprecating them all.

Bill Simmons Said What?

The Sports Guy wrote today:

First, it's going to be near-impossible to win a Game 7 in Cleveland with the way LeBron James feeds off a frenzied crowd that's in "Maybe if we shower him with love, he won't leave in two years mode" (like a high school junior who starts putting out because her boyfriend is leaving for college in a few months).

Boy, Disney (ESPN's parent) sure has come a long way from Mickey Mouse and innocent family fun!

Now he has a four year old daughter Zoe and has just given her, if she does her *homework*, the ultimate retort to a scolding father for when she's a teenager and gets caught sneaking out to see her older boyfriend.

SportsPrincess - But Dad, you once wrote that....

But in all seriousness, Simmons' making light of, well, what he referenced, has to be considered inappropriate and also unnecessary for that column.

Having just read his Wikipedia entry, apparently Bill Simmons has already had a handful of run-ins with ESPN management over *adult content* and such.

He ought to tread lightly here. If ESPN fires him, it's not exactly as if he can go elsewhere as ESPN is the only game in town now.

Remember those last couple of talking-head sports upstarts?

Max Kellerman?

And Jim Rome?



I'd say the career of Bill Simmons is an easy short.

The Dollar Ain't Worthless, Yet

I'm 34.83 years old and I just did go into my first *dollar store*. I checked out a brand new Dollar Tree in Weymouth, MA this afternoon.

I must say that there is definitely some good cheap stuff in there, I think. I purchased some Rubbermaid plastic containers for 50 cents a piece. I can't even imagine they're that cheap at Wal-Mart. Now I can tell my wife to throw them in the garbage after she eats her lunch at work - though she certainly won't. [I find these things, along with *Gladware*, a real pain in the butt to wash - oil and grease adhere to them, they get water stuck in the lids and don't dry off,....]

And there seemed to be other useful junk in there as well though I couldn't really focus. I had my two urchins with me and my son was wandering the store with his dollar bill. The store is a good teaching ground for my son since we're currently doing Kumon's Dollars and Sense book. Also, I'm trying to teach him the transitory property of money. In other words, if he spends his $1 on the water pistol at Dollar Tree then he won't be able to rent that DVD (Redbox) at the supermarket.

There were a bunch a books at Dollar Tree that had price tags on them for $17 or so. It was only on my way out, after asking the cashier, that I discovered those books still only cost $1. There were a ton of anti-Bush and anti-Iraq books to put it mildly. Standing out among them was this one:



You know why these *pamphlets* are getting liquidated for $1 each?

Because they were over-supplied and under-demanded to begin with. A full audit of book publishers *losses* would no doubt expose a mountain of *bias* in terms of what books got seeded and which ones made money.

This would be the ignominious risk of writing a book - i.e. seeing it at a *dollar store*, or, like Frank Rich's book, seeing it offered used for a mere 1 cent on Amazon!



As you can see from the above chart, *dollar stores* are, along with pawnshops, repossession firms, credit counselors, etc., one of the beneficiaries of the Greater Depression - for the time being anyway.

I do wonder about the business aspect of these retailers. Is their inventory all of the liquidation variety? Or do manufacturers, like Rubbermaid, develop products specifically for them?

Make Them Walk!

So recently, while taking my daughter out for a ride to induce a nap, I got stuck behind the local school bus.

Within about 400 yards, it made 5 STOPS!!!

It was literally a door-to-door limousine service. Why couldn't it just stop once in the middle and make the brats walk for 30 seconds or so?

I really didn't mind because I was in no hurry at all. Just the pure inanity of it chafed me.

Then, maybe two weeks later, I got stuck behind a school bus in the adjacent tony town. Likewise, this bus also stopped every few feet to let kids out RIGHT ON THEIR DOORSTEP even though the span was also a mere couple hundred yards, and even though there was a full-fledged sidewalk they could have utilized.

So where does this movie star treatment come from? From the parents? Or from the school that will no doubt claim *insurance reasons*?

Regardless, this is just another example of the gross infantilization of government schools.

Just when my father thought the schools couldn't descend any further from his *time* when he had to walk to school uphill in the snow - BOTH WAYS!

[I, myself, was walking a mile to and from school by the 1st grade - though admittedly, it was only uphill on the way there.]



So schools are going to spend millions on nutrition education and BMI tests for obese school children.....meanwhile they should just make the darn kids walk A LITTLE!

And then we have these parents that *pick-up* their kids at the bus stop via car. I have parents waiting at the end of my driveway for their kids each afternoon in a minivan - EVEN THOUGH I could literally hit their house with a 6 iron (167 yards) from here.

Boston Globe - Pathological Partisanship

Just as I presumed, there would be no mention of the nationwide *Tea Party* demonstrations in the Boston Globe. Above is a screen shot of the front page which however had the space to mention stabbings, sports, weather, American Idol, and ketchup theft.

I checked the *News* section as well and found nothing.

Supposedly 2,000 people rallied on the Boston Common to express disgust with Washington DC. And locally it could only be read about in the Boston Herald.



I do think the protests were a waste of time and energy - but they are still *news* worth reporting.

And the Boston Globe still thinks the *internet* is what did them in as opposed to unions and partisanship!

See also - The New York Times And Its Suicide Fart.

Tentatively Marginalizing John Holt

So I just finished John Holt's book Learning All The Time. He was a famous educator and author - who can probably best be described as an advocate of *unschooling*. Check out his Wikipedia entry.

Unschooling is a hands-off approach; let the kids learn WHATEVER and WHENEVER they want to learn. And it can be punctuated by an extreme lack of criticism.

For example, what that means is when a child is reading and mispronounces a word, the adult mustn't correct them. The theory being that *corrections* damage the self-esteem and learning enthusiasm of tender brats; that the kids will in due time correct themselves anyway....with precious egos intact!

Although I found much of the book interesting and somewhat enlightening, this is where I part ways with John Holt - as y'all would expect any CaptiousNut to do so. (Look up captious if you haven't already.)

From his book:

We are fooling ourselves if we think that by being nice about it we can prevent corrections from sounding like reproofs. It is only in exceptional circumstances and with the greatest tact that you can correct an adult without to some degree hurting his feelings. How can we suppose that children, whose sense of identity or ego or self-esteem is so much weaker, can accept correction equably? I would say that in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred, any child will take correction as a kind of reproof, and this matter how enthusiastic, pleasant, relaxed, or stimulating we may happen to be. I am ready to be about as dogmatic about this as about anything I know of; I have seen it too often with my own eyes.

On one premise - that the supermajority of today's adults are incorrigible and insecure when rudely confronted with facts - I couldn't agree more. Over two years ago I learned this and disabused myself of the fanciful notion that I was EVER going to truly convince ANYONE of ANYTHING. Whew! How liberating to be rid of that potential burden!

But I contend that grown-ups are so obtuse in fact because of their pronounced under-education. Most people are lapsed-learners and are *fronting*. That's why they react with such discomfort to trenchant intrusions.

But in my view, children have a whole lot less ego at stake. I just don't see them as more emotionally unable to deal with realizations of personal ignorance (and *shame*) that might be provoked by *corrections*.

That entire quote sheds some light on Mr. John Holt. He's *as dogmatic about this as anything* so he's essentially going all-in on the kid-glove treatment.

I understand he's done more work in the field - and seen far more children than I have.

But right now I have to stand opposed.

I would almost take it as a personal insult if a friend, family member, or teacher of mine allowed me to make a repeated mistake without correcting me. For my feelings?

Hah!

How compassionate is it to let someone embarrass or harm himself, again and again, when you could have prevented it?

I've been a self-taught golfer for 20 years now. Some of the things I recently learned; some of the mistakes I've recently diagnosed were surely pointed out to Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus when they were 5 and 6 years old by well-paid professional instructors. Sure I'm a decent single-digit handicap player today but that's only because I've spent an inordinate amount of effort and energy on my game. I could have been a much better player - so much sooner if the right people had BOTHERED me with helpful advice.

Then if you look at my father and his horrible golf game....

He too is an auto-didact in this endeavor - only with a horrible teacher and a worse student!

He really thinks he enjoys the game notwithstanding his 3 digit scores and constant cursing. On some level he may be right. But that doesn't change the fact that if he stopped flipping his hands throughout EVERY swing, his scores would drop and his enjoyment would rise to inexperienced levels. But go ahead and try to get him to change something; this 'old coot' insists that *practice* actually makes him play worse!

Do you think a sensitive 8 year old could concoct such a ridiculous excuse?

Me neither.

The same goes for trading. It took me a full ten years of *fighting the tape* to grasp the reality that I should be playing momentum. In fact I still might not have even fully digested this truth that none of my bosses or colleagues have ever taught me. Compare that with the pedigree of one Michael Davey. (click the link)

The fact is, instruction, including FEEDBACK and CORRECTION, matters greatly because it sets learning curve trajectories.

And the kid-glove treatment can turn humans into mice!

Though I'm not convinced John Holt is totally wrong. I'm going to have to contemplate his theses some more.

What You Can Learn From Park Moms

So yesterday I was at the park and I bumped into a mom-chick that I had once met before.

Like me, she had been prowling for sanely-priced real estate in the area for years to no avail. She even did my frugal pragmatism one-up - she rented in what would be considered a *worse* or *undesirable* adjacent town.

Mom-chick was absolutely bubbly this Monday. She informed me that she had recently bought a foreclosure in Norwell, MA. Now Norwell is still a notch below the two tony oceanside towns that I straddle, but it's still a pretty nice place to call home. It doesn't have a beach and it has a worse commute to Boston, BUT it does have really *good schools*!!!

This mom-chick paid just under 400k for 3,000+ sq foot home on 2.5 acres - probably 300k less than she would have had to ante up for something similar in her/my ideal target towns today.

I was really taken aback by this young lady's grasp of the housing market. It's a rare event I meet anyone with a clue....but from among the homemaker set???

Wow.

Furthermore, as I pressed for details about the foreclosure bidding process I realized that despite all my research, she knew a little bit more about the subject than I did!

She told me that the first thing you have to do is check with the town about unpaid taxes. I mistakenly thought that the *lending bank* was on the hook for those but she told me that the foreclosure buyer might have to pay them. This I'll have to double-check.

Also, she told me to research unpaid federal taxes on the deadbeat owner. The feds have something like a month to put some type of lien on a home after a foreclosure sale. This I'll also have to research.

The place she ended up buying had been put up for auction in September 2008. Two minutes before the bidding, the owner showed up with a declaration of personal bankruptcy. That legal ruse cancelled the proceeding and allowed him to stay another 6 months! This tactic I'd actually known about since *credit counselors* recommend it on the web. It really is amazing how long it takes to kick a delinquent squatter out of a bank-owned property. How much do any of y'all wanna bet that my slimy landlord files a last minute bankruptcy as well?

The mom-chick told me she actually did get a look inside the home. She randomly popped-in and the resident was nice enough to give her a walk-through that most foreclosure buyers can't procure. She said the inside looked great except for papered-walls - which are about the easiest part of a house to *correct*. Though the septic is a problem and she'll be on the hook for that one.

As for my house buying these days....

I'm not even looking. From an affordability standpoint (considering unemployment and interest rates), houses are almost as expensive as they were in 2005-2006!

"Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have."

That's Henry David Thoreau in Walden, about 100 years ago.

Movie Rec - Michael Clayton

I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.

By rights, with George LOONEY, no *SSC*, minimal action/violence, and a slow, gloomy tone, it should have been a snoozer - but somehow this flick captivated me.

Trades- April 14th, 2009

Now that my taxes are paid, the inlaws gone, and the house almost clean....I can get back to work. [Note to heathens - it just was Easter the other day.]

Though honestly, I'm trying not to look at the market (my computer). I'm extremely short - and bleeding at the moment. If it were possible to fast-forward life a couple of months I'd take it in a second. In other words, I'm long-term confident in my position but I'm not exactly enjoying the ride thus far. There's simply no difference between being *early* and being *wrong* when trading.

Today I increased my FAZ by another 33% at 8.90.

And tomorrow I will try, yet again, not to look at the market all day.

Trades - April 9th, 2009

Today Wells Fargo claimed to have made $3 billion in the current quarter. How'd they do that?

They just reserved $3 billion less for loan losses than they did last quarter. Easy enough, right?

Flashback to last July, as Wells was getting its butt handed to it, in a show of false bravado they decided to raise their dividend. The stock rallied from the low 20s to eventually 44.00 in part on that BS lying. Then of course, only a month ago, they reduced their dividend essentially to zero - from 38 cents to a mere 5 cents per quarter....and the stock fell below $8.00 per share.

I also read that Wells actually made half of this alleged $3 billion on a Rohm & Haas stock position. That may be real money, but it's also a one-time charge. I'll need verification on this point.

Wells also lied about loan loss provisions and got caught in the fall. See - Wells Fargo Number Fudging.

So with that (recent) history, I say good luck to anyone buying the stock today at $19.00!

Here's the first of what'll probably be 100 articles this weekend calling BS on Wells.

Last year I got caught short WFC and that single position almost wiped me out. In the end, I didn't make that much money on the stock trade; however, I made a bunch of dough buying Jan 30 and April 30 puts when they were OTM, covering at around $14.00 early this year.

Today I averted my eyes all morning. I just knew something bad was going to happen. I saw the market up 155 points on the television at McDonalds around noon. Then later on I came home from the park and witnessed the damage to my account up close. My profits for the year are now whittling down to almost nothing.

This afternoon I tripled up my FAZ position at 11.65.

Bullets are running low....

More Establishment Attacks On Blogs

Click that graphic to enlarge or click here for full article.

The gist is that some judge in Kfell's libertarian paradise - New Hampshire - ordered a website to out its anonymous sources even though:

1) The plaintiff didn't prove *defamation*.
2) The plaintiff didn't prove the leaked info was *confidential*.
3) The plaintiff is a scumbag mortgage company.
4) Big Media newspapers and magazines are almost never molested by judges despite their copious use of anonymous sources.

Here's all you need to know about the litigant - The Mortgage Specialists:

From their website:

The Mortgage Specialists has been a leader in mortgage lending in New England for the last twenty years. We have been recognized by Fannie Mae nationally and have won their most prestigious award "The Platinum Award."

Recognized by Fannie Mae???

Hah!

That means their entire business model is most likely based upon STEALING MONEY from us taxpayers. (Sue me for that statement, please!)

For just one example of this institutionalized fraud, check out that post I wrote the other day, if you haven't already - Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac....Killing US!.

I can't wait to see Kfell spin this one! How about "that judge is originally from Massachusetts"???

Or "he was educated in Boston"???

Mr. Mortgage, Found

He left ml-implode.com and jawboned going over to Barry Ritholtz's blog....but he somehow got lost.

It must have taken me a full 10 minutes to find his new launching pad - Field Check Group.

Here's his latest blog entry - California Foreclosures About To Soar.

Y'all ought to bookmark his blog!

Marginalizing Road Races

So there was a 10k road race in my town this weekend. And there'll be another in the adjacent town in a couple of weeks. Then there'll be a local triathlon. And the Boston Marathon. A kayak race. And someone put a flyer in my mailbox yesterday advertising a road race in Quincy....

ENOUGH already!

I have no problem with the real competitors of these races. I take issue with the rest of the clowns. Some local chicks asked my wife to run/walk with them for Sunday's 6 mile *race*. What the heck is that?

And look at that POSEUR above. If he's really running in full stride, why do all the other runners participants seem to be walking?

With his knee-knocking form, I'd say he looks more like a BI-athlon kind of guy anyway!

I have some well developed theories on why *road races* are all the rage up here in the worst State in the Union.....but haven't time to discuss.

Personally, I always hated running. I could beat almost everyone around the track once, but never developed any stamina. Only recently did I figure out why - I was a total mouth breather; I didn't ever use my nasal passage to aid respiration. So I was dusting people, over short distances anyway, with essentially half my lungs tied behind my back!

I still think running stinks. Swimming, yoga, basketball, racquetball,....do something else to break a sweat and get your heart rate up. These days I reluctantly run maybe 1.5 times per week and never for more than one mile. My knees and broken back just can't take the impact.

Then just today I found a flyer on my car advertising the Hyannis road race on Cape Cod.

Argh!!!

It's all part of this amorphous *culture* of Boston.

Whatever *they* do....I'll stand opposed.

[Here's where I got the inspiration for that line - *to stand opposed*. CAUTION - profanity]

Golf - A Great Game, An Irrational Business

Above is allegedly some failed Greg Norman golf/housing *development* in Bakersfield, CA. It was called McAllister Ranch and the interesting story is here.

And here's a great article on the plight of Central Massachusetts golf courses and country clubs - Economy Plagues Plenty Of Courses.

The *money* quote:

The good news is if you have the money, you can probably join any golf club you’d like. The bad news is you most likely don’t have the money.

And even beyond that reality, country club memberships, in the Northeast anyway, make ZERO financial sense.

Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac....Killing US!

For $37.52 a square foot, y'all could buy this foreclosed Naples, Fl condo - 7985 Preserve Circle #1114. (It's right across from Arrowhead GC on Immokolee, a track I happened to play in January.)





Less than 2.5 years ago, this condo sold for a whopping $310,000.

The loan underwriter - Freddie Mac!!!

My real estate guy down there informs me that this condo may have theoretically been worth 200k at the peak - but never 310k by any stretch.

AND, he tells me that condo would sell for close to 60k today. So Freddie Mac will have gotten ripped off at both ends.

Check that. Us taxpayers will have been ripped twice on this property!

See also - Fannie Mae Reincarnated - It's Called FHA.

Addendum - What's interesting about this 1,250 square foot condo is that its annual upkeep of $8,263 (condo fees + taxes) vastly outweighs the purchase carrying cost since a 50k house can currently be financed for less than $300 per month, or $3,600 per year.

In other words, owning this condo will cost almost $12,000 per year - EVERY YEAR - and that's fantastically presuming fees and taxes NEVER RISE. Why would anyone commit to those payments when they can seasonally rent for so much cheaper? Remember the place I leased in January was bigger, nicer, in a far superior location, and only cost $2,200 for the entire month.

Conclusion - the real, rational, market value of the that condo could soon be $0, or less.

Massachusetts - The Dumbest State, QED

From US Highway Deaths At Lowest Levels Since 1961:

Seat belt use in 2008 climbed to 83 percent, a record. Fourteen states and the nation's capital had rates of 90 percent or better. Michigan had the highest seat belt use rate with 97.2 percent, followed by Hawaii with 97 percent and Washington state at 96.5 percent. Massachusetts had the lowest rate, 66.8 percent, while it was under 70 percent in New Hampshire and Wyoming.

I'm telling you - from being the only state to opt for McGovern in 1972:



To an astounding super-majority voting TO TAX THEMSELVES:



And now to this list we'll add being the least seat-belted state in the country!

The biggest threat to our lives and our family's lives remains on the roadways. You just have to be an absolute Moron not to buckle up.

I could be wrong, but I suspect it's mostly 'old coots' and 'old bags' that refuse to utilize seat-belts (and we have a boatload of them!). They complain that belts are *too uncomfortable*. I don't know about the rest of y'all, but when I'm not fastened in I feel pretty darn uncomfortable.

See Massachusetts - More Morons Than Your State and also my old yet oft-visited post Marginalizing Bad Drivers.

Trades - April 3rd, 2009

You know, when you lose as much money as I've lost in the past 3-4 weeks, you can't help but wax philosophical. It's only money, right?

On Friday I started cursing. The SRS is getting squeezed and squeezes are irrational and pretty darn scary for those of us on the wrong end. Seemingly, they take forever to end; and that's if they ever do. Take a look at Netflix or Treasuries. Nonetheless I increased my SRS position by 55% after the close at 38.24.

My taxes for this year are just about done - except for the *paying* part, which is going to hurt big time; and probably force me to reduce my trading positions.

AND, on Thursday , I got another letter from the IRS about my 2007 return. They already hassled me with this last year and robbed me of 40 hours of time dealing with the issue, i.e. their mistake. That was *resolved*, or so I thought, with me getting back $800.

But this new letter, accuses me of underreporting my capital gains, THE SAME CAPITAL GAINS THAT I'VE ALREADY REPORTED TO THEM TWICE NOW, and demands a response by April 29th. They want another $19,700 or else....

So I've been hit with a deluge of agony these past few weeks.

And then I got word yesterday that my old man got light-headed, fell down, and split his head open a bit. He's been at the hospital for *tests* the past three days. They've ruled out *cardiac* causes but I we all know these doctors are Morons.

My father's father died young of a heart attack. And my old man, healthwise, is a mess. He's got one banged up body through which rivers of alcohol and transfats have flowed for decades. A chip clip? What's that? Just try to tell my father that when he opens a bag of potato chips he needn't polish it off. He used to eat on of those large Wise bags every single night. They had to be the greasiest chips ever, right?

On top of all that I've been pretty busy. I played golf twice this weekend - needing four layers today to survive the 30+ mph winds. Smashed every single tee shot down the middle save one, but still ended up with a 91. No one can putt, not Tiger Woods nor even a robot, in the wind.

Also, my wife took a new job (within the same firm) and can't really skate on *Fridays from home* just yet. So I have to watch the kids a bit now an extra day. That's a 25% increase in my duties!

And we had a Christening....and a long Palm Sunday mass to got to.....

Jim Cramer - "The Worst Is Over!"

The next time I post him.....he'll be in tears, again.

The New York Times And Its Suicide Fart

I just got the great news today out on the golf course that the New York Times has threatened to shut down the Boston Globe without significant union concessions.

The New York Times Co. has threatened to shut The Boston Globe unless the newspaper's unions swiftly agree to $20 million in concessions, union leaders said yesterday.

Executives from the Times Co. and Globe made the demands Thursday morning in an approximately 90-minute meeting with leaders of the newspaper's 13 unions, union officials said. The possible concessions include pay cuts, the end of pension contributions by the company, and the elimination of lifetime job guarantees now enjoyed by some veteran employees, said Daniel Totten, president of the Boston Newspaper Guild, the Globe's biggest union, which represents more than 700 editorial, advertising, and business office employees.

The newspaper industry, which had already been struggling as readers and advertisers moved to the Internet, has been hard hit by the recession, and the Globe is no exception. The newspaper's advertising revenues have declined sharply in recent years; once robustly profitable, it is now losing money.

This week, the Globe newsroom completed cutting the equivalent of 50 full-time jobs. But the deteriorating economy has made the Globe's financial outlook much worse. Management told union leaders Thursday that the Globe will lose $85 million in 2009 unless serious cutbacks are made, according to a Globe employee briefed on the discussions. Last year the paper lost an estimated $50 million, the employee said.

HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now there's so much material here that I could write 50 blog pages on the matter. But why would I waste my precious time doing such a thing?

All I wanted to do was highlight one point.

As you can see in the penultimate quote above, these newpaper dinosaurs just continue to blame everyone and everything but themselves. Sure it was just the economy and internet. It had nothing to do with bad management, specifically the terrible business decision to systematically muzzle and offend half of would-be customers!!!

And the NYT/Globe's woes have NOTHING at all to do with unionization and pensions!!!

They are asking for the *elimination of lifetime job guarantees* for some employees??? Who're the Morons who allowed them in the first place?

And why the bleep are newspaper delivery truck drivers unionized....in the first place?

The thing is, their unions probably did them in as much as anything. So a paper that spews agitprop all day long, for decades, met the fate of all statist enterprises. What irony! What justice!

There's a wonderful expression describing this.

No, not schadenfreude, that characterizes my feelings.

It's *hoist on one's own petard*.

I always mistakenly assumed that this referred to *hanging oneself*.

But it actually means to *blow oneself up with one's own bomb*.

And more accurately, a petard is a fart - according to its French etymology.

So yes, the NYT/Boston Globe did *hang itself*....

But that verbiage wouldn't properly capture the aroma we've had to take in all these years.



HAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The First Russian Gangsta Spinoff

Due to the sheer hilarity of this post....

TallDude would henceforth like to be known as PrivateCaller, seriously.

Come to think of it, Taylor needs a more interesting moniker too. How about EricTheClown?

A while back, I actually tried to, well not rename, but add an another identity myself. I started posting on Rich Karlgaard's blog as AirFreshener and lobbed some *positive* comments.

Yet the undiscerning 'old coots' there didn't even notice.

Bar Talk

So I got this text message yesterday at 5:36 PM from a buddy who was in Detroit for the Final Four:

I am talking to iverson at the bar right now, he is drinking corona!!

So why was this joker drinking at that time, during the final stretch of the season?

I chuckled and wasn't surprised a bit. When I lived in Philly, AI was a daily fixture at the bar at TGIFs - the one on Cityline Ave if I remember correctly. Once there his posse tried to pick up this really obese girl I knew - when her husband went to the bathroom. They told her that Allen really wanted to meet her.

Yeah, right. Those scrubs were the ones interested....

A couple hours later, I got a another text saying that AI was still there - and he was throwing them back.

Then I went home and learned why:



So at least this one time anyway, the gangsta had a legit excuse.

By the way, this buddy of mine goes to the Final Four every single year, and occasionally the Superbowl. Tough life he has, no?

Google Gobbling, Again

Man these things happen fast. I just heard about Twitter a couple of months ago. Now it's all everyone is talking about. I'm sure Google deprecated it at first, just like me, just like they pooh-poohed YouTube before that gobbled that one up.

Hah, what do ya know!

Google did dismiss Twitter recently, calling it "A poor man's email system" according to this PC World article.

This rumored move by Google, like the YouTube one, reaks of *defensiveness*.

A billion bucks doesn't sound like a lot. I'd think that Microsoft would also be willing to pay that much for upstart Twitter.

Me, as of now I have no plans to *Tweet* - though I did think about tweeting all of my nasty bodily functions if for no reason other than to mock these clowns who've nothing better to do than indulge in such rank voyeurism!

Man, has it really been 2.5 years since Google bought YouTube?

See Google And YouTube.

Trades - April 2nd, 2009

Today I added FXP at 23.00.

And I bought some FAZ, some SRS, and some QID in my wife's retirement account - at 16.91, 50.69, and 43.35 respectively. Unfortunately, this is her *small* retirement account. The big one, through her employer, only allows mutual fund purchases.

I've got a post on retirement account trading on the agenda.

Movie Rec - 300

Last night, I made the mistake of putting on a movie around midnight. I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars. But I wouldn't recommend watching 300 if you plan on falling asleep anytime soon or you've a weak stomach. Some of the storyline is a bit on the hyperbolic side nonetheless it's still very watchable for the special and dramatic effects. Oh yeah, the cinematography was also tremendous - whatever that is.



Note the Battle of Thermopylae was indeed an historical event.

Money, An Easy Sell

The other day, I slapped down a quarter and three pennies on the table in front of my 4.33 year old son and asked him to count it.

"27 cents," he fired back.

"WRONG," and I snatched the money and walked away.

My mother was horrified. How cold, how cruel she insinuated.

Here's the deal I have with Prince C-Nut - every time I get change, I hand it to him. If he can add it up correctly, then he's allowed to keep the money.

For the past 2-3 years my son, like every other kid, has badgered me for candy, toys, or whatever else he fancied in store aisles. And for 2-3 years my response has mostly been the same, "Did you bring your money?" - to which he invariably groans. I believe most parents either simply say "no" or "yes".

Learning about money with my son has not only been really fun - it's a great reinforcement of addition and multiplication AND the foundation of a most important life skill.

I was just contemplating how many millions of parents with kids on the cusp of this level of arithmetic (no matter what their age), simply put the change in their pocket and waste a most *teachable moment*.

SRS Fundamentals

That's merely one page of a fifty page report you can read here.

Of course, none of this is news to us SRS holders....

See also - On The SRS.

Word From Naples

I'm told there are 11,000 homes for sale in the Greater Naples area.

Of those 2,600 are *short sales* - in other words they are distressed, upside-down,..., listed below the total mortgage debt on the property.

My insider down there tells me that right now, 85% of *short sales* eventually turn into REO - or full-blown bank-owned foreclosures.

So despite all the hoopla about *brisk sales* nationwide (esp. in California and Florida), the pipeline of coming inventory is still backed up with no end in sight.

And what people have to remember is that the Northeast (and places like Silicon Valley) hasn't even really had its real estate prices decline much - if at all, yet.



Check out the house above that's not far from me and theoretically a target of mine. It got re-listed today (after a few month hiatus) for $750,000.

But it sold AT THE PEAK, in December of 2005, for $702,500!

So 3.25 years later, after a stock market crash, a nationwide housing collapse, a Communist elected President, and skyrocketing unemployment, THEY WANT MORE MONEY THAN ITS BUBBLE PRICE!

This house may be 2,900 square feet and look nice, but it's on a busy street, has incredibly low ceilings, AND abuts the train tracks.

The total capital cost of a $700,000 house at 6% mortgage rates is $4,200 per month, EVERY MONTH, FOR 30 YEARS.

There just aren't enough people earning the money needed to afford that kind of *shelter* expense.

Not even close.

See also Morons Bidding Against Themselves and The Morons Are Still Winning.

Trades - April 1st, 2009

Got pretty frustrated today. Even though I have been saying since the initial squeeze two weeks ago that it would take at least 4 weeks for the market resume its toilet spiral, I had a sneaking suspicion that it may come sooner.

Today's rally disabused me of all delusional suspicion and all hope. It'll be another week or two, or three.

Look at my CDE anyway (on graphic)!

I bought it at .75 on February 17th. Though I wish I bought a whole lot more....

Made no trades today. Tomorrow, if this crappy market continues to rally I may add more short ETFs in my retirement accounts.