It's just my opinion, I could be wrong

Here's a link , there are many others. Normally, I wouldn't quote mundane news stories, but it's not every day that "our" government wastes $825 Billion dollars in payoffs, bribes, handouts, pork, and other corruption disingenuously labeled "stimulus". To put that in perspective, assuming countries tax income equals roughly 20% of their GDP, that makes this wasteful spending package alone the equivalent of spending the entire annual income for a country producing 4.125 Trillion dollars in GDP; such a country would be just behind Japan as the third largest economy in the world. And that's just what we're wasting in new sewage pork waste; that doesn't even count the projected deficit, which is even larger! Anyway, the somewhat humorous quote from the news article is: "We don't have a moment to spare," the president said earlier in the day[, using the same fear mongering tactics and rhetoric Bush used to pass his failed stimulus pa...

So I guess the "joke" would begin with: what do the Large Hadron Collider and the US government have in common? The answer, of course, is that they both could screw you (and the entire world) very badly, and you would not be able to do anything about it. Of course, there are some differences: the LHC presumably has a small chance of screwing the world, but if it does it will literally be the end of the world; the US government's actions probably won't lead to the literal end of the world, but you are extremely likely to be screwed. So why, you ask, might the LHC be the death of the planet, and you can't do anything about it? Well, the address the second point first, you can't do anything about it because it's a project being pushed by various governments, and scientists who need to perform the experiments to justify their salaries and jobs. Unless you're controlling a world government providing funding and can shut the whole project down, they will eve...

... and I should qualify that, cause I feel bad typing it already. I don't feel bad for Realtors; they chose to be part of the NAR, which is one of the most dishonest institutions involved in the housing market, and greatly contributed to the housing bubble and resulting collapse/correction. I also don't feel bad for bubble bandwagon RE agents, who got into the RE business to get rich quick during the bubble by putting up a sign (maybe), doing some data entry (maybe), signing paperwork, and cashing fat commission checks; those people can have fun serving fast food or equivalent in their new jobs. I also don't feel bad at all for RE agents who were involved in leveraged RE investments during the bubble, trying to cash in on the hysteria they were hyping to make million from all their "hard work"; may they enjoy the foreclosure process many times over. No, the people I feel a little sorry for are long-term, hard working RE agents/brokers who don't fall into the ...

This one from Warren Buffet, summing up what would be required to ensure that there is never another housing bubble/explosion (interview for this show , blog entry with entire transcript here ): WB: Well you can have a rule for example to prevent another real estate bubble; you just require that anybody bought a house to put 20% down and make sure that the payments were not more than a third of their income. Now we would not have a big bust ever in real estate again... Quite possibly one of the biggest "duh" statements about the economy in recent times, yet equally astounding that politicians still fail to grasp that this would be a good idea. One of the reasons the country is so f-ed up is that even with this blindingly obvious concept, clearly stated, we're creating trillions in new debt, thousands of new regulations, and thousands of new policies, procedures, and regulations all designed to specifically avoid implementing the simple and obvious prevention solution. Eve...

I'd also recommend reading: this article . I'm not sure if I should describe it as a feel-good piece or a doom and gloom piece; I suppose it depends highly on your own personal view of America becoming a more socialist country. Regardless of your opinion on it, though, I found it to be a very well thought-out analysis of what's probably going to transpire over the next four (at least) years. I suppose it's kinda disheartening if you're in the category of productive worker with no political connections or ambitions who gets absolutely raped in a socialist system, but for every person like that, there's probably two other people very happy to have their government take that person's hard-earned wealth and forcefully redistribute it for the "good" of the less productive. Anybody have any good suggestions for a democratic, free-market country that abused ex-Americans can move to in a few years? I realize the list of options is dwindling with the global...

This article is very informative, and quite possibly the best summary of the current state of the US economic system, and what's likely in store for the next couple of years. It's so good, in fact, that I'm going to quote a section directly: If monetizing nonfinancial debt were costless, economically speaking, the Zimbabwean economy would be the envy of the world. But, of course, there are economic costs. Monetizing debt means printing money. And printing money ultimately leads to accelerating prices – prices of goods, services and assets. As well intentioned as it may be, the government does not use economic resources as efficiently as the private sector. This inefficiency from government spending worsens the trade-off between aggregate demand and goods/services price increases. And finally, with the Federal Reserve holding the price of credit below its free-market equilibrium, malinvestment, as the Austrian economists say, occurs. That is, the lower-than-equilibrium inte...

I figured I'd try to do some small blog posting on observations about the Obama presidency, at least for the first few days/weeks/months (eg: the "critical time"), in an attempt to document in small part the actions of our "historical but not because of his race" (actual reason for historical-ness un-cited) 44th president. Executive order: increasing transparency in government. That's a good idea, I think. I mean, I can't think of a much more transparent way to start your administration other than personally lobbying Congress behind closed doors to release the 2nd half of a $700 Billion blank check, of which the first $350 Billion was spent in secret, and the Treasury officials in charge are still either not sure exactly how they wasted all the money, or aren't eager to tell. I'm sure there will be more accountability for the 2nd $350 Billion, surely that was included in the new "transparency and openness" guidelines. Surely our new ...

It never ceases to amaze me how people, even seemingly intelligent and educated people, can be remarkably dumb regarding things they haven't bothered to think about, don't understand well, or have ideological blocks regarding. I know I've blogged about some of these before, but here's a recap of some things which just keep coming up, uttered over and over again by otherwise reasonable people, blathering on like morons in these cases: - We should raise taxes to solve government budget problems This has to be the #1 most often repeated, stupidest proposition in the common understanding of government economic policies. I mean, it's the definition of insanity: it has never worked (to reduce deficits), yet people keep suggesting it, over and over and over again. The people who keep espousing it must have ulterior motives (not unlikely), ideological impediments to rational thought (probable), or mental damage [in this area], or all of the above. Excess spending is always ...

I figure since I'm currently sitting in the jury room waiting to be assigned to one or more cases (which has an outside chance of basically ruining my life for a while), I would blog about jury duty. This is mostly going to just be my opinions on how things should work, with possibly a little personal experience thrown in. First, I think the #1 travesty with jury duty is the compensation for jurists: it's beyond retarded into insulting. You get $15/day, for each day beyond the 1st, plus one-way mileage. That... is ridiculous. Now I get that if you're getting paid by your company anyway that extra money is just that, but it's not like your company is not losing money when you're wasting your time waiting around for your rubber-stamping time in the jury box (which, BTW, might be literally months of mind-numbing time wasting, but more on that in a bit). More than that, though, your employer is losing your services, which are likely worth more than your actual compensat...

A small part of the problem with federal (and state) budget deficits and ridiculous spending is that people don't really comprehend how large the wasteful spending numbers are, and just how much money we are flushing down the proverbial toilet of government [in]efficiency. People can kinda grasp up to about a million dollars: that's "a lot" of money (enough to retire still, for many people). To that end, I offer the following suggestion: all official government numbers for deficits and spending, when in excess of $10,000,000, will be expressed as number of millions of dollars. Thus, when we're talking about California's annual budget deficit, instead of saying "45 billion dollars", politicians will be forced to say "45 thousand, million dollars". The estimated federal budget deficit for next year before Obama's "waste as much money as possible" spending package will be "one million, two hundred thousand, million dollar...

This article pretty much sums up my opinion, for reference. To paraphrase, it's regrettable that there are lots of innocent casualties, but take the race and religion out of it, and the situation becomes fairly clear-cut: on one side, you have a region who elected a terrorist group to lead them which is interested in maximizing innocent casualties; on the other side you have a government which is explicitly trying to minimize innocent casualties, even at the expense of their own people/soldiers. Pretty simple to figure out which side is morally "right" by most people's morality, huh? I guess I can hope that if enough Palestinian people die, they will clue-in to the fact that sponsoring terrorists (and/or electing terrorists to lead them) is not the best way to play nice in the international community today, and also not a particularly good way to keep yourself safe and alive. Then again, trying to get people to clue-in to that in general is a lot like wishing for pea...

I recently went on vacation for the holidays, and on the flight there the airline (Hawaiian) forced us to check our carry-ons, because they were full. Now normally, this would be no big deal; we had a checked bag already so we were already going to baggage claim, no extra fee, etc. However, when we got there, our bags as well as many others had been rifled through somewhere along the way, and several people had cell phones and other electronics stolen. In addition, bags were very damaged in the process (ripped zippers, torn bags, damaged items, etc.). This, in my opinion, is ridiculous, and should be illegal. Here's what I would do, if I were making laws. Force the airlines to provide, at no extra individual charge (general uniform fee increases to cover the cost are expected, and even preferred), a minimum of $10,000 insurance for any item which is checked. This will be payable, by an independent 3rd party insurance company, for any non-trivial damage, theft, lost item, or obvious...