It's just my opinion, I could be wrong

It's kinda hard to tell these days, with all the encroaching socialist agenda, if we're still living in a country nominally dedicated to the idea of creating a land of opportunity, where individual work can make you successful, instead of just political connections and corruption. They say all good things must come to an end, and sadly the US apparently is not immune from this age-old adage, no matter how much many good men and women have sacrificed to preserve America this long. Take, for example, the Chrysler situation . The government is arranging a "pre-packaged bankruptcy" for the company, after giving them tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to squander on a failed enterprise. What, you ask, does a pre-packaged bankruptcy mean? Apparently, it means the government takes the company, gives it to whoever it wants, and gives its previous owners the finger. In this case, the union retirement organization (effectively, the union) is getting a 55% stake of the company...

From Dictionary.com : Irony: [...] 5. an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected. An example of irony: A socialist president, in a bid to help the domestic economy while appeasing his union supporters, vows to preserve the US auto industry as a vital part of the US economy. He then pledges US taxpayer money, in virtually unlimited quantity, to support the auto industry while they can be "restructured" to be economically competitive again. In doing so, he creates an perception that no matter how bad the losses are, the auto companies will continue to exist, spending taxpayer money. Emboldened by this, the domestic auto makers make token efforts to control costs, while launching new "reform" plans which rely on significant concessions from their partners and workers to be successful, and keeping all their employees and executives fully employed and compensated (regardless of the actual work to be done) during the "restructuring"...

Ok, I know this is far to early to be thinking about this: the government is still hemorrhaging money as fast as it can bludgeon future generations, many large banks have yet to collapse or be nationalized under the strain of enormous gambling losses, and America hasn't even yet seen the massive inflation effects which will inevitably result from all our reckless and ill-advised "bailout" payoff schemes. However, in the spirit of Warren Buffet's "well duh, the way to give loans that don't fail is require 20% down, always" (paraphrase), I give you the simple steps the government could do to virtually assure that the current debacle is not repeated. As a bonus, my steps do not require massive new ineffectual oversight, more enormous wasteful spending, or a complete conversion to a socialist economy, so they are already way better than anything Obama or the despicable scum in Congress are likely to propose. Step 1: Require that the GSE's (all of them: F...

So the long-time CFO of Freddie Mac apparently committed suicide ; I feel for his family and friends. That said, I don't really get why he would have been exceedingly stressed as he apparently was, or why he was feeling so much pressure that he felt he needed to end his life. Let's examine the situation: The GSE's (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc.) are in conservatorship, which means they are being controlled by the government. Currently, the government is using them to artificially under-price risk in the housing market, in order to prolong the market downturn and magnify the problems it causes; you could argue about their motives, which may or may not be pure and/or idiotic, but that's what they are doing with the GSE's at the moment. As a result of this, the GSE's will cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, and possibly trillions depending on how long they continue to operate in their current manner, but all of this is more or less known and expected, a...

So I was watching the NBA playoffs today, and interspersed with the movie previews, endless repeats, and other DVR-FF-fodder, I saw some commercials for Cadillac. I looked at a CTS five years ago, and I kinda like the way they look, so it occurred to me to wonder why it was that I didn't like Cadillacs. I mean, they look ok to me (subjectively), they have all the usual luxury features, a good warranty (now featuring taxpayer-backing), and are competitively priced. So why is it, I asked myself, that I'm not at least a little interested in owning a Cadillac? So I considered... Now in the commercial, they point out that all Cadillac vehicles come equipped with OnStar. I'm not sure that's something you really want to have, much less emphasize. Let's review: you get one year of service (then you have to pay for it monthly, or it becomes non-functional*). Second, it was initially pitched as a navigation system replacement, but that's pretty ridiculous: people want a n...

It's hard to not be in the protesting spirit this time of year. Firstly, it's tax time, which means we once again get to painfully reflect on just how much of our hard earned money is being taken away from us to fund extraneous wastes, or even worse, to pay salaries for people who would take away our freedoms and liberty. Second, we're in the midst of what will likely be at least the second worst recession in modern America (since the Fed was founded, which may be related), and "hard time", perceived or just rumored, do wonders to stir the protesting spirit. Third, our country is being run by a socialist, and a lot of people are waking up to the fact that it might be nice to maybe try to educate their fellow voters on how not to vote socialist, lest you wake up in Communist America in a few short years. And while I think there's a lot of value in making the voice of reason heard, there are a few inconvenient truths which are hard for me to ignore. First, and p...

Man, false and misleading news reports are really aggravating. Not that the news media doesn't generally bias stories and publish opinion articles as fact, but when they just throw in obviously false tidbits in the middle of otherwise "normal" reporting, it really emphasizes how corrupt and deceptive the news media can be. Take for example this article from Bloomberg, which has this gem thrown in: ... banks remained reluctant to extend affordable loans. Now, I haven't done an extensive survey, but every bank I looked at (from big to small) had published loan rates, openly available, which is highly suggestive (anecdotally) that they are very willing to extend loans. Given that rates are at historical lows, I would go as far as to say the are very eager to extend affordable loans, although I'll concede that "affordable" should not be in the original sentence, since the affordability of a loan has nothing to do with the banks' offerings, and everythi...

Something which has always fascinated me is people's ability to believe things because they are the general consensus, often in the absence of (or to the contrary of) direct empirical evidence or logical analysis. Sometimes it's an intentional and well-considered delusion, such as the willingness to believe in religious beliefs in the absence of any method of proof or ability to substantiate any of the claims. Sometimes it's cultural, such as willingly adopting beliefs of a group to fit in. Sometimes it's a defense mechanism, like the unwillingness to accept inevitable negative outcomes. And sometimes it's subconscious and pervasive, like getting caught up in group-think conclusions because that's what everybody else thinks, or that's the way it's always been in someone's experience. The last of those seems to happen a lot when it comes to economics, or other "high level" macro trends which people don't think they can understand. Also, ...

One of the currents in the economic news these days is about the TARP money the government put into the banks, nominally to recapitalize them. There's starting to be reports of banks giving the money back, and other reports of the government not allowing them to return the money. If you weren't following the story, you might wonder why the government wouldn't want our money back: after all, we're about to pass a budget which puts the country in debt for another $10 Trillion dollars over the next ten years (essentially doubling the realized national debt), and creating an unbearable debt burden that we'll never possibly be able to pay off; you'd think we'd be excited about, or at least interested in, the ability to reduce the crushing outflow of taxpayer money. To understand why the government isn't interested, you have to look at the whole picture. Back when the government was forcing banks to take TARP money, they had a simple a good reason: if everybo...

Disclaimer: I'm not an accountant, I have no particular insights into the accounting that went on during the housing bubble, and my observations are entirely based on my reading and personal analysis. Naturally, they conflict with those of most of the other talking heads and respected prognosticators. ... and I don't care. Recently, I was reading the fascinating article written by the software developer who helped write the applications which were used to create CDO's (sorry no link). In it, he talked about how he created the software, the small amount of guilt he felt for being indirectly a part of the housing bubble and collapse, and what his software essentially allowed the banks to do. The last part was the most interesting, as it kinda shed some light, for me at least, on what the so-called "toxic assets" actually are. See, most people think the assets are bad home loans, but that's not really true. As far as I can tell, what the banks did was take a home...

In a surprise to single-celled organisms everywhere (and nobody else), the government admitted that the FHA loans it gave out (with your money) are starting to fail in alarming numbers. Well, actually, that's not entirely accurate: they have been failing for while now, everybody knew they were going to fail, and someone just had a slow enough news day to write an article stating the obvious. Uh, I mean, wait, who could have known that these 3% down loans (where we let the seller pay the 3% directly or indirectly through a sham "charity") we gave out to people who couldn't substantiate income or savings necessary to actually afford the actual house would fail? Wait, what, everyone? Oh, right, cause it's fricken obvious. Maybe the first clue you were giving out below-market loans for above market purchases might have come when your market share went from like 2% to like 50%, and you went to Congress to steal another few hundred Billion from the taxpayers... but I d...

Google wins this 4/1, applause, congrats all around for their masterpiece. In case anyone out there missed it, here are some links: homepage , code writing , map , etc. Tremendous work, bravo. Notable mentions: /. (traditionally solid) Blizzard (great production quality, as usual)