Sunday, September 25, 2011

HNHI: A Follow Up

By pageviews, Ruminations in the Wake of HNHI (January 2011) is the third most popular post on the BNB blog.


Figure 1 - Et tu, 50 Cent?  Et tu?

Saturday, September 24, 2011

This Article Pissed Me Off

In Perry Is Right: There Is a Texas Model for Fixing Social Security the author, Merrill Matthews, writes:
As with Social Security, employees contribute 6.2% of their income, with the county matching the contribution (or, as in Galveston, providing a slightly larger share). Once the county makes its contribution, its financial obligation is done—that's why there are no long-term unfunded liabilities.
The contributions are pooled, like bank deposits, and top-rated financial institutions bid on the money. Those institutions guarantee an interest rate that won't go below a base level and goes higher when the market does well. Over the last decade, the accounts have earned between 3.75% and 5.75% every year, with the average around 5%. The 1990s often saw even higher interest rates, of 6.5%-7%. When the market goes up, employees make more—and when the market goes down, employees still make something.
Emphasis mine.  How much is a mortgage?  How much was a mortgage?  PAY YOUR FUCKING MORTGAGE!  You get guaranteed return by not incurring future expense!  That interest is charged against a levered outlay, so you're looking at some big time savings, all the while staying warm and dry.

#winning  #tigerblood  #sensibility

I'll charge you the extra low, one time fee of nothing for that suggestion to consider.  Normal people do not belong in the stock market.  Learn how to save, and learn how to spend.  Why would you undertake to lose sight and grasp of your money when we've experienced 2 recessions + 1 depression since the middle 80's, with exploding debt and unfunded liability at the sovereign level?!  Dude ... guaranteed returns through the elimination of future expense.  Guaranteed.  Normal people shouldn't care about outpacing inflation.  I wonder what the actual market returns, brokered or self-directed, has been for the middle class in the last 20 years.  There's the lasting claim to need to combat inflation, but how does that work out when bouncing between bubble and calamity with fees and emotional distress attached?

It is a great and ongoing crime perpetuated against the middle class that they cannot elect to reduce their mortgages with these matching funds, and in a tax efficient manner, but that does not mean they should abandon the calling to make the best financial decisions.

In closing:  Pay.  Your.  Mortgage.

For more on this topic please view:  Why I think people should own homes, not stocks.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Jim Chanos talks about stuff ...

... with Carol Massar.  Win.  Win.


Sunday, September 18, 2011

How traffic works.

I have been developing a Communist Driving Theory as a coping mechanism for the angst of my window time.  It's easy to excuse most of the rest of society for not understanding how traffic works - they do, after all, spend most of their time dialing into radio stations for free lawn tickets at the next Bieber show instead of guarding their own lives.

Do you want to see how traffic efficiency can  be decreased by 17% using shapes?  Fasten up.


Figure 1 - In a constant space 6 cars can travel a constant speed.


Figure 2 - Changing lanes decreases surface efficiency by 17%, trailing cars must decrease speed to create space.

Perpetual lane changers exacerbate the decline in traffic efficiency as constant speed, and space optimization can never successfully occur.  Worse yet, as they proceed ahead the results compound.  To ye I say:  Please stop being a dick.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Monday, September 5, 2011

Seeking Protection


If you're betting on the end times, utilities might catch some myootual fund flow, but I don't believe it's a stable choice in the longer term.  If we're heading into the dark times, you want to make your money from a bleeding heart government that will not let lazy, insolent, and zero value added dick bags starve:  namely, the Food Stamp Trade.

Interesting Reads and a Short Editorial

A Tweet is Worth (at least) 140 Words by Alemi << on efficiency and the English language
Stock Tiger Stalking Stocks by Stock Tiger << comprehensive market TA 9.6.2011
Try, Try Again, or Maybe Not by Leslie Berlin for The New York Times
Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult by Mike Lofgren

I used to work for a guy who treated performance not against a baseline, but as the difference between one outcome and another.  If you ended up writing a change order against a contract it wasn't the pure delta in the original and revised contract that got parsed, it was the difference in what the contract should have been written for originally and the final revised contract.

You only walked into Goodie's office one time thinking that you lost a grand.  After that you're prepared to explain why there was a 2k "swing" between what should have been and what it is now.  It used to drive me up the fucking wall because some of his what ifs were an octave below aliens dropping out of the sky with space concrete and diamond flake aggregates.

Winners want to know what the best possible outcome is and how far they have to go to get there.  I get that now.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

That was quick.

Postal Service Struggles to stay Solvent, and Relevant by Steven Greenhouse at The New York Times

Reference five day old post:  Macro Idea - Parcel Mail