willstrickland

Not for months now. Solstice is next week. Sunset is around midnight, sunrise about 3:30am or so. Doesn't get dark though, sun never gets very far below the horizon just kind of skims below it for a bit, sort of a long sunset transitioning into sunrise. Messes up my sleep patterns but it's great for fishing. Our minor league baseball team plays a midnight game with no lights around this time every year.

Give global warming a few more years. It's close to 80 right now.

Well, I am more northwest than any of you foos. More north AND more west...by thousands of miles. but Layton ain't a geography major, hence his version of PNW ends in BC. So I didn't answer the poll.

Nothin' but fly fishing. I am not a climber anymore, closest I get to climbing these days is ascending the two flights to my apt.

Jay_B, you were discussing the housing bubble issue earlier, and I see you quoted Schiller above. You might look into his recent writings on the housing bubble if you've yet to do so. He is firmly in the unsustainable bubble camp. And Friedman sucks. Worst mixed up metaphors ever. Here's Friedman's style: First talk about yourself, toss in some anecdotes, reveal your brilliant conclusion in a strained metaphor without realizing that the brilliant conclusion is a "no shit sherlock" to everyone else. Let me try to imitate: Last year my wife and I visited Alaska where we met my good friend the famous scholar Dr. Eskie Mo. Over king crab legs and halibut at his 7,000 sq ft log home, Dr. Mo said to me "Thomas, everything is changing. The arctic is warming and it's heat-sink abilities are diminishing rapidly and threatening native subsistence lifestyles." Then it hit me, my god he's telling me that our arctic is an overflowing kitchen sink, with too much heat! My next book, titled "Drano and the Eskimo" examines this revelation in depth.

Superfly wires. Agree with trogdor, better than neutrinos.

Werd, I stream it up here. One of the better stations in the nation fer sure yah.

BTW, bankruptcy filings hit an all time high last month. Foreclosures are picking up substaintially. The quality of credit (not to mention the volume) is absurd. The banks don't care about the credit quality, they sell the loans to Fannie anyway who packages them and sells the MBSs. Add in the other derivatives and you have a highly leveraged credit system with horrendous underlying quality. Anyone have an idea of the reserve banks are carrying as a % of loans? Used to be around 10% or so for a 10:1 leverage, if my numbers are correct. Today? Ohh try 0.93%. In other words, you go deposit a dollar into the bank, they loan over $100 off that $1. More? Ok. 40% of the jobs created since the dot-bomb collapse are residential housing related...construction workers, mortgage brokers, real estate agents, etc. When the sector cools and we loose the economic driver of the latest expansion, what happens? I don't argue that homes are a great investment. Clearly they are. But I can't see any reasonable case that the current trend is sustainable. At some point, you run out of speculators and price the avg person out of a home. In SoCal the median house price is only affordable by 10% of the population...that is not sustainable. Asset class price rises above and beyond GDP growth+inflation are not sustainable. When 68% of families own their home, who are you going to keep selling to? As Dru points out, prices will rise as long as everyone chases real estate as the latest "no brainer" investment. And optimism in a sector is always highest at the blow-off top. Once everyone is "in", prices must fall. With housing, the reaction is typically first seen in longer turnover times (i.e. avg time a home is on the market). But houses act diffently than other assets. As the prices drop, people tend to take their home off the market, thus restricting supply and stabalizing prices. Japan had stagnant property values for a decade. So did parts of Texas after the mid-80s housing bust. SoCal took only 3 or 4 years to recover after a 10% haircut in the early 90s.

Here ya go, Fed Funds rate (this is what the Greenspan is actually manipulating when they raise/cut rates).

Yeah, I have rates might take min to find them (on home computer, I'll have to source it elsewhere). Stefan, you are way off the mark bro. The housing sales/starts etc are WAY WAY above pop. growth levels in the "hot" markets.

Any questions? LOL.

Don't wanna get into a long write-up here, but Jay_B drop me a line if you want some more data resources. I've got stacks of info accumulated in the last 6 mos on everything from bankruptcy and default trends to median home price charts over the years, to cost as % of income, % of interest only and "investment" home mortgages, etc. The short version: Negative real rates and the ensuing credit bubble flowed largely into real estate in the last few years. The asset inflation trend is out of line with fundamentals, unsustainable. Housing tends to be "sticky downward" meaning that prices rarely fall much but tend to stagnate for long periods of time (notable exceptions in the "hottest" markets...Texas circa the S&L scandals is one, soCal mid 90s is another where prices dropped 10% or more).

Good luck Tex. Maybe you can get some white Carhartts to match you white pharamacist coat

You're too funny Puget. Yeah, the currency markets give a shit what side of history Villepin was on WRT to Iraq. Please. Did you even read the article you link past the quote from some "freedom-fries" eating winger about Villepin and Iraq? You know, the part of the article where they actually access why the euro is down against the US$? Or should I e-mail you copies of the daily currency report newsletters from the trading desk of Everbank over the past couple of weeks where Butler breaks down the likely moves from a "non" vote? C'mon PP, I expect better out of you than this drivel, especially the first piece. EJ Dionne would have a field day with that POS.

So that horse is dead...but what I wanna know is: Selkirk, did you go climb it or what?

Maybe he meant 0-60 km/h.

Dems should have made them go Nook-u-lar. But the effect is the practiaclly the same: The radical right of Frist/Cheney, backed by radical cleric James Dobson aka "SpongeDob Stickypants" has lost it's grip of power over the GOP. And Chimpy is firmly in lame duck territory as he continues spending OUR TAX DOLLARS on this Social Security roadshow SCAM where only loyal kool-aid drinkers are allowed to attend. BTW, the Chimperor is now on day 80-something of his 60 day road show and public support for his "sort of a plan which doesn't address the problem of solvency" is still sinking. But the press still says George is popular, maybe they missed the worst approval ratings ever at this point in a presidency. 43% approval...sounds like a fuckin' mandate to me baby...go ahead and veto the stem cell legislation you fundie nutjob, and finish the destruction of your legacy. WORST. PRESIDENT. EVER. Between Voinovich's (R-OH) move on the Bolton nomination and the 14 moderates' compromise (Voinovich sent a letter to all senators asking them to defeat Bolton's nomination on the floor) the wingnuttia brigade's powergrab is coming to a close. These clowns overreached big time, and the public is none too impressed. I am happy to see the middle reclaiming the Grand Old Party from the fundie lunatics. Now if we could get some fiscal discipline, we'd be getting somewhere. It's appaling that this "compassionate conservativism" Bush was selling is neither. Free trade? Umm we are threatening the Chinese with tariffs. Fiscal responsbility? All time high deficits. Strong military? They can't meet recruiting goals because they may be poor 18 year olds, but they are smart enough to avoid dying in a festering middle eastern shithole in a war based on a pack of lies. This is an administration that is very adept at dodging responsibility for anything. Huge trade deficit...blame China. Iraq fiasco...blame the media for not reporting all the "good" news coming from Iraq. And that cooked up intelligence used to sell the public on the need for war...yeah, ummm well that was really the fault of the CIA, NSA, and FBI. In effect, McCain just sank Frist and his presidential aspirations and sent a strong message to the White House...namely that George is about five minutes from lame duck status and the blind sychophantic deference to the President is all but over. The good doctor Frist thought he was going to ride into the White House on the wings of the religious right, and his early moves have obviously been targeted at securing that sector's support for the primaries. No matter, Frist will get destroyed in the primaries. We still bomb Iran, or back Israel in doing it.

'56 Chevy Nomad Wagon with a '67 Vette 427 under the hood. I drove one of the Dodge Magnums last week, a guy in our office building bought one. Nice car, but impractical. They are fast and look nice, but you can't see out of them for shit, especially out of the back. Audis are crap. Nice, expensive crap, but crap nonetheless. I have a 91 Suby legacy wagon. Next car will be a newer version of the same.

Shotgun will clear that problem up and quick.

Damn, tell him to lay off then. That's my schtick. And ChrisT gets the