JayB

That's been very interesting. Both the options-backdating scandal and the GNMA corruption scandal occurred on a scale that makes the Enron debacle look like someone snagging a couple of cents out of the "Need a Penny, Take A Penny. Got a Penny, Give a Penny" tray at the local 7-11, but no one seems to have noticed. In the case of GNMA, I would have thought that people would have been especially incensed given connections between that particular institution and the US government, especially the "implicit guarantee" that most market participants believe will leave taxpayers on the hook for any large-scale implosion. Here you had mega-malfeasance complete with a much more convincing evidence of the company buying political cover on Capitol Hill, yet zero reaction. There are some minor political reasons why this hasn't been noticed much, but the primary reason is that none of these events has been part of any major financial implosion that hit the investing public in the shorts, and the general public is not anxiously scanning the landscape for a scapegoat to pin the responsibility for their financial losses on. When things start to go critical in the subprime mortgage backed securities market, and especially in the most irrationally exuberant housing markets, look for the self-exculpatory language and the manic fingerpointing to begin, then the righteous indignation all around "How on earth could I have known that a stated-income, no-doc, pay-option, I/O libor-indexed ARM was the least bit risky!?," followed by the Mortgate exec perp-walk before whatever sub-committee convenes to sort things out. I think that at this point pretty much every single aspect of the US mortgage market needs a serious overhaul. The mortgage/real-estate business in the US today resembles the stock market of the 1920s, and it's kind of amazing that things had to get this ripe before it occurred to anyone that there was anything amiss.

Very much looking forward to paddling that when I finish my sentence out here. Had my eye on that one for a while.

No one saw this one coming. "WASHINGTON, D.C. - A record-high 19% of high-cost mortgages originated during the past two years will end in foreclosure, a consequence of the growth in risky mortgage products, according to new data compiled by an industry group. The nonpartisan Center for Responsible Lending predicts 2.2 million households in this mortgage segment, known as subprime borrowers, either have lost their homes or hold mortgages doomed for foreclosure in the next few years. This estimate comes a week after a grim survey from Fitch Ratings, which studies residential mortgage securities, showing a 16-fold increase in past-due subprime loans in the third quarter of 2006, compared with 1998. Subprime borrowers, who typically pay interest rates 2% to 3% higher than those with good credit, currently account for a quarter of all mortgage originations." http://www.forbes.com/2006/12/19/mortgage-lenders-bust-biz-cz_ms_1219bust.html?partner=links

you are going to be dead a lot longer than you are going to be alive.....better hope you are right Hey - it's Pascal's Wager. More on this argument here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/ Not an argument that I ultimately found convincing, but it's interesting to see how an especially intelligent guy tried to reconcile faith and reason.

Very bad news indeed. Many crossed fingers out there hoping that they'll resurface. There's another thread about their disappearance in this forum.

It had been a long time. A long-time indeed. Ron cinched down his figure-8 with a brisk tug, chalked up, and exhaled one last time. How long had it been since the incident on the Condor Wall? 12, 13 years? So much had changed, but for reasons that he couldn't quite explain, after lying awake with scenes from the past scrolling across the back of his eyelids for hour after hour, he found himself prying open the chest that he'd entombed in the darkest corner of the attic so many years before. The scent of the rope, the dull clang of the carabiners - suddenly it all came back. Now here he was, staring up at his old nemesis from so many years before. He took one last look across the valley, set his hand within the gnawing countours of the crack, and........"

I may be in touch about some prints as well.

I think that alpine climbing is an elitist pursuit in the best sense possible. Mountains can't be bullied, bribed, flattered, deceived, enticed or coerced. The mountains could care less who you are, where you were born, what language you speak, what race you are, who your parents are, where you went to school, what kind of car you drive, and will mercilessly and repeatedly expose the gap between your true self and the self image that you've constructed to flatter your ego like nothing else. Strength, experience, determination, fitness, judgment, skill, honesty, humility, loyalty, and integrity. In every day life you can flatter yourself and pretend that you have all these traits without ever putting them to the test. Not so in the mountains.

Even if the families, friends, or relatives never see the thread, which is unlikely, and we remove their sensitivites from the equation entirely for a moment, I really don't see the advantage in maintaining a thread thats evolved into a free-for-all where people to try find new and creative ways to mock the response to these guys' deaths. Theres a time and a place for gallows humor, but it's not just a few days after their fate has become certain, and it's not in a venue that's likely to be scanned by friends and loved ones trying to sort through their grief. I think that the emotions are going to be raw enough at this point that the distinction between making light of the tragedy itself, exasperation that's morphed into ironic insider chatter is not going to be entirely clear to anyone whose feelings and sensitivities we ought to be concerned with respecting. Even if they never see this stuff, I can't see how engaging in this sort of thing does anything but diminish the participants. How about confining this to e-mails, PM's, or the local barstool for a month or two?

Good points, good post.

No respect due. Thanks for the feedback.

If anyone's watching the coverage that can log-in and summarize the disclosures at the news conference for the the people who may not be able to tune in themselves, I'm sure that there are quite a few folks viewing the thread who would appreciate it.

Agreed. Please be mindful of this thread's primary purposes and it's audience when posting.

Scrolling through that thread is like looking at an avatar Mausoleum.

Phil/FFOC: What you guys don't seem to understand is that the equipment that these guys brought with them on the climb is the climbing equivalent of a life-jacket. No one who knows anything about mountaineering, and the equipment that's appropriate and necessary for a climb of this nature has found fault with their planning or execution, so one would think this would prompt you to question the assumptions and perspective that you've brought to this discussion. Moreover, neither the SAR crews, nor the air-crews, nor the climber's families have voiced the critiques that you are presenting on their behalf, so one wonders why you've presumed to speak for them, and have appropriated the risks that you are not taking, and the grief and worry that you are not bearing, to advance your arguments here.

This is only relevant for the first two years of the policy. After that you're golden. Care to expand on this one for us non-legal types?

Good info. Thanks for sharing. Does the "edoc" handle mean that you are an ER doc? If so any word on how your colleagues who have come into the profession more recently insure against income loss? Disability is a scary enough prospect on its own, but servicing the debt that most residents carry along with them into practice would be pretty much impossible working in any other capacity, unless perhaps they've picked up an MBA along the way. Given the number of M.D.s and attorneys out there with substantial debt and business obligations that also ski/climb/whatever - there must be some kind of supplementary insurance that they are using to cover themselves against disability brought about by the kinds of risks that are typically excluded from coverage.

JayB- most churches "highly suggest/require" tithing of their members (you know, the people who attend more than Christmas and Easter) - for the mormon church it's 10%. My earlier point with the picture of the Gulfstream was that many churches have much higher overhead than other charities (and that overhead is subject to much less scrutiny - witness the head of the Getty Trust who was fired because the Getty purchased him a $100k SUV. Apparently $10 million Gulfstreams are ok for preachers). No, the key element isn't giving away your money; if that were true we'd be lauding patrons of stripclubs who give exorbitant tips in the hopes of some action. underworld - I suggest you look at the average workers "lavish" home in a coastal megapolois. Perhaps they don't want to commute 4hrs a day from some cheap Central Valley shithole. Some people have to pay the taxes in this country - you'll note that the Blue States receive less than they pay out in taxes, where the Red States receive more than they pay out (headed by Alaska!). Perhaps the blue states wish for more federal government spending because they see so little of it? True - but how much you give is entirely up to you unless you belong to a sect that stipulates a given amount as a religious duty. I was going to add "giving without the expectation of recieving any tangible benefit in return," but I figured that'd be obvious enough so I left it out. You and I would probably agree that if their objective was to help the needy, there's more effective places to send their donations, but I wouldn't dispute the claim that a charitable impulse is what drives most religious tithing. This is consistent with what I think will be one of the few claims that Brooks advances that will withstand scrutiny, which is that religious folks give a greater percentage of their income - even to secular charities - than non-religous folks do. Where I think Brooks engages in a kind of rhetorical sleight-of-hand is conflating religious observance with a conservative political orientation. That may be statistically more likely, but there's a significant number of religious folks out there who self-identify as liberal, so I don't think the religious = conservative grouping that Brooks has put forward is accurate. With regards to the blue-state/red-state tax imbalance, it'd be interesting to see what the political affiliation of the folks who are paying most of the blue-state taxes happens to be. Given the breakdown of total federal taxes paid by income level, I suspect that the most of this "tax-charity" that Democrats claim to be handing over to Red State Republicans would go away.

Unless you are a member of a church that requires you to give, then I don't think that religious giving should be completely discounted here. The key element here involves making a choice to give away your money.

One other tidbit I've learned is that if you have group coverage provided by your employer, and they pay the premiums, the benefits are taxable, whereas benefits generated by a policy that you pay for yourself are tax exempt. Or so I understand. For most people 60% of income, free of taxes, is relatively close to their after-tax, take-home pay, so 60% coverage should be enough to cover most of the shortfall.

Definitely good points. Since blinking from a motorized wheelchair while working as a Wall-Mart greeter could very well be considered an employment opportunity that will get the insurer off the hook, you should defnitely look at the "own-occupation." clause of the coverage and make sure that it's adequate. I think that there are policies out there that will cover the difference between your pre and post disability wages after you reach the limit of the "own occupation" coverage period. I'm leaning towards a two-year policy for myself now, given that there are any number of things that I could do that would pay at least as much as I'm making now, in a couple of years my income will probably become a less important component of the household income picture. Things are a bit different for physicians, attorneys, etc - who might not even be able to pay off their student loans, much less their mortgages, car payments, fixed business expenses, etc - in any other field.

Bump. I'm in contact with a broker concerning disability coverage right now, and it looks like the coverage they offer excludes pretty much any of the outdoor-rec activities that my wife and I participate in that are likely to cause disability. If I can't get this stuff covered, I suppose we'll have to just live with it, as were both still most likely to get disabled through disease or everyday accidents than anything that happens while climbing, skiing, etc. I just called Great Western Life, and the person I spoke with said that they haven't sold long-term disability policies for at least six years. I will try Unum Provident tommorow and see what they have to say concerning climbing, etc. If anyone out there is reading this and has had any experience with other insurers who do not specifically exclude climbing and other activities like it when issuing disability coverage, feel free to chime in. Own-occupation coverage that includes climbing? Possible? The broker that I've been in touch with has indicated that pretty much every major insurer excludes climbing and other activities with a similar risk profile, but I'd like to make sure of that before I commit to a policy. Not sure how many climbers this fellow deals with, so it's possible that he may simply not be aware of them. Given that he has a financial interest in selling his policies to me, its also possible that he's omitting this information, but he seems like an honest guy so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Both seem rather moderate to me, but I can see why both sides would want to claim them as their own. This still seems like one of the most salient and most overlooked points in the "Who's Better" debate: "One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring. It is liberals who advocate "forgiveness" of loans to Third World countries, a "living wage" for the poor and a "safety net" for all. But these are all government policies -- not individual acts of compassion -- and the actual empirical consequences of such policies are of remarkably little interest to those who advocate them. Depending on what those consequences are, there may be good reasons to oppose them, so being for or against these policies may tell us nothing about who is compassionate or caring and who is not."

As I said it'll be interesting to see how the stats hold up under the kind of scrutiny that his claims will generate. He's claimed that people with some kind of religious affilition donate more money to non-religious charities than non-religious folks, which seems plausible to me, but the blurbs don't indicate how well the self-described "religious" category matches up with the self-described liberal/conservative categories. The other claim that the working poor are the most generous people in the country in terms of the percent of their income that they generate also seems plausible, and I imagine that finding will stand. My personal hunch is that the more passionate someone is about using the state as a means to compel maximal income redistribution, the less likely they are to voluntarily distribute any of their own income, but I'm not sure if there's any data out there to confirm or refute this.