JayB

Wow - killer photos. Thanks for posting those.

There's something in the works. Stay tuned for more info.

Smoke crack and worship Satan.

Great ideas there. Apparently the "Grecian Formula" works for hair *and* economies! Here's the endgame: "EURO GOVT-Portugal yields unattractive even at record highs * Portugal’s government collapse complicates Europe’s problems * Portuguese yields at record highs after govt collapse..."

What arbitrary geographic boundary should we not allow goods or services to cross in order to avoid the horrors of outsourcing? How many goods or services that you require do you produce in your own yard, vs outsourcing them to other neighborhoods, cities, counties, or states? Got a hydro dam in your backyard? If not, why are you impoverishing yourself by buying power generated outside of your household? You buy power from outside sources every month, but they never buy anything from you. Just thing of the negative trade balance that you are running with them that you could rectify by erecting your own hand-made solar array, windmill, etc sourced with materials found on your own property! I propose that you put an immediate 100% embargo on all electrical power generated outside of your household and stick it to the folks who are engaged in unfair trade practices that are enabling them to profit at your expense. Also - should we limit the restrictions on trade to physical products? Or should we erect barriers to foreign media content, software, new surgical techniques, etc, etc, etc?

Awesome. Love the panos and the story. Tacked a 600mile RT onto a long day of climbing under similar circumstances way back when.

http://www.detroityes.com/industry/index.html http://www.detroityes.com/downtown/index.html http://www.detroityes.com/nhood/01riveria.htm

Is there a single instance of a bulk mineral resource that we dig out of the ground that we've actually used every last bit of before the price became prohibitive, consumption declined, conservation/efficiency increased, and we wound up using something else?

Best to eliminate their income all together by hastening the decades long exodus of private employers out of Michigan.

"The stone age didn't end for lack of stones." If you allow prices to coordinate supply and demand, then increasing scarcity drives increasing efficiency, conservation, and substitution. If oil does start to get extremely scarce relative to effective demand, we'll switch to something else to fuel transport before we come anywhere close to exhausting every last oil-field.

I'm on the phone on hold to my broker right now. Betting the farm that treasury bill interest rates will rise. Yes, you should do the reverse and go long on T-bills with every nickel you have. Whew....rolling the dice here. Risky business..... Think Bill Gross made a big bet that the end of QE2 will result in rising yields a while ago. http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/262688/running-exits-jim-lacey Only obvious wild card in the near term is the simmering sovereign debt crisis in Euroland could go critical at any time, and that'd probably send an awful lot of cash into treasuries and crush the yields. Maybe go long on seeds, ammo, and whiskey?

Yes. If you're 20+ years from retirement, the *last* thing you want to keep doing right now is maxing out your contributions to tax sheltered retirement vehicles, and continue making incremental investments in a diversified pool of indexed assets with super-low management fees within the said vehicles as part of a market-invariant strategy. Ergo - you should put everything you have in taxable accounts with high management and transaction fees, churn the hell out of it to maximize the tax-inefficiency, and put everything you have into one volatile asset at a time as part of a return-chasing strategy and leverage the hell out all of your bets. Tell me that you personally vow to do this until the day you retire and I'll be a happy guy.

Yes. Some bad ones - but if you find a good bottle you can go score lots of it for a mighty good price.

Don't think we'll see the second coming of Weimar-style inflation but negative real rates and quantitative easing = consistent inflationary pressures on most commodities. Had this discussion with a good friend the other day. Tough to hedge as a little guy without trading costs eating up any gains. Pretty much all you can do is minimize debt and stay liquid. Lots of scary downside risks in just about anything you can hedge in. People with local knowledge of which neighborhoods have upside potential and lots of cash could find a haven in busted real estate markets that are waaaay into the cash-flow positive zone.

Mostly.

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What an awesome TR. Killer photos in there.

We are. Word. Eeek! http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/initiatives_detail.aspx?initiativeID=36072

Private companies do it all the time. And w/r/t retirement... so do individual employees at private companies. Sometimes you have to cut 401k from 10% to say 6% when times are not so good. Sometimes you even have to cut below the amount where you get matching funds. That's life, j_b. Some kind of variable bonus compensation that's indexed to economic growth over and above a particular floor would do wonders for aligning the incentives of the public and private sector workers, and would serve as an automatic belt tightening mechanism during recessions.

There are no reasonable answers to fallacious questions. Cutting your hand off will stop your finger from bleeding, but you won't have stopped the bleeding. As matter of fact, you'll have made matters worse: permanently decreasing public employee compensation will further degrade public services and reinforce the race to the bottom. If pensions, work-rules, seniority based pay, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc then California world beater in every category of public sector performance. It isn't. Virginia outscores California, Illinois, NJ, NY, Wisconsin, etc in every category. http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/gpp_report_card.aspx There *are* states with collective bargaining rules that score well, The data certainly don't support the claim that collective bargaining is necessary for the efficient delivery of high quality public services, effective public administration, etc. And yet, without collective bargaining, Virginia's schools still suck. Surely this would suggest there isn't a link at best? Hell, having lived in that state I'm surprised anyone would trot it out as a model for anything - except never ending suburban sprawl, regional incompetence and general shittiness. But Jay's packing up the Buick and moving out to Virginny! Oh dear, those dirty little facts getting in the way of Jay's ideology JayB would prefer if the U.S. followed the Texas model of governance. He's apparently not willing to live in such a shithole himself, however, preferring instead the bask in the benefits of a more enlightened, liberal state. What not-so-closeted hipster wouldn't? Ah, the Angry Hairless Monkey and its many contradictions. Family, friends, and rivers/mountains. That's it. You could swap out every other human being in Western WA for an equal number of people from anywhere in the intermountain West and it'd be a vast improvement IMO.

I fail to see an argument to cut public employee benefits in there. In fact, they did the exact opposite to help retain employees. Paying what's required to qualified people, pay-for-performance, etc, etc, etc as part of an "aggressive approach to address employee retention," in a state that was near the top of the charts in all of the categories in the Pew survey. Witness the dystopian nightmare at the end regressive neocon warmongering plutocrat's ideological crusade to end collective bargaining for public sector employees...

What data have you got to support the claim that the absence of collective bargaining leads to a general decline in public sector performance? why does your question have no relation to the points made in my post? You said the support used dubious methodology. Bring an equally comprehensive study to the table that shows that granting collective bargaining rights to public employees in the US is critical for public sector performance.

The vast majority of employers in this country manage to attract and retain employees who are sufficiently qualified to do their jobs without imposing massive, potentially bankrupting future pension obligations on themselves. Non sequitur! Private sector employees receive higher total compensation than public sector employee for equivalent schooling, experience, seniority, etc ... Yes. Pretend that what you got your degree in, which school you went to, what you've been doing with it, etc and fail to account for the actual cost of retiree pension and healtcare benefits you can get a regression analysis to crank out a set of statistical aggregates that says that someone with a Master's degree in Physical Education should be making more than someone with a BS in EE, etc, etc. The simple fact that people who are *actually* being underpaid for their skills tend to remedy the situation by accepting higher compensation elsewhere is another confounding variable. Certainly doesn't square with this or any other data about public sector quit rates vs private sector quit rates. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t04.htm/

Bring on zee Meeerage Vihtor Zhjets! Allez! "The United Nations Security Council voted Thursday to authorize military action, including airstrikes against Libyan tanks and heavy artillery and a no-fly zone, a risky foreign intervention aimed at averting a bloody rout of rebels by forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi." http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/africa/18nations.html?_r=1

What data have you got to support the claim that the absence of collective bargaining leads to a general decline in public sector performance?