sexual_chocolate

hehehe, won't answer the questions about your voting, but will attack others about theirs? that's good ol' smart guy kevbone for ya.

i asked you very specific questions.

how about kerry in '04?

kevbone, did you vote for gore in '00?

oh kevbone, did you vote for clinton in the '90's?

Wow…..I did not know there were still people out there who openly stated they are republican? Interesting……that would mean you voted in Bush, therefore you have the blood of all the DEAD from this occupation on your hands……how does that feel? did you vote for clinton in the '90's?

yeah this one has really surprised me. the guy is an intolerant good ol' boy, and some "progressives" sing his virtues. amazing.

so i assume your point is....? are you certain there is no history of unsustained commodity price appreciation which doesn't conform to historical trends? we are now what, 2 years along the road since that graph came out, and we have witnessed a correction to historical averages? no. we have witnessed further price appreciations in seattle and other markets, with some areas experiencing precipitous drops. nationwide, i believe the last year brought a 1% drop in prices on average? am i right in this? since you are so bearish on the housing market, i'm curious about your opinion on what the eventual outcome of this will be, let's say 5 years out nation-wide, 5 years out seattle, and let's throw in a 10 year time-frame too for kicks. changes expressed in percentages. clarification: i have no idea what the market will do, but my best guess is that certain areas of the country will get hammered for many years to come, while other areas (read, seattle) will plateau out (i think it's happened here with single family), maybe drop a few percentage points for a few years on average, then slowly appreciate again. the mortgage rate reduction would affect this....

so how are the preparations going?

the same kind of fear-mongering has happened every time the US has had a down-turn. you know, the end is near, it's like 1929, everyone will die, etc etc. it's nothing new. i have no idea how bad a down-turn will happen, if any; no one does. could it happen? of course! could it not happen? of course!

another perspective: The worst market crisis in 60 years By George Soros --- Published: January 23 2008 The current financial crisis was precipitated by a bubble in the US housing market. In some ways it resembles other crises that have occurred since the end of the second world war at intervals ranging from four to 10 years. However, there is a profound difference: the current crisis marks the end of an era of credit expansion based on the dollar as the international reserve currency. The periodic crises were part of a larger boom-bust process. The current crisis is the culmination of a super-boom that has lasted for more than 60 years. Boom-bust processes usually revolve around credit and always involve a bias or misconception. This is usually a failure to recognise a reflexive, circular connection between the willingness to lend and the value of the collateral. Ease of credit generates demand that pushes up the value of property, which in turn increases the amount of credit available. A bubble starts when people buy houses in the expectation that they can refinance their mortgages at a profit. The recent US housing boom is a case in point. The 60-year super-boom is a more complicated case. Every time the credit expansion ran into trouble the financial authorities intervened, injecting liquidity and finding other ways to stimulate the economy. That created a system of asymmetric incentives also known as moral hazard, which encouraged ever greater credit expansion. The system was so successful that people came to believe in what former US president Ronald Reagan called the magic of the marketplace and I call market fundamentalism. Fundamentalists believe that markets tend towards equilibrium and the common interest is best served by allowing participants to pursue their self-interest. It is an obvious misconception, because it was the intervention of the authorities that prevented financial markets from breaking down, not the markets themselves. Nevertheless, market fundamentalism emerged as the dominant ideology in the 1980s, when financial markets started to become globalised and the US started to run a current account deficit. Globalisation allowed the US to suck up the savings of the rest of the world and consume more than it produced. The US current account deficit reached 6.2 per cent of gross national product in 2006. The financial markets encouraged consumers to borrow by introducing ever more sophisticated instruments and more generous terms. The authorities aided and abetted the process by intervening whenever the global financial system was at risk. Since 1980, regulations have been progressively relaxed until they have practically disappeared. The super-boom got out of hand when the new products became so complicated that the authorities could no longer calculate the risks and started relying on the risk management methods of the banks themselves. Similarly, the rating agencies relied on the information provided by the originators of synthetic products. It was a shocking abdication of responsibility. Everything that could go wrong did. What started with subprime mortgages spread to all collateralised debt obligations, endangered municipal and mortgage insurance and reinsurance companies and threatened to unravel the multi-trillion-dollar credit default swap market. Investment banks' commitments to leveraged buyouts became liabilities. Market-neutral hedge funds turned out not to be market-neutral and had to be unwound. The asset-backed commercial paper market came to a standstill and the special investment vehicles set up by banks to get mortgages off their balance sheets could no longer get outside financing. The final blow came when interbank lending, which is at the heart of the financial system, was disrupted because banks had to husband their resources and could not trust their counterparties. The central banks had to inject an unprecedented amount of money and extend credit on an unprecedented range of securities to a broader range of institutions than ever befor e. That made the crisis more severe than any since the second world war. Credit expansion must now be followed by a period of contraction, because some of the new credit instruments and practices are unsound and unsustainable. The ability of the financial authorities to stimulate the economy is constrained by the unwillingness of the rest of the world to accumulate additional dollar reserves. Until recently, investors were hoping that the US Federal Reserve would do whatever it takes to avoid a recession, because that is what it did on previous occasions. Now they will have to realise that the Fed may no longer be in a position to do so. With oil, food and other commodities firm, and the renminbi appreciating somewhat faster, the Fed also has to worry about inflation. If federal funds were lowered beyond a certain point, the dollar would come under renewed pressure and long-term bonds would actually go up in yield. Where that point is, is impossible to determine. When it is reached, the ability of the Fed to stimulate the economy comes to an en d. Although a recession in the developed world is now more or less inevitable, China, India and some of the oil-producing countries are in a very strong countertrend. So, the current financial crisis is less likely to cause a global recession than a radical realignment of the global economy, with a relative decline of the US and the rise of China and other countries in the developing world. The danger is that the resulting political tensions, including US protectionism, may disrupt the global economy and plunge the world into recession or worse. The writer is chairman of Soros Fund Management

perhaps that is the point. i'm not absolutely certain; i'm conjecturing here on possible motives other than simple "pandering". maybe you can google up some study results.... i do think the fannie mae mortgage restriction abatement will have direct effects though, limited to specific areas, whereas the recent ten year note market's effects on long term debt in general will affect all areas, imo. i might be projecting a bit, cuz it'll more than likely affect me quite directly.

because saving 18 cents per gallon of gas priced at 3.20 would have miniscule ramifications on consumer confidence. it would be a nil factor. and capital gains cuts would again affect the larger populace very little. most folk aren't so directly and viscerally affected by capital gains as to boost consumer confidence significantly.

perhaps bald-faced pandering; perhaps an attempt at alleviating the anxiety of King Consumer, who makes the economy go 'round. With so much talk about recession, a legitimate fear is that with a spooked populace, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. another factor that could sustantially impact the economy is the possible lifting of fannie mae's and freddy mac's restrictions on mortgages above 417,000. couple that with recent drops on long term interest rates to 5.5(!), and you have a real potential for market stabilization in many areas. so do i think the package might help? it depends on what you mean by "help"!

i'd agree, but only if your kid doesn't wanna train. if he's psyched on his own, then i think pretty much everything an older humanoid would do, minus campusing perhaps? i'd read One Move Too Many. it talks about kids and training. pretty important stuff about development and such.

smoking would be just fine. don't let me bum any though, cuz that's the last thing i wanna start doing again.

oh my gosh, how i miss the simple days....

thanks mark, posted and waiting. in the meantime, if you know anyone or can spare a guy for a couple of days this week....

Anyone a finish carpenter out there, or know any who is looking for some pick-up work this next week? Need basic finish carpentry skills for a job that could turn into full-time if desired. Decent pay, around $25 an hour. Seattle location. Thanks for any info!

wtf does that make you? a 40 year old ouch potatoe who never gets any or gets out? look, i don't even own a couch. and even though recently, it is true, i haven't been getting a whole bunch, i certainly get out. unless i'm staying in and watching a movie or something.

Iran did so out of the countries you listed, you now say that only one of these is applicable as an example, but now you must state exactly what it is that iran "did".

Israel, S. Africa, Argentina, Iran, N. Korea oh excellent point. these countries all adopted these tactics because george bush did. how silly of me!

ok ok you can argue about the benefits of zoos, and good points can of course be made about species preservation; that's really not the point here though. the point is about building structures that human-eating animals cannot escape from. this is entirely entirely entirely the liability of the zoo administration, ESPECIALLY if the inadequacies had been previously noted. i fail to see what is so damn difficult to comprehend about this point. you don't use a structure to house a tiger from which the tiger can escape. period.

hopefully something else will get him soon? wtf? bad blood between ya? i swear the people at this site are all 50 year old couch potatoes who never get out. yes all, it's dangerous out there. lock your doors and stay indoors. it's for your own good.

so the argument goes. please give specific examples of "other states" that have used these "tools", or specific other states that "feel they must adopt such tactics to defend themselves." I am not certain russia is a pertinent example, for reasons discussed above.