missed the dog and pony show today. Bailout at its best. Why don't they investigate the false rumors that make stocks go up? FNM and FRE access to the dicount window? well see.
Enjoy wherever you are while you can--before the Bush Administration figures out a way to sell it to one of his cronies (for a good price, of course, if you're the buyer) as Bush has already done with some beautiful public lands in western Montana.
His administration wants to finish clearcutting all the old growth left in on federal lands in OR too, so what if the market's bad for lumber now because of the construction industry slump.
I miss going to Lake Tahoe here in my neck of the woods and over Carsons pass for a hike now & then. One day.... Great song. Great pics. Again, thank you for a much needed mental break.
I sure do love the Sierra's, my favorite place growing up. I hope the Chinese and Arabs from the Oil Producing Economic Countries let us visit when they buy it.
And speaking of not knowing where the lions are, today feels like at least a short-term bottom (or close to it in the market).
Can't say why, exactly. Maybe many reasons. And it just FEELS like it... The VXO gapped up and hit against the upper Bollinger band calculated at 2.1 standard deviations from the last 150 days, for example. Mmmm, some negative divergence between price and the 140 day RSI on the major indexes, to name another. The IndyMac failure, the calming song from this post... to name others.
Maybe I'm calling it too early, but many of the shorts probably got out on Tuesday, and the longs have probably already thrown in the towell so I'm going to at least start testing the waters. Worst case scenario, we have another leg down the same size as this one... no biggie.
Once upon a time, a young man and a young woman met and fell in love. The man proposed to the woman and she accepted. They were married in 1993.
In 1995 they bought a modest house. The man lived within his means, and over the next 10 years he made the mortgage payments on time every month. Their equity grew until they owed 25% of what the house was worth. During this time the man and woman conceived two wonderful children.
One afternoon in December 2007, the wife came to her husband with a strange look in her eyes. She needed money in a bad way. She was in debt. The husband didn't understand. They both had good jobs. He had money in the bank and for the first time in his life felt secure that their retirement needs would be met. Why was she in debt? How much money did she need?
The wife told her husband that she had $20,000 in credit card debt. The husband was shocked. The husband was angry with himself for not monitoring his wife's spending habits. He wondered where the $20,000 went. "With all of that debt, why don't we at least have nice leather furniture and a plasma TV?" he asked himself. He paused to consider the annual trips to Europe his wife had been taking over the past few years with her friends. She never asked, she just told him that she would be doing it ("You only live once!" were her exact words.) The husband gave her the $1,000 budgeted for Christmas, plus another $2,000 in cash.
One day in January 2008 the wife came to the husband again. "I'm screwed," she said. Checks had bounced. By this time the husband was paying all of the bills, including the utilities. All of the wife's income was going to pay off the credit cards. "I owe $30,000," she told the husband. "I went to the bank and they said we could take out a home equity line of credit." The husband refused. The husband said she should talk to a debt counselor because there are things she could do to reduce the amount owed. When the husband told his wife "no" she had a desperate, feral look in her eyes. The wife didn't want to do this because it would damage her credit rating. Her credit was the most important thing.
The wife shut off the husband. She became distant. No longer did she snuggle up to her husband. She took a second part-time job and rarely saw her husband or the children. She worked the second job for 5 months. When the couple's economic stimulus check came, the husband gave it to her.
One morning in late June, the wife announced to the husband that she was filing for divorce. She had used the economic stimulus check to hire an attorney and file the papers. She already had a new apartment lined up. The wife wanted the husband to give her half of everything that he had worked for. The husband didn't take expensive vacations to Europe. The husband drove a beater car. The husband didn't have the latest expensive cell phone. But that didn't matter, and the husband was soon presented with the divorce decree. The husband was shocked to discover in the decree that the wife didn't owe $30,000 to the credit card companies. In fact, she had over $50,000 in credit card debt.
Now the husband is forced to sell the house in a depressed market and he is very, very upset. No longer does he see the children every night. All of his plans for the future have been torn to shreds. He is a grown man who cries every night in an empty house, pining for the life he once had.
man oh man. Work kept me off the magic tubes of the internet until about 10 min ago. (stressful work away from the desk today). Caught the headlines- understand I wasn't the only one with a hard day today. Then hit play on this video, with my martini next to me, and felt the stress melt away. I think I need to follow CR out there soon.
Weather Helm writes:
In other news, Moody's has announced a downgrade of IndyMac debt from AAA to AA+, and puts IndyMac on credit watch with negative implications.
Moody's will continue to monitor IndyMac's financial health and will update investors when appropriate.
The Onion has already written this article, but to add insult to injury they are waiting to mid august to publish.
Ah, the Sierras... anyone ever been the Mineral King, in the southern Sierras, populated with bears and a kind of cute but voracious chipmunk/rodent called a "marmot". From the trail guide:
"Each spring and early summer, the marmots of Mineral King dine on rare delicacies in this alpine valley. Their fare includes radiator hoses and car wiring! Like bears, jays and ground squirrels, marmots have not only become accustomed to visitors, they have learned that people are a source of food.
In the parking areas some marmots feast on car hoses and wires. They can actually disable a vehicle. On several occasions, marmots have not escaped the engine compartment quickly enough and unsuspecting drivers have given them rides to other parts of the parks; several have ridden as far as southern California!
The whole thing sounds ridiculous, but it's true. If you visit Mineral King, especially during the spring, check under you hood before driving away. Let the rangers know whether or not your vehicle has been damaged. And don't forget, marmots also love to feast on boots, backpacks, and other equipment. "
"Everybody is totally negative on financial stocks, and until housing prices stabilize, and people feel like there is liquidity for these firms, the market will continue to take them down. It's interesting the way the shorts have gotten -- it's almost like a group of piranhas. Something in the water is hurt, and all of the sudden it has 10,000 piranhas on it."
Yeah. Those darn shorts. Like a bunch of piranhas. Trying to get one more bite of the animal before the carcass is devoured.
And all the animal had to start with was a little boo-boo.
The weekend before my conference in San Francisco, we took our boys and my MIL to Yosemite NP for their first time. Any day in the Sierras is a great day, even in spite of the smoke. I promised my 7yr old that we were going to come back some day when we had more time to hike Half Dome. He's ready.
Pet peave? Try this: everyone understood what he meant by Sierras, and it's actually commonly used in both forms in these here parts, so give it a rest grammer pendants. No one else cares.
As for being over the FDIC limit, I see that as a method to get in early on the IndyMac Federal Savings IPO.
My in-laws got back from a 2 day hike in the Sierras last week. It was supposed to be a 3-day trip, but because of the high rain and snowfall this year, many of the streams were impassable. Also an insane number of mosquitoes, even over 10,000 ft.
I miss the Sierras. We went out the last two summers for 7 and 14 day treks, respectively, but this year my wife is pregnant. It may be a few years before we get back out on the trail!
FWIW, I was in a somewhat similar situation some time ago. A spouse who is acting out like that and then looking for a rescue is almost certainly stuck in adolescent mode, testing for unconditional love and acceptance. It would not have helped if you had taken out the Heloc - she would have just doubled down. The most you can do in that situation is take on the role of parent and help the perpetual adolescent try to outgrow the problem. Unfortunately, they are unlikely to see it that way. And if they do outgrow the problem they will still probably want to do what every adolescent does - move on.
On the bright side, your next house will likely be even cheaper in a few years than the one you're selling now. My advice is to price it aggressively and try to feel the financial loss as penance and absolution. Just don't end up like one of my relations, now in a nursing home and still fixated on the tragedy of a divorce that happened nearly 40 years ago. Hint: most people in nursing homes have more pressing problems than a divorce that happened 40 years ago, so it's hard to make friends.
What's the Zestimate worth? On my street the last house (all identical) sold for 186k, yet Zestimate taxes the other houses at ~207k. Are they so behind the curve as the Fed?
W.
Would like to thank Tanta and CR for the excellent site and actually commenting on the comments. Bloggers are definitely the future and the community surely appreciates the work you both put out.
The peso has gained 5.5 percent this year, buoyed by the widening gap between U.S. and Mexican benchmark interest rates. The 5.75 percentage-point differential between the two countries is the widest since September 2005.
Yields on Mexico's benchmark 10 percent bonds due December 2024 jumped 8 basis points, or 0.08 percentage point, to 9.29 percent. The bond's price slipped 0.71 centavo to 105.94 centavos per peso, according to Banco Santander SA.
The home and offices of Eike Batista, Brazil's richest man, were raided by the federal police today as part of a probe into alleged fraud and tax evasion. The shares of three companies controlled by Batista tumbled, wiping out as much as $3.26 billion in market value.
``Operation Midas Touch'' is investigating possible fraud in the granting of rights to run the Amapa Railroad and tax evasion related to a gold mine, said Fabio Tamura, police chief in Macapa, in the northern state of Amapa
Marmots? That's it! Didn't CR make a similar trip last summer just before things started to go haywire?
Marmots, sitting in the bloomberg terminals, nesting in the circuit breakers, gnawing on the transistors in the black boxes.
And they could have multiplied.
Every policitican, regulator, wall street schmuck might have their own little private marmot, sitting in their skull, chewing away at the tiny atrophied locus that controls social behavior.
Anonymous Coward
because of stories like this, many young people in eastern europe earn as much money possible when they are young to have the appartment/house bought and written to their own name.
here, what you owned before marrying and even inherited furing your marriage is all yours, and in a divorce you split just what you both earned during the marriage. prenups are not very common here.
the downside is, the young people who plan marry usually in their 30s, when their peers who married in their 20s are getting divorced ...
But I started buying gold a few years back. Told all my friends to get some too. Few listened. They still seem to think the way to make money is in stocks.
I even get the impression some think its better to lose money in stocks (which are racey glamorous and exciting) than make money in a strange and boring thing like gold.
On the same theme I've got younger friends who are intent on going to business schools and getting jobs at investment banks and the world of finance because they think it is a path to riches.
revro wrote: because of stories like this, many young people in eastern europe earn as much money possible when they are young to have the appartment/house bought and written to their own name.
revro, I got married for the first time at 57 years of age because, not only of stories like this, but of the many friends, most of whom earned much more than me in life, who have been stripped down to their ankles by the US court system. Don't have a set of nuts in this country and go into a courtroom. Bye the way, the feminists and divorce attorneys have found ways to invalidate many prenups here in the states. Anonymous Coward is but one of many.
And to think slavery was supposed to have been illegal for 145 years now.
On the same theme I've got younger friends who are intent on going to business schools and getting jobs at investment banks and the world of finance because they think it is a path to riches.
I think so too, the outcome of mess would most likely result in structural changes in these institutions and if it gets really bad, more protectionism will come in play.
Globalization will mean a whole new thing before this is finished.
Grats on your gold decision, the dollar can only head down now, with more monetization looming on the horizon.
Notice that bonds fell with equities recently, but where can all that capital hide. Extreme volatility is just waiting to happen.
Man that brings back memories. Such a beautiful place to hike. I've only been there once, ironically
we arrived on the day that some famous nature photographer died in a plane crash on his last
leg back from China. His studio was in the very town we were staying - I remember they put colorful balloons
outside, celebrating his life rather than mourning his passing. We went in at Shepard's Pass (?) and came out
at Bishop, I don't remember how many days. Some of those pictures look very familiar, but probably just
similar places. Maybe CR will give us his route when he gets back.
Dryfly: yes there are trout. (Puts environazi hat on) they shouldn't be there but (removes hat
shamefacedly) it sure is gorgeous to look down into the crystal clear water and see them.
voracious chipmunk/rodent called a "marmot
There's one in that slideshow, looking at the cameraman with a sort of "what's up doc" expression.
I remember the little suckers buzzing around whilst I was gasping for air at 13.5K ft.
The great thing is when you "come back down" to where you live you feel like Neil Armstrong bouncing
around on the moon, with all those supercharged red blood cells sucking up sea-level o2!!
lol investment bankers i heard in train recently how an it guy who is in parallel studying economy as well as it is dreaming about leaving his current stable part time job as a programmer and going to ireland to work for a hedgefond there xD
i really really had to control myself so that i dont burst out in laughter. such a clever guy studying two universities at once without even having using common sense and simply read the macro trends, or maybe just MSM.
offcourse hedgefonds in ireland are waiting for a new out of school wannabe quant when there are thousands of people with many year praxis in finance being laid off oh, sweet naivity.
"marmots of the Sierras... the way they would yell at you from the tree"
The Sierra marmots must be unusually athletic. There are plenty of them up in the Colorado Rockies, and I've never once seen one up in a tree. The ones that habituate hiking trails and camping sites are too fat to climb anything.
I've never seen a Sierra marmot in a tree. Lots of other rodent species, yes. Besides, marmots don't yell. I think they were referring to a Douglas squirrel or chickaree (not to be confused with a chickadee which is a bird). Those things like to yell at you.
Nice to see you taking some time off, especially for a refreshing hike in nature. CR, for a retired fellow, you spend too much time working on this undeniably excellent blog. While your efforts and expertise benefit many, I look forward to more posts like this one. Enjoy!
Anonymous Coward that's horrible! It may not be much comfort, but I think that's a common story. And I've heard worse. My cousin recently had his life turned upside down because of his (now ex) wife. He worked two jobs while she over-spent and neglected to pay bills. To this day, I don't think he knows what she spent the money on. She also neglected to take her daughter to the hospital, and she died of appendicitis. Several of his relatives (myself included) gave them money for the funeral, and after falsely accusing him of abuse, she kicked him out of the house, took the funeral money out of their joint account, and filed for divorce. Granted I don't know the whole story --but what kind of person steals money from their own child's funeral fund? Anyhow, my cousin is now paying through the nose for everything.
Sharing half of a $50,000 debt may be a lot easier than what you would have been stuck with 10-15 years down the line.
First!
IMB DIED!!
Good to step out of the ring for a while and re-group on perspective. Nice.
Are those your own photos, CR?
Nice. Very nice.
Does that come with bongwater Tanta?
John Muir Trail?
I thought all the chipmunks and squirrels were in NY and DC
hiking in the sierras looking for the treasure bogart failed to secure...
good timing CR
thanks Tanta, great tune magnificent pegs
I thought you would have pink ponies instead of Lamas.
Thanks for the pictures. How about something like this with every bank failure. A spoon full of sugar type thing.
like Thoreau said...
And like I know--once beyond the reach of any government, it ceases to exist.
Or words to that effect.
so what you're saying is if we jump in our car
and drive up to the john muir trail
and we grab blackberries out of the hands of passing hikers,
and find the a guy texting messages to certain Tanta
we will learn the true identity of CR...
ok that sounds easy
Thank you for the refreshing redirect , focusing on more valuable assets which have not been corrupted or manipulated.
Glad that you had a chance to get away. Thanks for the most excellent site, dude.
No, you can't smoke what's in the pix.
Nice pics, CR.
Nice.
Puts things in perspective!
what camera are you using? nice!
Thanks.
After a day like today, I needed that.
-- Hiding out
Nothing like roasting a pony over a open fire. Mmmmmmmmm, I miss camping.
CR... I saw streams, trout?
Bruce Cockburn is one of my favorite musicians.
But I like the line "Wondering where the lions are", perhaps echoing the previous post about bank failures.
missed the dog and pony show today. Bailout at its best. Why don't they investigate the false rumors that make stocks go up? FNM and FRE access to the dicount window? well see.
Enjoy wherever you are while you can--before the Bush Administration figures out a way to sell it to one of his cronies (for a good price, of course, if you're the buyer) as Bush has already done with some beautiful public lands in western Montana.
His administration wants to finish clearcutting all the old growth left in on federal lands in OR too, so what if the market's bad for lumber now because of the construction industry slump.
the music of bruce cockburn (i think its pronounced co-burn) pretty amazing stuff
oh cut the wise cracks !
for those who like guitar work
emmitt and cockburn bang out this ditty with slide and six string
best listened to with a double shot straight up
YouTube
- Bruce Cockburn - Deer Dancing Round A Broken Mirror
Any idea what kind of hummingbird that is? Female rufous?
ok...i'm envious.
Pacific Crest Trail Association - Home
planning an '09 thru hike!
SIIIGH.Thank you.
I miss going to Lake Tahoe here in my neck of the woods and over Carsons pass for a hike now & then. One day.... Great song. Great pics. Again, thank you for a much needed mental break.
Maybe, with the surplus of commercial real estate about, it's time to make another Blues Brothers' film?
"The mall car chase was filmed in the real, albeit abandoned, Dixie Square Mall in Harvey."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Blues_Brothers_car_chase.JPG
Very nice pics and beautiful music. It does my heart and soul good to watch and hear.
This blog is a general good for society, not just because of the economic analises, but also because of stuff like this.
Thank you!
I sure do love the Sierra's, my favorite place growing up. I hope the Chinese and Arabs from the Oil Producing Economic Countries let us visit when they buy it.
Congrats. Have a good trip. Hopefully you didn't bring a blackberry.
CR, I could never make such a trip because of too much scotch and too many cigars, so my hat's off to you.
Enjoy.
Nice pictures. Did you see any bears?
It ain't all about money, folks. Thanks for the grounding CR. You and the T are the best. Great photos.
14,505, I've been there.
And speaking of not knowing where the lions are, today feels like at least a short-term bottom (or close to it in the market).
Can't say why, exactly. Maybe many reasons. And it just FEELS like it... The VXO gapped up and hit against the upper Bollinger band calculated at 2.1 standard deviations from the last 150 days, for example. Mmmm, some negative divergence between price and the 140 day RSI on the major indexes, to name another. The IndyMac failure, the calming song from this post... to name others.
Maybe I'm calling it too early, but many of the shorts probably got out on Tuesday, and the longs have probably already thrown in the towell so I'm going to at least start testing the waters. Worst case scenario, we have another leg down the same size as this one... no biggie.
lovely photos! No smokey skies in the sierras? I haven't seen the sun here in the valley in something like a week here.
btw, anyone see this on the soup? YouTube
- The Soup: iPhone Frenzy
Something tells me CR may not even know (happily hiking the Sierras) that IndyMac is kaput.
Gawd am I jealous! Beautiful, simply beautiful. Makes me (again) nostalgic for the old CR banner.
A CREDIT TALE
Once upon a time, a young man and a young woman met and fell in love. The man proposed to the woman and she accepted. They were married in 1993.
In 1995 they bought a modest house. The man lived within his means, and over the next 10 years he made the mortgage payments on time every month. Their equity grew until they owed 25% of what the house was worth. During this time the man and woman conceived two wonderful children.
One afternoon in December 2007, the wife came to her husband with a strange look in her eyes. She needed money in a bad way. She was in debt. The husband didn't understand. They both had good jobs. He had money in the bank and for the first time in his life felt secure that their retirement needs would be met. Why was she in debt? How much money did she need?
The wife told her husband that she had $20,000 in credit card debt. The husband was shocked. The husband was angry with himself for not monitoring his wife's spending habits. He wondered where the $20,000 went. "With all of that debt, why don't we at least have nice leather furniture and a plasma TV?" he asked himself. He paused to consider the annual trips to Europe his wife had been taking over the past few years with her friends. She never asked, she just told him that she would be doing it ("You only live once!" were her exact words.) The husband gave her the $1,000 budgeted for Christmas, plus another $2,000 in cash.
One day in January 2008 the wife came to the husband again. "I'm screwed," she said. Checks had bounced. By this time the husband was paying all of the bills, including the utilities. All of the wife's income was going to pay off the credit cards. "I owe $30,000," she told the husband. "I went to the bank and they said we could take out a home equity line of credit." The husband refused. The husband said she should talk to a debt counselor because there are things she could do to reduce the amount owed. When the husband told his wife "no" she had a desperate, feral look in her eyes. The wife didn't want to do this because it would damage her credit rating. Her credit was the most important thing.
The wife shut off the husband. She became distant. No longer did she snuggle up to her husband. She took a second part-time job and rarely saw her husband or the children. She worked the second job for 5 months. When the couple's economic stimulus check came, the husband gave it to her.
One morning in late June, the wife announced to the husband that she was filing for divorce. She had used the economic stimulus check to hire an attorney and file the papers. She already had a new apartment lined up. The wife wanted the husband to give her half of everything that he had worked for. The husband didn't take expensive vacations to Europe. The husband drove a beater car. The husband didn't have the latest expensive cell phone. But that didn't matter, and the husband was soon presented with the divorce decree. The husband was shocked to discover in the decree that the wife didn't owe $30,000 to the credit card companies. In fact, she had over $50,000 in credit card debt.
Now the husband is forced to sell the house in a depressed market and he is very, very upset. No longer does he see the children every night. All of his plans for the future have been torn to shreds. He is a grown man who cries every night in an empty house, pining for the life he once had.
THE END
This is a true story. Don't let it happen to you.
Thanks. I needed that.
man oh man. Work kept me off the magic tubes of the internet until about 10 min ago. (stressful work away from the desk today). Caught the headlines- understand I wasn't the only one with a hard day today. Then hit play on this video, with my martini next to me, and felt the stress melt away. I think I need to follow CR out there soon.
Soylent Green!
I thought these pictures looked familiar.
Question:
Where shoud Indymac clients who will get 50C on a dollar from FDIC put their money next?
anya
Stolen shamelessly from another site but here goes.
an old trading aphorism that is worth being followed by both veteran fund managers and market neophytes: picking bottoms gives you stinky fingers.
Now quit screwing up the serenity and give it a rest.
Damn, that story sucks, but if you're on CR, then you'll have a leg up on everyone when the shit really hits the fan.
"Where shoud Indymac clients who will get 50C on a dollar from FDIC put their money next?"
As long as they keep their new accounts less than $100,000 it shouldn't matter.
4822,
What about those with more than 100K? What were they thinking? They should at least subscribe to Sen Schumer's investment letters.
"What about those with more than 100K? "
Never had that problem :^/
I did that...many times. Now, I'm too old to do that...thanks for the memories.
From the last post:
Weather Helm writes:
In other news, Moody's has announced a downgrade of IndyMac debt from AAA to AA+, and puts IndyMac on credit watch with negative implications.
Moody's will continue to monitor IndyMac's financial health and will update investors when appropriate.
The Onion has already written this article, but to add insult to injury they are waiting to mid august to publish.
Good Lord, Anonymous Coward!
I thought I couldn't get any more depressed, after just seeing 'Wall-e" with my kids.
Well, Indymac is dead. All of the ceremony I can remember is, 'he will be returned to the sea'. So, return him to the sea.
Ah, the Sierras... anyone ever been the Mineral King, in the southern Sierras, populated with bears and a kind of cute but voracious chipmunk/rodent called a "marmot". From the trail guide:
"Each spring and early summer, the marmots of Mineral King dine on rare delicacies in this alpine valley. Their fare includes radiator hoses and car wiring! Like bears, jays and ground squirrels, marmots have not only become accustomed to visitors, they have learned that people are a source of food.
In the parking areas some marmots feast on car hoses and wires. They can actually disable a vehicle. On several occasions, marmots have not escaped the engine compartment quickly enough and unsuspecting drivers have given them rides to other parts of the parks; several have ridden as far as southern California!
The whole thing sounds ridiculous, but it's true. If you visit Mineral King, especially during the spring, check under you hood before driving away. Let the rangers know whether or not your vehicle has been damaged. And don't forget, marmots also love to feast on boots, backpacks, and other equipment. "
"the" Mineral King --> "to" Mineral King, of course.
You'd have to be certifiably insane to have had over-limit deposits at IndyMac today.
Expired
"Everybody is totally negative on financial stocks, and until housing prices stabilize, and people feel like there is liquidity for these firms, the market will continue to take them down. It's interesting the way the shorts have gotten -- it's almost like a group of piranhas. Something in the water is hurt, and all of the sudden it has 10,000 piranhas on it."
Yeah. Those darn shorts. Like a bunch of piranhas. Trying to get one more bite of the animal before the carcass is devoured.
And all the animal had to start with was a little boo-boo.
pet peave - "Sierra" is already plural
CR,
The weekend before my conference in San Francisco, we took our boys and my MIL to Yosemite NP for their first time. Any day in the Sierras is a great day, even in spite of the smoke. I promised my 7yr old that we were going to come back some day when we had more time to hike Half Dome. He's ready.
Hike on brother,
It's not the Sierras (with an 's') but properly the Sierra.
Pet peave? Try this: everyone understood what he meant by Sierras, and it's actually commonly used in both forms in these here parts, so give it a rest grammer pendants. No one else cares.
As for being over the FDIC limit, I see that as a method to get in early on the IndyMac Federal Savings IPO.
My in-laws got back from a 2 day hike in the Sierras last week. It was supposed to be a 3-day trip, but because of the high rain and snowfall this year, many of the streams were impassable. Also an insane number of mosquitoes, even over 10,000 ft.
I miss the Sierras. We went out the last two summers for 7 and 14 day treks, respectively, but this year my wife is pregnant. It may be a few years before we get back out on the trail!
Anonymous Coward -
FWIW, I was in a somewhat similar situation some time ago. A spouse who is acting out like that and then looking for a rescue is almost certainly stuck in adolescent mode, testing for unconditional love and acceptance. It would not have helped if you had taken out the Heloc - she would have just doubled down. The most you can do in that situation is take on the role of parent and help the perpetual adolescent try to outgrow the problem. Unfortunately, they are unlikely to see it that way. And if they do outgrow the problem they will still probably want to do what every adolescent does - move on.
On the bright side, your next house will likely be even cheaper in a few years than the one you're selling now. My advice is to price it aggressively and try to feel the financial loss as penance and absolution. Just don't end up like one of my relations, now in a nursing home and still fixated on the tragedy of a divorce that happened nearly 40 years ago. Hint: most people in nursing homes have more pressing problems than a divorce that happened 40 years ago, so it's hard to make friends.
Kyle: Since we're being pedantic, it's "pet peeve"...
Now, back to fine memories of the marmots of the Sierras... the way they would yell at you from the trees, going cheepy cheepy cheepy cheepy...
Well, there are the Sierra Nevada, the Sierra Madre del Sur, the Sierra Madre Occidental,and others, so 'Sierras' is as correct as 'peoples'.
This break is just further evidence that CR has his head on straight. Gotta keep the dive_hike thing going, it's what living is for.
Slightly OT: Zillow
What's the Zestimate worth? On my street the last house (all identical) sold for 186k, yet Zestimate taxes the other houses at ~207k. Are they so behind the curve as the Fed?
W.
Kyle Winslow,
you might like this
Would like to thank Tanta and CR for the excellent site and actually commenting on the comments. Bloggers are definitely the future and the community surely appreciates the work you both put out.
Anonymous writes:
Kyle Winslow,
you might like this
I can relate!!
The peso has gained 5.5 percent this year, buoyed by the widening gap between U.S. and Mexican benchmark interest rates. The 5.75 percentage-point differential between the two countries is the widest since September 2005.
Yields on Mexico's benchmark 10 percent bonds due December 2024 jumped 8 basis points, or 0.08 percentage point, to 9.29 percent. The bond's price slipped 0.71 centavo to 105.94 centavos per peso, according to Banco Santander SA.
The home and offices of Eike Batista, Brazil's richest man, were raided by the federal police today as part of a probe into alleged fraud and tax evasion. The shares of three companies controlled by Batista tumbled, wiping out as much as $3.26 billion in market value.
``Operation Midas Touch'' is investigating possible fraud in the granting of rights to run the Amapa Railroad and tax evasion related to a gold mine, said Fabio Tamura, police chief in Macapa, in the northern state of Amapa
So CR, practicing for the approaching financial winter, living off the fat of the land? Those squirrels look YUMMO!
Seriously... Nice work. It's good to see you're living it up, in spades. Enjoy!
T and CR, have you considered a 24 hr chat room? we are site addicts and would stay here longer (I think).
on a phone...excuse the small caps,spelling, etc
Marmots? That's it! Didn't CR make a similar trip last summer just before things started to go haywire?
Marmots, sitting in the bloomberg terminals, nesting in the circuit breakers, gnawing on the transistors in the black boxes.
And they could have multiplied.
Every policitican, regulator, wall street schmuck might have their own little private marmot, sitting in their skull, chewing away at the tiny atrophied locus that controls social behavior.
Anonymous Coward
because of stories like this, many young people in eastern europe earn as much money possible when they are young to have the appartment/house bought and written to their own name.
here, what you owned before marrying and even inherited furing your marriage is all yours, and in a divorce you split just what you both earned during the marriage. prenups are not very common here.
the downside is, the young people who plan marry usually in their 30s, when their peers who married in their 20s are getting divorced ...
but well at least they learn to save
Oh well!
Feeling envious here. Enjoy!
Very Paul Krugman of you to post pictures from your vacation.
Looks nice, hope you are having a good time!
Woe, woe and thrice woe. Woe, woe, woe.
But I started buying gold a few years back. Told all my friends to get some too. Few listened. They still seem to think the way to make money is in stocks.
I even get the impression some think its better to lose money in stocks (which are racey glamorous and exciting) than make money in a strange and boring thing like gold.
On the same theme I've got younger friends who are intent on going to business schools and getting jobs at investment banks and the world of finance because they think it is a path to riches.
The zietgeist is slow to change.
revro wrote: because of stories like this, many young people in eastern europe earn as much money possible when they are young to have the appartment/house bought and written to their own name.
revro, I got married for the first time at 57 years of age because, not only of stories like this, but of the many friends, most of whom earned much more than me in life, who have been stripped down to their ankles by the US court system. Don't have a set of nuts in this country and go into a courtroom. Bye the way, the feminists and divorce attorneys have found ways to invalidate many prenups here in the states. Anonymous Coward is but one of many.
And to think slavery was supposed to have been illegal for 145 years now.
Ozymandias writes:
On the same theme I've got younger friends who are intent on going to business schools and getting jobs at investment banks and the world of finance because they think it is a path to riches.
I think so too, the outcome of mess would most likely result in structural changes in these institutions and if it gets really bad, more protectionism will come in play.
Globalization will mean a whole new thing before this is finished.
Grats on your gold decision, the dollar can only head down now, with more monetization looming on the horizon.
Notice that bonds fell with equities recently, but where can all that capital hide. Extreme volatility is just waiting to happen.
Thanks for sharing the breaths of fresh air -- needed that as I sit in the humidity bowl of Brookly
This is another soothing moment, though disturbin at the same time - a weird, panic-calming-attempt piece on F-F by nytimes
Worst Fears Ease, for Now, On Mortgage Giants' Fate - NY Times
Laughed a few times about the phone call thing - oh yes, soothing, mysterious words brought the market up, and not the rumor of fed window.
Man that brings back memories. Such a beautiful place to hike. I've only been there once, ironically
we arrived on the day that some famous nature photographer died in a plane crash on his last
leg back from China. His studio was in the very town we were staying - I remember they put colorful balloons
outside, celebrating his life rather than mourning his passing. We went in at Shepard's Pass (?) and came out
at Bishop, I don't remember how many days. Some of those pictures look very familiar, but probably just
similar places. Maybe CR will give us his route when he gets back.
Dryfly: yes there are trout. (Puts environazi hat on) they shouldn't be there but (removes hat
shamefacedly) it sure is gorgeous to look down into the crystal clear water and see them.
There's one in that slideshow, looking at the cameraman with a sort of "what's up doc" expression.
I remember the little suckers buzzing around whilst I was gasping for air at 13.5K ft.
The great thing is when you "come back down" to where you live you feel like Neil Armstrong bouncing
around on the moon, with all those supercharged red blood cells sucking up sea-level o2!!
lol investment bankers
i heard in train recently how an it guy who is in parallel studying economy as well as it is dreaming about leaving his current stable part time job as a programmer and going to ireland to work for a hedgefond there xD
i really really had to control myself so that i dont burst out in laughter. such a clever guy studying two universities at once without even having using common sense and simply read the macro trends, or maybe just MSM.
offcourse hedgefonds in ireland are waiting for a new out of school wannabe quant when there are thousands of people with many year praxis in finance being laid off
oh, sweet naivity.
mock turtle writes:
the music of bruce cockburn (i think its pronounced co-burn) pretty amazing stuff
oh cut the wise cracks !
for those who like guitar work
emmitt and cockburn bang out this ditty with slide and six string
best listened to with a double shot straight up
YouTube
- Bruce Cockburn - Deer Dancing Round A Broken Mirror
mock turtle | 07.11.08 - 11:03 pm | #
MT - THANKS! Great Sat morning play!
"marmots of the Sierras... the way they would yell at you from the tree"
The Sierra marmots must be unusually athletic. There are plenty of them up in the Colorado Rockies, and I've never once seen one up in a tree. The ones that habituate hiking trails and camping sites are too fat to climb anything.
CR,
Thanks for the photos and music. Even on the tiny screen it looked like heaven.
I've never seen a Sierra marmot in a tree. Lots of other rodent species, yes. Besides, marmots don't yell. I think they were referring to a Douglas squirrel or chickaree (not to be confused with a chickadee which is a bird). Those things like to yell at you.
Nice to see you taking some time off, especially for a refreshing hike in nature. CR, for a retired fellow, you spend too much time working on this undeniably excellent blog. While your efforts and expertise benefit many, I look forward to more posts like this one. Enjoy!
He is a grown man who cries every night in an empty house, pining for the life he once had.
THE END
Anonymous Coward who reads CR
ACWR -- Doesn't sound like you were the coward to me. You stuck it out. Cut yourself some slack. Onward and upward.
CR - Unbelievable. Kinda puts things in perspective. Housing crisis? Who cares!
Anonymous Coward that's horrible! It may not be much comfort, but I think that's a common story. And I've heard worse. My cousin recently had his life turned upside down because of his (now ex) wife. He worked two jobs while she over-spent and neglected to pay bills. To this day, I don't think he knows what she spent the money on. She also neglected to take her daughter to the hospital, and she died of appendicitis. Several of his relatives (myself included) gave them money for the funeral, and after falsely accusing him of abuse, she kicked him out of the house, took the funeral money out of their joint account, and filed for divorce. Granted I don't know the whole story --but what kind of person steals money from their own child's funeral fund? Anyhow, my cousin is now paying through the nose for everything.
Sharing half of a $50,000 debt may be a lot easier than what you would have been stuck with 10-15 years down the line.
How much smoke were you breathing and looking at up in the Sierra?
God, this is a sucky decade.