YLSP(Unrated) writes:
\tHope no one has a plan to marry Paris Hilton for her money...
\t YLSP | \t \t \t \t12.13.08 - 11:24 pm |
</i>
After seeing her presidental campaign commercial, I'm only interested in her mind...

When you can get an hourly rate at the Ritz, we've reached a bottom in hotels.

So when is the commercial real estate bailout?

And why does SRS continue to tank? Something doesn't smell right here. I feel like one of Madoff's "clients".

A general thought about trends of various quantities measured as percent of GDP:
Share of financial services in GDP has grown significantly over the past 15-20 years. Therefore measures defined as percent of GDP are distorted. Assume the non-financial economy did not grow in absolute terms. That means that as percent of GDP the non-financial economy has been declining. Conversely, industries that have been growing as percent of GDP must have been MUCH faster than the rest of the non-financial economy.

And why does SRS continue to tank? Something doesn't smell right here.

The Fed has created a pipeline that enables it to funnel liquidity into the stock market, mainly to provide a floor for the SPY.

By putting a floor under the SPY, the Fed is able to directly influence almost all domestic stocks, at least for the short term.

A savvy or inside group of traders either is tipped or or can discern where the Fed's SPY floors are set. I'm just an amateurs, and even I am starting to figure it out.

Once these traders know the floor is in, they naturally want to make as much money as they can, as fast as they can. So, they hammer high-risk ultra-shorts like SRS, EEV, and TWM. If you hold these while the floor is in, you are the bozo and the traders are just using you for a punching bag.

At times, like last Thursday afternoon and evening, the floor starts to melt. At those times, you see the traders scrambling to cover. That's what all the carnage in Asia and yen plummeting was about Thursday night.

But within 2-3 hours, the Fed and their overseas central bank cronies were able to reinforce the floor, although a bit lower. Once that floor held, they kept moving it up all day Friday.

Friday has given the traders-in-the-know all the confidence they need to murder double-shorts next week. They are convinced the Fed will hold the floor at least through Xmas, barring catastrophe. Bernie Madoff may become a catastrophe soon enough, but not next week.

I'm betting that next week will be a repeat of this week, with double-shorts getting murdered, the Fed's floors holding, and gold/silver heading way north.

We are all Hotel California now.

When I read dc1000's comments re deflation vs inflation, he's correct in the "micro" sense of domestic supply and demand.

But he ignores the larger perspective of the global side. We're pouring acid on the dollar and the corrosive effect will cause the rest of teh world to start turning it in.

That's going to take a bit longer, but how much?

If you say you can detect market manipulation, aren't you pretty much claiming that you can predict day-to-day stock movements? In essence, you know where it "should" be if it weren't for the manipulation. I have to say I'm skeptical, given that nobody has ever demonstrated this ability to my knowledge.

Topher-
first hand. poker. make funny.

rich-

What is the fascination with ETFs? IOWs- if trading is your thing (nothing wrong with that), why make bets against foes that know more than you?

I confess to not understand day trading, in general, but, day trading on derivatives based on orders of magnitudes from the underlying securities seems...self-defeating.

It's like taking day trading and amplifying it to millisecond trading due to the structure of the "securities"?

Outside of sport, am I missing something?

“I'm betting that next week will be a repeat of this week, with double-shorts getting murdered, the Fed's floors holding, and gold/silver heading way north.”
rich | 12.13.08 - 11:53 pm | #

Maybe, but how long can that last. I read a comment you made last April about TWM. I bought it and held it till I had a nice profit. I only wish I held it to $160.00 from $68. But as my Grandfather always said,” never cry over a profit”. IMO the market will trade in a range and go up towards PE/O’s inauguration. Then it’s time for SDS. S&P 600 or lower.

The other part of the pattern I see is that the Fed is holding the door open for some big sellers to trade at the highest price possible.

If you had a list of the top 6-8 U.S. life insurance companies that write variable life insurance and annuities, you would see chaos right now at all these companies. They don't have enough hedges against the stock market guarantees they have written. They are scrambling to cut stock market risk as fast as possible, by hedging, selling shorting (all the same thing). But if everybody runs for the door at the same time, the market tanks.

So, the Fed holds the door open, and all these companies have to exit in sequence, kind of like a programmed fire drill. That's what I see.

The Fed will probably shut me down soon for saying this.

SRS fans (and I was one of them), you need to go back and very carefully understand what this thing is.

In this climate, it will go nowhere but down -- regardless of whether the underlying index loses 50%.

You can be absolutely right about your macro call on CRE, that it will tank. SRS does not care. It will take all of your money if this volatility keeps up.

If you have invested in SRS you absolutely need to understand this. You cannot possibly make money with it with this level of volatility, regardless of whether the DJUSRE drops by 50% in the next two months...

Read the prospectus, and especially the SAI document (Special Additional Information). There is a chart there that shows how the thing will perform in volatility. Their chart only goes up to 40% volatility level, cause that's been the maximimum we've seen in our lifetimes. But it's way above that now, and showing no signs of letting up.

You will not recover your losses, no matter what, if this volatility keeps up.

Rich, I am not sure you understand this.

Also, I held TWM for 7 months. Talk about a wild ride!

I'm convinced that the Fed probably is tipping off traders so that they can go after the double-short ETFs and obliterate them. This helps the Fed let the market down easy. The Fed thinks the double-shorts contributed to the market declines in Sept-Oct.

anyone who thinks this is going to end pretty needs to go look at the committment of traders report for the s&P

commercials are more short the market than at anytime during 2008.

hong konger,

Exactly, the Ultrashort ETFs are not affected by crowded trades. Their value obediently obeys mathematics. Of course the underlying index is part of the equation, so it is affected by that. But as I said earlier, the other parts of the mathematics overwhelm the index if this volatility keeps up.

... and if rich is correct than clearly the Fed had a plan to an "orderly unwind"... maybe 10k by December, 8k by June... 6k by December 09? But these external events managed to take things down more than expected? Not sure when but you gotta believe the Fed saw the Bubble like anyone else.

- NY Times

I apologize for derailing this thread, but I'll say this again.

If you invest in SRS in this environment and think you can make money on it, then you are investing in something you do not understand.

You will probably regret it, unless your timing is exactly perfect (like right before a radical drop with hardly any up days in the index).

SRS was designed to be used by mathemeticians, not by macro-investment-themed investors.

ETFs- "The fundamentals aren't fundamental."

Pissed Off in California,
It shorts the Dow Jones Real Estate Index (2x short actually). I think IYR is an ishares etf that tracks that index.

I can see why someone would argue that SRS isn't going to make any money again... one would have to believe housing will hit pre-2000 pricing, right? Is that what you are believing ShortCourage?

Or are you just someone who is a counterparty to SRS trying to scare us away...

YLSP, the argument is that volatility kills ultrashorts regardless of the movement of the underlying index. That's all.

The tinfoil hat brigade is out in force tonight.

Ian,
But that doesn't take into account demand if a number of people jump into the ETF all at once? (Or for ultrashort a number of people jump out of the shorted index all at once?).

I don't care, the US is already "holding to maturity" a number of assets for me that are junk, so I can hold some junk in my portfolio as well...

I get the underlying argument. Why not short the specific companies themselves instead? Or even better short the ultralongs and ultrashorts.

I can only assume everyone who knows about slippage must be making a killing going short the ultras?

I think someone else posted this on another thread, but it bears repeating:

Major US banks are worse than zombies.

"iTulip: What do you make of the extraordinary levels of bank reserves that the Federal Reserve is pumping into the Federal Reserve System, now at more than 600% higher than November 2007 levels?

"Dr. B: Think of the commercial banks that take loans from the Federal Reserve banking system as a person and the money that flows through them as the blood in a person's body. Now think of that person as injured. When he suffers a severe injury and loses blood, the Fed gives him an emergency money transfusion. You can see in your chart below the money transfusions in late 1999 just before the end of the year, due to the Y2K scare -- false, as it turns out -- and in 2001 after 9/11. Some believe that the withdrawal of reserves in mid 2000 caused the market decline that led to the recession of 2001...

"Dr. B: After the injury is operated on and healed and the patient is producing his own money again, the money that was added earlier by the Fed's transfusion is drained back out. As you can see from your chart above, the transfusions usually take two to six months and typically six months or so after the crisis is over are gradually withdrawn over a period of several months to return total money in the system to pre-crisis levels.”

"iTulip: That makes sense. But why has the Fed this time had to continue to transfuse money? Why are the transfusions so huge and why do the transfusions seem to not be working? Is he still bleeding and the money is pouring through the system? If you try to compare previous expansions with this one on the same chart on the same scale, the differences are quite stark.

"Dr. B: My theory is, and I admit not everyone will agree with it, is this: the patient is dead.

"iTulip: Interesting. That does not bode well for the efficacy of future transfusions.

"Dr. B: No it does not. They can keep the intravenous tube hooked up to a pint bottle or a 100 gallon drum of blood but it doesn’t matter if the blood is not circulating through the patient so he can take it in.

"Dr. B: The reason: Credit Default Swaps. It is now well understood that CDS are at the root of today’s financial crisis. Your readers have known that risk since 1999 when you first posted Someone Please Turn on the Lights. Some have suggested the simple expedient of canceling them all, declaring all of the CDS contracts null and void.

"iTulip: That will bring the dead patient back to life, assuming as you assert that he is dead?

"Dr. B: CDS certainly killed him but removing them is no cure.

"iTulip: Why not?

"Dr. B: Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Report no. 276 "Credit Derivatives and Bank Credit Supply" by Beverly Hirtle, February 2007 concluded that all of the nation’s largest banks used credit default swaps not to protect existing assets but to expand their balance sheets between 1997 and 2006.

"iTulip: So all of the largest banks relied on CDS to make new loans since 1997.

"Dr. B: Correct, and that means that central banks cannot wave a magic wand and declare all CDS contracts null and void because if they do loans that were made in the US by the largest banks only because they were insured by CDS will have to be declared null and void, too. No one knows exactly the total loan value is of these CDS-dependent loans but it must be high enough to call their solvency into question because these banks refuse to lend to each other no matter how much the Fed increases reserves.

"iTulip: But why does the total value need to be that high to make the decision to cancel all CDS a non-starter for central banks? Doesn’t the act of canceling the CDS mean that these loans are technically ‘bad" loans? No bank can survive a write-down of 10% of assets never mind 20%. Doesn’t this mean these largest banks are technically insolvent?

"Dr. B: Now you understand the problem! You nailed it. That is why I say they are dead and all the cash infusions in the world from the Fed won’t bring them back to life. They are dead with the CDS and dead without them. The Fed may as well stop the intra-venous injections of reserves."

Major US banks worse than Japan's zombies? - iTulip.com

bgates, where are you located that the freeways are mysteriously vacant?  I'm asking with honest curiosity.  Things here in TX are still quite brisk... with plenty of undesireable traffic

PO'ed:

650 is probable if earnings fall and PE compresses.

Trailing 13 month PE on SPY as of 11/30/2008 was 10.73.

SP500 was 896.

Re: "Have we hit bottom?"
I always hark back to this enlightening post I saw from CR in 2005. Every businessman should understand this (?) . I have to admit I didn't know too much about the business cycle when I read that; I'm not a businessman by trade.

I suppose right now have moved from the 1 o'clock position; "Stagnant or lower home prices", through the 4o'clock position "lower equity withdrawal", and are in the 6 o'clock position.

Has the trade deficit actually gone down yet? I think it is getting close to going negative but hasn't yet. Additionally, by lowering the interest rates so much, they only have 1 way to go. Less foreign CB investment?

Now; I'm not sure where the printing press comes into play. I guess it would have to replace the "less foreign CB investment" which leads to higher interest rates. But that would mean the Fed is going to fight the GDP and trade deficit and foreign CB investment numbers in order to float the economy, right?

Sorry, I'm not an economist, just an engineer who has been reading this site for awhile. My wife and I were recollecting the day a few years ago when we learned her brother had bought a house in Las Vegas. It was clearly a point of pressure in our relationship, as we were a bit stunned how they could afford a house, and really jealous, "Oh, they have a house...". I try to impart her some of the stuff I read but she thinks of me as someone who is a "know it all" and reads too much, and it would be better if I didn't peruse the news every day.

About my brother-in-law and his wife. They levered up and started a business based on a push cart in Las Vegas. To rent the push-cart in front of a hotel cost them $15k. When I heard all of this I was clearly concerned for their son. They are now divorced and it is messy. I haven't seen my nephew for 2 years and I'm not sure I'll ever see him again, although I'd really love if he were to visit and play with my son, not sure what my brother-in-law's visitation rights are, but it doesn't seem like he can spend time with his son. I can't help but think that this type of situation is going to be played out so common with the next generation.

demographics would indicate health care
bgates | 12.14.08 - 1:59 am | #

Note to self: got to learn spanish, chinese, or tagolog so I can talk with the nurses in the nursing homewhen the time comes.

Norka-

It's true someone did. And, that's the thesis for why it stopped. But, that was a much different problem (a "mechanical" problem with the clearing mechanism).

In regards to what we were discussing, though, I'm not sure I could go along with the notion that an ETF's price affects the underlying securities for the simple fact that the ETF has a fixed allocation at inception. In theory, that's what you're trading on.

Unless the fund has provisos to artificially match a non-fund, open market-based NAV, of course.

But, we're getting to levels of complexity now that I'm too tired to contemplate and would have to be addressed on a case by case basis, in any case.

You always make good points, though. So, I'm willing to keep an open mind.

Well...  last night, reading this board, I had become convinced we may well be looking at Great Depression II.  However, so long as people are lining up in the morning to buy iPods, Wal Mart workers are trampled to death by eager consumers, my downtown is clogged up with well-dressed 20-somethings hitting the bars, we are NOT in depression territory.

I don't doubt a real crash is coming - one that exists on the street, not just on Wall Street.  However, our gubment may be able to pump this bubble up once or twice more before that happens...

Back to the thread topic for a sec;

Did anyone else see the article in Monday's Barrons about Gaylord Entertainment (GET)? They are a convention hotel operator in the south.

Barrons thinks they are looking good, I disagree with their thesis - the debt looks too ugly and the management is entrenched. Linkey

Maybe the U.S. would be more competitive if we all had healthcare. Maybe less sick days, definitely fewer people stuck being less than productive in stressful and/or dead-end jobs because they need the benefits. (And a girl can dream: maybe benefits that are well-deserved for the hours and effort certain classes of workers put in, whatever the size of their employers' empires.)

I remember Bernanke saying something about fiscal stimulus a while back. He said a package designed to help would "be aimed at redressing specific factors that have the potential to extend or deepen the economic slowdown." (I found that in his testimony from October 20, 2008.) To me, that doesn't preclude paving the way for a workable healthcare idea. The "market-based" one we have is clearly not working.

Boomers are broke, and they're going to get old and sick soon. Don't be naive about the language thing; I know a lot of waitresses and line cooks that might want to be nurses instead for a mere $5 or $10k pay raise.. especially if that means they can get new glasses/get their teeth fixed. We need our young (and not-so-young) people to stay healthy and keep working, whether they've been to college or not.

As far as devaluation of the dollar goes, I think RhodesianGreenback's got it. A decline in purchasing power of the dollar (and "our" standard of living) might not be the worst thing for a culture hooked on easy credit.

POiC-

Well, if you're "trading", it's always around NAV, no?

Thanks folks (and CR), I gotta skeedaddle, as well.

"ya, man. if you can get the other taxpayers to pay for my family's healthcare, I can finally quit this annoying job I have and try to venture out on my own. if you're willing to shoulder my burden while I "explore",..."
--RockyR

It could happen. All we need is a funding mechanism that collects from the underground economy, such as a consumption tax, to pay for it.

We could have a happy outcome to the creative destruction if people could start and run small businesses and attract the best talent without the direct burden of health-care costs.

With the wrong funding mechanism, we would end up with an even more dysfunctional health care system, much like what you can see in the county hospitals and trauma center in California today. The only way it works is if the illegals and the underground economy in general can be made to carry some portion of the load.

"Sounds nice, but I'm planning on finally abusing opiates on a massive scale in my golden years, so those winding roads might not be the best idea."
--bgates

I know some people with names you would recognize who managed to have it both ways. Believe it or not, Malibu has good delivery service to most areas.

sm_landlord,

i like the idea of funding healthcare on a consumption tax.  The ONLY ways to make hc more affordable by nationalizing are to a.) increase the number of payors into the system (increase revenues) or b.) rationing (decrease costs).  As it is, the total cost of healthcare remains the same whether private or public.  That is, unless you think the government can do something it has never done before and run a more efficient operation than does the private sector.

RR

why would the market go up? I'd like to know what industries or sectors are going to have encouraging news.
sdtfs | 12.14.08 - 2:40 am | #

I keep asking myself this question.  I can't think of a single thing.  But then again, I didn't see (wasn't paying attention enough) to see the RE bubble coming after the .com bust.  This goes back to the more fundamental problem of our economy being gutted.

I find it extremely hard to figure out where to invest, because I can't defeat this feeling that these bastards are going to manipulate the rules and screw me no matter what I do. Bank account? They'll screw you by devaluing the currency, which they intend to do for a recovery. TIPS? They'll screw with CPI to get out from under that. Ibonds? Same. Gold? They'll outlaw it. I, the saver, am like a goddamn cockroach that they want to destroy in order to bail out the real vermin, these debt monkeys.
Hoopajoops, LTD | Homepage | 12.14.08 - 2:50 am | #

Damn, have you been reading my thoughts. 

I'll have to get new batteries for my tin-foil collinder.

[:-)

RockyR;

No, the government cannot run the system in a way that I would find acceptable. But it certainly could change the revenue equation. of course, the devil is in the details.

But I have seen evil things. I have a friend who got cancer and was forced to stop working in order to get government coverage to pay for a bone marrow transplant. I gave him rides to the hospital on several occasions, and got to see first hand how broken the system is. I have seen the LATimes reports which document people dying in the waiting room while the staff ignores them. The whole disaster at Martin Luther King hospital, with the nasty local politics that prevented a solution until the feds had to come in and force a closure.

It would be hard to design a system as bad as the one we have now, where emergency rooms are overloaded with indigents and doctors are leaving the profession. I happen to have enough money to pay for real health care if and when I need it, but what about the other 95% of the population?

And fraud consumes upwards of 40% of Medicare/Medicaid expenditures.  Your point?
Comrade Bear (tj & the bear) | 12.14.08 - 2:57 am | #

Subsidize their med school loans; protect them from the lawyers; and put them all on a high salary.

http://photos1.blogger.com/hello/101/3984/1024/K-Cycle-Interest-Rates.jpg

20-year cycle in terms of interest rates. The rising in stock prices and housing prices is inversely related to fall of interest rates.

The only way to restart the bubble is to drive interest rates down to new levels. I suspect the "natural bottom" of rates was reached around 2003 when The System resorted to "structuring" short money as long money aka subprime loans.

I don't think they can do it. If I remember correctly, the market was dead from 1970 to 1982. Oops, make that 1965.

^DJI: Basic Chart for Dow Jones Industrial Average - Yahoo! Finance

E Tu, Krugman?

Newsmax.com - Swedish Officials Investigating Nobel Prize Board

"The Nobel Prize Committee is facing criminal investigation of bribery and corruption"

Comrade Bear writes;
"Do you think there's ever going to be a system comprised entirely of doctors & nurses?"

No. But. Have you seen how doctor's practices are run? Lots of overhead for billing, lots of time and money wasted.

Many years ago (like 1983), I wrote some software (under contract) that automated the classification of diagnoses and billing codes, and submitted the charges to MediCal on Mag tape. The incentive was faster payment.

When I went to visit customers, I discovered that the software was being used to run fraud mills.

So I know that the system in California has been corrupt since at least 1983. Needless to say, I ran away fast and found better things to do with my time.

The system badly needs fixing. The only way I know of to minimize fraud is to keep the patients involved in the payment process somehow. In the old days, you would pay your doctor and submit an insurance claim for reimbursement. That might be better, as it would complicate the problem of organizing billing fraud.

Comrade Bear;

Sure, go ahead. I certainly do not have the answers.
.

Megsly.  I haven't turned in, yet.  I did have student loans  - LOTS OF THEM.  I worked my ass off and so did my wife.  I had to forego new cars, houses, and big vacations while we holed up in a tiny apartment in a flea-bitten corner of the south to pay them off.  Now that I'm free of them, I really don't feel like subsidizing people who aren't willing to go through the pain.  And, also, not all college degrees are worth the loans.  I know plenty of people who racked up college loans to get jobs a High School education would have allowed them to obtain.

Two paychecks away from the street?  I'd suggest adjusting lifestyle (even your city if need be) to get yourself out of that position.

And, hey - I'm a nice guy

Maybe this guy needs a CR Community put:

On Martin Armstrong's 'It's Just Time' -- Seeking Alpha

C

Maybe this guy needs a CR Community put:
Counterpointer | 12.14.08 - 3:35 am | #

Maybe it's because it's GretchenM, but something about that narrative smells fishy to me.

UK may give car firms low-cost loans, guarantees: UK media

take that!

I'm out with Jesse Malin & Marah, Jesse goes back to the states and I go with Marah to Spain for a week, mostly the north and Catalonia. I have a free day in Mallorca, will check out the implosion 1st hand.

The value of faster and wider global communication can not be estimated in dollar terms

Of course it can.. and is. You're debate is about the accuracy of the estimation.

Value is a tricky thing.

The trick is to spread the dividends. Less suffering, as you put it

Yes, that's really the crux of it.

How do you distribute work in the most efficient way?

Again the digital revolution has allowed more efficient pricing of "public goods" like roads

I'll commit blasphemy and suggest that "optimum pricing" is sometimes a bad goal.

There impedences and durations which central banks may not be good at managing around, but perhaps they are... good enough.

The problem I have with this idea is that it rewards immediate gratification and people tend to be gratified by sex, drugs and rock-n-roll.

Elements of a public good. Hahahaha. Yes, I can see that, it's an interesting idea.

I've been in a very odd frame of mind for the past few days, I haven't been able to sleep much. Counterpointer got me started tonight on Tao, it falls naturally into my current flow.

Broward tragedies of the commons are overcome when enough people understand the short term costs are worth paying

You assume a certain homogenous belief and intelligence in the general population.

Idealistic.
Doomed to failure.

You can't design systems around the best components, "average" is the most likely case and slack needs to be built in.

And some tragedies of the commons may span across a longer time than any of us can understand.

Yogi,

Solar-powered will increase, not eliminate, the need for batteries (or, more generally, electricity storage modules).

It is interesting that only a couple of weeks ago I went to a sales breakfast where a company was making a big point of using capacitors rather than batteries in their write cache. Perhaps a combination of capacitors for storage/surge and micro fuel-cells or solar cells for recharge . . .

to add to the SRS discussion from last night (yes, I've got a good chunk of it I bought at the recent low prices).

Here are some numbers from a recent volatile stretch.

Sept 19 $68
Oct 9 $139
Oct 13 $97
Oct 15 $142
Oct 20 $125
Oct 27 $199
Nov 4 $110
Nov 12 $172
Nov 13 $134
Nov 20 $259

That looks like some pretty serious volatility to me. Obviously you need to pick and choose your entry and exit points. But I don't believe it it correct to say volatility makes this investment useless. However, it you are going to invest in it and make it work, you'd better be paying attention.

SRS got hammered on friday because GGP got a hint of financing and many of the other REITs who have a lot of debt to refinance next year jumped 15%. Still a good chance of GGP going TU. Expect more volatility if that happens.

This is the last stand for the big CREITs. They all know that they can follow GGP to zero, they all know what will happen next year. Did their optimistic financing model for -5% GDP for a few quarters next year? I expect they will fight with all they have. As an industry, they will not win that fight.

OT: Does anyone follow Public Storage (PSA)? Seems to me that in hard times having extra storage space might be a luxury. I know one other public storage company just cut their divvy to the bone this week (and of course spun it as good news). IYR (what SRS shorts) holds a big chunk of PSA.

Google Finance is showing a current PE for PSA of $17 and a F PE of $746. That seems like a sign of trouble to me.

Just by driving around I'd say the public storage industry is overbuilt but I've never seen it mentioned on CR. I'm always surprised to see these units out in the country in areas with a bunch of old empty barns.

good luck.

Not far behind in NY. We all are looking at a one Madoff unit sized hole in our budget.

New York state must make "painful" spending cuts to cope with an estimated 47 billion dollar budget shortfall over the next four years, the state governor warned Tuesday.

"OT: Does anyone follow Public Storage (PSA)? Seems to me that in hard times having extra storage space might be a luxury. I know one other public storage company just cut their divvy to the bone this week (and of course spun it as good news). IYR (what SRS shorts) holds a big chunk of PSA.

Google Finance is showing a current PE for PSA of $17 and a F PE of $746. That seems like a sign of trouble to me."

It certainly seems as if PSA will drop further. I recall looking at their 5-year chart and they took off like gangbusters amidst all the building. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. The owner financed the swift boat campaign. The cornerstone of the industry is inertia. People who rent a unit anticipate they will use it for three months or so, but they actually end up renting for over two years. At $100 a pop, I have trouble believing that too many people are storing stuff worth 2-3 grand. If you have a brain, you should stop paying and disgorge your junk.

PS - I hope you're right about SRS. Having bought some at about 100 and reading those comments upstream had me tossing and turning last night.

Here is an interesting bit on Public Storage Anyone familiar with what happened to GGP's stock after the execs unloaded?

shares have been posting sharp gains in recent weeks. But while investors load up on the real-estate investment trust, longtime Chairman B. Wayne Hughes and two children who also serve as company directors have been selling off large sums of shares.

Altogether, the Hughes triumvirate sold 5.4 million Public Storage shares on the open market for $342 million in transactions taking place on Nov. 12 through Dec. 4, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The shares were priced at $55.67 to $68.35 a piece.

RE double leveraged funds - I mentioned this already in the past threads, the long term expected return depends on the short term return and volatility as muLT = muST - sigma^2 /2.
So yes, the excess volatility does kill your expected return. You really have to have strong beliefs in very high short-term expected return to hold leveraged ETFs (long or short) for a long period of time.
Now, that of course, is about expected returns. You actual mileage may vary.
PS. Kiyoshi Ito passed away on November 10 ...

Altogether, the Hughes triumvirate sold 5.4 million Public Storage shares on the open market for $342 million in transactions taking place on Nov. 12 through Dec. 4, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The shares were priced at $55.67 to $68.35 a piece.

If Wayne's selling, it's time to drop. He had a friend of mine invest when it was around 55, and it shot up to 110/120, if I recall.

As it is, the total cost of healthcare remains the same whether private or public. That is, unless you think the government can do something it has never done before and run a more efficient operation than does the private sector.

I hear this dogma all the time, but struggle to find proof of said dogma.

When it comes to healthcare, there is no question that a single payor govt system is more efficient than the American Private system. all you have to do is look at the $$$ spent in the US for privatized health care and compare it to that in nationalized countries.

Privatized health care gets expensive really quick when the CEO's of the medical groups make 10's of millions of dollars a year and the insurance companies 50+Million bucks a year and the other associated administrators all make millions of dollars a year.

I'm sorry, but there is no question in anybody's mind that nationalized health care would be cheaper and more efficient.

what is argued about is whether or not we as a country want health care nationalized.

cue horror stories of how bad medical care is in those other nationalized models while ignoring the travesty that is American Health Care...

You're looking at it backwards. It's not that the private insurance necessarily has too much bureaucracy but that Medicare/Medicaid have too little dedicated to eliminating fraud. Hey, it's government; it's not their money, so they just spend it. Insurance companies have their own survival to think about.

hahahahhahHAHAHAHAHAHHAhahahahahahhahaha.

whew, you non-medical guys kill me! Fraud only in Medicare/Medicaid? Hahahahahahahahah

There is fraud in both Medicare and Medicaid, as well as the private insurers as well.

what you all clearly don't understand is that the ADMINISTRATION side of medicine is now so bloated because there are so many different plans and rates and billing codes and such, that every doc has to have a HORDE of people to figure it all out. Every company is different, with different rules and different regulations. They all try to screw the docs as much as they can. thus the docs have to hire a cadre of expensive lawyers and "consultants" and billing staff and what not just to try to survive.

and then what happens: the ADMINISTRATORS start getting more and more and more money. so that they can administrate with other administrators. and then they can administrate with more yet!

hooray!

in a single payor system, there are 1 set of rules. everything is significantly simpler.

the simpler=the cheaper.

American Health Care CAN NEVER NEVER NEVER compete on a price basis to its Nationalilzed Counterparts.

the only way it "competes" is that it is so big and so wasteful that many endeavors get funded that otherwise wouldn't in the Nationalized systems.
(for example, we have tons of MRI's and PET scans and more experimental drugs etc)

some of that ends up really improving life. not much of it. but some of it.

Data Point: Panama City Beach
$500,000 condos auction for $200,000, auctioneer says: "I'll be back often in 2009."

Ha, I live here in Panama City and saw that in the paper this morning, thanks for posting 1929'er. My husband worked on those condos when they were going up a couple years ago. Another one just went bellyup a couple months ago as well.

No TARP dough until Bush returns from Iraq.

Between that, Madoff, and Citadel, Monday could be interesting.

Rob Dawg - your wish has been granted

"Here is my health care proposal:
1. Everyone is required to put 15% of their income into a health care account."

I see. Why not do the same for housing? For education? for food and clothing?
Maybe you'd like to rethink this just a bit.

I'm reading all the talk about devaluing the dollar and I wonder how successfull Bernanke will be.  There's a lot of competition in the devaluation arena.  Are China and Japan, who depend so strongly on exports, going to sit idly by and not attempt to devalue their on currency at the same time?

RR: well, all right. I believe you.
And I believe you're nice, too. :^)
megsley | 12.14.08 - 4:21 am | #

:-)  I'm glad we can be friends.